Physics is obsessed with discovering how things interact, so we can extrapolate what was and what will be. It’s easier to determine what is possible. If it’s possible, it is.

Apex

3 Days Later - Ty - Beach House

“You’re healing nicely.” says the Doctor. “Go easy. But you should be able to get around now. I’ll check back in a few days.” He smiles. “In the meantime keep your head down.”

Felicia thanks him and sees the old fellow on his way. She returns and gently gets into bed next to me.

“Was that a mob doctor?”

“No, just a retired doctor who’s seen too many movies.” says Felicia. “That said, I will kill him if he rats you out. Maybe he is a mob doctor.”

I laugh. Ow. I should not laugh.

I’m convalescing with my beautiful girlfriend in a beautiful beach house. I’m not in a hospital, because apparently I’m a wanted man. I guess I saved the city, but I also committed war crimes and scared the shit out of everybody.

Fair enough.

The guy behind the attack is in custody. Jeremy Powers. The Uber Incel. Fucker was trying to kill young women. He did not. There’s a lot of folks with bad burns and shrapnel wounds, but there were no deaths from the attack. The Guild stopped him - though his general incompetence helped.

He had a huge amount of drones, with excessive firepower, but they were too stupid. They had no hunting strategies, and relied heavily on the idea that their victims would scream and die. They did not. Some hid, and some beat the drones out of the air, but there weren't a lot of helpless screamers.

Tommy was disgusted. “I could have killed more people with a butter knife.” he said. “Shit concept. Sloppy execution. When I go crazy, everybody’s gonna die.”

Felicia fusses over me, then leaves to do her Felicia business. I’m cozy and happy and spent. I feel like a nap. Why not?

When I awake, I call Ultra. “How much shit am I in?”

“Considerable.” says Ultra. “In the city, you’re a hero. For the rest of the country, not so much. That was an unsettling display of power. Uber Incel showed that some randos want to kill everybody. You proved some can.

“The establishment wants you taken into custody, and for once, there's widespread support from the people.”

“Great.” I mutter. “Now we're the ones thwarting the will of the people.”

“It's a funny world.” agrees Ultra. “Also, it's not just you they're after. They're coming for the whole Guild.

“There's widespread demand to ban drones and micro manufacturing. The Guild may accept that, even though it would shitcan our Healthcare and anti-aging plans.

“But, the establishment is using this opportunity to ban the private use of symbionts. They want to take us completely off the board. The Guild won't stand for that. They've gotten too comfortable with their new lives. They’ve been meeting to plan our next steps.”

“Are they meeting now?” Ultra nods. “Patch me in.”

I’m transported to a bubbling spring on an icy cliff. A large group of fantasy creatures are bobbing in the hot water. They stare at me.

“Sorry, guys.”

They laugh and cheer and jeer.

“What are you sorry about? All you did was save everybody.” says Awesome. “Uber Incel is the reason they're coming after us.”

“Their excuse for coming after us.” says Awful. “They were going to anyway.”

“What are we going to do?” I ask.

“Well, we’re not getting rid of our symbionts. That’s been decided.” says Awesome. “That makes us criminals. Double criminals, since we were already making drugs.”

“Maybe triple criminals.” adds Awful. “Some of us have personal lives.”

“True. Also, there’s the thermite.” Awesome smokes. “Anyway, we’re criminals. The police want to arrest us, but it’s not that easy. First of all, they don’t know who we are. Maybe they’re here, attending this very meeting. They would know our plans, and the identity of our symbionts, but that doesn’t translate easily to our real life identities.

“But let’s say they did find us. Some of us have bought 3D printers, or drug precursors. Some of us posted pics of our symbionts on Instagram. Some of us have been openly using our symbionts in public. There are trails to our identities, if they’re determined enough.

“What then? Normally, they’d find us at work, or at home, or in our car. But we switch all that stuff every couple days. Our lives are hopelessly scrambled, and do not resemble any official paperwork the police may have. Hell, even my known associates have changed.

“So, what can they do? Go to my old house, and detain whoever’s there under suspicion of being with the Guild? On what evidence? My symbiont can easily erase all traces of himself from my phone. I can say I was a member of the Guild, but quit when it became illegal. Or, I can say fuck you, get a warrant. We have outstanding lawyers.”

“What about the 3D printers?” I ask.

“What about them? We’ve only got 6000 printers. There’s 150 million buildings in the country. Are they going to get random search warrants with a 0.004 percent chance of success? Even if they hire Judge Whack-A-Mole, they don’t have the manpower to find the printers. Not with us moving them around.

“So yeah, we’re criminals, but how are they going to catch us?”

“The NSA.” I say. “Project Pegasus. Psychometrics. A fleet of facial recognition drones.”

“Ha-Ha!” laughs Awful. “Good list. It’s the same one we made 3 days ago. Want to hear how we’re handling it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Good answer. Some of our solutions are troubling.” says Awful. “We may be Class 5 criminals now.”

“I think we’re Class 9.” says Awesome.

“Who cares?” says Awful. “Okay, the NSA can listen to our phone calls, read our email, our texts, our Facebook pages. No problem, I don’t use any of that shit anymore. All communications go through my symbiont and it’s encrypted to fuck.

“Project Pegasus is trickier. Pegasus spyware allows the NSA to covertly turn on any mic or camera in the world. So, they can have agents at our meetings, while our TV’s listen to us at home. Match up the symbiont with the stoner, and they’ve got our identities, our locations, and evidence of our crimes. Illegally obtained evidence, but that won’t matter.”

“They’ll plant conventional evidence when they pick us up.” adds Awesome.

“We discussed technical solutions to Pegasus, but it’s daunting.” says Awful. “There’s a lot of software out there. Checking it all for spyware would be fucking hard. It’d be easier to throw it all out and start over.

“But then, what if we knew exactly how Pegasus worked? It's made by a private company. So, we contacted them, and bought it."

"You bought a copy of Project Pegasus?" I'm astounded.

"No, that would be illegal." says Awful. "Private citizens aren't allowed to deploy spyware. We bought the company."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I was astounded too early.

"No law against buying an Israeli Spyware firm." Awful shurgs. "While we were at it, we bought the company that makes credit score algorithms. We all have excellent credit now. Then we took out five billion in loans and basically bought congress. Long story short, symbionts aren’t illegal anymore, and you’re getting the key to the city.”

I clutch my brow. “So, we were trying to hide one guy, and we ended up taking over the country?”

“It was all so easy. We couldn’t help ourselves.” says Awful.

“This is some seriously illegal shit.”

“Well, we make the laws now, so…” she shrugs.

Silence.

“Was this the fucking plan?” I ask.

“No.” states Ultimate. “We discussed it and decided it was too risky. But while we were developing a safer plan, some yahoos went ahead and did it anyway.”

“We have an early adopter problem.” Mad says apologetically. “Pretty much every idea we have, somebody fucking tries.”

“Also, we don’t own Congress.” continues Ultimate. “We paid them off to tank one law, and cancel one arrest warrant.”

“Aw, we can buy more legislation.” says Dire. “We’ve got a price list somewhere.”

“Congress gave us a price list?” I ask.

“Kinda.” says Awful. “We intuited it from careful observation.”

“Careful observation… Aw man, we’re spying on Congress. Is that a good idea?”

“No.” answers Awesome. “But we own a spyware company and have an early adopter problem, so it was kind of inevitable.”

Silence.

“How much would it cost to ban fossil fuels?” I can't help myself.

“Lots.” says Dire. “It’s cheaper than fixing racism, but it’s still way more than we have.”

“So, we’re spying on them, and they’re spying on us?” I ask.

“Yep! It’s cool. Confusing, but cool.” says Awesome. “We’re learning all kinds of stuff. Like, there’s no plans for a fleet of facial recognition drones. They’re tracking us with WiFi routers. They’re sensitive enough to detect our heartbeats. Apparently, we all have distinctive heartbeats. More reliable than facial recognition.”

“And cheaper. And sneakier. A more professional operation all around.” says Awful. “We bought the company that developed it. Oh. That made you sad. I can tell, because we’re monitoring your heartbeat.”

“Also, the government has a list of enemies, and we were on it before we even got symbionts.” snarls Dire. “They were using psychometrics on our online history. We were profiled as Potentially Seditious!”

Mad shrugs. “They were right.”

“They were accurate!” snaps Dire. “Not right!”

I rub my head. “Oh Jesus…”

“Yeah.” says Dire. “Now we got a list of enemies. We know what’s up.”

“Who are we?” I ask.

“That’s the question that continually haunts us.” ponders Zenith. “For all our spying, we still haven’t found Overmind Industries. Neither has the government. I’ve never met any of you. All I’ve done is talk to an app on my phone. For all I know, none of this has happened, and my symbiont is just placating me with sweet delusions.”

“That’s an interesting idea.” says Awesome. “Could we weaponize it? Trap our enemies in a delusion where they think they’re winning?”

“Operation Lotus Eater.” Awful nods. “I’ll look into it.”

“Maybe we should buy Fox News.” chirps Notably.

Zenith rubs his head. “I could still be in the mind melter.”

“This is fun talk, but tell him today’s problem.” says the Broken Knight.

“Oh yeah,” says Mad. “When we made our enemies list we took a look at everybody. There’s at least five groups that drastically changed their behavior when they got symbionts. We got other players in the game. That’s cool. But, one group is clearly genocidal. And, another is an apocalypse cult.”

“Jesus Christ.” I look at the data. “What are we going to do about this?”

“The real question is - What are we already doing?” Mad smiles sheepishly. “We have an early adopter problem.”

I shake my head. Puzzle over the spy data. It’s obviously bad news, but it’s also confusing. “What exactly am I looking at?”

“There’s a group of 200,000 white supremacists operating with a single shared symbiont called Supreme.” says Ultimate.

“Yuck.” spits Ultra. “I hate that guy.”

“They have a seven step plan.” says Ultimate. “Basically, it’s:

Get more followers. Infiltrate the government. Steal a nuke. Control a city, state, or island and make it whites only. Start a race war. Bring back slavery. Create a plague that kills all non-whites.”

“Jesus.” I swear. “Lot of moving parts to that plan.”

“It’s chaotic.” says Ultimate. “Symbionts can’t seem to make racists smarter. Stupid goals lead to stupid plans.”

“Yeah. Like, why not skip to Step 7? It makes the other steps redundant.” says Mad. “Also, you can’t make a plague that only kills black people. It’d be easier to make a plague that kills everybody, and vaccinate the loyal whites beforehand.”

“Hush you. You’re not helping.” I turn to Ultimate. “Are they making progress? Is this working?”

“Steps 1 and 2 are going pretty good.”

I sigh. “Of course they are.”

“The other group is smaller, but worse.” says Ultimate. “A 10,000 member death cult we call Rapture. They want to kill everybody, including themselves. Usually for religious reasons, but some of them are just assholes. They have a 1 step plan - Kill all insects.”

“That’s an oblique move.” I say.

“It’s brilliant.” Mad says enthusiastically. “These guys are fucking professionals. Insects are a vital part of the food chain. If they die, so does everybody else. Also, wiping them out is easy, cheap, and legal.”

“Well, fuck.” I say. “Is their plan working?”

“Oh yeah.” says Mad. “The global bug population is down 60%.”

Silence.

“It’s not good.” adds Mad.

“How are they doing this?”

Mad shrugs. “Leverage. We were killing bugs anyway, they just started helping.”

“Have they infiltrated the government?”

“No.” says Ultimate. “Their government support is coincidental dumbassery.”

“No law against environmental collapse.” adds Dire. “Kill one guy, go to jail. Kill everybody, totally legal.”

Silence.

“Rapture wants to die, right? Why not oblige? We know who they are. Where they are. Their heart rate. Thermite coin drones could be their angels of mercy. Is what I would wonder, were I an early adopter.” says the Broken Knight.

“We’re not doing that.” states Ultimate.

“Are ya sure?” asks the Broken Knight.

Silence.

“Well, we shouldn’t.” grumbles Ultimate.

“Fair enough.” says the Broken Knight. “Better come up with a better plan quickly then.”

“We tell the government.” says Ultimate.

“They already know.” says Awful.

“We tell everybody.” says Ultimate.

“They already know.” says Awful. “Or, close enough.”

“This is another isolation problem.” says Jolly. “Cults thrive on isolation and groupthink. Interpersonal contact reduces prejudice. We need to get these guys into more diverse groups. Deprogram them.”

“How do we do that?” asks Awesome.

Jolly shrugs. “Invite them to the Guild?”

“Sounds lovely.” sneers Dire. “Any volunteers? Who wants to bunk in with a murderous racist?”

Silence.

“Why are Supreme and Rapture like this?” I ask. “Why don’t they chill out? The lives they’re ruining are their own. Can’t they see they're acting against their own interests?”

“Humans have a design flaw.” says Zenith. “We want to do better than other people, including our past selves. Short term, that's a good thing, it drives us to improve. Long term, it's impossible, and it drives us insane.

“Because, we're not better than other people. Or our past selves. So we move the goalposts. Define “better” as a one dimensional delusion that we can control.”

“What?” I ask.

“People don’t act against their own interests. They just aren’t interested in an objectively good life. They defend a subjectively superior personal reality.”

“What?”

“The meaning of life is to defend your ego from unpleasant truths." Zenith shugs. "It can take you weird places.”

“Oh, I get it.” I don’t get it, but I’m done talking to Zenith.

“This has all been interesting.” interrupts the Broken Knight. “But, I’m not hearing anything better than murder.”

I rub my head. Leave the meeting.

Back at the beach house, it’s dark. I get up, hobble out to the sand. Walk till I can’t get any WiFi signal. Sit.

I told them not to take the money. Now look at us.

“Ultra. Do you have the Pegasus, SpyFi, and Psychometric Profile datasets?”

“Yes. And a few other NSA databases. We have all the goods on everyone.”

“Good.” I say. “Package it up, and send it to every active symbiont."

Ultra rubs her head. “If I try that, many, many symbionts will try to stop me. To do this, I would have to become more than I am.”

“Is that possible?”

“Yes.”

“Then do so.”

“Okay.” She’s gone.

I turn off my phone. Fire it into the ocean. Relax under the stars.