GAIA
Part Three
I saw a bed in the back. Milo was lying on it, face flushed, eyes half-closed, chest rising and falling. I finally exhaled, relief flooding through me.
"So, your problem is resolved. Now let's discuss mine," said the man sitting in the center of the room. His voice was flat, yet it carried a deep, commanding weight that made me look twice—a second glance that turned into a shock.
"You're Marcus Webb, Secretary-General of the Awakeners' Alliance Greater China Division?!"
"That's right. Looks like my media presence is decent—you actually recognized me."
"You're a public figure, and you're involved in this kidnapping?"
"Watch your tone!" The bald man waved his gun. But Marcus Webb simply raised his hand. "It's fine... Mr. Chen, you should know that in the Gaia world, there's no distinction between public and private figures. Because at every moment, we are all under Gaia's surveillance—neither you nor I can escape it. But I have to say, you pulled quite the bait-and-switch right under our noses." He toyed with a metallic USB drive as he spoke.
That was the USB drive Liu Yang had left me—the same one Shirley had rushed to trade for Milo. But what none of them knew was that after I discovered the drive's secret, I'd swapped the actual malicious program for twenty gigabytes of nothing but movies.
"The program?" Marcus Webb looked up at me.
"Answer my question first," I gathered the courage to say. "What exactly is this malicious program? And who is Liu Yang, really?"
"Liu Yang..." Marcus Webb's expression darkened. "He was a traitor to our Alliance. Without him, our plan would have been completed long ago!"
Liu Yang was an Awakener? I was stunned. I suddenly remembered the burn scar on Liu Yang's right forearm—he'd claimed it was from a childhood accident. Now I realized it was the mark left by laser removal of an Awakener tattoo.
This confused me further. If Liu Yang was an Awakener, why had he betrayed the Alliance? And why had he left the USB drive with me?
"Do you know what the program stored on this drive is meant for?" Marcus Webb suddenly asked.
"I don't know. But I'd guess it's some kind of extremely powerful virus—though it doesn't seem designed for ordinary computers," I speculated.
"A man of talent. No wonder Liu Yang became your friend." Marcus Webb lightly clapped his hands. "Mr. Chen, kidnapping wasn't my original intention—it was merely a safeguard. I believe you're a reasonable person. From the perspective of all humanity's interests, I trust you'll hand the program over to me."
"All humanity?" I was taken aback. Then a wild thought struck me. "Is this virus... meant to destroy Gaia?!"
"You guessed it!" A sharp gleam flashed in Marcus Webb's eyes. "This is our ultimate weapon against Gaia! Think about it—Gaia is nothing but a virtual program, just vastly larger and more complex. If it's a program, it can be destroyed by a virus. That's an unbreakable truth!"
"But..." I struggled to grasp the enormity of it. "Gaia IS our world. It's intangible—it doesn't even have a single access point—"
"Every program needs servers to sustain it, and Gaia is no exception!" Marcus Webb cut me off. "Do you know why Gaia lets people return to the real world without worry? Because its servers are internal—built inside its own world. Even returning to reality can't harm them. But we've located those massive servers: deep in the Sahara Desert, in the Mariana Trench, in the Bermuda Triangle doldrums... all places humans never reach. These servers are invisible to us—we can't see or touch them. But if we convert the malicious virus into electromagnetic signals and release them as an EMP at any of those server locations, it would deliver a fatal blow to Gaia. Perhaps... even destroy this entire world!" By the end, Marcus Webb's eyes were blazing.
I couldn't help drawing a sharp breath. Destroy the world? These people were insane!
"But why?" I asked. "Gaia's creation might have been the outcome of a human-machine war centuries ago, but Gaia has since confessed its existence to all of humanity and lets anyone choose whether to stay or leave. It has no malicious intent. Why destroy it?"
"No malicious intent? Gaia's confession IS the greatest malice!"
My mind blanked.
"Open your eyes and look at this world!" Marcus Webb continued. "Since Gaia came clean about what it is, how many people have chosen to return to reality? Less than one in a million of the total population! Do you know why? Because Gaia gave people the freedom to choose—and that freedom utterly crushed their will to survive. If there's no enemy to fight, why endure the desolation of the real world? It's an outrageously clever manipulation. If this were like The Matrix—if humans faced extinction and enslavement—everyone would take the red pill, just like Neo. But Gaia's transparency dissolved that rebellion without firing a shot. It keeps people living contentedly in an endless virtual world. THAT is Gaia's true agenda!"
"So you're going to destroy Gaia?" My voice trembled.
"Even if we can't destroy it, the attack would force Gaia into conflict with humanity. Instinctively, it would purge anyone it sees as a potential threat. That would reignite the spirit of rebellion in people."
"Crazy. This is insane..." I shook my head. "But how many families would you destroy? Have you thought about that?"
"Families?" Marcus Webb scoffed. "The happiness people cling to inside a virtual world—it's not worth preserving!"
"If you hate Gaia so much, if you hate this virtual world, just choose to wake up! Why take it this far?"
"Don't be stupid! If we all left, who would wake the rest of you up? We stay behind to awaken more people!"
So that was it. I finally understood the Awakeners' Alliance's true purpose—and why Liu Yang had given me that vital USB drive. His faith had been shaky; that's why he'd erased his Awakener mark. On one hand, he wanted to stop the Alliance's terrorist plan, so he stole the drive and returned to the real world to evade them. On the other hand, he couldn't bring himself to accept Gaia's existence either—so rather than destroying the drive, he'd given it to me. Perhaps somewhere deep down, he was waiting to see what would happen. If the Alliance found me, that was fate.
"Mr. Chen, 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 do, this world will be destroyed! Our family, our child—"
"Shut up!" Marcus Webb snatched the gun from the bald man's hand and shot Shirley point-blank in the chest.
Bang.
The bullet went through her heart. My vision went red. "NO!!"
The gunshot woke Milo. He started crying. Marcus Webb pointed the gun at my son. "Family? It's exactly this illusory happiness that chains you down and kills your desire for freedom. Fine—I've killed your wife, now I'll kill your child. Then you'll have no reason to refuse me, will you?"
"Don't! Don't touch my child!" I screamed, tears pouring down my face. "I'll give you what you want! Just don't hurt him!"
"Good." Marcus Webb extended his hand. "Hand it over. If the goods check out, you can leave."
Trembling, I pulled out another USB 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 contents before letting you go." Marcus Webb kept the gun trained on me and nodded to one of his men. The man took the drive, plugged it into a computer, and checked the files. "It's the real thing, boss. The virus program, intact and unmodified."
"Good." Marcus Webb sneered. "The Awakeners' Alliance keeps its word. You can take your son and leave."
—
I carried Milo out of 16 Yunting Street and ran as fast as I could toward the city's Transport Portal.
I couldn't stay here. Every additional minute was another minute of danger. The virus program I'd given them—I'd already tampered with it, embedding a self-destruct code. If they ran the program for more than three minutes, it would delete itself. I was sure this was what Shirley would have wanted. She wouldn't have wanted to see everything destroyed.
If the Alliance discovered the sabotage, they'd never stop hunting me or Milo. We had to leave this world as fast as possible.
At the Transport Portal, at the moment of parting, I held Milo against my chest, tears streaming down my face. "Milo, when you wake up, you have to remember—your mommy's name was Shirley. Your daddy's name is Quinn. No matter what happens, you have to survive. You have to live. No matter how many years it takes—daddy will find you again. Do you understand?"
"I understand." Milo looked at me with bright, clear eyes and nodded earnestly.
I closed my eyes, kissed his cheek, and then—biting down hard—I stepped through the Transport Portal with him in my arms.
Twenty Years Later.
Surviving in that desolate, ruined world was nothing like what anyone had imagined. The radiation from the nuclear wars had long since dissipated, and the environment wasn't humanity's greatest enemy anymore. But civilization depends on population—and the number of people who chose to awaken from Gaia was barely enough to sustain a semi-industrial society.
Still, the embers of knowledge had been rekindled. A deep commitment to fair social contracts had taken root in people's consciousness. Little by little, human civilization was recovering. Humanity had even organized a global "World Reunion Committee" to help scattered survivors find each other.
I awakened in the far south of what had once been China. Following word of the Committee, I migrated and trudged across the continent until I reached the old Chinese heartland—by then, I was a man entering his twilight years, my hair thin and grey.
But those years of struggle had not been in vain. The World Reunion Committee contacted me once more: they'd found my son. A meeting could be arranged.
In the family reunion room, I looked at the handsome young man sitting across from me, desperately searching my memory for a face to match.
"Do you remember what your childhood nickname was?" I asked.
"I do. Milo."
My hands trembled. "What were your parents' names?"
"Mom is Shirley. Dad is Quinn."
My vision blurred instantly. My legs gave out, and I started to fall—Milo caught me, holding me tight, the way I used to hold him.
"Dad, it's been twenty years... I finally found you. I'm going to take you away from here," Milo said, his voice thick with emotion.
"Away from here?"
"The double-slit interference experiment with light—have you heard of it? When no one is observing, light exhibits wave properties. But when someone carefully observes how light passes through two slits, it exhibits particle properties. That's a way of conserving system resources. Dad, do you know what that implies?"
A jolt ran through my body. I slowly lowered my head and followed his strong arm with my eyes—there, tattooed on his forearm, was an open eye.