Daniel Suarez - Influx

“That son of a bitch. He actually claimed he invented fusion.”

“I am more concerned with future generations than my own scientific credits.”

Grady looked over at Junior coiled on the floor next to him. “You said you took over the AI in your cell. How did you do that?”

“I had a great deal of time on my hands. And a strong incentive not to let these damn AIs get ahold of my mind. Back in the ’80s the AIs were not as capable as they are now. The equipment not as reliable. There were weaknesses that no longer exist. But once I had control of my cell, I set about finding other prisoners. Organizing us. And now, decades later, we have taken over whole sections of Hibernity. Turning the machinery against the guards. The security turrets, the surveillance cameras, and many other systems. The guards do not dare walk their own prison now, for they have no idea which of their machines are trustworthy and which are not.”

“Hedrick allows this?”

“In order to ‘allow’ it, Director Hedrick would need to know about it. And he does not. Hibernity’s systems are monitored from BTC headquarters. No alarms ever sound there. We have the power to make wardens of this prison look very incompetent if we wish. And the garrison is considered quite expendable—most of them are clones of some notable commando.”

“I met the guy they’re copied from. Morrison.”

“Yes. The guards very much resent their lowly status and the ubiquitous surveillance by AIs. Any discharge of their weapons is carefully tracked. Trouble must be explained to their superiors. No, we have far more leverage over them than they over us. They are, thus, complicit in our charade that Hibernity is fully under BTC control. And by making them look good, they in turn inform us in advance of inspections and internal reviews.”

“But what about the research data these interrogation AIs are supposedly producing? Doesn’t anyone at BTC headquarters ever look at it?”

“They read reports. We’ve tasked our AIs with falsifying reports. And new orders are issued from BTC headquarters based on those findings. Orders that are never carried out. And so the cycle repeats. Sadly, we can only falsify our own AI’s reports, and I fear that the majority of prisoners here in Hibernity are subject to actual research.”

“Do you ever consider—”

“Escape?”

“Yes. If you’re so organized—if you’ve taken over parts of the prison and gotten the cooperation of the guards…”

“Gaining control of our cells and portions of the prison is one thing. Effecting escape from Hibernity another entirely. It is not sufficient for just one of us to escape. And we are, all of us, encased in hundreds of feet of solid rock. Even the guards do not know where our cells are or how numerous we are. It is a secret known by very few. I am nearly a thousand feet below ground by my estimation. We have so far been unable to get our physical bodies out of these interrogation modules. They have a shell of aggregated diamond nanorods that’s a hundred and fifty times harder than steel. When the prisoner is sealed in, the shell is sunken into molten rock, and then a probe burns its way to the surface to create a narrow pressure channel—the same tube that my polymer worm followed to you. But that narrow conduit is all that connects us to the outside world. And we lack any material capable of penetrating our prison wall.”

“That channel—does it handle communications? Maybe we can hijack the uplink and—”

“I am glad you are ambitious, Jon, but the channel is not for communications. The BTC abandoned radio communications decades ago in favor of extradimensional signal processing—or EDSP. We Resistors use our carbon thread wires only because we have no other means. But BTC communications do not traverse four-dimensional space-time. They are quite impenetrable.”

Grady remembered a conversation with Alexa—or at least her telepresence robot—some time ago. Funny what memories survived in his mind. “They seriously use extra dimensions to communicate?”

“Specifically a fifth dimension—one where gravity is forty-two orders of magnitude more powerful than in our perceived space-time.”

“So, a gravity brane—which is why gravity is such a weak force in our four dimensions.” Grady snapped his fingers. “Damn! I knew it.”

“Yes. This compactified fifth dimension is curled up from our perspective, less than a thousandth of a millimeter in size, but present everywhere in lower dimensional space. Thus, it can always be accessed.”

Grady considered the implications. “How do they interact with it?”

“Their transmitters are nanotech—diamond lattice structures they call a ‘q-link’—a tiny mass that they vibrate at high frequency to send gravitational waves through higher-dimensional space.”

Grady nodded to himself. “ Where they would be strong enough to be detected. And gravity permeates all dimensions. I get it: a gravity radio.”

“I suppose of all people, you would understand.”

“So we really live in a five-dimensional universe?”

“Actually a ten-dimensional universe—but let’s leave that for another day. The point is that the BTC can transmit and receive information undetected.”

“Which is why no one’s noticed them.”

“Undoubtedly. But they also use q-links to track things.”

“Things like us.”

“You learn quickly. Yes, there is a small q-link diamond inserted deep into your S1 sacral vertebra. With this device, their AIs can track you no matter where you go in lower-dimensional space. And they have positioned weapon satellites in the L4 and L5 Lagrange points in the Earth-moon system—or as Homer’s Iliad might describe it: the ‘Greek’ camp and the ‘Trojan’ camp. From this distance, they can direct powerful lasers at spinning mirrors positioned in low-Earth orbit. From there, it is a small matter to instantly kill an escaped prisoner anywhere on the Earth’s surface.”

Grady sighed. “So even if we escape—which is nearly impossible—we won’t live long.”

“There are numerous obstacles to such an endeavor. But none of them insurmountable. We must pool our intellects and tackle these problems one by one. For example, your cell’s medical systems can be reprogrammed to remove the q-link diamond from your spine. Several of us have already done so. It doesn’t help us escape, but it would be a prerequisite of escape.”

“We need to get a message out, Archie. We need people to know that we’re here. That we’re alive.”

“We have been pondering this very idea for decades now. I fear it will require some time yet.”

“I don’t give up easily. Not even gravity eluded me.”

Grady heard a gentle laugh over the line. “Oh, I think our membership will be very pleased to make your acquaintance, my friend.”

Benigno Cruz shouted down fromthe bridge of the San Miguel through an open hatchway. “Arius, lubricate that damn winch! What did I tell you?”

The three-ton lift on deck smoked and squealed ominously. His fifteen-year-old nephew, Arius, waved to him noncommittally. The boy was a good deal younger than most of the equipment down there. And seemed half as smart.

Cruz moved to the railing and leaned over. “Damnit, now!”

Down on deck a half-dozen Filipino crewmen scurried about, two of them guiding a basket net bulging with yellowfin tuna as it lifted up from a purse seine net drawn along the starboard side of the aging trawler. Blisters and tears of rust were visible all about the boat, but Cruz was confident his vessel was strong where it mattered. It had to be. Or at least he prayed it was. They were a thousand miles from the nearest landfall—and that was intentional. Away from all prying eyes except the Lord who watched over them all.