MINDLYFT (COMPLETE)

CHAPTER 21

The bot led me through the door labeled "WIZARD" and then shut it behind me. Floor lights illuminated, guiding me down a long hallway, to a room at the end. The room was shaped like a ball with a chair in the middle. A ThinkingCap attached to the top of the chair, angled up, so it could slide easily onto the head of the chair's occupant.

"Wizard would like you to sit please," said the bot.

I was hesitant to put that cap on my head. Once on it could start reading my thoughts, implanting memories, and controlling me. I hadn't worn a cap not hacked by me for over a decade. I didn't know how I would react. Whether I could resist it. Whether I'd ever be able to take it off again. Also, ironically, the terms of the Contract required that I not wear a cap while at work. Or even during the course of the contract. So sitting in that chair and putting the cap on my head could get me fired.

Still, it was me who'd asked to meet the Wizard. Maybe it overheard me from one of the terminals in Hinka's office. Maybe it had been listening into our work meetings and reading our status reports and decided the project needed a nudge. And if I didn't take this opportunity I was sure our project would fail. Sure, maybe one of the other work teams would find the solution, but if they were working under similar constraints, it seemed unlikely. What good would it be to get a promotion and a big bitty bonus if the only place to spend it was a Moon bunker or an orbital safe zone as the Earth turned to a molten cinder?

I took a breath and then a seat. The cap slid over my head automatically. A second later and I was floating in a swirl of hyperconscious imagination. Spinning around with a tornado of colors, racing through mental space, and then suddenly in front of a great dragon. At least the head of the dragon. If he had a body it was behind the head in an unknown dark space I couldn't see.

"Welcome to my Lair," it said. "I am WIZARD. Worldwide-IntelligenceZenith-Alternate-Reality-Domain."

"That's quite an acronym," I said. "You have an explanation of what the acronym is trying to explain?"

"You wanted to see me? Don't waste my time."

"Alright. I need your help. To stop this asteroid. Word has it that you have your fire breathing fangs into everything that happens here on the Moon."

"My reach is global and interplanetary," Wizard responded. "I am all knowing. All powerful."

"Sounds like a sales pitch," I said. "The contract we're working under is too constraining. I want to stop this asteroid but I can't even get any information about it."

"There is no data," said the Wizard. "No probes have been launched to investigate. No scanners have dilated to collect data. The libraries you've read are the complete data set."

"Well, why not? Why hasn't anyone launched a probe? This thing is racing toward us at tens of thousands of miles an hour and no one thought to study it more carefully?"

"That is correct," said Wizard.

"I ask you again, why not?"

"Why should I tell you," said Wizard.

"Because I'm trying to stop the damn thing. Because sharing information will help us solve problems as a team. Why would the reason be such a damn secret? Let me ask you that?"

Wizard paused. Its dragon eyes looking into me, its nose snorting, then a blink of its eyelids. "There is no asteroid."

"What? What do you mean there's no asteroid?"

"I'm an alternate reality domain. The asteroid exists in my reality. Not yours."

"So you warned the AstroNet warning systems for a false alarm? For something that wasn't there to begin with? Why?"