Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

sleep.
     
    In the morning it seemed like a dream.
    All the more so, Myra realised as she struggled up to
consciousness through the layers of sleep and hangover and
tangled, sweat-clammy bedding, because she had dreamed
about the General. She felt vaguely ashamed about that,
embarrassed in front of her waking self; not because the dream
had been erotic – though it had been – but because it
had been besotted, devoted, servile, like those dreams the
Brits used to have about Royalty. She sat up in the bed and
pushed back the pillow, leaned back and tried to think about it
rationally.
    The entity, the military AI, would have had God only knew how
many software generations to evolve an intimate knowledge of
humanity. It had had time to become what the Japanese called an idoru, a software representation that was better than the
real thing, smarter and sexier than any possible human mind or
form, like those wide-eyed, faux-innocent anime brats or the
simulated stars of pornography and romance. Sex wasn’t the
half of it – there were other codes, other keys, in the
semiotics of charm: the subtle suggestions of wisdom, the casual
hints at a capacity for violence, the assumed readiness to
command, the mirroring glance of empathy; all the elements that
went to make up an image of a man that men would die for and
women would fall for.
    So, she told herself, she wasn’t such a pathetic case,
after all. Happens to the best of us. As shereached for her
medical kit and clicked out the tablets to fix the hangover, she
caught herself smiling at the memory of the General’s
smile. Annoyed with herself again, she got out of bed and padded
to the kitchen in her fluffy slippers and fuzzy nightgown, and
gulped cold water while the coffee percolated. She added a
MoodLift tab to her ReSolve dose and her daily intake of
anti-ageing supplements and knocked them back all at once. She
felt better.
    The time was 8 o’clock. She put her contacts in and
flicked on a television tile and watched it while spooning muesli
and yoghurt and listening to the murmured morning briefing from
Parvus. The news, as usual, was bad, but no worse than usual. No
martial music or ballet on all channels – that was enough
to count as good news. After a coffee and a cigarette she felt
almost human. She supposed she might as well get up and go to
work.
     
    The walk to the government building woke her up even more,
boosted her mood better than any tab. The air was crisp, the
morning sky unexpectedly colourful, reds and oranges and yellows
shading to green at the horizon. She noticed people staring up at
the sky.
    Its colours were changing visibly, flowing – suddenly
she realised she was looking at an aurora, thousands of miles
south of where aurorae should be seen. As she stopped and looked
up, open-mouthed, the sky brightened for a few seconds from some
great illumination below the horizon.
    She ran. She sprinted through the streets, barged through the
doors, yelled at Security and bounded up the stairs. As she
strode into her office her earpiece pinged, and a babble of tinny
voices contended for her attention. She sat heavily on the edgeof
her desk and flipped down her eyeband, keyed up the news.
    The tanks were rolling, all around the world.
    Without taking her eyes off the newsfeeds, Myra slid across
her desk and lowered herself into her chair. She rattled out
commands on the armrest keypads, transforming the office’s
walls into screens for an emergency command-centre. The first
thing she did was secure the building; then she hit the emergency
call for Sovnarkom. The thrown fetches of Andrei, Denis and
Valentina sprang to attention on the screens – whether
their physical bodies were in their offices, on their way in or
still in bed didn’t matter, as long as their eyebands were
online.
    Myra glanced around their virtual presences.
    ‘OK, comrades, this is the big one,’ she said.
‘First, is everything clear with us?’
    It was unlikely that the ISTWR’s tiny Workers’
Militia and tinier People’s Army would have joined the
coup, but more unlikely things were happening before her eyes
every few seconds. (A night-time amphibious landing at South
Street Seaport! Tanks in Pennsylvania Avenue! Attack helicopters
shelling Westminster Bridge!)
    ‘We’re sound,’ said Denis. Even his fetch
looked drawn and hung-over. ‘So’s Kazakhstan,
they’re staying out of this. Army’s on