GAIA
Part Two
3
The room was brighter. I saw Shirley seated in a chair, her hands bound behind her back, blood seeping from the corner of her mouth. She cried out when she saw me: "Quinn..."
I started toward her, but a bald man raised a handgun and aimed it at me. "Mr. Quinn, I advise you not to make any sudden moves."
I raised my hands and held still. "Where is my child?"
"Don't worry. We haven't laid a finger on him." The bald man jerked his chin toward the back of the room. "He cried himself to sleep—just went down."
I saw a bed behind him. Milo was lying there, cheeks flushed, eyes closed, his small chest rising and falling rhythmically. I exhaled a long breath of relief.
"So—" a deep voice resonated from a man seated in the center of the room. "Now that your problem is resolved, let's discuss mine." His tone was calm but weighty, carrying an unshakable authority that made me look twice—then I jolted in recognition.
"You're Marcus Webb, Secretary-General of the Awakeners' Alliance Greater China Region?"
"That's right, it's me." He smiled. "I suppose my public profile is higher than I thought—you actually recognized me."
"You're a public figure. You're involved in a kidnapping?"
"Mind your tone!" The bald man brandished his gun. Marcus Webb waved him off. "It doesn't matter. Mr. Quinn, you should know that in Gaia's world, there's no distinction between public and private figures—because every moment of every day, we're all under Gaia's gaze. Neither you nor I can evade it. Though I have to say, you managed quite a clever little bait-and-switch right under our noses." As he spoke, he twirled a metallic flash drive between his fingers.
That was the flash drive Leo had given me—the very one Shirley had grabbed to exchange for Milo when she received the message. But what neither of them knew was that after I'd discovered the drive's secret, I had swapped out the hidden program. This flash drive now contained nothing but the original twenty gigabytes of adult films.
"The program?" Marcus Webb looked up at me.
"You answer my question first." I forced myself to speak with conviction. "What is that malware, exactly? And who is Leo, really?"
"Leo." Marcus Webb smiled, but his expression darkened. "He was a traitor to our Alliance. If not for him, our plan would have been completed long ago."
Leo was an Awakener? I was thunderstruck. Suddenly I remembered the burn scar on Leo's right forearm—he'd said it was a childhood injury. Now it was clear: it was a laser removal scar from an Awakener tattoo.
This threw me into confusion. If Leo was an Awakener, why had he betrayed the Alliance? And why had he given me that flash drive?
"Do you know what that program stored on the drive is meant for?" Marcus Webb asked suddenly.
"I don't know. Some kind of powerful virus, I'd guess—but it didn't seem designed for ordinary computer networks." I was reasoning aloud.
"A keen mind—no wonder Leo befriended you." Marcus Webb gave a light clap. "Mr. Quinn, kidnapping was never my intention—merely a safeguard. I believe you're a reasonable man. From the perspective of all humanity's interests, I trust you'll hand over the program to me."
"All humanity?" I froze—then a wild thought surfaced. "Wait—is the virus meant to destroy Gaia?"
"Guessed right in one." A flash of zealotry blazed in Marcus Webb's eyes. "This is our ultimate weapon against Gaia! At bottom, Gaia is nothing but a virtual program—just a far more vast and intricate one. And if it's a program, it can be destroyed by a virus. That's an unassailable truth!"
"But—" I struggled to wrap my mind around this staggering idea. "Gaia is the world we live in. It's intangible. It doesn't even have a physical access point—"
"Every program needs servers to sustain it, and Gaia is no exception!" Marcus Webb cut me off. "Do you know why Gaia allows people to return to the real world? Because its servers are internal—even if you return to the real world, you can't damage them. Put simply, Gaia placed its servers inside its own world! We've already located the primary server installations: deep in the Sahara Desert, the Mariana Trench, the Bermuda Doldrums... all impossibly remote places. Yes, these servers are intangible to us—invisible and untouchable. But we only need to transcode the malware into an electromagnetic signal and release it as an electromagnetic pulse at any one of these installation sites, and the blow to Gaia would be fatal. It could even... destroy this entire world!" By the end, Marcus Webb's eyes were burning with fanaticism.
I couldn't suppress a gasp. Destroy this world? These people were insane!
"Why?" I demanded. "Maybe Gaia was the consequence of a human-machine war centuries ago, but it's already confessed its existence to all of humanity. People can choose whether to stay or leave. It has no malicious intent—why destroy it?"
"No malicious intent? Gaia's confession is the greatest malice of all!"
My mind went blank.
"Open your eyes and look at this world! Since Gaia confessed its existence, how many people have chosen to return to the real world? Less than one millionth of the total population! Do you know why? Because by confessing—by even granting humanity the freedom to choose—Gaia utterly shattered the human will to resist. If there's no adversary to fight, why suffer in that barren wasteland of a real world? It's a deeply manipulative strategy. If this were The Matrix, with humanity facing annihilation and enslavement, everyone would swallow the red pill without hesitation, like Neo. But Gaia's openness dissolved that resistance instantly, letting everyone continue living contentedly in this endless virtual world. That is Gaia's true purpose!"
"So that's why you want to destroy Gaia?" My voice was trembling.
"Exactly. And even if we can't destroy it, the attack would be enough to force Gaia into open conflict with humanity. In self-preservation, it would have to conduct large-scale purges of potentially hostile humans—which would reawaken the spirit of resistance in the masses."
"Madness. Pure madness." I shook my head, muttering. "But how many families would you destroy? Have you thought about that?"
"Families?" Marcus Webb sneered. "What's worth clinging to in the hollow happiness of a virtual world?"
"If you hate Gaia, if you hate this virtual world, then just choose to wake up! Why take it this far?"
"Nonsense. If we all leave, who will awaken the rest of you? We stay so that more people can wake up!"
And there it was—I finally understood the Awakeners' Alliance's true intent, and why Leo had handed me that pivotal flash drive. His conviction had wavered—which was why he'd had his Awakener tattoo removed. On one hand, to prevent the Alliance's terrorist plan, he'd stolen the drive; and to avoid pursuit, he'd chosen to return to the real world. On the other hand, he couldn't bring himself to simply destroy the drive—he couldn't let Gaia exist either—so he'd given it to me. Perhaps, in some deep, conflicted part of himself, he was hoping for something. If the Alliance found me—well, that was fate. Leo's ambivalence mirrored my own.
"Mr. Quinn, we've talked enough. Time to hand it over." Marcus Webb extended his hand toward me.
"Quinn, don't give it to him!" Shirley suddenly cried out. "If you give it to them, this world is destroyed! Our family, our child—"
"Shut up!" Marcus Webb snatched the gun from the bald man's grip, aimed it at Shirley's chest, and pulled the trigger.
The shot cracked through the basement like a thunderclap. Shirley's heart was pierced clean through. I saw a spray of red—my vision went white.
"NO!!"
The gunshot woke Milo, who began wailing. Marcus Webb trained the muzzle on the child. "Family? It's this illusory happiness that binds you, that chains you from pursuing real freedom. Very well—I've killed your wife. Now I'll kill your son. You have no more reason to refuse me, do you?"
"Don't—don't touch my son!" I roared, tears streaking down my face. "I'll give you what you want. Just don't touch him!"
"Good." Marcus Webb lowered the gun slightly. "Hand it over. If it's the real thing, I'll let you go."
My hands trembling, I pulled another flash drive from my pocket and placed it on the table. "This is what you want..."
"You should have cooperated from the start. But first, we need to verify the goods before we release you." Marcus Webb's gun stayed level. He jerked his chin at one of his men, who took the drive, plugged it into a computer, ran a verification, and confirmed: "It's the genuine article. The virus program, intact."
Marcus Webb gave a cold laugh. "The Awakeners' Alliance keeps its word. You may take your son and leave."