Daniel Suarez - Influx

“Yes, of course you’re right. I’m on it.”

Grady eased his “down” in the direction of the tower, keeping it to barely any gravity at all. The roof of the building slowly approached him. At first glance he’d thought this was an older, art deco sixty-story building, but now that he was getting up close, he could see it was newer than that—paying homage perhaps. The art deco look here had an ’80s blockiness to it. The roof of the building was capped by four identical purely ornamental towers—square boxes of metal with small pyramids atop them. He focused on the nearest one, and as he glided closer, he modulated his pitch, adjusting the angle of his foot as necessary.

“Remember to reduce your gravity after you land. It will prevent damage to the structure.”

Grady gave her a thumbs-up sign and turned back toward the approaching tower. It was barely ten feet away now, capped by a large square point made of steel, about three feet wide. A lightning rod stood above that. He glanced down to see the roof of the building some forty feet below. The other towers nearby. And the Chicago streets hundreds of feet below them all.

A wind blew him slightly to the right, but he corrected, and in a moment he grabbed onto the cap of the metal pyramid with his gauntleted hand. Moments later he wrapped his arms around the spire, and lowered his gravity to almost nothing, but pointed in the direction of actual gravity—just enough to keep him in place. He clung to the top of the spire and looked back up at Alexa floating in space a hundred or so feet away.

“How was that?”

“Excellent. Did you feel how the structure started taking on your gravity field?”

“Yeah. I dialed down the intensity just as I got in close. Seems to work all right.” Grady looked out across the city, and then down. Whoa. He was up in a place where he’d normally be frightened out of his wits, but changing the direction of gravity seemed to chase off vertigo. Looking around he felt a little like King Kong atop the Empire State Building.

“Now remember, when you push off, don’t just hit full gravity upward, or you might rip the top off the tower.”

Grady nodded and pushed away from the building at nearly zero g before increasing it moments later to gain altitude. “How’s that?”

She came nearly alongside—just far enough away so their gravity fields weren’t tangled. “Good. Okay, how about a bit of high-speed maneuvering?”

“I don’t want to go through any skyscraper windows tonight.”

“No, we’ll head down there.” She pointed out toward the water, where long lines of stone outlined a harbor. A lighthouse blinked occasionally at its tip. “Along that quay, near Chicago Harbor. I’ll meet you down at the lighthouse. Go fast, now!”

She did a backward somersault and then kicked in full gravity—sending her soaring downward at an angle toward the lakeshore a mile away.

Grady felt the thrill of the chase and immediately fell downward after her. He was rapidly getting a feel for how to direct himself and how to increase or decrease his speed. It was a physical experience of the laws of motion he’d studied for so many years. He could almost see the mathematical arcs he was tracing through the air as he increased this variable or decreased that one. Living proof of his perceptions.

Grady hurtled through the night air, passing over the rooftops of shorter skyscrapers at a hundred miles an hour. Once clear of the last row of buildings, he angled down toward the lake, aiming for a spot about a half mile from shore. He descended to five hundred feet and sped silently across the dark water.

As he came up to a few hundred meters from the blinking stone lighthouse at the end of a lone stone quay, he eased up on the speed and brought himself to within yards of the water’s surface. When he reached the lighthouse, he rose to a full stop alongside the railing at its peak, where Alexa stood waiting for him patiently—apparently in normal gravity.

She smiled. “You’re taking to this quickly.”

He floated ten feet away from her like a child’s balloon on a string. “It’s like everything I imagined. It seems so natural.”

“Just don’t forgot the old rules of physics when you take the belt off.” She looked up. “We still need to experiment with interlocking gravity fields. It’ll be safer if we go high up for this.”

“How high you want to go?” He craned his neck into the cloudy sky.

“How about just below the cloud deck? Meet you up there?”

He nodded, but even before she launched, he did—laughing like a maniac as he plummeted into the heavens.

He glanced back at the city as he kept rising. It was truly breathtaking—the best elevator ride in the world. It wasn’t until about four thousand feet that he started coming to the bottom of the cloud cover. He dialed to equilibrium and stopped slowly. The mist was clearly defined and dense above him. It was also much cooler up here, and he could feel the dew point was near, as moisture seemed to be coming out of the air.

He looked down to see Alexa rising up, and in a moment she was across from him at a distance of ten yards. The clouds formed a roof above them, but there were gaps here and there where he could see the stars. He could smell the moisture. Below them the city of Chicago glowed in the night.

“All right, Jon. Let’s fall toward each other slowly—one tenth gravity. I want you to try to grab my hands as we pass.”

“Like objects passing in space.”

“Right. Our gravity fields will make it seem like we’re objects of much greater mass, so we’ll behave like stars passing by each other—we’ll disturb each other’s trajectory.”

“Okay. Say when.”

She nodded. “Go.”

They started falling toward and past each other, but as they got close, their trajectories were disturbed to a degree Grady felt that he could anticipate. They were now proof of the physical laws he knew so well. They sailed past each other on altered courses.

Grady shouted back. “Let’s try it again. This time come in at a slightly steeper angle toward me. Just slightly.”

“Change your angle of descent.”

“Done. Here…” He looked ahead as they started to drift toward each other again. He felt it the moment their trajectories interacted. A tug as he fell in toward her, and she fell in toward him—then they passed, brushing outstretched hands.

And then they began to orbit each other, revolving without either one adjusting their controls. They were now a binary system.

She smiled lightly as they continued to go in circles, getting closer with every revolution and spinning faster. “We could get dizzy doing this.”

He nodded but watched her face in the semidarkness. “How many more until we meet, do you think?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know…”

“I say six.”

“Six, eh?”

He nodded.

“All right.” They went around again, gradually increasing speed. “That’s two.”

He kept his eyes upon her as the natural laws of the universe brought them closer together with each revolution.

“Four.”

At their sixth revolution they were face-to-face. They locked hands until their rotation began to slow. They turned to look at city lights far below.

“How did you do this, Jon?”

“Simple physics.”

“No. I mean this… the gravity mirror. Even the BTC doesn’t understand how it works. No one does.”

He thought for a moment. “It’s not me. It’s the universe. I was just the first person to see it.”

Her beautiful eyes studied him.

Graham Hedrick stood in theBTC command center as technicians scurried about in the control room below. He knew that beyond his sight AI bots were scouring consumer data, telecommunications signals, surveillance camera imagery, and satellite reconnaissance for any sign of Grady, Alexa, or Cotton. Every form of communication known to man was being sifted and resifted. With every passing hour they widened their search radius.