The Thousand Year Beach

by TOBI Hirotaka

  And then, suddenly, a woman whose name nobody knew was standing in the corner of the room.

  She had olive skin and black hair that fell to her hips.

  Her slender body was wrapped in dark Romani-style clothing, but the lining of her long skirt was as red as blood.

  She crossed her arms over her chest and stared defiantly at the assembled group.

  The same defiance was in the smile on her lips. The sheer sense of her presence was breathtaking.

  She was not an AI.

  She lived inside Femme Fatale—inside the miniature room that had been prepared inside the Eye.

  The Eye was her home. Every morning she boiled water in her enamel kettle to brew her tea. She liked cooking and drawing, practiced severe dance lessons on her own; at night she wrote in her diary, composed poems, and then pleasured herself in bed, where her technique was wild and free.

  The winter constellations or the summer sun were visible through a skylight directly over her bed, and milk was delivered to her room daily. From one angle she looked like a courtesan; from another, a poet.

  Those who gazed into her Eye she seduced with a smile. Come on in, she seemed to say. I’ll put the kettle on. But nobody could accept her invitation. The hard wall of the Eye kept everyone out. Nobody knew her name, and so it regularly came up in conversation. Because everyone wanted to call her by it. Because she was thought to have a personality. Such was the extent of her allure.

  “Honestly, that was the biggest surprise,” Bastin said, patting Jules on the head. “To think a boy like you would know how to handle this beauty. I wish you’d teach me a thing or two.”

  Jules smiled up at Bastin. He had done well and he knew it. “How’re things going, Yve?” he asked.

  “Just breathtaking.” It seemed that Yve had picked up on the woman’s presence too. “I never dreamed it would go so well.”

  When she removed her fingers from the lace, the woman disappeared as if at a signal. Bernier finally exhaled.

  This was a trap.

  The true value of the trap did not lay in magic-lantern tricks like these. They would use more cunning methods to bring the Spiders down.

  Bernier looked at the boy with undisguised admiration.

  He could not forget the sight of Jules explaining his “trap network” proposal. A blackboard had been brought into the hotel’s small dining hall, and Jules had chalked diagrams on it as fast as a machine gun until it was almost white.

  “Do you understand?” he had asked finally, standing with the blackboard at his back and surveying the overwhelmed adults that were his audience. “The preparations will take some time. Perhaps until eight o’clock tonight. If we can hold them off that long, the hotel will be ready. That will let us escape being slaughtered like rats, and possibly even create the opportunity to go on the offensive.”

  The impossibly complex network he had drawn on the blackboard had Trap Network written at the top in thick letters.

  “Call it TrapNet. This is what we’re going to make.

  “It won’t take much to get started. The hotel’s own security systems will serve as the foundation. The Mineral Springs Hotel has always had guards and security systems. It had to, because it was members only.

  “Of course, the whole of Costa del Número is members only. Guests who want to enjoy the facilities have to pay. The Mineral Springs is a special zone within that space that costs extra. But things in the Realm act the same way as things in the real world, so any guest can see the hotel building, or touch it. If it has an entrance, they can even go inside. To cordon off the Mineral Springs Hotel as a premium area and control who can get in, the Realm’s designers wrote an authentication program. In our world, that system has a physical form: the hotel’s security system, its doormen, and so on. Does that all make sense, Denis?”

  Denis nodded his light bulb of a head.

  “Embedded throughout the Mineral Springs Hotel are minute sensors called microscopic sensory receptors. Every gate, wall, and window in the hotel is under constant surveillance. If someone gets in without ID, or commits a crime once they’re inside, they will be seen. Naturally, unauthorized entrants can be informationally detailed, but in response to violence the system is also capable of fighting back.

  “What I’m proposing is that we remodel the security system into an anti-Spider system. The current system isn’t powerful enough, but we should be able to supplement it using Eyes. We can use them as sensors, as processors, and for offense. Trained users can develop all the latent powers within the Eyes we need, and we’ll have control of the system itself.

  “I mean, if there’s one thing this hotel has plenty of, it’s Eyes.

  “So …have any Eye users arrived yet?”

  Bastin offered the names of Yve and the triplets.

  “Ah, Yve is here?”

  At that moment Bernier thought he saw a thought roiling in Jules’s eyes like a tiny storm. Jules immediately erased the blackboard and drew a new spiral-shaped diagram.

  “This is a lace pattern,” he said. “Have Yve knit it up right away. We’ll use this to control TrapNet.”

  Bernier had no idea what Jules was saying. He doubted the others present did either. Undeterred, Jules continued.

  “We need the biggest and most complex Glass Eye there is. An Eye to be the core of our network. Once the battle starts, sensory information is going to wash in from all over the hotel—far too much to be dealt with by two or three Eye users, but no problem for a big, gem-shaped Eye that can transmute many incident light rays in parallel.”

  At last someone among the assembled adults spoke.

  The voice was quiet, but it carried well.

  “So, the lace is the server interface. The user goes through that to control the Glass Eye and TrapNet itself. Do I have that right?”

  The audience turned in surprise to the source of the question: José van Dormael, standing by the wall with his arms folded. It seemed to Bernier that he had grasped Jules’s idea at once. (Bernier preferred to hedge with “seemed” because he wasn’t sure he understood Jules’s idea himself yet.)

  “Let me ask you a question, Jules,” José continued.

  “Go ahead, José.”

  “What is the lace knitted out of? And the cables for the network?”

  “We use Spider silk.”

  “Okay.” José nodded briefly.

  But the others—including Bernier, of course—were shocked. Bring something that had come out of a Spider’s body into the Mineral Springs Hotel? The murmurs rose to a dull roar with no sign of stopping.

  “I read Dr. Biott’s dissection records,” said Jules, glancing at a nearby binder. “The Spiders are very similar in their basic structure to the maintenance Spiders that have always been in the Realm, and probably to similar programs all over the Costa del Número. Their spinnerets aren’t any different either, and their silk is fundamentally the same stuff. The better half of this town is probably made up of web patches from the maintenance Spiders by now. There’s no reason not to bring silk into the hotel.”

  “Okay, so there’s no reason not to do it,” said José. “What reason is there to do it at all? Why do we need it?” He hadn’t moved from the wall, and his arms were still folded.

  “It’s highly conductive,” said Jules. “When Julie took down a Spider on the beach, the hunger that Cottontail bounced back was carried along a web. And everyone knows that you don’t use Spider silk to carry Eyes or wrap them up for storage, right? The content of the Eye might leak out, or unnecessary external information could seep into the Eye and muddy it. But this trap network is …there seem to be a few people who don’t quite follow how it works yet, but please understand this much: we need to put the Eyes into a state in which the fluidity of their content is high enough for constant exchange between one Eye and the next. Spider silk is the ideal mat
erial for that, and we can get as much as we need. The Spiders have left it all over the place. We just find it, untangle it, and spin it into thread again.”

  “What if it’s a trap?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Exactly what I said. What if they anticipated that we would use the silk, and went out of their way to make it easier for us—after hiding something in it to sabotage us from the inside? Isn’t that a possible danger?”

  Jules remained silent for a moment. It was not that he had no counterargument. He was simply waiting for José’s meaning to sink in for everyone else.

  “José,” said Bastin. “Let me see if I understand you correctly. You’re saying this isn’t just a natural disaster. The Spiders are under somebody’s control, and getting silk into the hotel is part of their plan. Is that it?”

  Jules nodded. “He has a point,” he said. “It’s not outside the realm of possibility.”

  “And that’s okay with you?” demanded Bernier, leaping to his feet.

  “Not with me,” said José, arms still folded.

  “There’s a relatively easy test we could run,” said Jules, erasing the blackboard to fill it with another diagram. “We will need help from the triplets, though. See?”

  “Yes, I see,” said José, nodding. “That test didn’t occur to me.” He unfolded his arms and offered Jules his hand. “Looks like I lost this year too.”

  “I wish we could have played a proper game,” said Jules, shaking José’s hand with a smile.

  “All right, everyone. Everything’s finally ready. TrapNet is set to go, and everyone understands their station and their assignment perfectly.”

  The sound of Bastin’s voice brought Bernier back to the present. The deputy mayor had his arms spread wide. He spoke calmly, and the audience hung on his every word.

  “There are currently two hundred of us here in the Mineral Springs Hotel. We are the only survivors in all the Realm. The western town was destroyed this morning; the attack in the afternoon ate away most of the east bay too. Our mountains, our pine groves, our marina with its beautiful schooners and yachts, our fish market—all turned into one gigantic hole covered in Spider-web. The hotel is completely surrounded.

  “The fight is not going to be easy. Our enemy is powerful beyond measure, and our weapons meager indeed.”

  He heard someone sniffling. René. René was a gifted shipwright, in whose hands even severely damaged craft were restored as if by magic. When one of his creations hit the water, the most lecherous playboy in town would leave his lady hanging to watch the launch instead. If anyone had the right to weep for the marina, it was René, thought Bernier. But of course René wasn’t crying. It was just rhinitis.

  Nobody there was crying. Nobody at all.

  The casino was utterly devoid of sentimentality.

  “Luckily for us, we have the ideal fortress—the Mineral Springs Hotel. Here there are beds to rest our bodies and drink to soothe our souls. We do not lack for food or fuel, and, most importantly, to get in or out of this fortress is tremendously difficult. After all, Denis is standing right at the front counter, ready and waiting.”

  Everyone smiled.

  “We also have the ideal Eyes for the job. This is an enormous advantage for us. And, most importantly of all, we have as many people to use them as we need. Right, Yve?”

  “Right.”

  “That’s right. And to help those Eye users exercise their powers, we have the ideal setup too.”

  Bastin thanked Jules by name.

  “Think about it this way. The Grand Down. Everything collapsed that day. In the thousand years since, not a single guest has set foot in the Realm. Well, it’s been a long time, but we finally have company. These brutal, cunning, grotesque Spiders.

  “We’re past masters at welcoming visitors. So let’s show these Spiders a good time in our own way. Let’s pull out all the stops.”

  His ending was characteristically anticlimactic:

  “Anne, over to you.”

  Anne rose to stand beside Bastin and began giving orders.

  She divided the men into three groups. The first set off for the front entrance under Bastin’s command, while she took control of the second herself, leading them toward the terrace overlooking the sea. The terrace would be the hardest part of the hotel to hold, she thought. José was in the second group with her.

  The third group dispersed to key points on each floor of the hotel. They were the engineering corps who kept TrapNet working smoothly; most of the men who knew how to use an Eye had been assigned to this group.

  “Bastin.” Bernier approached his longtime coworker. “I’m going around to the terrace. That’s where all the tough guys will be, right? Good place for a senior citizen to relax.”

  Bastin snorted. “Don’t get in their way, old man,” he said with a grin.

  “Later, then.”

  “Yep.”

  With that, the two of them parted, never to meet again.

  With all the able-bodied men gone and only the elderly, women, and children left, the casino felt much less crowded.

  “Julie, let’s get started,” Jules said. He tried to move away from the table so as not to get in the way.

  Removing her arm from around his shoulder, Julie whispered to him, “Hey, Jules, would you look after this little guy for me?”

  She held out Cottontail on her open palm. It was still asleep. Without its shining fur, it just looked like a milky-hued rock.

  Cottontail alone had not been plugged into TrapNet. Julie had refused point-blank to allow it.

  “He’s a very good boy, this one,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “Take care of him. You have to keep him safe.”

  “Okay.”

  Jules accepted the Eye from her. He knew its faint warmth was from Julie’s lap, but it still felt like a small animal—a squirrel, or perhaps a dormouse. Cottontail squirmed in his hands. It must have realized that it had changed hands, because Jules felt a lonely noise through his open palms. It was calling for Julie.

  Julie brought her lips to his right ear.

  “Make sure he never touches any other Eyes,” she said.

  Jules looked at her, puzzled.

  “Promise me,” she insisted.

  “Okay, I promise.”

  “I’m counting on you.” With that, Julie headed for the large table.

  Yve, Julie, and the triplets gathered around the Chandelier. Everyone else in the casino stood around the table as well. Women and children gazed at the Eye to which had been entrusted the fate of the hotel and the lives of their husbands, their fathers, their sons. Everything hinged on the TrapNet they had made of the Eyes.

  And then—

  “You’re thinking about the web, aren’t you?”

  Someone clapped Jules on the shoulder as they spoke, making him jump.

  “We meet again, huh, kid?”

  The old man wore his usual crow-like robes. Jules had not even noticed the man sitting down beside him.

  “Shame about your ma,” the old man continued, not bothering to look Jules in the eye. His tone was as casual as if he were discussing the weather.

  Jules was frozen, unable to move.

  He could not tear his gaze from the scar that deformed the man’s face—the grave of the man’s right eye. Finally, he managed to force something out.

  “You were here all along?”

  The old man ignored him. “Look at your face!” he said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Anyway, you did good. A web of Spider silk around the hotel—brilliant idea. Not even the Spiders will be able to get through it.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Now that’s a tough question, isn’t it? You want me to tell you what I’m about in one sentence? But even if you knew, it’d be to
o much for you to handle. I promise you.”

  That roundabout way of speaking he had. He was snide and arrogant, and the reasons for his unshakable self-confidence were far from clear.

  “Can you at least tell me your name?”

  “My name?” The old man smirked. “My name’s Jules.”

  It seemed to Jules that he heard the voice coming from the grave of the old man’s right eye, from which the eye itself was long gone. He felt dizzy, and that groundless idea swam into his mind again.

  So … so you aren’t my papa?

  Julie Printemps had a memory of her birthday.

  The memory, from the days when guests still came, was more than a thousand years old.

  That birthday had been her last before the Grand Down.

  Before the Grand Down, Julie’s family kept a pet rabbit named Souci, a young and fearless male. His muzzle, belly, and feet were white, and every other part of him was pitch-black—his ears, his back, his face, his legs. Julie loved his feet, which seemed to be neatly dressed in white socks. She loved his soft, twitchy nose, his mouth. She loved stroking his ears.

  Julie often took Souci with her when she went walking in the nearby meadow. She didn’t like being at home. She would carry him to the meadow in a large wicker basket, then let him run free. She herself would lie on her back, cover her face with her straw hat, and let time go by. She would breathe in the scent of her straw hat, her blond hair (it was a little darker then, and fell to beneath her shoulder blades). Humidity would steam from the grass around her. Her hands and feet would smart in the sun. The dry wind would slowly stir the entire meadow. After a vigorous run, Souci would eventually return to Julie and sniff around her. Face still covered by her straw hat, Julie would take a biscuit from her skirt pocket, crumble it in her fist, then open her palm under Souci’s nose. Delighted, the rabbit would begin to eat. It ate methodically, licking up each biscuit crumb one by one. Julie loved to feel its mouth and tongue moving over the palm of her hand from inside her straw hat. She loved concentrating her bodily senses there. She loved spending long hours in the meadow with Souci in this way. Her other hand would undo her top blouse button. The smell of her own hair. The humidity from the grass. The dry wind stirring the meadow.