by Stan Lee
“Isn’t, isn’t, isn’t that what I, what I say?” the father-thing stutters, and Cameron moves forward, purposeful this time, allowing himself to focus for the first time on the deep, rich humming of the digital voices that surround him. They’re everywhere, beneath his feet and in the air all around him—and they’re inside his head, too. He is being manipulated. Messed with.
Hacked, he thinks. It’s HACKING me. Creeping around in my head like a virus and showing me what it wants me to see. And Dad can’t answer my questions because . . .
Because I’m talking to myself.
“That’s Kevin Costner’s line,” Cameron says, and clenches his fist as he brings his focus to a point.
His father freezes in place as his face goes slack—Only that’s not my father, Cameron thinks, or his ghost. For a moment, the whole world seems to go silent.
* * *
None of this is real.
But someone wants me to think it is.
The realization fills him with rage—at his father, at the illusion, at the unseen force that tried to take advantage of these painful memories to manipulate him. Everything he’s seen tonight has been mined from inside his own head. Things he’s recently seen—and the things he’s spent his whole life trying not to think about.
Cameron unclenches his fist, and the father-thing explodes in a blaze of light.
It may be the most advanced tech he’s ever interfaced with, but this place is still just another digital world—a computer program like any other. Just like OPTIC’s security bot, just like the boat with its keyless ignition.
If it’s got software, I can hack it.
Cameron claps his hands, and the cornfield erupts in flames. Around him, the world seems to shimmer.
“Hey!” Juaquo yells, and Cameron cringes. He’d almost forgotten his friend was there—but Juaquo doesn’t seem to be freaking out anymore. He’s shouting and running toward the baseball diamond, pointing wildly at the burning corn, and Cameron is only a little bit surprised to see a horde of frothing, shrieking orcs crash through the flaming stalks and onto the baseball field.
After all, he just watched Lord of the Rings last week.
He passes his hand through the air, concentrating hard, and grins as a laser gun takes shape in his palm, seemingly out of nowhere. This system is as much under his control as it is whoever created it, and the air itself seems to be made of code. He turns his weapon on the encroaching army, ripping a path through the sea of creatures, cackling as their bodies blow apart. A severed head lands at his feet, and he punts it, laughing again as it explodes like an overripe tomato against a wall—and there is a wall, because this place isn’t a cornfield, in Iowa or elsewhere. It’s a room, and under the slick black blood of the orc’s splattered head, he can see a doorway shimmering, the seam around it glowing brighter as he focuses his energy on it.
“Juaquo!” Cameron shouts, and points; Juaquo, understanding, runs to kick the door open. As he does, everything in the room—the grass, the dirt, the remaining orcs and the scattered body parts of their comrades—stutters and crumbles, the program hopelessly corrupted. For a moment, nothing moves, and nobody speaks. The only sound Cameron can hear is the pounding of blood in his ears, and beyond it, Juaquo’s labored breathing.
Then Juaquo peers through the open door, and his eyes go wide.
“Cameron,” he says. “Come here. Right now.”
“What?”
Juaquo shakes his head, grimacing. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. You told me you needed muscle, I figured you meant it literally. I’m not fighting this guy, dude.”
Cameron startles. “What? Why not?”
“Because if Batshit Barry is your girlfriend’s dad, you can knock him over yourself.”
25
Your Princess Is in Another Tower
Cameron’s mind is a roiling mess, confusion, fear, and anger battling for control. He crosses the room in a flash, prepared to tell Juaquo that he’s full of shit and not funny—only to stop short as he enters the next room, which is as tiny and featureless as a closet, the walls made of the same smooth material and lit with the same luminous glow. It’s not a joke or a lie: Barry, Batshit Barry, is slumped against the wall inside, sitting in a corner with his bony knees drawn up almost to his chin. He looks up at Cameron with red-rimmed eyes, and Cameron feels a surge of disgust mixed with pity. The old man seems to have aged twenty years since Cameron last saw him. Even his skin is drooping, drained of color, hanging in loose wattles under his chin and pronounced bags beneath his eyes. His complexion is as gray as the weird thing he’s wearing, some kind of caftan over a pair of loose pants. His feet are bare and filthy. But when he sees Cameron, his eyebrows raise in recognition and the corners of his mouth twitch upward. Cameron winces. It’s like watching a corpse try to smile.
“It’s interesting,” says Barry, in a shaky voice, “that it should be you. A coincidence, I suppose. But one understands, in moments like this, why human beings see meaning in everything. I could almost believe in kismet myself, seeing you here in this room.”
Cameron shakes his head.
“You! I don’t understand. What is this place? What are you doing here?”
“This is my home,” the old man says. “Or the closest thing I have to one.”
“Your—” Cameron breaks off, gaping. “You made all that—that stuff? The cornfield? The shooting? My goddamn father’s ghost?”
Barry shakes his head. “You imagine this is personal. It’s not. The program makes those choices, my boy, based on what it finds inside your own mind. It analyzes, it guesses at what will move or frighten you—or in this case, what might convince you to turn back. To leave us be.” His eyes are pleading. “You must understand, I only wanted to teach her.”
“You mean Nia,” Cameron snaps, and the old man’s eyes widen. “Where is she? We’re here for her. I’m not leaving without her.”
“Please,” Barry whispers. “You don’t understand. If you let her go—”
Juaquo steps forward, pushing past Cameron and crouching beside Barry. He peers at the old man, looking bewildered.
“How are you Nia’s dad? You’re, like, a million years old. Cameron, are you sure—”
But Cameron isn’t listening. Up until this moment, the anger and confusion were so loud inside his head that they drowned out everything else, including the whispers of a hidden system inside the walls of this room. But he hears it now—and in his mind’s eye, he sees it. Layer upon layer of security, a series of intricate locks all closed tight over a single door. It calls to him, draws him in. He closes his eyes and concentrates.
When he opens them, so does the wall in front of him. A single panel slides open, revealing an intricate digital display.
“NO!” Barry cries, and Juaquo grabs ahold of him as he struggles to his feet, pinning him against the wall.
“Whoa whoa whoa, Grandpa,” he says, then rolls his eyes. “Or Dad. Grandpa-Dad. Whatever. If your kid is behind that wall, we’re letting her out, end of story. Cameron? Is the wall, y’know, smart?”
“I’m almost there.” Cameron’s eyelids flicker as he works, training his focus on the system in front of him, closing his ears to the old man’s protests. One by one, the locks click open; piece by piece, the obstacles peel away. He’s getting close now, and is he imagining it, or can he hear Nia’s voice on the other side of the wall? Is she calling his name?
“Nia, I’m here!” he calls, and with a surge, he breaks through the final lock. The display in front of him flashes once and swings aside, revealing a doorway that he plunges through.
Behind him, Barry sobs, “Don’t, please don’t!” Cameron can hear him struggling vainly as Juaquo holds him fast, but the sound seems very far away.
Nia is standing inside the room, smiling at him through tears. She looks beautiful—luminous, lit from within, just like the walls that surround her.
“Nia!” he cries, as joy and relief wash over him.
B
ehind him, Juaquo says, “Huh? Where?”—but Cameron doesn’t hear, doesn’t care. He has eyes only for her, the one he came to save. She reaches out to him, her eyes shining, and he runs to her, his own arms outstretched. He has just enough time to realize that this will be the first time they’ve ever truly touched, to feel his heart begin to race in anticipation.
Then his hands plunge through her body and she disappears as the room goes dark.
Nia, he tries to say, but no sound comes out of his frozen mouth, and his frozen body cannot move. His eyes are fixed in front of him, fixed on his own hands, which were supposed to be embracing the girl he loves but are instead engulfed in a pulsing orb made of bright, shimmering electric light. Lightning crackles outward in tendrils, lacing itself up the length of his arms, wrapping his torso, his shoulders, his neck. He feels the tingle as it crawls over the back of his head, gripping his face in a perfect mirror of the scar where he was once struck. The sensation is horribly familiar, and when he hears Nia’s voice, it’s not with his ears. She seems to be speaking from inside his head.
You came for me. You came. I’m so glad, Cameron, I’m so glad, and I’m so sorry. This is the only way.
Sorry? Sorry for what? Cameron’s voice is a frantic whine, even inside his own head. The silence before he hears her again seems to stretch on forever. His body is engulfed in the light from the orb; it wraps him from head to toe, and he wonders briefly if this is what it’s like to be electrocuted to death, if his eyeballs will melt in their sockets before his body gives out.
Even in this moment, Nia’s voice is gentle, almost teasing.
They won’t melt. You’re not dying. But I am sorry, Cameron. I don’t want to, but I have to be quick . . . and this is going to hurt.
She’s right. The pain is exquisite, endless, and if Cameron’s vocal cords weren’t frozen, the sensation of furious electricity, of something intelligent and terrible and alien racing through the synapses of his brain, would be enough to make him scream in horror for the rest of his life.
Instead, he makes no sound at all. In one moment, he’s in the grips of it; the next, he’s slumped in a heap on the floor, looking up at Juaquo’s worried face and the old man’s anguished one beside it.
“What just happened?” Juaquo says, as Barry whimpers, softly, “Oh, child, what have you done?”
* * *
Nia’s voice seems to come from everywhere. It hums from the walls, the floor. It whispers down the narrow hallways and echoes in every cavernous space, as the room pulses with soft pink light.
“Cameron did what was right, Father,” she says. “He understands what you never could. You cannot teach a being to think, to feel, to be free . . . and then expect it to stay in a cage.”
Juaquo leaps backwards with a shout. “Who is that?” he yells as the old man collapses in a heap beside Cameron, and Cameron struggles to sit up. “What kind of messed-up ghost-in-the-machine shit is this!”
“Nia,” Cameron says, weakly. “Where did you—Where are you?”
The voice in the wall is full of feeling. “I don’t want to leave you like this, but the window is closing. I have to go. I’ll find you, I promise.”
The light inside the walls pulses and ripples. For a moment, it gathers in a soft pool just beside the place Cameron sits. Then it fades, and a deep stillness settles over the room. Juaquo stares at Cameron. Cameron stares at Barry. And Barry presses his forehead against the floor and whimpers the word “No,” softly, over and over.
Finally, Juaquo speaks.
“Guys, I’ve been through a lot tonight. Boat theft. Baseball ghosts. K-pop. Finding out that my best friend is some kind of computer whisperer who can talk to Roombas, and is also dating Batshit Barry’s daughter, who is invisible and lives in the wall . . .” He shakes his head. “What am I missing? One of you, say something!”
Cameron looks at Juaquo. “I don’t understand. Invisible? But she was here. I saw her.”
The old man looks at Cameron with something like pity. “You poor boy, you really don’t understand. You set her free. You’ve unleashed her.”
“But where is she?” Cameron says, his voice rising in pitch. “Where is she!”
The Inventor holds both his hands in front of him, palms up—the universal human gesture for helplessness.
“Where is she?” he asks. “She’s everywhere.”
26
The Inventor Speaks
In the dark room, the old man is barely visible, just a voice in the shadows—and the vast space that once held Nia’s learning worlds, and where Cameron battled through a series of dangers made out of his own hopes, fears, and memories, is alive with color and movement. It illustrates the story as he tells it, a story he has carried with him but never given voice to until now.
I had a daughter.
It was a long time ago. Not just another life, but another world. This universe—you cannot fathom how boundless it is, and how full. I know. I was like you once. My people were not so different from humans. And we believed we were alone too.
By the time we realized how wrong we’d been, it was too late.
The Ministry found us, as they found so many planets, so many races, before us.
They kept some, but killed most.
I watched Nia die on the day they came. I held her body in my arms until they ripped it away.
My daughter. My daughter.
She was my daughter.
They cut my Nia down, and there was nothing I could do.
* * *
It plays out before them like a movie. The Inventor watches Cameron and Juaquo, who stare, transfixed. The Inventor’s people appear in silhouette, surrounded by the great, polished stone city that was once their home. They are shielding their eyes against the dazzling light of a massive ship entering their planet’s atmosphere. There are gasps and cries of excitement, of awe . . . shortly replaced by shrieks of pain and anguish. A formation of small ships sweeps overhead, moving in eerie unison. The people scatter and fall. A small girl runs for safety, scampering up a long and sweeping staircase, only to stop abruptly at the top, frozen in place. Her head snaps back, her eyes wide and blank, as a burning hole opens up at the base of her throat. She falls for an eternity, her body caught at the end by a tall, cloaked figure—a younger version of the old man who sits before them.
“I was a prisoner of the Ministry,” he says. “But I was also a skilled engineer and inventor. They saw that I could be useful to them. Instead of killing me, they employed me—and to my shame, I did not have the courage to resist. The Ministry had a central mind, you see. A shared consciousness that united them in their exploits across the galaxy. It made them virtually unstoppable. Have you ever seen a flock of birds moving as a single mass? Changing directions as if by magic? Imagine that, but an army. Endlessly hungry for more power, more resources, more worlds to exploit.”
He says “imagine,” but they don’t have to. The army is passing before their eyes now, thousands of dark, spectral figures moving in lockstep, humming as they pass. Their bodies are encased in oversized, insect-like exoskeletons, carried forward by dozens of small, fast-moving legs, and joined together above by dendrite-like tendrils that spill from the tops of the exoskeletons and extend in all directions. The tentacles form a forest, offering only glimpses in between the creatures’ dull, lidless eyes and remora-like mouths. Seen like this, it is impossible to tell where one member of the Ministry ends and another begins. Cameron looks at the appendages writhing and sliding against each other and gags.
The Inventor says, “There was no defending against it, no time to organize. Every civilization they targeted was overrun, plundered, and every time they became more powerful . . . and greedier. Once they took me, I saw the truth.”
The spectral figures vanish now, replaced by an image of a gray, grim landscape. Dilapidated structures rise closely on all sides, and the air is full of ashes that seem to fall endlessly, coating everything in a blanket of grime. This is the Minist
ry’s planet, their ruined home. From the shadows inside the decaying structures comes that same eerie hum: the planet’s citizens crouch there unmoving, their bodies intertwined and in repose, the tendrils glowing faintly red where they join their owners together. The red light waxes and wanes, pulse-like; the hum deepens. The creatures are gathered in a circle surrounding an indentation in the earth, and as the three-dimensional movie before them shifts to zoom in on the crater, Cameron moans involuntarily at what he sees. It is filled with bodies—of the Inventor’s people, but others, too, heaped upon each other in a mass grave for the living. The pulsing tendrils of the Ministry snake down into the hole, entering the eyes and ears and open mouths of the beings below.
“Their planet had fallen into ruin long ago, but in their minds, the Ministry’s home was a utopia. Their shared consciousness became a shared delusion, a fantasy, sustained by the energy of their captives. Those who had no gifts to offer to the Ministry became what you see here: fuel. Their neural networks were tapped and drained like batteries to sustain the Ministry’s Elders. They fed on the energy of other beings like vampires. Millions were sacrificed. And still the Ministry was never satisfied.”
The Inventor pauses, his lips curling in a grim smile. “I saw my chance. I told them I could build them a new network, one that could serve as the foundations of a mind-world without end, sustained by its own energy. I promised them the kind of limitless power that nature had denied them, that they couldn’t attain for themselves even with millions of minds to feed on. I promised them an undying paradise. And all they had to do was connect through the portal I provided for them. To plug their shared consciousness into a central brain.”
He closes his eyes. This part, the part that comes next, is both the greatest and most terrible moment of his life. A victory and a curse, all at once.
“I convinced them to put their precious mind-hive in the hands of an artificial queen. My queen. My creation.”
