Chapter 26: In Nam-Shub Only (Part I)

“I need to get out of the RF suppression and get Halady connected up,” Elaine said. “She’ll have a better clue as to the current state of ASU’s electrical network. Then we need to pin down any more of these nests. Zane, I need you to complete this Faraday cage. Frog you’re with me, we’re going to my office to check my equipment. Roger, I need you to contact Emily—I am sending her number to your phone now—and warn her to cancel her event.”

Frog cleared her throat. She leaned against the wall, her green bangs sticking to her forehead from sweat. Her ponytail swung back and forth as she shook her head.

Elaine turned towards her and looked up. “You disagree with my conclusions?”

“I think you’re missing the social picture here,” she said. “Sure this works through the electrical system and it’s spreading with the gremlins, but ultimately it’s affecting people. The technology is only a vehicle for the actual product: political pull for Emily Early. You’ve noticed how strangely people have been acting. The dean trying to sell you on her campaign, people across campus showing interest in a student council election?”

“But the wires matching Magnetic North, gremlins, other galvemetric disturbances…”

Frog walked her fingers through the air like a pair of legs moving from place to place. “Conduits and connections,” she said. “Think about how people have been acting. I’m not the genius here, but I can say that you’re missing a huge chunk of what’s going on by forgetting people happen to be involved.”

Forged in a new paradigm, Elaine broke the jigsaw she’d been putting together using the associations between various technologies and examined how each of them interacted with people—or at least, beginning with how they connected to Emily. Everything started with her iPhone, a very direct and personal sort of connection to Emily. One which contained pictures of her and her upper-crust society. Possibly the first of those introduced to the contagion, giving her an edge in her dealings with them, which would explain her explosive popularity in the ASU political community from the very beginning. Although initially subtle, her rise to power seemed without precedent, even for the daughter of a foreign but savvy family—and especially with her hidden fraternal connection with Tom Barett.

Tom who now lay in a hospital bed. An event which stifled her primary rival in the competition to reach Student Council President. He had been struck down in front of his computer—by an event Elaine now felt singularly convinced conducted from the electrical-tendrils of a gremlin through his monitor. Each time she closed on a possible source, the source moved, it was throwing distractions at her with every turn. Tom being the first. The sudden return of her lab after it had been taken away—although she wondered momentarily if that initial situation could be tied to that as well. Emily did free her from that without any action taken on Elaine’s part.

Could Emily herself be an unwitting puppet of her own stalker’s drive to push her to fame?

The words of the dean echoed in her head again as he tried to sell her on Emily’s campaign. The button on his lapel. Roger’s observation that the campaign itself seemed to catch in people like a fever.

“It’s a nam-shub!” Elaine exclaimed.

“Mind control?” Roger said. “This sure reminds me of mind control.”

“What he said,” Elaine said. “A nam-shub is a self-replicating meme, a brain virus that infects and spreads through communication. This is why we’re seeing so much disruption of the communication networks. The gremlins have done their work of getting the nam-shub into the population, so it needs to prevent dilution from other memes. Election is next week. Its best chance of infecting as many people as possible before the vote is coming to a head. Thus: the concert.”

“If we want to get that concert cancelled we need to do it soon,” Roger said.

“Not yet, we can use it to force our stalker to show his hand.” Elaine turned a severe, discerning eye to the computer equipment shrine. She let her eyes settle on the curvature and geometry “What if the gremlins aren’t running from something, it’s plausible they’re going to something? The design of this attack is brilliant. It’s distributed in nature, it requires no central control, just enough information in the nam-shub to spread from person to person, but I think we’re looking at a critical mass event. The overall control the nam-shub exerts must not be enough to solidify the desires of our stalker.

“He doesn’t see Emily winning the election for some reason, so he’s withdrawing the initial infectors: the gremlins.”

Zane walked back into the group, trailing the smell of vaporized metal in his wake. He twirled the goggles on his fingers idly, and puffed his chest out proudly. “One Faraday cage ahead of schedule, give me the word and this shuts down.” After Elaine nodded, he went on. “Also, I couldn’t help but overhearing. If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, the gremlins serve a dual purpose. Not only can they deliver programming, but they’re also a power source. If our programmer in this case intends to make a massive change to the programming, he may need a lot of power to transmit. Recall the drones. Voila: instant power.”

“Too much speculation, I think,” Emily said, tapping her finger on her phone. “The empirical evidence suggests a highly varied technological network, carefully designed comm systems matched to the Earth’s magnetic lines of force, and it uses gremlins to deliver and collect information. I’d say, the best-fit speculation involves the network itself and the activity of the nam-shub, as we’ve seen that in action.”

“She has a plan,” Frog said.

“We need to disrupt the new network,” Elaine said. “Our own infector subroutine would do it. Injected into the network we would knock the foundation out from under the entire program.”

“For that we need a gremlin,” Zane said. He waved at the empty hallway. “Except it seems that they’ve all ditched this scene.”

“Already covered.” Elaine smiled to herself and tried to emulate an expression of deep self-satisfaction. “I know exactly where we can get one.”