Achilles choice

She rocked and moaned. It had never been like this. Never had she felt the tension screwed up inside her like an ice sliver inserted at the base of the skull.

She fumbled for the small plastic wafer that contained Beverly’s personality. Within that clear card was a gigabyte of data, the essentials of the personality Jilhan had labored since childhood to create.

She inserted it in the console.

I/O error 1154.

She peered at the card. Nothing had changed. Beverly was still in there, somewhere. Try again.

I/O error 1154.

What was error message 1154? Fingers shaking now, she typed the number in manually, watched as the message appeared on her holo screen:

1154: unfamiliar nomenclature. Please check program compatibility.

It was a standard console. She had loaded Beverly a thousand times and never seen that message.

On the fourth attempt, a new message appeared. Special message 9263: Olympiad participants are allotted computer time to complete their approved projects. The present line of questioning is judged inappropriate.

Jillian felt damp, sticky, frightened… but never surprised. At no time had she felt surprise.

So they couldn’t damage Beverly, huh? What a fool she had been. All they had to do was refuse to let Jillian load her Simulacrum into the console.

There weren’t any privately owned computers large enough or powerful enough to run Beverly.

For the first time in her life, Jillian was completely alone.

Cautiously, she asked: “Access A.D. 2034 Munich symposium on crime. National police agency of Japan white paper on civil actions. Statistics only.”

She chewed fingernails as she waited, an old habit she’d thought long since vanquished. Then the blue holo field fluttered, and numbers began to appear. She sighed relief, and risked another harmless inquiry:

“Cross-chart Australian situation comedy ratings with child abuse stats.”

Again, a moment’s pause, and then the field began to fill.

She’d been wondering anyway- “Do a bar graph. Olympic contenders, ratio of Corporate to national. Cross-reference against funding and wins-“

Contenders representing one or another nation totalled only eight percent this year, a steady drop from above fourteen percent sixteen years ago. In terms of population they should have had more like thirty percent. Funding for national contenders was generally higher… and still they didn’t take their share of wins.

Suspicions confirmed. The surviving nations offered more support for the Olympics because they wanted their prestige back. It wasn’t working well. Their contenders were beating themselves, giving in to their own lack of self-respect. It was part of what Jillian Shomer (USA) would be fighting.

But losing Beverly-Holding her breath, she slipped the cartridge back into the console.

I/O error 1154.

Should she wait for a ransom note?

No, the implications seemed clear enough. So long as she stayed completely away from the Council, or the strange case of Lilith Shomer

… actually, Jillian flattered herself that there were Counselors eagerly awaiting her results. She was potentially useful to them.

They’d play fair, she thought. If the Council barred her from material necessary to her thesis, it would cause the nastiest stink in years.

Right. And they couldn’t hurt Beverly, either.

If she fought too hard to uncover things the Council wanted hidden, she could simply have a training accident. If they could hurt a Donny Crawford, Jillian Shomer meant nothing.

She’d have Sean send some of her old files by courier. Last year she had downloaded massive amounts of raw data into personal files. She could sift through it without being hooked into the main lobe.

She sank her head down on her folded forearms. Beverly gone. Vital lines of inquiry sealed off. Claustrophobia.

What had her blasted obstinacy really accomplished?

There were questions to which Jillian Shomer could not get answers. But perhaps a Boosted and Linked Olympic gold-winner, one thoroughly co-opted by the Council, could open doors now sealed.

Could she risk it? Did she even have a chance to win, now that the Council disapproved of her line of questioning? If she Boosted, could the Council simply deny her the victory, guaranteeing her aslow death?

Jillian was shivering as if she were ill. They. The Council? She’d known of the Council since grade school; what she knew might not be fully true, but it was a starting point. Was it the Council who had snatched Beverly away? or some single Council member? or a faceless “Old Bastard”?

What was he, what were They, hiding about her mother?

“I’m going to win,” she whispered. She would find out, beyond a doubt, if she could win in Athens without Boost. If she couldn’t, if she had to become a part of the Lie in order to expose it, in order to find the truth..

In order to find Beverly again..

Then so be it.

Chapter 7

“It’s actually a tougher grade than what you’ll face in Athens,” Abner said.