The drive to Chicago was liminal. Despite that there was almost no change in elevation, to Nio, it felt like the continual ascent of an impossibly high mountain. She had to close her eyes several times to avoid the dizzy incongruity between her senses. The limited number of communication networks and augmented realities in the countryside were mostly global in scale. They settled over everything like sediment, only irregularly punctuated by tiny clusters of complexity. But as the car entered the city’s sprawling border towns, spikes arose like tickles on Nio’s scalp and gathered together until the landscape itself seemed to throb and rise. Hobbyists and businesses joined hospitals, schools, police departments, government offices, and a myriad of agencies, both public and private, to create a complex overlay of ever-increasing digital architectures: not just networks but virtual and augmented realities for commerce, leisure, art, or education. Every mile of flat road seemed to rise more steeply than the one before, creating a virtual mountain in her mind that reached into space.
“You okay?” Quinn asked.
“Not a fan of cities,” she breathed, her hand clutching the handle of the door as if to keep from falling out the back.
“You need us to stop?”
She shook her head. “I’ll get used to it.”
The ImagiNext corporate campus was thankfully some distance from downtown. Its starkly white buildings clustered around a striated vertical spire that towered incongruously over staid suburban homes and apartment blocks, like the mast of an alien sailing ship. As Quinn drove past row after row of late 1900s tract housing, Nio could feel the distant magnetic tug from the spire grow increasingly insistent. By the time his credentials got them past the robotic front gate and into the parking garage, the magnetic field that radiated from the tower completely obliterated all others, and the sensors implanted under Nio’s skull droned at her insistently. She grimaced as she got out of the car. She took her pills from her pocket and swallowed two.
Quinn heard the rattle. “Those are new.”
“Hospital. And no, I didn’t steal them.” She held up the bottle to show him the label. “See? There’s my name.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“But you were thinking it.”
He smiled. “But I was thinking it.”
The campus’s main building was pristine in glass and acrylic. Everything was polished to a high shine.
“Looks like a giant bathroom,” Quinn whispered.
The pair were greeted and asked to sign an electronic log and then to wait while Quinn’s identity was verified with the Bureau, which took only moments. A pair of guards, a man and a woman, stood in the rear corners of the lobby, their semi-automatic rifles slung behind them.
“Does this seem like a lot of security?” Nio asked quietly.
After being issued visitor’s badges, they passed through the glass-and-steel security stalls. Nio noticed the phones on the circular information desk on the far side. Whatever machinery caused the single, droning EMP surge also irregularly interrupted cell phone signals. For “safety,” the company collected all communications devices.
While they waited to be escorted inside, Nio and Quinn stared in silence at the flat translucent plastic screen on the wall, which silently broadcast a 24-hours news channel. There had been another suicide bomber, it seemed, this time at a gerontology clinic in Miami rumored to provide radical anti-aging treatments. The Florida governor deployed a fleet of counselors to the affected community. On the screen, the solemn-looking group boarded a bus single file, each wearing the same blue jumpsuit, like astronauts preparing for launch. The bomber, a 16-year-old TruBoi, a white nationalist incel, left a manifesto in which he claimed that wealthy older white men, by artificially extending their lives, were robbing the young of sexual access and perpetuating a system of extreme reproductive inequality that would result in a decline of “the white race.” Meanwhile, in Washington, the Committee of the Two Americas had broken in chaos that morning when the members of the Red Coalition walked out over the issue of farm subsidies, which the Blue Coalition argued should be funded out of sovereign taxes rather than by treaty. Although the committee was closed and its members extremely tight-lipped, there was widespread speculation that the estimated Red America tax base was insufficient to meet basic state requirements, including the level of defense expenditure they had already committed to maintain.
A completely bald man—the head of physical security, according to his badge—gave his hand to Quinn and explained that the boss was with investors from overseas. After some polite wrangling, Quinn made it clear the Bureau needed to speak with Chancery as part of a murder investigation, and the bald man led them to the rotunda—a perfectly round, glossy white room at the center of which stood a matching globular sculpture. Curved windows on one side looked out on a small garden courtyard with a white pebble floor. White placards, like exhibits at a science museum, took up the rest. Next to each description of basic theory was a rounded protrusion that depicted some “miracle” application that the company was working on.
“And what were those names again?” the head of security asked.
“Agent Quinn of the FBI and Nio Tesla.”
“Tesla. Got it. We had Monroe in a few months back,” he said as he walked away.
“Monroe?” Quinn asked Nio when the doors were closed.
She was scowling at the crudely lava-esque white sculpture. “Manda.” The semi-spherical top rested just underneath the wide, recessed circular lighting in the ceiling.
“The model?”
Nio smiled wryly. “I didn’t realize you were into fashion.”
“You know, before you I never realized the connection. I guess I should have with the name. I thought it was made up.”
“All names are made up. None of us like to make a big deal of our origin. It just invites a reaction.” She walked toward the door. “I gotta use the bathroom.”
Quinn moved as if to follow.
“That okay?” she asked.
He stopped. “Fine.”
Nio walked out the door and asked a passing employee where the bathrooms were, despite that she had noticed them on the walk from the stairs. Standing in front of the placard announcing the ladies room, she turned to make sure the doors to the rotunda were closed before scurrying back to the lobby.
“I don’t suppose I could use a phone,” she asked the elderly security guard behind the visitor’s desk. “Mine doesn’t appear to be working.”
He gave her a fob and she walked to one of the nooks on the wall and dialed.
“Number please?”
“I’d like to make a collect call to a solo register.”
“What’s the name?
“Samizdat Kellner.”
“Pass phrase, please.”
“I’ll be back.”
Nio heard sounds of frantic typing.
“I’m sorry. That pass phrase is incorrect.”
“What?”
“Would you like to try again?”
“Um... No. Thank you.”
She hung up with a scowl. After a moment, she returned to the rotunda, where Quinn was reading the placards explaining Young’s 1801 double-slit experiment, which demonstrated the wave nature of light, and the 1999 delayed-choice quantum eraser experiment, which demonstrated that in quantum systems, future outcomes can retroactively change the past.
“Did they answer?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
He lifted his phone without turning from the placard. “I can see where you go. You could’ve asked, you know.”
“Don’t even,” she accused. “Last time you took the phone out of my room.”
“What is it with you? Were you not hugged enough as a child?”
Nio strolled to the other side of the round room as Quinn continued his tour away from her. After the quantum eraser were placards on supersymmetry and superposition, leading to the seminal 2036 experimental demonstration of quantum array superposition computing, which was then happening in the short, medium, and long arrays inside the massive striated spire over their heads.
“Why don’t they teach this stuff in school?” he asked.
“That’s a rhetorical question, right?” Nio called from the other side of the sculpture.
After completing his tour, Quinn stopped in front of the window to the interior garden.
“It’s fake,” she said.
He scowled. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s a projection. There’s nothing there. It’s just a special screen.”
He stepped back. “Nooo...” he said skeptically.
“There’s no space for a garden. The hallway’s right on the other side of that wall.”
After Quinn made a face, Nio walked to one of the placards opposite the “window” and touched the protrusion, which glowed. Immediately, the circular lighting dimmed and the garden disappeared. A dark-haired woman with bright red lipstick was talking as if to a camera. She was dressed in an expensive ladies suit.
“That’s her,” Nio said.
Like Sol, Chancery looked older than Nio remembered. She was a businesswoman now.
ImagiNext billed itself as a technology company, but its only commercial success had been in pharmaceuticals. Rather than investing in genomics, as every other pharma company had, ImagiNext targeted the manufacturing process. Using virus-programmable bacteria, the company brewed organic chemicals extremely cheaply. Where traditional chemical plants required expensive precursor compounds, which also had to be manufactured, ImagiNext’s giant vats of specially engineered bacteria could be fed for free—or nearly. They consumed biological waste, much of it human sewage, and converted it with evolutionary efficiency into whatever drug they had been genetically programmed to make. From poop to medicine with almost no human supervision. ImagiNext could churn out industrial quantities of chemicals for mere pennies.
The company was successful and flush with cash, but with maximal efficiency reached and competitors entering the marketplace, the company’s stockholders naturally wanted to know what the founder was going to do next. Reclamation, he told them. Since human waste contains trace amounts of gold, silver, and several increasingly rare metals that the world sorely needed, his plan was to upgrade his bacteria and to extend their use to reclaim landfills. Despite a coordinated campaign touting the clear environmental benefits of such an investment, especially over the invasive and potentially destructive deep core program, the project was expected to lose money for several years, and afterward only to be weakly profitable. Accustomed to the massive dividends that had come from the disruption of pharmaceutical manufacturing, the company’s major shareholders were unimpressed and ousted the man from the company he created and replaced him with Chancery Brontë, whose work with so-called Creative Intelligence at Google—machines that could invent entire movies, including actors, effects, and plot—had earned her a reputation. The new boss quickly raised drug prices everywhere. She then fired most of the company’s scientists and recruited top thinkers in the field of quantum superposition computing. The move extended her reputation for being “bold and dynamic.” Everyone was waiting to see if she could add “successful” to the list. If so, she’d quickly find herself courted by the top 100.
On the screen, she described how the company was developing “scatter displays” like the one Nio and Quinn were watching.
“—by simply squeezing more and more pixels onto a 2D surface. Our scatter displays are different. They exist somewhere between those older technologies and full 3D holograms, which are bulky, requiring a box full of magnetically movable particles. In fact, what we call a hologram these days is not a hologram at all since it’s three-dimensional. A true hologram is the recording of an interference pattern such that a higher-dimensional image is encoded on a lower-dimensional surface. Real 3D holograms should be two-dimensional, and yet look completely real.
“It turns out the cues your brain uses to decide whether an image is real are explicable. We see in stereo, so the first of these is parallax, or how objects seem to move relative to an observer. As you walk down the street, the sidewalk under your feet changes position quickly, whereas the skyscraper at the horizon doesn’t appear to move at all. That happens at a small scale just with objects on a desk. We’re not always consciously aware of it, but our brains are. After that, a certain amount of chaos is required. Our brains have learned that the real world has ‘noise’—scratches on a computer casing, the tiny dead spider in the window track, the scuff on the wall from where your chair occasionally hits it, right down to the pattern of dust on the legs of your monitor. That’s all information. We don’t think of it this way, but I’ve just described the history of your office, completely encoded in its chaos. Computing all of that to realism requires as much information as there is in the world, or very nearly. We here at ImagiNext can do it—or something very close—with superposition computing, which is why we moved our headquarters to Fermilab, the world leader in neutrino—”
Nio touched another protrusion and the image changed again. The same woman was standing before a peaceful scene.
“What if we could detect cancer years before it appeared, simply by breathing into a tube? What if teachers could identify children with learning disabilities just by having them press their thumbs onto a screen? What if an app you carry on your phone could listen to a salesperson’s voice and tell you if they were lying? These are the kinds of revolutionary questions we’re asking as part of our groundbreaking Social Dimensions Survey, a partnership with the US Department of Health and Human Services. The project aims to quantify as never before the complete range of human—”
The image stopped and the lights rose as the double doors opened again. The garden reappeared on the screen as a sharply dressed, dark-haired woman who looked to be near 30 strode into the rotunda wearing a colorful Chanel suit and matching accessories. It was the woman from the video. In the foyer beyond the doors, mixed-race businesspeople milled as if waiting for their next meeting.
The doors swung shut with a clatter, and the sound echoed disconcertingly.
“We really must do something about the noise,” the woman said as she approached. She had a faint British accent. Her two-toned suit pants swished as she walked. “This was supposed to be a room of quiet reflection.”
“Doors still have to pass the fire code,” Nio suggested.
The two women stood twenty feet from each other and stared. Nio instinctively concentrated on Chancery’s bioelectric field, but there was nothing. Just the tug from the tower.
“Goodness,” Chancery said. “It’s really you.” She frowned. “You’ve lost weight.”
“Still rockin’ the fake accent, I see.”
Chancery rolled her eyes. “Same ol’ Nix.”
“Nix?” Agent Quinn asked.
“That’s what they used to call me,” Nio said.
“That’s what we still call her,” Chancery told him. “Or we would if she hadn’t disappeared.” She stepped forward and held out her hand to Quinn. “Chancery Brontë. How are you?”
He took it. “Ms. Brontë.”
“I’m afraid you’ve caught me completely by surprise. But then, something tells me that was intentional. I don’t suppose you’re working for Vogue these days,” she joked sarcastically.
“How are things with the Brontë Society?” Nio asked. “They still declaring war?”
“Oh my God.” She shut her eyes. “I cannot deal with those people. They will not let up. Apparently, I’m not doing anything right! Do you know I’ve sued them for harassment?” she asked Quinn. “I’ve explained to them how disrespectful they are to her memory. Charlotte could’ve been anything she wanted, but in that time, women could be professional authors and little else. They couldn’t even own property! In different circumstances, she would’ve been Prime Minister.”
“I’m sure.”
Chancery stopped. She gave Nio a wry look. “Ah, haha. Nice try. But I really can’t stay. If today goes well, we could triple our revenue in five years.” Her shoes clicked on the floor. “Lovely to see you, but please, please make an appointment next time. My assistant can set something up.”
“Hold up, Miss,” Agent Quinn called. “We just have a few questions.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do.” Her lipstick stretched into a smile. “Unfortunately, it will have to wait.”
“Sol called you,” Nio said.
“Yes, and as I already told the FBI, it was a short conversation. We caught up on things. We agreed to meet.”
“Was there anything odd or unusual about his behavior?” Quinn asked.
“Not at all.”
Nio was studying her sister. “You’re lying...” she said.
Chancery’s jaw set. “Excuse me?”
“You’re lying, Chaz.” Nio turned to Quinn. “That what we call her. She gets that flippant ‘oh-it’s-no-big-deal’ attitude when she’s lying. Otherwise, everything she talks about is super important. The most important thing ever. I’m sure it works on most people. If you act like something’s not a big deal, they’ll treat it that way, right?”
“Goodbye, Niobi.”
“He always loved you. That’s why he called you and not Leo or Max.”
Chaz stopped again.
“You already broke his heart. Why you gotta piss on it, too?”
“Fuck you.” Chaz turned.
“If you’re not free to talk here,” Quinn interjected, “I’d be happy to take you to the FBI office downtown. It’s not far.”
“Is that a threat?” Chancery’s lips pursed in shock.
“No, I—”
“I’m not obliged to talk to you at all, so unless you’re going to arrest me, I suggest you find my secretary and make an appointment. Goodbye.”
She turned again to go.
“Buy me a few alone?” Nio asked softly as she strode after.
“Will I regret it?” Quinn whispered back.
“Versus losing your job?”
“Good point. Excuse me!” he called, trotting forward with an extended hand. “You’re right, of course, Ms. Brontë. Let me sincerely apologize” —he took her hand in his— “for whatever is about to happen.”
“What?”
Agent Quinn moved through the door ahead of Chancery and shut it behind him. She stormed forward and tried the handle, but it was either locked or he was holding it.
“Ohhhhhoho,” she grumbled menacingly as she took out her phone. Her manicured thumb clicked furiously on the screen. “I am going to have your badge, Agent Whoever-You-Are. This is kidnapping. And you” —she looked to Nio— “are going to prison.”
Nio slapped the phone down. It bounced once and the screen cracked.
Chaz’s mouth went wide with shock. “Are you insane?”
“You always said so.” Nio grabbed the woman’s neck in a throw hold and rolled her to the floor.
Chaz shrieked and landed hard. She touched her nose and looked at it, checking for blood. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
She started to get up, but Nio pushed her back down and climbed on top of her, holding Chaz’s arms down with her knees and putting a hand over her mouth.
“I know you’re not scared of me, Chaz. I don’t have the lawyers for it. But you have to ask yourself something: if I don’t get what I want—five stinkin’ minutes of your time—am I crazy enough to beat my head against this trash corporate art until I’m bloody and nearly unconscious, and then to call Agent Quinn and tell him you assaulted me? Because if I did, then as a matter of procedure, he’d have to arrest you. In front of your guests. I don’t have the resources to threaten you. But the government does. They have a whole giant apparatus set up to handle exactly this sort of thing. I’m told it turns very, very slowly. You and I both know you have the lawyers to beat the charge. But what will your investors think when there’s smears of blood all over your perfect white walls? Think of the time and money and bad press that could’ve been saved if only you’d—”
“Alright!” she screamed. She pushed Nio up. “Alright. Fine.”
Nio stood.
“Same ol’ Nix,” Chaz accused. She stood up and dusted off her Chanel. “Always what you want.”
“No, that’s you. I’m here for Sol.”
“I told you, there was nothing unusual about the call.”
“And I told you, you’re lying.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“The truth!”
“Yes!” Chancery yelled. “He was acting weird!”
A quiet moment passed.
“He said he was concerned for his life.”
“Why?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
Nio made a face but Chancery objected. “It’s true! Look at me. I don’t know who threatened him. Okay? I don’t know what they said. What he told me—” She stopped.
Nio waited.
“It didn’t make any sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said! I can’t explain it because it was nonsense. He said a man approached him on his morning walk and said a bunch of crazy, vaguely threatening things.”
“Did he go to the police?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
“And you didn’t think to be worried?”
“I offered to come! I didn’t know what else to do. The things he was saying... I told him he wasn’t making any sense and offered to come. Do you understand that? I offered to drop everything. He said not to bother. But I sent him an invite anyway. For dinner. I was already going to be in New York in a couple weeks. I texted him to make sure he saw the invite but didn’t hear anything. The next day, I got an automatic response saying he’d accepted, so I thought I’d see him then and we’d work through whatever needed to be worked through.”
“Why didn’t you tell this to the FBI?”
“And say what?”
“Exactly what you just told me.”
Chancery looked down. “I—”
“I’ll tell you why,” Nio interrupted. “Because you knew how it would look. You blow him off and then he ends up dead.”
“Don’t you dare. I was closer to him than any of you and you know it! I cried for days. You didn’t even come to the funeral! The FBI said he had a massive stroke. What—”
Nio shook her head in disbelief.
“Oh, shut up!” Chaz scoffed. “You were always so patronizing. ‘Look at me, I’m so cool. I hate everything and dress in black.’ You don’t understand because you have nothing to lose. If you did—” Chancery glanced down to the bracelet peeking out from under Nio’s pant leg. “God. I should’ve known. You’re such a child.” She turned toward the front.
“Chaz,” Nio called a second later.
“That’s all I know!” she objected from the door.
“Not that. After... everything, I got checked. I got everything checked. You should too.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Have you ever asked yourself: how come none of us have any kids?” Nio paused. “Not even the guys.”
Chancery’s anger faded to confusion. Then her face was blank.
“You should get checked,” Nio said.
And that was it.