Kingdom Keepers III(35)

“We’re either doing this, or we’re not,” Finn said. “It’s a little late to be debating the merits of the plan. Forget us. Forget the Syndrome. Think of Wayne. Think of Jess’s dream, or premonition, or whatever it is that Jess has. Wayne’s in trouble and he needs us. End of story.”

Philby looked over at Finn and nodded. “You’re right.”

“I know I’m right.”

“Okay. So do it.”

“I’m going to do it now.”

“So why aren’t you moving?” Philby asked.

“Because now you’ve scared me. I mean, what happens if there are people in there?”

“I thought we just got past that.”

“I thought so too,” Finn said, turning around and crossing the wide tunnel to the door on the opposite side.

He paused there in front of the unmarked door. A pair of voices came and went at the far end of the tunnel they were in. He knew he mustn’t be seen going into this room, and so he waited to make sure the voices weren’t coming toward them. But there was more to it than that. He also stopped there to clear his head. He forced his fear into a tiny box at the back of his mind and he closed the top of that box and he locked it. He washed all concern and all sensations from his body, taking a deep cleansing breath and feeling his connection to his senses expelled with his exhalation. Even thought left him, so that he existed in an ether, a fragile place where he wasn’t even Finn any longer. He wasn’t even sure he was—that he existed at all. He was a bundle of jumping atoms, light generated by a series of computer-controlled projectors. If he could become pure light, without thought and without form or shape, no physical barrier could stop him.

He imagined the train coming down the tunnel and he stepped forward and passed right through the door into the humming room on the other side. The light from his own projection created a glow in the otherwise dim room. He looked left: no one at the desk there; right: row after row of shelving lined up in stacks like a library. The shelves were not filled with books but with computer servers, network hubs and switching, terabyte hard drives, routers, and thousands of flashing, colorful LEDs. It was all neat and organized with labels attached to each shelf below a device.

Old McDaniel’s Farm read a computer printout, hanging like a sign on the endcap of the one of the stacks. A server farm. A computer nerd’s paradise.

Slowly, Finn allowed his thoughts to flow again. His senses came back online and he not only processed cognitively but he felt his fingers and toes tingle.

He turned and reached for the doorknob. His hand went right through the door. He withdrew it and closed his eyes, trying to speed himself back to a less pure condition, where his body would be more than light.

He hadn’t told any of the others, but this transition had become increasingly difficult for him. He could easily—perhaps too easily—transport himself into the state of pure DHI—all-clear he called it—a state in which he possessed no material quality, in which he was capable of walking through walls or on top of water. But the way back to his human self was sometimes harder. It occasionally took him more time to transition back to being part DHI–part human. He wasn’t sure when that scale had tipped, but it had; he didn’t know what it meant, but knew it meant something. He tried the handle again, and this time it turned. But he looked down at his own hand as if it belonged to somebody else.

And maybe it did.

Philby came through quickly.

“Jeesh! What took you so long?”

Finn shut and locked the door behind them.

“Heaven!” said Philby, spreading his arms as he faced the stacks of servers. Finn’s primary job was to get them in and out of the locked room, a job half accomplished. His other job—checking the maintenance records—would have to wait.

Philby searched the aisles, row after row of servers, inspecting the labels taped beneath each black brick. Unlike Finn, he didn’t seem the least bit intimidated by the maze of wires and display of blinking lights. He located a vertical column of six machines and a keyboard and screen that accessed them. Within minutes he’d removed the portable hard drive and was downloading the data from the Soundstage B shoot.

He typed frantically, at a speed Finn had trouble believing.

“Done a little bit of this, have you?”

“For me,” Philby said, never slowing, “this is like a violinist playing a Stratosphere—”

“Stradivarius,” Finn corrected him.

“Whatever. Just like that. I dream of messing with this stuff. For most companies, it would be a major deal to have one of these SGIs. I’m looking at six right here. Four more, a couple rows behind us. They’ve got everything in here: Solaris, Red Hat, Linux. All the top-of-the-line Macs. For all I care, you can just leave me here.”