Oasis was bursting with all forms of vegetation. A moment before, he had recognized none of them, but with only a moment’s study, he knew each one. As the names and particulars of all these growing things flooded into his mind, he felt the same exhilaration he had felt the first time he explored the information inside the extractor.
He waded out into the unspoiled lands, brimming with life. There were hundreds upon hundreds of different varieties of plants, each one seemingly more beautiful and more precious than the last. Trees, bushes, vines, flowers, and grasses—all rose up to meet him as if they had come alive for him alone.
Most of the trees were some variety of palm, their wide, substantial fronds waving ever so slightly in the warm breeze which blew past. The bushes were mostly agave, though they varied much more in coloration than the trees. As he reached out to touch some of their bright, aquamarine leaves, they felt much smoother in his hand than he expected.
The grasses were tall and stout and came in shades ranging from green to golden yellow. They brushed against his legs and waved hypnotically in the breeze, beckoning him onwards.
As mesmerizing as all of this was, the most beautiful plants of all were the flowers. There were less of them than the other types, but they were all the more striking for their rarity. They were dappled with splashes of indigo, fuchsia, and crimson. Most were some type of inflorescence, the individual flowers clustered around a central stem with wavy petals tucked along the sides. The few larger ones were single flowers, nearly as tall as Adan with blossoms as large as his head. These were composites with a central bulb of brilliant white and pastel green florets surrounded by a riot of multi-colored, long, bladed petals, no two of which seemed to be alike. They were sprinkled with spots in shades of purple, maroon, and lavender. Adan had never seen so many colors at once and yet they all blended together harmoniously, each complementing the others.
A small stream bubbled quietly through the center of the scene with a winding, amber path of sand running alongside it. It was the most beautiful, enchanting, and idyllic sight he had ever seen. And, unbelievably, this paradise stretched on and on as far as he could see.
“Why do they keep this hidden from people? It’s so beautiful. I never imagined a place like this existed. Why didn’t you tell me about it before?” Adan wondered.
But Will’s mind was elsewhere. He was focused on the plan, on what lay ahead. Adan knew they had important things to do, but he found it hard to believe Will could be completely unaffected by the vibrant colors and endless beauty surrounding them.
“Don’t you see how amazing it is?” Adan asked.
Again, Will gave no answer.
“I suppose you’ve seen it before,” Adan mused. But even if that were so, Adan couldn’t see how such a sight would ever become old.
At last Will’s mind came back into focus. “No, you’re right. It is beautiful. It’s just that we need to think about what lies ahead. We need to get you into the Annex as quickly as possible. Every moment we delay, more Waymen die.”
The blunt reality of Will’s thoughts snapped Adan out of his bliss. He was basking in this paradise while people were dying.
“I’m sorry. You’re right. Let’s get going,” Adan replied, though he could not help but cast a longing look at all the splendor surrounding them.
“Besides, it’s not real,” Will added as an afterthought.
“What? It’s not real?” Adan struggled to escape the implications of what Will told him, but because the thought-speech was so direct, so clear, he had no doubt about what had been communicated; he understood it all too well. If the whole scene had instantly withered before his eyes, Adan could not have been more devastated.
“This is what the Developers call a ‘skin’,” Will explained. “You’re just seeing the default landscape someone would normally see when they first connect to the esolace. But the city looks nothing like this. None of these plants exist. They’re all a projection of the esolace. If you want to see what Oasis really looks like, tell the esolace to set the landscape skin to ‘null’.”
Embarrassment quickly replaced disappointment as Adan realized how he had been deceived. But he supposed the quickest remedy for such feelings was to simply face the truth. He gave the mental command and told the esolace to switch the landscape to ‘null’, as Will had instructed.
The scene around him blinked out of existence. It was as if a lumin had just gone out, except that the area around him was even brighter than before. Despite the brightness, everything was colorless and drab by comparison; all the life had been drained away. The entire scene, the plants, the stream—everything was gone. The fertile paradise had been replaced by nothing more than flat, empty pavement. Off in the distance he could see the true beginnings of the city—row upon row of the kinds of massive, silver-gray buildings he had seen in the extractor.
The contrast between the old, false Oasis and the new one was stark. And the new reality seemed to him as unyielding and dead as the pavement beneath his feet.
Thirty-Six
An Anomaly
The buildings of Oasis were all identical except in size. Each one was taller and narrower than the one before so that the skyline rose as they traveled further in. The buildings were arranged in concentric circles, like a set of giant steps leading upwards to the center of the city. Their otherwise smooth, metallic exterior was broken up by horizontal grooves marking the divisions between floors.
The wide black streets running between them looked like they had been coated with a clear, reflective glaze and bore neither mark nor stain. They were entirely empty; they looked as if they had never been walked on at all.
Looking up, no clouds troubled the sky. A pale grayness extended upwards without end. It was a drab and sterile place, devoid of life, blanketed in a frozen silence.
“Where are all the people?” Adan wondered.
“Inside the buildings. The city is flat-lined so they’re all unconscious right now,” Will replied. “Take a look and you can see them.”
There were no windows or doors in the buildings, but Adan knew that wasn’t what Will meant. With the esolace and his bioseine, there were other ways of seeing things. As he focused his thoughts on the buildings, the walls lost their solidity. It was just like looking at the model in the extractor, only this time, he could see more than just the layout of the rooms. There were people inside. They lay motionless on plain white beds, a single person in each room. The rooms didn’t look that much different from the one Adan had stayed in at the Institute.
“They all look the same—the rooms, the people, the buildings. It’s all the same,” Adan thought.
“That’s because you’ve turned off the environmental skins. To them things look very different. No one person sees things exactly the same. Oasis is whatever they want it to be.”
“Don’t they care that it’s not real?” Adan asked.
“Just because something is in your mind, it doesn’t mean it’s not real. It’s real enough to them.”
Perhaps that was true, but Adan could not bring himself to think that way. A lie could never be real, no matter how convincing.
As he studied the unconscious people, if he had wanted to, he could have gone inside their minds to find out what they really thought about Oasis. But he dismissed the idea as soon as it occurred to him. It was not right to go wandering through their private thoughts just to satisfy his curiosity.
Adan went back to focusing on the street. Even though it was easier than sprinting across the desert, he grew more and more fatigued the further they went.
They were about halfway to the city center when Adan spotted five figures dressed in dark gray robes coming at them from a side street. Fortunately, it didn’t seem like they had noticed Adan and Will yet, but there was no doubt they soon would. Adan and Will were in the middle of the street and there was nowhere to hide.
“I thought you said everyone was unconscious. Look.” Adan came to an abrupt stop, preparing to
go back and run down a side street.
Will kept running. “Those are just assessors. Don’t worry, they can’t see us.”
Adan waited for Will to explain further, but he kept going, straight for them.
“What do you mean they can’t see us? They’re looking right at us. And you’re going to run into them. Watch out!”
Will did not slow down. The figures, who could not have avoided seeing him by now, kept going at the same leisurely pace.
“They only see what the esolace lets them see,” Will explained. “All they see is an empty street because we’re using channels they don’t have access to.”
He continued on towards them as if he meant to plow into them. But the assessors never veered from their course. At the last possible moment, they contorted their bodies in such a way that Will passed right through the middle of the group without hitting any of them.
“You see? Nothing to fear—out here at least,” Will assured him. “Once you get to the Annex it will be a different matter.”
Will stopped and waited for Adan to catch up. While there appeared to be no imminent threat from the robed figures, Adan was still a bit unnerved by their inability to see him. He gave them a wide berth as he passed. Once he caught up to Will, the assessors stopped as well, about half a dozen paces in front of one of the buildings.
“They’re running a check, looking for anomalies,” Will informed him. “We need to find a group like this one to take you to the Institute. But these assessors are too far out. They only operate in the Service Ring. We need to get you closer to the city center so you get captured in the Axis Prime district.”
“Are you sure that they’ll detect me as an anomaly?”
“Yes. I checked some of the Dev security notes and found out which deviations provoke a memory wipe. I placed one of them in the other vial of remin fluid. I’ll give you the vial once we get closer to the city center. After you drink it and the assessors do their scan, they’ll come for you.”
“Why can’t you just share the thought with me? Why do I have to use remin?”
“It’s just to be safe. Regular thought exchange leaves behind the signature of whoever the thoughts originally belonged to. They might pick that up. Remin works on a more primitive level. It makes the thoughts become your own in a way that the scans won’t detect.”
“So I have to put somebody else’s thoughts inside my head?”
“Well, they’re not really actual thoughts. They’re more of a composite—based on actual thoughts, but then rearranged.”
Adan wasn’t sure what he thought about this. Would this change him somehow? Would it make him less himself and more synthetic? Once again he would just have to trust that Will knew what he was doing. The plan was set and they were too close now to think about changing it.
They left the assessors and resumed their push towards Axis Prime. The running continued to take its toll on Adan. Every muscle required to run ached, but the real threat was how exhausted he was. Somehow he made it into the central district without having to resort to using his bioseine, but he knew he could not go on like this forever.
As they slowed to a light jog, they came across another group of assessors scanning one of the buildings. The structures had risen to an enormous height by now, the last row topping out at fifty floors. The dark-robed men stood in front of one of them, staring blankly at the towering edifice.
“There’s your building,” Will told him.
“How do I get inside?” Adan asked, gazing up at the featureless walls of the towering structure.
Will didn’t need to answer because the esolace already had. Adan just had to walk up to the center of the ground floor and the wall would slide open automatically.
“Here, take this,” Will told him, reaching inside his garrick and pulling out a slender black case. Upon opening it, he pulled out a vial of neon green remin, the one with the blue topper.
Will handed it to him, a troubled look overshadowing his face. “This is as far as I go. From now on you have to go alone.”
“You’re worried, aren’t you?” Adan asked, a bit alarmed by Will’s expression.
“No, you’ll do fine.” Will unexpectedly loosened his kaff, exposing his face. Even more unexpectedly, he addressed Adan with his own voice.
“What you’re doing is a noble thing. It’s not just that we’re stopping the Developers. I’m going to take the technology of Oasis and use it to help the people in the Vast live a new life. Things are going to be different after today. I just wanted to let you know how grateful I am for what you’re about to do.”
Adan sensed that he wanted to say more, but a strong surge of emotion drowned his unspoken thoughts.
During all their time together, Will had never spoken to him this way. The words, and even more the emotions behind them, took Adan off guard. He glanced at the nearby assessors. Though he knew they couldn’t hear what Will said, their presence only increased the awkwardness of the moment.
“Thank you, even though I don’t deserve what you just said,” Adan replied.
Will’s mind was a puddle of emotions, unclear and difficult to read, but it had been that way off and on ever since the Waymen camp.
“I’ll still be with you,” Will added, struggling to focus. “I can track your position wherever you are and we can keep communicating through the esolace until you get to the Annex.”
Adan had been trying so hard to avoid thinking about this moment. Now that it had come, he felt completely unprepared. Will’s display of emotion did not make things any easier.
But he could read the thoughts of the assessors and knew they were already well into their scan. It was time to go. He swallowed his ambivalence and headed towards the building.
When he reached the silvery outer wall, two sections slid to either side. Though he could still see Will in his mind without turning around, Adan glanced over his shoulder one last time before passing through. Will raised his hand in farewell, but the enigmatic expression on his face was as difficult to read as his clouded mind.
Adan arrived at the central access shaft inside the building and stepped onto one of several black discs. With a thought, the disc whisked him upwards, but he felt no sensation of movement, just like when he had been in the elevator.
He stepped off the platform onto the top floor and ventured down a hallway lined with shiny white plastic doors. He walked over to the first one he saw and it slipped into the wall with another thought. Interacting with the building was just like interacting with the extractor except that the entire structure was filled with such devices, waiting to activate whenever he told them to.
Passing through the doorway, he entered a room with one of the familiar austere white beds. The person lying on it looked as if he could have been any one of the scientists, except that he was dressed in a pale gray unisuit. He had the same short, brown hair, the same pale skin, and his face had an indifferent look to it, even in his unconscious state.
“The assessors will be scanning your floor soon,” Will’s thoughts came to him through the esolace. “You should go ahead and switch over to the Collective channel now so they can pick you up on their scan.”
Adan did as Will instructed. The minds of the assessors disappeared from his immediate awareness, but through his connection to Will, he knew they were still there.
“You need to be unconscious when the assessors run the scan,” Will continued, “I’ll knock you out after you drink the fluid.”
Adan glanced nervously at the vial of green liquid in his hand.
“All right. I’m drinking the remin now.” Adan removed the stopper and brought it to his lips. His hand quivered. He remembered that first glass of water, how strange the thought of drinking it had been. What was this going to do to him?
He tipped the vial back, swallowing the contents in one gulp. It tasted the same way it smelled, metallic and bitter. The taste sank into his tongue and the smell clung to his nose.
Adan winced as
his chest constricted. Pain stabbed his temples. Images, thoughts, and memories flashed through his mind. They were shadowy, flickering in and out of his awareness, but slowly they coalesced into something recognizable. The images were of him, of things he had done before he had come to the Institute. He was finally getting a glimpse into his past. Or was he?
He saw himself kneeling on the ground in a dimly lit place. The bitter remin taste was gone and there was a pleasant aroma to the air. The shadows came and went like a thin strip of cloth fluttering back and forth across his vision.
His head was bowed and his eyes were closed. He held his hands in the air. Something about this posture seemed vaguely familiar, but he hadn’t known what it meant—until now. He was praying. This was the way one spoke to the being beyond the clouds, the one they called Numinae. Adan was begging him for mercy—asking to be forgiven for something he had done, something terrible, though he couldn’t quite make out what it was. But whatever it was, he was devastated because of it, feeling as if he would never be whole again.
Even though Adan felt that the memory belonged to him, a part of him sensed that it wasn’t really him who was praying. Adan had only the vaguest notion of who Numinae was, after all. How could he have ever prayed? There was a nagging impression at the back of his mind that he was somehow two people at once.
He thought perhaps it was just another illusion, like the imaginary garden he had seen when he entered Oasis. But there was something too familiar about it to make him believe it was pure invention. And whoever this other person was, he felt that the experience had been just as real for them.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 26
