The Sacrifice Game

(100)

Some of the security windows were as vapid as “Thank you for downloading DrudgePro 1.3.” But some were packed with simple powerful yet powerful statements, like “do not click on any items other than those specified or you may void your bowels.” Still, it all didn’t look too tough. These days you barely have to even hack, you just use reverse-engineering programs. You become a systems manager. No sweat.

I checked Marena’s phone’s GPS dot. She was on Chinikatook Street. On her way. Better hurry.

Looking, looking…

Most of it seemed to be military products, things like bowling-ball- and beachball-sized ground robots. Another division of Warren was developing much smaller “spider robots, which were partly guided by brains taken from pigeons.” Don’t stop to gawk, I thought. Eyes on the bling.

Okay. I found out that LEON was not an acronym for “Learning Engine/Orlando Network.” Rather, it was short for Leonid Bugaev, the Russian researcher who oversaw the Russian military’s time-travel research in the early 1970s, and who came up with the basic equations used in the missile-defense system-a name I heard mentioned during the Racetrack Table Conference.

I was still clue-free about what the Warren Corporation was really doing, though. Were they just contracting for the Pentagon? Or for some other country, maybe?

They weren’t telling me Shit One, that was for dang sure.

I was cold and shaky.

Chattering.

Obviously betrayed, even though I didn’t know quite what the deal was.

For a moment I felt that there was somebody in the room with me. But I looked and there was no one.

The Stake has a fleet of five F-22s, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but is actually enough to do quite a bit of damage, and over forty unmanned support aircraft, over five hundred medium-range remote-piloted missiles, and over two hundred freight and troop transport aircraft-also eight attack helicopters and at least thirty noncombat helicopters.

How many troops? Twelve hundred regulars, fourteen thousand irregulars?

The Pentagon group had calculated that the country couldn’t withstand many more attacks in the mode of the Disney World Horror, and that they might happen even if the U.S. policy in the Middle East changed a lot-which it wouldn’t. And no conventional means could stop them. So they began to fund research on speculative systems that might be able to affect a situation without touching it, or redirect it once had started. Over the last ten years, they had funded nearly a hundred speculative research projects-disintegrator rays, antigravity, telekinesis, atmospheric shielding, weather control, and so on-and only a few of them, notably ASP, ever worked out.

They reasoned that they’d never be able to completely stop terrorists from getting into a jet and taking it over, but that once they’ve seen the jet is heading for a given target, they might be able to get into the terrorist pilot’s head and make him reroute it-even in the last couple of seconds.

Then, it became clear that there might not even be time to do that-but that it might be possible to send signals or even consciousnesses into that terrorist’s head at a moment in the recent past. This wouldn’t affect anything up until the time you sent the signal, of course-but it could give you enough leeway to change what that terrorist would do later on, beginning the moment after the signal was sent.

And, of course, the project grew from there. And grew, and grew.

Okay. Time for that call. I touched PIC. Marena’s head and shoulders came up.