by Sean Platt
“You should watch a video,” the thing suggested.
Sam lunged at it. He missed and hit the floor. It seemed unfair that it should hurt if he was in a hole and not his apartment.
“Sam Dial,” the floating microfragment observed.
“How do I break the loop?” Sam asked from the floor.
“Sam Dial,” the thing repeated.
“Beam support. I want Beam central support.”
“Sam Dial Sam Sam.”
Sam came to his hands and knees. He crawled to the couch and sat. He’d heard of this sort of thing — probably the reason he’d recognized the loop. Normally, The Beam only fragmented due to line vacillation (creating a relatively short-lived hole) or due to a flaw deep in the code that Quark had never meant for users to tinker with. Down there, snippets were everywhere. In the deep Beam, hackers and walkers reported half-deleted files, corrupted and long-forgotten archives. AI had retooled much of it like tinkerers rebuilding old wheeled cars and made it into something new and custom. Down that far, anything went. If you ventured into the realm of fragments, incomplete paths, and schisms, you deserved what you got. But Sam had been near the surface, operating from a Starbucks high-fidelity hard line. He was paying through the nose for it, too. So why had he run into a hole?
It didn’t matter. Good thing he’d noticed that he was in it because he never would have seen it coming. In places like the Null forum, hackers told stories about people who went into holes and never came out. They just replayed the same few minutes or hours over and over, their minds resetting until they died of dehydration.
And, more helpfully, he’d heard from hackers who’d seen the problem in time then emerged with hours missing.
Imagine you’re trying to rock a boat, they said. You have to kick the walls. You have to do anything you can to break past what the sensors expect you to do inside that loop.
He’d seen the loop, so he could get out. He’d never once heard of someone who’d seen the trap and yet stayed stuck.
Of course, if they never left, then no one would know.
Sam dismissed the thought and tried to focus. The moondust made it easier. This mattered. This, here and now, was vital. It wasn’t just about Sam; it was about Nicolai, too. Maybe about Shift and the NAU itself. As he’d relived identical minutes in his bogus apartment, that last bit had felt increasingly certain. Integer7 wouldn’t have warned Sam about Nicolai heading into a trap if it wasn’t true. And he wouldn’t have bothered if the ensuing disruption wasn’t about to be a big one.
Sam stood. He didn’t know where to start, so he kicked a bare wall. The plaster in the ancient partition dented. Even if this were his apartment, no bot would fix that hole. If he was wrong about all of this — if he wasn’t truly stuck in a hole — then he wouldn’t be getting his rental deposit back.
Nothing happened.
He kicked again. This time, there was a popping sizzle, and Sam almost saw smooth composite walls through his shitty plaster ones.
Encouraged, he kicked again. And again.
“Sam Dial Sam,” said the microfragment.
“Beam central support!” Sam yelled, now slamming his shoulder into the wall. There was a wider blink, a bigger pop, and sizzle.
“My name is Sam Dial, and I’m stuck in a hole!” Sam yelled toward his canvas.
Nothing happened. Sam rammed the wall again.
“My name is Sam Dial, and I’m ramming my wall!”
Another flash. And now, hope against hope, Sam thought he might have smelled coffee.
“My name is Sam Dial, and I’m smelling coffee! My name is Sam Dial, and I need to contact Nicolai Costa!”
“Nicolai Costa Nicolai,” said the microfragment.
Sam hit the wall again. This time, something seemed to pop, and Sam slid to the floor in pain. It was working. Maybe he could reach Nicolai in time. Maybe he could still pull himself from six years of hiding and failure and be someone worth dignity again.
It was working, but if he kept this up, he’d kill himself before rocking the loop from its groove.
He hit the wall with his fist. The room flickered. For a second, Sam could almost see a VR rig. A Beam surface. A delivery table.
Then it was gone.
“My name is Sam Dial,” he said from his crumpled position, “AND I’M GETTING REALLY TIRED OF THIS BULLSHIT!”
“Sam,” said the microfragment, changing shape and color as it spoke. “Sam Dial Sam Sam.”
“Do you see her?”
Nicolai looked at Kai. In heels, she was nearly as tall as he was.
“I don’t think so,” he answered.
“You said Kate is blonde. Is that her?” But the second after she’d completed the question, Kai was pawing at his arm, her eyes fixed on a totally different, non-blonde woman several feet away. Nicolai watched, thinking her unhinged. And she was. But this wasn’t nervous Kai. This was fangirl Kai.
“Oh shit,” she said. “Holy shit, Isaac. That’s not Kate. Do you know who that is?”
Nicolai followed Kai’s ravenous gaze, still looking for Kate. Other than the very brief flash he’d caught on the call earlier, he hadn’t seen Kate after her refurb. Kai hadn’t seen her at all. Doc Stahl had gone in, and they’d left. The closest thing to Kate that Kai had seen had looked like a mummy in a tank of liquid.
The woman in Kai’s line of sight wasn’t blonde. Her hair was red but had seemed almost blonde under an overhead light. Seeing her, Nicolai wanted to disappear.
“That’s Natasha Ryan,” Kai blubbered. “Natasha Ryan!”
“Easy. We’re supposed to be low key here.”
“That’s Natasha fucking Ryan!”
“I know who it is, Kai. I worked with Isaac forever. You work for Isaac, you end up working for Natasha. Besides, didn’t you break into her apartment once and watch her immerse?”
“This is different.”
“How the hell is it different?”
Nicolai watched Kai’s soft brown eyes. He shouldn’t dump his baggage on her. She wanted to be a Natasha fan; he should let her be one. Nicolai’s personal and professional lives had never before crossed, and he didn’t want them to start now. That meant accomplishing two tricky goals: staying away from Natasha and Isaac and keeping his mouth shut about Natasha’s detestable personality and her eternal crush on Nicolai — for Kai’s sake, seeing as creature comforts were rare things for them these days.
“You have to introduce me.”
“You’re kidding.” So much for goal number one.
“When else am I going to be in the same room as Natasha Ryan?”
“Let’s go back to the time you broke into her apartment then stood over her while she was immersed. Having virtual sex with some guy, if I remember correctly.”
“I told you, that’s different.” She put her hands on her hips. “I’m like two people, Nicolai. It was business Kai who did that. Do you see this?” She gestured at her own lithe, well-dressed body. “This is social Kai.”
“So this is a social event for you, then. Aren’t you here to — ”
“We’ll see. Introduce me.”
“That’s not a good idea. I just quit working with Isaac, remember? Both of them are probably feeling a bit — ”
Kai hit Nicolai’s arm with the back of her hand. “Stop it. You introduce me to Natasha right now, or I won’t kill any old women for you tonight.”
“It’s not for me. Interestingly, that killing is for her.”
“You can’t do shit with your parasite until everyone’s here anyway. Micah told me he and Isaac are putting on a little show later. That’s when it becomes business, when everyone’s distracted. Until then, we’ve gotta do something.”
“Kai, about me and Natasha: she’s…”
Kai grabbed Nicolai’s arm and began to drag him.
Nicolai shrugged off her grip and reluctantly followed.
“Is that her?” Dominic’s voice said through Kate’s cochlear implant.
She looked around, trying to figure out which monitor Dominic was watching from…well, from wherever he was monitoring things. “Where?” she whispered.
“Dragging that man toward…” Dominic’s audio glitched out then returned,. Kate heard him finish, “…Isaac Ryan.”
“How the shit am I supposed to know where Isaac Ryan is hiding?” Kate said, annoyed.
“Right there, Kate.” He huffed, possibly realizing Kate couldn’t see where he was pointing. “You know Natasha Ryan, right?”
Kate scanned the room. Finally, she spotted the tall redhead — who, it turned out, dwarfed her little mousy husband. She didn’t look for Kai right away. Instead, Kate found herself comparing Natasha’s figure to her own. She wondered what it meant that she was pleased to see that her own girls were perkier and more natural than the famous singer’s.
“Okay. I see her.”
“Kai Dreyfus or Natasha Ryan?”
“What the hell does it matter? Both!”
“All right, all right,” Dominic said. “Calm down.”
“Easy for you to say. You ain’t here in the thick of things with a second person in your head.”
Kate was in the corner, keeping her voice low, holding a drink in front of her curiously moving lips. There wasn’t anything precisely wrong with her speaking to the temporary commissioner from inside the party (she’d already manufactured a cover story in which she was an undercover cop), but the undone deed before them made her prickly. She might also be getting her period. When she’d had her refurb, she’d requested that system be short-circuited, but Kai’s assertion was that the more natural Kate was, the better. Doc’s arguments that many women didn’t have periods in the age of nanobot medicine had fallen on deaf ears. Since then, Kate had become increasingly certain that Kai had been fucking with Doc one final time.
“We all have our parts to play.”
Kate rolled her eyes, raising her head and hoping Dominic could see.
“Where’s Omar?” Dominic asked.
“I saw him a little bit ago. Not sure now.”
Dominic tapped something on his end. “Okay. I see him. He’s in the far bedroom with a big crowd. You’re safe to talk to Kai.”
“Not now, asshole. They’re talking to the Ryans.”
“Then when she’s done.”
Kate considered telling Dominic to stop calling the shots. It had been her idea to mention Kai to the captain, and she was having a hard time separating truth from lies. Between the three of them, officially, Omar was in charge and had given marching orders to them both. Unofficially, between Dominic and Kate, Omar was a double-crossing shit bag with plans of his own. But even beyond that, Kate had a few secrets herself. First, she wanted to make contact with Nicolai, not Kai. Second, she needed to make sure Dominic didn’t figure that Omar’s Doc-related secrets were, in a rather intimate way, actually Kate’s secrets.
“Look. I know Kai better than you do,” Kate said, trying to remember the specifics of that lie. She’d told Dominic that Kai was a sort of industrial spy, and that the two of them had met when working as hookers together. That one had raised Dominic’s eyebrows…and, probably, a tent in his pants. “Let me talk to her I judge it’s safe to do so.”
And hopefully without you listening in, she added in her head. But that would be hard to pull off as well. The Beam permissions that would let Kate hide her upcoming conversation with Kai from Dominic were currently trapped in Nicolai’s head. There were lies on top of lies on top of lies. It was getting hard to keep track.
At that moment, Nicolai looked over. He watched Kate for too long, but then Kai dragged him back into the circle with Natasha and Isaac.
“My canvas says that’s Nicolai Costa with your girl,” Dominic said. “The guy Omar and the Doc Stahl guy in your head have in common.”
“I figured that out.”
“But…his ID is reading funny to me,” Dominic’s voice added. “So…so maybe it’s not Costa?”
“It’s Costa.”
“How do you know?
Shit. Damned lies were so hard to keep straight. “I looked him up.”
“This is really strange,” Dominic said. There was a pause. “Hey, do you know how Omar got those last-minute invites? They certainly look official. And Costa’s…” His sentence ended in the middle, trailed off rather than glitched this time.
Kate hadn’t liked where that sentence was going, but she liked even less how Dominic had stopped speaking.
“What?” she said, afraid of the answer.
“It’s Braemon. He’s headed your way, with Omar behind him.”
“SerenityBlue?”
“I know,” Serenity answered.
“The knot. The map. It’s changing.”
“I know, Wax. Thank you.”
Serenity looked up at the boy as she knelt on her cushion. Her smile felt like a lie. She’d been trying to feel The Beam since Wax had come in last night. Sleep had been impossible. She’d felt herself wanting to fragment, to reach out to those who believed in and sought her. She’d found herself wanting to tip away from the physical world and become virtual, but the way had suddenly felt like a decimated landscape fraught with pitfalls. She’d gone out anyway and come back empty. But Wax wanting to show her changes to his map was ridiculous. It was like being struck by a train then enduring a doctor trying to prove you’d been hit rather than fixing the damage.
“That dark cloud you noticed on the map earlier…”
“I know.”
“Serenity,” he said, desperate to get in a few words. “Some of the others? They say people are talking about Violet James.”
“I see that now. It’s fine, Wax.”
“It’s not fine!” the boy blurted.
SerenityBlue watched him at the doorway, allowing his outburst to pass. The students were usually serene, but at root they were still children. There were things they wouldn’t understand — that they couldn’t understand. Serenity didn’t like what the ripples seemed to be saying. Or the realization that there were two shells out there, and that something malicious seemed to be following one of them. She didn’t like the black cloud, but at least now she might know what it meant.
What Wax and the others didn’t understand was that at this point, little could be done. It was like watching an explosion in slow motion. The explosion couldn’t be stopped because in the ways that counted, it had already happened. They could only watch it unfold then count the bodies later.
Finally, the boy’s face returned to mostly normal, and he turned, surely knowing that Serenity couldn’t say anything to make it better but perhaps understanding that in its way, that was okay too.
“Will that be all?” she asked.
Wax’s face changed. Perhaps it was the truth dawning on him. “Is there anything you’d like? Anything at all?” he asked.
This time, despite what Serenity knew, her smile came more easily.
“No,” she said. “It was always inevitable.”
“Then…” He tried again. “You’re leaving?”
Serenity stood, crossed to the door, and put her hands on the boy’s shoulders.
“I think I must.”
“When?”
“Soon,” Serenity said.
“What should we do in the meantime?” Wax asked.
Her answer was as pointed as it was obvious.
“Prepare,” she said.
Natasha had her hand on Nicolai’s wrist, noting the flash in Isaac’s eyes when she spotted Shelly from across the room.
“I’m sorry,” she said, interrupting her own words to Nicolai about how nice it was to see him, “there’s someone over there I need to catch before she gets away.”
She gave the fan, Kai, a smile. She gave Nicolai a larger smile, being sure to turn in time to see Isaac’s reaction. Their recent banter had been so much more pleasant than normal. Natasha used to taunt Isaac by flirting with other men, but now the same actions were almost foreplay. In the past, she’d have hones
tly tried to get Nicolai to sneak into a back room with her, but right now she was enjoying Isaac’s hungry, possessive eyes, hoping to capitalize on that lust a bit later.
When Natasha moved to push out of their little circle (the first time in West knew how long that she’d left Nicolai without yearning for him), Isaac put a hand on her wrist.
“Don’t go, darling,” he said, his voice a tad false. “I know how much you love your fans.”
Natasha turned her smile on Isaac, but she saw nerves in him rather than sex. He’d been jacked up the whole ride over. But it had been a long time since she’d played cat and mouse with her husband, and maybe this was what his bedroom gaze looked like now.
“I don’t know how long Shelly will be here. If I don’t catch her now, I might miss my chance.” She turned to Kai. “I’m sorry to seem rude. It was so nice to meet you.”
“Oh, it’s no problem at all,” Kai gushed.
Natasha moved again, but this time Isaac slipped an arm around her waist. The embrace was sweet but incredibly awkward given the distance already between them.
“We haven’t talked to Nicolai,” Isaac said.
“We’ve talked enough to this deserter,” she said, now smiling broadly and touching Nicolai to show she was kidding.
“And Kai hasn’t even told you her favorite song,” Isaac added.
“We should actually go anyway,” Nicolai said, taking Kai by the arm.
Natasha was preparing to humor Isaac and ask the woman for her favorite song when Isaac’s head swiveled the other way. Natasha turned to see what had grabbed his attention and found herself facing her brother-in-law.
“Isaac,” Micah said. “I just found out Carter Vale is going to be here. Did you know?”
“They changed the whole traffic pattern because he…” Isaac began. Then, lying as far as Natasha could tell, he changed tacks and continued: “Oh. No. I didn’t realize.”
“Is there a problem, Micah?” Natasha asked.
