Negative Energy

Geronimo's Revenge

The days leading up to Carnival passed easily. Matt barely left the Mesch unless it was to check on Jemma or share a virtual meal with Bryon.

He tried visiting Ina one night. She hadn't explicitly told him to stay away. But she just pathed through the door, Busy now. See you on Carnival Day. When he put an ear to the door, a loud bang rattled his eardrum. No eavesdropping!

Neither Logos nor his shard had dropped by since the late-night visit, and Bryon continued to act as his mentor. Matt made rapid progress under his tutelage, peppering the senior electrician with questions. Issues popped up in a work board that was color-coded according to difficulty. At first, Matt was only allowed to work the white ones, the easiest, but he soon progressed to the blues. The yellows, oranges, and reds were reserved for more experienced overseers. The most severe, the deep reds and blacks, were handled by Logos himself.

Realizing how much he had yet to master, Matt endlessly replayed scenarios and experimented with the layers, which could be combined and customized until they felt like an extension of his own thoughts. He created a layer based on a river tributary model and was surprised how well it fit the Mesch, but he reluctantly set it aside when he couldn't iron out nagging discrepancies.

Remembering the MAGI's charge, Matt redoubled his efforts to track down the saboteur. The problem was, once he started looking, he saw suspicious activity everywhere. He recalled an incident from his brief stint in the Boy Scouts when the bonfire had nearly gotten out of control. They had stacked the firewood too high, and when it blew over in a gust of wind, stray sparks scattered into the dry grass. All the boys ran around in a panic to stomp them out.

There were stray sparks everywhere in the Mesch: small glitches, rogue algorithms, mechanical failures, and loopholes that consumers were all too eager to exploit. Most of the time, the failures self-corrected or were quickly dealt with by the smart algorithms that converged on them like ants on crumbs. But occasionally, under just the right conditions, one of those sparks might lead to a conflagration—a failure cascade.

Bryon walked him through the calamities that had befallen other arcologies. Fountain Place—structural failure. Richland—algo-virus. Greenville—flood. Prosper—chemical explosion. The accounts were frustratingly incomplete with no hint of a shared pattern. It was the Tolstoy principle writ large: all disasters were disastrous in their own way.

Matt made a mental note to keep a close eye on Bryon as well. He had read somewhere that half of cybercrimes were perpetrated by insiders. The lead electrician certainly had the access and know-how. Still, Bryon didn't strike him as the criminal mastermind type. The senior electrician reveled in routine. He ate the same lunch at the same time each day and patrolled the Mesch like a cop walking a beat.

"How come the Mesch uses holo-projection instead of a full-dive simulation like the In-Verse?" Matt asked him. Manipulating a visual layer would have been that much more powerful with full tactile feedback.

"Remember the Internet?" Bryon said. "The In-Verse is a lot like that. It's a massive, open network with a lot of competing interests and more than a few bad apples. Word to the wise—you better watch your ass on there. Your connection is supposed to be private and anonymous, but I wouldn't trust it any further than my dick. The Mesch uses an ultra-secure channel through special modifications to our Nexes. It's the same for all the major domains like Paradox, life support, and construction. You wouldn't want someone hacking into the builder bots and turning them into killing machines."

Paradox—where had he heard that word before? He was about to ask about it when another question popped into his head. "When do I get access to the restricted areas? Like the dark spires?"