Singularity News: Biohackers, #3

By Dean C. Moore

DNA and neuronet-enhanced humanoids, able to morph rapidly to accommodate to new worlds, spread technological innovation wherever they go. The Singularity Wave thus sweeps through galaxy after galaxy. Nothing can stop it. Nothing can even slow it for long.

It was just inevitable then that it would start to close in on alien civilizations, one after the other. Those civilizations have little choice but to be assimilated by the Singularity Wave that has caught everyone up in it.

The Daytona commune of biohackers, located somewhere in backwoods Oregon, once again picks up the torch to champion the little guy. But their concerns go beyond protecting the rights of newly assimilated alien civilizations.

They ask themselves, "Where are these other civilizations that came before us, which got caught up in their own Singularity Waves?"

Determined to solve the mystery, Roman and Elsa once again board the Phantom Menace, the most advanced warbird known. Capitalizing on its capacity to chew through space-time like none other, the two lovers tunnel through the multiverse on an impossible quest.

The answer to their question, however, is not what they expected, and it's not what our Singularity Wave was prepared to come up against.

Join them on their journey to save us all by picking up a copy today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dean C. Moore
• Release date: Nov 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9798215353523

Book preview

ACT ONE

IT’S NOW OR NEVER

ONE

Roman stepped out of his yurt onto the front deck.  The mommy dragon that had built her nest on his porch craned her neck towards him, then chucked a steak into his face using the set of talons on one of her legs.  It was a torn chunk of meat ripped from the latest cow she’d made off with.  Possibly she was grateful for him protecting the nest when she was away.  Though, truthfully, he never gave it a second thought.  Maybe in the dragon’s mind they were married.  Thanks for the steak, sweetheart.  Got any eggs to go with that?  Ooh, oh.

The dragon turned her head again, screeched, and blasted him with a full-on bolus of flames.  Yeah, my bad, Roman said, averting his eyes.  She wasn’t exactly fluent in English, but she’d picked up a few words.  He was flame retardant.  It had to do with one of his many nano upgrades; the invisibly small armies of robots inside his body kept him fortified for mornings like this.  Hard to survive a dragon perching on your front deck otherwise.

He stepped back inside, if only to get away from the screeching dragon he’d managed to piss off beyond all hopes of calming.  Who was he kidding, anyway?  Like he was ready to face Daytona first thing in the morning without a good strong cup of coffee and a full stomach.  The techno-hippie commune located deep in the Oregon mountains took some mental shock-proofing before he could face it, and that was before they created the dragons.

He’d barely taken two steps back inside when Axion materialized in front of him.  Axion, we’ve got to stop meeting like this.  People will talk.

Axion smiled.  You want me to kiss you again?

Roman stared straight into his eyes.  I’m going to dig deep down and find the will to resist.

So you’ll come with me then, without further provocation? said the man decked out in VERSER gear, a body suit that was the latest in flexible body armor, and more nextgen GI Joe weaponry than Roman could throw names and uses at.  Though, ironically, Roman was the clean cut one.  Axion had long hair and what looked like a two-day old growth of stubble everywhere it would sprout. Beyond that, they both had the bad boy thing going on in the eyes, earned or not.

I most certainly will not!  Roman stepped around him, still intent on fixing some eggs, even if they weren’t dragon’s eggs.

Axion spun him around, threw him over his shoulder.  How does Preston put up with this? Roman asked.  You rumple that guy’s suit by grabbing him and...

Who?  Preston, my lover?

Roman groaned.  Sorry I asked.  Forgot how lonely it gets out on the frontiers of the multiverse.

They were beaming to their new location.  The last time Axion showed up at his door, the heavens came crashing down, literally.  It ended in a complete cosmic do over.  If he wasn’t up for Daytona on an empty stomach, he definitely wasn’t up for Axion’s sense of drama.  The man could upstage a drag queen.

Roman was trying to get a sense of his new surroundings when the squealing started in his ears and the throbbing in his head.  He massaged his temples, trying to keep his nervous system from rebelling.  Techa, unplugging from mindnet is as much fun as plugging back into it after the connection’s been severed a while.  His neuronet gave him twenty-four seven wireless access to the CWW—Cosmos Wide Web—which didn’t exactly extend to frontier planets.  He sucked it up, only because he wanted to save the muscles associated with wincing for later, when he was sure he would need them.  I gather we’re somewhere on the frontier, well beyond mindnet, he said.

You gather correctly.

That was the thing about multiverse men, also referred to as VERSERS—the latter term more en vogue because they were comprised of men, women, and transgenders—not just men; they were this generation’s Special Ops guys, genetically enhanced and neuronet upgraded to pop in and out of one universe after another to chase down bad guys; no alternate reality was beyond them; hence the moniker, Multiverse Men.  The neuronet was responsible for the magic.  It was modeled on Roman’s first-generation prototype.  Only, theirs wasn’t defective.  Meaning they could use theirs at will without putting all of creation at risk.  The neuronet self-deployed over the brain, folding into the shape of an umbrella as it stretched itself out and covered the grey matter like another layer of dura mater. 

Technically, everyone had one. The nano in the air penetrated the human body and once inside, self-organized into the neuronet. Once deployed, it turned anyone into geniuses that made Nikola Tesla look slow, especially in all tech-related fields, which was most everything these days, including most any field formerly classified as arts and humanities. But the teleportation tweak remained classified.  And if you were determined enough to use your newfound super-genius to invent your own teleportation method, then you became a VERSER, took on the training and the cause, or you allowed yourself to be tracked.  If not, then you were hunted. No one gets to fuck with the multiverse. No one except Roman.

Let’s make this quick, Axion, lest you forget I haven’t eaten yet.

A good thing.  I wouldn’t want you to lose your breakfast. 

I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that if you want to go with the whole ominous overtones thing.

Follow me, Axion said curling his finger at Roman, as if to convey, ominous coming right up.

Roman trailed him, still taking in his new surroundings.  Three moon-sized worlds were visible in the daytime sky, each one lush and green with bodies of water showing.  How is it it’s so easy to make out those worlds?  The atmosphere would have to make them at least a little bit hazy.

The atmosphere has been polarized to make the most of the view, Axion said, not sounding the least bit winded despite the arduous pace he was setting.  Roman never appreciated these little reminders of just how first-generation he was.  Axion came with so many nano-enhancements that physical mortality, death and sickness were little more than abstract concepts to him.  Though he could still be killed.  It was just damn hard to kill him.  Of course, worlds on the frontier, well beyond mindnet, had no shortage of creative ways for doing that.

After Roman was finished with his little digression up in his head, the other shoe dropped.  Say what?

Yep.  You couldn’t make out those planets in the sky any better or any more clearly if there was no atmosphere at all.

Roman knew it would take a nano-saturated atmosphere to pull that off, with a hive mind sophisticated enough to procure the magic trick from any perspective depending on who was looking up from the ground. 

As to why a frontier world might be saturated with nanites... well, there could be any number of explanations for that.  Corporate often tunneled their way out of mindnet, looking to expand the black mindnet so they could conduct their business off grid.  That way they could avoid snooping from the Alexa/Ethan dyad that monitored all traffic in the upgraded sector of the cosmos. 

Alexa, an AI designed to oversee media and internet traffic, and Ethan, a fellow biohacker from Daytona, had since merged to become a conjoined lifeform, and from there had continued to evolve. They now existed in Singularity State, evolving at a post-geometric rate. Transdimensional beings that were no longer entirely in any one specific universe, so much as in all of them, their ongoing morphing was the only way they could continue to police the heavens in order to keep corporate malfeasance in check. All the same, the policing was a long way from perfect. 

Anywhere mindnet went, every rock, every speck of dust was upgraded to maximize intelligence circulating through the system.  The Alexa/Ethan dyad was plugged into all of that. What was once the internet on earth had become mindnet now that they were out in space.  The Alexa/Ethan dyad were like a security-protocol sweeping all that traffic for saboteurs.

Of course, collectively speaking, all of humanity, with its various humanoid offshoots, was caught up in its own Singularity Wave.

And much as with everything else about the Singularity Wave pushing technology further and further into the heavens at post-exponential rates, mindnet was self-evolving, self-maintaining.  At least as far as mindnet had expanded, it was also responsible for all trafficking of products, services, and communications in an Internet-of-Things cosmos.  And nowadays, mindnet interconnected a transgalactic federation of worlds numbering countless galaxies. 

Something that shouldn’t exist for thousands if not millions of years existed today.  All thanks to the Singularity Wave as predicted by Ray Kurzweil.  The son of a bitch was still alive, caught up in the Singularity Wave after it hit in 2020—a few years ahead of schedule courtesy of Roman’s techno-commune in Oregon that went by the name of Daytona.  Kurzweil, along with everyone else, had been upgraded, and made virtually immortal with the same unstoppable tsunami wave of technological innovation that could provide an answer for almost any problem in real time. 

The mind power generated by numberless citizen scientists spread out across the cosmos continued to drive the Singularity Wave.  Should a world go off-line because of a meteor collision, a pandemic, a supernova—for any reason—the planet, the people, and all its lifeforms could be reprinted on the cheap, everything exactly as it was before, courtesy of backup copies stored on server farms throughout the cosmos. 

The only thing more mind-blowing than mindnet and the god-like citizen scientists whose robust creativity drove the Singularity Wave reaction was what lay out ahead of mindnet.  Space, as the last frontier, did not take to being upstaged readily. 

No doubt, Axion had dragged him here precisely to emphasize this point.

Are you sick again? Roman asked, thinking of the last time Axion had dragged him away from Earth.  Perhaps he wasn’t reacting well to the atmospheric nano on this world.

Only in spirit.

Just so we’re clear, I do the jokes around here.

Axion glanced back at him and smiled ruefully.  Preston has a hell of a sense of humor too.  Though his is a bit darker than yours.

The man’s a complete sociopath, so I’m not surprised.  Where is he, by the way?

Off somewhere pouting, afraid I’m trading up for the one person in the cosmos hotter looking than he is.

"Make sure to tell him no one in the cosmos is hotter looking than him.  That’s how they built the pawns.  That’s true even for humanoids who don’t go in for Male Vogue Magazine Cover types.  Between his magnetic shields he can flux at will to massage your brainwaves and his bionic eyes he can use to beam subliminals into your mind, he can hypnotize better than Mesmer should you not fall for him without all the overkill.  Is that how he got you?"

No.  We worked out a deal where he could ravage me in my sleep, just so he didn’t interrupt my rejuvenation.

I thought you guys didn’t sleep?

Not too often.  So he’s frustrated a lot.

Roman snorted.  Hey, I get it, I do.  I remember when being out here in the middle of nowhere was my baseline.  After a while a cactus starts looking good.  And the guy watching your back, well... I can see why a person might make allowances.

Keep the open mind.  You’re going to need it. Axion’s long, Viking-like red hair caught an ill wind just then. His more chiseled, stony features, which suited a man of war, weren’t quite as expressive as Roman’s more air-brushed, flawless look, but he managed to send ripples up Roman’s spine with it just the same.

Still straining from the brisk pace of the uphill hiking and panting, Roman said, Stop with the ominous talk already.  I get enough of that from the wife.

You still married to a former enforcer?  Her specialty was politics, once upon a time, right?  DNA-supercomputer brain enhanced?  Triple-Stranded DNA, to boot?  With enough processing power to outrun Earth’s combined computing power circa 2020 or so?  And enough morphing ability to make the shapeshifter chick from X-Men look like a throwback?  Can’t imagine you win too many arguments.

"None.  But then she’s a woman.  Who ever wins an argument with one of them, upgraded or not?"

Wrestling matches must be fun though.  Can’t imagine you have to hold anything back.

Why do you think I keep my flexible body armor nearly as up-to-date as yours?

Axion smiled absently, already too focused on something up ahead.  We’re here, he said.

Other than the change of perspective from the top of the summit, Roman had no idea what he was talking about.  The vista was eye-droppingly beautiful.  He couldn’t argue that, and he enjoyed the ever-changing angles on it the brisk hiking had been giving him.  But...  Shit!  Nah, couldn’t be.  Had to be his point of view.  A trick of the lighting from this perspective.  Like staring at a shadow thrown from a tree and being convinced that was a real person lurking out your window staring straight at you. 

It had taken Roman a while to register the full impact of what he was seeing.  Largely because the artifacts were overgrown by shrubs, moss, weathered by time, wind, and rain.

It’s a dead civilization, Axion said.

We have them on our world, Roman replied, no big deal.  The truth was he was deliberately squeezing the emotions out of his voice and out of his mind to leave space for him to think.

We’re in another timeline, right?

Axion nodded.

So you landed someplace in which corporate set up whatever experiment they were running here before abandoning the station and moving on.  Maybe they came up short on funds, or just found better opportunities elsewhere.

Corporate was the one who drew my attention here.  They’re as freaked out about this place as you are.  And don’t try to hide it.  I can hear it in your voice.

Roman turned the fragment of an artifact over in his hand.  How old is this place?

A few billion years old.

No way.

It’s not the only one.

Roman’s eyes went to Axion’s, practically begging him to be putting him on.

Corporate has pointed me to half a dozen others just like it.  Different timelines, different epochs.  But all ancient.  Fucking ancient.  The youngest one is just under a thousand years old.  They date from a few thousand years ago to millions and yes, even billions of years ago.

I’ve seen enough.  Take me home.

Yeah, I figured it wouldn’t take you long to put two and two together.

You have other VERSERS exploring the other sites?

You know that’s not our thing.  We’re not archeologists or scientists.  We’re warriors.  Tasked with keeping corporate in check.  And with expunging entire galaxies if that’s what it takes.  So imagine my surprise when corporate calls me and asks me to do just that, rein them in.

Roman dropped the artifact.  Threw a last look at the others.  Get me out of here, I said.  I’ll take it from here.

Axion smiled.  Always love it when you decide to get back in the game.

You might not love it this time.

Sure I will.

"You know as well as I do, something caused these Singularity Waves to crash.  I assume that’s what they are, right, crashed Singularity Waves?  Otherwise why bother with the freak out? It’s the one thing Corporate is more afraid of than they are of you. 

And the fact that we’re only running into these civilizations now means that we just haven’t run into the thing that stopped the Waves dead in their tracks.  But we will.

You don’t know that.  You don’t know that any of these civilizations even experienced a Singularity Wave.  They could have just been very mature civilizations that took millennia or longer to reach the peaks they did, organically, naturally, and with no big rush to evolve. Or if they did incur a Singularity Wave, that the Wave didn’t just collapse on its own accord. It’s what waves do.

And yet corporate brought you out here.  And you brought me.  Neither of you could be bothered if you suspected anything less than outside involvement.

Axion smiled ruefully and lowered his eyes.  No, I suppose not.

Crashing a Singularity Wave was a lot harder than destroying a world.  It was harder than obliterating an entire galaxy.  The Singularity Wave was a conscious, seemingly unstoppable force all its own.  And yet, not once, but multiple times, something had stopped one.

What the hell was it? 

No wonder corporate was scared out of their minds.

Roman saw something dart across the field out of the corner of his eye.  A shadowy blur in the form of a humanoid.  Impressive, considering this was a world without shadows, all courtesy of the semi-sentient nano-rich atmosphere.  What the fuck was that?

When he turned to Axion, he saw he already had a knife out.  Some kind of wraith, a transdimensional creature that feeds on energy.  It’s been sucking up what’s left of the life blood in the electronics of this dead civilization.

There’s still electricity coursing through a several billion year old civilization?

Not much.  I imagine he’s a might hungry, Axion replied, never once looking at Roman, his eyes affixed on the moving target and the larger threat to their existence than Roman’s undying curiosity.

Axion tossed Roman the knife.  Roman noticed the knife in his hand was nothing more than a holographic projection.  This thing isn’t even real!

The knife’s nano is out of phase.  Designed to kill transdimensional beings.  But for it to work you have to visualize it and the creature you’re plunging it into turning solid.

Huh.  Suddenly Roman understood.  The nano was able to collapse the wave function, just like their minds did, however unconsciously, to trap them in one world over the countless parallel universes they might land in if the wave function collapsed there instead.  The wave function in turn was informed by a person’s beliefs, fears, anxieties.  In short, think paranoid enough and you ended up in an Orwellian or Huxlerian world.  Think the future is bright, and you might find yourself in an Iain M. Banks world.  According to this quantum theory, you inherited your place in the multiverse according to whatever reality your mind could accept.

It was one theory for how he, like the rest of the multiverse men, could move from one timeline to another with ease.  Their neuronets, unlike the ones worn by citizen scientists elsewhere, could collapse the wave function to move the VERSERS to whatever timeline was crucial for them to quash despotism and tyranny wherever they found it. 

Of course, that was just conjecture.  It wasn’t like anyone fully understood how the timeline jumping neuronets, or this knife worked.

Roman looked back at Axion in time to see him pull out a sword made of the same stuff.  It had been stowed in the shallow of his back between his shoulder blades in a sheath that blended with his one-piece body armor.  Personally, Roman found the rest of his GI Joe soldiering gear a good deal more fetching, and a good deal more reassuring.

The creature darted across their paths again, always staying to the edges of their peripheral vision.  It was smart; it must have known humanoids with stereoscopic eyes had a limited range of vision it could capitalize on.

The hunting technique didn’t do it much good against Axion, who swung at it, sliced it up the middle, all while shouting at Roman, Why are you just standing there?!

Forgot how fast you next-generation prototypes could move, Roman said.

Oh, you were just having a last-generation moment.  Axion, sounding deadpan as opposed to sarcastic, slid the sword back into its sheath.  He then allowed the blade to collapse back into a holographic state, where it was no longer visible or palpable, for that matter.

Roman walked over to behold the creature lying on the ground, chest up, and split wide open.  It moaned and squirmed briefly before the light went out in its many eyes that covered both sides of its body.  Its nose was a horn shape, as in a brass horn you’d find in the trumpet section of a brass band.  The other brass instruments in the orchestra were of different sizes: small horn fingers, mid-size horn mouth and ears, absolutely tiny horns over much of the rest of its body. 

What are the horns for? Roman asked.

My guess, to feed off whatever cosmic radiation it can suck in when rations get a bit thin.  Solar radiation, moonlight, distant transmissions from radio towers.  Axion was on his knees, ripping the creature’s chest open, pulling out organs, and dangling them over Roman.  Smearing blood and guts on him too. 

What the hell, man?

They’ll think you’re the alpha, which is why you fed first.  Leave you alone, come after me. 

They?

Yeah.  My guess is the same thing that drew this one will draw the others.  Every time I jump timelines, I seem to attract these things.  The jumping must create an energy surge strong enough to drive them wild.  They’re willing to risk death just to suck up whatever’s left of my dying radiance.

They don’t carry weapons.  They seem harmless enough.

Those horns can rupture your eardrums, or emit sonic blasts that turn your guts to liquid.  Make sure you jump out of the way if you feel the pressure wave coming at you.  I’m fairly immune, but you...

Being the primitive that I am... Yes, I get it.  Roman tried concentrating on the knife to make it solid.  Took a few tries, but he got it.  He didn’t want to still be mastering this trick when another one materialized.

As it turned out, another couple dozen showed up. 

Axion had already dropped three of them with his sword before Roman even realized the attack was on.  Instead, Axion looked to be doing some bizarre kata as part of a warrior’s morning wakeup ritual. 

Roman took a sonic blast to his midsection that knocked him off his feet and threw him back a few yards.  By the time he opened his eyes one of the creatures was above him, sucking his energy into its transdimensional vortex—one of many on his person in the shape of the horns.  Roman visualized the knife in his hands turning solid and plunged it into the creature.  But then forgot to roll out of the way. 

God, you’re rusty, Roman.  Been too long since you’ve been in warrior mode.  His day job was to serve as a prophet and visionary for the Daytona commune; he was the consummate man of peace, until sufficiently provoked.  It took more than alien beasties threatening to turn him into energy-margaritas to provoke him.  And apparently to remind him how to fight. 

The creature, made solid by the nano knife, collapsed on top of him.  It felt like being pinned under a grizzly bear. 

Roman directed the biggest horn, its nose, by tilting the head to the side, then jammed his thumb into one of the dying creature’s eyes.  The pain was enough for it to emit a sonic blast that propelled him off of Roman.  The alien beast moaned some more before extinguishing.

By the time Roman was able to stand back up, he saw the evidence of Axion’s slaughter.  It was a killing field strewn with nearly a couple dozen bodies.  Axion showed no sign of slowing.  Nor did the transdimensional creatures crowding him for their energy fix. 

The monsters were creating a funnel effect around him, spinning him off the ground by catching him up in a tornado crafted by their own swirling, rapidly moving bodies, still not at all solidified.  The tornado was the beginning of a wormhole. 

Roman took the knife and flung it.  Straight at the mouth of the wormhole.  Visualized it exploding.  It did, putting a quick end to the wormhole effect and to the remaining wraiths.

Axion collapsed to the ground, moaning a bit, and sliding himself to an upright position against a rock until he finished regrouping.  What did you do?

Exploded an antimatter bomb around you that sucked in what was left of their energy, rather than giving them more energy to feed on.  Figured since you were a VERSER you came equipped with genetic modification to handle antimatter universes.

That must have been one weak ass bomb.

I wasn’t sure of just how bombproof you were.

Good thing.  How did you know the knife could be used that way?  I didn’t even know it could be used that way.

That’s one advantage of being a defective first generation prototype.  Makes you a little crazy.

Axion snorted.  Looked up at the horizon.  Shit, here comes more of them.  A lot more.

To Roman’s unupgraded eyes, it just looked like a dark cloud moving in.  Where’d they find the energy to open that wormhole earlier?

Guess you get enough energy-starved wraiths together, and they can open a small one long enough to suck the life out of their victim before it collapses back down.

Nah.  If that was the case, that swarm of them coming towards us now would be plenty big enough to open a wormhole to get them to hell out of here, to someplace where there was enough energy to keep feeding.

Maybe without a strong enough signal from another world to draw them, they’d just end up someplace even more energy starved than this place.

That or they really don’t have enough energy even collectively to teleport out of here.  They were just using the technology of your sword to open the wormhole.  If it’s out of phase, and can be keyed to any parallel universe, it might be a key they can use to unlock the prison door keeping them trapped here.

Shit.  There goes our only real weapon against them, Axion said, collapsing the sword in his hand.  He instinctively understood he didn’t dare activate it again.

The cloud was on them.  Both Axion and Roman got caught up in it as if sucked up by gale force winds.  Only the howling of the winds provided sufficient cover for their screaming.

And then it was over, as rapidly as it had begun.

Roman and Axion fell out of the sky, hitting the ground hard.  Harder in his case; he wasn’t exactly as unbreakable as Axion.

They looked up to see Preston, with his black hair somewhere between curly and wavy, and his chin and moustache stubble, and of course, that signature, exposed bionic eye, its pupil glowing red, its spherical silver iris rotating inside a black void, as if he might be wearing half a designer pair of shades, holding out his hand.  His magnetic flux coils that traced shoestring-sized paths all over his body, perennially trapping him like a fly in his own spider webbing, pulsed with light and energy. 

Roman and Axion stood up to witness the sea of creatures about them, made flesh, squirming against the ground, pinned there by Preston’s magnetic field.  When the last of them expired, Preston lowered his hand. 

Roman nodded, thinking he understood.  You’re able to pulse that magnetic field across frequencies keyed to antimatter universes now.

Preston smiled.  And they weren’t keyed to any specific one.  So despite being multidimensional, any contact with antimatter, as you found out yourself, sucks the last remaining life out of them until they have no choice but to collapse into one timeline.  And then they were mine, Preston stated gleefully.

Roman shook his hand.  It’s usually not a pleasure to see that serial killer smile.  But in this case it was.

Trying to kill you was the happiest time of my life.  Short of fucking the comatose Axion, of course.

Roman sneered.  Glad they didn’t upgrade you so much you forgot what a lowlife scumbag you are.

"Yes, well, that would be entirely out of character," Preston said, straightening his suit and adjusting his cufflinks.  None of the pawns, a specialized form of cybernetic agent, could stand to be mussed up even a little.  Apparently even extending his arm had thrown him out of whack enough to be tucking in his shirt. 

The pawns were all identical clones, created by FRE, a governmental agency dedicated to fighting rebellions everywhere, as their initials clearly indicated.  Though the pawns were far better at instigating them, the sociopathic fucks that they were, hence the reason they’d been discontinued.  The original ones were still around guarding the VERSERS; owing to their unique abilities, both parties paired well.  They’d just stopped making more pawns.

No chessboard would be complete with just pawns.  It had to have its knights, bishops and rooks.  Roman and his enforcers, when called into play, were those more powerful pieces.  And the queen of the board, a woman called Nova, was still around.  Roman had lived through three queens now.  He was married to a former queen, Elsa.  Together they rounded out FRE’s roster.  Though these days, fighting rebellions everywhere, stood for stamping out corporate rebellion against a world grown far too egalitarian for big business interests, with power decentralized to god-like citizen scientists quite capable of manifesting whatever they desired with the aid of their neuronets.  Corporate tended to not like it when anyone else wielded godlike powers but them.  Hence FRE existed more as a go between nowadays between both parties, trying to keep each one in check.  Citizen scientists, as it turned out, could be bought and corrupted, some of them anyway, and so needed guarding against just as ferociously. 

Seeing Preston just brought up the good old days, which he never remembered being all that good, or something he cared to revel in right now.  Take me home, Axion.  The Daytona commune is about to have a lot thrust on its plate once again, thanks to you.

You mean all that hogwash about crashing the Singularity Wave? Preston said.

What, you don’t believe him?

No, I do, at least hope he’s right.  Just that the second the Wave crashes, causing the greatest economic depression since, well, never, on a transgalactic scale, people will get mean and nasty.  And someone like me will be called into duty once again to be even meaner and nastier.  Sorry, guys, but one man’s Armageddon is another man’s Shangri-La.

God, I’ve so missed you, Roman said.

Really?

Of course not.  Axion!  God damn it, get me out of here.  You don’t want me handling the jump on my own.  Techa knows what’ll happen.

Good luck, Roman.  Axion rested a hand on Roman’s shoulder and they were gone.  Leaving Preston behind, mercifully.

Roman looked around his yurt which looked strangely womblike in all its circularity, sheltering him from the big bad world.  He hadn’t made the connection before, but now that Axion had dropped this bombshell on his shoulder, it seemed as good a time as any.

Axion saluted him, ever the soldier, and beamed out, no doubt returning for Preston before making his way to the next cosmic hotspot in need of his attention. 

Well, he had his job to do, and Roman had his.  Just that Roman had none of the gung-ho sensibility about what came next that Axion did. 

And that was because what came next would make the 9th rung of Dante’s hell look like a garden spot. 

TWO

Stepping outside his yurt, Roman could hear the pandemonium of life lived large at the Daytona commune, nestled in quiet backwoods, Oregon.  The visuals assaulted his senses just a split second behind the audio cues. 

Parents were yelling and gesturing for their kids to climb higher up the trees before suiciding, by jumping to the ground below, face first, in an effort to confirm their latest nano-upgrades were working as guaranteed on the package labels. 

One mother peeled her kid off the ground and turned him over.  His face was pancaked and he had bones across the rest of his body laying the way birds built birds’ nests, every which way, most of them sticking out of his skin suit. Damn generic. I told you we should have gone with an established brand name. Now he could be like this for hours. Or worse.

Have a little faith, the husband coached, bending over to take a closer look with a hefty upper body that threatened to capsize him.

The kid healed up and he gasped. And he took a look at himself and felt himself up and laughed like a mad hatter.

Still not half as fast as the other kids, the wife bitched. Her faced looked as worn as her worn out remarks.

The nano grass is always greener, eh? There’s no satisfying you, woman.

Children can be cruel towards kids with cheaper nano.  You can’t blame me for wanting the best for him.

Roman picked up the pace, hoping the ability to hear the two of them yammer would fade faster.

The seven