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  “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.”

  Chapter 7: // Shamanic Interface

  Sebeck sat in the Mesa dining hall reading the local paper when he felt the table bump. He lowered his paper to see Laney Price sitting across from him with a tray loaded down with scrambled eggs, bacon, pastries, and pancakes. Price wore a crisp black T-shirt bearing the slogan “I’m undermining civilization. Ask me how” in bold white letters. He was already digging into his breakfast.

  Sebeck folded the paper, and sipped his coffee. “So they let you in?”

  “You’re a dick. You know that?” Price didn’t look at him, but instead busied himself reading something in D-Space.

>   “I needed to talk to Riley alone.”

  “So you ditched me in a truck stop. No, that’s fine. Never mind that I had virtually nothing to do with your identity death, and that I resuscitated you after your near execution—for which I never received so much as a thank-you. No, it’s fine. It’s no wonder the Daemon could make a bad guy out of you. You know why? Because you’re a bad guy.” Price ripped off a piece of toast with his teeth and resumed reading in virtual space.

  Sebeck didn’t feel like arguing, but then again, he didn’t feel like reading anymore either. He tossed the paper aside. It was a tribal rag that dealt more with school announcements and local council news. There was little mention of the vast construction project outside the window.

  He turned to look out the tall bank of windows along the outside wall. The entire facility appeared to have been carved out of the solid rock face—and the crushed rock used to generate hydrogen, no doubt. The dining room had a broad view of the valley floor, and the extensive construction under way there.

  Just then he saw Riley approaching through the dining hall. Many people smiled and waved as they saw her, and she paused at several tables to exchange pleasantries. But she walked inexorably toward Sebeck. He wondered how she knew where to find him, but then he realized he could probably be pinpointed easily in the fabric of D-Space.

  Riley was dressed like the day before. As she stepped up to the table, she didn’t smile or greet Sebeck. “Are you ready? It’s seven thirty, and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

  Sebeck gestured to Price. “Riley, this is Price. Price this is—”

  She interrupted him. “We’ve already met, Sergeant.”

  Price nodded as he kept eating. “She heard my tale of woe.”