"I wish I was a post-apocalyptic surfer," Richard Belman said. A rusted ironing board was stuck in the dirt, holding up a web of bare wires.
   "The ocean is an hour away." Jay said. "I usually get seasick. By the way this is all temporary." He looked as if he disapproved of everything.
   From behind the fence came the roar of rush-hour traffic. Children shrieked on the other side of the trailer. Richard smelled motor oil, wet dirt, a barbecue.
News channels chattered through the trees.
   They sat on lawn chairs under a stretched tarpaulin that covered part of the small yard behind Jay's newly purchased mobile home. It was overcast, with rain expected this evening, the end of the world later this week.
   An overweight drummer in his late twenties in an ambitious Internet band, Richard wore garish shorts and a tie-dyed T-shirt.
For Richard, it had been a strangely stagnant day. He had been unable to start anything, like in those over-the-counter antidepressant commercials. The gloom matched the rising tension.
   Last week, Richard's friend since high school had moved to the Shady Glenns trailer park after losing his house. Jay's secondhand trailer was packed with odd artifacts collected over the years: realistic looking lightsabers, a complicated "cold fusion" generator that didn't generate neutrons but somehow did get warmer, and a glass jar containing something like a pickled alien embryo. On the walls were cryptic posters and artist impressions of post-human megastructures.
His main project, a highly impractical thought-controlled computer, was at a standstill after the only investor had pulled out. Jay was downbeat, his life going nowhere.
   The trailer stood in a far corner of the mobile home park. Jay had already installed gadgets in his yard: motion detectors, spotlights, an oddly shaped satellite dish. Richard doubted that big antenna was legal under the McCain-Dragos Act. The yard bordered a row of overgrown shrubs, with litter caught in the branches. Several tons of dirt had been excavated in a long mound almost six feet tall.
   "You dug those ditches?" he asked.
   "They were here when I moved in," Jay said. "The cops were looking for something they didn't find."
   "So this is a good neighborhood."
   Jay sighed dramatically. "No worse than the rest of the world. At least this will be the last war ever."
   Richard had known Jay for twelve years, during which time he had been invariably in debt. Jay's schemes to conjure money always made matters worse. Two years ago, when his annual property taxes came due, he'd simply ignored the notices. After the penalties and interest were added, Jay had been forced to declare bankruptcy.
   "You should have planned ahead," Richard said.
   Jay shook his head. "I just can't get a break."
   "You did win the lottery, which is how you bought your house." A small snake slithered through the grass. "You're right back where you started. The one time you played, you won big time. It's a sign, like when Gore won by one vote in 2000."
   "Irrational thinking is very common," Jay responded. "Winning the lottery was a fantastically improbable coincidence. I'm earning money by not playing."
   Richard leaned back, adjusting the framework of his chair. "That doesn't explain why you're always losing money. Probably because your parents were hippies," Richard mused. "Fighting the System only makes the Establishment madder."
   "The County had no right to use those Gestapo tactics to evict me."
   "The cops showed unusual restraint because you're white," Richard thought. Jay's complaints were a useful distraction from what was to come. "Told you that barricade wouldn't hold."
   Jay shrugged. "You know why they raised the property taxes in the first place? Goddam commissioners want to buy super expensive computers for the school district. Every student gets a Microshit OBox. In our day you had to share a PC!"
He sulked. "Cosmetic communism. It's a time of confusion."
   "Like that old song," Richard agreed, pounding the slightly sagging sides of Jay's trailer. "At least no one is going to evict you from here."
   "The property manager is raising the fees again. You know how expensive it is to move one of these things?"
   "You still believe in free markets?"
   "The only thing that could save us," Jay nodded earnestly.

A voice said: "This is a perfect example of non-linear complexity."
Jay jumped up.
   A middle-aged man stood at the entrance to his yard, waving a parabolic device at the sky. Dressed in gray shorts and a deeply faded oversized T-shirt, he resembled an older version of Richard.
To Richard he looked incredibly serious, with a worn face that reminded him of a lifelong stoner, but his eyes were far too sharp.
   "How are you," he said, stepping closer and extending his hand. "I wish to hire your brain to solve a unique problem."
   Jay frowned at the unprecedented interruption, trying to recall the voice. "I know you! You're Arnold Weiszman, futurologist with the Tomorrow Foundation."
   "Yes, the name is Weiszkopf." He smiled briefly. "I'm also a fugitive from the law." Richard shook his hand.
   "I need your help," Weiszkopf went on. "According to my sources, you investigate long-term social trends."
   "You've come to the right person," Jay said. Among other things, he claimed to be a consultant.
In the course of hundreds of library visits and hotspot adventures since the mid-90s, he'd created an obscure Web presence for himself as a private investigator using a Costa Rican license.

The three persons sat awkwardly on mismatched folding chairs. Weiszkopf was surprised at how cramped the singlewide trailer felt. His left arm brushed a cluttered sink.
   "My goal is to prevent a hypothetical near-future tyranny," he began. "As you may know, I'm a mathematical physicist working in unstable feedback networks. I used to consult for the National Patterns Database."
   Jay nodded automatically.
   "That's how I learned of a conspiracy affecting all levels of government."
   "I don't believe in conspiracies," Jay said. "Of course, there can be emergent cooperation, where independent agents do the same thing for different reasons, the Gaia hypothesis of evolution being one example, but . . ."
   "True but incomplete," Weiszkopf said. "Society is changing dangerously fast. There are too many conflicting laws and regulations. Have you noticed how complicated the tax code has become? Probably not. More wealth and knowledge than ever, but relatively fewer opportunities. I call it the Great Lock-In. It's becoming impossible for new groups to make it, as you may have noticed."
   "I agree 100%," Jay said.
   "I oversaw a private project looking for gridlock alternatives. It started in 2013 as an off-budget, Executive Branch plan to stimulate creative rule compliance: automatic tax software, CG flowcharts, informal shortcuts and bypasses and the like. We were more successful than expected."
"What if I said there's a new tool?" Weiszkopf continued. "A way for people to rationally resolve any conflict. Aleph Blue is a new algorithm to create and control high-order neural networks. The ultimate synchronization software, it can forge links between almost any two unrelated systems, amplifying the faintest relevancies. I could give you a demonstration by predicting the price range of any stock you care to name, but that would require time we don't have."
   Richard reclined in his chair while Jay bounced and fidgeted. "Is it self-aware software?" he asked.
   "No, but it can transfer knowledge directly between suitable minds by temporarily forming a derivative shared sentience."
   "That is the most incredible thing I ever heard."
   "I thought you might understand. Let me show you something."
He took out a sheet of E-paper. Jay took the sheet and tried to see which end was up. Just an ultradense printout composed of billions of colored dots, an explosion of lines and smudges that shimmered at different scales and seemed to resolve into patterns.
Slowly, he became aware of the outline of a face somewhere behind the printed patterns.
   "No human mind could have created this," he gasped.
   "Let me see," Richard said, grabbing the sheet. He half-expected an acid flashback, but only got a slight headache from staring cross-eyed at the chaotic fractal shapes. If he could have concentrated more, it might have resolved.
"Is this one of those magic eye pictures?"
   "No," Weiszkopf said. "This was made by an NSA/NPD semiquantum supercomputer using my algorithm. It incidentally also composed Mozart's 42nd symphony, though that's not quite as impressive. Spaced lines in the picture cause decoherence loops in the visual neocortex of 58% of target observers. Perfect for extrapolating and optimizing hidden neural patterns. This is just the beginning, of course."
   "It might be the most impressive thing ever."
"So what's the downside?" Richard asked.
   Weiszkopf took back the printout. "The government has classified my algorithm top secret."
   "Will the cover-ups never end?" Richard sighed.
   Weiszkopf shrugged. "I understand their reasoning. Other countries are watching our national decline with great interest. But it's very short-sighted. Aleph Blue should be released to the world as a universal communication tool. It could renew Moore's Law and end poverty."
   "Have you tried the anonymous media?" Jay asked.
   Weiszkopf shook his head. "I'm a wanted man already. My crime is that I copied my own files. My equations had errors I couldn't solve, until an associate solved them without telling me."
He glared. "A great scientist, but ethically bankrupt. My algorithm is now classified as a federal munition. I need your help to liberate the technology before we blow ourselves up. There's almost no time left."
He gestured at Jay's TV, playing on the ceiling above his bed with the sound off. A government-approved reporter stood on a Philippine airfield. "Chinese navy sinks Jap sub" read the crawling text.
   "The scientist's name is William Altlander. His version of my algorithm has been copied to an anonymous server."
   "I think I know him too!" Jay said. "We're on the case."
   "We are?" Richard asked. If he understood correctly, they would attempt to stop a world war between two unstable alliances led by China and X-NATO by using an empathy mind virus. Compared to some of his other problems, this seemed almost reasonable.

An example of practical stealth architecture, the building attracted little attention in the low-income high-crime neighborhood. From the outside, it was just another windowless warehouse, perhaps a place to store used clothing for air freight to South America. Subtle details kept the burglars away. The compound was bigger than it looked from the road. The guard houses were small but heavily armed and armored. The light poles contained many smart sensors. Around the back, generators and transformers stood in a fenced enclosure. On the roof, a forest of air-conditioning vents had been painted gray. Pilots on final approach had complained about the reflections.
   Out front, the sign read: "SunSine Investments LLC" In the unexpectedly fancy lobby: "DOD clearance Sigma beyond this point".
   Janet Wolfran rollerbladed between the cubicles. After dropping off her son at preschool, she was ready for another fifteen hour workday at the data compression division. She braked in her office, and tossed her bag on the desk, causing the monitors to light up. The screensavers turned into frowning masks tracking her movements.
   "Damn." She'd forgotten to activate her secret neural implant again. The brain needle was simple, safe, and secure, but she found it disconcerting to have rudimentary icons, sounds, and perceptions appear without warning. Her problem was that the signals were too subtle. The text feature was OK.
Until recently, this had been mankind's most advanced invention.
   The voice of her boss said "There you are. We've had a breakthrough. Your surveillance idea paid off."

An hour later, Jay and Richard pulled into a private university parking space in a rented van. Weiszkopf hadn’t come along because the security system knew his face.
   They walked down a tube linking the garage to a restricted building resembling an oversized glass taco. Jay punched three codes before the doors zipped open. Walking down the hallway, he thought he heard an anachronistic typewriter, but it was a huge gene-sequencing machine.
   At the end of the hall were the offices of professor Altlander, the world's only Nobel laureate in both physics and economics.
   "Can I help you?" the attractive secretary asked.
   "We're delivering intergalactic dust samples from the Corona spacecraft," Jay said, holding a cardboard box covered with labels.
   "He meant the Nimbus spacecraft," Richard corrected.
   "Send them in!" a voice rang from the office.
   Entering the office, they were surrounded by an uninterrupted floor-to-ceiling picture window, curving majestically around the room.
The office appeared to float above an otherworldly lake with clouds towering over a mountainous horizon. It felt as if they themselves were on display.
Next to the doorway, honorary degrees and awards hung under a da Vinci drawing of an autopsied head. William Altlander rose from his desk, looking like a powerful CEO with a shock of silver hair.
   "I'm your biggest fan," Jay said, shaking his hand as Richard watched. "I'm the president and CEO of Futuritisms Unlimited, perhaps you've heard of us?"
   "What's that in your ear?"
   "My Epod, to remain available to my many clients."
The concealed receiver-transmitter allowed Weiszkopf to listen in.
"I agreed with everything in your Discover interview," Jay continued.
   Altlander's PR skills kicked in as he accepted the sample box. He listened with interest to Jay's praise as he led them back to the door.
   Richard saw something strange in Altlander, as if he wasn't fully realized, like a videogame cut-scene character.
   When they reached the door, Jay's face changed. Sometimes he could look extremely serious, as if he personally represented all the victims of history.
"We know your secret," he told the professor. "Aleph Blue is the only way you could have written your last two papers on pattern recognition. Share your discovery with the world before it's too late!" He was like an annoying protester, Richard thought.
   Altlander was nodding as if a meaningful exchange was taking place. He stepped lightly against the window behind him, and vanished.
Richard found himself barely surprised by the miracle. Slowly, he began to understand what had happened. It was almost like a curtain being opened in his mind, not really his own insight.
What exactly had been in that sample box?
He realized they might be in the worst trouble of their lives.
Altlander's voice echoed from the front office. "Weiszkopf!"
   Jay heard cursing in his earpiece.
"How did he do that?" he asked.
"Wait!" Jay called out past the startled secretary. The hallway beyond was empty.
   "Turn left and take the fire exit," Weiszkopf said.
   The secretary was whispering urgently. "Let's go," Richard shouted.
   Jay led the way past a long fish tank to the exit sign. "I have a bad feeling about this."
They stopped as two large men in colorful Eighties-style business suits turned the corner.
   Richard pulled him back. "Follow me."
   They turned. "Weiszkopf, alternate route!" Jay said.
   Richard slammed open a door to another stairwell. It looked almost inviting, their momentum carrying them downward like a controlled fall. For a dizzying moment Jay lost his balance.
   Richard pushed through a pair of swinging doors, and now he did fall, getting up as Jay stumbled past.
This section looked deserted, a long, gently curving corridor leading to various white laboratories.
   The two men calmly emerged from the other stairwell, almost as if they all belonged to the same group. The larger man placed a suitcase on the ground.
Richard knew he wouldn't like whatever was inside.
   Jay ripped open a padded envelope taped under his shirt. For seconds he struggled to remove the Styrofoam pads around the device.
   "Act confident," Weiszkopf said in his ear. "You get only one chance."
   Jay stepped forward and lifted the device. "I have Aleph Blue. One more step and I start Armageddon!"
The men stood perfectly still.
   "This is the military version," Jay continued. "With this device I can delete the root directories of every Homeland ISP, including .gov and many .mil servers, and their linked lookup and router directories. In fact I have the power to disconnect most computers in the world. That might interfere with the war we're about to have."
On the device's screen, large red numerals counted back.
   "A dead man's switch," he explained. "I'm thinking of placing you both under citizen's arrest, though I couldn't stop you from leaving, obviously."
   Jay's fingers closed on empty air. He looked around bewildered.
   "You shouldn't play with grown-up toys." The young woman holding the device seemed vastly more mature than Jay, despite her colorful training suit and green hair in a casual ponytail.
   "This is all a misunderstanding," Jay stuttered.
   The two men scrutinized Richard and Jay.
   "It's all right," Janet Wolfran sighed, "they're harmless." The men kept their distance.
   "I could have handled them," Jay declared.
   She headed down the corridor. "Come along now."
   Jay started to follow. To Richard, it felt as if they weren't all in the same place. She was controlling them like Sims, one of many different reality levels.
With a glance at the enforcers, Richard joined them.
   "We triangulated your earpiece," Janet explained. "We've been looking for Weiszkopf for a long time."
   "Who are you?"
   "Memetics International," Jay heard Weiszkopf say in his ear. "Data arbitrage. My old employers."
   They walked over a service ramp where a limousine waited at the end. "Everything Weiszkopf told you is a lie," Janet said, "but it was what you wanted to hear. He used you to bring us together."
   "They have a deep, irrational hatred of me," Weiszkopf said.
   Jay looked around. "Someone tell me the truth," he pleaded.
   The mathematician said: "Repeat everything I say." Standing on the ramp, Jay relayed the fantastic message.
   "My plan is to manipulate Altlander into attempting to delete Aleph Blue. To do so, he will have to activate it first. To save this data, do exactly as I say."

"You think Janet looks like the lead actress in 'Tyrannoshark'?" Jay asked two hours later.
   "I missed that one," Richard replied.
   They had already experienced more than they could reasonably absorb. The Memetics International compound was a corporate power zone. One sleek area unintentionally resembled the Halo movies, but it was all very functional. Apparently the government paid well.
   "This is awesome." Jay was in an exalted state, where even the end of the world wouldn't faze him. They had just entered the Ganzfeld Room, which contained the first known total immersion pod.
   The sign over the Interaction Vault read "Deep VR". The walls were covered with unreal, evenly lit tetrahedrons.
A technician had shown them how Altlander had vanished from his office, a trick he had used before to entertain visitors. He had been replaced by a prerecorded, gigapixel hologram while Jay and Richard had looked away. Then he had simply walked out of the room behind them. The illusion had of course been generated by the fake picture windows surrounding his office. Even such crude illusions were incredibly effective when they weren't expected.
   Richard said. "There's something wrong with the light here."
   According to their briefing, this room was a giant feedback scanner and perception simulator. Every millimeter helped create a deception.
   "Are you sure you want to do this?" Richard asked. "Did you understand everything that guy said?"

"'Mindstorm' is the outcome of a sealed no-bid DARPA contract," the engineer had explained. "An intelligent reality environment with anticipatory feedback. We built several prototypes, but missed the key insight. Weiszkopf figured it out while working for us, but he never told us. He did tell a foreign national, Altlander, who somehow created a working prototype using only simple hardware. With our cutting edge resources, Aleph Blue can finally be tested at its full potential. We're extending two untried technologies into unknown territory."

"We just made contact with Altlander," Janet announced as she entered the chamber. "Weiszkopf told us how to get through to him. He compares himself to Einstein, and Altlander to Hilbert. I don't see the resemblance myself."
   "Sounds like they hoped to keep the goodies for themselves," Richard said.
   "Did you get Aleph Blue?" Jay asked. Not understanding what the algorithm did, it assumed mythic proportions in his imagination.
   "Turns out Altlander somehow stored his working copy on our own servers," she said. "We can't decompile the code, but had no trouble reactivating the software. Mindstorm has never worked better."
   "I'm willing to sacrifice myself for humankind," Jay declared. "No time to think it through."
Two hours earlier, the President had suspended all relevant state and federal laws and regulations for the duration of the emergency.
   "Let's begin."

Jay was lying on his back inside the Reality Chamber, wondering when he would cease to be himself. Until minutes ago, the virtual screen had shown the latest world news, but now there were only strange colors. A war had just begun in south-east Asia. It all seemed very distant and unreal.
Fighter-bombers launching from a carrier. A drone carrying a huge missile. Green flashes in the night sky. Wobbling blue lines and alternately blinking dot patterns.
   Something grabbed hold of his mind as new directions opened up like endlessly unfolding origami.

The next hour was the strangest of Jay's life. Those who would later experience it would call it "The Trip".
   First, the program tried to establish his mind parameters. Questions flashed by with no time to respond. Which thing did he find more interesting? Complete the following sequence . . .
"It's profiling your biases against a standard template," a voice explained.
   Then stranger and more complex imagery appeared. Exquisitely sensitive sensors in the surrounding chamber and couch measured his brain and muscle activity. Complex chemicals circulated through the air, most of them restricted and criminalized by the government.
A bank of helium-cooled mainframes in the basement tried to seize control of his mind.
Then, what Richard had called the Voodoo Beam: a self-stabilizing electromagnetic web began to converge on Jay's head; locating, suppressing, and stimulating hundreds of individual brain regions.
   All this technology had been invented and developed years earlier for approximately the cost of the Space Shuttle. Aleph Blue was merely the control mechanism, a thousand pages of inscrutable code.
This was the answer to the mystery of awareness, but no one could understand it.
   Weiszkopf made himself part of the illusion. Linked with Jay and the control room through a proxy satlink, he carefully tracked the readings.
After a while, he contacted Altlander, still in hiding in his secret location.
How had the professor tested this algorithm on himself without expensive VR equipment? No doubt he'd memorized an endless series of mental exercises, methodically disassembling and rebuilding portions of his mind. His legendary learning skills had to have helped.
Just how much had he been changed?

Richard had been cleared to observe the session from the control room. On the big monitor was a surprisingly detailed map of Jay's brain. Biometric columns scrolled by as alpha and theta waves converged. At least a dozen technicians pored over the data. He asked Janet what was happening.
   She took a few minutes to explain the procedure. The algorithm created temporary Knowledge Layers over existing ones. Curiosity Siphons extracted data from the subject's unconscious, while Projectors overloaded it with creative metaphors. The full interface session would last only an hour.
   "Shouldn't he be strapped in or something?" Richard asked.
   "It uses stable feedback," Janet explained. "Originally developed for covert interrogations and mind control, so I've heard. Local field strengths constantly adapt to his position."
   "Cool." If Richard understood correctly, whatever they were using to hypnotize Jay (that was far too weak a word) didn't make him any smarter, but temporarily multiplied his short-term memory, and thereby certain specialized problem solving skills, while deactivating his inhibitions. "Like mixing alcohol and LSD."
Janet explained the field could focus on brain structures less than half a millimeter wide. If necessary, the system could also cause intense pleasure or pain.
   Bright, colorful patterns synchronized Jay's brainwaves and changed his perceptions. To Richard they looked like unusually vivid game backgrounds, blinking checkerboards and strobing wavelets.
In some ways, the human mind appeared to be simpler than it should be.
   "Could you fit this technology inside a headset or a flashlight?" he wondered.
   "No," Janet said, "it has to be a fully interactive controlled environment."
   "I suppose this all started in the Cold War," Richard said. "Perhaps you could use this thing to catch Abdul Ahref or Tomos. Courier interrogation and the like."
   "Need-to-know," she muttered pleasantly.

In their separate hideouts (they might be closer than they thought), Weiszkopf and Altlander were cooperating again. From split brain experiments, they had learned how to create detailed false memories.
Not only did Jay have the honor to be the first person to experience a virtual mind/machine interface, he would prove that such a thing was possible at all.
   Data torrents flooded past the gateways to his mind, cascading and colliding in imaginary space, spinning through unsuspected dimensions on the way down. The software asked almost meaningless questions, and distant parts of himself replied out of sequence through heavy static.
Loud paper    happened twice twice    black table    the fourth door?
It all meant something. Mostly it meant too much.
As the hour passed, he experienced the equivalent of a university-level course in himself. Aleph Blue's ultimate application would be to reprogram its users.
   Jay experienced unrepeatable emotions, revisiting earlier times and places.
None of this would seem real later, though if he lived, he would have many strange flashbacks.
As his mind dissolved, his personal history became incredibly remote. A blank personality template, he now saw how easy it was to connect unrelated facts, patterns, thoughts.
   Weiszkopf was talking excitedly. Unleashing this code inside Altlander's mind meant that he could no longer be fully human.

Richard saw what Jay saw. Streams of words, strange flashing symbols, self-assembling puzzles.
   "How much longer?" he asked.
   "We're almost there," Janet said.

Jay felt profoundly anesthetized. Strange music filled the air, as colors flowed through each other and traded places.
   "You don't remember?" Richard asked. "There were nurses and doctors in breathing masks in there with you the whole time."
   "I could have sworn I was alone." His head throbbed in a way it never had before. He also didn't remember taking the drug cocktail that had put him in his trance.
   "You spent two hours getting prepared," Richard said. "Never saw anyone swallow that many pills since Burning Man." Almost half the pills had partially counteracted the effects of the other half.
   "I have no recollection." He realized his head had been shorn smooth.
   Jay remembered hovering in the middle of nowhere, information flowing in all directions with Zen-like clarity.
"I remember signing that stack of release forms before they started."
   Near the end of the session, full awareness had returned. They had all made an important decision together. Why couldn't he remember what he'd done?
"How did it end?" he asked Richard.
A wall-mounted screen showed night flames.

"This thing keeps crashing," Jay had repeated four times in the same voice. The jarring disconnects had lasted a few seconds each, until the control field reasserted itself. Then he immediately forgot what had happened.
   There had been a three-way stalemate in cyberspace.
   "I didn't complete my research, but I could contest your patents," Weiszkopf had said. "Altlander has an even better case, though he built upon my achievements. At least drop those ridiculous charges against me."
   "The company owns all your work," Janet had insisted from the control room.
   "I never signed anything," Altlander said. "You have no moral or legal claims against me."
   "You'll find the law won't help you," she replied. "You were never authorized to learn about this project. You have no idea how deep this goes. If you try to disable your algorithm, we'll just reconstruct it."
   "If Arnold had kept his mouth shut, I would never have solved your impossible paradox. You'd still be playing your primitive video games. The mystery of awareness is stranger than you can ever realize. It's a transcendent level of understanding."
   "Wow," Jay had exclaimed. "I get it completely. This must be a mind meld."
   "This technology must be released correctly," Altlander said. "Or it will be your last mistake."
   "Aleph Blue will allow people to see reality from each other's viewpoint," Janet countered. "That is a bad thing. Employers, unions, ethnic groups will realize that their rivals are not like them after all, and hate each other even more."
   Jay felt the future take shape in his head, a coherent vision that almost made sense. If only he knew enough words.
   "What our unwitting test subject is experiencing right now is very expensive," Altlander said. "My algorithm combines all available human and computer intelligence. By definition it will always require more information than it generates. But it also reveals subtle errors and biases. Users have unfair advantages, without necessarily becoming more insightful. This could create an elite group, people who know they can trust each other implicitly, even if they don't like each other. That has never happened before."
   Weiszkopf's time had come. "I propose we immediately turn over Aleph Blue to a new UN agency serving only mankind. Memetics International should place its resources at their disposal. The agency's goal will be to find the least bad solution to the current crisis."
   Janet answered instantly. "That has to be the most impractical suggestion ever. The UN and the US don't exactly get along."
   "True, but Aleph Blue has the power to bring them together - gradually, of course. This test has revealed how powerful it can be. It will change society! We'll need to expose only 1% of all politicians at all levels for only an hour each. I will help any way I can."
   Jay saw that despite appearances, this stand-off was quite irrational.
Finally, he had a real insight. He knew Weiszkopf craved admiration and status. Altlander's basic personality hadn't changed: He wanted to live in the most interesting world possible. Janet believed civilization required order.
   Somehow, they had all become linked. They shared concepts none of them could have described or experienced separately.
Jay spoke a single long sentence. The words seemed to come from nowhere, and were forgotten as soon as they were out.
"I guess we have no choice," Janet sighed. "Very well."

"I'm vaguely starting to remember what happened," Jay said.
   Richard seemed more dazed than usual, a false impression. "Weiszkopf and Altlander manipulated you into supporting a plan that will enslave half the world and probably kill the rest. They want to turn our leaders into zombies and us into drones, making them the most powerful humans ever."
   "I remember a brilliantly simple solution. What did I say again?"
   "Maybe it seemed like a Star Trek ending to you, but this is reality. Weiszkopf knew you'd fall for the chance to feel important, not to mention impress the lovely miss Janet. I think her face was hidden in that printout he showed you. Wheels within wheels! What about your principles man?"
   "If he tricked me, I can't be blamed. That thing altered my perception."
   Richard sadly shook his head. "You can't hypnotize someone into doing something they don't want."
   Jay was starting to think more clearly. "It doesn't matter," he said to himself. "So what if two men get to play god for a while. They're still mortal! New technology can't be stopped. It will find its own way. Nothing I did will change the ultimate outcome."
   He looked up at the wall-mounted TV. On the screen, a dark gray-brown mushroom was starting to lean over the clouds on the horizon.