“That little device over there?” the Haash touched the back of his head. “I do.”
“Why do you think they fitted you with it?”
This wasn’t curiosity. The Haash civilization was on the brink of extinction. An idle adrenaline rush was the last thing their pilots needed on their quest for a new celestial home.
“You can’t jump without an implant! That’s what we were told!”
“And your ships, were they controlled by automatics?” Jurgen decided to dig deeper.
“Nowr!”
You’d think that the recent battle would have us worrying about a totally different set of problems. Still, this subject — albeit fleetingly mentioned — contained grains of vitally important intel.
“I got the impression that only living beings are capable of using the Founders’ network,” Jurgen said pensively. “That might explain a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“Like the arrival of the hybrid at Oasis,” Jurgen replied. “I kept thinking: why would the military have chosen such unreliable — pardon me — methods of exploring the Darg system? Why would they plant players’ minds into an alien technosphere? What prompted them to build an identity pieced together from hundreds of neurograms? You have to agree it’s a huge risk. It would have been so much easier to just use cybernetics.”
“What are you driving at?”
“I think there must be a certain restriction in place. Some kind of security filter. As far as I know, even the Founders’ AIs don’t enjoy the right to travel. Which was why I didn’t find any signs of automatic flight controls back on the Relic.”
“Could it have something to do with the nature of hyperspace travel?”
He shrugged. “Possible. But personally, I think the Founders were simply aware of the danger of machine expansion.”
“Enough, please!” Arbido poked at the solidified lava with the point of his sword to make sure that the Hand of Earth had already expired. “We’ve very nearly been killed, all of us! That’s what we should be thinking of! Zander, do you still have scrolls left?”
“Nothing too powerful, unfortunately.”
“So how do you want us to keep going? Did you see those monsters?”
“Keep your voice down. We’re protected by the location’s defense programs.”
“As if they did much to help us!”
“At least we have a very clear warning system in place,” Foggs said. “It’s the cold. The location tries to freeze the Reapers out.”
“With zero results!”
“I don’t have time to argue with you on this one,” Jurgen said. “We need to keep going. We need to find some kind of access to the servers. The cold is as good a warning as any. We should steer clear of any life-threatening weather phenomena.”
* * *
The slopes of the enormous crater were devoid of any signs of life. The area looked like a post-apocalyptic wasteland setting. The visibility was just as bad. Sheets of dull green shimmer heaved in the sky — the only source of light we now had left. The cracks in the ground spewed an occasional jet of ash. Our feet kept sliding: the vitrified surface powdered with ash considerably hindered our progress.
Charon stopped and raised a warning hand.
“Are we taking a break?” Arbido asked, hopeful.
“Nowr! I can see some buildings,” Charon pointed at something far ahead, slightly to the left of our path.
I peered in that direction, barely discerning the dark outlines of some cliffs. They reigned over the crater’s edge like an island exposed by a parting sea. I couldn’t see any buildings.
In the absence of my mind expander, I felt awkward. Amazing how quickly man gets used to creature comforts. The world of high technologies had become part of our mental build, to the point where normal human perception seemed substandard.
“Take us there,” I said, knowing that the Haash could read the objects’ thermal imprints. We could hear the occasional clatter of hooves in the distance: the Reapers were on the prowl. Still, until now Charon’s natural ability had allowed us to avoid new encounters.
I walked, leaning on my sword, digging its point into cracks in the vitrified earth in order to keep my balance on the slippery surface so treacherously powdered with ash. Foggs did the same. Jurgen and Arbido lagged considerably behind. We had to make frequent stops waiting for them to catch up.
Soon the precipitous outlines of the cliffs loomed up out of the dull green shimmer. Now I could make out a few modern buildings high above, perching on the edge of one of the cliff faces. Enveloped in the mist, they seemed to be hovering in mid-air, impregnable and unapproachable.
“That’s where we need to go,” Jurgen motioned us to keep slightly to the left. He seemed to be getting his memory back, reclaiming the experiences he’d once lost under the constant pressure from his neuroimplant back in deep space.
The mist parted, revealing a crooked fence of planking. Soon we arrived at a neat row of cottages. They’d been ravaged by a recent fire, their roofs collapsed, their windows gaping black. Their neat front gardens had been ploughed up by horses’ hooves.
“Over there! It looks like there’s a road tunnel,” Foggs pointed at a cracked stretch of tarmac disappearing inside the cliffs. The entrance to the tunnel was marked with rampant stumps of rusty building steel and gray mounds of concrete debris.
“Wouldn’t it be better to give it a miss?” Arbido asked cautiously. “Do we have to go there?”
“That’s the only way,” Jurgen replied. “This is the oldest part of the testing grounds. One of its first locations, in fact.”
“Take five,” I ordered. We needed a breather. God only knew what lay ahead.
“How weird,” Foggs studied the burned-out car carcasses, the broken fences and trampled flowerbeds. “Jurgen? Why did they have to build all this?”
His question was quite logical. I too used to imagine the testing grounds as somewhat different.
“The testing locations are slightly higher up in the mountains,” Jurgen looked around with sadness. “Frieda and I used to live in one of those,” he added, meeting incomprehension in our stares. He shrugged. “You don’t understand me, do you?”
“What’s wrong with just telling us? Why would they need all these roads, houses and cars? Wouldn’t it be easier to simply log in directly to your work place?”
“And where are we supposed to live, then?” Jurgen took offence. “You had it all nice and easy, didn’t you, traveling virtual worlds to your heart’s content! But how about us? What kind of life is that, living between your workplace and a capsule hotel? You have any idea what a couple of months of this life can do to you? They can turn a man into a monster!”
“All right, all right, don’t get your knickers in a twist!”
“At least here I could walk out of my own house in the morning, take a breath of fresh air, get into my own car and drive to work, understand?”
Charon in front turned around, alarmed.
“It’s all right,” I told him.
“Are they arguing?”
“Not really.”
Actually, Jurgen was absolutely right. In the last ten or fifteen years, virtually all of the Earth’s population had moved into in-mode capsules. Working in cyber space was just so much more comfortable, the choice of occupations so much better and virtually no competition between humans and serves — the maintenance robots.
I grinned. Did we really differ that much from the Founders’ then? Were our low-level technologies and the modest size of our planetary network our only drawback? Weren’t our mentality and our so-called lifestyle basically the same?
Foggs left Jurgen alone and crouched next to me. “I keep thinking about what could have happened in the Crystal Sphere,” he said. Since our encounter with the Reapers, he seemed constantly on his guard. Still, at the moment we were enveloped in a weird thick silence.
“Are you talking about the neurograms?” I asked.
“Of course. I used to know Forrest very well too. All our dialogues... I remember them almost by heart. He was just a regular NPC, but what is he now? I just can’t see any logic behind that update he told us about. Why would the Corporation take such risks? Just to make the virtual world random and unpredictable?”
“That’s true,” I agreed. “NPCs are at the center of most plots. They’re obliged to play by the book, otherwise the game would collapse. Do you think it’s been hacked? Could someone have infected NPCs with neurograms?”
“I can’t see how it could have happened any other way,” Foggs replied. “Jurgen,” he turned around, “come on man, don’t get so worked up. You’d better tell us how far we still have to go.”
Jurgen walked over and crouched next to us. “These wastelands point at the defense system’s attempt at complete data destruction,” he commented on the route we’d just taken. “This is a last resort measure that indeed suggests a hacking attack.”
“An unsuccessful one, hopefully?” Arbido asked.
Jurgen grinned sadly. “I’m afraid that the boundaries of other virtual worlds have been wiped out, too. The testing grounds, the Crystal Sphere and dozens of other gaming worlds might have become a single cyberspace. The Corporation owns lots of virtual realities all of which use different modifications of the same engine and are physically located in the same server complex.”
The picture he’d painted wasn’t rosy.
Foggs pointed at the buildings at the cliffs’ edge. “Can we get access to the city network from there?”
“Don’t know. I’m not sure of anything anymore. We need to go and try.”
“Excellent. Let’s go, then,” I stood up. “Pointless sitting here theorizing!”
* * *
The car tunnel met us with a fetid gloom. Evidence of desperate battle were everywhere. Here, the defenders had used modern weapons.
Wheezing, Charon studied the remains of flybots peppered with bullets.
Arbido scurried after me, looking depressed.
Jurgen strode decisively, his head held high, a feverish gleam in his eyes.
Foggs stepped softly like a cat, his gaze keen and fearless.
Breathing was a struggle. We kept coming across the avatars of dead Corporate workers. The location’s engine continued to dutifully generate stomach-churning “special effects”.
I caught up with Jurgen. “Why didn’t they log out?”
“Out of habit?” he suggested. “Think about yourself: whenever did you log out at the sight of a mob?”
“Me, never! Wait a sec... Does that mean there’re respawn points here too?”
“Well, what do you think? They test new worlds here. Accidents happen. All sorts of glitches and power misbalances. Sometimes mobs escape from their designated locations. Creating a new gaming world is a complex business; you can’t think of everything at once. Accidents weren’t an excuse to drop your work and disconnect,” he slowed down, then stopped and crouched next to a dead avatar still dressed in the uniform of a Corporation security officer. He turned the man over onto his back.
“But whatever happened here,” he said softly, “wasn’t normal. What could have killed them?”
“Can’t you see? Neuroimplants, that’s what did it. Not everyone can survive death, no matter how virtual.”
“You’re wrong. Look, his gear is practically intact,” he shone his torch for me to see.
The man’s battle helmet wasn’t damaged. His sturdy composite suit was covered in a series of shallow scratches and dents, left apparently by some bladed weapon. I also noticed a few traces of bullet impacts. Still, Jurgen was right: there was nothing life-threatening.
I peered through his transparent computerized visor. The man’s face was distorted by death throes. He had died in agony for no apparent reason.
The clattering of metal made me swing round.
Foggs had discovered something in the narrow gap between the wall and the burned-out skeleton of a flybot. “Charon, give me a hand.”
Unhesitantly the Haash grabbed at the car’s mauled door and yanked hard. With a loud screech, the car inched aside.
“That’s enough!” Foggs bent down and picked up an automatic weapon covered by a fine layer of concrete dust. “Look at this! That’s not a pulse gun. It has to be some really old system.”
He unclasped the clip and pulled back the breech spring. The cartridge which was still in the breech clattered onto the floor and rolled away.
Arbido picked it up and turned it in his fingers. “Did you notice there aren’t many weapons lying around here?” he handed the cartridge to Foggs. “Try and shoot it.”
It worked. A thunderous echo rolled across the tunnel. The bullet went through the hood of a flybot.
“It’ll do,” Foggs slung the weapon behind his back. “You’re right: someone’s already been here and picked up all the loot. Which isn’t good.”
Charon kept peering into the dark. He’d noticed something as soon as the shot had been fired. I walked over to him.
“Do you see anyone?”
“A human. Not tall. Blond hair,” he answered curtly. “He’s gone now,” he forwarded me a snapshot.
I couldn’t make out his face — and still I startled, recognizing certain details of his gear.
“Zander, what have you got there?” Arbido asked. “You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost!”
“It’s probably a glitch. I’m just tired.”
“The floor here is covered with ice!” Foggs’ voice came from within the depths of the tunnel. “And the walls! It looks like the defense systems are kicking in again! The exit can’t be far away and it’s letting in the cold!”
“Is this the only way out?” Arbido asked anxiously, forgetting all about me.
“It is,” Jurgen nodded. “We’ll come out by the lake in a minute. There’s a recreation zone just past it, followed by a junction. That’s where we need to go.”
* * *
An eerie light seeped over a small mountainous location.
A narrow beach framed an ice-bound lake. A few deck chairs still sat in the frozen sand. Further on to the right was a park, the trees’ bare branches gripped by frost. Not a rustle of wind, not a sound anywhere.
The buildings’ top stories faded in the thick fog, their window panes gleaming weakly. The ringing silence seemed about to explode.
Jurgen craned his neck, casting anxious glances around, his white-knuckled fingers almost fusing with his weapon. “The cyber labs are further up,” he gulped. “If we turn left at the junction, we’ll get to the bunker’s entrance. Our in-modes are there — Frieda’s and mine.”
Charon turned round. “And the children’s? Are they there too?” clouds of mist escaped his jaws.
“They might be,” Jurgen didn’t sound too sure. “I was with the first twenty, wasn’t I? I’ve no idea what happened here after that.”
The road skirted the lake. Snowflakes swirled in the silent gloom. I could sense something was coming but I couldn’t quite put my finger on how I knew this.
The Reapers were here! Right here! Not two paces away!
I swung round.
In a silent flash of purple, a portal opened behind me, disgorging a rider. He appeared in a swirl of snowflakes, crushed ice flurrying from the horse’s hooves. The rider’s eyes glowed purple through the narrow slits of his lowered visor, his spear aiming at my heart. All this flashed through my mind in the milliseconds — beyond which lay the sticky darkness of death.
“Neeeeuuuro!”
A burst of automatic gunfire thundered above my shoulder, burning my cheek, dumbfounding me. I dropped down and rolled aside as the scared horse bolted, dragging its unmounted rider behind.
Another portal!
And another one!
And yet one more!
“Neeeeuuuros!”
A bizarre medley of realities gushed forward out of the gap between worlds. Each of the Reapers was surrounded by a pack of motley cr
eatures. Fangs and claws, the frozen gleam of steel and the rusty armor of androids, the shabby futuristic gear of post-apocalyptic dwellers — imagine that all the boundaries between the gaming worlds had been torn down and their NPC inhabitants had received both purpose and absolute freedom in achieving it.
Charon reacted quickly. He didn’t give a damn about the phenomenon’s illusory nature. All he could see was a bunch of aggressive mobs. Unfazed, he didn’t try to analyze their origins. In one shattering blow, his club struck sparks off the nearest serve’s steel casing, crushing him and sending him flying a good thirty feet.
Foggs (it had been him shooting over my shoulder) had already spent what meager ammo he’d had. He dropped the gun and whipped out his sword, beheading the nearest mob, unable to see yet another portal open up behind his back.
Stumbling and falling, Arbido staggered toward the nearest building, desperate for cover.
Several riders attacked Jurgen, knocking him down. He wriggled in the snow, his face distorted with agony. Numerous shallow wounds seemed to appear strategically over his body. They didn’t bleed: they just oozed a dull green haze.
“Zander! Help me!” he wheezed.
The dull haze enveloped him, thickening into phantom images. His wounds were leaking something deeply personal, hidden in the recesses of his heart. The haze formed Frieda’s ghostly outline. She looked so young and happy...
Those were neurograms!
The Reapers were harvesting Jurgen’s identity! They needed his memories, his feelings — any manifestations of human nature!
His personality was about to be ripped apart and absorbed by these raiders who would take its fragments away as precious trophies.
I too was circled by NPCs craving human experiences. No idea what kind of sick experiment this had been but its results were obvious. Now I knew what kind of agonizing death they’d all met: both the Corporation workers and the players trying to stop the Reapers on the river bank.
I desperately wielded my sword, fighting my way toward the kneeling Jurgen. He was clasping his head. Arbido hadn’t made it to the nearest building: he lay motionless. Foggs was fighting off the creatures with his last ounce of strength. Time slowed down, growing more subjective, dragging out the nightmare until it became an eternity.
Black Sun (Phantom Server: Book #3) Page 11
