Wakers Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Learning Module 0.1: Pre-Wake Expectations

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  Learning Module 1.0: Think Space

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  Past Wave Regrowth: Business Background

  CHAPTER 6

  Learning Module 12: Central Inspector

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  Learning Module 22: Laws of Control

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  Learning Module A.12: Success Criteria (Private)

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  Free Think: A History

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CODA

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT RON COLLINS

  Wakers

  By Ron Collins

  Other Work by Ron Collins

  Stealing the Sun (6 Books)

  Saga of the God-Touched Mage (8 Books)

  The Knight Deception

  The PEBA Diaries (2 books)

  Picasso’s Cat & Other Stories

  Five Magics

  Follow Ron at:

  http://www.typosphere.com

  Twitter: @roncollins13

  Copyright

  Wakers

  © 2020 Ron Collins

  All rights reserved

  Cover Design by Ron Collins

  © 2020 Ron Collins

  All rights reserved

  Cover Images: © Raggedstonedesign | Dreamstime.com

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All incidents, dialog, and characters are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Skyfox Publishing

  ISBN: 1-946176-22-2

  ISBN-13: 978-1-946176-22-6

  for Lisa, as ultimately they all are

  Learning Module 0.1: Pre-Wake Expectations

  Welcome to Think Space, Mr. Montgomery.

  Do not be afraid. You have not yet been given your full memory, so it is normal to feel anxiety or confusion. It’s like this for all of you.

  Waking happens in self-contained steps, most of which — for you — are now already complete. Your body has been rebuilt using stores of your DNA and is now in the final stages of confirmation. The connection and restart of your neural system is nearly complete.

  We started with operations that control your involuntary functions: breathing, heartbeat, and others. You are operating fully in these categories. We then installed core elements of your personality from source files taken prior to your passing. When those were stable, we initiated activity of the finer tuned neural connections required for voluntary movement — the ability to control fingers and thumbs, for example.

  When you are finally resuscitated, you will be able to raise your arms and lift glasses. Only minimal therapy will be required to ensure you have the nimbleness needed to feed yourself your own dinner.

  Years of optimization philosophy and several cycles of trial and, unfortunately, error have brought us to this design — involuntary function, then personality and voluntary function prior to full memory — because experience with early cases proved that humans who were roused to immediate and full cognition had difficulty assimilating into our society.

  Much has changed, after all.

  Imagine how it would be for a businessman from the early 1800s to arrive fully formed in your own age.

  This is among the reasons for our use of restraints.

  Patient safety is always of the utmost concern, and without your full background installed, some Wakers exhibit violence spawning from their personality cores.

  So do not fear. You are not alone.

  This is also the reason for these Learning Modules, of which I am the first. We are here to help you thrive as we introduce you to this modern society.

  So, relax. Enjoy your recovery.

  It is only a matter of time before you will be back on your feet.

  PROLOGUE

  The thing Bexie Montgomery would remember most about the day he woke up was that the direct newsfeed was running a story about Kinji Hall, and her plan to put soup stands in every fashion shop in the world.

  It was brilliant.

  Women shop. Women get hungry, and when they are shopping for high fashion they want something sensible and chic, like soup.

  Kinji Hall would make a mint.

  She could charge two arms and a leg, and the women would still want more.

  It was absolutely, honest-to-God brilliant.

  The fact of this newsfeed became even more interesting later as Bexie discovered he couldn’t remember anything else about coming awake.

  No sensation of awareness.

  No coming out of a gray fog or hearing a chorus of hallelujahs.

  There was a heart monitor, he thought at one point, though he didn’t know if that was a false memory that came because waking made him think of a hospital room.

  He couldn’t remember the touch of a nurse or the feel of bedsheets on his naked body. Didn’t even recall being concerned about the strangeness of having a voice in his head.

  But he remembered the newsfeed distinctly.

  Wondering who Kinji Hall was.

  Asking himself how much it would cost to steal her away.

  CHAPTER 1

  “Come on, Maine, don’t be weak.”

  He stood at the edge of the formation and stared down into the crystalline blue water below. Stone Canyon was beautiful here. The rock was warm from the midday sun. The sky above him was light blue, but just as deep as the water below. The breeze blew against his bare chest, making him shiver. His toes curled around sharp edges as he glanced at the gathering of kids in the clearing maybe fifteen meters below — at Beatrice in particular, who was dripping wet and made her one-piece look like something out of this world.

  They’d gone out twice before, and already Maine knew he didn’t want to lose her.

  Lionel yelled up. “You gonna jump, man?”

  He smiled. The weight of the riders’ presence weighed in his mind.

  He looked at the water.

  He loved this moment, the anticipation, the feeling that came before the jump.

  He loved the jump itself, too, as terrifying as it might be. He liked the sense of controlling his body as he plunged through space to fall hard into the water. Diving was a science as much as it was an art.

  He liked the preparation.

  He crushed on riding TS, too, of course. Beatrice’s feed especially. It was fun to feel the endorphin rush sizzle as her body rose through the air, and that weightlessness moment at the top. But, while most people said they got the same buzz from a wire as when they did something themselves, Maine Parker had never been one to go along just to get along.

  Maine preferred being the host rather than the rider.

  He spotted the four columns of rock that lay below
the surface to his right, and tracked the shallow sandbar further out in front of him.

  The water was deep enough, but the leap had to be modulated just right. Hitting the sand would be disaster. Too close to the columns was tempting fate.

  He bent his knees, and fear signatures from the riders amped.

  They were going to like this.

  Maine curled his toes, bent further, then launched.

  Spread his arms.

  Felt that moment of zero gravity, then tucked himself into a ball to rotate twice and twist as he came out of the tuck, looking for water, his hands in at first, then reaching.

  The impact was sharp, a rush of white noise, then a muted silvery scrub of the cold water.

  Gorgeous.

  He glided to the bottom and pressed his feet against the silty floor, feeling the soft mud between his toes and the solid chill of deeper water. Opening his eyes, he was surprised to see the rocky column so close.

  He kicked upward and broke the surface.

  The gathering was hooting and hollering.

  “That was sick!”

  “Incredible!”

  “I can’t believe you did that!”

  Lionel Burgess was literally lying on the sandy beach and writhing with put-on ecstasy.

  Maine swam to the shoreline and stepped out of the water, feeling streams chill in the breeze over the warmth of the sun. He smiled, looking at Beatrice.

  “I can do you better,” she said.

  “Oh, really?” Maine said.

  Her smile flashed, and Maine knew she wasn’t lying. “Link in, flyboy.”

  Then she was climbing the vine that lay over the rock, making her way barefoot over the sheer surface, climbing hand over hand like she’d been born to it, her legs driving her upward, her hair trailing in ringlets behind.

  She came to the ridge, then stood, legs planted, arms dangling from lanky shoulders, the sun behind her framing her silhouette as she stood above them, flesh golden-brown against the endless blue of the cloudless sky.

  Maine shaded his eyes.

  What was she going to do?

  Three flips? A twist?

  He jumped into her wire to find her examining the rocks under the surface, felt the loose gravel of the cliff under her feet. She adjusted further right to align with the rocks. The movement made him clench his hands.

  Beatrice was going to thread the columns, dive directly at the rocks, hoping to split the space between them.

  “Come on, Beatrice,” he said over the wire. “Don’t play with that.”

  She laughed. “If there’s one thing you should know about me by now, baby, it’s that I don’t play.”

  “You’ll kill yourself.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  She took a step back, then another.

  Maine felt warm blips as others joined her TS.

  They felt her plan just as he did.

  “Stop it.” Lionel ran toward the rock, his muscles glistening in the sun, sand still clinging to his back as he grabbed the vine to climb.

  Maine watched him, knowing it was useless.

  Beatrice took two steps and jumped.

  He felt the fall, heard the cry of her voice with such clarity and such joy that for just one instant he forgot about the formations that lay below the surface.

  He felt her entry, sensed the angle created by the speed of her run, the leg splayed off-kilter and out of control, the shin that crashed hard into rock, and the body, thin and arched as it sliced a path between two spires, then out into open water where friction finally slowed her pace.

  Arms extended, legs together, chin tucked into his breastbone, he felt her rise, kicking upward.

  As Beatrice broke the surface, Maine let out a breath.

  As she approached the shoreline, he came out of the ride.

  Lionel Burgess dropped from the cliff surface. “You scared me, girl! Don’t you ever do that again.”

  “I thought you were dead,” said Pammy Granier.

  “What did you think?” she said to Maine.

  Their eyes met. She smiled and shook water from her hair.

  Everything about Beatrice Diaz was poetry.

  She was a centimeter or two shorter than him, her eyes dark in the shade of the cliffs, her lips thin.

  He held her by the shoulders.

  “I think that was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Gently, he pulled her toward him.

  She followed without resistance.

  His face dropped toward hers, and she raised her lips to meet his.

  Somewhere behind him his friends hooted and hollered. Lionel attempted to access his wire, but Maine shut it down. Some things were his, and his alone, and while he already knew Beatrice would never belong to anyone in particular, this moment, the heat of her body against his, the softness of her lips, the sense of electricity where her hand touched his shoulder — just like the moment where he saw Beatrice leaping, flying out in midair — was going to remain with him forever.

  Learning Module 1.0: Think Space

  More than a bit of controversy surrounds the origin of the term Think Space — or TS, as many cultures call it.

  Some suggest it came from the original Brain Gang. Others point to Lin Wein, the cosmological philosopher who also drove the movement of social consciousness toward isolationism by presenting the arguments against space exploration that can be summed up in his famous quote: “We are spending thirty percent of our resources to go places where nothing exists.”

  Regardless, Think Space is a split world that occurs within the mind of each entity involved and is, in fact, a network of all individual networks where humans, machines, and artificial constructs each serve as unique nodes.

  It is the fundamental center of human interaction.

  As with most applications of communication theory, it works in three phases: identification, wherein one opens a conversation; contribution, wherein one contributes to that conversation in some meaningful fashion; and confirmation, wherein one receives the result of that input.

  The physical manifestation of TS in human systems is the result of DNA channeling, an encoding process that begins before birth and embeds receivers into each person at the genetic level — creating sensitivity to fluctuations in quantum entanglements, the fractal nature of which allows a node to tune to any channel in free-space, or to develop their own channels over which they can then connect directly to any other node.

  Sharing in this environment can be as complete, or as fragmented, as each participant desires.

  CHAPTER 2

  In darkness, with his heartbeat a dull thump that pounded between his ears, and feeling an edge of raw fear, Bexie Montgomery gasped for air and forced his eyes to open.

  The room was bathed in soft light, tending toward blue. Lying in a still-paralyzed null space of lucid sleep, he deciphered rounded walls. Slits of windows placed high up. The floor, a light tile of some kind.

  The smell was neutral.

  He was warm.

  Anxious people can hear their bodies working, a feminine voice said as the heartbeat faded.

  Angela? Or had the voice been Pritzi?

  Fuck it either way. He wasn’t a goddamned pussy. He’d never been anxious a day in his life.

  And who the hell were Angela or Pritzi, anyway?

  “Seriously,” he said with a thick tongue. “Someone tell me who the hell they think they are?”

  A mechanical system the size of a mini fridge rolled to his bedside, the only sound the hum of its electronics. A ring of pale blue and green lights flashed from a control panel across its surface. Extending an arm, it disconnected cords from Bexie’s bed.

  Everything else was quiet.

  Relaxing, he took in a large breath and blinked. Only then did he notice the sheets lying across his body, or in fact, the bed itself.

  “Where am I?”

  His voice was raw. His throat dry.

  He needed to scratch his nose,
but his arms wouldn’t budge.

  Glancing, he saw his hands were locked down, engulfed by bulbous cuffs of some composite material, white and made of a plasticky rubber, that were attached to rails that ran down each side of the bed.

  They were warm, though, the cuffs, soft and fitted to his hands in ways that were anything but uncomfortable. He could sit here forever if he didn’t have to scratch.

  “How are you feeling, Mr. Montgomery?” the nurse said, stepping into view.

  “Like a trillion bucks,” Bexie replied without knowing why.

  She was female. Young. Probably just out of school — thin, with short, dark hair swept off a smooth face. Her skin was dark, her features at least partially Asian. She wore a uniform that was white and pink, and seemed comfortable.

  The nurse’s lips curled upward in an expression Bexie thought was supposed to be a smile.

  Yes, she was very young.

  “Can I move my hands? I need to scratch my nose.”

  She used an edge of his sheet to do the deed for him.

  A pair of sapphires were embedded into her earlobes — or maybe they were aquamarines. Bexie had never been good with gemology except to note the fact that jewelry made women happy for a while. But he noticed the stones as she leaned over to adjust his pillow because they flared with a series of flashes.

  A line of the stones ran along the back of her skull to disappear under her hairline.

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re in a resuscitation center in Geo-Span Medical Center, Mr. Montgomery. We’re taking care to bring you up properly.”

  “Resuscitation center?” he replied. “Was I dead?”

  Yes, he recalled. For some reason he was supposed to be dead.

  She smiled again.

  A holographic image appeared over the bed. Tables and charts.

  The nurse waved a hand along a stream of color, then toggled a series of buttons.

  “You’re going to feel some movement in your arms and legs,” she said. “It’s a process of autonomous isometric exercises. Good for your new muscles. Keeps things optimal while you’re processing. It means that once you’re ready, you’ll be able to stand up and move right away.”