Jay Maison discovers that humans have been lied to. He learns that alternate intelligence (AIs) are capable of lying and manipulation. This discovery happens when he uncovers that a defect in his DNA has been purposely hidden from him. This defect i...
Jay often worried if fusion-hoppers were not around he might never have met Abby and a life without Abby would be impossible for him. Abby's parents had died in a "supposed" freak hopper accident in one of the early models. She distrusted ISECs explanations for the crash and she distrusted hoppers in general. She understandably hated the new mode of transport and hated going in them. She knew from the polish of the explanations there had been some cover-up on what had happened to the hopper that killed her parents. Jay still remembered traffic on the motorway, but by the time he was old enough to wear deodorant the hoppers had annihilated the combustion engine. They were so cheap that everyone had them. Nuclear powered and completely safe, it wasn't long until they abandoned traditional motor vehicle aesthetics and started resembling cartoon characters and pop stars' faces.
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Imagination was the only limit for design. As a kid, he would count how many Millennium Falcons or USS Enterprise hoppers he could see on any one ride. But even knowing the hoppers were safe, and that the AI record was flawless, Jay had an aversion to them. He had seen the dream, he knew they were fallible and he knew people were willing to kill to keep it covered up. One day soon he would have the proof, and make them pay. In the mean time they both walked when they could, in an unknown bond of solidarity. Very few ground cars ventured along the old, poorly maintained road systems. Almost all the traffic lived in the air now. Any ground traffic was likely to be police, or perhaps the people they were on the ground looking for. Jay still liked to walk, people thought it was dangerous because of criminals and failing infrastructure, but the truth was the people he bumped into on the ground were scared ragamuffins on the run or hiding for their own reasons. If you left them alone, they left you alone.
The front door to his POD beeped. He pulled on some fresh jeans and an adjustable molecular sweater and walked from the bedchamber into the main room of the POD. A hologram of the visitor awaited him, floating with the Mona Lisa smile she often had.
Abby.
He opened the door and let her in. She had been visiting a friend for a week and just returned.
"You look like shit," she said, taking off her coat and setting it down. She wore cutoff jeans like his and a cheerful yellow top.
"Bad night, not much sleep." He didn't lie.
"Bad dreams again?"
"Yeah, sort of."
"When are you going to see someone Jay, you must get some real help with this," she said. "I worry that this DNA work is messing with your head properly this time. It's time you sat down and told me everything boyo!" The worry, etched on her forehead, convinced the DNA changes were screwing with his wiring permanently and to be honest these days he was not so sure either. He knew that when he was riding the influx in the void every night keeping himself lucid to chase dreams that he was not sleeping properly. It had come naturally to him either an ability from birth or something introduced by his medical treatments as a kid. The real frustration lay in the final link to modifying his dream signature so he could pass into others dreams unnoticed, the Trojan Horse, or like a virus faking your immune system. It was the virus analogy which first led them to understanding that genome mods altered mental frequency outputs, and as such could alter dream world control.
