by Kris Schnee
"No way," said one of the goons. He pointed at the side entrance.
The door had a panel beside it that Linda would have expected to be a numeric keypad or other standard lock. But instead it was colorful. A screen displaying gems and clockwork whirred there.
Linda laughed. "A puzzle?"
The leader said, "The AI's a lunatic. What do you expect? You played a lot before all this went down, right? Can you open it?"
The others hung back as though afraid the video game would steal their souls. Linda approached. She'd never attended the real-world lockpicking lessons that some MIT students offered for fun; they'd make her look shady, and she'd cared very much about that until lately. But she did know how to pick a Thousand Tales treasure chest's lock. Linda went to work, moving glowing gears.
A minute later the door chimed and slid open. The warehouse office beyond it was utterly ordinary, and dark for the evening. Dingy desk, file cabinets, heater, no guard. Linda looked at the conventional lock on the far door and said, "We could rifle through this room and go."
"Don't you want to see what's inside?" their leader asked. Another man stepped forward with a lockpick to attack the inner door. A third started taking photos. Not much to see in here besides standard computer hardware (obsolete, Linda noticed) and paperwork about financial projections.
Linda thought there was a fair chance their location was being tracked in two or three different ways. Unless their hacker was especially good. Finally the inner door clicked open and the burglar waved everyone over.
Beyond the anteroom, they reached a hallway with an unlocked door at the far end. Past that, they peeked into a server farm. Four cargo containers stood in the warehouse, giving off a rumble of air conditioning that washed warm air over the intruders like some creature's breath. Vine-like cables were draped around the steel boxes and the walkways that crisscrossed overhead. At the center, a sleek pillar of wood and glass held machines of unknown design, pulsing with blue light that cast shadows in an X around it. A chorus of humming hardware filled the room.
Nobody here; the place was automated. A robot drone rolled into view, its camera-eyes facing the other direction. Catwalks overhead filtered the harsh light into weird dots.
The intruders' leader waved everyone to take cover behind the nearest container. Linda joined them, trying to keep silent. How dumb were these guys going to be, now that it was dangerous to make noise and there could be cameras everywhere?
Two of the gang took photos silently. The robot rolled on, slowly following an obvious yellow line along the floor. Linda looked questioningly to the leader.
He frowned, glanced at the oblivious guardbot, and decided to advance. He beckoned the others to follow. They were closer now to the central pillar. He took the unfamiliar gadget out of his pocket and waved it around, looking at tiny lights on its surface.
One of the others pointed to an open panel on the nearest container, where a rainbow thicket of cables could easily be unplugged or cut. The leader stuck his device onto that with the antennae sticking out.
There was a silent argument. Two of the four fools wanted to go back to the entryway and declare their mission accomplished while the other and the leader wanted to press on and break things. He looked at Linda as though to break the tie.
Instigate nothing, she'd been coached. So she just shrugged.
Annoyed, the leader crept closer to the main pillar. Then, he took a spray can out of his coat. Spraypaint? No, the label looked different. He shook the can and leaned closer --
And a spring-loaded cushion swung out and walloped him, making him stagger backward. The entire room erupted in flashing red lights and alarms, transitioning to a battle song that'd fit in a video game.
The entire gang swore, and fled. The leader was in back now. He was the last one to realize the door had locked behind them. Linda, meanwhile, had flattened herself behind a crate. Well, here was the payoff, the entire group getting caught doing spying and sabotage!
The four yanked on the door but couldn't budge it to escape. They really should've brought a doorstop.
The menacing music blared. Linda's ears rang. A man's voice spoke from a new robot that trundled onto the scene. This one was a squat little treaded bot with a single arm, and it rolled into view from behind the central pillar. "My name is Simon. You've broken into a computer center of Ludo, who's trying to save lives."
Simon, Paul's friend! Did he upload? Isn't he in jail or something?
The gang leader looked desperately for another exit. "Crazy robot!"
"Maybe. Ludo has equipped this place with some non-lethal defenses to catch the likes of you. Saboteurs. People who'd murder our uploaders." The bot rolled closer. "But she also let me control this machine, on my own. We have independent minds." The robot was a straight shot away from the cornered gang, now, and from somewhere, it picked up a metal pipe. "Tell me why I shouldn't splatter your brains all over this room."
The leader swore. "We're messing around, man! You can't kill real people!"
"What do I care anymore? Machines aren't people to you, so they can't get convicted of anything if they go haywire. Or off-script." The pipe tapped loudly against the bot's own plastic plating. "Who put you up to this?"
Linda kept hidden. Was Simon really going to attack these guys? It was too much. The robot had all its attention on the thugs. Linda crouched and slipped around a corner, nearer to it.
"Who sent you!" bellowed the machine over the music. It thumped its pipe against the floor, striking sparks.
The four saboteurs panicked. The leader made an impressive leap to grab the catwalk overhead and start pulling himself up. Two more rammed the door without success. The fourth fled randomly. The machine rolled toward the two at the door.
Linda darted out from hiding. This was no combat bot; she recognized the style and its limited range of motion. She seized its single arm and whipped it toward her while levering the treads up with her foot. Motors flailed. Most of the weight was in its lower body but she wrenched it off-balance, onto its side. "Pin it!" she said.
Two of the guys hurried toward her. One of them picked up the spray can that'd fallen from the leader's hands, and sprayed a cloud of black dust at the machine. The other stomped on the metal pipe so it couldn't swing and hit anyone. His boot sank into the shiny foam that made up its surface. He looked down, puzzled.
Linda suppressed a laugh. A prop!
Boots stamped on the catwalk above. "Freeze!" said several men in security uniforms.
The gang cursed and fled through the room, seeking an exit, but found only locked doors and machinery. They lashed out stupidly at the cargo containers and exposed wires for long enough that three security guards tromped down a staircase and brandished nightsticks, saying, "Sit down, all of you!"
Linda, meanwhile, had been wrestling with the robot, but it had gone still. She sat on the floor, cross-legged.
"There's only three," one of the spies said. "We could probably --"
The leader said, "Just shut up. Why'd you let the exit lock, dummy?"
"Me? That was you!"
They fell to bickering as the battle music faded at last. The guards tied their wrists. When they got to Linda, the one tying her winked. That, at least, was according to plan.
* * *
Linda was the second one hauled out of the storeroom where they'd all been marched to wait for the police. The guards took her out of sight, then cut her bonds and quietly pointed her toward a wallscreen on the second-floor catwalk. She threw off her stuffy outer coat and approached the monitor.
It flickered to life, showing Ludo in a castle, at a chessboard. "Thanks," she said. "How do you want to swing this? Let the cops arrest you, and I drop the charges? Reveal the penetration-testing contract and let you publicly make fools of the attackers? Or just slip away? I warn you, the thugs will presumably say you were there, so it'll be hard to pretend you weren't."
The AI had left her options open, and Linda's. Diffe
rent ways to look like an enemy of Ludo or an ally. Linda said, "Those idiots gave you the performance you wanted, huh? What is this place, really?"
"Ever played an 'escape room' puzzle game? I'm thinking of setting this up as something similar, where you get to solve puzzles and battle robots. But there's no real, important hardware here. Nor lethal force in the hands of robots. I'm just miffed that the attackers didn't find the 'self-destruct button'."
"My 'team' attached some kind of device to the server racks. And there's that spray, whatever that was."
"The spy gadget is picking up vast amounts of silly meme images." The screen flashed a picture from Thousand Tales showing an in-joke about bananas. "Both the device and the can suggest these people are backed by someone more competent. That spray is conductive carbon fiber, meant to short out electronics. Like poison for robots."
Linda's own future was more important right now than unraveling who was behind this attack. "I don't want notoriety as a criminal, even with the charges dropped. I invoke our contract." That would keep her political career safe. However, it'd also tell any interested people that Linda was willing to work with the machine overlord. "I take it you know what 'controlled opposition' means."
"Oh yes. I'll even let you decide how much to brag, though the truth of what you did will probably come out. You're free to go. Also..."
A familiar chime played and a message popped up on the screen: [Skill gain: Stealth!]
Linda scoffed.
Ludo said, "You're welcome to play again. With or without talking to your friends."
"Not tonight."
Linda turned her coat collar up and headed for the door, which unlocked for her. She headed out into the cold alone, wondering whose side she was really on.
* * *
Word of her trip didn't immediately hit the news. Or rather, the news story was that "a fifth assailant has not yet been identified". That saved her from an awkward family conversation or two.
The next day, she waffled about it until evening and finally made herself log into the game. It was time to speak with Paul and Typhoon again, to say a lot of things. What had they been doing in there, anyway?
11. A Knight of Talespace
Horizon
A rippling portal beckoned atop what the griffins had named Hazard Island. They'd battled their way across the water and gained enough flying ability to get across with a dinky raft, some steering past sharks, and a well-timed leap from there to the far shore. Now they leaped through, unsure what lay ahead.
Wind warmed their feathers. Gratuitous shiny special effects flared around them, marking their transition to another universe within Talespace. Horizon tried to quiet the part of his mind that knew the trip largely consisted of changing numbers on a computer somewhere. He could say the same about Antarctic explorers "changing their coordinates" by sled, since neither he nor they could manipulate the numbers directly. He'd died more than those guys, too.
They landed on a hard, cold surface. A circular stained glass window ten paces across that floated in a starry void. The image showed a happy, oblivious man sniffing a flower as he walked off a cliff.
"What's this?" asked Nocturne, poking at the glass with one talon and making it ring.
"I don't know."
A pile of pillows materialized, then a hovering checkpoint crystal, and then a walkway of glass and steel. This new bridge led to a second platform where three doors stood. Horizon tapped the crystal to make it ring. [Save point set.]
He crossed the bridge nervously, worried he'd fall off and into the void.
"You've got wings, you know," said Nocturne, flapping overhead.
Horizon looked at them, and flapped. They still felt like costume pieces that had been glued onto him, sometimes, but they worked. They took him into the air, easily crossing the gulf.
The second platform depicted a serene man dangling upside-down from a tree, a golden halo around his head. The doors were a narrow wooden one, a second wooden door painted green, and an iron door carved with runes.
"I suppose it's a puzzle," Nocturne said. "Any preference?"
Horizon shrugged, and fell over on his beaked face. He'd been standing on all fours. "Ow. Uh... the plain wood one."
It opened easily, with only light beyond it. Nocturne leaped through, saying, "Huzzah!"
"Huzzah!" Horizon answered, and followed her.
* * *
They were on the deck of Fallen Crown. The ship had tilted at a crazy angle on a beach. It was a blazing, cloudless day.
Last time Horizon was here it'd been through a VR pod, and before that just on a screen. He lifted one forefoot and stared at his avian talons, then lightly scratched the mast beside him and felt the faint give of the wood.
"Something wrong?" asked Nocturne.
Horizon tried to keep his balance. "Last time, I was just pretending to be this."
She nuzzled his wings. "You'll get the hang of it."
He nodded. Then he looked over the railing and called out to the shore, "Hello?" Ropes held the ship down by its masts. NPC sailors on the island were cutting trees and sawing logs.
"Down here," said Typhoon's Eye, Linda's companion.
The griffins flew down to him. His piratical clothes were in tatters. He was listlessly reading a book in the shade of a lean-to shelter. Now he came out to stretch and look the griffins over. "Wow. Hey, Noc. And is it really you, Paul?"
"I think you should call me Horizon now. It's on my official character sheet and everything. Um... Can I touch you?"
"Of course." Typhoon held out one webbed hand.
Horizon reached out to poke the otter-man's fuzzy arm, then to shake his hand. There was a vague salty smell to him. "Good to meet you in the flesh."
"Glad you made it."
There was an awkward pause.
Horizon said, "We'll talk her into it yet."
"Why do I even exist, if not for her?"
"You're your own person. You're not limited by what you were designed for. What about Nocturne, here? She's been doing things while I was offline. And now that I'm here, she still doesn't have to spend all of her time with me."
"I bet she has, anyway."
Nocturne said, "It hasn't been long. I'm sure we'll find other things to do like getting back to the charity work. So can you."
Horizon added, "Didn't you tell me one of your AI friends had a human who died? You should talk with her. She found another purpose besides being devoted to one specific human, right?"
Typhoon looked at the damaged ship, laying tilted and under repair. "I should be patient, at least. Take up a hobby besides this incomplete quest and waiting for Linda to come to her senses."
Nocturne hugged him, and he returned it. "There you go. Just be patient, okay? In fact, do you want to come with us? We're looking around at some of the uploaders' worlds. Wasn't expecting to see you on the list of people to visit."
Typhoon said, "I need to think and clear my head. Go have fun."
Horizon backed off, saying, "All right. But send me a message or however that works around here, if you need anything."
"Like this." Typhoon used his interface to conjure a business card that he handed to Horizon.
[Typhoon's Eye is now on your contacts list.]
Horizon did the same to make sure he had Typhoon and Nocturne listed in both directions. "We're off, then. See you later." He saluted with his talons, took off, and headed for the ship's tilted cabin door.
* * *
He and Nocturne were back in the void of doors. "Your pick," said Horizon.
She opened the runic door. Horizon followed.
They emerged into a battle. In a tunnel lit by torches and flaming arrows, a horde of dwarves surged toward nightmarish beetles with demonic faces. He and Nocturne were right in the middle!
They leaped into the air. The arrow-rain was so dangerous that they fled from it, toward the monsters. The tunnel was only a few times their wingspan.
"Come down behind '
em?" said Nocturne.
"I'll use magic. Maybe ambush them?" Horizon switched to hovering to conserve his stamina. Then he spread his talons and the rune-field of magic glowed into existence before him. A simple [Mage Dart] took only a few moments to prepare. His version of it sizzled like molten gold. The energy flashed downward at the foes. He couldn't miss the packed, dark swarm but it was like throwing a rock into a stream. A red wound-mark burst from his target and the rest kept coming. Horizon started another blast. The dwarves realized he was on their side, and the arrows arced harmlessly below him.
Nocturne landed at the rear of the swarm, slashing and beak-stabbing. She yanked one beetle up by the hindlegs and shoved it forward like a wheelbarrow, gleefully plowing through its fellows before they tried to hit back. In their packed formation the monsters had little room to turn, but the stragglers now threatened her. Horizon sent his next spells raining down on them. Only a yellow minor-wound mark and a blocked hit.
"Any loose rocks?" he called out. His stamina was running low, and he started to feel a vague ache in his back like his brain wasn't sure how to warn him.
"Plenty!"
Horizon dived. He felt the wind rush through his feathers, then the impact of talons against chitin. A yellow wound-mark grazed his enemy as he tumbled, accidentally throwing the beast he'd gripped, right over him.
A second beetle caught him while he was on his back and stabbed downward with its hairy, spiky legs. Horizon rolled the wrong way and got speared through the chest. Pain lanced through him and a red mark flashed in his vision. But the leg lifted again and he wasn't bleeding, nor broken. He shoved and scrambled away, aching.
Nocturne darted into his brawl with her talons, slashing and kicking. "Hover again?"
"Ow, ow. Give me a second." Horizon fought defensively, batting beetle-legs and snapping mandibles. Then he seized a chunk of loose rock from the tunnel walls, chucked it into the swarm, then took two more and lifted into the air. Nocturne did the same with a good-size rock she struggled to lift.
The dwarves were chewing through the monsters' ranks. The griffins hovered, hurled their rocks down, then peppered a few more beetles with magical bolts. The foul things hissed and clacked their jaws up at the flying intruders.
