Chapter 21
“I think it’s just MeNet,” Marcus said. “The other Nets are still up, but without MeNet, nobody can interface with them.”
“Everything might as well be down if we can’t use it,” Chloe said, trying for the tenth time to call Norman or Grandma, and when that failed, to check NewsNet, only to get Authentication Error again. “Phreak! Where’s Kleio? I want my baby!”
A heavy knocking at the apartment door made her jump. She and Marcus exchanged looks.
“Stay behind me,” Marcus said. He led the way to the door and cautiously opened it a crack.
“Daddy!” said a voice.
“Oh god,” Marcus said, throwing open the door and collapsing to his knees in one motion.
And then Chloe was collapsing as well, her arms wrapping around their daughter.
She buried her head in Kleio’s curls, sobbing, telling her over and over again how much she loved her, how sorry she was that this had happened, how she’d never, ever let anything happen to her again, while Marcus enveloped them both in his own arms.
Kleio said, “Mommy, I can’t breave.”
“Oh, sorry!” Chloe said, holding her at arm’s length to inspect her.
Kleio’s face had old salt streaks on it, but she was looking at Chloe with her familiar impish smile. “Are you so happy to see me, Mommy?”
“Oh, god, yes,” Chloe said, folding her in her arms again, more gently this time.
For the first time, she noticed the SWAT airvan on the pavement and the black-suited SWAT team, some standing close with their weapons slung, others facing away, watching up and down the street, their weapons in their hands.
Their faces were tense, but the closest one gave Chloe a tight smile.
“She told us to come here,” he said, nodding to a woman just stepping out of the SWAT van. Grandma.
“Oh, thank you!” Chloe gasped as Grandma approached. “I’d hug you if it didn’t mean letting go of Kleio.” The little girl was burrowing deeper into her arms.
“Please never hug me,” Grandma said. “I am not a hugger.” But she was smiling.
“What’s going on?” Marcus said to her. “With this new Cybercrash, I mean.”
Grandma’s smile faded. “Nobody can talk to anybody, so nobody knows. I’m on my way to the Tower. Chloe, you need to come.”
“What?” Chloe said, squeezing Kleio harder. “No!” She had just gotten her baby back. There was no phreaking way she was going to leave her.
“Chloe, Norman’s bound to be holed up in the Tower, and who knows what he’s going to do. I need you there as a voice of reason.”
“No.”
“Chloe.” Grandma squatted on her heels so she could look Chloe in the face. “I know what you’re feeling, and I wouldn’t ask if this weren’t so serious. But if you want Kleio to stay safe, you need to come with me. People are already panicking. Riots are starting all over.”
“No,” Chloe said again.
“She needs help,” said Kleio in a voice muffled by Chloe’s body.
“What’s that?” Chloe said, releasing her.
“Sys said ‘help.’” Kleio’s snub nose was scrunched in worry. “And den she disappeared.”
Chloe looked at Grandma. “What can I do, though?”
“Be someone who isn’t Norman,” Grandma said.
“Why can’t you do that?”
“He wouldn’t react well to my interference. Believe me.”
“And he’ll react better to me?”
“There’s no one else who can try.” Her voice became soft and singsong. “‘For want of a nail the shoe slipped.’ Chloe, all the other nails have slipped.”
“What does that even mean?” Chloe said in sudden heat. “And what would I even do as a lone unslipped nail?”
Marcus put a hand on her shoulder. “This is why you’re here,” he said quietly. “To help however you can.”
They were all looking at her: Marcus, Grandma, and Kleio. And it was crazy. But Marcus was right. Coming to DC had been her way of gathering up the broken narrative threads of her life and trying to weave them into a new tapestry of meaning. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’ll try.”
“I’ll take care of Kleio,” Marcus said grimly, gathering her in his arms.
“Grab a couple Bomb Bars,” Grandma said to Chloe. “You’ll need ’em.”
The SWAT airvan carried them over a city that felt wrong.
The streets were as packed as ever with cabs, but they were motionless.
Cumulonimbus peaks piled over the treescrapers, casting the city into shadow, as if things weren’t portentous enough without nature underlining the point with unintentional metaphor.
There were people on the streets, dots of color joining together into streams and clumps, warily circling other clumps.
Smoke rose from the base of a treescraper in the distance, the dots of people there roiling like ants.
Grandma was right: There were riots already.
They must have started even faster than in the first Cybercrash. What the hell was wrong with people?
As they neared the Tower, Chloe could see that the Park was already packed, and throngs were crossing the arching footbridges to the island.
These people weren’t rioting, at least not yet.
For decades, pundits had warned that increased online interaction diminished genuine human connection, that despite the stream of new technology meant to rehumanize virtual spaces via ever-better facial tracking and avatars and “presence,” something was still lost. It seemed they had a point, judging by the thousands who at this moment weren’t content to shelter at home.
History was happening and it was happening here, at Norman’s fortress, and so they were taking the time and effort to manually transport their bodies to this place.
Many of the faces were upturned, toward the Tower.
They’d made the pilgrimage; now they awaited salvation.
Beyond them, black smoke rose over Arlington.
The crowd was held back from the Tower by what looked like a military checkpoint; beyond it, on a clear stretch of grass, soldiers and dogbots spread out, while a number of military vehicles positioned themselves into a wide array.
Several of them began pivoting long tubes skyward.
“Revere distributed missile battery!” Grandma shouted, pointing at them.
“What’s that?” Chloe called back. With MeNet down, there was no coordination between their smartbuds, so even though Chloe’s buds were attenuating the rotor noise, she had to shout to be heard. She focused on Grandma and subvocalized a command to amplify her voice.
“Missile defense,” Grandma said. “Good thing MilNet’s still up or we might be misidentified and shot down.
” She seemed amused at the idea, but Chloe shuddered.
“Don’t worry,” Grandma said, seeing her reaction.
“MilNet’s the one network OverNet doesn’t control.
It’s in its own silo for security. Supposedly even harder to hack than OverNet. ”
As the airvan settled to the earth inside the checkpoint, Grandma vaulted out with unexpected sprightliness, and Chloe followed.
The growing overcast gave no relief from the afternoon heat; if anything, the heat seemed to compress beneath the clouds, squeezing the air into breathlessness as they hurried up the Tower steps.
“We’re heading to the NOC,” Grandma said as they entered the atrium.
“Knock?”
“N-O-C. Network Operations Center. The dome. The center of the eye.” Grandma led the way across the vast atrium to waterfall-shrouded elevators. “Oh no,” she said, stopping.
“What?”
“No MeNet. The elevator can’t see who we are, so it won’t take us to the NOC.”
“Don’t tell me we have to take the stairs,” Chloe said. The Tower’s spiral stairways were famous, or infamous, for their exercise potential.
“Allow me,” said a voice, and the waterfall parted to reveal an open elevator, and the System standing inside.
It was the first time Chloe had seen her outside of a VR room, and she could almost believe she was a real little girl—albeit one with marble-white skin and softly glowing eyes—physically present in the same real-world space Chloe and Grandma occupied.
Grandma stepped into the elevator, and Chloe followed. As the doors began to close, the System stepped between them and gave Chloe an eye-crinkling smile. “How’s Kleio?” Her voice seemed to come directly from the small figure.
“Safe,” Chloe said. “I’m so, so grateful to you.”
“To me?” the little girl said, her smile widening.
Chloe paused; then, realizing she meant it, “Yes. To you.”
The elevator began to rise, and the System’s smile faded into a searching, earnest look. “You’re one of the only people who knows me. And”—she bit her lip and looked past Chloe at the water falling past the rising elevator—“I know you’ll do the right thing.”
“That doesn’t sound ominous at all,” Chloe said, as the elevator slowed.
The doors slid open, and she jumped, because the big NNA agent, Bruno Tavion, was standing there, arms crossed.
Chloe couldn’t read his expression behind his darkened smartglasses, but after looking at her—and only her—for a moment, he stepped aside. Chloe stepped past him and stopped.
She was looking down into a crowded space so vast it spanned the entire Tower horizontally, as well as three vertical stories of open space to the rounded top of the dome.
The dome’s dark, clouded glass obscured the garden wings outside and served as the surface of a unified, almost 360-degree projection screen.
A huge version of the System strolled across the screen, pacing among windows filled with numerical readouts, and satellite images showing prickly-looking military vehicles and labels like “Vladivostok” and “Saint Petersburg.” Other windows, labeled “New York” and “Chicago,” zoomed in on large crowds and black smoke in the shadows of skyscrapers.
Below the screen, banks of terminals snaked through the space in tiers, gradually descending toward the recessed front.