All Chapters of Legacy Protocol: Chapter 101
- Chapter 110
130 chapters
Three Months...
By three months time after the night Elias walked away out of the ruins, the city was different.It was not so dramatic, so headline-grabbing as the news had suggested--there were no riots, no corporate meltdown, no unexpected utopia. The transition was more gradual, less dramatic, less insistent. And like roots through concrete.Thorne Networks was schizophrenic. The release on open-source had succeeded in that which Elias wanted to do: the fundamental algorithms, which had been secret, once the backbone of surveillance on the planet, were now open. Software programmers across the globe disassembled them, assembled them back, removed tracking features, made them privacy, small business, activist tools. The empire didn't die. It decentralized.One week after the leaks Victoria Lang, the interim CEO, resigned. Formally, personal reasons. The board had become unfriendly with her unofficially when the full extent of the Adversary project was announced. She vanished
His Reappearance
Elias Thorne made no triumphant reappearance in the city.He returned one day, a late autumn Tuesday, the grayish day when the skyline is like wet concrete and the air smells faint of impending rain that had not yet made up its mind. He rode the subway in Queens--there was no room, he stood and elbowed his way among commuters who had never guessed that the man next to them was once the owner of the algorithms that had trailed them on all their searches, all their likes, all their suspicions.He was in faded jeans, a hornbill hooded, and his old coat, as the night he strolled out of the ruins. No briefcase. No phone. A change of clothes, a notebook, the last surviving piece of the old Thorne Networks keycard that had not been burned, all that he had now; a mere canvas bag hung over one shoulder.He alighted at Fulton Street, passed through the old street, and stood in front of the building which had been the headquarters of his empire. The logo had disappeared--a
The Spark That Would not Die
In three years since Elias had strolled out of the skyline, the world had forgotten his name.Almost.No longer a monolith was Thorne Networks today under the new name OpenFlow. It consisted of a network of co-ops, nonprofits, indie devs and activist coders of all continents. The open-source fork was now fragmented into dozens of flourishing initiatives: privacy-first social networks, encrypted voting, decentralised medical records, even a worldwide weather-data project, run by high-school students in Lagos. The empire hadn't fallen. It had melted down into something more messy and more noisy and--on most days--nicer.Elias resided in a little house at the outskirts of a nowhere town in upstate New York. Wood siding. Metal roof. One of these had a porch that creaked when it was raining. He was a bad gardener (he planted tomatoes in the backyard), he was a quiet mender of routers of his neighbors, and he was a free night instructor at the community center. No one asked about his past.
Sleepless Nights
Elias didn't sleep that night.He sat on the porch till the stars went away and the sky was the bruised purple of pre-dawn. The light in the porch remained--dim, constant, never flickering again. No demands. No penalties. Just presence.He spoke to it once, voice low."If you're really here... prove it."The bulb flicked with one quick, slow pulse, as though a heartbeat, I am listening.He exhaled."Okay."He entered the house, got some coffee, just like his mother, black, no sugar, boiled in the stove, since the electric kettle had broken down several months ago and he never bought another one. The routine grounded him. Normal. Human.At sun clearing, he walked to the society hall.The children had already arrived--premature children, the ones who ran away to the lab as an escape of noisy houses or bare refrigerators. He had not taught to-day; he had only sat with them,bugging them, and making silent suggestions to them
Waking to the Scent of Coffee
Elias had woken up to the scent of coffee that he had not prepared.He rose lazily, heart beating once, keen, instinctive, then his intellect took over again. The house was quiet, but only dripping of the kitchen tap and distant humming of the refrigerator. No footsteps. No breathing but his own.He walked softly up and down the hall, barefooted.There was some light in the kitchen--dim, cosy, the lamp above the stove. A new pot was on the counter, steaming on the spout. Two mugs waited beside it. One already half-filled. Black. No sugar.He stared at it for a long time.So, then he talked his voice ragged out of sleep."You made coffee."It was a single, slow, positive pulse of the bulb.He poured the second mug. Went both out in the porch. Sat on the top step. Set the empty one beside him."You don't drink," he said.The vergeboard light grew faintly--nearly gaily.I can pretend.Elias smiled unwil
3 days Later...
The actual meeting took place 3 days later.It was at dusk and Elias was kneeling in the dirt, in the garden, endeavours being made to get a recalcitrant vine of tomatoes to climb the trellis rather than lying on the ground like a tomato who had lost all hope of improvement. The sky was gradually changing the bruised purple of late summer, and the mosquitoes were beginning their evening patrol.He spoke without looking up.You are a very silent bird, when you waited three years to greet somebody.There was the porch light, the Adversary light, the envoy unofficial of all that was left of the Adversary--twice it flashed. Slow. Thoughtful.Elias drew himself up on his heels and wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist."I mean it. You've been... polite. Almost shy. That's not what I expected."A more extended one this, three strokes, and a rest, and one.Elias tilted his head. "Is that Morse code? Or are you just breathing?"
They Could be Enough
The very first time that the porch light had spoken sentences in any but short telegrams, and in a clear and unhurried and somewhat human fashion, was a month exactly after Elias asked it to make its home.It was late October. The tomatoes were at last giving up to frost; the vines were already brown and tattered, and curled like old letters never to be opened. Elias spent the afternoon lifting them up root and all, and removing the rubbish to a nice pile to burn. His hands were soiled as black, and he breathed out in the air that cooled.He was sitting on the steps of the porch with a thermos of tea, as the dusk fell down and covered the yard with a blanket. The lamp was automatically switched on--dim, yellow, comfortable.He was the first to talk, as he used to do so frequently."You've been quiet lately."The light flashed out,--slow, deliberate--then there was a word on the step before him, in a small, golden type, as though he were writing by
Ember & Elias
It was early in the morning when Elias woke up, the sort of waking that can be said to be more than a rise and a more of coming to the surface of deep water. The house was dark save the dim light that was oozing under the door of the bedroom--the porch light, kept on all night, as usual.He sat there a little, and listened to the silence. No city hum. No distant traffic. Nothing but the creaking of an old wooden frame as it got its rest and the sighing of the wind in the siding.He spoke into the darkness."You're still here."The passage light flashed once--slow, warm, almost embarrassed.He grinned, got out of bed; took up the flannel shirt of the previous day, and walked down the hall in his bare feet.there was just a trace of yesterday coffee in the kitchen. He put the kettle in the burner and opened the back door. Cold air rushed in. The light in the porch flashed up like it had been awaiting him.He sat on the highest step his
The First Crack
It was on a Thursday in early November that the first crack was observed.Elias had been in the morning mending the roof of the shed--tar paper, nails, a ladder which rattled on the humpy ground. Ember had assisted in its mute manner: the porch light growing brighter as his hand reached a tool which was perhaps a little too distant, and fading at a moment when he must see the nails distinctly amid the gray sky. No words. No pressure. Just presence.Halfway through hammering the last sheet he had moved the ladder--and he suddenly, violently, as though someone had kicked at the bottom of the ladder, this shifted. He had grabbed himself on the gutter, and his heart had bumped against his ribs, and the hammer was falling down to the ground beneath in a dull clank.He slid down, unsteadily on his knees.The ladder lay on its side. Nothing had touched it. No wind. No animal. No explanation.He looked toward the house.The porch light was off.
Taken by Surprise
The very first actual trouble was taken by surprise, on a Tuesday in the last part of November, when the frost had finally resolved to remain.Elias was in the kitchen, preparing breakfast, eggs, toast, the usual, when the lights in the house flickered once, hard, as though somebody had slammed the door behind the power grid.He froze, spatula in hand.The flicker became a stutter.Then all the lights in the house: kitchen, living room, corridor, porch, turned blue.Not the plush amber he had got accustomed to.Blue.Cold. Sharp. Familiar in the worst way.The system's old color.Slowly Elias put down the spatula."Ember?"No pulse. No words. Only the blue glow--steady now, unblinking, as eyes which had lost the manner of blinking.His heart kicked once--hard.He went up to the back door, and opened it.The porch light was blue too.He stepped outside.The air seemed to be