Cyberdrome

by Joseph Rhea

  “What did I say?” Maya yelled as she crouched low and spun around to face her attacker. Blood began to ooze from a deep cut on her cheek.

  “Knowledge is power,” Kay growled as she stood and casually licked the blood from her claws. She was apparently trying to look undisturbed by the fact that Maya had deflected the brunt of her attack. “You must give knowledge in order to receive it,” she said. She then glanced briefly at Maya, and added, “You have nothing I want.”

  Javid and Jas Kaido’s Tracers raced into the area just then and slid to a stop—quickly ending the confrontation. When they climbed out, Alek introduced Maya to the Sentinel, while the two KaNanee walked a short distance away to speak privately. Alek avoided mentioning the fact that most of the people he had been searching for were dead, or at least, gone. He didn’t want to think about that fact just then either.

  “You’re a Sentinel?” Maya asked, holding her palm against her cheek to stop the bleeding. “I thought they were all deleted in the attack.”

  “All but one,” he said flatly.

  “So, you didn’t find anyone?” Alek asked.

  “No survivors were found,” he said. “However, I did locate the remains of this sector’s Watchport just over that rise.” He pointed to a pile of debris nearby.

  Maya looked suddenly interested. “I want to see it,” she said as she began walking toward the rise.

  “Stay low,” Javid warned. “The area is being guarded by a number of Mantids, and we do not want them alerted to our presence.” He caught up with Maya and began leading the way. Alek had no idea what a Watchport was, but he ran to catch up with them.

  When they neared the pile of debris, Javid dropped to his hands and knees and crawled up the side to peer over the top.

  When Alek slid up next to the Sentinel, he saw a group of Mantids standing in a circle less than a hundred meters away.

  “It is prohibited for non-system programs to access a Watchport,” Javid whispered. “I have recorded this location and will attempt to report it at a later date.”

  “I don’t see anything,” Alek said. “Where is this Watchport?”

  “The structure is gone,” Javid said. “Deleted by the same energy wave that destroyed the Sentinels.”

  “Watchports were inhabited by a class of programs called Watchers,” Maya said as she glanced at Javid. “Like Sentinels, Watchers are born in the simulations and brought to the Core for service. Their sole purpose is to monitor the integrity of our researchers.”

  “You mean they made sure your researchers did what they were supposed to do, even when your people weren’t around,” Alek said.

  “Right,” she said. “A sort of quality control measure. They—” She paused and glanced at Javid again. “They could cloak themselves—make themselves invisible so that they could monitor our researchers without being detected.”

  “To do that, they would need direct access to the simulations,” Alek said.

  “Correct,” Javid said. “That is what the port was used for. Now, the Mantids are trying to access the simulation for themselves.”

  “How can they do that if the Watchport structure’s gone?” Alek asked.

  “There,” Maya said, pointed to the circle of machines. “In the middle—the floor’s glowing.” She turned to Javid. “That’s the port opening, isn’t it?”

  “Correct,” Javid said. “Without the Watchers or the structure to guard it, that port is an unprotected direct connection to this sector’s simulation.”

  “This could explain how the KaNanee and the CeeAut got here,” Alek said. He briefly relayed the story Kay Broon had told him.

  Javid frowned. “One problem with that story is that Watchports operated on the surface. I do not see how they could have emerged below the surface as you described.”

  “Can you give me another explanation?” Alek asked.

  “The KaNanee are known to exaggerate,” Javid said. “Their story must be—”

  “We need to get a closer look,” Maya interrupted.

  Javid turned and faced her calmly “There are six Mantids protecting it.”

  “Find a way, Alek,” Maya demanded, ignoring Javid’s statement. The cut on her face had finally stopped bleeding, but the scar was still deep. It must hurt like hell, he thought. No wonder she sounded angry.

  “CeeAuts help Gray Sentinel,” a familiar voice said.

  Alek spun around and saw Persis standing at the bottom of the debris pile.

  “Do you know this creature?” Javid asked, moving quickly toward the CeeAut.

  Alek crawled down the pile and stood next to the Sentinel. “This one is called Persis,” he said, unconsciously mimicking the CeeAuts unusual speech pattern. “I spoke with her back when we were trapped inside the border.” He turned to Maya, who had just climbed down to join them. “She helped me figure out how to get out of there.”

  Maya studied the woman from head to foot. “Are you going to tell me that she came from one of the simulations as well?”

  “Same world as the KaNanee, from what I’m told,” Alek said. The sight of Persis standing so close to Maya made him nervous for some reason. Maybe he was worried that Maya would pick up on his admittedly strong attraction to the strangely beautiful creature.

  “CeeAuts help Gray Sentinel,” Persis repeated staring right at Alek.

  “If the KaNanee find you here,” Javid began, but he didn’t need to finish. “I assume that you have been following us in the Tracer you stole.”

  “I gave her the Tracer,” Alek corrected him.

  Maya stepped in front of Alek to face Persis. “How can you help us?” she asked.

  “Show you opening to world,” Persis said.

  “The Watchport opening is well guarded,” Javid said.

  “Tunnels,” Persis said.

  Maya looked up at Alek. “Who makes the tunnels?”

  “They are called Moles,” Alek replied. “They dig tunnels in the ground. If you haven’t experienced them yet, consider yourself lucky. The CeeAut use their tunnels to hide from the KaNanee.

  “CeeAuts use tunnels,” Persis said. “Help others to surface.”

  “It is possible that a Mole tunnel intersected the Watchport beam below the ground,” Javid said. “They are attracted to energy signatures, and a Watchport beam would be very powerful.”

  “That could explain how the KaNanee and CeeAut made it out of the simulations,” Alek said.

  Maya turned to the CeeAut. “Is there a tunnel open to this beam?”

  Persis nodded once and then began walking back toward the circle of Tracers. It took Alek a moment to realize that she expected him to follow. He started to move but Javid put a firm hand on his shoulder.

  “Are you sure you can trust her?”

  “No, but once again, we don’t seem to have many options at this point. Are you coming with us?”

  Javid released his grip. “My place is here. I will keep this area secure until you return.”

  Maya was already walking. Alek made a half salute to Javid and then turned and ran after her. In the exact center of the ring of Tracers, he found Maya standing at a small opening in the ground. He peered inside and saw a steeply sloping tunnel.

  “Mole tunnel,” he said.

  She looked at the backs of the four Tracers surrounding them. “It can’t be a coincidence that Roy’s team parked their ships here.”

  He looked at her, then back down at the opening. “You think they escaped down this tunnel?”

  “One way to find out,” she said, and then jumped in. He watched her disappear into the depths.

  He took a deep breath and then jumped in. The sides of the tunnel were smooth as glass and the slide down was fast. After a few seconds, the bottom leveled out and he slowed to a stop. Maya stood nearby, motioning for him to follow.

  After about ten minutes of walking in near darkness, the tunnel began to get brighter. He rounded a slow curve and found the source of the light—a glowing blue beam that
stretched from floor to ceiling. It stood at the center of an intersection where several tunnels met.

  “Must have been quite a few Moles in the area,” Alek said, counting the number of intersecting tunnels in the dim light of the beam.

  “This has to be the transportation conduit between the Watchport and the simulation in this sector,” Maya whispered.

  “Wait a minute. Leconte told me there were all sorts of safeguards to prevent THI programs from escaping the simulations,” he said. “These conduits seem like a really obvious escape route to me.”

  “Well, escaping to Core memory is not exactly getting out of the system,” she said, “and don’t let the name ‘Watcher’ fool you. They had the power and authority to delete any program that tried to use their technology.”

  “Lucky for us they were destroyed with the Watchports.”

  “Yeah, lucky.”

  “So, if we step into this thing, where will it take us?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure—wherever they were working when the Watchport was destroyed. Most likely, somewhere inside the planet’s Survey Vessel, since that’s where you would expect to find most of the researchers.”

  “You think we’ll find Roy and the others there?”

  “I hope so,” she said. “This is a two-way conduit, so if we find Roy and the others there, we should be able to bring them back up to the Core with us.”

  The thought of bringing Roy back into the picture didn’t exactly make him happy. Then he thought of something else. “Do you remember my original plan to get your people back?”

  She nodded. “You wanted to bring everyone up from the simulations and place them inside the Core. Then reboot the secondary systems to release Ceejer’s control.”

  He nodded, happy—and surprised—that she remembered. “If we can use these Watchports to get Roy out, then we might be able to use them to get all of the hostages out of all of the simulations. If we can do that, we won’t have to worry about finding deletion routines.”

  She chewed on one of her fingernails a minute before responding. “Your plan might actually work if there was more time. There are more than forty hostages and each one’s inside one of a hundred simulations. Assuming that we could locate every Watchport and that we could find tunnels like these underneath them, what you’re talking about would takes us months, maybe longer. None of our bodies can be interfaced for that long.”

  “We’re all interfaced at a speed 100 times normal,” he reminded her. “You said that the interface chambers could keep the hostages alive for three or four more days. That’s equal to almost a year here. I think we have time to try this.”

  “Even if you’re right, how will Rebecca know what we are doing? How will they know when everyone’s out of the simulations?”

  “They were able to monitor your team’s locations in your Cartography room, which means they can see any hostage we bring out of the simulations. I assume that they will be smart enough to see what we are doing, and once we are all inside Core memory, they will hopefully do the reboot I suggested and we can all go home.”

  Her face lit up for the first time since he found her there. “This has to be why Leconte sent you in here,” she said. “She knew that you would figure something like this out. You’re a genius, Alek!” She smiled, which reopened the cut on her cheek. “Damn, this hurts,” she snarled.

  Alek looked over at Persis. “We are going inside and I don’t know how long we will be gone. Can you help Javid hold this location until we return?”

  “The CeeAut wait,” Persis said.

  Alek turned and faced the blue light. Maybe Maya was right, he thought. Maybe this was why Leconte sent him in, and maybe his idea would work after all. He reached out and clasped her hand, and then they stepped into the light together.

  PART THREE

  FIRE

  ELEVEN

  Alek felt a slight electrical jolt as he passed through the outer wall of the beam and a field of thin blue fog enveloped him. Through the fog, he saw the tunnels and inner workings of the Core disintegrate right before his eyes. He realized that it must be Cyberdrome’s rendering engines reformatting what he saw—his personal reality. Within moments, the Core had disappeared altogether and he found himself immersed in a blue void.

  The fact that he felt something solid beneath his feet meant that he was probably inside a formatting cell—sort of a bridge between one reality and the next. He felt a tingling on his abdomen and looked down to see his bodysuit moving like black water across his body. He turned to Maya and saw that she now wore a dark blue jumpsuit with a sort of loose webbing connecting her arms and legs. He looked back down and saw that his Omnisuit had changed into something similar.

  Just then, a line appeared in the fog in front of him and circled around to the back, forming a type of horizon. Above this line, a deep-blue sky with thin stratus clouds appeared; below the line, a hazy brown planet began to form. He watched as mountains rose up out of the bedrock and rivers and valleys formed. It was like watching creation itself—in fast motion.

  “What we’re wearing are called Omnisuits,” Maya said. Her voice sounded distant even though she stood right next to him. “For some reason they are transforming themselves.”

  “Klaxon already told me about the suits,” he said, more interested in the spectacle forming all around him. “She said they can automatically create clothing to protect us.”

  “That’s right,” she said, then looked down at her arms and made a face. “But I can’t imagine what environment this particular outfit’s going to protect us from.”

  “I wondered that too,” he said. “What the hell are these extra folds of material between our arms and legs for?”

  She reached out and touched his arm. “They almost look like—”

  Before she could finish her sentence, a blast of ice-cold air hit his face. “Shit,” he tried to scream as he began to fall, but the air rushing into his lungs prevented his voice from making a sound.

  Instead of entering a Survey Vessel, they had exited the Watchport beam in open air, at least several kilometers above the planet’s surface, and were now in free-fall. He instinctively spread his arms and legs out which seemed to stabilize him.

  He looked around and saw Maya in the distance, falling in the same spread-eagle position. Her suit seemed to be expanding out between her arms and legs and apparently, his suit was doing the same thing. The icy wind in his face slowed a bit as the suit became a makeshift air brake.

  When he caught his breath, he saw Maya coasting over toward him. She looked just like a flying squirrel. When she came within 20 meters, she pointed down and off to the left. A Survey Vessel lay half-buried in the sand. It had obviously crash-landed and, based on the damage, looked like no one could’ve survived the impact. Less than a kilometer away, he saw a series of low buildings inside a circular wall—some sort of desert fortress he guessed.

  He followed Maya’s lead and leaned in the direction of the ship, maneuvering himself toward a flat spot between two large sand dunes near the crash site.

  Maya landed first, and Alek saw her tuck at the last second and roll when she hit the sand. He tried to do the same but still hit the ground with a jolt. He sat up spitting out sand and cursing.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, reaching a hand down to him.

  He waved her off and spit again. “You know what? I’ve never had any interest in skydiving.” He looked up at her. “So what the hell happened?”

  She looked up at the blue sky. “My guess is that our exit point up there’s probably where the Survey Vessel was hovering just before it lost power and crashed. The Watchport beam must have been stuck in that position ever since.” She looked back down at him. “We’re lucky to be alive.”

  He glanced down at his hands and realized that he looked real again—the crude Core-rendering was gone. When he looked back at her, he noticed that the cut below her eye had disappeared. “Maya, your face!”

 
; She gently touched her cheek. “It’s gone,” she said. “Our Avatars must’ve been reformatted by the Watchport beam.”

  “Why would it do that?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Not my area of expertise, but I would guess that the Watchers needed it for some reason. They were human-based programs just like the Sentinels—maybe they used the beam to repair themselves if they got hurt in the simulations.”

  He stood and then winced at the pain in his lower back. “I wish I could go back through it right now,” he said. “I landed pretty hard and my back is killing me.”

  She looked at him, but then something over his shoulder caught her attention and her eyes widened. “What the hell?”

  He turned and saw a dozen or more Mantis bodies lying broken and half buried in the sand a hundred meters away. He scanned the horizon for movement before answering. “They must have tried taking the same route in we did,” he said. “Luckily for us they didn’t survive the fall.”

  She walked up to stand beside him. “Why would they leave the Core? What could they possibly want inside our simulations?”

  “I have no idea,” he admitted. He looked over at the broken hull of the Survey Vessel looming a short distance away and changed the subject. “So, what do you think happened to the ship?”

  “I don’t know, but it looks like it crashed a long time ago. If it happened right when Ceejer took over, that would’ve been well over a year ago—local time that is.”

  “Do you think anyone survived?” he asked.

  “I don’t know that either,” she said looking at him gravely. “What I do know is that Roy and the others couldn’t have survived that fall without their Omnisuits. Hopefully they didn’t try.”

  He nodded, but then realized that something didn’t make sense. “Hey, wait a minute. I thought that everything in the simulations had to obey the laws of physics. There’s no type of nanotech fabric that can move and change shape as fast as our suits just did.”

  “It’s a flaw in the simulations,” she said. “As accurate as they appear to be, they can’t model things at the quantum level very well. Nanotech works much better here than in the real world because the Fluidal computer simply fills in the gaps where it can’t model reality. It is a limitation your father had difficulty accepting.”