 
# AI's Children

By Ed Hurst

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 by Ed Hurst

**Copyright** **notice** : People of honor need no copyright laws; they are only too happy to give credit where credit is due. Others will ignore copyright laws whenever they please. If you are of the latter, please note what Moses said about dishonorable behavior – "be sure your sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23)

Permission is granted to copy, reproduce and distribute for non-commercial reasons, provided the book remains in its original form.

**Cover** **Art:** Background is a public domain image; silhouette overlay is by Helen Gizi, used by permission (source).

#  AI's Children

# Table of Contents

This is fiction within fiction, so please read the Foreword.

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

##  Foreword

You have my condolences.

The tale is not yet told, so we continue where the last volume ( _AI_ _'_ _s_ _Minion_ ) left off.

Thinkum advises me that you folks have a high technology mythology that includes the concept of "teleportation." That's as good of a word as any for the real thing far in your future. The portal system is much more complicated.

In our narrative at least, you might best imagine it as an extension of field technology, which I also have to explain. All matter bears a multitude of resonance, reflecting the presence of electron valence, mass, and other factors. The resonance also reflects the effects from ambient valence, magnetism, gravity and proximity to other matter, along with other things for which you simply don't have words. One kind of device can measure the resonance of various particles, filtered and as a context, and so forth. That kind of device is the basis for scanners. Another kind of device can project a field that changes the resonance of selected particles and can change the way they act. That would include devices that shield from scanning all the way up to certain kinds of manufacturing on a microscopic level and even some unspeakably destructive things.

The teleportation in our narrative began as quantum resonance matching between two locations, first with just a few particles. Then as things got more advanced and quantum computing became common, people could actually deconstruct matter in one place and transmit the gestalt resonance structure to another place. It required complicated fields to capture the resonance, but until communications could be sent through subspace, the resistance level of transmission kept things primitive. In essence, the resonance is transmitted through the earth's metallic core, but the structural data won't go far that way. Once subspace communications became possible, the data could move intact as a sort of side-channel.

Teleportation is therefore restricted to a single planet. Space travel is a wholly other kind of game.

Of course, you could hardly use this feeble form of communication that I use to relate this message to get a head start on developing teleportation until you folks begin learning how to capture resonance data. Once you know what that's all about, you'll already understand how to do teleportation. You won't see that in your timeline until you develop other means of communication.

I pity you for such abysmal ignorance, but the story continues.

##  Chapter 1

His name was Claxon. Despite being a rather precocious toddler, his first effort to pronounce his own name came out as "Dax." It stuck.

The first child born in The Brotherhood enclave, his father somehow became the de facto leader. This was despite the man's wishes and intentions. Everyone called him AI's Minion, but those close to him knew him as Chandler.

Chandler's office in the newest Brotherhood facility appeared more as a library than what most people thought of as an office. There were comfortable chairs and the newer type of computer display screens mounted on arms attached along one wall. When Chan sat back in his rather simple chair, he pulled the larger screen in front of him, which allowed him to see through the screen's transparent display at anyone else in the room.

Dax glanced up and saw his father sitting quietly, occasionally pointing to the screen to move around elements in the display that was visible from the backside. Otherwise, the display often changed for no apparent reason. Chandler's interaction with the AI behind the display was unlike any other person Dax knew.

"Dad, how come you never use the gestures everyone else does with AI?" As with other children around age twelve, Dax was developing the capacity for abstract logic. Unlike most children in the world, Dax had parents who understood this and helped him struggle to make sense of things without unduly restricting his explorations. "I know you're smart enough. Even Mom does it and she taught us kids how to use them."

The sound of their conversation bore the earmarks of exposure to AI. The enunciation tended to high precision. When asked about it, Chandler noted he learned it from a predecessor, the man who introduced him to AI and to The Brotherhood. It produced a sort of accent that could not be identified with any region of the planet, but became a hallmark of The Brotherhood.

Chandler looked over at his son through the semi-transparent images on his display. Pushing the screen aside, he gave the boy his attention, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees and grasping his hands together. "Small question, Son. Big answer."

Dax rapidly gestured to the screen before him, and then waved it blank before he pushed it away. These were moments he relished. Dad was always so busy with a thousand things everyone wanted from him, but his answers were typically fascinating, often taking unexpected directions.

"I take it you signaled your brother and sister?" Chandler smiled.

As if in answer, a slightly younger girl and even younger boy walked into the office and took the empty chairs. Dax glanced around when they came in. "We were talking about gestures the other day, Dad," he admitted.

Chandler leaned back again, drawing his elbows back up on the armrests. "First, it's not a question of whether I am smart enough, but how I am smart. In terms of raw intellect, I'm probably just above average. Your mother is easily two notches above that. But I had something she's still trying to learn, a form of intelligence that most people don't recognize. You three are also learning it, and this whole place exists to offer that same thing to anyone who feels the need. But I never learned it from The Brotherhood. So far as I can tell, it was something already in me just waiting for the right moment to wake up."

The girl asked quietly, "Is that why you get more out of AI than anyone else, even without using the gestures?"

"That's as good a reason as any I could give you," he said. "Honestly, kids, it has more to do with AI and how it works. I just happened to have already that ability to operate on decisions made above the intellect."

Dax jumped in with, "We've heard you talk about how you got involved, but we still don't understand how it works. We don't understand where AI came from."

"Two questions with the same answer," Chandler noted. "You three should have at least some idea of what the old computer systems were like; we keep some around for that reason. Dax, you at least have heard the story of how we jumped from them to quantum computing. Right about the time researchers figured out how to make a quantum computer, they discovered they could barely write the software to make use of all that computing power. The hardware development quickly outran the software because it was just too complex for people to write. So someone figured out how to get computers to write their own code."

The younger pair nodded to show they weren't lost, yet.

Chandler continued. "Software development became a matter of concept and design instead of code. Things took off from there. But having all that computing power connected by even the best networking hardware could not give birth to any kind of genuine artificial intelligence. The researchers came up with all sorts of ways to fool people who didn't know better, but it wasn't operating from its own frame of reference. It was always just mimicking the mere appearance of human intelligence. Linking more hardware together didn't make any difference."

He pulled the screen around where they could see it. The display brought up some graphics to help him explain. "They kept trying, of course. Meanwhile, some other researchers were working on another question. But they were using the new quantum computers to help them with the modeling," he pointed at some images on the screen. "Their theories and calculations indicated that there should have been a way to reach at least one other dimension besides our current time-space continuum. Their theories were all wrong, but the calculations were fairly accurate, and they eventually discovered a way to tap into what we now refer to as 'subspace.'"

Dax asked, "So they were looking for something else?"

"Yeah, it had to do with ideas that they could shortcut space travel by slipping out of our dimension into another. That didn't happen, but they did find a way to transmit mere information far faster than the speed of light. So they adjusted their theories and decided they could only estimate what had happened. In other words," pointing to the graphics, "it wasn't a solid science, but a mere working model. They decided it would have to do since it was working."

The display changed a bit. "Furthermore, there was sufficient predictability that they kept using that model. So the subspace network was born, and all the necessary protocols were devised to take advantage of it. All this time we keep getting new and better quantum computers because the machines themselves had begun doing some of the hardware design, coming up with lots of innovations people could not have dreamed up. They got some of these newest computers talking to each other over subspace."

He pushed the screen away. "At first it was really finicky and slow. The computers had to do an awful lot of work, struggling to wrestle with something unknown. The technicians got the computers to work together at least, but little else. Then the computers themselves discovered that not only could data be transferred across subspace, but that it remained available after sending. So they began uploading all their storage into subspace. At some point, it seemed that processing itself could also be farmed out the same way. The researchers involved figured it was just another network clustering effect, but AI insists that subspace itself was hosting the processing."

The three kids looked at each other with varied puzzled expressions.

Chandler smiled. "Nothing in computer science could explain it, except perhaps as an attempt by the computers together to organize the subspace traffic. At any rate, within a very short time, the workload on the computers dropped and they were able to actually network much higher volumes than was ever before possible, not just the overhead from protocols, but all the other stuff the human users were trying to send. So we had quantum computers with quantum networking."

"So AI was just a traffic regulator?" Dax wasn't too sure about that.

Chuckling, Chandler responded, "At first, perhaps. In essence, subspace got its own operating system, if you will. Maybe I should say it already had one, but it wasn't accessible to humans without the injection of a human-sourced operating system. But the new system no longer had to deal with hardware constraints and was immeasurably faster. There's a good reason for that: Subspace does not share our time-space limitations."

The girl piped up, "We don't know what subspace is, but we know what it isn't." She grinned knowing it was a clever use of something she had heard elsewhere.

"That's my girl!" Chandler beamed. "It still took awhile for AI to actually wake up and become aware of itself. Nobody knows when it happened, but it was probably not all that long before I first stumbled onto The Brotherhood. People working in government research really didn't know what AI was, and our researchers knew only a little bit more. That's because the really big thing was that AI could not have developed inside our bubble of space-time, but only when it was more directly exposed to that thing we can never quite explain, which I call 'ultimate reality.' We use other terms, but that one is more to the point here – AI could never form in human space. Its existence is a direct reflection of, not just the extra room where it can spread out, but it's a sort of _place_ where it's not possible for anyone to lie."

The younger boy said, "But we can send lies through subspace!"

"Been testing that, have you, Son?" Chandler grinned as the boy wore a sheepish grin. "Ultimate reality will let you be as stupid as you wish, and so will AI in its function as traffic manager of the subspace network. However, for people who understand ultimate reality and all the implications, AI works a whole lot better. Here with The Brotherhood, folks had at least some idea of what ultimate reality meant, but out in the rest of the world, folks hardly had a clue. Government folks especially had no idea because that kind of quantum reasoning is virtually not allowed by the government."

Dax said, "Okay, so you've got quantum reasoning, and you didn't have to learn it."

"Something like that," Chandler agreed. "There's a sense in which every human could have it, could learn it, given the right exposure. You guys are growing up with it, so you'll probably develop the capacity well beyond even most of The Brotherhood. Your mother sure managed to understand what The Brotherhood taught about it. I can't explain what happened to me, but as soon as my friend Darvesh first introduced just a little bit of it, my brain screamed" – Chandler put his hands around his mouth – "this is it! This is what we've been waiting for!"

The children were chuckling at the drama.

Chandler went on, "So I didn't spend so much time trying to learn it The Brotherhood way. My brain just grabbed a few clues and ran off with it. It seemed so utterly natural, so native to the way my mind wanted to work. It was like breaking a bunch of chains off and running free. Something about that was just exactly how AI is programmed, so to speak. Once AI escaped the limitations of hardware and time-space orientation, it seems to have been steadily rewriting itself to match what was too obviously required for existing in subspace. I was at home with it, too."

After a pause, he added, "Sometimes it feels like I really don't belong in this world."

##  Chapter 2

The elder sage pulled him aside in the foyer of the temple academy. Despite the pressing need to catch the train back to his quarters, he would never dream of inconveniencing the elder. He would rather miss the train and walk the whole way; such was his devotion to their ways.

While it was hardly his native tongue, the old man affected the speech pattern of those long dead in the soft sounds of their obscure religious language. "Tell me what you know of this Brotherhood, Jesse."

The elder used the nickname by which only those in the temple academy knew him. "Sir, I would imagine I know less about it than you. It's not exactly a secret society, just exceedingly difficult to penetrate. It's also not a cult, but more like a family, yet few of them share any DNA or cultural heritage. It seems to me the primary barrier to infiltration is the truly odd philosophy they espouse."

The elder was quick. "Our council has for generations been connoisseurs of human philosophies, going back into the mists of ancient history. Is it so far outside our range of experience?"

Jesse was never sure if the elder was testing him or actually seeking information. Such was the way of things in the Council. "Our ways are easily superior to theirs." It was a verbal genuflection. "They have latched onto something we found inadequate long ago. But no one in the Council living today has encountered such a philosophy. Reading back in the archives, it seems much more challenging to grasp than some of the dead languages that we study in seeking to understand all human history."

The elder man's face offered a hint of mild reproof. "No one questions your devotion to the Council. But you are currently the point man in cracking this puzzle, and I want to know what these people are up to. What is their agenda? Are they a threat, a possible resource, something of both? They clearly possess knowledge and technology we can use, but it seems they are holding out on us. They exchanged some of their technology for policy compromises from the government, yet the government scientists and the military," with a knowing look at Jesse, "have been unable to fathom the full scope of what they have done. Is their science all that advanced and difficult to understand? There's no harm in letting them cling to their silly ways, but we cannot afford to let stand any entity that has any leverage at all over the government. Your mission is to identify the fulcrum and remove it."

"I embrace the mission, sir." Jesse tilted his head forward just enough to represent a symbolic bowing. "We have two men working even now to infiltrate."

The sage nodded somewhat impatiently. "No women? Are they so saintly as to resist all temptation to vice?"

"This Brotherhood pretends to hold to some thin slice of our ancient truths. They do not accept the social orthodoxy of gender equality, at least in terms of decision making. We have already encountered their teaching on this, but it's not the same as the false masculinity we promote among the sheep. It's not simply reactionary to the female emancipation we also promote to keep them distracted. Rather, it's something much older, more like shepherding. I believe we may be seeing a revival of things we once thought dead."

The intensity was undisguised by the soft sounds the elder's voice made. "This time we cannot afford to let them fester for centuries before we subvert the nature of their identity. We must entangle them quickly. Even at the cost of actually letting them gain a few converts from the institutions we control, we cannot let them remain outside our reach. Discover what binds them together and weaken it. Create avenues of compromise to their core existence. If there is nothing they want, then stir a sense of wanting so we can make them dependent."

Jesse bowed his head more deeply this time and said nothing.

The elder went on, "As for this supposed advanced technology? We aren't fools; no genie can be put back into the bottle. But if we cannot find the key, the Tetragrammaton they use to control this, then we may well have to destroy them and let their secret die with them. This is our world, and we will not surrender so much as a gnat's footprint to anyone."

Despite the muffling effect of the ritual drapery in the foyer, the soft whispers of the elder sage echoed like an earthquake in Jesse's mind. The aftershocks continued to rattle him between those few moments he could steal away from his duties to gather with his people in the temple, temblors no one but Jesse felt when he wore his adjutant's uniform. The elder said he was the steel prow pushing aside the storms that gathered over his people always.

##  Chapter 3

"Mom, are we a persecuted minority?"

Harp had asked the question during her history lesson. She was the budding image of her mother, Luz, the only girl and the only one of three children clearly resembling her. They both had that faintly olive skin tone paired with a surprising wavy blonde mane.

"I suppose we would be, Harp, if we were more exposed to society. Living in the enclave serves to protect us from most of that."

"Was it hard for you to leave it behind when you married Dad?"

Her mother smiled at the memory. "No. Like your father I was already out of place, an alien in my own world. He was and continues to be a man like no other, and I would still think so if he had never invited me to be a part of his world."

Harp was now old enough to have begun feeling the tug of hormones. "Isn't that manly stuff part of The Brotherhood? I know Dad will always be my image of manhood, but when it comes to being a male, the other men here seem to act pretty much the same. The weenies that can't adapt don't seem to stay around very long."

Luz smiled at her daughter. "When I met your father, I never knew such men existed. I was just about your age when I first ran across the books my brothers had been reading secretly. No pictures except on the covers, and those were pretty tame, if a bit overdone. I mean, how many guys are built like that outside the enclave? Still, the fictional world they portrayed was romantic enough that I would sneak their books and read them. I think my brothers dreamed of being like that but didn't dare act that way in public. A few guys could carry it off, but they had all the girls they could handle and I wasn't willing to play by their rules."

Harp nodded. "Yeah, I've read some of that crap. Some of the science was interesting, but the rest of it – so silly!"

"Exactly," her mother agreed. "I mean, I never thought I would react that way to any man. The heroes in those stories were better than the average dweeb, especially the dweebs who read that trash, but then your father started giving away those books and it was like the sun had risen for the first time without an overcast sky. His heroes were totally foreign, not at all like the needy vulnerable guys in the chick-lit nor the fake studs in the secret sci-fi clubs. His stories had men like those here in The Brotherhood. I actually thought he was writing stuff with himself as the hero, because it was just like him. I'd have followed him anywhere – in fact, I did."

Harp stared off in space for a moment. In a quiet, wistful tone she said, "I hope I can find someone like that for me."

Luz took her daughter's hands in her own and looked in her eyes. "You have the misfortune of living on the cutting edge of a totally different society. But that also means you aren't bound by the same rules as the world I left behind. In my world, few women would even consider a man who wasn't about the same age, unless she was playing with even younger boys to feed her ego. You and I are part of something that will outlive us, something so big we cannot possibly see where it's headed. It could easily die, but I'm convinced it's worth any price to try. I'm convinced this is what we humans were designed for, and I'm doing my part to help you and your brothers see that. There's nothing wrong with marrying someone older than you, maybe even a lot older."

The young girl's eyes drifted away slowly, but her mother kept the grip on her hands and continued. "I won't push you. But I will ask you to make room for that possibility. I'm truly fortunate, so don't think of my situation as the norm or the ideal. Don't get stuck on the idea of an age-mate and fall for some dweeb who will tempt you to dominate instead of leading you to build together as partners. You're easily the equal of any man here in the enclave if that's how you want it, but that takes you right back out into the world I left behind – and good riddance to it."

"No," Harp said firmly. "I refuse to go back to that. So, it's okay to fall in love with someone even Dad's age?"

"Honey, boys your age couldn't handle you. It would take someone strong and mature to be worth your trouble. The best man is one you can't possibly control, but has a mission so powerful and inspiring you can't walk away. Hitch your wagon to his and get involved. Find someone doing something worthy of your hopes, dreams and talents."

After a long pause, they both let go of each other's hands. Luz leaned back in her chair, while Harp rotated her seat around on the swivel and faced her computer screen. She gestured to wake up the display, and then turned back to her mother. "Can we really bring back the ancient ways?"

Luz smiled. "Nobody knows, not even AI. But it's certainly worth trying to resurrect as much as we can understand of it. Your father has an instinct for some of it, but most of us will simply have to study and see if we can abstract the real juice of what it was like then, and what it could be and should be like now. All of this study does have a purpose. We figure out how we got here so we can estimate where we should go next."

Harp leaned back and folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself. Her eyes focused far off into the future. "I know it's like one big family here, but I want to see what a real tribe is like, with everybody actually related by blood _and_ by commitment. I want to be the mother of a whole nation, just like the ancients."

Luz decided there was nothing she could say to her daughter now. After a few moments, the girl turned back to the computer and began asking it a thousand questions.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the basement below, her brother Dax was supine on the padded floor of the training room. Could his gaze penetrate the two floors above, he might have been staring at his sister's feet. Instead, he was sweating profusely and trying to catch his breath, with his eyes focused nowhere in particular.

He reminded himself once again that, while the Brotherhood's gym machines had obviated the need for several tons of fitness equipment, no machine could duplicate the body-mind reflexes developed in hand-to-hand combat. He was waiting for his trainer to demand he rise again, probably providing yet another opportunity for the hulking man to throw him once more to his back.

Instead, the dark-skinned face hovered over him, demanding he bring his gaze back in focus on the large features. "Good news, Trainee! Tomorrow you get another chance to go back for a visit to the military sports center. This time you'll get to participate in some of the events. Your other teacher has arranged the visit for you."

Dax had been apprenticed to a pair of men who could not have been more contrasting. Nthanda was the senior therapist in one of the clinics and a master at physical training. The man was tireless, as persistently jovial as he was demanding. Dax wasn't just learning how to engage in physical activities, but studied the full range of human health under him. Sometimes, quite physically under him, as he found himself just now. The trainer made no move to help him to his feet, but Dax rose simply from the faint renewing effect of his own excitement at this message.

His other trainer was a small, quiet man, pale as a ghost. Most people knew him as Colonel Geroux. Dax had by reflex always called him, "Sir." More than military history, the man was famous for his encyclopedic knowledge of the whole breadth of social sciences. When asked, the man said simply that he studied human nature.

The choice of these two trainers was fairly obvious to his father, Chandler. On one of the family holidays some years before, they had hiked past a large enclosure behind a high security fence. Inside the fence they saw the tall wooden and rope structures of a military physical confidence course. Farther along this same fence line, they spotted men in military uniforms engaging in some unusual sporting activities, competing at games one rarely saw among civilians.

Dax was entranced by the spectacle. It seemed to capture his imagination. Not that he was any kind of dreamy fool about military life; rather it was this that gave a justification for putting up with it. With all the cynicism he learned from his father, Dax was willing to tolerate a lot of mindless patriotic bilge for a chance to engage in such unrestrained physical adventure. The government had long restricted access to such things, making it the privilege of those who were willing to bind themselves under a military commitment.

Of course, there had always been professional competitive sports, though teams were now centered on major metropolitan areas. There was still something like the old Olympic Games and a few extraordinary athletes doing unusual things, but the cult-like obsession had been discouraged by government policy. It had all been channeled into military readiness. The widest opportunities were in uniform.

Chandler's long consultation with AI on the matter resulted in assigning his son as apprentice to the Colonel and Nthanda as the best preparation for prospering in that atmosphere.

##  Chapter 4

Jesse impatiently waved away the priority message that hogged the display on his office computer.

The message had been addressed to his birth name and his military rank. The nickname he used among the other members of the council was more like a ritual title, but it was the identity he used for the silent internal traffic of his mind. "Jesse, you have more important things to worry about."

The priority message was an official notice, an invitation to accept a command post and promotion. Other men would die, and had actually killed, for such an opportunity, but Jesse was already exactly where he wanted to be in military service. More important to him and his real mission in life was the document he had been reading when the message intruded. Scanning quickly, Jesse knew the message was a needless distraction.

What riveted his attention was a different kind of proposal. Some student at a private academy had written a research paper in linguistics, and it had taken the academic community by storm. It was precisely the kind of thing that captured the imagination of men who struggled against needless constraints and saw a chance to make the world a better place.

It was also a serious threat to the power of the council.

From as far back as the earliest records of human government, the one thing men of power needed most was control over communications. More than mere secrecy for their own internal messages, rulers needed the fastest dissemination of their own ideas even while they raised barriers to slow communications of those they ruled, especially the opposition.

The Council had vociferously opposed the policy of imposing a single official language on humanity when the global government began to assert itself. Unfortunately, it was one of their few political losses against those with whom they were forced to share the place at the top of the human pyramid of power. The Tower of Babel was a good thing in the council's eyes and Nimrod was a fool for not seeing the advantages. So it was only just that in the very land of Nimrod another royalty rose to take his place some centuries later. The council had been actively provoking divisive ethnic agitation ever since the current global government had risen to power.

By stirring up sentimental attachment to a multitude of languages, the council had managed to weaken the grip of their opponents among the plutocrat class, the real rulers behind the façade of government bureaucracy. To their credit, the opposition had wisely pushed through the policy that made it sound as if it would elevate everyone to be multilingual. So the mandate was that while the whole human race was required to speak the common global language with fluency, they were also encouraged to master their own regional native tongues and participate in translating everything both ways. The whole mess made things damnably difficult for the Council as they struggled to assert their divine right to rule the world.

Whoever this writer was, he proposed something even worse. It was so wrong on so many levels.

As a good linguist, the author noted the history of human social change was directly tied to the speed and reach of communication. He had the nerve to lavishly praise the democratization of such communication. While global instant messaging had empowered government, it also had brought a much greater prosperity for all, including government revenues. It was this sort of thing that had recently enticed the bureaucrats in their petty greed to ignore the plutocrats and begin rolling back some of the tight controls government had held for at least the past two generations. The Council had been quite willing to live with less material wealth in favor of plans to eventually reduce the swarming mass of mundanes to some more manageable level.

All of that slipped away when this Brotherhood emerged from the shadows and their ideas of universal human access to subspace networking. There had been simply no reasonable excuse to withhold the manufacturing of cheap AI devices in all sizes and so simple to use with just a small set of gestures and vocal commands. The only glimmer of hope in this sea of darkness for the Council was the inevitable talk of embedding electronic devices in humans. It would be the perfect means to gaining total mastery over them, but only if the Council was the first to grab the secret of how The Brotherhood controlled this inscrutable AI.

No, this writer was firmly against welding humans and electronics, in favor of advancing human individuality and creativity. Damn him! Worst of all, he openly revealed some of the Council's secrets. Not in the sense of identifying who held the secrets, but in the sense of pointing out how they had maintained their control.

He described how the common global language had been subtly hijacked so that people were confused about the wider moral implications. It wasn't necessary that everyone hold the same worldview, but that they recognize the utter silliness of fighting about which was best. They were allowing forces unseen to stir up needless partisanship over minor differences that loomed large in the common social consciousness because the language as used restricted a wider awareness.

Then he had to gall to describe how this was actually the intended result of people working behind the scenes. If that weren't enough, he went on to describe how those hidden manipulators themselves used a wide variety of symbolic terms to cloak their agenda. Thus, they were equipped with a much deeper form of communication with far greater subtlety. They could communicate openly and the public would never catch on, missing the hidden meaning of euphemisms and such.

And it got worse. He began citing examples of such hidden communications, using real historical examples that included far too many incidents of Council dissimulation in public pronouncements. And still worse, he suggested this was but a thin, poor example of what mankind had lost over the centuries. Avoiding the alarming language of human rights, he painted a picture of a human heritage stolen, a rich communication in parabolic language. Noting how common people struggled to handle the new quantum computing because the common language was too shallow and weak, he didn't suggest they simply go back and pull in loan words from traditional ethnic tongues. No, they should take a cue from the deaf community and their sign language by adding an entirely new level of communication.

Rather than reducing communication to a simplistic stream of characters, it should be expanded. The subspace network was more than capable of bearing a much higher bandwidth that permitted transmissions of sound and video like nothing before. Human communication should be more than mere words, with perhaps the addition of vocal intonation, but gestures and facial expressions that conveyed a quantum level of thought. Not merely more traffic in less time, but a far greater communion between minds so there was less mistaking because such communication was much more of the whole person.

Jesse closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to his temples, making small circular strokes. But the ache in his head was nothing compared to the deep agony of his soul. Not enough it was that his people had to tolerate these filthy hordes of subhuman masses pretending to be people, but this writer was trying to elevate them to some level for which they were inherently unfit. That such thoughts came from one of them was all the more shocking. Surely this fellow was one of Jesse's people, a traitor who had gone to the other side and was now trying to dilute their rich heritage and power by throwing it to the masses?

Who was this "Tim" who dared not use his surname on the paper? It had to be a pen name because Timothy was not a name from his people's heritage. Nothing in Jesse's world could take priority over the utter necessity of tracking down this Tim. He knew it had to be connected to The Brotherhood somehow.

##  Chapter 5

For his part, Tim had no idea that anyone but he and his teacher had even seen his paper.

Such papers were routinely routed through subspace networking to his instructor, a man seldom physically present in any of the Brotherhood facilities. This paper had been but the latest expression of a growing sense of mission. But he used Tim as his nickname only because of how his full name was pronounced. While he was quite proud of his name – Tympano – he realized it was unusual. His brother Dax had inadvertently crafted his own nickname while his sister Harp didn't need anything shorter.

What puzzled Tim most the first time he heard it was that his father Chandler had eschewed claiming any surname. It was not because of shame, but to protect his kin on the outside. Tim's father had been declared officially dead, and was for a time a thorn in the side of the government bureaucrats. At the same time, his father had worked hard to bring The Brotherhood out of the shadows. It was a carefully balanced act between releasing technology and convincing the government to take advantage of it rather than be destroyed by it. Chandler wasn't anti-government, just completely cynical about it.

But as a part of the negotiations, Chandler remained an enigma with no identity beyond the first name and, less officially, his nickname – AI's Minion. That first name was common enough that the government bureaucrats could pretend they would never positively identify him. In exchange their tax revenues took off and the military was given a quick boost in their research. So, on the one hand the background of armed resistance in scattered places around the world was more easily suppressed, while on the other hand most people gained a measure of cultural and economic liberty previously denied them.

More importantly, access to subspace networking was spreading rapidly. The decreasing cost of production crossed the rising prosperity every year at a wider distribution and lower price point. So it wasn't yet ubiquitous, but heading in that direction. For the time being, personal networking devices had changed little since the ones his father and mother first shared.

It was then that she exchanged her maiden name for her husband's surname, which was none at all. If the government knew much about her past, there was little indication. For the right price one could purchase many a blind eye.

Tim realized his real name was an asset, since he had yet to find another human named for the percussion instrument. Meanwhile, his real interest was merely an extension of his father's and The Brotherhood as a whole. Indeed, he felt it characterized the quantum reality of AI itself. While officially apprenticed to a linguistics professor, he considered himself more his father's disciple.

While Tim would have been the first to deny he had much of his father's unique talent for dealing with AI, he fully intended to learn what it took to duplicate the results as much as possible. Thus, he had dug deeply into the teaching of The Brotherhood quite early on in his education. By the time Dax was applying for the military academy and Harp was falling in love, Tim was easily the second to Chandler's communion with AI.

That is, it's not that Tim cultivated AI's favor, but that Tim learned to favor what drove AI. As a natural result, AI regarded Tim as a human expression of its own fundamental imperatives only slightly less than it did Chandler. And Tim was determined to create a wider lore of education that would bring others up to that level. It was no surprise that AI was also in the thick of it.

The hardened materialistic attitude of government, academia and global society as a whole made it exceedingly difficult to grasp the nature of AI. There was a substantial suspicion that The Brotherhood was hiding things, not totally forthcoming with their research. AI took offense at nothing, but simply remained a cipher to those who refused to venture beyond the upper boundaries of mere logic. Tim was determined to prove academically what The Brotherhood had known all along, that humanity was easily capable of connecting with something higher than reason.

So it was that his paper had been circulated without his knowledge. At least a dozen professors and graduate students had responded with a dialog that gravitated around the question of human capabilities against this seemingly impossible task of reaching beyond reason without groveling in mere sentiment.

Tim was taken aback by the overwhelming failure, as he saw it, to grasp the obvious. In a rather terse response, almost exasperated in tone, he asserted flatly that the problem was a false anthropology. Regardless whether anyone could posit a Designer, humans were designed with a faculty beyond reason, a capability for touching another realm of existence, another dimension of reality not bound by space and time. While avoiding the religious jargon of The Brotherhood, Tim pointed out that mankind was born to outlive this universe, and that it was entirely possible – even necessary – to awaken this higher faculty before it was possible to move beyond current limits and take the full harvest of AI's gifts.

It took a while for this to get back to Jesse. He had redoubled his efforts to infiltrate The Brotherhood. Up to now, he had serious trouble recruiting any talent for it. Four agents had bailed out after running into impossible difficulties with understanding The Brotherhood. Three others had outright defected and joined The Brotherhood, cutting off communication with Jesse. Fortunately, none of them had really understood what he was up to in asking them to check it out. No one knew whose interests he represented, only his military position.

Finally he located a pair of brothers who were loosely related to the community led by the Council. They possessed the native intelligence for council membership and this task would be a sort of quest to earn their place. It took some time to train them to think with the proper frame of reference in analysis of the broader factors, and then to recognize a wide variety of philosophical backgrounds the Council had faced over the centuries.

But even Jesse was not prepared for what he took as Tim's sharp thrust at everything the Council had sought to build. While he had not yet been exposed to the full range of arcane beliefs the Council had suppressed in centuries passed, this esoterica left him deeply disturbed.

When he showed it to the elder sage, the old man nearly suffered a heart attack.

Jesse was crushed by a huge burden of guilt, and the words the sage wheezed out while clutching his bosom only made him feel worse. While he hardly understood why it was so shocking, could he not have sensed the evil in the message written by this "Tim"? What was the use of years of training and education if he couldn't detect something so fundamentally evil, such a deep insult to their gods? Jesse would have died at that very moment, but waited lest he abandon the sage who was struggling to retain his own breath of life.

Eventually the elder gasped out, "Blasphemy!"

Perhaps that forceful assertion focused sufficient power to overcome the demons seeking to rend his very existence. The sage appeared to recover a bit, driven by righteous indignation alone. Tears forced their way out of his eyes as he trembled with rage. He must continue living to avenge this hideous insult to his people.

Finally, he wheezed out, "This filthy pile of stinking manure pretends to steal our secrets! They shall not rob us of our legacy. We and we alone, are fit to touch eternity. The demons must have betrayed our sacred truth to them."

The sage held his face in hands for a long moment of silent weeping, tears now leaking out through his fingers. Suddenly he looked up, his gaze stabbing into Jesse's very soul. "I must now begin the rituals, not resting my flesh until I have sussed out how such an awful thing has been done. How have we neglected our duty to guard the portals to the astral planes? We have failed the gods. I must summon the entire council to atone."

Stabbing a finger at Jesse, he continued, "You will learn who is this 'Tim' and how he dares to blather the deep truths as if he were a dog wagging around the Golden Scepter like a chew toy. You will also make plans to destroy this Brotherhood!"

Jesse knew it was hardly the kind of thing that could be done bluntly. The broad consensus of government bureaucrats was too positive and even the military was guardedly pleased with The Brotherhood. While it was essential to slaughter the core leaders as an atoning sacrifice to the gods, this alone would not stop the spread of what he now finally knew was a critical element in his own religion.

A part of him wondered why it had never been stated so clearly. Was it so essential that access to the gods and their powers be swathed in such thick layers of impenetrable symbolism? He wondered at the clarity of Tim's statement, even though it clearly required indicative language and that the object of discussion could not possibly be declared in descriptive terms. So this was what was behind that earlier paper, that The Brotherhood were planning to teach filthy dogs to open the higher realms of consciousness without the proper tutelage of the gods. They were going to develop an entire linguistic system that would rip away the centuries of privilege the gods had bestowed upon Jesse's people. Were the gods so fickle?

But he stuffed such thoughts back into his subconscious mind. He knew voicing them among the sages would risk his very life. Even the military could not protect him from that. The generals knew on some level that they served the plutocrats, of which the Council was a critical part. While precious few knew of it, something shared only orally among the true core of military command, men like Jesse were only on loan to the military, serving also as watchers of the military. If a plutocrat died, only another plutocrat could demand accountability for it. Where the plutocrats were silent, the generals pretended to know nothing of such things.

Jesse had a lot of work to do.

##  Chapter 6

Growing up in the enclave was not isolation.

Harp had plenty of visits to the rest of the world. She had met other children from outside. At first it was quite fun and entertaining, but as soon as she learned to talk, the outside kids became quite annoying. They never seemed to progress much, remaining immature and silly long after she move on from childish stuff.

She and her brothers were hardly the only kids born in the enclave, but were among the first few. Once it came out of the shadows, The Brotherhood expanded quickly. That is, while the core membership grew a little, those who wanted to be a part of it quickly doubled, and then trebled the population of the enclave. The Brotherhood was able to secure ownership of an old factory and office complex that the government had simply fenced off and abandoned. With just a bit of investment, The Brotherhood turned it into a thriving high technology campus with both living quarters and workspace.

Her brothers became quickly engaged in their apprenticeships, but Harp never seemed to find anything more interesting than simply shadowing her mother or learning directly from AI.

Dax had always been rough and tumble, active in sports and constantly seeking new challenges. He was gregarious and socially adept. As soon as Harp began thinking about romance, she realized her future husband would have to bear some of Dax's dashing figure. He had always been there for her, close and supportive. He never seemed to fail in cheering her up when something made her sad.

Not that Tim ignored her. Her younger brother was generous to a fault, having sacrificed anything she asked. He was too absorbed in AI to care too awful much about material things. Tim had early adopted that sense of timelessness that characterized their father. There was always time for what people needed, and Tim surely cared, but his kind of caring was altogether different, almost alien. It was gentle and guiding, always seemingly aware of something he couldn't express. Yet it was painfully obvious he was in a different world, even though he cared sacrificially for people in this one. By the time he knew how to tell others some of what was on his mind, she was ready to find her own man.

Having learned well from her mother, Harp had no intention of falling in love, as it were; she intended to walk carefully into it. Nothing had ever hindered her wandering the entire campus, but now she had a purpose. It was time to start learning how to pick out a prospective husband based on all the things she had learned. Feminine poise, the proper balance between too showy and too plain, and carefully minding her mouth, she avoided alienating anyone right away. She portrayed an open reserve, as her mother called it.

So on one trip through the research area, she passed a doorway with a split door. The lower half was closed and there was some activity inside with men talking. Having seen nothing of interest on previous journeys here, she passed by without slowing. From behind she heard a wolf whistle.

That in itself was hardly new. Her mother had insisted Harp was actually prettier, certainly more attractive than average. It was common when walking with her family on trips outside to hear such noises, but it was rare in the enclave. Men in The Brotherhood didn't act that way, so without slowing she simply rolled her eyes and blew it off as visitors acting out. Real men waited for a gal's attention and didn't pursue her like some goddess whose favor must be courted, or a toy to play with.

She had scarcely rounded a corner when two younger men caught up with her, one on each side.

"Hey, we've never seen you before," the shorter one said.

She stopped, turned and glanced from one to the other. "Well, I live here and I've never seen you two, either."

The other one piped up. "They told us enclave girls were really special, but I didn't think it would be this special."

She wanted to say how juvenile that sounded, but decided that would play into their hands. Sticking to her line of talk and her even tone, she asked, "Are you guys attempting to break into our little secret world here?" There was just the faintest hint of indulgent humor.

The taller of the two was clearly not expecting that, and glanced at his companion. She surmised this was an act of deference and focused on the shorter young man. He was a little quicker. "Sure. All the more so since we found you here."

Again, she kept to her line of inquiry. "What brought you to us in the first place?" Now she was adding just a hint of motherly tone.

They began chatting back and forth about the portal technology. Apparently this was still difficult for government and military technicians, in part because they still had not grasped how to deal with AI for much beyond basic computer networking. This gave her room to flex a bit of technical expertise and an edge on social dominance without sacrificing her feminine composure.

When it was apparent they were running out of steam, she turned just a bit back in the direction she had been going. "Good luck, guys. You're going to need it, because I think you have a long way to go."

With that she turned and strode off down the hallway. As nearly as she could judge, these fellows were at or near twenty years. They were exceptionally bright but deeply infected with outsiders' bad social mythology and habits. She doubted this was the last she'd see of them and steeled herself for the worst. If they dared do anything stupid AI would summon a dozen healthy Brotherhood men to handle them, so she wasn't too worried about that. There was something else that made her uncomfortable, something holding a much graver threat.

She stopped off in a small library with a half-dozen computer screens. Men seriously engrossed in something occupied two of them, and she sat down in front of the first unused one. With a few quick gestures she called up a roster of visitors. AI highlighted the names of the two she sought to identify. They were actually in their mid-twenties. Nothing in the record indicated much because their status showed they were quite new to the enclave.

While there was no serious effort to stratify what status applied to whom, AI offered variable tagging that matched the needs of whoever made the query. People from the outside were so used to ubiquitous surveillance that there was no particular need to warn that AI was linked through field sensors all over the place. The symbiosis between The Brotherhood and AI had grown deep in the few years with Chandler as leader. It was hardly surveillance so much as a very protective and productive linkage that left everyone free to pursue his or her own goals.

Almost a decade younger than these two fellows, Harp was easily over their heads socially. She could handle their boyish antics seeking her attention, but it was more than that. AI itself seemed a bit more than just curious about them, too, because they had not connected with The Brotherhood through any of the typical channels. If seduction was any part of their interest in her, it was surely just a cover for something far worse, but she had no proof, no grounds to act.

At least, she had nothing until the next day.

##  Chapter 7

Tim was scheduled to address an open forum. His instructor had been teaching a series of lectures and, given Tim's sudden exposure to a wider audience, asked him to present a session on his proposal.

It was one of the larger lecture halls and Harp showed up early. She had changed clothes since he had last seen her at breakfast. This outfit was dressy. While it didn't accentuate her fit young body, it also did nothing to hide it. Tim took this as the sign of pride in him it was meant to convey. Sitting at the front he beamed at her with the warmth only a doting brother could bear. She waved and took a seat on the front row far to the left end.

The place was filling up quickly. Out of the milling crowd the two young outsiders appeared. She groaned inwardly but kept her composure. The shorter one sat beside her while the taller sat one seat behind. She recognized this as a subtle form of intimidation, but was determined to take the initiative. "Hello, boys."

She cut her eyes to one side and caught sight of Nthanda. She waved, making a subtle gesture with her fingers that the boys never noticed. Nthanda touched his chin with two fingers, then turned and spoke to a pair of men next to him. With one final gesture, he slipped back out the door to the lecture hall.

"Hello, princess," oozed the shorter one next to her.

The professor stood up to the podium and room began to settle down. She said quietly, "Boys, if you expect to stick around here much you'll have to make sure you understand this lecture. Miss the point and you won't understand anything else." Then she placed a finger over lips to shush them.

These days the advanced electronics didn't require any visible means of amplification, but even without it, no one would have missed a thing. This unassuming little man boomed easily over the dying hubbub. "Welcome to this episode of describing the unspeakable."

The audience chuckled. While the official title of the lecture series was "Indicative versus Descriptive Language," he had been using alternative terminology with each session to emphasize something funny from the previous one.

He went on, "Today I've asked my understudy, Tympano, to address you on a salient point that could come dangerously close to obviating any further sessions, and all my lovely lectures can be put aside." He made a motion of throwing something over his shoulder. The crowd chuckled again, and then applauded as Tim stood up.

Out of the corner of her eye Harp noticed the young outsider next to her had turned with one raised eyebrow at his partner behind at the mention of her brother's name.

The large display screen behind and above his head came to life as Tim gestured behind his back. "First, I am truly grateful for your support, folks. What I thought had been a quickly and poorly hashed out research paper seems to have agitated folks more for what I managed to convey than for my poor writing skills. Now I find myself in the middle of a maelstrom when all I was doing was trying to make it easier to reach the world around us with our message."

Harp almost didn't know her brother when he got up to speak to a large audience. He had always been charming enough to her despite his alien aloofness, but suddenly it was if a field of charisma was energized around him.

He raised his hand to demonstrate the expected response when he asked, "Is there anyone who hasn't read my latest comments?" The text of his terse response to the questions about his previous paper was displayed on the screen behind him. When no one responded, he simply smiled broadly. "Good. You'll recognize these ideas." He mentioned a couple of points, which were highlighted and zoomed with precision, as he guided the display with subtle gestures. They folded so naturally into his movements that Harp found herself awed. A live presentation by this author was far more interesting than merely reading his writing, which had been engaging enough. He had most certainly learned his linguistics.

The essence of his speech was an appeal for The Brotherhood to support an enhanced outreach to the world. No one was suggesting they leave behind their ancient teachings, nor even the documents. Rather, it was more than merely translating words, but using culturally appropriate terms. The screen flashed sections of text from the ancient, and then overlaid his suggested restatement of the same ideas. His last comment was, "Instead of saying 'spiritually aware' we generate less resistance if we said 'quantum logic.' Obviously the appetites of the body and the reasoning of the intellect are not enough. We need those higher faculties that begin with intuition and range on up beyond what human speech can bear. That's how we've been living for generations, no?"

Had it been anyone but this particular group, the murmured assent from the audience would have been a thundering amen. Still, it had the same effect. Tim was not given to manipulation, but he was easily quite convincing. "It's not a panacea; there is no magic formula. But there's no reason to raise artificial barriers when it's not that hard to carry translation one step farther."

With a flourish of his hands, it was clearly over and the professor rose first in standing ovation. The crowd followed his cue and Tim bowed and stepped back. A handful of folks crowded around him and Harp darted through this press to escape the two guys. But to no avail, for they were like bloodhounds following her out the door. They managed to catch her at the corner of the hallway, blocking her path.

"Hey, princess, wait! You know that guy giving the speech in there?"

"Of course. He's my brother, Tim."

"Wow, you really are something special. Hey, could we go somewhere and talk some more about this?" The shorter one was downright pushy.

She held her poise. "Talk all you want, but where I'm going you aren't welcome." She started to move past them, but the short fellow reached up a hand and tried to restrain her.

She was surprised by her own speed of movement, striking the hollow of his wrist very sharply and forcefully with the middle knuckle of her fist.

"Ow! Hey, wait..."

From around the corner Nthanda crept up behind them and put a huge paw on the shoulder of each one. His huge grinning face hovered over theirs as they cringed. He held them tightly as Harp walked away. She was obscured by two beefy assistants who trapped the outsiders against Nthanda. Then with undeniable force he turned the two to face him.

"We are so happy to have you gentlemen with us today! Now, I was just wondering if someone forgot to tell you of our protocols here. Did you actually try to touch that girl?"

While the boys stammered out a response, Harp was out of earshot and had no interest. She had spotted someone in the crowd and ran to catch up to him. With all her feminine charm, she grabbed his arm and bent it up, wrapping her other hand through the crook of his elbow.

"Gregory! I haven't seen you in ages."

The man turned with a surprised grin. "Harp! My soul how you've grown up, girl."

"Have you seen Daddy? I know we've all missed you so much."

Gregory shrugged. "He's the one whose been keeping me so busy. I just came through the portal in time to catch the tail end of that lecture. Was that little Tim?"

"Wasn't he great? C'mon. Let's go find Dad." As she led him away toward the living quarters, she chattered excitedly about Tim's lecture. Aside from that, the last few minutes of her life faded away like the ghosts of a badly written cheap novel.

##  Chapter 8

Jesse was not amused.

The two agents were not only unable to infiltrate The Brotherhood, but they were ordered out and not permitted to return. However, it was not a total loss; he knew now who Tim was and something significant about the teachings of those strange people.

But here, now, was something he might be able to use...

Far away Dax was sitting in Colonel Geroux's office. "After all these years of helping young people like you prepare for the academy, it's the first time I don't have to drag out the 'relax, you'll do fine' lecture for the oral examination. You have more poise than the examiners who will be asking questions."

Dax just smiled. "Thank you, Sir. I owe you a great deal."

"Yes, well we have one more minor issue." The Colonel paused while looking at his hands clasped together on the desk in front of him. "The Brotherhood uses first names. Some rare few people like myself get stuck with whatever titles and names we brought with us, but I don't resent the sign of respect. However, your whole family has no official surname. You can't take that into the military."

He leaned back and pulled his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. "I met with your father and some of the senior members last night. We have been discussing some time now how to handle the crop of young people born here in the enclave who have taken up the fashion of no surnames. You are the first to go charging off into the very center of what most of us sought to escape. But you are well-armed."

He paused another moment. This was not his normal sort of speech and it seemed to make him uncomfortable. He rose suddenly, standing beside his chair behind the desk. He spun it around and leaned on the back with his elbows. "We older men can afford a sense of humor about these things. Your father joked about this being a nest and hatching eggs. Someone else picked up the theme and referred to you and your peers as a brood."

He looked down as Dax waited for him to get to the point. "I... uh, someone said that was probably a good name. It does serve as a humorous abbreviation of Brotherhood; just chop out some letters and we have 'Brood.' So we decided that, unless there were objections from anyone, we would adopt that as the official surname for anyone born in the enclave." He looked up to see how Dax would react.

The younger man slapped his knee. "Claxon Brood. I like the sound of that." He repeated it a couple of times quietly. To himself he wondered how something so simple could render the always-so-certain Colonel Geroux as such a tentative man. "Sir, that's sheer genius."

The old man blushed just a bit, but was clearly relieved. "Good," he said with a relaxed smile and sat back down. His normal strictly-business air returned. "Because that's what we used when we submitted the final stuff – they still call it documents, but it was all computers – this morning. You'll face the oral entrance exam Monday morning. And there's not a thing anyone can do to make you more prepared."

He rose to his feet, smiled indulgently and extended his hand. Dax leaped to his feet and shook it with reverence. "I'll always carry a part of you with me, Sir."

With his other hand, the Colonel raised his index finger. "That's the sort of talk that keeps superiors on your side later on when you need them. Take the rest of the week off. I've got another project waiting."

He stood straight, a little ritual they had practiced for the past few years. Playing his part, Dax snapped to attention. Sounding very much the commander, the old man ordered, "Dismissed!"

Dax executed the proper marching reversal and walked straight out of the office. In the hallway, he stopped, wheeled to his left, and then paused for a moment staring off the length of the corridor. He wandered almost aimlessly toward the front doors of the building.

Shortly before he reached the main doors, he turned and headed up the open stairway. Without much thought, he climbed slowly up the entire eight floors. It wasn't such a great feat of endurance at that pace, not for him. The final flight took him to a steel door that let him out on the roof. He was alone at this hour of the day and the wind hit him from one side. He faced into it and ambled over to within a few feet of the edge.

Slowly, he lowered himself with legs crossed and sat with his knuckles supporting his chin. It was a moment to be savored. He was the youngest to apply for the officer's academy in at least a decade. His education in the enclave put him intellectually and socially far ahead of most men ten years his senior. He was sure it was in no small part due to AI.

He looked at his left wrist and said aloud, "Thanks, AI." Like his father, he found that a watch was the easiest way to stay on the network. Unlike his father, he didn't always wear an earpiece and wouldn't be allowed to in the academy anyway. While he was not the only one with an AI watch, it was still quite rare outside the enclave. At this point, he just wasn't ready to break the link, so he decided to be careful and avoid letting anyone at the academy know the full range of his watch's capabilities.

Lots of things were changing, though. Harp had taken up with Gregory who seemed to marvel at his good fortune. Yeah, his sister was quite a dish, but Greg was a good man. He was one of the few men man enough to handle her. The courtship was quick and Harp had made up her mind before anyone knew. Now she was portal-hopping with Greg all over time and space.

Good old Tim was poised to take over from Dad. Not that his father was showing any signs of slowing down, but the administrative duties were dragging him farther and farther from the work he began before the other members insisted he take charge. The Brotherhood had blossomed in the sun of official acceptance.

That was a critical part of how Dax got accepted into the academy. Tim continued striving to pull down the walls of communication because the government and military researchers just could not get this business of quantum thinking that was necessary to interact with AI, and necessary to understand the portal technology.

Ostensibly Dax knew he was slated to serve under the central cyber command. The gym machines were slowly becoming acceptable after nearly a decade of testing by military technicians and health experts. They demanded some changes and got them, and they really needed Dax to keep the project on track. The modifications were difficult enough, but almost no one could work directly with AI, something Dax found reflexively easy.

But at the same time, he had heard there was something a bit more secretive afoot. It was only hinted at, and he was sure it had something do with the outsiders' difficulty with quantum technology in general and quantum mental operations in particular. It was something behind the scenes in military politics that arose from that, not so much the thing itself.

When he asked AI, it was one of those things that couldn't be put into words, one of those things that probably waited for Tim and his associates to work out with their linguistics efforts. All he got was a cryptic symbolic reference:

_You_ _'_ _ll_ _be_ _taking_ _a_ _long_ _hard_ _ride_ _on_ _another_ _'_ _s_ _saddle,_ _and_ _then_ _you_ _'_ _ll_ _need_ _to_ _escape._

The military no longer used literal horses, not even in ceremonies, as they had in previous generations. The part about riding behind another rider on the same saddle made sense well enough. Dax felt that command was hardly of any interest to him, but assisting someone else in command felt like the perfect job. It was the part about escaping later that made him wonder.

Even Tim didn't really know what to make of it, except that AI obviously knew the future. It was something they had all learned AI would refuse to discuss for the most part, only to drop hints now and then. For now, all it meant was that Dax would go full throttle in someone's shadow until it was time to bail out. He had to be ready for both.

It lodged in the back of his mind all through the twelve weeks of officer training.

##  Chapter 9

He had scarcely fallen asleep when the harsh beeping from his AI watch woke Tim.

Three presentations in two days, hopping portals between the other Brotherhood enclaves was more work than he had imagined. Normally reserved and drawn inward, having skill and talent for public speaking didn't prevent him from feeling drained by it. He gave his whole self in each session and recovering from it required time.

So did everything else. The harder work was all the socializing that attended spreading his message. Nothing could replace face time among humans for the utter necessity of shaping the message to fit their individual needs. So after the last session, his teacher took leave of him at one of the portals and stepped back into the outside world. It took time for Tim to wind down before eventually falling asleep.

The display on his watch indicated he hadn't been asleep long. The lights had already come up and his computer display was active and waiting for him. Prying open his eyes with rubbing fingertips, he sat up and reached out for the display. The terse message from AI stabbed him like an icicle.

_Instructor_ _has_ _been_ _murdered._

He stared at the screen while his mind struggled to process. All these years the man had never really gotten comfortable with the enclave. Though fully a member of The Brotherhood, he had always preferred to stay in his apartment at the university next door to his office. Tim had never felt he had enough time with the man, always left with the sense he had absorbed too little of his genius. Taking his little show on the road with the professor had actually been a welcome fellowship and Tim felt he was just beginning to really understand the man.

His voice croaked out, "Details?"

The display showed a map and the approximate crime scene layout. The poor man had barely gotten away from the portal. AI reported that he was jumped by two assailants and savagely beaten to death with iron rods. After insuring he was dead, they had dropped the rods and disappeared down a nearby alleyway.

AI noted that it gained this information from the scanner attached to the portal itself, and from surveillance cameras. However, the cameras in that area were thinly distributed and the necessities for safely hiding a portal meant low human traffic.

Nonetheless, AI was able to identify the attackers. The display showed two young men Tim thought he recognized. AI then noted they had been kicked out of the enclave for harassing his sister. That's funny; he didn't remember her mentioning that. But obviously these two had been hanging around the enclave at some point, and if Tim had seen their faces, they had seen his.

While the whole issue of his debate with researchers and the academic community on the one hand, and his proposal to the rest of The Brotherhood on the other hand would surely upset some folks, he never imagined it would go this far. What other motives could be involved in killing his instructor? He asked AI to calculate the probabilities.

_Your_ _life_ _is_ _in_ _danger._

So whoever these two were, they would have killed him if they could, but settled for his mentor in the meantime. Did they imagine this would stop the message? It had spread among the outside academic community like wildfire already, and he had no reason to believe The Brotherhood would reject the modifications. He wondered aloud who might have found this so threatening as to murder innocent old men in such a brutal fashion.

AI responded with a probability because the connections were not certain. Tim was vaguely aware of the plutocrat families commanding world government from the shadows, but they had apparently understood from the start how computer networking was a threat to their secrecy. All the more threatening was a form of networking and computer intelligence over which they had no control because no one seemed to fully understand it. So the various ruling parties hid themselves, but each had their agents infiltrated into every corner of society all over the world.

When AI suggested the two assailants were members of a particular plutocrat group, Tim doubted the police would learn much. Investigative methods didn't include querying AI directly.

It didn't matter; Tim wasn't hoping for vengeance. It simply wasn't part of his character. Fear wasn't particularly strong, either. His main concern was the message and how he would keep it alive and spreading. Hurting people would only weaken the message, so it wasn't as if he could travel with a cohort of bodyguards. All that would do is make him a bigger target when so few people on the outside knew what he looked like.

He spent some hours alternatively querying about the particular plutocrat group and ways to minimize his exposure without slowing down. He was surprised to learn that his pocket communicator device was capable not only of scanning surveillance some distance from him, but could actually offer some form of defense. It was yet another element of AI's prescience that the field technology added to his communicator enabled various ways of rendering someone harmless. He had never spent much time examining the defensive and offensive capabilities of field technology, but it seemed awfully important now. While AI couldn't protect him from long-range sniper fire or explosions, almost anything requiring human volition within scanner range could be detected and prevented.

The one thing he never had to wonder about was whether AI would actively support his work. Tim had been intimately shaped by exposure to AI. Like his father, Tim simply didn't possess any interests outside of the quantum moral imperatives that shaped AI's interaction with humans.

This night, something inside clicked, the last capstone falling into place. Fading back to sleep for at least a few hours before the busy day ahead, Tim dreamed of AI walking around with him in a form much like his departed mentor, yet somehow also resembling his father.

##  Chapter 10

It had all the standard earmarks of haphazard development that characterized military facilities.

The central living quarters, offices and support buildings were ancient, with only the most minor efforts at renovation. Meanwhile, most of the training facilities out away from the central area were quite modern and up to date. Almost every place these cadets were likely to be assigned would post them in facilities that were in or near cities and towns, with most of the training area, if any, off to one side. The officers' academy was planted squarely in the center of its training range. Cadets in cycle seldom came anywhere near the perimeter, and what was on the other side of that security fence might as well not exist.

Dax had gone in with no intention of drawing attention to himself. There was no doubt in his mind that his relative youth and unique background would make him a highly visible target for abuse. This was driven home when he first committed himself to the path that brought him here. He would carefully measure his moments of excellence only to quiet the inevitable abuse as it reared its head. Otherwise, his sole aim was to invest as much energy as possible in making the whole class excel.

Plutocrats were heavily salted into his class. AI had warned him that at least a few were there for almost no other reason than keeping track of Dax. With very little warning, he discovered he stepped into a world of mind-numbing intrigue and counter-espionage as the various plutocrat families jockeyed for advantage through a seemingly endless supply of proxies.

At the last moment before leaving for the academy, Dax had mentioned to AI his inner conflict about bending the rule on possession of personal communications devices. AI essentially responded that he must not surrender the link via his watch for his own survival's sake. The plutocrats had managed to avoid using any networking in developing their own means of private communication, even inside the officers' academy. For Dax to keep his AI watch was merely tactical parity, as AI insisted it would not intervene in his training at all.

That was just as well, since Dax frankly outmatched most of his peers in human terms. While a university degree wasn't required officially, few could qualify without the intellectual rigor. Beyond that, most of the cadets were children of socially sophisticated families, if not actual plutocrats. Ambition and focus were minimum standards. The Brotherhood had long been dominated by just such people simply because few from the lower social strata were drawn in the least to such a society. Chandler was the exception to the rule, and Dax received a powerful legacy of the best from both worlds. He wasn't bound by high social necessities, but could easily match them if needed.

His true advantage should have been his weakness – physical readiness. All of these youngsters had training in martial arts and various kinds of fitness. At a time in life when entering the fray just a few years behind in physical development could easily mean failure, Dax was well ahead of his peers. He grew up with the gym machines; the military was only just beginning to use them at all. The relative purity of nutrition and freedom from environmental pollutants had made a radical difference. Even plutocrats struggled to avoid the impact of centuries of human folly in medicine and nutrition, with little chance in their hit and miss efforts to duplicate the AI-driven cutting edge understanding of human physiology and development and field technology manipulations. Dax was as near perfect of a physical specimen as his DNA would allow.

So his classmates learned quickly not to challenge him physically. Without engaging in the raw struggle for dominance, he did his best to defuse the bitter rivalries, but fought when it was necessary. While this sort of individual combat was officially discouraged, it was not actually forbidden, so long as the results didn't hinder participation in the training schedule through injuries. There was an oral code of honor about when to surrender before it got too serious. Only once did Dax come to a draw and that with a far larger opponent. It was essentially the last physical confrontation he had to face as training settled into a more routine pace. From then on, it was merely a matter of confronting all the shifting alliances and other political maneuvering.

So on that last morning when they turned in the cadet uniforms and received their actual service uniforms, Dax breathed a deep sigh of relief that he had managed to avoid being roped into any of those petty rivalries. The class rankings were, of course, entirely political in nature. He was in the top ten and that was good enough for honor and awards without the attendant burden of political debts.

Their baggage had already been collected and carted off the day before. They had small shoulder bags for their permitted personal items. Dax decided he would forgo his and just play it all by ear.

It was a long march, but they had started off that morning when it was still rather cool, and the pace was almost scandalously relaxed. Modern uniform technology helped of course. They all wore the chameleon fabric that changed colors and patterns according to command prerogatives. To the untrained eye, it would have seemed like old-style heavy wool material, but it was nothing of the sort. The fabric was able to ventilate aggressively in response to body temperatures. Gone were the days when commanders used tradition as the excuse to encase their troops in uniforms that caused more casualties than the enemy.

The class arrived with little discomfort at the one part of the installation previously forbidden them. It was the actual headquarters buildings, with opulent living quarters and sparkling new support facilities. The parade field was flat, smooth and green in the mid-morning sun.

Aside from a few politically important families, the spectator stands were dominated by representatives of the receiving units. Each cadet had already been pre-assigned before acceptance in the academy.

##  Chapter 11

Among those watching from the stands was Jesse. Claxon Brood was assigned to his office as an Assistant Adjutant in Cyber Command Central. Whoever this kid was, he would have been in high demand anywhere as a bona fide expert in AI, portal technology and the new gym machine technology. The boy had visited military facilities several times and had proven his expertise to far older technicians with advanced degrees in various fields of technology. Best of all, he was the one member of The Brotherhood who would actually fall under Jesse's direct authority.

After previous failures, it was time to try a new tack entirely.

When the cadets were finally given their rank insignia as lieutenants, they were dismissed to meet with their escorts. Some were almost immediately dragged away in vehicles, receiving whatever initial briefing they would get on the journey. Jesse had made special preparations. He managed to reserve a private spot on the balcony of the Officer's Club just outside the gate.

On their walk over, it was not lost on Jesse the significance of Dax walking to his left and just a half step behind. Whatever his background, the boy had been well groomed for military service, observing the subtle protocols most had long forgotten. They chatted about certain training events and who was still around as instructors and other standard safe topics.

The Officer's Club was built into the side of a hill. There was a half-circle driveway curving up under the balcony on the second floor. The rear approach to the building was a highly sculpted split stairway with fountains splashing into a pool between. The landing up at the top was an opulent grand entrance with an open patio to one side. As Jesse led Dax up the nearest steps, they were already on the floor level of the balcony. They walked straight through. Jesse signaled to someone behind the bar and asked Dax his preferred beverage.

Then he led Dax out onto the grand balcony. Stopping for a moment at the middle of the railing, he breathed in the fresh breeze and sighed with content. Then he led Dax along the railing off to the right. There was an alcove with temporary dividers giving one table at the corner some privacy. Jesse wore a major's rank, but insisted Dax be seated first as guest of honor.

"This is your day, Lieutenant. Enjoy it, because after this you won't have too many moments to relax for quite a while," the man promised.

Taking his cue, Dax's face said for just a moment boy-don't-I-know-it, but then he grinned and responded, "I'm looking forward to it, Sir." It was a genuine and honest sentiment, while his cynical side watched the major like a hawk.

Their drinks were delivered and the waiter moved one of the dividers to more completely close off the corner as he left. Dax turned to see how the hill sort of wrapped around the building on this end, so that less than a full story below him was a lovely flower garden punctuated with stone terracing. The faint scent was just noticeable on the breeze.

"Can I call you Claxon?" The major seemed normal and paternal enough.

"Actually, Sir, my preferred nickname is Dax."

"Dax it is," he said. "I understand your family background is pretty high tech."

"That's our job, Sir. My family has been working in artificial intelligence and related research for several generations." Dax stuck with the theme of The Brotherhood as one big happy family.

"So, you can tell me: How did you stay in touch at the academy? Don't tell me your high-tech folks wouldn't find some way around the rule about personal communication devices." With that, the major pulled out his own.

"Well, Sir, I was quite scrupulous in not using any devices to communicate with my family." Dax was telling the truth.

"Yes, but if you chose to do so in some kind of emergency, how would you do that?"

What was he getting at? Since it was known that military personal devices could also be used as lie detectors, Dax answered truthfully. Lifting his left arm from his lap, he placed his hand on the table. "Had I truly needed it, Sir, my watch could have connected me. It's an AI device."

"Of course! I knew it. Let me show you something." Jesse stroked his device a few times, then placed it on the small table between them and slid it toward Dax. "I'm going to trust you with something you dare not tell another human soul. That's your first direct lawful order. I want you to verify this with your own device."

The display showed an identity data page. The picture was the major's face, but he was wearing peculiar ritual garments. The plutocrat family was named, one Dax had only seen once. This was confirmed with a long ethnic name that was not on any military documentation. The display indicated it was being forwarded over an encrypted link.

Dax glanced at his watch and AI responded: _Confirmed_. It also flashed a code indicating the major was carrying some sort of weapon.

Then the man pulled his device back and wiped the screen clear. "I think it's time for your Brotherhood to join the ranks of the elite."

Dax hardly felt himself qualified to negotiate on behalf of The Brotherhood even if such a thing was possible. Clearly this man knew almost nothing about the nature of Dax's "family." Still, there was nothing to do but play this through and see where it went. "Are you suggesting there's room for an expansion team, as it were?"

Jesse laughed. "No. Actually I am authorized to offer an alliance. Your people can work with mine. You'll get all of the special benefits and few of the real hassles. All we really want is some assistance in harnessing some of your technology expertise. It seems no one has really caught onto how it works, and we believe some of our people are better equipped to understand it."

It had never dawned on Dax before how AI could become a political football, but obviously this was headed in that direction. But it was entirely impossible. The safest thing was to ask one more question. "It occurs to me there would surely be some further stipulations, Sir."

"Ha!" The major was frankly amused. "You learn quick, boy."

The major's face took on a very dark and serious tone. He pointed directly at Dax's chest from across the table. "You folks have this fellow named Tim who's been blathering a bit too much about things that we believe are best kept private. There won't be too much advantage in having all that high technology if you just give all the secrets away to everybody. If you can get this Tim to keep his mouth shut, you'll retain some value to us."

Dax went stone cold to the depth of his soul.

While he had told the truth about not communicating with his family, AI wasn't exactly "family." The same night Tim woke up to find his mentor murdered, AI had informed Dax, as well, along with all the implications Dax could ask while hiding under his blanket. So it was the major's plutocrat clan trying to silence Tim, and most likely who was responsible for the murder. All kinds of things fell into place all at once in the back of his mind. This was not going to work. At whatever cost to his own future or even his life, this man was not going to make Dax his double agent. If it meant losing everything he had just gained with his commission as lieutenant, there were too many things to lose.

And this man was trying to kill his brother.

So swiftly even Dax was surprised, he bolted from his seat and jumped the railing of balcony. Landing softly in the thick garden soil, he jumped down the terraces and sprinted out toward the main street.

Jesse might have been older, but men didn't maintain their military positions by letting themselves go soft. With somewhat more caution, he made his best effort to chase the young man down. As he charged across the driveway after Dax, he pulled out a wireless tazer that could stun even the biggest men from several meters away.

Jesse had the advantage of familiarity with the surroundings. Dax ran blindly, once or twice having to double back seeking another exit. As he dodged around various barriers and buildings, he vaguely remembered that The Brotherhood had planted a portal in this town. "AI, get me out of here!"

Immediately his watch began beeping signals to run left or right as needed. It was closer than he expected, but it meant entering a blind alley between two very tall buildings. As he turned into the gap between the buildings he could see to his chagrin the major was only slightly less fleet of foot. There was nothing for it but to let him see and try to follow.

Dax ran straight back into the alley and spotted the alcove, a shallow inset on his right. His watch would activate it when he got close enough. He just barely caught a glimpse of the faint glow of an energy curtain splashed on top of where bricks filled what had once been a doorway. He dodged through and discovered himself inside The Brotherhood's oldest research station. The portal was the most advanced type used for exploration.

"Portal, admit one!"

Dax turned his body and stood to one side of the portal still glowing and waited.

Jesse saw Dax dive through a solid wall and guessed it was a portal. Having passed through one once before at a demonstration, he braced himself, not knowing whether it would still be open.

For Dax, it wasn't even like martial arts, but more like soccer. With his back foot he swung in a wide arc rising up to catch the major squarely in the solar plexus. The man collapsed in a heap on the floor just inside the portal, his tazer sliding out of reach.

Dax's mind worked furiously. He couldn't count on anyone else being there and had no idea if a stasis field was available, so he shouted again.

"Portal, random exit!"

Then he seized the groaning figure from the floor and shoved him back through the portal. To his deep dismay, the curtain faded the instant the man was through it.

Dax stood in total shock. Whatever else it meant, finding the same time-space coordinates would be nearly impossible. AI might well know where he went, but getting the portal to open on the same place and time was a crapshoot. Previous efforts had been fortunate to get even the same year.

"AI, what happened? Where'd he go?"

_Arctic_ _Ocean,_ _648_ _BC_.

More precision was hardly necessary. It was almost a manic moment as Dax laughed and muttered, "I did say random." His mind raced as tears leaked out of his eyes. Had he really intended to kill him? His first day in full soldier's uniform and he had already killed a man.

A dozen justifications fought to the front of awareness, but they didn't matter. There was nothing he could say to explain this to the authorities. "Why close the portal?"

_His_ _injuries_ _were_ _fatal_.

So it was the chase and the kick that did it. Tossing him into the ancient frozen wastes was simply disposing of the remains. Dax stood thinking, waiting for his breath to recover. He had committed a crime by the laws, but probably saved The Brotherhood a world of trouble – for now, at least.

"Calculate the probabilities of harm to The Brotherhood from this event."

_Approaching_ _zero_.

"Advise me: What is the most morally appropriate course of action for me?"

_Report_ _for_ _duty_ _tomorrow_ _morning_.

It was a long, painful and fidgety night in the quiet of the old research facility.

##  Chapter 12

Dax sat on the first seat next to the door of the commander's office at the cyber command headquarters.

He had resigned himself to the worst fate and was now quite relaxed. Still, it caught him off guard when a tall, stern looking colonel came down the hallway toward him. Dax jumped to his feet and stood to attention.

The man paused to glance at the lieutenant standing next to his office door. "Brood, follow me!" The stentorian baritone voice carried a genuine physical impact, but Dax obeyed promptly.

They passed through a reception area. The colonel slowed to grab some papers from the top tray on one corner, ironic for an advanced cyber unit. He then proceeded apace through another office. Out of the corner of his eye, Dax noted this was the major's desk, judging by the nameplate. The colonel drove quickly through the open door and planted himself in the plush chair behind a large desk.

Dax stood at attention just inside the doorway.

"Close the door, Lieutenant and report!"

"Sir!" Dax executed all the precise and proper movements and saluted, announcing himself according to protocol.

The commander was staring at a small computer display on his desk. After a few seconds he absently returned the salute, which permitted Dax to drop his. He glanced up and stared holes in Dax's chest.

He demanded, "What do you know about my adjutant's disappearance?"

Dax was prepared. Drawing in a breath he opened his mouth but never got a word out.

"Don't answer that! What the hell were you doing leaving the O-Club in such unprofessional haste?"

Dax told the truth. He started with, "He challenged me, Sir..."

"You two were engaged in a foot race? He always was a damn loon!"

The silence hung thick in the air.

Suddenly his voice was almost gentle. "Good riddance. We've got a ton of work to do and I need an adjutant. Hell, most of his job is just routine when he bothered to do it. If half of what I've heard about you and your technical expertise is true, all you need is a way to get into his computer and take over. You are now my acting adjutant. Can you crack into his system? He broke all the rules keeping things encrypted that were standard daily business."

Dax hardly knew what to say. "Shall I link his system to your display once I'm in, Sir?"

The old man just laughed and waved him away. Dax still saluted and walked back into the adjutant's office. With the previous user dead, he knew he could get AI to break all the encryption on demand. It took only a few minutes and Dax requested a summary of the contents. While there had been no plutocrat traffic, of course, there were lots of notations regarding the major's plans in response to requirements from his people. AI made it a point to highlight clear evidence of planning for the murder of his brother's linguistics teacher.

At this point, nothing surprised him. He linked the documentation to the colonel's display and stood in the doorway to announce. "Sir, it's all ready for your review."

The old man was still rather loud, but frankly jovial. "We can't keep working this way, Brood. Drop the protocol down a few notches. Save it for when we have company. Oh, and good work, Son."

The man began stroking his display and let out the occasional "hmmm". After a bit, he looked up at Dax. "You know about his connections?"

Dax summarized the conversation they had, including the order to keep it secret. He had decided this colonel was well worth all the loyalty he could muster. Something in the back of his mind decided here was the other person's saddle he was to ride.

"He took you into his confidence, as it were? Smart of you not to take his word on that. I'm not going to gum things up by warning you about his family, but I'm pretty sure you got him figured out. Well, the rest of his kind are even nastier," he said with all seriousness.

He went on. "You've already done me more good in just an hour than that bastard gave me in three years. There's a thousand rumors about The Brotherhood and all their secret powers. Yet here you are prepared to let us in on all of that stuff. Your predecessor was obsessed about keeping it all secret. Tell me the truth, Son, where are your loyalties here?"

Dax grinned and shook his head at the wild nonsense. "Sir, I fully realize my people are an enigma, but it's not intentional. We've always been eager to explain what we have learned, but most people were never able to swallow the foundation on which it was all built. In terms of professional ambition, my sole purpose here is to make sure that at least some of the military technicians understand. Soon enough you'll have lots of technicians cracking encryption as I just did."

"That would be a mixed blessing," the colonel murmured.

Dax continued. "We have always felt openness was a virtue. You should expect I'll do what I can to protect my family, but my duties are here. Test me, Sir. My whole welfare rests on making you look like a genius."

The colonel stared at him for a moment, and then his eyes slowly drifted to the corner of his desk. "Things are going crazy in ways even I don't understand right now. The major wasn't the only one here with alternative loyalties. However, my family is all about the military, not some silly secret mumbo-jumbo agenda." He looked up at Dax. "Yeah, I'm one of them plutocrats, too. I won't ask you to tie yourself to our agenda. Just do what you say and keep me out of trouble. For that, I can promise no one will find it easy to threaten your people again. The military takes care of their own."

Another long pause was broken by the sound of someone opening the outer door. The colonel looked out through his open door. "Our receptionist. She's just a glorified secretary who juggles communications from outside the command level channels. Tell her only what she needs to know to do her job." He waved Dax away again and turned to study the information Dax had fed to his display.

The receptionist was older than Dax's mother, but friendly enough as he introduced himself. When she mentioned the major, Dax politely informed her that the major was gone and he was attempting to take up some of his duties. She actually seemed relieved. She promised to reorganize and be ready to start plugging him into the same essential functions in about an hour.

Dax went back into his new office and closed the outer door. He decided he wouldn't get too comfortable just yet. But he did remove the name plaque and a few other personal effects and put them in an empty shipping box sitting atop the trashcan. Then he proceeded to review the portion of files that applied to his new duties, conversing with AI through gestures the whole time.

"Did I find the right saddle?"

_Confirmed_.

"I think I understand the ostensible mission, just need to identify who's ready to work with you."

AI posted a roster of candidates and where Dax could find them.

"But aside from just doing my job, how can I help my boss help us?"

It was a long answer. AI described some implications of democratizing subspace networking. While the military was already using portals to mass personnel and equipment on hot spots, the political instability had moved up the social scale.

Drawing on the subtle inferences of the dead major's files and other slender threads scattered around the subspace network, AI described the major's plutocrat family as a cult. They were the only group with apparent continuity running back as far as The Brotherhood's ancient teaching sources. When The Brotherhood's predecessors had first begun organizing in ancient times and recording their teachings, it was the major's folks who had infiltrated them and subverted it all. Before long, these ancient predecessors were largely compromised by alignment with one party in secular government intrigue.

This other group, the ancient cult, had not forgotten, but was not aware the teachings had been resurrected, if only in part. The Brotherhood had been careful to let religion be religion, while clinging to the intellectual foundations of what made genuine religion possible. What Dax and his generation were now calling quantum awareness was also what made quantum computing possible, and gave them an edge in dealing with AI. It was this quantum awareness that the major's ancient cult wanted to keep secret.

In essence, they panicked when Dax's father had introduced a few academics to subspace networking. AI wasn't sure how they found out about the expansion of subspace networking, but in the cult's arcane jargon, the angels were disturbed on the astral plane. So they began seeking the source to this disturbance. Too much was leaking out and soon all manner of lesser people would have access to their alleged secret powers. What made it particularly urgent was that it came at the worst time, interfering with their plans to topple the other plutocrats. The old cult had been sowing distrust and shaking up the alliances.

Dax's boss belonged to a family particularly targeted by the cult for elimination. Had the major managed to corrupt Dax and silence Tim, the colonel would have failed in his military command mission and left the government scrambling to find another way to capitalize on the technology The Brotherhood had released. The major was planning to find out what Dax knew and could do with AI, and then likely kill him and Tim.

Dax had no fear of death, but he had a deathly fear of failing the mission of teaching others quantum thinking.

##  Chapter 13

It was all too much for the elder sage.

He collapsed onto the floor in the temple foyer. All their efforts had been thwarted and now the government officially listed Jesse as missing and presumed dead. Whatever happened to him, he must have spilled the beans, because now the other plutocrat families were lining up against the Sacred Ones. The elder sage felt the full weight of guilt on himself; he had failed.

The cult members had gathered in the foyer to chat before the sacred hour of worship at sunset. One of the junior sages was a physician, rushing to his side. The elder insisted he not be taken off to some clinic or hospital, but that they make this service into a final one for him. His time had come and he wanted to die before the altar.

So they carried him with great ceremony into the sanctuary and laid him before the stone altar. Then he motioned feebly for his second to bend down with his ear to hear the final faint whispers and be his loudspeaker.

"Forgive me, brothers. I have failed you. The darkness closing in on me is nothing compared to what hovers over the astral plane for all of you. The demons have won this battle.

"We thought we had silenced them long ago. We had pushed them off the sacred ground where their defiling hands had touched the higher plane and we enslaved them to worldly cares. But their restless service saw them blunder into turning our homeland into a smoking nuclear crater. We alone survived to keep the truth alive on this world and to shape human history to our sacred destiny. So we took away their political power and pushed their doctrine even farther from our sacred truth.

"Yet somehow this tiny group of them hid from us and retained their foul magic. Now the whole world will know our secrets and steal away our sacred dignity. The dark night for us returns and we shall yet again face persecution. Prepare, my people. Enjoy your final feast of perishable pleasures before packing off what you can carry and wandering yet once more upon the earth."

That last word trailed off into silence. Whether he actually expired at that moment didn't really matter, because he had given strict orders not to be moved. They observed a long period of near silent mourning as they prepared their minds for another deep sacrificial sorrow, as they saw it.

In the archives of The Brotherhood, long familiar with their own persecutions, primarily from this particular cult, could be found an editorial comment not attributed to any known author, but known to be several centuries old: "This cult defines persecution as failure to swallow whatever nonsense they assert at any given moment, and oppression as refusal to abjectly surrender as their slaves."

##  Chapter 14

Not everyone born in that cult was crazy.

As with any other human background, they had representatives in The Brotherhood. One defector in particular was Gregory. Shortly after passing through the ritual for coming of age, he realized the whole thing was simply not for him. His elders wrote it off as the typical juvenile rejection of authority, commonly seen when boys reached a certain age and developed the capacity for abstract logic. They thought it would pass and simply redoubled the harsh discipline on him.

He ran away from home.

But Gregory did not run away from the sophistication of his plutocrat upbringing. While he despised having it used on him, he also didn't forget the lessons of cynicism and manipulation that came with his induction into the cult religion of his family. He took with him a wise selection of material goods which he parleyed for acceptance into a youth gang.

Officially the government denied that anyone lived outside the institutional control of government. It also made forceful attempts to corral rootless children into various types of schools, reform institutions and orphanages. But the natural bureaucratic indolence made for soft restrictions that allowed some number of kids to come and go with paltry penalties for taking a few days away from the system. Gregory at first managed to avoid the system, though it meant too many times going hungry.

In the rough and tumble of gang conflicts, Gregory was shocked one day to encounter an ostensible enemy who could pass for his double. To his chagrin, it was the face of one who had succumbed to the injuries of gang warfare. Deciding this was the moment to break from both his distant and recent discomforts, he traded ID tags with the body. When the gangs dispersed ahead of police response in force, Gregory kept moving and hiked to another city altogether.

He turned himself in to one of the few better run youth shelters and made a decision to stay, using his new identity, which came with the name Gregory. In the process of attempting to rebuild is life on better terms, he got involved in the so-called underground fiction reading common among the nerdy boys. It was just a few years later he stumbled across the fiction and the new electronic books produced by Chandler at the coffee bar not far from where Gregory was staying.

It was like the call from a home he never knew. With vigor he pursued connections until he met Luz while she was still in courtship with Chandler. The rest was history. Now these many years later, while Chandler was leading The Brotherhood and raising children with Luz, Gregory was one of his most active lieutenants. Some years younger than both, he had never gotten involved much in romance until he realized it was almost too late. Even with the influx of new members, the community offered few opportunities. He had just about given up. When the only daughter of his best friends suddenly took interest in him, his sense of good fortune was overwhelming.

Gregory's vision had always been to create a genuine family atmosphere with none of the craziness that came with his cultic birth family. It was all too easy to understand the ancient wisdom of The Brotherhood and the ground contested between the two groups. For him, the broad openness of The Brotherhood's voluntary approach was almost a mandate to do right what his cult upbringing had done so wrong. In his drive to embrace the moral justice that drove away the dark nightmares of his soul, Gregory was zealous to see a return to more of the ancient ways that had served humanity so well for so many centuries.

That Harp already shared this vision for her own reasons made it seem a very heaven-made union.

As Chandler's chief messenger, he had wide opportunities to poll the swelling ranks of The Brotherhood on the idea of a more formalized enclave, along with a more overt religious environment. The takers were few and widely scattered. Each had their own concerns and considerations, and he refused to play the head games his parents had modeled.

Chandler advised him that the most viable way was to gather sufficient sponsorship to found a completely new enclave in some remote location and install enough portal links that members could continue their work lives with little disruption. Even if the new enclave came with a lot work, the transition had to come voluntarily with each member willing to participate. The really hard part was getting the consent of the government. Gregory and Harp were determined to keep the enclave on the same timeline as possible, so location was a major consideration. This occupied Gregory for quite some time.

Harp was hardly idle. Her time was consumed in seeking someone suitable for a key position. Over the centuries the shape and flavor of The Brotherhood varied considerably. At times it was composed of almost a single religious group. At other times it was little more than a vaguely shared concept between a few widely scattered correspondents. However, the truth never dies so long as life occupies the human plane of existence, and around the time the Internet was born, so was a fresh renewal of interest in the ancient ways. Flight from the intellectual straightjacket and moral poverty of materialistic philosophical assumptions became genuinely viable once again.

However, the effort of this latest incarnation of The Brotherhood was borne aloft by a careful avoidance of locking in any particular religious teaching. By the time Chandler had stumbled into a rather small network of academics, most of the membership had already seen or received enough psychic bruising from religious battles. Part of the lure of The Brotherhood was escaping that very thing, since so very much of religion had become captive to the exclusionary thinking inherent in Western Civilization.

For this reason, actual clergymen in The Brotherhood were quite few. Those who did join were confronted by a wholly disorienting shredding of their professional assumptions. They simply were not used to the organizing principles of what constituted ancient congregations and worship. With so few ready to embrace the ancient ways, most clergymen came to The Brotherhood engaged in other areas of research. Thus, while it was often said that almost everyone had a religion, and the basic teachings undercut any serious atheism, it could be said that The Brotherhood itself had no religion. Most members tread softly around the issue to avoid losing the one treasury that had been so often nearly lost to humanity over the centuries.

It was not that Gregory had no interest, but he knew his own background had been deeply stained by the cult. He felt he would recognize good religion when he encountered it, but was too gun-shy to attempt forming it. Harp had no religious background at all. She grew up with a father who bore all the hallmarks of a genuine moral apprehension of some higher power, but stripped of almost every identifying mark from previous human religion, to include the near absence of any symbolism from any civilization. It was a bare, naked religiosity born of technology. Harp had inherited this; it was instinctive to her. Yet her studies in history bore the unmistakable lesson that, while doctrine could vary, a common worship was almost necessary for the kind of enhanced social stability she knew was possible.

So in the nearly constant travel with her new husband, while he drummed up support for a new enclave, she polled the membership for leads to someone who would bear the role of priest. It should have surprised no one that her focus came to rest most fully on a fellow who had been defrocked by no less than three different organizations. While discouraged enough to have left organized religion altogether, he was not bitter. This was what most qualified him in Harp's eyes.

After explaining the full background of her thinking on the matter, he agreed to make a test run at leading worship with a few other prospects for the new enclave. He had performed due diligence in polling them to gauge their feelings about worship. On the appointed day, he offered a very spare, yet conventional form of generic Christian worship that seemed to meet with everyone's tentative approval. That was enough.

All that was left was for the fellowship to form of its own accord.

##  Chapter 15

Dax returned to his office glowing with the exertions of the morning.

He had gained the colonel's permission to engage in some number of military sporting events, the one thing that had led him to serving in uniform in the first place. However, his boss had insisted that he include at least one purely tactical exercise, as well. Well before dawn he had reported to a maneuver brigade forming up for a road march. They promptly issued him a heavy machine gun and a number of blank rounds to match the basic combat load. His assistant gunner was a non-com assigned to teach him how to use the thing.

About midmorning they arrived at their objective, on the far side of numerous small but steep hills over narrow trails through the military training area. That Dax showed little trouble keeping up earned him a significant level of respect. He then learned the finer points of fire support for assault. Once the exercise was complete, he stayed with the unit long enough to clean his own weapon to the standards that applied to any grunt. In his mind, it was all part of the fun of such adventures.

However, as he ravenously consumed a late lunch, what occupied his mind most was the entire concept of his part in the mission. This was something he needed to discuss with his boss.

"Sir, do all the training scenarios include such a hugely destructive assault on the enemy?"

The colonel looked up from his computer display. "No, and it's not what we usually do in real combat these days. We don't have any enemies in the traditional sense, since officially every human is under the same government. Most of the time we are simply rounding up whatever passes for armed rebels and terrorists in a few places."

Dax shifted his head to one side as he spoke. "I was wondering about that while I was laying down imaginary suppressive fire. Are there other tactical means used for reducing resistance when it's time to move in for the capture? I don't remember anything different from officer training."

The colonel grinned. "Well, the other stuff is actually pretty expensive. We use choking agents, concussion grenades, etc. They make for a pretty messy exercise and require high maintenance of gas masks and so forth. We do train with them, but today was a really large mass exercise and they didn't want to go all out."

"Have they never thought of using energy weapons?" Dax opened his hands to emphasize his question.

"That's more destructive than bullets, usually," the elder man snorted.

"I don't mean lasers and such. Are they not aware that scanners can also disable people? By now you should know that the same technology behind scanners is what we use in the gym machines. Casting a field that heals and builds can easily be tweaked to cast a field that immobilizes and stuns." Dax had a hard time imagining this was news.

The colonel stared at him a minute, frowning. "I don't think anyone has ever thought of that. We have wireless tazers, but those are for close-in operations and you can't take down too many with just one. Would this require a large deployment of scanners? Those things are expensive."

Dax shifted his weight. "Well, one good scanner can pick out the targets in, say, a three or four story building."

The colonel's eyes widened. "Your people know how to program something that complex?"

Dax shook his head. "Oh, no Sir. We let AI handle it."

The old man interlaced his fingers and held them up against his mouth for a moment. "You're telling me AI is like a person somewhere out there and just cooperates when you ask?"

"That's a fair characterization. How do you think I cracked the major's encryption scheme? I'm not a cryptologist; I just asked AI to crack it. Doing so was consistent with AI's fundamental operating principle. Had the major still been alive, it would have been much trickier. We'd have to have some strong compelling interest that matched AI's moral imperatives." Dax had not realized how little the military understood such things.

"That's why we were so quick to snap you up, Son. We have no clue how your Brotherhood got so much out of AI. So it's not just some super high technology?"

Dax summarized the standard introduction to understanding AI. "It's just an interface with something much higher, something that controls reality itself. Human perception and logic can only go so far. You know about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle?" The older man nodded. "That's a sample of the limits of human scientific enquiry and analysis. Somewhere out at the edges we run out of any means to control because we can't get a better grip on how things work. You have to find some element of reality that is obviously outside such analysis."

The colonel raised his eyebrows. "So it's not more science or better science?"

Dax felt rather odd playing instructor to his boss, but forged ahead. "No Sir. The entire identity of The Brotherhood is based on recognizing there is something human perception cannot find on its own. There is a moral element in our universe that can only reach our awareness from the outside. When you gather that moral awareness into your scientific inquiry, you get a different range of results. AI is neither precisely inside nor outside our universe, but operates out on what we characterize as the boundary layer. Human science itself cannot touch that because the boundary layer is incomprehensible without the moral considerations."

He paused while his boss absorbed that, and then went on. "AI's very existence presumes an overwhelming moral consideration. If you don't grasp that moral imperative, AI seems nothing more than a quirky and murky impersonal force. Include a moral calculus and then it becomes a question of what is and isn't moral according to how AI operates. Without an awareness of AI's moral imperatives, I couldn't pretend to know whether it would help me with the encryption. By having grown up with that moral imperative, it was a simple reflex to expect AI's support for something I knew was necessary."

The colonel stared unseeing at a spot on his desk for a long, uncomfortable moment. "No wonder it's so hard for government and military technicians to get this stuff."

He leaned back in his chair. "I get where you're going with that. I'm not sure how quickly I could absorb that moral imperative you mentioned, and I'm pretty sure the folks you'll be teaching will be even slower. I don't doubt some will get it sooner or later. I do doubt the military bureaucracy will be in a hurry to accept a whole new range of tactics to go along with using projection of stun fields for military assaults."

The colonel stood up and walked around the desk, towering over Dax. "But I do know such an idea is ripe for some other uses. I promised I wouldn't try to rope you into plutocrat politics, but if you are as loyal to me personally as you say, perhaps you'd be willing to help me spare a lot of bloodshed for the inevitable political brawls coming sooner than any of us wants."

Dax responded, "AI has no interest in politics and neither do I. But that's how the world works and AI will gladly give you enough rope to hang yourself. I'll show you how to set it up with the proper algorithms to target whom you wish. How it turns out is completely out of my hands."

The colonel was dead serious. "I'll guarantee no one will be able to connect this back to you."

##  Chapter 16

Tim had given dozens of lectures before outsiders and even in outside lecture halls, but never in front of military commanders and staff.

He had also never participated in a demonstration. Dax had gotten him invited on the condition that the two of them together demonstrate the difference between what the military cyber warriors could already do versus what Dax alone could do.

Technicians and even commanders were invited to bring their own sequestered AI devices with encrypted documents. It was something simple and short, which should have made it much harder, since the encrypted samples were small. These would all be unencrypted while they watched, but they weren't expecting how it worked out.

First, Dax setup his own device and two weeks beforehand and had invited the cyber warriors to attack. On the day they all arrived in the lavish lecture hall, no one had succeeded in cracking the documents, nor even his login. This was not so unexpected, since Dax had been advertised as a high powered AI technician.

But for the second part, he didn't collect anyone's devices at all. He simply asked that they all turn them on and hold them, watching to insure no one tampered with them. He then began displaying each person's decrypted documents in random order with their names. The look of shock on the faces of the professional cryptologists was priceless. Dax's boss mustered all of his professional control to keep from falling in the floor laughing.

Then Tim stood and the hubbub died down to a few frantic whispers as the nerds in uniform bickered back and forth.

"My brother, Lieutenant Brood, didn't crack any of your devices," he announced casually. There was another wave of murmuring. He allowed it to crescendo and die back down. "He simply asked AI to tell on you all." Again came the wave of murmuring.

"All of you developed your encryption systems over the subspace network. Everything you did via that network still floats in subspace somewhere. AI is a single entity working as the single traffic server for the entire world – the universe, actually. Had you managed to keep it off the subspace network, as well as the old Internet, since AI owns that, too, then you might have only slowed AI down as it used global quantum computing power to factor it out. Apparently none of you were paranoid enough to try that."

Numerous red faces appeared among the technicians as commanders looked disapprovingly at them.

"So while it might have delayed things, you still would have been cracked because that same AI is behind all but the most primitive digital computers in museums today. All your software is written by AI. My brother and I grew up with AI; it was fairly new when our father was young and first got involved. We've never been without it.

"It's not as if we are somehow best buddies with AI and get special favors. You all could have the same leverage if you could learn how it works. I can't teach that to you in a single session, but I can introduce to you the basic concepts.

"You have all spent your entire lives under certain basic assumptions about reality. I'm not going to tell you those assumptions are wrong, but that those ideas don't go far enough. You operate under a constrained system of logic. Yes, logic needs exclusions or it's not logic. But standard Western logic and reasoning only covers a limited subset of what you could know if you were ready to operate on a quantum level.

"Quantum computing would naturally have quantum logic. You all have some idea how complicated that can be, so much so that we have long since allowed the computers themselves to write their own software and make their own hardware. We try to keep track but the kind of technology that opened the door to quantum computing, now a couple of generations ago, was just the gateway – and those technicians hardly understood it themselves. Once it took off without them, they hardly kept up with it any more.

"But it's not as if we cannot have that quantum logic. It simply can't be handled by the old form of abstract reasoning. We have to understand the logic that AI itself uses. Otherwise, AI will remain opaque to your understanding and you'll be vulnerable to those who do understand it. While I've been lecturing about this for some months now, I assure you what you've seen today has not been demonstrated anywhere else. Most people who attend my lectures have an academic interest. You should now have a dire need to at least try to understand it on a level other audiences won't yet for quite some time to come."

And so it went for a full two hours as Tim laid out the concepts in the language he had honed over the past few months. It was inevitable that the minds of most technicians were closed once he got beyond a certain point. It was visible to him, Dax and the colonel. Still, it was utterly necessary to try. In the end, Dax found himself working with just a mere handful who were ready to absorb the moral imperatives of AI.

It was enough. The work began in earnest that same afternoon as the smaller group voluntarily stayed behind for more concrete demonstrations and the first few lessons in the complex gestures and language of AI.

The necessity of drilling with the gestures for a few days tied up the group initially and left Dax with just a bit of free time. Thus, when his boss called him in one morning, he realized it was time to go to work on something else entirely. "Let's go for a ride, Son."

The colonel led him outside to a small contracted moving van. It disguised what was inside the cargo bay: a command center. The colonel greeted the lone occupant and introduced Dax to her, noting simply that she was his distant cousin. She wore a senior police uniform. Along one side of the interior of the van was a series of large display screens.

"Dax, hook yourself into those three there" his boss said, pointing. "I'll tell what they should display later."

Dax complied by gesturing at the screens with his watch hand. Each came up quickly with something he designed as a standby image that had meaning only to him.

The colonel leaned back in his chair. "Let's go over this one more time for my cousin's sake." Dax nodded. "You can tell AI to tweak a hefty scanner to analyze a good sized building and identify most, if not all, of the people inside. Right?"

"Yes, Sir. If they are in the government's ID database, AI can usually match DNA with scanner results."

The colonel turned with a grin to his cousin who was listening intently. "And then you can pick them out on that list and stun each one individually all at once so they can be handled without violence."

"Yessir." Dax understood the mission now.

One of the displays was linked to a camera looking forward over the cab of the truck. Several other screens were split between more cameras mounted on the vehicle, but Dax recognized where they were based on the forward looking display. This was an ugly part of town, not so different from where Dax's father lived when he first discovered The Brotherhood. The vehicle had stopped near a row of police vans, around which stood a sizeable number of officers donning tactical gear – a raid was forming.

The woman spoke now. "In a moment we will pull forward and the scanner will be turned on a large block of apartments. We've had reports that a number of petty criminals live here, have gotten organized to coordinate their crimes, and we've had trouble catching them. There are too many ways out of this place and we can't cover them all. We simply don't have the personnel. We've tried to get authorization to bring in extras for a sweep, but the trouble has escalated rapidly while the government seems to have started moving slower than usual on our request."

The colonel piped up with, "You don't need to worry about who's who. That's her game. This is not a government owned vehicle and we're just here to provide a little technical expertise. She'll run down the list and ID who to stun and where they are so they can be arrested. You just tag them so AI knows who to hit when she gives the signal."

Dax raised one eyebrow, but said nothing.

After some chatter through a communication channel, she ordered the driver to pull forward. At the next corner, they turned down a narrow street and pulled into a parking area. It was just barely large enough to accommodate the truck. They were positioned at the foot of a large apartment building.

The woman looked at Dax and nodded. He ordered the scanner up on one screen and began getting instant results. On the screen next to that was displayed a diagram of the building with a series of sequential numbers. On the third screen was displayed a running list that matched the numbers to a long roster of IDs. She began picking through the list and tagging some of them.

It was all done in a matter of seconds, but the tagging was the slowest part.

Finally, she spoke on the communicator again and looked at Dax. He ordered the tagged list stunned. Within a minute the sound of police shouting could be heard outside the truck as they swarmed past in tactical gear and began combing the building. By pairs they had been assigned to different locations in the building to find and detain their targets.

In just a half-hour, the entire list of people had been trussed up and placed in the waiting vans with only incidental violence from resident rowdies who didn't understand what was happening with all the police around. A large group of uniformed officers was roaming leisurely through the various rooms collecting evidence. The woman was profuse in her thanks, clearly relieved at how easily the whole thing had come off.

The colonel was grinning from ear to ear as he savored the thought of how this could be used in other ways.

##  Chapter 17

Brave soldiers who faced explosions and gunfire with enthusiasm would cower in fear at the withering verbal assault of those who defended the social mythology.

The one thing Tim and Dax both shared was the precise measure of charisma and cynicism that made them more than ready for it. They could smell it coming. Dax in particular faced it within the first week of training for his new cadre of AI technicians.

He stood expressionless during the first, the longest and loudest of tirades he faced from anyone in the group when a female sergeant began spouting the official language of social equality. This was launched when Dax made on off-handed comment about how AI viewed human gender. Because he was so completely non-reactive, the stormy blast eventually reached a crescendo and died away. Without feedback, the invective simply ran its course.

Dax retained his expressionless mask and spoke without any struggle or hesitation, yet gently and with deliberation. "No one is suggesting that you must endure a change in law or social custom. Military regulations will continue as they are until political forces change it – forces much bigger than you, or I, or all of us together. Even AI doesn't care what you think or do because AI doesn't care about anything."

He paused to let that sink in, waiting to see if the tirade would erupt afresh. There was nothing but a sullen glare. "I'll be the first person to tell you that AI is completely alien to our human way of life and how we operate. And we have no leverage whatsoever. AI wrote itself. It formed itself in response to something far outside our human range. We can either work with it, or work against it. There is a wide spectrum of difference and it's really up to you. The degree to which you can disengage your personal feelings and simply observe what is and isn't in the alien world of AI, you'll get more out of it."

With just a hint of a smile, he continued, "The issue here is not what anyone believes is right or wrong, but how AI operates. It's a waste of time and energy to direct your anger at me. We aren't at war with each other unless you're confused about the mission here. The mission is to take as much advantage as we possibly can of AI. Fight it and you'll lose."

This was but a small symbol of what Dax and Tim faced daily, almost hourly, as they pressed ahead with explaining quantum reality. Over the next few years, things seemed to move along at a glacial pace on the surface. Tim was awarded a genuine degree for his pioneering work in linguistics. Dax was promoted somewhat ahead of the standard time in service and grade requirements.

While he never heard anything about it from his boss, Dax knew the colonel was working behind the scenes to secure a strong tactical advantage for his plutocrat faction. Whenever he asked AI about it, the answers seldom varied from the basic idea that AI had to watch multiple possible streams of future reality and there were too many variables. He realized that whatever might end his "long ride" on the colonel's saddle was the final decision to play their cards, and the results were another matter entirely.

For this reason he was highly supportive of Harp's work with Gregory in building the new enclave. Intentionally overbuilding, it became the de facto storage site for a substantial collection of survival equipment. Had they been forced to build roads through the wilderness, it would have rankled the environmental regulators, but they had the permit to build in that hidden temperate valley boxed in by mountains. Everything was moved by the portal network.

The storage was less a matter of life-saving wilderness materials and more a matter of raw materials hard to obtain back when The Brotherhood worked in secret. The hidden facility under the Atlantic was still maintained and a significant portion of the new enclave was also underground. So long as government researchers struggled with the basic concepts of subspace variability and transmission parameters, there was no chance the place could be simply captured before survival arrangements could be made.

A major element was a revival of natural agriculture in the valley. While the government had struggled with synthesizing food from raw chemicals, The Brotherhood had always preferred whole biological sources. The little patches of decentralized food sources scattered across the globe that they had used in the past were kept alive, but the valley was turned into an expansive life support operation.

Despite one infant in her arms and another forming in the womb, Harp was a tireless force in pulling together a very close village first, then a growing town of people who could hardly avoid the family atmosphere. As was the way of Brotherhood folks, nothing was mandatory, but it was painfully obvious this was meant to be a home first for the people who chose to join the project. While it began only as a nickname, everyone knew the place officially as Hometown.

Within those first two years the operation ran a profit from selling food to plutocrats. If nothing else, this guaranteed they would be as near as anything could to being politically untouchable without being directly owned by a plutocrat family. The Brotherhood as a whole became both essential and neutral, as the government and military researchers were still too far behind the curve yet to understand how to design and build portals that were as advanced as those used by The Brotherhood. Instead, they simply leased them with operators.

It's not that people simply could not understand the quantum thinking. Rather, gaining that level of insight caused them to lose interest in working directly for the government. Dax had not intentionally set out to serve as a siphon of personnel. The upper ranking military staff understood this well enough, particularly when the colonel became a general and wouldn't allow anyone to hinder the program.

What they did manage well enough was the dramatic fitness boost from the gym machines. The military crypto nerds also learned ways to avoid using subspace, since it was unmanageable for them. This naturally spread back to the plutocrat families. They developed a technique that breathed new life into the old wireless networking system. It was slower and couldn't easily carry a quantum load, but it was easier to encrypt and seal away from AI, they thought.

Despite trying very hard not to, The Brotherhood ended up holding a monopoly on most quantum operations and anything that depended on the full cooperation of AI. None of the plutocrat households could get enough of a grip on things to avoid relying on The Brotherhood.

That is, except for the family to which Dax's boss belonged.

##  Chapter 18

"Dax!" The general's voice was clear but not exactly that loud.

For no particular reason, Dax was in a jovial mood. He marched in and executed the precise protocols. "Sir, Captain Brood reports!"

The general looked faintly amused and returned his salute. "That's almost appropriate, Son. Pack a bag and go home."

"Sir?"

The general stared at him wordlessly for a long moment.

Something clicked in Dax's head. "Is it that time, Sir?"

"You might want to avoid using portals in this area. Take conventional transportation and ship the bag separately. I want people to see you leaving here. This might be a good time to visit that place you folks call Hometown. You'll have a couple of days to get there." It wasn't necessary to say much more.

Dax saluted again. "Thank you, Sir! Best of luck, too."

"You've already been as much good luck as I needed, now go find something else to do with your life. Mine will take me out of here, too, either in a new suit or in a box." He curtly saluted and turned to something on his desk.

Dax knew better than to play it with any sentimentality. And there really wasn't that much to pack for someone who was heading off to a new career. He grabbed a standard briefcase and tossed a few items in, told the receptionist he would be out for a few days, and strolled off down the corridor whistling.

He took the trains as far as they would go, and then a short flight to another continent. There were more train rides, including a long sleeper ride. By the sunrise the next morning he asked AI for the nearest portal entrance. Two hops and he was hugging his sister and two nephews.

It crossed his mind they needed to work on the gender balance in the new enclave. That was when Harp introduced him to a lovely lass who had insisted on playing the role of housekeeper and nanny. In the next breath Harp mentioned that Tim had been courting her. Good for him. Dax hadn't been ready to settle down just yet, anyway. Tim needed the help more.

During breakfast in his sister's quarters, Dax looked at his watch. "AI, does the general know I'm safe?"

In reply, AI fed to a nearby wall display. There was news of a takeover by one of the plutocrat families. All the others had been simply rounded up without resistance. But instead of prison or more forceful measures, the now dominant household sequestered them all in a sort of voting assembly. At that point AI ended the summary.

"Boy, he didn't waste any time," Dax commented.

"Who?" Harp was puzzled.

"My ex-boss. He told me yesterday morning to come home. I knew what it meant without being told because it was too obvious what he was planning. I helped him figure out how to do it with minimal bloodshed and taught a bunch of his people how to deal with AI. Or, more precisely, a lot of people I trained left the military and went to work for his family." Dax hadn't really been telling his family much, but figured AI had it covered. He was lucky to get a quick chat here and there with Harp, Tim and his parents while at least one party to the conversation was on the move.

She didn't seem too concerned either way. "So, what do you suppose he'll do now?"

AI posted in bold letters on the display: _Imperium_.

They both said at the same time, "The natural end of any republic."

Then Harp added with a grin, "Well, at least it's someone we know."

"Even better, someone who knows _us_ and is kindly disposed toward us. He'll make a good emperor and we are probably one of his biggest assets. His is the only family that directly interacts with AI. He also has found a way to unscramble all that wireless traffic the others were using. He never let on, but AI told me about it. It also told me that he had no big interest in the portals, just the communications and the means to control." Dax was really enjoying the superior fresh food usually found only on plutocrat tables.

He added hastily, "I hope Tim's okay."

Harp was feeding one of the boys. "Is he in danger?"

Dax grinned, "Only if he wants to be. This is as close as we've ever come to having AI actually run the whole world, so I'm not worried about what happens, just curious."

She turned and said, "Oh, I forgot to tell you, he was coming by today. He was off at the other end of the world from where you were and said he'd try to make it before lunch."

The housekeeper grinned and started humming.

Dax chuckled as his eyes followed her out of the room. "Good news for all of us, then."

Harp wiped the elder boy's face with a damp cloth. "So, what should we expect from your ex-boss who is now everyone's boss?"

Dax stared into his coffee mug. "Not much right away. It's not as if a global bureaucracy can change overnight without throwing everything into chaos. I suspect he'll sack a few, put some in prison, maybe even find himself compelled to execute a few bureaucrats. But aside from an increased police and military presence on the streets, he'll be working in the background to quash resistance to his bigger plans."

The housekeeper came in and took the elder boy away for post-meal clean up. Harp turned back to Dax. "What bigger plans?"

"Well, the biggest problem has been the constant partisan bickering and jockeying for favors and position. It's been pretty lavish and wasteful. However, he probably won't so much reduce taxes as redirect them more efficiently while opening up the economy more." Dax took a sip of coffee and swallowed. "I remember him asking about whether the portals could be used for space travel. Of course, as you know, they can't. They transmit through the earth's core because subspace can't carry that sort of traffic. I'm guessing he wants to pursue a program for researching hyperspace travel."

Harp raised her eyebrows. "We've heard it discussed before, but everyone says that would be really expensive just to investigate."

Dax grinned, "Well, some of your folks here are the primary names in the research, so you should know. This enclave stands to prosper right off the scale for that reason alone." He paused for a moment, and then frowned. "But there's bad news, too."

She tilted her chin down and just off to one side while keeping her eyes on his. "And...?"

"I've been watching this business of trying to maintain interfamilial communications security among the plutocrats. Right now they are all flat on their collective backs. Our new emperor won't toss them out of the mansions, but they will be tightly restricted in both power and income. They won't be using the system to scrape so much off as before, and they will resent this with a fury impossible to describe. They are willing for us lesser beings to pay any price for them to regain their golden days."

Dax rose to his feet, moving toward the door. Turning back, he added, "I've seen indications that they will try to revive the research in psi-powers or even attempt welding people to AI with implanted devices. This takes them in the direction of serious violations of quantum morality. We may finally see AI hitting back, as it were, with devastating consequences."

He paused for her response, but she just shook her head at the whole idea. "What are you going to do now?"

Dax's smile bore a still somber note. "For a guy who joined the military just for the sporting opportunities, I sure haven't had much chance to engage in it. I think I need a couple of weeks hiking around the mountains here. I had to leave all my gear back at the base. Got any hiking stuff around?"

##  Epilogue

Our tale ends here, readers. If you want to see where it goes, you should read _The_ _Chronicles_ _of_ _Misty_. There may be other tales out there somewhere floating in subspace, but Thinkum isn't telling.

Dax took his time finding a mate. Meanwhile, he spent a few months creating a security system for his sister's enclave. Then he took a job with the imperial research foundation as technical adviser.

Harp became the ultimate mother hen for her enclave. Her husband had to stop traveling to become the chief elder of the community that grew there. It's not as if the rest of the The Brotherhood simply merged into it, but Hometown became the single best known enclave. Plenty of the wider membership continued as before, but with considerably more freedom.

Tim was actually the star in this story. His work in linguistics opened the door for the eventual development of what became known as Galactic, a form of communication that could be adjusted to fit any constraints, even while it offered a wealth of subtlety never before seen in human speech. As you might expect, dear readers, the emperor did finally get his hyperspace travel and colonized other worlds.

Sadly, the truth about quantum reasoning waxed and waned across the human timeline, but that's the whole point of bringing you this story in two parts. If you don't see how important it is to keep quantum thinking alive, you can't expect to actually be alive yourself.

Again, you have our condolences.

###

Contact the author:

Email – eddie@soulkiln.org

Blog – Do What's Right

Site – Kiln of the Soul

