The Wasteland

My little girl is lost! Have any of you seen her?

Chapter IV

"What the Hell?!?" Rory, the ginger nerd with the sliderule in his pocket, exclaimed. Vick was astounded as well. He hadn't done this. Rory said, "You triggered something when you padded her for the lenses. Look." Another layer popped up on the graph of the emotional state of AC the team had been going over from the prior day, comparing the timing of their original signal with her spontaneous magnification of it. What they had been doing was experimental, and not everything had turned out quite like they'd planned. They needed to know why.

Vick's mouth was actually hanging open, and he closed it for a moment before he said, "Mabel handled that. I've never seen anything like it. The resolution change?" he asked.

"Nope. That's what she did. She just exponentially multiplied the input frequency, and made.. this." Rory was hard pressed to imagine how strong the impulse AC was... possessed by, was. It wasn't normal. He started bouncing queries off the nodes, mentally sighing that the security scrambling would delay responses by random times, as part of the steganographic insertion of their signal into the web. There was no cure for it, he'd just have to wait for the hits.

Vick remembered the look in her eyes when she'd finished sobbing. Somehow he didn't think this fierce rage was just part of the stages of grief. The strength of the signal indicated in the chart was orders of magnitude more than what they'd sent - he thought. He started checking the actual power transmitted, the antennae health, everything, trying to find the source of the multiplication of the signal.

He pitied the CFS. No one had ever been as pissed off as AC was. He looked over to where Mabel was beginning to explain the consoles, and how to use them. AC had risen from the floor where she'd been weeping, strode directly to the door behind which Mabel had disappeared, and summoned Mabel. That was really the best word: summoned. Mabel hadn't batted an eyelash, coming straight to the call, and matter of factly proceeding right to the lesson in how to use the consoles AC had demanded.

Mabel's own specialty, theoretical psychology, essentially the basis for the entire project both they, and the CFS, were undertaking, gave her plenty to talk about with AC, who was devouring every detail with seeming photographic memory and the intensity of a 1,000 suns. Vick watched as AC slid into the chair and took command of the entire room. Either Mabel didn't notice the change in the authority structure, or didn't mind.

No, Mabel not only didn't mind, she was eager to work within it. He could see it in her eyes: a sparkling glee at the thought of the doom and destruction AC would unleash on the CFS. Mabel knew, and she hadn't even seen the chart.

Gerald joined them, and said nothing, just began examining the charts. Gerald was the advanced mathematics specialist in their cadre, and translating the strange theoretical psychology equations into signal strengths was largely his doing. He didn't seem alarmed at the spike in... resolution, AC had experienced, he just seemed fascinated, and intent on solving an interesting problem. He absentmindedly tucked his loose shirttail in, as he scoured the data.

Rory was more comms and security, while Vick himself was all about the hardware. Together they made a good team, each brilliant in their way, and totally committed to their cause. Once again, Vick was impressed with The Twelve, and how they managed personnel. Whenever personnel were needed they just appeared, and when particular expertise was necessary, even when wholly innovative and theoretical technologies were necessary, they were somehow availed.

And he'd never even talked with them. Late in the investigations he and Sarah had undertaken, just before he'd lost her, The Twelve had made themselves known. They had devised means of communication that were embedded in the world on multiple levels at once, yet were able to coordinate audio, text, or even video messages by concatenating signals from things as diverse as the water faucet and fridge, modulated by the LEDs, even the damn vacuum cleaner.

He never needed to talk to them, because they had total access to the surveillance and entrainment networks that permeated the arcology, and this place too. This place wasn't even online, nor was there ordinary wifi access through which they interfaced with the web, here. The signals were coordinated through the power grid itself, and concealed within the quantum fluctuations of the electricity that occurred naturally, inevitably, and heavily encrypted. It was an amazing system.

It was very eerie when the noises from your toilet, doorbell, and random street sounds coordinated and became speech. It made you think you were hallucinating; that you had gone completely insane and were hearing voices where none could be, in the background of the universe itself. But they had proved they were real, and after his initial skepticism of his own grip on reality, he'd become able to grasp the system more easily. At least in theory. He left the particulars to Rory, as much as possible.

It was still weird as Hell, though.

With that, the world, in the form a cat yowling, leaves from the maple tree in the yard tapping on the window, and a burble from his own stomach said "Pilot Wave Theory" He looked around the room, futilely, but uncontrollably, for a speaker, a source of the intelligible discourse of the world, and looked down at his stomach. How did they do that? He looked up Pilot Wave Theory, and for once, a hit came back quickly. Bohm, de Broglie.. He began to try to digest a new way, to him, of looking at quantum mechanics.

He realized, after a few minutes, that The Twelve had answered the question he had only asked because of how they answered it, by making his stomach rumble, and that he had only asked in his head. Who the Hell were these people, he thought.

The world laughed and said "The Twelve".

Adon, the scruffy old man that had first spoken to the panicked, fleeing AC after she'd ditched the entrainment and AR prosthetics from the CFS, came in, done with the moto. After it's exposure in the arcology, they couldn't keep it around. It had been scrapped, and another moto was already delivered, with the uncanny timing The Twelve managed. Adon was the money guy. He'd been in cryptocurrencies for decades, not as a developer, but through his understanding of finance, and had latched immediately onto Bitcoin when it came out in 2009.

He headed into the bedroom to ditch the rags they'd needed for camouflage in the arcology, along with the hats that foiled the entrainment signal from the CFS. In here it wasn't necessary, due to the age of the place, and a few modifications by The Twelve. This part of town had only recently been updated to the web at all, and this particular house was owned by a holdout. Simon had never even used a smartphone. He had several properties. None of them were hooked to cable, and all were shielded against wifi. Indeed, some re-radiation scheme created 'emf shadows' that made it look like the house was just as surveilled and entrained as the rest of the neighborhood, had been installed by The Twelve, after they recruited Simon.

Adon chuckled, remembering how he had fallen to his knees when The Twelve had first contacted him, certain that God or some prophet, or angel, was at work. Actually, he thought more soberly, The Twelve, while denying their divinity, sure showed all the signs and wonders. He wouldn't be surprised if plagues of frogs fell from the sky, were such ever needed.

More comfortable now, in a standard blazer, slacks, and tie - he just didn't understand folks who had no swag - he returned to the living room/office where the rest of the team was hard at work trying to figure out what had erupted in AC's mind, and how to use it. AC was going to use it, and Mabel was going to launch her at the CFS like an arrow to the heart, of that there was no doubt. Adon had no idea of any of this, although he noted the odd dynamic between Mabel and AC, as their lesson progressed. Vick soon explained what they were confronted with, and Adon began to consider ways to capitalize on this new and unexpected development.

After all, capital was his specialty, and chaos... well, chaos is a business opportunity.