Pa'an

“The bastards shot down my plane with a missile. They blew up my lab here in Cambridge and killed one of my people. They injured Deepak, and murdered our Aura. I’m lying low for a while. Let them think I’m out of commission.”

Sax was confused, “I wondered why Aura never appeared with that Zovo-whatever on the Galena Lockwood’s show. But isn’t there another copy, er, clone, of her?”

Jag heaved a deep sigh, “Yes, Aura the personality is alive and well, but the lab’s SHARPIE machine was blown to scrap. Deepak is trying to rebuild it now, but he is pretty weak and his assistant, who did that work, was the one who was killed.”

“No one from the Order has contacted you?”

“They wouldn’t. I never met them or knew who they were. They only pull the strings, they don’t dance.”

Jag continued, “I’ve given it a lot of thought. A 3500 year-old sect like the Order doesn’t just fall apart. Perhaps they think that enough people will Exit that they don’t have to resort to decimation. Of course, I don’t know how they ever planned to accomplish that anyway. Starvation, war and mass executions, probably, along the lines of Stalin’s murderous regime in Russia.”

“Jag, didn’t you tell me that part of their plan was to install a system of global domination? They haven’t got that far. Do you think that’s still their plan?”

“No doubt, but that isn’t possible right now. Too much turmoil with the reflectors and the effects of the Cone of Probability. They will wait, now that we have eliminated Mentor for them. Exit will be over soon enough. What I think they will do is cover their tracks and go underground. I would watch for them to withdraw their secondary leaders. The lower levels will be dismissed or terminated. Media references will be deleted. Watch the conspiracy media, sometimes they get it right.”

“That matches up with what we’re seeing here, and according to Gupta, across the Pond as well. You know, 34 Senators have announced retirement. I had to laugh at one rookie who announced retirement partway through his first term. What kind of idiot wins a Senate seat and gives it up in a few months? Ayup, and department heads and assistant directors are becoming hard to find. I’ll keep an ear out. On the good side, I’m unapposed in the next election.”

“Lucky you. Make some waves, Sax. Vermont will rise again. Aura and I must stay here and hunt moose and fissionables. There are a great many lives at stake. I hope you will be part of the team.”

“You bet I will. Every step of the way, Jag.”

Aura’s main occupation became hunting down Mentor clones and stolen fissionables. Ultradata invested a significant part of its new found fortunes in a new aircraft, a supersonic Spike that could cross the Atlantic in a few hours. With it, Jag could conveniently and quietly lead his operatives on the destroy missions. Occasionally, Aura got to add yet another node to her global network.

With Zovo’s new algorithm Aura was now a true distributed system. Her avatar was everywhere, the Order be damned.