World of the changed 3 Noa in the flesh

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “Noa warehouse. Let’s go.”

  I added the last phrase, apparently having really gotten into the role. The doors closed behind me, and I lurched when the elevator shot downward. Happily, Ulbaron kept me upright when our vertical flight path turned horizontal. It was back to vertical after that, and I was finally released into a closed area.

  Of course, the area wasn’t any bigger than the elevator — yet another room with a scanner.

  “Ten units of noa detected. Would you like to leave them in the warehouse?”

  “I’d like to get into the warehouse,” I replied before adding an impatient exclamation. “Hurry up!”

  “Excessive and unprovoked aggression detected. If there is a repeat occurrence, access to the warehouse will be revoked, and the general will be informed of your condition.”

  Whoops, guess I overdid it. I had to fix the situation quickly, and remorse seemed like a good option. Would One be remorseful?

  “No, it’s not aggression. I just need to check personally and make sure the noa is safe — Mark Derwin was respawned. Father wants us to do a complete check.”

  It took a little while for the answer to come back.

  “Verification complete. Mark Derwin really was respawned, and an order to mobilize resources was found. Access to the noa storehouse granted. Note that you won’t be permitted to leave the storehouse with

  concentrated noa. Any attempt to do so will be considered theft.”

  “That won’t happen,” I replied, barely able to contain how excited I was. Machines couldn’t get to my virtual inventory, and that was all that mattered. “Is there a remote terminal in the storehouse? I need access to the internal network.”

  “Access will be provided. Goodbye, player RPN-332-1.”

  The local hunks of metal used One’s full name, almost as if they felt no programmed awe in front of the general’s eldest spawn. The conversation hadn’t gone as w^ell as I might have hoped, either. But anway, the wall in front of me opened to reveal another elevator. I headed upward, shot over to the side, and then caught my breath wrhen I arrived. The room wasn’t large, though it was full of boxes. And wrhile they were locked, I could see the beautiful spheres of noa inside. There were lots of them. An unbelievable amount.

  “The terminal is to your right. You have one hour, and a guard has been assigned to you.”

  The walking cannon w^ent over to the wall, stopping a few steps away from me. I even felt a pang of hurt for One — what had it ever done to deserve that kind of distrust? But before taking care of the guard, I decided to check the boxes. A hand found its way to it wThen I walked over. From the sensations in my head, I could tell there were ten stones inside.

  Verifying access...

  Access confirmed. Level: inspector.

  Would you like to move the noa to your virtual storage?

  My guard was a robot through and through, with not a shred of life force, and so I didn’t think my sacrificial offering was going to work on it. Ready to pull Fang out and slice it up, I hit the yes button. My noa counter jumped by ten, and I turned sharply, ready to counter a strike.

  But there was no attack forthcoming.

  As far as the locals were concerned, I hadn’t done anything. I hadn’t opened the lid, and I hadn’t dropped anything in my pocket. All I’d done was place a hand on a box and pull it back. Just to make sure, I checked the room with my device control. There wTere no pressure sensors or counters to worry about.

  A nasty grin flitted across my face, and I looked around the room at wrhat wras about to be mine. In the next hour, I needed to get to every box. Okay, time to move.

  I could deal with everything else later.

  Chapter 17

  Would you like to request a delivery?

  OF COURSE I would!

  It took me about half an hour to collect all the noa. There weren’t as many boxes as I’d thought at first — just about two hundred and fifty. Or, to convert that into units of noa, two thousand five hundred. They were the ones that belonged to the general. Another 233 were in a separate storage, but they’d been stolen from a different hexagon, so I didn’t have access to them. I was going to have to be content with what I had.

  Over at the terminal, I didn’t even have to hack into it as the local administrator immediately handed me access. Navigation was the same as I remembered it, my decoding helped me understand everything, and a few dozen clicks got me to what I was looking for: the delivery request form.

  The controllers quickly got to work. And that made sense — they didn’t get orders like mine eveiy day.

  You requested 8 purple explosions. Please explain the purpose.

  My answer wasn’t exactly original, though it was certainly honest. They were even able to check it, as the player in question had presumably long since passed level 40 for its named equipment.

  Payment of services for Lirkun Po related to the hunt for Mark Derwin.

  The controllers took a while, almost a whole minute. In programming terms, it was an eternity.

  Delivery will made in 20 minutes to your residence.

  Damn it! I had no idea where One’s residence was or how to get

  there.

  Ultimately, I had to forget everything else I was doing and dig into the terminal to find my address. A little while later, the guard there came over to hint that my time was up. I’d already spent the whole hour.

  But it was a productive hour, at least. I’d been able to find where One lived, even if it was at the last possible moment. The problem was that it was in the general's tower, where One occupied floors 100 through 120.

  ‘"Give your noa to the guard. You can’t leave the storage with stones on you.”

  The local administrator’s unpleasant voice met me at the elevator.

  The robot gun activated, ready to fight for the property7 that had been entrusted to it, and I had to give in so I didn’t raise suspicions. Really, it was my fault — I should have dropped the noa into a box and pulled it right back out. After handing all ten units to the guard next to me, I was led back along the way I’d come. The robot who’d brought me was still outside the pyramid, unsure what to do next. It had left with one passenger, arrived with another.

  The thought crossed my mind that the best move would be to make a break for the edge of the location, but I quickly put it aside. There wasn’t anything for me to do without the explosions, and the tower was where they were going to be waiting for me. Why not risk it? I already had transportation, so I wasn’t going to have to tramp around the city looking for it myself.

  “Home,” I said as I flew over to the vehicle. That was enough to reset the robot’s “brain.” Everything made sense once more — One was there, it had its orders, and its job was to carry7 them out. Nothing else mattered.

  We quickly headed toward the central tower. And nothing looked out of place until the LTS suddenly came to a complete stop. The robot sitting behind the wheel nodded over and turned off, its supply circuits overloaded. And while I was able to grab the railing for support, I didn’t like what was happening. Is my cover blown?

  “One more warning, my son,” called a low, booming voice. It wasn’t that it was coming from every stone that time, no. I could see exactly what was making the noise: a two-meter barrel with legs that served as a loudspeaker and blocked the way forward.

  “You were told not to bring soulless robots into the tower.”

  Ah-ha, so that already happened once! I was starting to like One — it made a habit of seeing how long its chain was.

  “It’ll work one day,” I said, knowing I had to say something.

  “You're always saying that, only it never does work, does it? I want to see the experiment results. Grab the samples and be in my hall in half an hour.”

  The barrel moved to the side, letting us through. For some reason, I hesitated — I didn’t feel ready for a meeting with the general. I wouldn’t have taken One on in single combat, and this was the head of the enti
re hexagon. It was still fresh in my mind how larvae gave me fits. But they were one of a thousand, and there... It was scary to even think about what kind of a monster I was going to have to deal with.

  But I really did need the explosions. Lirkun wasn’t going to do anything for me without them, and I suddenly realized what I needed to do in order to make sure I didn’t raise suspicions. If you want to live, you have to push others into the line of fire.

  “The experiment can wTait. I have to tell you about a huge problem we have.”

  “Why didn't you just use the internal connection?”

  “This has to be in person. It’s about noa.”

  “Come see me immediately. You’ll be escorted here.”

  The barrel flew up into the air and hovered right in front of me. That's better! I had no idea where I was supposed to go, after all. As I followed the robot, I set up the conversation in my head and dreamed of the moment I’d be able to leap over to the general and finally sacrifice it. That was my only chance of getting out alive. Of course, I could have forgotten it all and flown away, and I probably would have gotten away with it, but curiosity was eating away at me. Who was the general? What did the top dog in the hexagon look like? There were too many questions, the answers to which I would have given a lot to get. My owm virtual life included. If it came to that, I knew Grust could bring me back.

  We made our way through a gate, and I couldn't help but be impressed by the scale — an ocean liner could have fit through without a problem. A procession of cocoons being carried into the towrer on a conveyer belt not far from us caught my eye. It wras the general’s food source. Suddenly, I had to wonder if my sacrificial offering w^ould be up to the task of taking out a monster that big. The gate and sheer volume of food told me about how oversized it would be.

  Still, I followed the barrel onwTard through the enormous empty buildings. There was nothing, nobody there. Just bare wralls. Halls were separated by doors that lifted up to let us through, each looking more like an anti-missile shell. About a meter thick, they sure looked capable of withstanding a nuclear explosion without suffering so much as a dent.

  The next door slipped upward, and my companion stepped to the side, letting me in ahead instead of continuing on. There it was, the general’s lair. A wave of excitement washed over me, and I had a hard time maintaining a calm composure. Everything inside me buzzed. There was a battle about to happen.

  ‘Tm supposed to get a delivery7 of purple explosions. Bring them here,” I said to the robot without much hope that it would listen. Surprisingly, there were no complaints.

  “Okay, One. They’ll be here in a few minutes. The general is expecting you, so please go ahead.”

  That was the robot talking — it was lifeless and emotionless. And as soon as I stepped inside, the door panel behind me dropped into place. A familiar low voice boomed out.

  “What did you want to tell me?”

  My fists tightened of their own accord, I got ready to start flying side to side, and Valkyrie shook from excitement, but I still couldn’t see my target. Unlike the previous halls, there was something in that one. Columns. Lots of columns. They reached upward, holding up something so far overhead that even Raptor couldn’t find it. Thats at least four' hundred

  meters!

  I stepped forward slowly, skirting column after column, until I finally made it to an open area. The center of the hall turned out to be empty. At least, there weren’t any columns, though there was something else. The first thing that caught my eye was an enormous vat fitted with pipes and sensors. The colossal contraption took up most of the space between the two columns, and Raptor was able to tell me how tall it was — a hundred meters. It had nothing on the width, however. The device blended into the shadows, while the columns also got in the way of seeing it completely. Meanwhile, my perception highlighted several conveyer belts earning cocoons into the vat. I got a sticky feeling of dread when I thought the whole thing was the general, though my perception helped out once again. The contraption had its own name: battery pack.

  “You’re making me wait. What did you want to tell me about our noa?” Finally, I saw where the voice was coming from.

  Right in front of me was the general, the head of the hexagon. A dangerous creature capturing the fear of millions, changed and players alike.

  Only my fear was quickly replaced by disbelief. The boss turned out to be nothing more than a human brain floating freely in a clear retort. It was what was labeled General, hexagon 118. A pipe stretched from the vat to the retort to feed the brain nutrients. The retort itself was sitting on something like a desk, though there were thick wires leading down to the floor from it, and a nearby camera gave the brain a visual image.

  Everything was covered in a force field. Actually, there were several force fields, the first starting a good twenty meters from the desk. Too far for my sacrificial offering to reach.

  “I just visited a noa storehouse and found that it was emptied.”

  “Nonsense!” the speakers on the desk barked. “I already got the report that you tried to take ten stones out with you!”

  “it's not nonsense; its reality. The only noa left is there because I brought it with me, and I was going to take it back out since I was afraid of what would happen to it there. Why don't you have them check every box the way I did? Tell them to see if we were robbed. We have to do something.”

  “Hold on,” the general shot back in annoyance. “If you're wrong, first son, I'm going to replace you!”

  “I’m never wrong,” I replied confidently. “There are currently 243 stones in the storehouse, ten of which I delivered myself. The rest were stolen from other hexagons. The ones we mined at our plants are gone.”

  The general said nothing, busy as it was checking up on my information.

  “Your explosions,” the barrel said, having just returned. Eight glimmering rocks found their way into my virtual storage, and I realized the main part of the job was done. I was free to go.

  The only problem was that I didn’t want to go anywhere.

  What I’d always assumed was some terrifying monster had turned out to be anything but. My perception told me the brain was the main element of the general, and that I’d send it off to a well-deserved rest if I could take it out. As sweat beaded on my palm, I wanted more than anything to pull out Valkyrie and gun the thing down, though I bided my time. First, I wasn’t sure how the protection worked — my shots might not have gotten through. And second, I wanted to know what the locals were going to do when they found out about the loss.

  “How?!” the speakers blared. “One, what do you know about this?”

  A field I hadn't noticed before gripped me, rendering me motionless. It was a good thing I hadn't tried to take a shot — I would have blown my cover and gotten squashed like a bug. As things stood, I could keep up the stream of absurdities I was spewing.

  “I received information from Lirkun Po that Mark Derwin was planning a noa heist. The mercenary has something going on with him, though I wrasn’t able to clarify what. And that’s why I went to check the warehouse. I was too late, unfortunately — the stones were already gone.”

  “I want Lirkun Po captured immediately!”

  “Easy there — wre won’t find anything out if we bring Lirkun in right awTay. If you let me meet with it, I’ll get you information. And Lirkun, too.

  Mark couldn’t have gotten into this location, which means he had help. Probably the warehouse administrator.”

  “Impossible! The administrator is a program I wrote myself. It can’t do anything on its own.”

  It was a shame I wasn’t going to be able to punish what I'd thought was an exceptionally unpleasant creature for being such a pain. Damn it! I'm really getting into this. I continued.

  “You're forgetting that Mark is an infiltrator and hacker. He could have hacked your creation and reprogrammed it, making it work for him. I mean, what do you think? Who else could have gotten the noa out of the
storage? Only someone who had access. Was anything tampered with?”

  “They’re checking that... What didn’t you tell me immediately that Mark had decided to steal the noa?”

  “Because I only found out about it a few minutes before the inspection. I was on my way here for the purple explosions when Lirkun Po gave me the information, mostly as a good-faith gesture. Since I wasn’t far, I decided to drop by and check. You know the rest.”

  “Nobody can know about this, otherwise the hexagon will lose its chosen status. Find me the noa, One, and you’ll be richly rewarded!”

  The field released me, and I once again had control of my body. All Raptor could do was keep its mouth shut — it had no idea how I’d been held captive. The field surrounding the general was presumably just as impenetrable for my weapons. But what else was there to do? Leave? Yeah, right. I just needed to get a few steps closer.

  “I need a guarantee,” I said, deciding to screw with the boss’ brain completely. If you asked me, that was the perfect phrase to use whenever anyone sends you somewhere or promises you something.

  “You don’t believe me?” the general shot back.

  “Why should I? Just look at everything else that has happened.”

  It was ridiculous, and the boss apparently agreed with that assessment.

  “I have no idea what you're talking about, son! What has happened?”

  “Everything! Just take that cable, for instance. You want to tell me you don’t know where it came from?”

  “You need diagnostics. I’m worried about you, so come here and let me check your mind. Traveling out in the world has altered your perception of reality.”

  The protective field disappeared, though it was replaced by the one that held me motionless. Without me doing anything, I was carried right over to the retort holding the brain.

  “I can’t let my first son go off its rocker. Don’t move — this is going to hurt.”

  It’s hard to move when you’re being held in place by magnets. A flexile arm reached out from the general’s table to grab hold of me from a couple meters away. I couldn’t help a gloating smile — sacrificial offering’s range was four meters, which put the retort and the brain inside well within it. It worked! My nonsense had turned out to be the winning play.