The God Gene (Age of Abundance Book 2) Read online

  “You telling me you got all that info on my dad off the cloud?” Nova said, his speech garbled as his reflexes only gradually came back on line. Again his skin colors shifted to indicate the more focused mind, and the sense of puzzlement mixed with cynicism—a mix of amber and fuchsia in his case. She hated to say it, but the phosphorescent greens and blues and purples of earlier, associated with decreased mental activity and shock was prettier. Granted his look was also more pixilated, like a TV screen on the fritz, or as if he might have a skin rash compromising his ability to convey subtler emotions and thinking through colors.

  “No,” she said flatly in deference to his question, continuing her fun with the bike. “He has a nanococktail in his head like me. Apparently some apples fall further from the tree than others. The neural net will continue to give the forensic team plenty to work off of long after his body is dead and buried. Not that it matters. Most anything that will lead back to who did this to him has already been erased, as I said. Including the firewalls he set up to safeguard that region of his mind. Without them, there won’t even be the suspicion of misdoing.”

  “I want him cremated. I don’t want the AI part of him trapped in a coffin having dreams that get all the more twisted the more bacteria and fungus seep into him, or feeling it’s at war with the world because it has to defend itself.” His skin hues shifted into more garish versions of themselves, as he reacted to the horror of the images he was throwing up in his mind’s eye.

  She smiled. “I can see to that. Just so you know, you’re asking me to murder the AI. You could consider putting it in your aquarium and having it strike up a relationship with the octopus.”

  His skin colors went wild again. She was always accusing him of having an excitable nature. Maybe now, providing he carried a compact mirror with him like some women still did, he’d see for himself. “The AI will invade the octopus’s mind,” he said, “that will then proceed to break out of the tank, and I’ll wake up with it on my face. No, thank you.” “Oh the horror of it!” was conveyed with some nasty blacks and oranges and yellow flashing across his face and arms. She couldn’t wait to get him undressed. Making love to him in the dark might well be like a day at the planetarium. “If something untoward happens to you, though,” he said, “I’ll consider it. You’ll have the sense to wrap around my dick in the middle of the night.” Happy colors flashing across his face, conveying, “Oh glorious day!” followed that proclamation.

  She hoped the wind would wipe the smile off her face, but it didn’t. Oh, hell, not like he could see it unless he was checking her out in the bike’s side-view mirrors. He was probably still too out of it for that. Then again he was male. When it came to keeping himself in a state of perpetual sexual arousal, higher brain functions not implied or desired.

  The truth was the hive mind guarding the synapses in Nova’s father’s brain wasn’t as advanced as hers, which is why it would likely endure any of the after-life perils Nova imagined it would. Nova was scared enough of the future; she didn’t want him looking at her with the same terrified expression every time he thought of his father forever not-quite-dead yet in his coffin.

  Corona was curious as to why his old man hadn’t upgraded to the latest nanococktails, which could bring him back from the dead. Especially when being hunted to extinction. They would preserve his mind and his memories long enough for the body-nano to do their repair work—however long that took. He must have been too busy running for his life to stop into a nano chop shop. That, or he was like Nova, only, slightly less of a Luddite, and certainly not an early adopter of the latest nextgen tech to come along. Many did prefer other people iron out the kinks with the prototypes on their minds before subjecting themselves to unnecessary pain, madness, a walking-death, or Techa knows what else. “You’d think being stalked by assassins would temper his reservations some,” she thought, if he had them.

  “I suppose we should leave the investigation to the police,” Nova said, sounding increasingly coherent. He had gone from an emotional response to dealing with his father’s death to a more logical one; of course that may have had less to do with the shock wearing off and more to do with how he processed grief. If he wasn’t all the way back thanks to her bike antics, he was eighty-percent back. Fear of falling off the bike would soon trigger a different kind of adrenaline cascade in him than the one pertaining to shock. She noticed he was flinching more in response to her avoiding slamming into things at the last second with a hard turn of the bike, like the other hot-rodding airbikers forgetting to put their headlamps on. Not to mention avoiding the aircars whose passengers hadn’t the sense to put their vehicles on autopilot so they could make out or trip out to the city lights.

  “Like hell,” Corona said. “We are not getting the cops involved. Any corporation smooth enough to entirely erase their tracks can stay well ahead of whatever tech the police have, or anyone has.”

  “You’re referring to the fact that they scrubbed your info blast to Interpol from the mindnet even before it reached its target. The self-evolving algorithms you sent to sniff out who got inside my father’s head to wipe it clean I gather aren’t faring any better.”

  “They’ve been scouring the mindnet the entire time. Drilling past any corporate firewalls that might have the information bottled up in-house. They’ve been neutralized now, of course. I’m thinking they only lasted as long as they did because whoever did this to him wanted to assure us there was no point coming after them. Even with nextgen sniffer technology not currently available to me.”

  “Like the stuff any men in black agency you can think of would have, starting with the NSA.”

  “Nothing that could jeopardize the corporate bottom line is going to be released even to secret government agencies, whose contracts are funded on corporate money.”

  Nova let out a primal scream. “You assured me there were no corporations anymore.”

  “The really big, world-destroying, people-suppressing ones have been absorbed back into the public sphere. They’re run by AI now whose algorithms are created by the people who gave us Unix. That still leaves countless smaller corporations still not a big enough threat to the public welfare to have everyone clamoring for their AI takeover.”

  “Shit, all it takes is one of you, far less a team of you transhumans, far less however many project teams in a corporation to turn the world ass end up.”

  “What can I say? Capitalism dies hard, baby,” Corona said, “and not everyone is convinced that people will work their asses off for the greater good only to increase the UBI pot, without more for them than anyone else.”

  “Can’t we use CRISPR to get rid of those people? Just edit their genes right out of existence.”

  She laughed. “You have some strange ideas for a bleeding heart liberal.”

  “Not when you consider the greater good.”

  “Fascist,” she said with a smile.

  He smiled back at her, realizing he was being ridiculous, or at least that his father’s death was still clouding his thinking. “So, what’s the game plan?”

  “I and some of my buddies will look into your father’s death.”

  “As if it’s not bad enough they’re coming after me. No, I want you safe.”

  “The only safe place anymore is one or more generations of tech ahead of the other guy.”

  Nova’s eyes went wide. His skin colors exploded in another kaleidoscope of colors. “And what makes you think that’s you?”

  She bit off another smile. The wind was finally a bit more help wiping this one off her face. “You don’t think opposites attract?”

  “There’s no way someone looking to push the trans-human condition into the post-human condition is going to hang around with me.” His skin’s phosphorescent shifts suggested he thought otherwise.

  “Oh, no?”

  “You’re not that smart!” Nova shouted, forgetting he was talking into the mike. Another explosion of skin colors, like 4th of July fireworks.

&n
bsp; “Just because I keep human pets and can talk down to them without them knowing, like a parent does with kids, doesn’t mean you know me.”

  He smiled. “I get it. This is the psychological warfare part of the relationship we’re into. Since you can’t get me to upgrade to your standards any other way, you’ve taken to condescending to me.”

  “You can’t control your mind as well as I can, Nova. It’s the price you pay for being a primitive. So it’s best you don’t know too much about me or what I can do. It would endanger both of us. And yes, if you want to get to know me that well, I’m afraid the only way is to upgrade to my level.”

  Nova’s sullen expression suggested he was still processing what she was saying. She could track his shifting thoughts and feelings thanks to that glow-in-the-dark makeover he’d picked up at the diner better now, after some practice. His skin phosphoresced wildly, in an ongoing, ever-shifting light show, responding to his most fleeting of emotions. There was no longer much need for her nano hive mind to waste energy hacking Nova’s thoughts for her. Finally, he said, “Until such time as I elect to adopt transhumanism to the degree that you have, I just have to convince myself you are playing mind games with me. Because if I contemplate the truth too long—if it is the truth—I just endanger both of us.”

  “You’re not half stupid for such a primitive life form.”

  His smile lasted for a bit before being eaten up with worry. The mask his face had turned into reminded her of taking a pie out of the oven too late. Corona couldn’t blame him. She’d put him in a no win situation. Knowingly live the lie that was their relationship. Or unknowingly live the lie. Romance didn’t have a way of surviving either.

  ***

  Corona had just given Nova a whiff of the truth, nothing more. Not wanting to see that look of terror in his eyes. But even that was enough to bring him close to catatonia in the short time that had elapsed since breaking the news she may well be transitioning from a transhuman to a posthuman state.

  She landed the air bike back at their place. From the way he was eying their home she could tell that he was already wondering how much of anything they shared together was real, including their condo. It was done up like a house on the Mexican Riviera with breathtaking views of the ocean, sweeping decks, breezes, tropical birds coming and going off the banisters from Macaws to toucans. In reality it was just a 3-D printed home, the one they gave the homeless. Corona had been living off-grid so long, that’s how she liked it. In his case, he could afford to live better, if not as well as her. But why bother, when he had access to some damn fine VR by way of his contacts that could convince his mind he was experiencing anything he wanted? Why, when he could instead use his surplus money above and beyond his UBI allowance for any added-value work he created and donate that instead to the people doing pioneering research to continue to clean up a world damaged by prior ages? Sort of like the way people invested in the stock market in years of old, only he got to pick his favorite eco-conscious entrepreneurs, and earn a healthy return on whatever they created with their more souped up minds.

  It was all a great way to live until she turned his world upside down with a few simple lines that by all rights should have been swallowed up by the wind. “The only way to truly be safe is to stay one or more generations ahead of the other guys’ tech.” By now it was sinking in for him why she would choose to be that person. Considering her childhood.

  Together they entered a house that always looked ideal, always the same, only it never would be the same for both of them ever again. Nothing would be the same. She consoled herself with the realization that that was what it meant to be transhuman. The ground constantly shifting under your feat. Just one tech breakthrough, any tech breakthrough, coming from anywhere… the one you couldn’t ignore if you tried… that’s all it took to turn your world upside down. It was become increasingly malleable or die from Present Shock. That’s why she always knew she’d win this ongoing argument between them that had lasted as long as their relationship. What other choice did he have if he were going to survive? She just wasn’t sure his survival instinct was as strong as hers. And it needed to be in the days ahead, if some faction of corporate America was coming after him. Otherwise, even she might not be able to carry him across the finish line.

  THREE

  Nova had one of the Macaws in his hand, feeding it peanuts in the shell so he could enjoy the bird’s masterful de-shelling of said nuts, when she walked up to him on their veranda. The bright light of late morning toned down the light show on his skin, giving it more of a pastel rendering. “I know, I should probably be standing well away from any windows, far less out on the patio,” he said, “with assassins after me.”

  She smiled. Maybe he should be an actor consider how easily he fell into character, forgetting that their home didn’t have a veranda, and the birds and nuts weren’t real. “Relax, I killed you already.”

  “Um, I gather you don’t mean metaphorically by refusing to marry me.”

  “According to any computer forensic evidence anyone will ever be able to find, you died a couple years ago, from grief, after searching for any family you might have had that could have deserted you and not finding any.”

  “But what of my love of nature? It doesn’t fit my profile! Why wouldn’t I just sublimate all the love I felt starved of into love of animals, trees, just to get away from people, because, well, I never did trust them after the initial abandonment?”

  Once again she smiled. “You died jumping off a waterfall, teaching a damaged bird to fly. Depending on how much they know about you, they can read the death as an accident, or a suicide, after finding out that no amount of nature therapy was going to cut it for you.”

  “Yeah, okay, that plays.”

  “Only for people dumb enough to try and teach a bird to fly by jumping off a waterfall.”

  “No, it’s very me. It’s creepy that you can know me better than I know me, actually.” His mood took a sudden nosedive, probably as his mind slipped back into their earlier conversation about her mentality being so far beyond his. His skin turned black. He put down the Macaw as if to get his mind off his rumination as well. “So, back to life as normal then?”

  “I don’t see why not. I’ve taken some added measures in case someone sees through my ruse and tries to mess with you when I’m not around.”

  “Well, then, life in denial about what’s lurking just beyond my senses is what I had before. So, you’re right, everything is status quo.”

  She took the dig about the two of them on the chin. Figuring he was going to be venting, whether or not he was even conscious of it, for some time in regards to breaking news, more about the two of them than the awareness of a corporation or corporations hunting him.

  “And while I’m at the nonprofit,” he said, “what are you going to be doing?”

  “Looking into who’s looking into you with ill-intent.”

  “Won’t that raise red flags all over again?”

  “Yes, but they’ll think we’re some rival corporation looking for dirt on them, not you playing defense.”

  “You’re certain you can think of everything. What about on the way over here from the diner? When you told me what you did. They could have been listening.”

  “My hive mind was generating its own shielding by going into overdrive.”

  “And you don’t think that sends up a red flag?!”

  “On the premise that it was reacting to bad diner food.”

  “Oh, I have to admit, that is rather believable. And what about me? I know I said I’d lose myself in the lie that our relationship has become, but it’s been all I can do to…”

  She hushed him by putting her finger over his lips. “No one is going to be monitoring too closely what a primitive like yourself is up to. You’re no threat to anybody.”

  “But you, you probably have at least fifty satellites aimed at you night and day. Sooner or later…”

  “It’s not that kind of world an
ymore, Nova. Sure, the people on top want to know what the people on the rungs below them are up to, same as ever. But we have a lot of the same tech tools they have now to spy on them. It’s an everybody-spying-on-everybody world now. Decentralization of intel keeps everyone safe.”

  “Or turns everyone into paranoid psychopaths.”

  She squeezed his shoulders supportively. “Mostly it’s a lot of scientists keeping an eye on one another to see when collaborating makes more sense than competing to save time and money to develop whatever they’re working on. There are bad people out there, and there always will be, but we’re far better at neutralizing them than ever. So long as there are more of us it’s them who should be worried.”

  When she saw he wasn’t buying it, she said, “It’s no longer easier to destroy than to create, Nova. Hard to be ruled by a psychology of perpetual need when you can have pretty damn well whatever you want. No need to take it from others. It’s no longer a world of scarcity; it’s a world of abundance. Don’t believe me, turn on the news.”

  “It’s all one big cover up for all the dirty dealings going on out there. They used to want people to cower in fear with nothing but bad news so they trade in their freedom for security and more military and police presence, for Big Brother. Now they figure they can keep everyone in line better by dumping nothing but good news on them day and night, so they start believing all the ugliness of the world is a thing of the past.”

  She laughed even though she realized she was being condescending. “A healthy eco-system maintains a place for those who thrive in the darkness as well as those who thrive in the light. Your nonprofit Ecosystems Restoral Inc. should have taught you that much.”

  “This conversation would go over better if you were giving me a different kind of lip service.”

  Corona thought about it and decided some tantric sex might just get the juices flowing to her brain as well. She was going to have her hands full tracking down Nova’s would-be killers. With that in mind, she dragged him into the bedroom.