Ipseity (The Stork Tower Book 5)

by Tony Corden

  Leah got to her feet and made her way into the centre of the concourse. Before she could challenge the enforcers, the largest of them said, “I challenge Atherleah to a death duel with modification.”

  Leah turned to face him and said, “Only one of you, are you sure? It’ll be easier to make it all eight.”

  She subvocalised to Gèng and said, “What does it mean, ‘with modification’?”

  Before Gèng could reply, a station official stepped forward and said, “The basic fee for a one-on-one kill challenge is 100 Gold. What modification do you seek?”

  “No electronic aids, no modern armour or weaponry. Anguidian weapons only.”

  The official turned to Atherleah and said, “Will you agree to these modifications? The challenger will be charged an additional 358 Gold. 258 charged because of his weight and height advantage. 100 because of his racial advantage.”

  “I will agree if you’ll give me a few minutes to get changed and buy or borrow a set of local knives and swords. Any further challenges from his friends must wait until I can get back in this armour and use my current weapons.”

  The official turned to the Clan D’Morte enforcer and said, “Will you agree to these terms?”

  He nodded his head, and the official turned to Atherleah and said, “Atherleah, you have five minutes to borrow or purchase suitable weapons and to remove your armour. In this time you will not be permitted to log out of Cosmos Online.”

  Leah looked around at the crowd and said, “Anyone able to lend a poor girl some sharp implements of death?”

  One of the smaller Anguidians stepped forward and said, “I will. My name is 映月. I am a devoted follower of yours.”

  Leah took the offered knives and swords and then ducked into a nearby store to change. She emerged wearing a t-shirt and slacks with the knives strapped to her thighs and a sword in each hand.

  The official said, “Atherleah, if you are ready we will begin. If you evade death you will be awarded 229 Gold as well as any items removed from the deceased. The challenge starts in thirty seconds.”

  The tall lizard stepped forward and brought his face close to Leah and said, “Your fancy weapons and preset moves won’t help you this time, little girl.”

  Leah struggled to stop the shock of his statement from showing on her face. He could see her consternation but misunderstood it and began to smirk with an overabundance of confidence. Leah stepped back and allowed a small look of defeat to show on her face. There was a short chime to begin the duel, and the Anguidian brought both swords around in an arc from right to left. Leah stepped to her left and used her right sword to deflect the lizard’s right sword closer to his body, upsetting his rhythm. Leah brought her left-hand sword across and severed the tendons and muscles on the outside of his right elbow. His arm folded in and he dropped his sword. Leah continued moving along his right side, turning a full circle and burying her right sword in the region of his kidneys and cutting his right hamstring with the left blade. As his leg collapsed, she withdrew her right sword opening up a large wound almost to his right shoulder. Stepping back, she allowed him to fall in front of her and buried her left sword in the region of his heart. The whole fight had taken less than ten seconds.

  While everyone was staring she said, “After I get changed, I plan on challenging any remaining members of Clan D’Morte to a duel to the death with no conditions.”

  Leah stepped into the store and changed quickly into her armour. As she returned to the concourse, she gathered the blades left behind by the enforcer and handed them and the borrowed weapons to 映月 and said, “I thank you for the use of your weapons. Please accept these additional blades as a token of my appreciation.”

  None of the other enforcers had left, and so Leah said, “I challenge the seven remaining members of Clan D’Morte to a duel to the death with no conditions.”

  The official stepped forward and said, “The basic fee for a one to seven kill challenge is 15 Gold.” The official turned to the enforcers and said, “Clan D’Morte, if you are ready we will begin. If you evade death you will be awarded 1 Gold each as well as any items removed from the deceased. The challenge starts in 30 seconds.”

  As soon as the chime sounded Leah sent the trigger signal and the seven drones exploded, each of them destroying the head of an enforcer. Leah waited for the bodies to fall before stripping them of their money belts and weapons. She took an empty duffle bag from her backpack and loaded everything into it. Nothing was said as Leah did this and no one moved. She pursed her lips, and after lifting the bag to her shoulder, she walked to the nearest hotel, rented a room, and logged out.

  THE STORK TOWER

  Arriving back in the Tower, Leah asked Gèng, “Is my mum awake yet and do you think it will be helpful or not if I go and talk to her?”

  “She is awake and the healers have allowed her to get out of bed. I’ve just reviewed Nathan Kodoman’s comments and find nothing that might indicate that your presence could trigger the explosive. If you wish, I can discuss the issue with Dr Roberts?”

  “Please do, although I’m sure Dad has already received some good advice. While you do that I’m going to look into Survival.”

  Survival was a niche universe which catered to people wanting to experience the challenge of surviving in a variety of challenging scenarios. At the simplest level, it was a one-player puzzle solving game which dropped players into a set scenario with the minimal tools necessary to survive and solve the puzzle. People could pay to join group scenarios, and it was often used by companies to help with team building and bonding. The developers had extended the concept to allow both individuals and groups to experience long-term scenarios. An individual could choose to be the only survivor of a plane accident who washes up on a deserted island, or the sole survivor in a town of zombies. A group might decide to be the crew of a spaceship which lands on Mars or some other planet and must survive. Each scenario provided the basic tools for survival, but the individual or group had to use them to survive. In the more extreme environments, players died numerous times as they learned the skills to navigate the particular scenario. It was rumoured that several nations used the world to train their elite soldiers.

  After reading through the variety of options, Leah came to the conclusion that meeting her mother as another player was almost impossible. Players were sometimes situated in the same virtual reality, but they were usually separated by insurmountable barriers. For example, the desert island scenario was conducted on a specially constructed water world. Over the surface were dotted tens of thousands of different islands. Some were in the tropics, others in the arctic regions and everywhere in-between. It was possible to travel between the islands if you built a raft or boat, but the distances and wild oceans made the probability of such interactions approach zero.

  Leah determined she needed to find out what type of scenario her mother was involved in before digging into all the available options. Leah doubted that Nathan would be able to change her mother’s situation even if he knew where she was. It wasn’t possible that he was in the same scenario as her mother because groups were required to spend at least 80% of their game-play together and there was no way Nathan or Meredith would have agreed to such a constraint.

  Once she’d looked over the material, Leah finally had time to fill in her diary for the previous day. She was rereading some of the previous entries when Gèng interrupted, “Dr Roberts believes it might be best not to cause too much internal conflict for your mother in the short term. Let your father discuss what has happened. You should relate to her as a friend, rather than as a daughter. Dr Roberts suggests that you stay completely out of the picture for a while as your existence, one way or another, is the root cause of any possible internal stress. She suggests you talk with your father and get him and your brother, or even John, to communicate if necessary.”

  Leah sat for a few minutes without responding, tears making their way slowly down her cheeks. Finally, she said, “See if John
or dad are available to meet me soon. I need lunch, and after I’m dressed they can bring that to me, and we'll talk the matter through.”

  “Your dad is free and will get some food together and come when Marie says you’re dressed.”

  REAL WORLD

  Leah logged out, only to see the cover rising and to feel the increase in pain. It was less than before, but she still ached everywhere, with particularly sharp pains in her shoulder and chest. Marie helped her to the shower and into a robe. When she was ready, Marie stepped out, and Michael entered carrying a plate of sandwiches and several pieces of fruit. He also had a variety of capsules and a vial.

  Handing everything to Leah, he said, “Food and medicines as directed.”

  “How is Mum?”

  “She is strong, Leah. She’s upset about being chipped but glad she was rescued. She’s responded as I would expect but hasn’t mentioned you at all. John said not to do a scan of Lin until talking with you. What is going on?”

  Leah had hoped John would have passed the information on but knew it was best coming from her. She spent ten minutes sharing what Nathan had done and her responses so far. When she’d finished, she said, “I’m almost sure she is safe from Nathan and Meredith at the moment. I need you to explain the situation to her without reference to me, except maybe as a friend of John. Mum needs to be back in the Pod by nine, and she needs to tell you what her experience is if she can. Once we know what scenario she is involved in, then there is some hope of finding a way to change the programming on the chip. Other possible solutions are rolling around in my head, but they need more work before I could even contemplate sharing them.”

  “You’re sure he can’t get to her and hurt her?”

  “Not completely. If she can describe her day, and if she is alone, then yes I am sure. If she is part of a group, then he can hurt her. I’m certain it won’t be him, but he may have given the job to a flunky. I don’t think he has because it would be too hard to coordinate times and he would have said something. What I think he has done is put her somewhere impossible to reach. I expect he’s revelling in our impotence, knowing we won’t do anything to jeopardise Mum just in case.”

  “What do you have planned next?”

  “I need to get back to Dunyanin, and I want to see if I can help rescue Thad. My only hesitation is I don't know what the police are doing.”

  “They’ve been working their way around the various bosses all morning. Jimmy thinks they might not get here until early this evening or tomorrow. They are asking lots of questions about possible attacks in the city and are referring to both you and Jimmy by name. They’re applying a lot of pressure, but it seems so far that no one has said anything. They are also applying pressure on the streets. Increased patrols have stopped people getting across the river to work, and anyone needing to deal with the government has had to deal with extra bureaucracy.

  “I just heard that the Thompson girl who finished school last year decided to get a PAI chip and go to the community college. Apparently, she was inspired by recent events. She was interviewed several times during the process and finally sent home and told to come back tomorrow. They suggested she would have an easier time if she had stories to tell of others who had recently had their PAI chip implanted. People are getting riled but as far as I can tell they are all entirely supportive of what you've been doing. It helps that no one really knows what happened.

  “I still don’t understand what happened and John has made it clear that I already know too much. As your father I’m not happy being out of the loop, but I understand John’s perspective. None of the team who went with you has been allowed off the property yet. They don’t seem to mind at all, but they are keeping their mouths tightly shut. I know you told the lawyer lady something. I had lunch with her, and she has a serious case of hero worship. To be honest, I’m a bit scared of the truth if it’s affected her like that.”

  Leah shrugged but didn’t say anything in response. Instead, she gave Michael a small smile and quietly finished eating. When she was done, she said, “Thanks, Dad. Can you send Marie back in? I think I’ll need her help to get back into the Pod.”

  “I will, but that’s another thing. What exactly happened to you? John wasn’t very clear.”

  “I won’t say how it happened, but I shattered my shoulder and collarbone and did a lot of damage to the tissue around them. I have bruising on my torso, front and back, and have some bone shards near my eye that are being dealt with. I can’t explain how, but it is all being looked after and should heal without any long-term complications. At the moment, the main problem is dealing with the pain and getting enough nutrients and energy to help with the reconstruction. At least when I’m in the Pod, the pain is easier to manage.”

  “How come no one else was injured?”

  “More questions I can’t answer, and you shouldn’t ask. Hopefully, by the time the police get here, I’ll be able to answer their questions without them even knowing I’ve been hurt.”

  “OK. No more questions. I’ll send Marie back in.”

  Michael stood and gave Leah a gentle kiss on the forehead before leaving the room. When Marie returned, she helped Leah to the shower and back into the Pod where Leah logged in to the Tower.

  Diary - 13 December, 2073

  I think I’ve subconsciously always believed that knowledge was dispassionate or impartial. Information has always had a quality of clinical cleanliness to it that made it seem positive, or at worst, amoral. Education is supposed to be liberating and empowering but knowing more hasn’t lessened my burdens, it’s increased them. Increased knowledge hasn’t set me free, it’s just tightened my shackles. To be fair, the truth could probably be more accurately stated as ‘my increased knowledge has set me free to truly understand my ignorance and powerlessness’. My world is bigger than it was before and it makes me feel smaller and more insignificant. At the same time, I have a greater burden of responsibility. I must do something with what I know. I need to connect the dots and make a difference.

  I’m afraid, or maybe it would be better to say, I am terrified. I wonder if this is how Pandora felt when she first opened the jar and let everything out into the world. I wonder if she thought that things would be better shut up and hidden away? So much has happened and so much has been achieved but the world is even more complex than I imagined. What can I hold onto in the way Pandora held onto ‘hope’? What, or where, is the hope for me to take away from today? The information I stole from Meredith is more significant, more comprehensive, more substantial than I ever imagined. Maybe it is too big, maybe it should have been destroyed, but how will I know? I can’t put it back. I suppose I could destroy it, or erase it. I wonder what chain of events would that would set in motion.

  I think of Eve. Through her disobedience she finally understood what good and evil were. It was through the very means of her learning that she left herself powerless to choose. The action which gave her knowledge defined her choice. Was there a better way to come to the knowledge? A way perhaps which would not have left her bereft of a choice? What if she had chosen to obey? Would she ever have learned what evil was? I wonder if it is even worth thinking of what might have been? I’m so afraid that my decisions have set me on a course which will always deprive me of a good solution. Mum has been chipped and she might always be separated from me because I chose to save her. How can I act properly if I don’t know what the repercussions will be?

  The other thing that scares me, possibly even more than the everything else, is the thought of the damage I did. I can rationalise about the necessity of it all I like, but I can’t escape from the reality of inflicting broken bones, torn muscles, concussions, knife wounds, unconsciousness, and possibly even death. Twelve dangerous, highly skilled, and armed guards were taken out in a matter of seconds. No matter how helpful, how useful, how necessary, I wonder if such technology is really values free? Mahatma Gandhi said that one of the things which might destroy us is ‘Knowledge without Chara
cter’. Who is it who decides what the character which won’t destroy, is like? At the moment, that is me. This responsibility is heavy.

  Do I need to carry it alone? Who can I trust?

  4

  December 14, 2073 - Part 4

  DUNYANIN

  Leah moved purposefully through the tower toward the gaming portals and stepped through into Dunyanin. She found herself perched on a branch near the top of a tall tree. She took a moment to describe the sense of movement she’d experienced in the portal to Gèng, as well as an impression of being in a tunnel looking out at a strange vista. Gèng said she would record every moment of Leah’s next portal transition.

  Leah had been moving slowly through Dunyanin and knew she had to pick up the pace. She didn’t want to be seen flying over the forest, so she decided to teleport. Climbing as high as she could, Leah looked out over the top of the forest canopy. On the far north-western horizon, she could see the mountains her map indicated to be between her and the ancient city of Batislar. She checked her Teleport spell and was pleased to see she could now teleport forty leagues. She focused on the mountains and cast the spell, but nothing happened. They were still too far away.

  Leah looked for something closer and saw a tree off to the northeast which towered over the rest of the canopy. She glanced behind her and noted another exceptionally tall and broad tree five or six leagues behind her. Turning through a full three hundred and sixty degrees she saw five or six of the giant trees scattered throughout the forest. She was sure they held some significance but focused her attention on the one ahead of her. It was so far away that she found it hard to visualise a safe place to appear, so she turned and studied the one behind which was closer, and then considered the trees around her. Finally, she felt confident and pictured a branch similar to the one she was standing on but with the darker leaves of one of the larger trees. With this in her mind, she again turned to the tree to the northeast and cast Teleport.