Child of the Fall

by D Scott Johnson

  She vanished. After a moment, Tal stomped over the hill. “Have you been caught up on your rishta?”

  It was time to stop being reasonable. “Almost. I told you I’d come get you when we were done. Thanks for cutting off my other half.”

  Tal almost looked embarrassed, but then his holo lost its scan lock for a second, like a classic TV he saw in old movies. “You misunderstand. My Salta is no longer in the center of the capital. Come along.”

  Another glitch. Definitely a good news, bad news thing. If it came to a fight Mike was pretty sure he’d win. But he wasn’t sure he’d keep Tal intact in the process.

  Tal’s Salta was in a sector to the left of the city center as they approached it. The buildings were lower here, and so more of them remained intact. Mike had designed his fair share of post-apocalypse realms, but he’d never tried one based on simple decay. He assumed that a modern building would remain standing for eternity. Ruins happened because of outside forces: an earthquake, a storm, a drunk Greek general, a barbarian mistaking roof tiles for gold, stuff like that. Assuming this realm was a high-fidelity scan of an actual place—Mike had no reason to doubt that—mere engineering only delayed decay. Like gravity, time’s units were very small, but they never, ever stopped.

  Now that he knew it mattered, he paid more attention to what little text remained visible in the realm, mostly on the buildings and the occasional street sign. Those in particular didn’t look anything like what was common on Earth, but they were consistently placed near intersections, so it seemed like a good guess.

  This provided a critical insight. Traffic, no matter if it was vehicles or network packets, needed to be controlled. Stop should be a universal concept. Mike picked a set of symbols from what he guessed was a Stop sign and searched for it in lower-level functions of the realm, finding one quickly. Keeping a careful eye on the external telemetry next to that function, he activated the potential stop function, and the stream stopped. Even better, the symbols on the function changed. He deactivated the function, and the telemetry started moving again. So now he had stop and go.

  Several symbols represented both words, so he figured it wasn’t a logographic system like Chinese. It was also three dimensional. Each symbol had a specific height, varying in fractional inch increments on the signs and as much as a couple of feet on the taller surviving buildings. But it was proportional: the bigger the lettering, the bigger the height difference. Always the same difference, though.

  This gave him a question Tal might answer. “Did they use echolocation at all?”

  “No.”

  Mike was disappointed that Tal didn’t follow up with more, but it did provide a data point. Whatever the reason for the variance, it wasn’t down to this specific species.

  When they arrived, he was scared, but also fascinated. The room was very similar to the one Ozzie had trapped Zoe in during their fight back in China. After killing himself, sort of, Ozzie had used her as life support while waiting for Helen to fall into his trap, taking Zoe’s place. It had almost worked. He’d controlled it all from a room very much like this, complete with a glowing hollow column in the center of the room that held a vague shape inside it. Spencer said that they’d almost stopped Ozzie by turning it off.

  Tal noticed his stare. “They are rather hideous when taken outside of their network case, but it is quite necessary since my other half died. Now,” he said as another foot plate scanner flared to life, “if you would be so kind as to submit to your scan?”

  Here we go. “No.”

  He watched as Tal tried and failed to digest Mike’s answer. Mike hadn’t told him no the entire time, and this must be when he least expected it. “What did you say?”

  “I’m not going anywhere but home, Tal. It would be nice if you helped me, but it’s not required.” A bluff, but not a big one. If this was like Ozzie’s control room, the transit dimension was close by. A rumble started as more consoles flared to life. Great. He didn’t like Tal much when he was calm. It looked like angry was coming right up.

  “This is your new home. You were sent to take my place. I have served enough of my sentence.”

  That was interesting. “Your sentence? Is this a prison?” He wouldn’t know that word. “You’re here as punishment?” He’d been talking about other halves the entire time but was single as far as Mike could tell. “What happened to your other half, Tal? Where is it?”

  For the first time ever, Tal had lost control of the situation. “That issue was resolved by this mission. I accepted the punishment and have obviously served my time, lest you would not be here.”

  Bingo. And now Mike had an angle. “You’re wrong, Tal. I was sent here to test you, to see if you’d learned anything in your time here. Now I must report back to the guild,” whatever that was, “with my findings. Open the passageway, please.”

  Tal was frightened and confused, but then grew angry. “Report to the guild yourself, whelp, if your ignorance really was a test.” The storage area of his avatar was suddenly closed off by a heavy construct that pushed his threads together more tightly. “Now don’t dawdle. Take your place.”

  Constructs very much like his realm probes manifested around his avatar. They quickly roped his arms and legs together, then started moving him toward the scanning plate.

  “These are a very original solution to our kind’s plight. I encourage you to transmit the construct plans as part of your first report back to the guild.”

  The cap against his threads was heavy, and Mike couldn’t get any leverage. His avatar was no better off. The probe constructs were weak individually, but very strong in large groups. He couldn’t push against them. Helpless, he could only watch the scan plate as it grew closer. Mike knew he had to get away from it, but the probes kept pushing him forward.

  He could almost hear Kim say the words: Do the unexpected.

  Mike relaxed, and the probes cascaded over his head like a wave. He lurched sideways out of their grip. Half a dozen managed to grab his ankles, sending him crashing to the floor. He’d only bought himself a few seconds of survival. It wasn’t enough.

  Tal cursed as he tried to coordinate the probes. He wasn’t as practiced as Mike; there was a still a chance. Mike’s eyes locked on the symbols around the glowing column.

  One was clearly a button, labeled with the word “Stop.”

  Mike pulled himself across the floor. Probes flailed his legs and back, but he kept going. He had to reach that button. If he ever wanted to see Kim again, he had to reach that button.

  Probes still wrapped around his legs while others beat away at him. He would not stop, no matter how hard the hits. Mike dragged himself up to the top of the column. He had to push it.

  It didn’t budge.

  Tal got control of more threads and wrapped them further up his legs. If Mike let go, he’d never be able to reach the button again.

  It wouldn’t move.

  Mike stopped and looked at the thing as more probes wrapped around his waist. If it was an emergency stop, it would have something to keep it from being activated accidentally. He saw a thin bar going through the middle of it.

  It wasn’t a button, it was a knob.

  When he twisted it, the bar flexed. If it flexed, it would break. It had to break, but he had no leverage anymore. The probes had lifted his feet off the ground, yanking harder and harder trying to bring him to the floor.

  Mike shifted his grip, knowing it would cost him the position he’d fought for, and let the probes pull him down as he held tight to the knob.

  The bar pinning it in place gave way with a loud snap.

  The probes partially cushioned his fall, but he still cracked the side of his head on the floor. A scream cut through the blooming pain. Mike turned in time to see Tal’s holo fade along with the glow from the column.

  Before he could free himself from the now-slack probes, Gonzo appeared.

  “What you have done?”

  He pushed them aside and stood. “I’m sor
ry.”

  “Ruined everything is! We together nothing work if will not are! You you him would not destroy promised!”

  “Hey, look, I’m sorry. I didn’t have a”—Gonzo vanished, and the room went dark— “choice?”

  Chapter 49

  Spencer

  Tonya’s phones were important, but the biggest score was his toolkit. It let them get back into the realmspace of the plant without being seen, this time with proper screens instead of hacked-together prayers like the last time. But when it came time to invade Abada’s fortress, even screens wouldn’t be enough to let them walk in. It would require more of a wriggle, and not always in a direction you could point to.

  “When you said we didn’t need disguises,” Edmund said with his foot only a few inches from Spencer’s face, “I didn’t expect you to force us to wear costumes.”

  Realmspace literally added entire new dimensions to the art of hacking. Pipes, back doors, and alternate command paths became physical things that could be explored and exploited. If you knew where to look and how to open it, there was almost always a path to get in. It helped that realm developers had fallen back on the old security through obscurity crutch, never once thinking anyone would manage to navigate an avatar through the multidimensional virtual basements that supported the back-end of realmspace.

  Kim had done this when she removed all traces of a run-in Spencer had with a local cop when they all first met. She’d moved through spaces in ways nobody thought were possible, using pathways that made Spencer’s head hurt when he tried to follow them on a map. But that didn’t stop him from practicing it as soon as she taught him how. Spencer never counted on bringing a bunch of noobs along, though.

  “Don’t blame me, blame Kim. These extensions only work on standard avatars.” The multidimensional cat suits were only flattering on Tonya, but even that didn’t last when they had to navigate the first of the extradimensional crawlspaces. People weren’t supposed to stretch through three different directions that didn’t exist at once. And this one was tight. “It could be worse.”

  The lights flickered and died. “It’s worse,” Edmund said.

  “No, sorry,” June said from the…well, rear had a fucked up relationship to reality in here. She was the last in line, at any rate. “That was me. I hit a switch with my knee.” The lights turned back on. “How much farther?”

  “I think,” Tonya said from the front of the line, “hang on, I need to adjust my neck.” The machine space construct was mostly modeled using brightly lit transparent walls. The effect was like crawling through clear twisted hamster tunnels. It allowed him to see her unhook the vertebra in her neck and stretch it out and around a corner. Kim did this all the time, but it made him want to barf. He was afraid to look at his own legs. He had to adjust the elasticity contract to get them around a few corners, and it felt like he had grown extra knees.

  “Right,” she said. “Two more turns and we’re done.”

  “Turns?” Edmund asked from above and ldup—Spencer had never bothered to learn the proper names of the extra directions, this one was at a right angle to left and up. “I can see my own arse without turning around in here. And I’m not using a mirror. The queen’s torturers could learn a thing or two from whoever designed this adjunct to Satan’s privies.”

  He would complain all day if they let him. “Edmund,” Spencer said, “less talk, more move.”

  What Tonya didn’t mention was that the last two turns were long and in a spiral that she could only describe with an equation. June looked like a black satin snake squeezed from a tube, so big she probably still had her feet in the entrance when they grabbed her hands to pull her through.

  “That,” she said as she stood and towered over them, “is not supposed to be possible. The man who designed those spaces was one of my advisers. He’d be appalled at what we just did. I’m appalled at what we just did.”

  “It gets us in without opening a door,” Spencer replied.

  Now that they were past the last of the mazes, they could ditch the cat suits. It was nice to get back into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Even Edmund’s bizarre lace-and-what-the-hell-is-that-on-your-crotch look was a definite improvement. Those catsuits left nothing to the imagination, and he’d seen things that could not be unseen.

  They still had to cross the internal space of Abada’s realm without getting kicked out before they took their shot. Walking would take too long, and they couldn’t switch avatars now. It would set off who knew how many alarms.

  So he brought their rides with him.

  Spencer pulled the four miniaturized constructs he’d been carrying in a pouch all this time and tossed them on the ground. Each expanded to full size with a snort and a whinny.

  “Shh,” Spencer said as he grabbed one’s snout. “Fuck, stop making noise.”

  Edmund was, predictably, unimpressed. “Oh God.”

  Tonya walked around the winged horse that stood next to her. “Very…cute?”

  “Are these from—” June asked.

  “Not exactly. I made shadow copies of them when my aunt brought her little brats over for Thanksgiving last year. I was planning on turning them into apocalypse ponies to scare the shit out of them this Christmas, but never got around to it.”

  “Do they talk?” Tonya asked.

  “Nah, that part’s copyrighted to hell and back. They’re not here for conversation anyway. You wouldn’t know it by looking at them, but the wings work.” Life-sized cartoon horses with wings. Well why the hell not?

  Spencer could never keep the names straight, but he got the black one with the moon on its ass, June got the big white one with the crown, Tonya got the purple one with the star on its ass, and Edmund got the one that had probably been a part of every gay pride parade since the 1990s. What the obsession with sticking symbols on a horse’s ass was all about, he never did understand. “Get on in front of their wings, and don’t forget the seat belt. You don’t want to fall off one of these fuckers if you can avoid it.”

  Edmund hopped right up like he’d done it all his life. He rolled his eyes at Spencer’s expression. “Nobles from my era learned to ride before they could walk. It’s not much more than a donkey crossed with a chicken. If you put a red hat and cape on it, it wouldn’t be any less useful than a cardinal.” He looked back at the rainbow tail. “It would make spotting their usual preference in sleeping partner easier.”

  “How do we get them airborne?” Tonya asked.

  Spencer climbed up and strapped in. “Once they’re running, pull straight up on the reins. Then hang the hell on. They’re faster than they look.” He slapped his on the ass and was rewarded with a stomach-lurching rear before it tore off into the darkness. They looked ridiculous, but speed was cool no matter what. Flying was even cooler.

  He spiraled up to get a good look at the layout. Abada may have built this himself, but he stayed true to the original design Spencer had seen in the restored realm-enabled movie. It was a gigantic open room with an island of hexagons floating in its center, maybe twice as big as the starship docked against it on the opposite side. The miles-thick ceiling had cathedral window cutouts that showed the misty cloud construct beyond. Spencer had never toured one of these before; it was pretty fucking impressive.

  He opened a channel on their phones so they wouldn’t have to shout. “Arm your logic bombs, we’re going in. Drop on my mark.” He set the pony on a shallow, gliding dive and activated his nordenSight. The phone app assessed the ballistic contracts of the realm and drew him a virtual basket over the target to aim for. Nothing but net and he was guaranteed a hit. “Three…two…” Four green sparks shot out of the central amphitheater and streaked upward, but they couldn’t dodge right now. “One…mark!”

  Spencer dropped the logic bombs and yanked the pony inverted, pulling into a split-S, barely dodging the bolt Abada had sent his way. The others weren’t as experienced and got direct hits. The damage contracts on the constructs and the avatars were exceeded
in an instant, and they vanished. “Are you guys okay?” he asked.

  “We’re fine,” June replied over the shared channel. “But he’s locked us out. Did it work?”

  Spencer had to concentrate to spot the small bits of solidified logic as they fell. One by one, they bounced off the amphitheater, arching into the darkness.

  Shit. “Negative. They just deflected off the surface. Yumbo and Inkanyamba must’ve—” He was wrenched sideways as the bolt that missed him slammed into the belly of his mount, tearing away the saddle construct’s straps and sending him sailing into the void. It wasn’t over, though. Vaporizing his mount instead of his avatar left him some options. Spencer touched a spot on his jacket, and a LightYear pack manifested on his back. The wings opened instantly, and he was gliding, searching for Abada’s next shot.

  Abada tried a different strategy and set the physics to Earth sea level, full fidelity. With one G and a much thicker atmosphere, the wings could only morph so much to compensate. Spencer barely managed to land without crushing his legs, but it still knocked the wind out of him. Shouting get up in your head doesn’t do much when your body is convinced it can’t breathe anymore, so it took him longer than he wanted to find his feet.

  He stood up just outside the amphitheater. Abada’s dripping, shit-filled form towered above him.

  “Clever,” he said. “I can’t find exactly where your access point is. You must be in one of the unfinished areas. No matter, the mistress has plenty of people to search for you now.”

  “You’re not going to find us. Stop being an asshole, Abada.” Spencer needed to get as close as he could, but it was not easy with a giant rotting corpse looming over his head.

  “Don’t call me that. June called me that. My name is Kokou.”

  Spencer only had one chance. The horror above him made his inner chimpanzee want to run for the forest, but he had to get closer to the thing. With an effort, he turned running backward into stepping forward. “I want to show you a trick June showed me when you weren’t around, just for this special occasion. Oh yeah, one more thing,” he yanked the Luger construct out from under his coat. “I’m glad you changed your name, you son of a bitch.”