Fire of the Dark Triad Page 2

  He shouldn’t have been so dumb and greedy, thought Garrett, listening to the details of the investigation.

  “Wasn’t it obvious that the return was too good to be true? What was he thinking?” the anchor was questioning the guest analyst.

  Probably nothing, thought Garrett. Thinking wasn’t the guy’s forte, and he preferred to simply trust his charming friend. Garrett was good at making friends, which was very useful because he needed a number of rich and powerful people for his Ponzi scheme to work.

  Gullible dummies with predictably pitiful behavior, he thought. It was their own fault that they believed in his bullshit. He won because he was smarter. It was an exciting game, for sure, but he was careful, and he always walked away in time. He moved his money to an anonymous offshore account, took a jet to Europe, and disappeared before the shit hit the fan. He heard his name and tuned back into the news.

  “… It’s very similar to Garrett Hall’s case. To remind the viewers, last month Hall’s sailboat was found drifting in the Pacific. After unsuccessful attempts to get in touch, a Coast Guard unit went aboard,” now it was the analyst speaking. “There was nobody there, but they found a suicide note. Hall apparently jumped off the boat wearing his scuba lead weights. He apologized to the victims of his exploded financial operation and said that he killed himself out of shame and guilt. His body was never recovered.”

  They had no clue that this scenario was absolutely impossible for the simple reason that Garrett carried the same personality trait as Gunt, the queen and a number of other people across the generations. A twist of evolution wired their brains differently. They didn’t know what conscience was in the same way that blind people couldn’t experience colors. Unaware of their deficiency, they assumed that they were simply smarter and more flexible, and it was only fair that they created their own rules, leaving conventional morality to the rest of the world. They always existed, peppered throughout the population, and they mostly stayed under the radar.

  But evolution didn’t deal in precision. Sometimes they broke laws too boldly; sometimes things that they desired were too dark. Those who derived pleasure from killing became serial killers, those who enjoyed power and mass murder became bloodthirsty dictators. Self-confidence misfired into grandiosity; boldness into recklessness; opportunism into cold manipulation.

  At the end of the 19th century, the nascent field of psychology identified these malevolent aberrations and gave each of them a name: Narcissism, Psychopathy, Machiavellianism.

  Later it was understood that these sinister traits always intertwined, and the scientists coined the new term Dark Triad.

  The Dark Triad personality was the most dangerous type, the worst of humanity. Aggressive, selfish, uninhibited by morals, they got whatever they wanted, ignoring the cost, because they never paid. Nature had armed them with the perfect tools – they used charisma, lies and manipulation to pass the cost of their actions to others. Unscathed, they traveled through life leaving destruction on various scales in their wake.

  Recognize them, stay away from relationships, screamed the headlines of the tabloids. Beware of Dark Triad leaders, learn to identify them by the discernible traits, be sure never to elect them, cautioned venerable publications.

  However, as ominous as they sounded, the Dark Triad warnings were mostly lost on the background of other alarms constantly going off on Earth. Regional conflicts, financial crises, shrinking natural resources, pollution, global warming – the number and severity of issues grew like a deadly snowball. The conscientious part of the world desperately tried to prevent the approaching catastrophe, but there was too much darkness in human nature. The planet’s future looked seriously dim.

  And then against all odds humanity got a chance. By a complete accident, scientists stumbled onto a game-changing discovery. According to their new theory, at the very end of its creation the Universe unfolded into an infinite number of identical copies glued along their multidimensional edges. They were called Mirror Worlds in the first news announcement, and the name stuck.

  In the beginning it was a purely academic concept, but after several decades, physicists learned that the matter connecting Mirror Worlds created observable singularities in space. Moreover, some of them were located right in Earth’s backyard, inside the Solar System.

  Theoretically, the science said, they could serve as gates to other copies of the Universe. Over the next several decades, astronomical amounts of money were poured into researching the space singularity. But the gate matter turned out to be impenetrable for transmissions. There was no way to see the other side. The doors to the other worlds remained locked, and the excitement about them gradually died down.

  Hope was regained overnight when a breakthrough discovery of the specific magnetic properties that allowed physical objects to pass through the singularity field. Another century later, scientists came up with technology to build spaceships capable of crossing over to the adjacent worlds.

  The first unmanned shuttle was sent to the other side through the closest singularity in the vicinity of Saturn’s orbit. It was programmed to simply pass through the border, quickly collect data and return home.

  Earth held its breath, but the suspense didn’t last long. The drone came back within several hours with a pot of informational gold.

  According to its records, crossing the boundary registered as a momentary glitch in navigation systems, and then the shuttle exited the singularity in seemingly the same location of the Solar System as its entry point. The Mirror World indeed was an identical copy of the known Universe.

  Expeditions sent through other singularity gates reported that there was no trace of intelligence or its previous existence on the other Mirror Earths. It seemed that evolution simply skipped that step there.

  Physicists processed the new data and adjusted their theory. It was determined that all Mirror Worlds periodically developed minor perturbations in their gravity fields, breaking the exact symmetry. Among other things, it slightly affected water distribution and formed different weather conditions on Mirror planets. A climate pattern on Earth prompted evolution to create an advanced intelligence.

  Humanity felt lonely once again, but it didn’t grieve for too long. In practical terms, the new reality meant that an infinite number of uninhabited copies of Earth were available for colonization. There was enough space for everyone who cared to have a world shaped according to their preferences. Earth’s governments, relieved to export domestic conflicts and to solve resource problems, enthusiastically encouraged the idea. In a joint effort they built mega ships for freight transportation and together signed a document promising full support to settlers until their civilizations reached technological self-sufficiency.

  Mass migration took off like an explosion.

  Logistically, some new worlds preferred to stay under Earth’s governance, creating the United Commonwealth, but the majority requested independence, which Earth granted without dispute. Armed conflicts were at an all-time low, and everyone seemed to breathe an enormous sigh of relief, until the imperfection of human nature completely shattered this utopia.

  The problem started when some seceded colonies demanded support well beyond the original agreement. This angered many Commonwealth citizens, and under the weight of internal political pressure, governments started ramping down on free aid.

  When a developing world was refused a free upgrade of medical software, a group of terrorists snuck a biological weapon across the Earth Mirror border as an act of revenge. The virus wiped out a third of Earth’s population before a cure was found.

  It was later argued that the scale of the disaster wasn’t intended, but the Commonwealth’s response was brutal and final. Special squads descended on all independent planets, annihilated their spaceship fleets and released nano-organisms that chewed up and rendered unusable all advanced hardware and machinery. The Commonwealth’s troops waited
until everything that could lead to a restoration of modern technology was destroyed, sent the bots a command to self-destruct and departed for good, leaving behind camouflaged satellites to keep an eye on the cutoff civilizations.

  Earth buried its dead, and the survivors began to put the shards of their lives together. They tried to process how this could have happened and recoiled in shock: the terrorists were monsters in human form. It was clear that there was something wrong with them on a deep psychological level. Indeed, scientific measurements of their brain functioning revealed a pattern that correlated with the Dark Triad personality type.

  For the first time, Earth’s population looked into this phenomenon seriously.

  Low agreeableness, tendency to violate the most basic norms of behavior and a distortion of the emotional sphere were among the main symptoms at the high spectrum of the traits. Throughout history, Dark Triad people left a scorched-earth in the lives of individuals and created wildfires of hatred and cruelty on massive scales.

  Every single person lost someone they loved in the epidemic, and people unanimously swore to prevent this from happening ever again. A high precision test was uniformly adopted to evaluate the intensity of this Dark Triad mental distortion, and countries across the globe introduced a cutoff score for some professional occupations and political positions. Couples were expected to share this information with each other to expose potential cheaters and emotional abusers. The presence of the trait was quickly nicknamed the “Curse of the Dark Triad.”

  It wasn’t a future anyone wanted for their kids, but fortunately, curses were a thing for medieval times. By this point in human progress, genetic engineering had already eliminated inheritable diseases relating to human bodies. Laws prevented DNA adjustments to cure mental disorders, but the current epidemic tipped the scales in the other direction.

  Political movements fueled by outrage called for removing the Dark Triad personality from humanity’s genetic pool for good. A few cautious voices warned against playing with fire. But the fire was already out of control, argued the rest.

  The majority easily won, and constellations of genes responsible for the Dark Triad were allowed to be replaced on embryonic levels with benign donor materials.

  Over generations, the condition became more and more uncommon. Crime statistics went down, and there were changes in other areas too. Political systems rebuilt themselves as one functional entity, and strict moral principles became prevalent in all fields of human activity. It was only a matter of time before discrimination against people based on their DNA was considered a violation of human rights, and the practice of eliminating the Dark Triad trait from the population was labeled as genetic self-cleansing. Any tinkering with the genes linked to personality characteristics was once again banned.

  The test remained available for self-exploration purposes, but it became illegal to ask for anyone’s score, and socially unacceptable to bring up this subject. There was no way to find out how many Dark Triad people were left on Earth.

  Meanwhile, surveillance reported violence and instability on all closed Mirror Worlds without exception. As these societies became more and more technological, they experienced a greater and greater likelihood of self-destruction. At some point, Earth’s moral responsibilities vis-à-vis the former colonies became a hotly debated topic, but finally a strict non-interference policy was accepted as the only ethical solution. Even sharing secretly collected information with the broad Commonwealth audience was considered a violation of independent civilization privacy. Only a small intelligence community retained the right to review spy satellite records.

  A few more centuries passed.

  PART II:

  HEADHUNTER

  Earth

  I woke up drenched in a cold sweat. It took a moment before my heart began to slow down, and the familiar sight of the navigation room pushed the nightmare from my head. I rolled out of the pilot chair and fought an irrational desire to turn on all the internal lights.

  “Kir,” I asked, “did you wake me up?”

  “Your level of adrenaline was nearing the threshold. Besides, we’re entering Earth’s orbit.”

  Our psychologists advised against cultivating a personal relationship with an implanted chip, but it was very reassuring to hear Kir’s voice.

  Earth guard systems requested identification, the usual procedure for everyone coming from the Mirror Spaces, and I initiated the arrival protocol.

  “Nick,” said Kir almost immediately, “we can’t land. The Cyber Safety Department has turned on a Red Alert for all ships arriving from Earth3, citing cyber-implant contamination. We’re told to dock in the quarantine area.” He paused for a second and added, “Nick, I’m positive that my systems are clean.”

  Of course, they were, I thought. I didn’t believe for a moment that this check was related to contamination. It would be too much of a coincidence, and I didn’t believe in coincidences anymore. It was an information leak that certain people were trying to stop, that much was certain.

  The border control cruiser escorted my ship to the quarantine hangar entrance – standard procedure in cases of suspected contamination, even if it felt somewhat menacing. Nothing personal … but I didn’t even try to pretend that it was true. The gates closed, and I surveyed the interior of a huge holding area, letting Kir deal with the landing.

  All the other parking spaces were empty; and the only person inside was a woman in a Cyber Safety uniform. Kir opened the hatch. I stepped out and waved at her as I walked down the stairs.

  She addressed me from several steps away, “Welcome to Earth. We apologize for the unfortunate delay and will send you on your way as soon as possible. Can you please grant us permission to run diagnostic software on your cyber-implant?”

  Another standard procedure for cases of suspected contamination, I thought.

  “No problem,” I said giving her my most charismatic smile. “How long will this take?”

  She stopped and looked at me with the cold resolute eyes of an interrogator. How unusual for friendly Cyber Safety personnel, I noted. Except that she most likely wasn’t from Cyber Safety and didn’t care about appearing nice. She was testing me: citizens with nothing to hide wouldn’t pay attention, people trying to smuggle critical information might get nervous.

  “We cannot provide an exact estimate at this moment, but we’ll make sure that you’re comfortable during your wait,” she said, smiling tightly.

  I told Kir to allow all cyber safety access. She nodded in acknowledgment, and gestured for me to follow. We passed through the metal gate to an internal corridor and entered a room that was decorated pleasantly enough, but nevertheless lacked a certain touch of care with which Earth usually treated her citizens. They didn’t even bother to imitate natural light.

  I sat down in the only chair, which felt pristinely unused. Cyber contamination protocol hadn’t been invoked for a very long time.

  I wasn’t surprised when Kir turned on a widespread security breach warning. They went beyond running diagnostic software – so much for standard procedure. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t believe in coincidences, and my connection to the stolen information was obvious.

  Let them look, I thought. They wouldn’t find anything. It would be a big overstatement to say that the situation was under control, but things were going as planned, at least for the time being. As for the delay – I still had several hours before the timing would become truly critical. I praised myself for such rational and restrained thinking.

  According to quarantine rules, I had to use their proxy to contact Earth. Not that it mattered, since Kir’s communications were under surveillance anyway.

  I took a deep breath, preparing for the conversation, which would determine if my plan had any chance to work.

  “Kir, request a connection to Hilgor,” I said finally. Listening to the gentle sound of the outgoing rin
g I silently begged for Hilgor not to reject my call. The truth was that I would most definitely get killed in the very near future if he wouldn’t take my call now. And incidentally, my life wasn’t even the highest stake in my game.

  °°°

  A young man, Hilgor, a recent transplant from a Mirror World, was standing at his window wall looking out onto a multileveled flow of traffic connecting skyscraping sectors of the great city of Berlin. He seemed to be deeply immersed in his thoughts when a sudden shift in the building brought the sunlight directly into his eyes. “Damn it,” he said, shielding his face with his hand.

  A large dog in the middle of the room stretched, sighed and turned onto his back, his shiny fur looking particularly black on the pristinely white surface of the floor.

  “Damn these narcissistic buildings, Riph,” repeated the man stepping away from the window. “I get they desire to look their best, but what about me?”

  The dog ignored the question and went back to sleep. He didn’t have a problem with tower behavior unlike his master who sounded mildly annoyed. Architects programmed skyscrapers to periodically change shape in order to achieve their best appearance under different light conditions. None of the modern windows had the ability to block the sun, however. Generations of Commonwealth’s people had received retinal filters and self-protecting skin as a part of their standard birth package, so the brightness regulators had been redundant for some centuries now. But the man wasn’t born here. In fact, he arrived to Earth only three months ago, and, in spite of the best efforts of his hosts, minor issues like this kept popping up in his day-to-day experiences. The external walls of his apartment needed to be replaced with some transparent photochromic material, but he kept forgetting to order it.