Phantom Menace: Biohackers, #2

By Dean C. Moore

Two-thirds of the way through the series starter, the Singularity reaction had already begun. Explosive technological growth beyond human comprehension caught everyone up.

Now it's impossible to look out your window from day to day without feeling like a stranger in a strange land. It's air cars one day—soaring dragons the next. The vista is constantly being repainted by billions of citizen-scientists forever creating the world anew.

The Singularity reaction was deemed inevitable. It hardly mattered what exactly brought it about; it was always going to be something.

Roman realized new challenges would lie across the threshold separating humanity from transhumanity. But what he got was a mindless beehive that wouldn't stop humming with activity. It was like a planet-wide form of OCD.

He and Elsa and the rest of the Daytona commune of biohackers, based in backwoods Oregon, don't have long to break free before they too lose their will to resist the Sirens.

And the clock is ticking not just on them.

The Singularity Wave pushes genetically-engineered humanoids across the cosmos in ships powered by warp drive engines. Soon the heavens will be populated with hell worlds modeled according to the same flaw in design.

Can Roman and Elsa, with the aid of their comrades, tweak the Singularity Wave to restore the heaven-on-earth vibe they were striving for all along?

Pick up a copy today to find out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dean C. Moore
• Release date: Jan 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9798215984178

Book preview

ACT ONE

TROUBLE IN PARADISE

ONE

2021

Rural Oregon

Roman was peeing into his bathroom toilet when the guy appeared out of nowhere, took him by the arm, and said, Hold on to your dick.

And they both began to dematerialize. 

When Roman could see through the soldier, he gazed down at his arm to confirm he too was looking a lot less solid.  And the tingling sensations had stopped, replaced with a sense of numbness. 

He gazed back at his kidnapper, noted this was no ordinary soldier.  Gee, ya think, Roman?  The guy’s teleporting you from where you are to somewhere else, so I’d say that pretty much rules out normal.

Were it not for the dematerializing thing, this would have been one hell of a men’s room come on.  The guy was brutally handsome with an ironically friendly smile, just a few inches taller, and well, quite butch looking considering the getup and the day old stubble.  If Roman went in for butch guys, the GI Joe weapons’ accessories would definitely have put Soldier Boy over the top.

As they solidified again, Roman looked up at the night sky, recognized none of the constellations and realized this was not good.  Wherever they were.

The cold, damp night air nipped, but no worse than backwards, Oregon, where his biohacker commune was based.  The downward pull on him was fierce, indicating twice earth gravity or possibly more, if experience had taught him anything.  His muscles were already groaning in protest.

But the thing that was most off was the smells.  He knew the aroma of decomposition well, living in a temperate rain forest back on Earth.  Rotting leaf matter smelled different than rotting flesh.  This being an alien world, he couldn’t tell what was decaying exactly.  But whatever it was, it was sending shivers up his spine that had nothing to do with the crisp air. 

And the jolting sensation in back of his throat... it tasted like death.  Like the very thing that had caused him to give up meat eating for a raw foods vegetarian diet.

Where are we? he said.

No idea.  I just go where the neuronet takes me.

You’re a VERSER? Roman’s eyes went wide.  Shit!  Shit, shit shit! 

A VERSER was a multiverse man.  This generation’s idea of Special Ops.  They could teleport anywhere, into any timeline, any parallel universe, to hunt down their prey. 

Sorry, dude, didn’t mean to drag you into this.

"You don’t say?  You have a strange way of not involving me."

The night sky lit up.  It was the first time Roman could see where the hell they were with any clarity. 

They were standing in the middle of a battlefield! 

Best as he could tell, the battle had been going on a while because the landscape looked like they’d have to tame it down, beautify it a bit, to give it that post-apocalyptic look.

Soldier Boy yanked on his arm for the second time in as many minutes to get him to duck down.  Pulling him behind a bombed out, upturned vehicle.  Seeing a jeep’s undersides was like seeing its guts laid bare.  Roman wondered how long it would take before he saw his guts laid bare. 

Techa, Soldier Boy balked, I realize you’re the first generation on line, but your reflexes are for shit.

Please tell me those lovely star bursts are their idea of fireworks, celebrating the end of an age-long battle.  Or really big fireflies come out to play at night.

His kidnapper wore a mask of pain on his face convincingly enough.  They’re chemical weapons.  After we took out their most advanced weaponry and bombed them back into a much earlier era, it was pretty much what they were left with.

Roman was hacking up a storm.  I confirm you don’t lie, at least about some things.

Why are you coughing?

Because it’s chemical weapons, you jack ass.

You’re telling me you aren’t genetically modified to handle this?

You read subtext well.  You should consider a different line of work.  An actor or writer, perhaps.

The soldier grabbed him by the chest, brought him in close and planted a wet kiss on him.  Strike that, French kiss.  Maybe even third generation French.  Roman was gasping when he released him. 

Thanks for reminding me to zip up my fly, just in case there’s more you’re not telling me.  Roman tucked his dick in and zipped up.

The soldier smiled.  Heard you were a bit of a smart ass.  You know why I kissed you, so don’t go making more of it than it is.

Roman did in fact know.  He’d seen the maneuver done many times over, just never on him.  The nanite-enriched saliva in the soldier’s body was now racing through his body, reproducing a mile a minute, and settling down his coughing fits. 

Roman took the VERSER in more closely and sighed.  He appeared to be doing his best to look out for Roman now that he realized Roman was relatively defenseless next to him.  His larger-than-life cat-eyes were darting across the terrain, amplifying every iota of phosphorescence.  His wiry, copper-colored hair looked like it might well be genetically altered to capture and enhance transmissions sent across the entire EMF spectrum, which his enhanced brain could then decode on the fly.  Each strand of hair attuned to a different frequency, more like antennae?  Maybe Roman was just being ridiculous.  And the genetically altered hair was more of a low-maintenance polymer for soldiers who wanted hair but not the bother of keeping lice and other vermin out of it.

No doubt the rest of the VERSER’s DNA-enhancements, along with whatever else was going on inside of him, were making a lot more of the situation than he could, including enemy positions, troop movements.  His eyes and his ears twitched constantly, like a deer constantly on the alert for lions.  Roman tried to flush the analogy out of his mind because it wasn’t helping his nerves. 

When he tried to react in sync with the VERSER’s twitching, all his senses relayed back to him were complete blackness, dead quiet.  Why can’t I hear or see anything?  My eyes should be adjusting by now, even if just to see you better.  I don’t care how underrated I am by super-soldier standards.

They’ve still got some legacy tech that isn’t without interest.  It includes light and sound dampening across quite a wide field.  Come on.

He dragged Roman away by the arm at a trot.  What’s your name, soldier?

Axion.

Nice to meet you, Axion.

Axion didn’t respond because he was busy gutting an alien bushwhacker, splitting him stem to stern with a laser-edged knife.  The creature had moved too fast for Roman to react.  He’d moved too stealthily for Roman to even see or hear. 

The fight over before Roman had even realized it began, Axion pulled out some of the lizard-man’s intestines, chewed on it, and ripped out another section for Roman. 

I’m vegetarian.

Axion grunted.  Just eat what’s inside then.  If my taste buds are any good, he was vegetarian too.

Roman knew better than to argue.  The VERSER was trying to keep him alive.  The least Roman could do was his part.  And try and not tarnish the brand name too much by being the first generation VERSER on line.  He took his strip of intestine and squeezed out the insides to make a pile of malodorous mush for himself, and shoveled it into his mouth. 

I’m getting the distinct impression you’re not the bad guy in all this, Axion.  You want to tell me who is?

Ethan, or maybe Alexa, or both.

Roman frowned.  Ethan was his best friend, a fellow biohacker, and former Daytona commune member.  Together, they’d freed the world from corporate misdeeds by giving everyone a neuronet upgrade—one far superior to his—and essentially making people so damn smart they couldn’t be manipulated.  The shockproofing of the future against all avenues of tyranny thus provided, Ethan and Roman were supposed to kickback and sip Mai Tais on a Maui beach somewhere.  But as it turns out, corporate tyranny dies hard, and even geniuses can be manipulated.  What did he do this time?

I’m dying.

The mixture of shock and empathy froze Roman up for a while.  When he did get his mouth moving again, he said, Impossible.  No one dies anymore.  Not even the ones several generations of tech behind you, which is most of us.

Finished with his latest assessment of encroaching dangers, Axion returned his eyes to him.  Whatever he did to create this batch of multiverse men, I’d say the recipe is missing a few ingredients.  Dying is the least of my problems.  Though it may not be the least of yours, if I can’t keep us both alive long enough to get out of here.

Roman clamped down on his jaw hard enough to feel muscles knotting around the back of his teeth he almost never felt. 

The soldier’s blood trickled from his nose.  Roman made a pained face in response which Axion couldn’t interpret, until the blood crossed his lip and he tasted it for himself. 

Don’t worry about that.  Worry about the fact that the cancer spreading throughout my body will undoubtedly affect my neuronet’s ability to access timelines.  We’re not exactly in the one we were in when we first met.  Trust me, you don’t want to get stranded in this timeline any more than on this planet.

So far you’ve given me reason to get on Ethan to create a VA hospital for you guys and to get him to task Alexa with finding a cure.  None of this explains my involvement.  Ethan would hardly need arm-twisting from me to do either once he is apprised of the problem.

How long do you think it’ll take for one of our neuronets to malfunction enough to cause problems for the entire multiverse?

Roman winced.  Axion had definitely struck a nerve.  Roman’s neuronet had once malfunctioned so badly he managed to blink out the entire multiverse, allowing oblivion to absorb it back into itself.  The effect was temporary.  But it could have been permanent.  Especially considering no one knew then or now what the hell caused it to happen.  Yes, he knew he was pondering a fact that could only possibly belong in a Douglas Adams rewrite of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  But a fact it was.  Though, possibly whoever was overseeing his fate shared Adams’ outlook on life.

Relax, soldier, you’re not nearly as defective as I was, being the first off the assembly line.  You can bet that even if he screwed the pooch elsewhere, Ethan got that part of the formula corrected.

But there are a million multiverse men spread out across a trans-galactic empire.  We’re understaffed and overworked.  How long do you think it’ll take for one or more of those relatively benign neuronets to become defective enough to give you a run for your money as the single most dangerous humanoid ever?

Roman swallowed hard.  Axion had a point.  Even with the odds being astronomically against it happening, as it turns out, the million multiverse men had the numbers to beat the odds. 

Okay, I promise I’ll look into it.  Now, at the risk of sounding self-serving, let’s get to hell out of here.

No can do.  Have to fulfill my mission first.

Roman groaned.  And what, may I ask, is your mission?

Another of the lizard people came at Axion. 

They were wrestling as if in some silent movie, just yards away.  Roman still couldn’t hear a damn thing.  If it weren’t for the glowing eyes of the creature, he’d have thought the movie screen had gone black too.

I’ll just sit over here waiting in suspense for your answer to my all-important question while you continue to act all preoccupied.  Roman picked up a rock and threw it at the tough hide of the creature.  It bounced off, rebounded at Roman, and nearly took out his eye.  I’m going to stop helping you now, he shouted. 

Sure, no problem.  Don’t strain yourself, Axion yelled, panting.  But amid the sound dampening field the hollering registered more like a whisper.  He managed to break free of the clinch, reach for his spilled weapon that had shaken free in the tussle.  But by the time he had it raised, the creature flicked its tail at him and his arm was gone. 

Without hesitating, Axion picked up the severed arm and fired the gun his detached hand was holding at the creature, with a finger over finger grip, boring a hole through its heart. 

Axion took the finger of his left hand off his right trigger finger, and stuck the arm back on. 

The nano proceeded to reattach it.  After about ten seconds, he figured it was glued on enough to let go of it; the nano would finish the job without any further assistance from him. 

Roman pointed at the fallen alien.  Axion said, Don’t worry.  He’s done for.

The creature managed to crawl forward enough to vomit on Roman before dying.  The acid was eating away the half of his body it landed on.  Roman screamed to high heaven, and to some point just beyond.

Axion said calmly, Don’t worry about the screaming.  The sound dampening will cover us, keep you from giving away our position.

"If it could just deafen me from your banter, I’d take that as a real kindness."  Roman returned to his screaming, moaning, groaning, howling, growling and fumigating the air with obscenities.

I’m going to tell all the guys when I get back that the original multiverse man is a real cry baby and a total drama queen.

Don’t you dare!  Roman screamed some more.  I’m dying!  God, I’m dying!  I just wanted to take a pee, and now I’m dying!

Axion shook his head slowly.  Total drama queen.  He flexed the arm that had been sliced off earlier with a flick of an alien’s tail. 

Roman took note of the acid continuing to eat through him.  His right leg was gone now.  Much of the hip on that side, and his chest up to about the third rib of his lung.  His screaming had taken on a wet, gurgling quality as a result.  This just keeps getting better and better.  I wake up this morning to pee after a particularly satisfying bout of masturbation...

You do that?  Me too.  I just need to flush.  Can’t stand the idea of cum backing up inside me and possibly getting infected.

Roman roared and winced from the successive waves of pain hitting him, each one more severe than the one before.  The only way for the new incoming signals not to be drowned out by the overworked nerves that had reached their carrying capacity, was for the source impulse to get more radical, more devious with finding its way through his overloaded system.

Finally he began to heal.  The tissue growing back nearly as fast as it had been eaten away.  His grumbling hadn’t entirely subsided, because as it turned out this part of the process was nearly as painful.  Look at that.  Fuck me!  I must be part lizard now.  He looked up from the magic show at Axion.  I suppose I have you to thank for this.  You’ll forgive me if I’m still not feeling all that grateful for your being in my life.

Axion waved him off.  No worries.  I get that a lot.

Roman ran his hands over his newly reformed body, especially the parts that weren’t there a moment ago, massaging them, enjoying the sensuality of just being able to feel a part of himself once more that felt good.  Now that I actually give a shit what you have to say again, you want to tell me why we’re here?

Axion’s face was the picture of someone who just didn’t want to give him the bad news.  I would if I could.  Only, I don’t remember.

What do you mean you don’t remember!  With his voice rising on the latest wave of anger, Roman was suddenly appreciative of that sound dampening field.  Otherwise he’d have given away their position yet again.

Axion ran his hand over his head as if he were directing a hair stylist at a salon regarding his makeover.  It’s the cancer.  I think it’s made it into my brain.  Been having trouble remembering a lot lately.  At first it was just names.

Roman sighed, easing up on the impatience and the anger and the frustration; he allowed his empathy for the man to overrun him instead.  The state Axion was in had to suck.  He remembered the days when there were old people.  His parents had died before the wave of nanococktail repairs, hell before even replacement organs.  It was just bad timing on their part to be born a decade too early.  If it hadn’t been for the neuronet, even the replacement organs would have been a few years off, and the nanococktails decades away instead of months.

Okay, try to think, he said.  The VERSERS don’t get involved with local beefs.  They only go after corporate bullies, using power and corruption to inveigle themselves anywhere in the universe they can get a foothold.  The VERSERS start at the top, at the corporate mega-alliances that dismantle entire worlds just for the privilege of profiting from rebuilding them. 

When Axion gave him a flummoxed look, Roman spooled out the rest.  These corporations will reduce a country or a continent to ruin if that’s their foot in the door to creating havoc on a planet-wide scale.  But their goal is always to maximize destruction and human suffering, so they can actually seem like the good guys when they swoop in to save the day, as opposed to the bastards pulling the strings behind the scenes that caused it all, the so-called political unrest, civil wars, tyrannical takeovers, coups... 

The more nonplused Axion looked, the more Roman felt egged on.  Hell, now that they’ve mastered weather wars, floods, earthquakes, cyclones are all in these guys’ bag of tricks now for taking down a country or a world.  They’ll financially ruin the economy by creating massive debt to pay for the rebuild, just so the aftermath is a slave society. 

Still Roman was getting no signs of recognition painting their way across Axion’s face.  Roman’s elocution became more fevered, the force behind his words stronger, his volume rising, his gesturing escalating.  He was up and pacing.  Suddenly the thought of making of himself an exposed moving target on a battlefield seemed like a secondary consideration.  "They started employing these tricks on earth, ruining Spain, then Greece, numerous south American economies, even went after the U.S.  Then when the Space Age took off, it was an endless smorgasbord for them. 

They’d pay to seed the off-world colonies, then trigger war and conflict, loan money and resources to rebuild them.  When they reduced everyone who had initially been prospering to a slave colony with indebtedness, they moved on, pushing outwards, repeating the same game over and over again until they ran into actual alien civilizations where they could run the con on them.  Pretend to be offering a helping hand, assisting the worlds to develop infrastructure, only to encourage massive debt that would later be defaulted on, giving them all the excuse they needed to...

Axion had been taking it all in, but he was shaking his head.  I’m sorry.  This is all news to me.  Then again, I’m just a grunt.  Not sure they would give me the big picture.  Just the mission details.

Roman groaned.  Part of the con was, sure, they’ll help the country rebuild after the destruction they’d sewn indirectly, but the rebuild contracts always went to the handful of firms looking to profit.  Only a small amount of the profit ever made it into local hands, and you can bet those hands were as corrupt as the people they were dealing with.  Hell, if they actually did what they promised, they would have left these worlds better off.  He knew he was just talking for himself now.  Axion didn’t understand, maybe didn’t even care.

Roman was retired from the game now.  Too outdated a model to be much good policing the bad guys across a cosmos anymore.  He hoped maybe he could get his blood up with a recitation of the injustices that would fire up any activist at heart.  But who was he kidding?  What was the point?  Win or lose, the future was in the hand of the next generation on line now.

And by his own credo, You can’t make a person do what a person isn’t meant to do, he was locked out of the game.  He had played the part of a warrior once, but it had cost him dearly.  It wasn’t who he was.  He was a man of peace.  A visionary.  The guy who could pull back the veils of Maya, as the Buddhists would say.  He could deprogram masses with his speeches, open their eyes to the truth about the kind of universe they should be building together, a much better universe.  That was his job at the Daytona commune.  Steering the architects and builders of tomorrow.  Keeping them fast and true to shoring up the best of all possible universes, so we never settled for anything less.  Not in Roman’s timeline.  Being here just reminded him of all the work to be done back home.  It increased his sense of urgency for finishing this mission so the soldier would take him home.  If only the guy could remember!

I remember, Axion said.  Just like that. 

Roman looked up from the ground and saw the fog lifting from Axion’s eyes.  It was like a lucid moment for an Alzheimer’s patient that appeared out of nowhere and that likely wouldn’t last.  Roman had to get this data dump now.

Spill, he said.

Axion was in a stooped position, looking like a coiled spring, ready to unleash its stored energy.  Lunging at anything that threatened them.  It’s the cloaking device.

The sound and light dampener?

It acts like sensory deprivation.  Prolonged exposure is driving the locals mad.  It’s what’s behind all the in-fighting.  This was a peaceful world before corporate got here.  They left the device as a gift to cities complaining of too much noise.  That’s where we’re standing now.  It looks like we’re out in nature, but we’re actually inside a domed city housing fifty million souls.

How many are left?

My scanners indicate just under three million.  Corporate won’t return until the population is closer to half a mil.

I don’t understand.  How can they profit...?

They can print bodies from just one skin cell.  A scrap of dried up bone that’s hundreds of years old.  When they swoop in with a solution for reconstitution of this planet’s families and loved ones, for rebuilding the populace quickly to restore the thriving economy...

So that’s how they get them.  But surely, in a place this ravaged, finding the one speck of a friend or a family member that’s...

Axion shook his head rapidly.  They can reprint someone from a mind upload.

Of fifty million people?!

One fly-over of the city with the scanners is all it would take.  It’s not like the old days when each person had to be scanned inside something that looked more like an MRI machine.

Roman took a deep breath and held it, trying to quiet his shivering.  He rubbed his upper arms as he paced. 

You don’t have to feel embarrassed for shaking like that.  I know I did when I got the debrief.

I promise you, when I tell Ethan what’s going on out here...

Axion was shaking his head again.  "We are Ethan’s angels of mercy.  And we’re dying.  Without us there won’t be much he can do.  You understand now why you have to come back?  I don’t care how primitive you are, you aren’t dying.  Only you can fix this."

All the other VERSERS... they can’t all be...

No, but we could barely tread water at a hundred percent.  Even with our innovations.

There’s a million of you!

Corporate is trans-galactic.  It was just the Milky Way and Andromeda in your day.  There are hundreds of galaxies in play now.  Billions of suns per galaxy.  Each sun has on average a half dozen or more worlds orbiting it.  Do the math.  A million multiverse men are like a light drizzle on desert sand before the sun rises.

There’s that term, multiverse men, again.  Your ranks are nearly half female, right?

More like a third.  Another third hermaphrodites.  Some soldiers just find it easier to be both sexes at once in case they need to impregnate themselves.  It gets lonely after a while out here.

You don’t have to explain, Roman said, that wave of empathy he tried to subdue earlier spilling over him again.

He held the last bit of his resistance like a knot in his belly before the knot become undone.

Come on, he said.  Let’s go put this damn device out of commission, before we can’t hear ourselves talk or think, for that matter.

It doesn’t cancel out conversation, not from up close, anyway.  They want you to be able to hear yourself raving like some madman.  Actually speeds up the process.

That’s corporate for you.  Efficient to the end.  Psy-ops countermeasures for every reactionary move an adversary could come up with.

You’re not going to get on that soapbox again, are you?

Roman grunted.  Nah, I’ll save it for when I’m back home.

They were moving again.  This means you’ve agreed to help us, right? Axion said, searching his face and especially his eyes for any false promises.

I’m afraid not.  You’ve told me your half of the story.  I haven’t told you mine.  Things are looking even worse back on earth and for all those in the habitable zones of the trans-galactic federation of worlds, far less in these fringe territories where, I grant you, corporate can get away with murder because they’re operating outside of mindnet.  That means Alexa and Ethan can’t track them.  They have no idea what these creeps are up to. 

How could things be worse in the lands of milk and honey?

Selling people on paradise, and on the Age of Abundance wrought by the neuronet, was just the biggest corporate con of all.  But that’s my battle to fight.  I’m afraid we’re going to be waging this war on two fronts for a while.  Not much choice.  But we’ll meet in the center someday, I promise.

I know, Axion said, smiling ear to ear.

Why do you look so happy?

I read up on you.  The more the man of peace spreads enlightenment to the masses, the stronger the man of war gets, buried deep down inside him.  So, yes, I believe with all my heart we will meet again one day.

It was the way he said it that made Roman’s hands run cold.  Was it destiny calling yet again?

TWO

Roman materialized back inside his bathroom.  The shock and adrenaline were subsiding.  As soon as he could feel his dick again, he could feel his bladder.  He peed into the bowl and sighed.  The price one has to pay to take a good piss these days.

He flushed, zipped up, and opened the bathroom door on to the main area of his yurt.  Before him was essentially one big open circular space beneath a conical canvas roof, all framed by shaved logs employed as tent poles.  A big post bed was up against part of the arcing wall.  There was Irvin lying on his bed, fiddling with a Rubik’s cube.

I’ll have you know I just masturbated on that bed.

Ewe!  Irvin vaulted off the bed, screaming.  Proceeded to roll on the floor, yelling, Get it off!  Get it off!

When the frantic histrionics refused to settle, and Roman’s ears were beginning to hurt, he padded over and retrieved the fire extinguisher and sprayed it on him. 

What the hell, dude?

I’m sorry.  I thought you were burning alive.

Not cool, man.  He coughed and padded over to the mirror to see what flamboyant faces he could make with his pie-in-the-face white foam look.  He gave himself a ferocious makeover on par with any Native American on the warpath.  Yeah, I could get used to this.

Remind me again when you’re going to stop being eleven?  And reach some much easier to deal with age, I don’t know, thirty-five?

You’re so blessed to have me in your life, and you don’t even know it.  Without me to role model how to be cool for you, you’d be a hopeless nerd the rest of your life.  He pranced over to the bathroom and stared into the room.  Although I must say, you got a lot more interesting when you teleported into your bathroom. 

He surveyed Roman’s bathroom with a device he had strapped to his hip that emitted flashing lights, strange sounds, the full monty.  Yep, ruled out paranormal activity, he said, after going over every inch of the bathroom.  He tapped the walls, stomped on the floor.  Yep, no trap doors.  Of course not, you’re way too boring for that. 

Finally he stepped out of the bathroom, So what’s with the teleporting, dude?  You’re just not nearly fun enough for that.

I didn’t teleport.

"Too bad you’re not a magician.  That would trump teleporting in my mind.  It would mean you possibly possessing a whole battery of tricks for one, instead of demonstrating the same one over and over again, which I could see getting monotonous after a while."

Tell me what you know about Ethan.

Roman was reclined on the bed when he asked, fiddling absently with the Rubik’s cube.  Irvin jumped up on the bed and proceeded to use it as a trampoline.  Jumping on the mattress as he traced the outline of Roman’s body.  "Now, there is one cool dude.  Nothing like you."

What’s the nature of his cool?

"You mean besides having the most powerful brain in the cosmos surgically implanted in his stomach like it was a tumor?  She goes by the name of Alexa, by the way, and she’s a perfectly shaped sphere the size of a grapefruit."

Yeah, besides that.

"That’s right, you don’t know, do you?  You are the worst with keeping up with current events, I swear.  Alexa was once a DNA super-computer.  Her unsurpassed parallel processing abilities allowed her to oversee and regulate all of mindnet, which is what the internet evolved into after it spread out across the cosmos and ultimately across the milky way and Andromeda galaxies."

Roman sat up in bed.  Wait a minute, did you say, was once a DNA-supercomputer?  But is no more?

"Yep.  And that’s not even the best part.  Ethan glows now, like some celestial light being.  On account of their ongoing co-evolution.  When Alexa morphed into a quantum computer, the most advanced known to us, it was the price he paid for going along for the ride.  He is a transdimensional being now, as is she."

Roman was getting tired of Irvin’s jumping up and down on the bed; it was giving him a headache just when he needed his mind to think.

He grabbed hold of Irvin, steadied him and forced him to sit.  You’re not fucking with me, right?  Because we both know how much you like to fuck with me?

"Trust me, giving it to you straight is me fucking with you.  When the truth is stranger than fiction, why settle for second best?"

Roman rubbed the foam war mask off Irvin’s face so he could read him better.  The kid was the brightest mind in their biohacker collective.  That title used to belong to Orion, a giant Sasquatch of a guy, every bit as tall, and nearly as hairy, a self-confessed hermit that lived in a treehouse on the commune that was nearly as much of a phenomenon as Irvin was.  The house ran for multiple stories up and down a giant Redwood, could entertain several hundred people at a throw without creaking so much as a floorboard.