Chapter 6: // Waymeet
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At issue is not whether the global economy will pass away. It is passing away. Rising populations and debt combined with depletion of freshwater sources and fossil fuel make the status quo untenable. The only question is whether civil society will survive the transition. Can we use the darknet to preserve representative democracy, or will we seek protection from brutal strong-men as the old order begins to fail?
Catherine_7***** / 3,393 17th-level Journalist
“That’ll be fourteen thirty-nine.” Pete Sebeck frowned. “That’s not right.”
He faced a lanky teenager in an ill-fitting franchise smock—one of the innumerable conscripts of the retail world. The kid glanced down at his computer screen and shrugged. “That’s what it is, sir. Fourteen thirty-nine.”
Sebeck leaned in against the counter. “Kid, I got a number two combo, and a number nine combo. What does that add up to?”
The cashier looked down at his computer screen. “Fourteen thirty-nine.”
“Stop looking at the screen and just think for a second.” He pointed at the wall-mounted menu. “How could a number two combo, at three ninety-nine, and a number nine combo, at five ninety-nine, add up to fourteen thirty-nine?”
“Sir, I’m just telling you what it is. If you don’t want them both—”
“Of course I want them both, but you’re not getting rid of me until you do the math.”
“I’m not trying to get rid of you, I’m just telling you that it’s fourteen thirty-nine.” He swiveled the screen so Sebeck could see it.
“It doesn’t matter what—Look, you’ve hit the wrong key or something.”
“You’re forgetting sales tax, sir.”
“No, I’m not forgetting sales tax. It shows sales tax there.” He pointed. “Listen, I want you to use your own mind for a second and think about this. Forget the machine.”
“But—”
“Three ninety-nine plus five ninety-nine is what?”
The kid started looking at the screen again.
“Listen to me! Don’t look at the screen. This is easy. Just round it up to four bucks plus six bucks—that’s ten bucks—then take away two pennies—that’s nine ninety-eight. Right?”
“You’re forgetting sales tax.”
“Kid, what’s five percent sales tax on ten bucks?”
“Sir—”
“Do it for me.”
“I don’t—”
“Do it! Just do it, goddamnit!” His shout echoed in the tiled restaurant.
People in the restaurant suddenly stopped talking and started watching what seemed to be an altercation.
“What is five percent sales tax on ten bucks?”
The kid started tapping at the machine. “I’ll need a manager to clear this.”
“Kid, do you really want machines doing all your thinking for you? Do you really want that?”
A balding assistant manager with a muscular frame emerged from the kitchen door. His name tag read “Howard.” “Is there a problem here?”
“Yeah, Howard, the kid has the price wrong, and I’m trying to get him to do the math.”
“And what did you order?”
“I ordered a number two and a number nine.”
The manager looked at the screen. “Okay, that’s fourteen thirty-nine.”
Howard was lucky Sebeck no longer carried a Taser.
Sebeck returned to the car with a carryout bag and two drinks. Laney Price was still refueling at the sprawling interstate travel center. There were at least twenty pump islands around them, brightly lit. Traffic hissed by on the nearby highway.
Price was using a squeegee to clean bugs off the windshield of the Chrysler 300 the Daemon had assigned them the day before. He seemed to notice the look on Sebeck’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“Humanity is doomed, that’s what’s wrong.”
“Oh.” Price kept cleaning the windshield.
Sebeck tossed the food in the car and took over the refueling. “That was something Sobol knew, wasn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“That people will do whatever a computer screen tells them. I swear to god, you could run the next Holocaust from a fucking fast-food register.” He pantomimed aiming a pistol. “It says I should kill you now.”
“I see we’ve had another unsatisfactory consumer experience.”
“There are times when I miss the badge, Laney. I swear I miss it.”
“Why, so you can intimidate the shit out of teen slackers? Besides, what you’ve got now is something better—a quest icon. You’re like a knight of the realm now.”
“Just get in the car.”
Sebeck almost missed the turnoff. They were heading west on Interstate 40 about an hour outside of Albuquerque when his new Thread abruptly veered onto an exit ramp marked INDIAN SERVICE ROUTE 22. Sebeck was in the middle of taking a sip of bottled water when the turn came up on him, and he had to swerve one-handed from the fast lane onto the exit ramp, cutting across solid white lines just before an abutment.
He glanced over at the sleeping form of Laney Price, who stirred a bit but then settled back to sleep. Sebeck followed the glowing blue line superimposed on reality over a bridge that crossed the highway to arrive at a travel center where trucks and cars were clustered around gas stations, convenience stores, and ever-present fast-food outlets.
There in the middle of a parking lot his new Thread ended in a swirling aura of blue light, above a live human being this time—a woman standing next to a white passenger van. The van was parked in front of a Conoco convenience store.
It was not exactly the destination he’d envisioned—not that he had any clear idea what to expect. Sebeck parked the Chrysler facing forward in a row of cars across from the woman and peered through the freshly bug-spattered windshield at her.
She was a trim American Indian woman in her fifties with long gray hair braided into a plait. She wore jeans, cowboy boots, and a tan button-down shirt with some sort of logo on the breast pocket. She also wore slim, stylish HUD glasses, through which she was gazing directly at Sebeck. She looked like a Santa Fe art gallery owner. Her D-Space call-out marked her as Riley—a fourteenth-level Shaman. Riley’s reputation score was five stars out of five on a base factor of nine hundred three—which, if Sebeck had understood Price’s ramblings over the weeks, meant that she had an average review by nine hundred-plus darknet operatives who’d interacted with her of five stars out of five. She was apparently highly regarded—about what Sebeck didn’t know.
He turned off the engine and glanced over at the sleeping form of Price in the passenger seat. Sebeck pulled the keys from the ignition and stealthily opened the driver’s door. He didn’t feel like having his Daemon-assigned minder along for this conversation, so he placed the keys on the seat and quietly closed the car door behind him, checking that Price was asleep.
Sebeck then walked across the parking lot toward Riley, who regarded him with some curiosity, since he was leaving his companion behind. It was fairly cloudy and rather cool. Sebeck closed his jacket as he approached Riley. Fellow travelers came and went around them.
He took note of the passenger van she stood alongside. It was new and bore a logo for “Enchanted Mesa Spa & Resort”—the same logo printed on her shirt pocket.
When he reached her, the last of the Thread disappeared and a chime sounded—leaving only the soft blue light of a D-Space aura slowly swirling above her head.
Sebeck was unsure how to feel. He spoke without emotion. “I’m supposed to be looking for the Cloud Gate. Is there something you can tell me?”
She extended her hand. “Why don’t we start with hello?”
Sebeck took a deep breath and shook her hand briefly. “Hello. You’re Riley.”
“Shaman of the Two-Rivers faction. And you are the Unnamed One.”
“Yeah, that just about describes it. I hope you have some answers for me.”
“What sort of answers?”
“Like how I can complete my quest? How do I justify the freedom of humanity to the Daemon?”
She frowned. “That’s not visible to me.”
He rubbed his eyes in frustration. “Why do I have to wander all over hell’s half acre to complete this damned quest?”
“It’s the hero’s journey.”
He narrowed his eyes at her.
“Don’t forget: Sobol was an online game designer. In the archetype, a hero must wander lost in the wilderness to find the knowledge necessary for his or her quest. Perhaps that’s what’s happening to you.”
“And I’m supposed to be the hero.”
“It’s your life. You should be the hero of it. If it’s any consolation, I’m the hero of mine, too.”
“Riley, why did the Thread lead me to you?”
“Why me exactly? I don’t know. I suspect it has to do with my skill set and my proximity to you when some system threshold was reached.”
Sebeck nodded to himself. “Yesterday I spoke with Matthew Sobol. He gave me this Thread after our meeting.”
“And yesterday an avatar appeared to me on a deep layer. She was like an angel. A beautiful woman with copper hair and alabaster skin—bathed in light. She said you would come.”
Sebeck ran his hands over his bald head. He thought of Cheryl Lanthrop, the woman who had betrayed him. Copper hair and fair skin. She’d worked for Sobol, and had paid for that with her life. “This is madness.”
“The avatar told me you were on a quest from Mad Emperor, and that you needed to grok the shamanic interface.”
He was lost.
She nodded in understanding. “I’ll put it in layman’s terms: you need to fully learn the darknet and all its powers in order to have any hope of succeeding on your quest.”
“Powers.”
“Data magic, far-sight.”
“And you’re a shaman?”
She smiled. “I know what you’re thinking. There’s no such thing as magic, and restless spirits are wives’ tales. However—”
Sebeck held up his hand. “Yeah. I stand corrected.”
“Good. I chose my darknet profession, and it is shaman. It governs my skill tree and level advancement. Is that more clear?”
He nodded.
“I see that you’re a first-level Fighter. Which makes it all the more puzzling that you’ve been geased by Mad Emperor to complete this quest.”
“Geased? What’s ‘geased’ mean?”
“It’s ancient Gaelic. It means an enchantment that compels you to complete a task. It’s an incredibly powerful spell—far, far above my level.”
“Can I break free of it?”
“Not if you accepted the quest. The only one who can cancel it is the one who gave it to you: Mad Emperor.”
Sebeck recalled sitting in the office of a funeral home, talking with an interactive three-dimensional recording of Sobol. The avatar had asked him: do you accept the task of finding justification for the freedom of humanity? Yes or no? It was an out-of-control voice recognition monster, and Sebeck felt compelled to accept, if only to buy time. If only to protect his family.
“I had no choice.”
“Maybe. But be warned: you must choose your words carefully on the darknet. Words have power in this new age. They are not just sounds. Where ancient people believed in gods and devils that listened to their pleas and curses—in this age immortal entities hear us. Call them bots or spirits; there is no functional difference now. They surround us and through them word-forms become an unlock code that can trigger a blessing or a curse. Mankind created systems whose inter-reactions we could not fully understand, and the spirits we gathered have escaped from them into the land where they walk the earth—or the GPS grid, whichever you prefer. The spirit world overlaps the real one now, and our lives will never be the same.”
Sebeck didn’t know what to say. A couple of years ago he would have called her crazy, but she was right—spirits or bots, it was just semantics. “And what happens if I refuse to proceed?”
“If you stray from your path, the Daemon will compel you to return to it. Of more concern to me is how you could possibly complete your quest while remaining first level.”
“I can’t go up levels?”
“The darknet is arranged like Sobol’s game world. You can only go up levels by completing tasks—or quests. However, the Geas spell prevents you from taking on any other quests until you complete this one. You are stuck at first level until you achieve your goal. And you have quite a goal.” She didn’t appear too optimistic. Riley checked her watch. “We need to get going. You should wake up your factor.”
“Factor?”
She pointed at Price sleeping in the car. “Chunky Monkey.”
“Where are we heading?”
She patted the “Enchanted Mesa Spa & Resort” logo on the side of the van. “You’re with us until you certify with the shamanic interface.”
He glanced back at the car and shrugged. “I’m good to go.” “You’re leaving your factor behind?”
“He’s a spy planted by Sobol.”
She reached up to manipulate unseen objects in a way that Sebeck had seen Price do many times. A few moments later she shook her head. “I don’t see that he’s reporting to anyone. Although, he has been tasked by Mad Emperor to handle the logistics of your quest. Unlike you, he can quit this task at any time and be replaced.” She lowered her hands. “But neither has he given you high marks for cooperation.”
“Leave him.”
She just looked at Sebeck. “And your things?”
“Replaceable. A few changes of clothing, toiletries.”
“If that’s what you want.”
Riley drove the passenger van south into scrublands, past creosote bushes and the occasional piñon tree. They were headed toward distant mesas of tan rock, mottled by the shadows of clouds. Sebeck was glad that the Thread no longer loomed in front of him. His view was unobstructed for the first time in a long while. The only reminder of his quest was when he looked at Riley and saw the subtle aura glowing above her call-out—she was his current goal.
He focused his attention out the window. A surprising amount of grass grew in the lowlands this time of year. It was beautiful.
Sebeck sensed Riley studying him, but for several minutes they drove in silence. She finally spoke. “I know who you are.”
Sebeck didn’t respond.
“You’re that detective—Sergeant Peter Sebeck—the one who was framed for the Daemon hoax.”
Sebeck nodded.
“They put you to death.”
Sebeck nodded somberly again. “If you believe the news.”
“You’ve lost a great deal. Your career. Your reputation. I don’t imagine you’re here voluntarily.”
“No.”
“Did you know Matthew Sobol? Is that why he gave you this quest?”
“Sobol was my primary suspect in a murder case. From the point my name entered the news, I was in the Daemon’s sights. Sobol effectively framed me with a computer program.”
“How did you survive your execution?”
Sebeck shrugged. “Ask Price. He was the one who revived me at the funeral home.”
“You mean Chunky Monkey, the operative back at the travel center?”
Sebeck just gave her a look. “His name is Laney Price. Another misfit the Daemon found somewhere.” He cast a glance at Riley. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
Sebeck decided to change the subject. “Is this your tribe’s land?”
“No. Right now we’re passing through the Acoma reservation. I’m a Laguna Indian. We’ll reach Laguna land in about fifteen minutes. The Navajo nation is north of us—much larger—and the Zunis are to the west.”
Sebeck gazed out the window at the mesas and light green grass bowing in a breeze. “This is beautiful country. I always thought of New Mexico as just sand and rocks.”
“The Spanish word for lake is laguna. That’s how our tribe got its name. Access to water is what attracted Europeans.” She pointed into the distance and a line of tan rock on the horizon. “The Acoma pueblo up on that mesa was first settled in eleven hundred A.D. It’s the oldest continuously occupied community in North America.”
Sebeck was genuinely surprised. “So they didn’t fall along with the Anasazi civilization?”
“You have an interest in Anasazi history?”
“It came up recently in conversation.”
“Well, Acoma rose partly from the collapse of Chacoan society. Some of the survivors resettled here.
“Acoma was attacked in the late fifteen-hundreds by the Spanish. They used cannons and attack dogs to force their way up the stone stairway onto the mesa. They killed all but two hundred and fifty of the twenty-five hundred inhabitants and cut one foot off every male survivor. The children were given to Catholic missionaries, but most of them wound up being sold into slavery. The Spanish then used the pueblo as a base to conquer the rest of the region.”
Sebeck didn’t know what to say.
“That was two centuries before the British colonies in the East declared their independence. We’ve been here a long time.”
“And now you’re a darknet faction leader. Are you some sort of militant?”
She laughed. “You mean, a violent fringe group? No, Sergeant. We’re builders.” A look came over her, and she tapped again at invisible objects on a hidden layer of D-Space. “In fact, you’ll see some of our work on the way.” She was about to say something, but then apparently thought better of it.
“What?”
“If you’re wondering whether I bear a grudge against the Spanish—or the U.S. government for that matter—I don’t. Nursing anger against people long dead is a waste of one’s life. Today if someone wrongs us, we do what anyone else does: we send our lawyers after them.” Riley fixed her gaze on Sebeck. “The Laguna value education highly. It is our rod and staff, as my father used to say.”
“How did a woman your age get involved in the darknet?”
“A woman my age?” She laughed. “Don’t sugarcoat it, Sergeant.”
“I’m just wondering how you—”
“Sobol’s online fantasy game—The Gate.”
He just looked at her.
“Okay, what’s a fifty-two-year-old woman doing playing online games? I found them interesting. The idea of putting on a body like clothing—there was something about it that seemed intriguing. That we might surpass our physical differences and deal with one another as human beings. With no preconceived notions about gender or race.”
“And that’s where the Daemon found you.”
“I did the finding, but it wasn’t the Daemon I found. It was the darknet. The encrypted wireless network Sobol created. Only later did I discover how much blood Sobol shed establishing this network. And yet, I can’t help but wonder, just as evil sometimes arises from good intentions, if good can’t sometimes grow from evil. It’s a distasteful notion, but human history makes me wonder.”
Sebeck gritted his teeth. “I may be on this quest, but that doesn’t mean I agree with Sobol. I accepted it because I had no choice, and I was concerned that unless I did so, he would enslave humanity. Matthew Sobol killed friends of mine. Police and federal officers—people with families.”
She held up a hand. “I’m not defending Sobol, Sergeant. I’m saying that Sobol was willing to be our villain to force necessary change. So that we didn’t have to.”
“Megalomaniacs always justify their actions by saying how necessary it is.”
She gave him a sideways look. After a moment she said, “Do you feel any guilt for what your ancestors did to the Indians?”
Sebeck was taken aback.
“You know, for the genocide that was perpetrated against Native American people by the U.S. government and the settlers?”
“That’s not the same as what Sobol did.”
“Why?”
“Because the theft of tribal lands occurred a hundred and fifty years ago. Things were different then.”
“Statute of limitations, then?” She concentrated on the road then turned an eye back on him. “I’m just making a point. You probably don’t feel guilt because you’re not the one who did it. You bear native people no ill will, and aren’t prejudiced against them.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“But then, we’re not getting the land back either, are we?” A slight smile creased her face.
Sebeck folded his arms. “It could never be sorted out even if we tried. That was a different time, Riley.”
“We’re not all that different from our ancestors, Sergeant. And even though the land Matthew Sobol grabbed was virtual real estate—computer networks—I don’t think anyone’s going to get that back either.”
Sebeck sat in silence for a few moments, watching the road. “He can force me to go on this quest, but I’ll never accept what he’s done.”
“Don’t waste time being angry with the dead. They’ll never give you satisfaction. Whatever punishment Sobol deserved he has either received—or not—already, and nothing you can do will change that. Now, there is only the system he left behind, and he’s given control of that to all of us.”
“I just spoke with Sobol yesterday. He is very much still here.”
She looked him in the eye. “Sobol is dead and gone, Sergeant. His consciousness no longer exists. What you’re dealing with is a recording—a scripted entity that responds to real events. It can’t feel. It can’t think. Sobol is gone.”
Sebeck just turned back to the window, lost in his reflections for several minutes. He thought about how much death the Daemon had caused and how much of his own life irrevocably changed.
Soon they approached a junction with an unpaved road. Riley slowed the van and turned left onto a road marked INDIAN SERVICE ROUTE 49. NO TRESPASSING signs flanked it. Moments later they were roaring down the dirt road, leaving a plume of dust in their wake.
Neither of them spoke for several minutes as the road curved between distant, rocky cliffs with batters of scree at their base. The grasslands and an occasional pond or stream gave the landscape a serene feel.
About fifteen miles later the road gradually curved around a tall promontory of stone—a mesa jutting out like the peninsula of a higher plateau. As they came around it, Sebeck could see the road for miles ahead, running straight toward a towering monolith, a mountain of rock perhaps a thousand feet tall. On the lowlands before it, glittering reflections spread across the landscape. Sebeck could also see signs of human civilization ahead—outbuildings and what looked to be a tall water tower under construction in the distance. Dozens of diminutive D-Space call-outs hovered over the land, their owners invisible at this distance. The valley floor was a vast darknet construction project.
Riley noticed Sebeck’s gaze. “The mirrors are heliostats. Trough mirrors that focus the sun’s energy onto a central tower to generate heat—and thus steam to run a turbine and generate electricity.”
“That whole valley floor?”
“No, no. The heliostats are an intermediary station. They provide on-site power for the real project. Otherwise the spike in energy usage would attract attention.”
They were coming up on a steel gate with a short stretch of fencing on either side to prevent casual drive-arounds. The gate was closed, but Riley wasn’t slowing down. As they got within a hundred yards, it opened automatically, revealing a new stretch of paved roadway beyond. A white SUV labeled SECURITY stood near the gate with two uniformed Indians inside—both had call-outs over their heads.
Riley exchanged waves with them, and there was a slight bump as they passed through the gate and onto pavement. Then the road was smooth—and suddenly quiet.
“The Daemon financed this.” Sebeck turned to her. “Didn’t it?”
“The Daemon’s economy is powered by darknet credits, Sergeant. Imaginary credits are all that money is.”
“But there’s a theft at the heart of it.”
She thought about it and nodded slightly. “Yes, the darknet economy was seeded by real world wealth. Wealth that was questionable in origin to begin with. Here, it’s being invested in people and projects that have begun to return value—not in dollars, but in things of intrinsic human worth. Energy, information, food, shelter.”
“But originally from theft.”
“That could be said of a lot of things that are now admired.”
The van followed a ruler-straight line through a series of ongoing construction projects—stark, windowless buildings, pipes, electrical lines, all of them leading toward the large tank being constructed in the distance, a couple of miles away still. It was enormous. They passed pickup trucks and minibuses moving workers—more than a few with D-Space call-outs above them bearing the mark of the Two-Rivers faction.
“So what’s this ‘real project’ you mentioned—that water tank?”
“It’s not a water tank. It’s a fifty-megawatt power station that will generate enough electricity to supply a hundred thousand homes. What you’re looking at is just the first three hundred feet. When it’s done, it will stand sixteen hundred feet tall and two hundred sixty feet in diameter.”
Sebeck whistled and peered through the windshield.
Riley gestured with one hand, and suddenly a completed, life-sized three-dimensional wire model of the proposed tower sprang into being in D-Space miles from them—rising sixteen hundred feet into the air in glowing spectral lines.
In spite of himself Sebeck smiled and turned toward Riley. “That’s incredible.” He looked back at the tower as parts of it began to animate, showing red arrows representing wind currents flowing in at the base and up through the tower’s shaft and out the top.
Riley aimed her finger, and a glowing pointer that must have been thirty feet across appeared miles away in the fabric of D-Space. She pointed at the heliostat array closer to them. “The problem with parabolic mirror stations is that they don’t produce much energy on cloudy days, and none at night.”
Her massive pointer moved to the base of the 3-D tower model, only a fifth of which was completed in reality. A sloping base surrounded the wire model as though it were a trumpet placed horn-down in the soil. “This design uses a transparent canopy to superheat air with solar radiation—energy that gets through cloud cover. The canopy is eight feet off the ground at the perimeter and slopes up to sixty feet above ground where it connects to the tower base. As the air heats, it rises, creating a wind that proceeds up the tower—which is lined with wind turbines.”
“So it creates its own wind.”
She nodded. “Even at night.” She pointed at what looked to be rectangular cisterns arrayed at intervals around the perimeter of the canopy. “Covered saltwater ponds gather heat energy during the day and release it at night—continuing the wind cycle.”
Sebeck didn’t know what to think. There was no dismissing the scale and ambition of this—but what was it for? “Why do you need so much electrical power?”
“To transform our environment. To power equipment, micro-manufacturing plants, chemical and material reactions. This tower—and other solar installations—will provide clean, sustainable energy and freshwater from the elemental building blocks of matter.”
Sebeck gave her a doubtful look.
She laughed. “It’s not my design, Sergeant. I’m not an engineer. What I do here is work with people—helping to define goals and needs of the community.”
“Seriously. How do you know this is not complete bullshit?”
“The design has existed for decades. The technology has been proven. My technical familiarity comes from dealing with the darknet engineers and architects handling the construction. I make it a point to understand, so I can convey the information to our people. This is a big deal for us.”
“No doubt. But, Riley, if this was economically feasible, don’t you think everyone would be doing it? Besides, I thought the Laguna nation already had water.”
“At present, yes, but darknet communities are founded on long-term thinking. In coming decades we anticipate water stress due to climate change and depleted aquifers. Sustainable water independence increases our darknet resilience score.”
He gazed upon all the construction. “But doing all this to irrigate fields can’t be anything close to cost-effective.”
“Water isn’t the product, Sergeant. Water is the waste.” In D-Space she pointed to highlight a line of small buildings being constructed down a road leading off to their right. “Those will be reverse-hydrolysis fuel cell stations. They’ll consume hydrogen to produce heat and electricity—leaving behind freshwater as the only waste product. We can produce a third of a liter of freshwater with every kilowatt-hour of electricity produced from hydrogen.”
“But where in the hell do you get hydrogen?”
She aimed her pointer at the surrounding valley walls. “From the crystalline structures of igneous rock. This whole region has vast quantities of it. Millions of years ago this volcanic rock picked up water vapor when it crystallized from magma. That means it contains molecular hydrogen. When crushed into a powder, it seeps hydrogen at room temperature through its fracture surfaces for hundreds of hours—no liquid water required. We use some of the electrical energy from the power tower to crush this rock”—her pointer moved onto the lofty power tower—“and the rock removal helps to create energy-efficient shelter in the cliff-faces—much like our ancestors had. But that’s just one aspect of the project. We’ll also use solar energy to reverse combustion.”
On his confused look, she moved the pointer. “Here . . .” The dot touched on a series of virtual buildings around the base of the virtual tower. “These CR5 units will use solar power to chemically reenergize carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen. It’s done by heating cobalt ferrite rings with a solar furnace. At high temperature the rings release oxygen. When they’re rotated back into the presence of carbon dioxide, the cobalt ferrite snatches oxygen from the CO2 as it cools, leaving behind carbon monoxide—which, when we combine it with our hydrogen source, can be used to synthesize liquid hydrocarbon fuels such as methanol. Methanol is portable energy that’s easy to work with, transport, and store. The hydrocarbons can also produce polymers for plastics and other products. Likewise, it sequesters carbon out of the atmosphere—making it carbon negative. It just requires energy, Sergeant—and solar energy is something my people have plenty of.”
Sebeck was speechless.
“What did you think we were building out here, a casino?”
“But what you’re describing—creating water and pulling liquid fuel out of the air—”
“The sun is what made life on Earth possible to begin with. Oil is just ancient solar energy stored in hydrocarbons. The CR5 technology was developed nearby in Sandia National Labs. It stands for ‘Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperators.’ The details are available to anyone on the darknet, if you’re really interested.”
He was still shaking his head. “Then why isn’t this being done everywhere?”
She turned off her D-Space layer and the lofty tower and virtual buildings disappeared. “Many things are possible, Sergeant, but not economically feasible. Of course, that all depends on how you calculate costs. Darknet communities factor in loss of economic independence as a cost. They factor in the cost of forcibly defending distant energy resources. They also factor in lack of sustainability and disposal of pollutants. That more than balances the equation. With this facility we’ll use solar energy as the foundation of a long-term, sustainable, energy-positive holon. And that’s the goal.”
“A holon.”
“Holons are the geographic structure of the darknet. Any darknet community lies at the center of an economic radius of one hundred miles for its key inputs and outputs—food, energy, health care, and building materials. Balancing inputs and outputs within that circle is the goal. A local economy that’s as self-sufficient as possible while still being part of a cultural whole—a holon—thus creating a resilient civilization that has no central points of failure. And which through its very structure promotes democracy. That’s what we’re doing here, Sergeant.”
They were coming up on the tower now. Scores of workers were scurrying over scaffolding while cranes lifted loads to upper levels.
Sebeck hardly knew what to say. It was as though he’d been transported to a different century. He was embarrassed to admit he had been half expecting to find a casino out here. He spent the remainder of the ride just staring at the construction under way.
A few minutes later they approached the face of the towering rock he’d seen from afar. Set into the cliffs were what looked like twenty-first-century cliff dwellings, with warm lights and tall glass windows. There were several dozen electric vehicles parked at the base of the rock, around a broad door that bore only a D-Space sign: TWO-RIVERS HALL. People of many races were walking in and out of the doorway, all with D-Space call-outs and all apparently busy. Too busy to note the arrival of a first-level newb—even with a quest icon.
Riley pulled the van up to the door. “We’ll get you settled in a room, Sergeant, and tomorrow we’ll start your training on the shamanic interface.” She got out of the van, and then turned around to lean through the window. “Oh, and welcome to Enchanted Mesa Spa and Resort.”