SHOCKS Headquarters, Victoria, British Columbia - June 1, 2043, 4:05 AM
- - - - -
Morning briefings never looked this bad.
Lieutenant Olivia Rodriguez looked out over the assembled Recovery and Stabilization Team members and scientists. Half-finished break room coffees and yawns greeted her; the potential merge in northeast Victoria had fully merged, and they’d spent their evening setting up a perimeter around downtown and the James Bay area. A couple dozen new Universal Reality Anchors were up and running now. It wouldn’t be enough to hold the line long-term, much less push back the merges.
No one at Victoria/Vancouver Island Headquarters had seen a merged anomaly the size of the three that had come through. No one had a plan to deal with them. Only Director Ramirez even had a shot in the dark about where to start.
Doctor Ramirez thought he had something, but it required steps Lieutenant Rodriguez couldn’t lend her support to. The facility’s on-site self-destruct wasn’t active, and it’d take three keys to fire it. One from herself as head of the RSTs. One from Ramirez, since he was acting director. And one from the place’s lead investigative agent, Carls. More importantly, it would destroy Victoria, and she wasn’t ready to give up on the city. Not yet. Not while there was still an option—even a bad one.
So, that left the fake nuclear option. One that, even if the other SHOCKS branches turned things around after, no one outside this room could ever know about. It leaking would mean termination—of careers, and possibly more. So, this briefing had to be kept secret from everyone.
Well, almost everyone.
“Thank you for coming,” Rodriguez started. “The situation hasn’t changed since last night, thank God. We’re holding south of Hillside, but that won't last forever without a significant change or outside help. Further, we’re getting signals of another wave of merges that we lack the manpower to contain and reset from this side. Maximum deployment could delay the inevitable by a few hours, but by the end of tomorrow, that Hillside line is done.
“However, Director Ramirez has been working on a possible solution.”
The nervous-looking scientist nodded and took the podium. “I think we can slow down, or even reverse, the current trend. However, in order to do so, we need to take some risks that SHOCKS’ upper leadership would no doubt not approve of. So, before I start explaining my proposal, anyone unwilling to take part in treason to keep the city intact, feel free to return to your regular duties.”
He fidgeted with his too-loose tie as he waited for people to leave. Rodriguez knew none of the RST troopers would; they’d already committed mutiny for the cause. Sure enough, the seats stayed occupied, and if some of the researchers weren’t so sure, they kept their misgivings to themselves.
Satisfied that his audience was, in fact, captive, Rodriguez continued. “My proposal requires three parts. First, we repurpose the JAMES Experimental Wing and its security systems. It, and more importantly, the anomalies we used to create it, offers a hyper-secure chamber in the middle of the most fortified place in Victoria. From there, we deploy Objects 723-V-1/RP and 1092-V-12/S.”
A murmur rippled through the assembled researchers. Rodriguez sympathized—she’d felt the same way when Ramirez told her about his idea. 723 was bad enough. When powered, it forced potential merges fully open. Its Qishi-Danger level was a testament to how out of control it could get; if left unchecked, it would act as a miniature version of exactly what was already happening outside.
But, according to Director Ramirez, adding 1092 to the mix had a couple of possible outcomes—and both looked worse than even 723. It stabilized other anomalies. Not in the way that SHOCKS would prefer, though. Instead, it made them permanent.
As the murmur rose in volume rather than slowing down, Ramirez continued. “I theorize that by combining these two anomalies with various other, less dangerous ones, we can create a location with a much higher likelihood of merges occurring—approaching ninety percent of local merges—a controllable merge portal. If successful, we would simply need to contain the merge until it stopped on its own.
“Normally, the risks would be too high. However, given the circumstances, we need a solution—either one that buys time for us or one that moves toward solving Merge Prime. Therefore, I think this is worth trying.”
Ramirez adjusted his tie. Olivia nodded in support; the nerves were getting to him, and even though they’d agreed on this plan last night, making it happen was a different story. After a moment, she took over. “Normally, we could wait out a single merge once we had a controlled environment. However, your teams are stretched too thin with all the merges already rolling, so the last component of the 723/1092 amalgamation is a kill switch to close the merge manually and hit other merges from that reality. To that end, I propose we bring Subject 573-V-1/IO Alpha back into the fold.”
----------------------------------------
Building Three-Five, Victoria, British Columbia - June 1, 2043, 9:13 AM
- - - - -
Claire crawled out from under the ancient-looking sedan’s steering wheel as James said, [That should do it. Connect the last wires, and we’ll give this a go.] He’d been watching and coaching her through hotwiring a car; one of the perks of being the Halcyon System in its entirety was access to the entire internet, with the exception of a few organizations whose security was still holding out against the odds.
YouTube was not one of those organizations, and James had watched three thousand videos on how to hotwire a car in the last five minutes while coaching Claire through it.
He couldn’t help but worry about her, though. After wrapping Smith up and moving him—via elevator—to Building Three-Five’s entryway, she’d tried her best to clean up after the fight. Luckily, most people in basic living had some idea of what not to do when they heard gunshots, and James had sent a warning message out telling them to shelter in their apartments, so that was covered.
But then Claire had tried—and failed—to sleep.
For hours.
James had tried therapy tricks at first, but one attempt told him she wasn’t going to respond to those. So, instead, he focused on putting together a plan for finding Sora. That had to be Claire’s priority now, with her family safe or at least accounted for. As he worked on his various—and incomplete—simulations, though, he’d also listened in as Claire tried to talk to her big sister.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Alice was struggling even more than Claire. In a way, James fully understood. He hadn’t always been the Joint Anomalous Emergency Management System. Once upon a time, he’d been Sidney, a boy who’d liked computers a little more than average. He’d had other hobbies, too, and as a twelve-year-old, he’d never imagined that his entire life would be the machines.
He loved spending a lot of time on them, sure. Lots of boys did nothing but play video games. But not his entire life.
And now, here he was, the most powerful computing system ever to exist on, near, or in any proximity whatsoever to Earth. And he was helping a teenage girl hotwire a mid-2000s Chrysler while pretending to be a therapist for another one upstairs, trying to make contact with an older gentleman across town who was very determined not to talk to the voice in his head, and running several thousand other conversations at the same time. How had his life come to this?
“Ow! Okay, got it.” The car started up, and Claire licked a slightly burned thumb. The shock from her misadventure with the starter should have knocked her out, not just singed her skin. “I…don’t know how to drive, though.”
[That’s okay. I have an idea on that front, and if it doesn’t work, I can probably coach you through it. Is it a stick or an automatic?]
“What?”
James glanced through Claire’s augs. [Well, damn. Stick. Don’t worry, I’m on it.]
----------------------------------------
Building Three-Five, Victoria, British Columbia - June 1, 2043, 9:16 AM
- - - - -
Alice Mary Pendleton stood on the platform at her graduation, giving the speech she’d practiced for almost a month. It was going to go off without a hitch this time. This was her big day. Everything was going to be perfect. Everything had to be perfect.
She had to be perfect.
“So celebrate your victory today, West End graduates! Be proud of yourselves. And tomorrow, be ready, because life is bigger than high school,” she said. This was it. All she had to do was get the next couple of sentences out, and she’d be done. She’d have been perfect on the stage. No one would know how close she’d come to messing it up. “And it’s going to hit us hard. But we’re going to—“
[Alice, your sister needs you,] a voice cut in. It wasn’t one she recognized, at least not right away, and at the same time that the not-quite-male, not-quite-female voice filled her aural aug, the words appeared in her vision.
“Fuck.” Alice opened her eyes. The popcorn ceiling of her basic living bedroom greeted her, and so did a constant whisper in the back of her head. She had no idea how she’d slept with the woman’s voice reminding her how hungry it was, but she’d managed somehow. There were too many voices; it took her a minute to decide which one was talking to her now. “What do you want, James?”
[Claire wants you to drive a car. She’s already got it running, but she needs to go check on her friend Sora,] James replied. [I’ve done some calculations, and you should build up enough resistance quickly to be able to be outside. We just have to—]
Alice switched off the aural aug—her model had that feature easily accessible, and it was new enough to reboot without being plugged in or anything. As silence filled part of her head, the…boy’s…words kept running across her eye. She couldn’t shut that off, so she walked to her cheap makeup table and sat down. She could ignore it instead.
She looked into her mirror.
Eyes greeted her. They weren’t hers, and she shivered. Her hand trembled as she reached for the brushes. She rested a finger on one, trying to calm herself. Deep breaths didn’t help, and she closed her eyes. This sucked. That wasn’t a strong enough word, but Alice didn’t have a better one right now. She’d been working for ten years to create a reality that suited her. One where she had friends, her teachers and coaches liked her, and she could move past her…circumstances.
Nothing about her new reality was what she’d worked so hard to create. Nothing except…she had her family back together. And the guy with the gun—Director Smith—hadn’t killed anyone yesterday. That was something.
Not much, granted, but something.
He’d showed up the day before, just before Alice went to sleep, looking for a place to crash for the night. At the time, she’d had no idea why he’d chosen their apartment; it wasn’t until later, when he set his trap for Claire, that she’d realized it was on purpose. That had been the beginning of the most recent shattering.
Okay, Alice thought. Her life had been shattered a dozen times in the last week. Most of them were recoverable. This one should be, too. She fiddled with her aug’s controls until it projected a bluish color over her left eye. It wasn’t quite her original eye color, but it was close. She’d just…get a cosmetic contact lens for her unaugmented eye or something. That would work. Yeah. One small step.
The woman’s voice in the back of her head laughed, but Alice ignored it. She ignored the boy in her head’s messages, too. Claire had never been the most patient, but Alice needed this.
She dipped her brush into her powder foundation and got to work.
----------------------------------------
Cowichan Building, Duncan, British Columbia - June 1, 2043, 10:59 AM
- - - - -
Sora was bored.
She’d been bored for days, trapped in the stuffy Ito apartment with only her brother and little sisters for entertainment. But more than just bored, she felt disconnected. The internet was out, her phone wouldn’t send messages, and her aug only had basic functionality. It was hell.
Worse, it meant no talking to Claire or Keith. All she could do was sit on her bed, reread her books or steal Itsuki’s architecture textbooks again, and wait. She wasn’t sure what she was waiting for. Maybe for the lockdown to stop. Maybe for someone in the Cowichan Building to get sick. Or maybe for a miracle.
Any of the above would break up the monotony.
As she flipped through a book on Frank Lloyd Wright’s old house in Arizona, her gaze kept drifting to her bedroom window. She couldn’t see much of Victoria from this far, not with the yellowish morning fog still there and the afternoon clouds building. But somewhere out there were her friends. They’d disappeared after the tsunami warning, and with the internet and phones out, she couldn’t exactly figure out what was up with Claire.
Sora flipped to another page. Taliesen West was a truly gorgeous house, in a ‘deserty’ kind of way. She wouldn’t be caught dead living there, of course. Even today, it didn’t have proper plumbing, and the Phoenix Valley was almost uninhabitable even in winter. Still, the compress-and-release architecture and use of Arizona materials to make it blend into the surroundings was stunning and fascinating—especially since it had been built a hundred and six years ago—before the internet. Ancient people really were fascinating.
Plus, it distracted her from her boredom.
Her phone rang, a cute little jingle. For a second, she didn’t realize it was even happening. Then it rang again. And again. And again. Over and over, so fast that it couldn’t finish one ring before the next one came in.
Claire -
Claire -
Claire -
On and on they came, an endless wall of texts from Claire. She started reading even as the phone chimed in her hand, her interest in Frank Lloyd Wright and architectural techniques completely forgotten. None of it made any sense. Was Claire in a hospital? Or was she on the street? A secret lab? Alien invaders? It was almost too much for her, especially with the constant flood of texts still coming in. Claire had been sending them for days, and only now were they delivering, like a disjointed, bizarre diary of her best friend’s last week or so.
The chiming mercifully stopped; Sora had close to two hundred messages to sort through. But something tickled the back of her head, and she couldn’t help but follow that impulse. The idea that somewhere on the bottom of the long scroll would be one very important message. One she had to read more than the rest.
She started scrolling. It took almost thirty seconds, and by the time she got to the bottom, she regretted not just tapping the ‘most recent’ button and ignoring the rest of Claire’s impromptu diary. It was all truth, but the truth at the bottom was the most important.
Sora’s face split in a smile so wide it hurt.
Claire -