Story Excerpt

Quantum Ghosts
by  Nancy Kress

Part I
“This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.”
—Plato

*   *   *

PROLOGUE

The motorcade was late. Security, Robert Dayson thought. You couldn’t have too much security, not since the bombings in Atlanta and Portland and Austin. Not with so many fringe groups so threatening about . . . everything. “The Unrest” the media were calling it, a term that seemed to Dayson unfortunately mild, as if country-wide seething dissatisfaction were no more than a bad night’s sleep. No, you couldn’t have too much security.

Still, he was freezing. Dayson huddled in his coat and blew on his hands—he’d forgotten gloves—behind the police cordon lining the street. Robocops moved among the human ones, holding the crowd in check. Dayson stamped his feet. Why was he even here? He was a New York State Capitol intern. He was Cabot Dayson’s brother and the late vice-president’s son. He could have watched Cabot launch his campaign for United States senator from the comfort of the heated VIP area instead of in this milling, frost-chilled, angry crowd. Always anger now, everybody angry about something, so that Dayson’s personal angst seemed puny, lost in the general and diverse American fury.

The motorcade came into view and drove slowly toward the New York State Capitol. Dayson lifted his eyes skyward. The building was beautiful, a two-hundred-year-old Renaissance palace among aging skyscrapers, January-bare trees, and foamcast homeless shanties. Built in the nineteenth century of white granite and Westchester marble, the Capitol had soaring towers, Romanesque Revival arched windows, and light, airy columns. Inside, vaulted ceilings, graceful staircases, glowing murals. It was all well maintained; somehow this stingiest of the country’s many stingy conservative governments, which had spent six years cutting nearly every other government program, had found the money to keep up the Capitol.

The motorcade crept forward.

The Capitol building exploded.

At first, Dayson couldn’t make sense of what was happening. Not possible. But . . . one explosion after another, shattering sound, screams and yells, flying debris. . . . The left tower of the Capitol collapsed into rubble, sending up clouds of ash.

Then the right tower.

People ran, screaming. Ash filled the air. Inside Dayson’s head, QUESNU shrieked. More explosions, some in surrounding city blocks. Christ—this was much more than had happened in Atlanta or Boise, this was a coordinated military-style attack . . . this was war.

Something else blew up, closer, and flames leapt through the ash to lick at the sky. From the fleeing crowd came cries of pain. Dayson finally moved, sprinting forward to find and aid the injured. But Cabot was already there, evading security, carrying a woman to safety, his cashmere coat and thick lustrous hair streaked with ash and blood. Bodyguards clutched at him, and then dronecams found him. Amid the sickening chaos they all got the picture: the illustrious candidate risking his life, even brushing off security, to save a poor woman in a ragged jacket.

Dayson ran toward Cabot, but security, not recognizing him, shoved him away. He could only watch as Cabot tenderly laid the bleeding woman in the black car. American royalty turned American hero.

There would be no stopping Cabot now.

*   *   *

 

TWENTY-TWO YEARS LATER
1

“The apartment has a ghost,” the apartment-allotting guy said, looking at his shoes, not meeting Kenda’s eyes. “I’m obligated to tell you that.”

Kenda O’Malley nodded. Of course the apartment had ghosts—she already knew that. Everybody knew that all apartments in Denker City had ghosts. That was why the government gave them out for free.

This one, two rooms on the fourth floor in a cement-block building with no elevator, came with a double bed with a stained, bare mattress, a table with four rickety chairs, galley kitchen, dingy bathroom. No climate control, and the August heat brought out the faint smell of mice. Caity looked around, scrunched her little face, and said uncertainly, “Kenda?”

“It will be all right, Caity. I promise.”

“I want to go home. I . . . what’s that?”

A ghost, wispy and white, materialized, drifted past, and vanished. Caity clutched Kenda’s knees. Her little sister, Kenda suddenly realized, had never before seen a ghost. Kenda had, two years ago when she was sixteen. She and Leila had skipped school and taken the bus into Denker City, giggling and jeering, having one of the “fun adventures” that Leila always adored. . . .

She could not think about Leila now. Or ever.

Kenda knelt beside Caity. “It’s a ghost, Caitlins. But it isn’t scary. It’s just . . . just . . .”

The apartment-alloting guy said suddenly, “Listen, miss, are you sure you don’t have any other choice besides living here?”

It wasn’t any of his business. Kenda stood and said coldly, “No. We’ll take the apartment.”

“Then there’s a few things I’m legally obligated to tell you.” He switched on a tiny recorder to a version of his voice: the monotone of somebody reading a script. “Any illegal activity in the dwelling is grounds for immediate eviction. The government reserves the right for authorized drones to enter and inspect the premises without warning, and if such a drone appears at your window, you are obligated to let it in. Your Dole card allows you access each week to the Dole Food Pantry, where you will be given food available up to the amount on your Dole card. If you lose your Dole card or it is stolen, you must go immediately to the Government Center at 45 First Street for a replacement.

“QUESNU will not work anywhere in Denker City, due to the close vicinity of the Joseph P. Denker Upload Center. Because of the UC, you or other residents new to the city may experience flicker vertigo, whether or not you are implanted for QUESNU. The symptoms of flicker vertigo are brief disorientation, nausea, rapid blinking, muscle rigidity. It will last only a few moments. The presence of Upload Center Electrical Leakage Phenomena, commonly called ‘ghosts,’ is not harmful in any way. The ability to see these ghosts varies enormously among individuals; you may never see any at all. However, whether you see them or not, it is my obligation to tell you that the geomagnetic disturbances caused by an Upload Center can slightly change electrical activity in the brain, which is why you see the ghosts. Also, some studies show a linkage between living in an upload city and brain cancer, although other studies dispute this. You are being told this so that you can make an informed decision about staying here.”

An informed decision! Kenda almost laughed in his face, but that would have further upset Caity. There was no other decision she could make. Their mother had died six months ago, and the mysterious income source that had supported them had stopped with her death. Kenda had not been able to pay any bills on their previous apartment, which hadn’t been great, but at least didn’t have ghosts, and did have Leila living down the street. All of it gone, including Leila.

“Do you accept these terms and understand this information?”

“I do,” Kenda said, and then she did laugh, an ugly sound that made Caity’s head jerk up to stare at her. I do sounded to Kenda like the marriage ceremony, and her stupid teenage dream of someday marrying Leila.

“Good. Say your name clearly and put your thumbprint here . . . good. Here’s your Dole card. Don’t lose it.” He switched off the recorder. “One thing more, miss. I said this apartment has ‘a ghost.’ There’s more than one, of course, but every previous resident reported one particularly distinct ghost that hangs around here a lot. I just thought you should know.”

“Is that why the apartment is empty? You said this is the only empty one in this whole bunch of buildings.”

“That’s why. Nobody’s ever been hurt by any ghost, of course, but it spooks some people. Here are your keys—Dole locks don’t use thumbprints.”

After he left, Kenda turned back to Caity. “We’re going to take the bus back now, Caitlins, and bring back as much of our stuff as we can carry. We’ll make two more bus trips, okay?”

“Okay,” Caity said unhappily. She was watching a ghost drift by, a faint wisp before it dissolved in the bedroom doorway.

*   *   *

Kenda, hot and sweaty, stood at the open bedroom window. Across the street a skinny, patchy-furred cat perched on the edge of an overflowing garbage can and rooted around in the contents. A ghost drifted through the cat. Three small boys, whooping and shouting, played some game in the street with a ball and a cardboard box. Leaning out, she could see two bars, a dingy holoplay palace that probably had tech ten years out of date, a 3-D print shop, and two homeless guys stretched out on the sidewalk against a crumbling wall covered with obscene graffiti. One car parked nearby—only one!—and it wasn’t even self-drive.

On the bed, Caity moaned in a restless nap, turned over, and snored softly. What was she experiencing? Was it different from Kenda’s brief experience of what the government guy had called “flicker vertigo”? Maybe. Caity, unlike Kenda, was implanted. Their mother had saved carefully the first twelve years of Kenda’s life. Then she had an “accidental” pregnancy by, presumably, the man she’d been dating, whom Kenda hadn’t liked and who had promptly vanished. Eileen O’Malley was Catholic. She’d had the baby and spent all her savings on an implant for Caity, now that the price had fallen so much. Kenda, twelve, had not been consulted, but wouldn’t have objected if she had been. They both hoped an implant would give Caity, whom Kenda loved from the moment she saw her, a better chance in life.

Not that the hope had come to much so far.

Kenda didn’t want to think about her mother, dead for six months of cancer. Or think about Leila. Or about where Kenda lived now, or what she might have to do if it turned out that she and Caity couldn’t survive here.

She leaned out the window and craned her neck to the left. From the fourth floor, she could see the big gray rectangle of the Joseph P. Denker Upload Center, a flat-roofed building surrounded by some sort of shimmering field. In there were “quantum computers” that held the brain patterns of people who’d been uploaded. Most of them, Kenda had heard, had not been implanted—they were born way before QUESNU.

What was it like inside that big metal super-scientific box full of uploads of people who’d spent their whole fortunes to be there in a virtual world, leaving behind their sick or dying or really depressed or too ugly bodies? Did their world, whatever it was, seem just as real to them as hers did to her? No way to tell; nobody could communicate out of or into a UC, something to do with the UC shield. What was “life” like for them, those very rich people who wanted to live forever—and not here?

She heard gunfire. There were gangs in Denker City, criminals, crazy people. Q didn’t work here, TV and computers and radio didn’t work here, but guns did. Kenda moved away from the window.

*   *   *

 

2

It is starting. No way to tell anyond.

No way to do any¸hing at all.

What hËve I done?

*   *   *

3

State Senator Robert Dayson finished using the urinal in the lavatory of the very ugly Temporary Capitol Building, zipped, and accessed QUESNU. He was alone in the lavatory, which didn’t matter because interactions with the global-spanning Quantum Entangled Spacetime Net Unity took place entirely inside the human skull. Still, he’d rather not be observed on Q just now, especially by his political opponents, fifteen minutes before the most important legislative bill of his life would be introduced.

*QUESNU on,* he subvocalized.

*QUESNU on,* said the voice in his head that he’d known since he could talk. *You have non-priority messages from Hailey Dayson and Claire Lambert.*

Hailey, Dayson’s difficult daughter, would be dutifully sending her weekly, non-informative message from college. Claire, his ex-wife, would be complaining about something, probably Hailey. The messages could wait a few hours until after the legislature’s vote. *View New York State senate chamber.*

The image appeared in his head; the chamber was barely half full. The clerk shuffled papers. Senators chatted or read or sat motionless with the look that Dayson had seen a hundred, a thousand times before on people he knew, on strangers at restaurants, people in offices, people on the street: the half-present, half-distracted look of someone more absorbed in QUESNU than in tangible reality.

The lieutenant governor, looking grumpy, sat ready to preside, since the majority leader was currently under indictment. This was also true of three other senators and five assemblymen. The New York state legislature had one of the country’s longest records in both corruption and delay. Its delegates had been unable to vote “yea” on signing the Declaration of Independence in July 1776 because they had been unable to obtain any instructions from Albany.

Well, at least he’d escaped one last attempt by Nate Canfield to dissuade Dayson from presenting his bill.

The door opened and Nate strode in. “Robert, don’t do it.”

“Nate—”

“It can’t further your political position in any way, and it hasn’t any chance of helping anybody else since it won’t pass.”

Nate was right, of course; he was always right. Dayson’s bill to end imports of cheap overseas implants would tank, and it would dent his career. Dent, but not destroy, which Nate also knew. It was Nate who’d called Dayson’s potential run for governor “practically bulletproof.” Robert was, after all, son to a former vice-president and brother to Cabot Dayson, slain hero, political martyr.

*QUESNU off* “Nate—”

“Soon you’ll announce your candidacy for governor. This is the wrong time, the wrong bill, the wrong reasons.”

“The reason is that data shows these new imports are dangerous to children. A CDC report shows a significantly high correlation between children under seven and brain cancer if those children live within twenty-five miles of a UC and—”

“The FDA approved the new implants. The data you’re referring to is disputed. And these overseas implants cost one-quarter of the ones made here, allowing parents to give their kids the advantages your class enjoys with your QUESNU implant.”

This was more bluntness than Nate, who had come to politics from working-class parents, usually dumped on Dayson. Dayson said, “The FDA rushed testing and approval for reasons you already know.” Corruption at the top, pressure from a laissez-faire government in love with the free market, pressure from public groups convinced that implants gave the rich an inestimable advantage. Which, to be fair, they did.

“Bob, don’t introduce this bill.”

When Nate called him “Bob,” it was a deliberate reminder that Nate had known him as a callow teenage intern, that Nate had far more experience with politics, and that Dayson was not Cabot. Nate had been Cabot’s chief of staff and now was Dayson’s, for the simple reason that Nate was the most effective political operative that Dayson had ever seen, even though Nate was too old to have been implanted. Implants had to be put in children’s skulls before they were six months old.

At least Nate had called him “Bob” and not “Bobby.”

“I have to go,” Dayson said. “They’ll call the vote in just a few minutes. Nate, my first duty is to my constituents. These new implants were manufactured on the cheap, imported the second the patent ran out, and stuck in babies’ heads with who-knows-what long-term consequences. They’re not like the implants that people have lived with for the past four decades.”

It was not in Nate’s nature to give up. “One more thing to consider. People will say—journalists as well as your political rivals—that you’re trying to keep implants from the middle class in order to maintain the dominance of the rich. A lot of people will believe that. People who vote, which those whose children live within twenty miles of a UC do not.”

Dayson stared at him. This was the other side of Nate. Loyal, hard-working, non-corruptible, but with a certain coldness at his heart. Dayson said quietly, “I have to go now.”

Nate said, “Cabot would have known better than to do this, Bobby.”

Only the obvious pain in Nate’s words, on his face, saved Dayson from giving a harsh retort. Cabot had died five years ago in a hail of bullets from a deranged assassin, and Nate still mourned. As did Dayson. It made a bond that Dayson could not break.

He strode into the Senate chamber, spoke the same points he’d just made in the men’s room, and watched his bill defeated fifty-nine to four.

As he left the chamber, an aide rushed up to him. Aides were always rushing up to him since, unlike most people, Dayson did not leave QUESNU on all the time. The young woman said, “Sir, Dr. Malter called and wants you to call him back. He says it’s really urgent.”

Dayson frowned. Sam Malter never thought anything was urgent. Dayson thanked the aide and subvocalized. *QUESNU on.*

*QUESNU on. You have a private, priority one message from Dr. Samuel Malter, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.*

*Recite message.*

*Reciting. “Robert, come here as soon as you can. Something has happened that could change everything.” End of message.*

Dayson frowned. Completely unlike Sam. Change what “everything”? How? But Sam never indulged in hyperbole. There was no one Dayson respected more.

*Order my helio for immediate rooftop takeoff. Tell Nate Canfield to reschedule whatever I have scheduled for this afternoon.*

*Done. * QUESNU subvocalized, and in the single word Dayson heard a completely unintended note of finality.

*   *   *

 

4

“Kenda, make them go away!”

Kenda sat on a rickety chair and pulled Caity onto her lap. “They can’t hurt you, you know. They’re not real.”

“Yes, they are,” Caity said. “I see them. They’re right here. And that one looks so sad!”

“Sad?” All Kenda could see was a wisp of mist, appearing and disappearing like those subatomic particles she’d learned about in science class. “You can’t see any feelings on ghosts’ faces. They don’t have faces.”

“That one does.”

Kenda didn’t argue. Caity had been like this the entire month they’d lived in Denker City, a month of alternating violence and boredom. Twice Kenda had been robbed of her groceries on the short walk between the government food pantry and their building. The second time she’d been pushed to the ground so hard that her arm wouldn’t stop bleeding until she went to the free clinic and waited two hours for a nurse to hastily disinfect and bandage it, Caity scared and sobbing the whole time.

At least Caity had made friends with Janelle Delgado, a little girl on the third floor. Mrs. Delgado—she insisted on the old-fashioned “Mrs.” as if it were somehow a badge of honor—was a hard forty with two kids, a resigned air, and three missing teeth. A lifetime of poverty had not blunted her compassion or generosity. Playing with Janelle in 3H distracted Caity from grief and ghosts.

“Caitlins, today is story day at the library.”

Caity’s face brightened until she said, “There are ghosts there, too. And it smells bad.”

“I know.”

It had been the smell of Denker City, even more than the ghosts and the danger, that had made Leila break up with Kenda. “Oh Christ, Kenny, you can’t move there! Remember when we went that time, how awful it was?”

“I have to.”

“No, you don’t. You told me your mother said—”

“Don’t, Leila. I mean it.”

“You do, do you. First you tell me only part of what she said to you when she was dying, even though you say you love me! And then you want me to visit you in that smelly place, with those creepy ghosts!”

“I didn’t say that. I can visit you here.”

“And what if you brought a ghost back here with you, by mistake? I couldn’t stand it!”

“You know that’s not possible. Ghosts don’t leave Upload Centers.”

“I don’t want to take the chance. You and I were fun, Kenda, but . . . not if you . . . no.”

And Kenda had seen the stubborn selfishness on Leila’s face, and felt the dark panic rising in her own chest and had understood that Leila was dumping her.

Don’t think about Leila. “Do you want to go to story hour or stay here?” At home—their previous and real home—Caity had been able to access Q and have it read stories to her whenever she wanted. Not here.

Caity chewed her bottom lip. Finally she said, “Story hour.”

“Good. Get your library books and your jacket, it’s colder today.”

But at the door, Caity paused. “He doesn’t want me to go.”

“Who?”

“The ghost. That one.” She pointed at a wisp drifting past, no different to Kenda than the others that appeared and disappeared several times a day. “Look how sad he is!”

“Caity, it’s not a ‘he’ and you can’t see any sadness on it. It isn’t sad. It’s just electrical leakage. Like . . . like lightning from the sky.”

“It’s not!” She stamped her foot, and Kenda’s patience snapped.

“If you don’t want to go to story hour, fine. Take off your jacket and mope here all day!”

“Don’t yell at me!” Caity started to cry.

Oh, God, she’d fucked up again. She was terrible at taking care of a little kid. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do for her sister, but she was eighteen years old and their mother was dead and the money had stopped and Leila was a hole in her heart and . . .

No and. This was their life now. Kenda knelt and took Caity in her arms. “I’m sorry, Caitlins. I didn’t mean to yell at you. Let’s go to story hour, okay? It’ll be fun. Maybe that librarian who reads so well will act out a story. And you’ll get some new books!”

“Okay,” Caity said. She hugged Kenda. “But that ghost is still sad. And scared.”

Kenda didn’t answer. The white wisp followed them as far as the door, where it writhed and vanished.

*   *   *

While Caity listened to a talented librarian who should have been a holo actress, Kenda stood patiently in line for her ten minutes at the ancient computer monitored by a watchful guard. She searched the internet for anything new about ghosts near Upload Centers and found nothing.

Of course, any new science might be only on QUESNU, which wasn’t a computer or a program. Kenda had never understood that, although she did remember from school that QUESNU—the Quantum Entangled Spacetime Net Unity—was “woven into” the quantomagnetic fabric of spacetime itself. Squinting at the cloudy computer screen, she read that momentary disturbances in the field around a UC started little electrical currents in human brains, causing people to see so-called ghosts. Even those—

“Time’s up,” the guard said. “Move on.”

“I still have one minute!”

—not implanted could see ghosts, since they didn’t depend on QUESNU. However, newer imported implants, which New York State senator Robert Ethan Dayson seeks to ban, might—

Kenda froze. Senator Dayson.

“Time’s up! Move!”

Kenda yielded her chair to the man behind her, just as children in the reading corner began to scream.

Kenda rushed over. Caity convulsed on the floor, her body spasming and her arms and legs shaking. She uttered strangled sounds: Uh uh uh! Kenda cried, “What happened?”

“I don’t know!” the librarian said. “She just suddenly dropped and started having convulsions! Is she epileptic?”

“No!” Kenda knelt beside Caity and tried to hold her, but Caity flailed too wildly. After another thirty seconds, the spasming weakened. The smell of pee rose on the air. The little girl stilled, opened her eyes, closed them again.

“Caity! Caity!”

No response. A ring of adults and scared children began to jabber. The librarian said, “Take her to the free clinic. It’s around the corner and three blocks over.”

“I know where it is,” a man said. “I’ll carry her.”

“I’ll carry her,” Kenda said. The man might be all right, but why take a chance? She scooped up Caity, who now seemed asleep, or unconscious. Kenda’s heart pounded so fast that for a moment her vision blurred.

She raced to the clinic, a wooden storefront with graffiti-covered plywood over the windows. A boy was painting over the obscenities with thick white paint. Kenda pushed inside, yelling for a doctor. The first room, filled with people and a few ghosts, had nowhere free to sit. When a doctor in dirty blue scrubs appeared, people called out to him: “Doctor!” “Ya taubib!” “Doc, over here!” “Aquí!” A few tried to clutch at his scrubs.

“This way,” he said, leading Kenda and Caity into a tiny room with three beds. Children lay unmoving on two of them. “What happened?”

Kenda told him. He questioned her, beginning with whether Caity had epilepsy or any history of seizures. Caity began to revive and he asked her simpler questions. She seemed confused and began to cry. The doctor finally said, “I’m going to have the nurse do an EKG, but the bottom line is that I don’t know why she had a seizure. If it happens again, have your parents bring her back and I’ll give you some anti-seizure medication, but it may not happen again.”

“That’s it? Aren’t you going to do a . . . a scan of something? What if she has some kind of brain thing?”

“Miss, I don’t have any scanning equipment. This clinic isn’t even government funded. If you have medical insurance” —his tone said he knew that she didn’t— “you can take her to an ER outside of Denker City. But there’s no free medical programs anymore, not even for children. However, 11 percent of people in the United States will have a seizure sometime in their life, and usually it’s only one. Take her home and tell your parents to watch her.”

“But—”

“I’m sorry.”

The nurse came in and spoke urgently to the doctor; he rushed out. The nurse turned to Kenda and said gently, “You need to leave now. I’m sorry. We need this bed.”

*   *   *

Caity slept all the way home; Kenda’s arms ached from carrying her. When Caity finally woke, she seemed normal, although very tired. She had no memory of what had happened, which scared Kenda. It also propelled her to the decision she’d been struggling with for seven months.

“I want to go home,” Caity sobbed.

“We can’t do that. But we can get out of Denker City.”

“How? You said nobody will help us!”

“Yes, somebody will.”

“Who?”

“Robert Dayson.”

“Who’s that? Why will he help?”

“Because,” Kenda said, and took a deep breath to smother fear in oxygen, “I can make him.”

*   *   *

 

5

I might havd a connedtion, no, a—

W˜at is—

*   *   *

 

6

When Dayson’s helio landed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, Sam Malter waited on the roof. Eccentric as always, Malter wore overalls with a white shirt, tie, and yarmulke, his prematurely gray hair blowing in the stiff breeze. They grinned at each other.

“Hey, Sammy Test Tubes.”

“Hey, Robert the Nerdy Wasp.”

Dayson and Malter had been unlikely friends at Yale, despite belonging to completely different social circles. Chess club had brought them together; genuine liking continued the friendship long after either of them had time for chess. They had been best man at each other’s weddings, both of which had ended in heartache. Susan Malter had died four years ago, the same year as Dayson’s divorce. Currently Malter held the RPI research chair for geomagnetism.

Dayson said, “Can we go inside? In case you haven’t noticed, it’s windy up here.” Malter was impervious to atmospheric weather. Only space weather interested him: the varying conditions in the Earth’s magnetosphere due to solar and terrestrial fluctuations.

Malter’s lab was cluttered with machines Dayson could not identify. In the small, fantastically cluttered office—what was a stuffed hummingbird doing here?—he said, “Sam, what’s so urgent?”

“This. No, don’t try to read it, I know you can’t. It’s an isodynamic chart for the Missouri upload city. It uses algorithms to break down complex statistical reports of changes in the local magnetosphere over the last year. I’m sure you already know that shifts in geomagnetism can be caused by so many things: solar flares, tiny shifts in Earth’s magnetic poles, changes in the Earth’s core as caused by at least four—”

“Bottom line, Sam. Please.”

Malter leaned forward and held Dayson’s gaze. “Basically, the study separates variations in the local geomagnetic field attributable to a UC from those caused by solar activity. The field around the St. Louis UC is changing.”

“Changing how?”

“Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? Geomagnetic fields are always subject to change. Even a large metallic object can do it, such as a submarine or hidden vehicle. The military takes great advantage of that. A pulsing field, which the shield around a UC is, has an exponentially larger impact. The shielding has to protect the UC against natural disturbances in Earth’s own geomagnetic field, which is very complex and extends from halfway down the Earth’s core outward to hundreds of thousands of miles into space. The two fields plus space weather all interact, which sometimes sets up feedback loops. If you also consider the way that both UCs and QUESNU are woven into the quantomagnetic field of spacetime, statistically speaking—”

“Not bottom-line enough, Sam. Cut to the chase.”

“The Missouri UC is destabilizing the local geomagnetic field.”

It took Dayson a moment to process this. “You mean destabilizing the field that you just said extends halfway down to the Earth’s core and all the way out to space for hundreds of—”

“Depends on the location, and whether you’re talking about the plasmosphere, the magnetosphere, or the magnetopause. That’s where pressure from the—”

“Sam. Destabilizing how much? How do you know? And with what consequences?”

“All questions we don’t have answers to yet. Earth’s geodynamo still isn’t fully understood, and computer models can only predict so much. There’s a lot of noise in the data. But I think the shifts in the Missouri geomagnetic field are real.”

“All right, then give me some likely consequences.”

“Increased geomagnetic storms, like those caused by big solar flares. That affects the electrical grid, so more power outages. QUESNU acting wonky farther out than the usual twenty miles—that’s one thing we have verified. Around the Missouri UC, Q now stutters—has brief interruptions while transmitting—as far as twenty-six miles out.

“Worst case scenario—and this is really unlikely, Robert, but you did ask—the strain on a UC becomes too much and it blows up.”

“My God!”

“And mine,” Malter said. “But that would need a really rare confluence of circumstances, so don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t—”

“There’s something else you should worry about, though. If QUESNU is stuttering—and that’s new, before now it either worked, or near UCs it didn’t—that means that the small alterations in your neural firing caused by accessing QUESNU—those tiny alterations are also affected. And no, before you ask, nobody knows with what consequences. But—worst-case scenario, again—it might mean that not only those new implants you’re railing against could be dangerous to the human brain, but all implants. Including the ones you and I have.”

“What are you saying? Exactly?”

“Oh for Pete’s sake, it’s a good thing you’re a politician and not a scientist. There is no ‘exactly’ to any of this. It’s brand new, possibly unreliable data, and no one including me is jumping to conclusions about it so we can face TV cameras with strong political statements.”

A moment of silence before Dayson said, “That’s not fair, Sam.”

Malter ran his hand through his unruly hair, strongly enough to knock off his yarmulke. He picked it up off the floor.

“I know it’s unfair. I’m sorry, Robert. But I want you to know that I’m considering having my implant removed.”

Dayson was stunned. “You can’t do that, Sam. You yourself just said that effects on normal implants is only a worst-case and unproven scenario. You need Q for your job. And about 15 percent of implant removals result in death. You must know that!”

“I do know it. I haven’t decided yet if I want to roll the dice with my brain through removing my implant or through keeping it.”

“But—”

“I don’t want to discuss this any more. But there is somebody I want you to talk to. Her name is Dr. Anna Foriss, she’s a researcher in bioelectromagnetism, and she’s heading a research project in Denker City. Before that, she did some outstanding work on eels.”

“Eels? You want me to go talk to an expert on eels?”

Malter smiled. “Electric eels can generate a field outside their bodies that delivers shocks of up to 860 volts. But that’s not what Anna is studying now. Go talk to her.”

*   *   *

On the way back to Albany, Nate Canfield phoned Dayson and left a voice message. “Senator, I went over the recording of your pre-bill speech to the Senate. Don’t say ‘dangerous and unknown potentials.’ If it’s unknown, then nobody knows yet if it’s dangerous, and if we know it’s dangerous, it’s not unknown.”

Good old Nate.

From the helio window, Dayson could just make out Denker City on the horizon. He couldn’t see the Joseph P. Denker Upload Center, the first UC to open its virtual doors, ten years ago. The enormous cost of UC research, testing, and construction had slowed all economic progress for two decades, as both private and public monies were diverted from all other science to these tombs for those buying immortality. The rapidity had been unprecedented. Five years from Denker’s brilliant equations until construction began; another five years until the first nearly dead person had been uploaded. Not even QUESNU had developed faster.

Rumor said that Denker himself was inside. However, not even a New York State senator had access to that information. Upload data was, or at least was supposed to be, as well-guarded as Swiss bank account data. Too many potential lawsuits over which heirs owned or did not own the considerable assets of those who were neither alive nor dead. No communication was possible between whatever existed inside a UC and the outside world—something to do with collapsing the wave.

Dangerous and unknown. Implants, UCs, QUESNU, geomagnetic fields.

Everything.

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Copyright © 2025. Quantum Ghosts by  Nancy Kress