This Virtual Night

by C. S. Friedman

  “This whole place is under surveillance,” he warned her. “They watched you coming in, and as soon as they return to their equipment they’ll be able to see where you are. You can’t hide from them as long as you’re in the public space.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. Hornet’s nest it was.

  Shock rod in her right hand, knife in her left, she sidled through the narrow space behind him, cringing as the vibrations from their movement set massive storage drums thrumming on both sides. You weren’t kidding about the claustrophobia. But soon enough they emerged into a slightly larger space, hidden behind a shelving unit. It was big enough to accommodate half a dozen people—assuming they were friendly—and a large hinged door that stood half-open. It looked like it had been laser-cut from the wall, and would probably leave no more than a hairline crack when shut. Just like the crack she had spotted on the way here, she realized. The one Ivar hadn’t seen. He and Ru must have come within inches of discovering the ambush, perhaps almost triggering it.

  But if it had been a real door, why didn’t Ivar see it? Everything she learned about this place only raised more questions.

  It was dark beyond the doorway, so the Sarkassan switched on his headset’s light, and she followed suit. Now there were two narrow beams piercing the darkness, just enough to hint at the presence of ducts, conduits, junction boxes, wires—a tangled nest of maintenance equipment. Black shadows lurked in every corner, stretching and shifting as the light sources moved. A dozen murderous people could be hidden in those shadows, and Ru and her guide would never see them. She spotted a light fixture overhead, connected to a conduit that might lead to others, but the Sarkassan didn’t activate it. Maybe he was afraid that so much light would be noticed.

  As he squeezed in between two ducts and gestured for her to follow, she instructed her headset to record sensory data. If she had to find her way out of here on her own, she would at least have that much data to guide her. Then she followed him into the guts of the station. It was a tight enough fit in places that it made their previous passage seem downright luxurious, and more than once her coat snagged on an unseen protrusion, startling her. No, she wasn’t claustrophobic—outriders couldn’t afford to be, given how much time they spent sealed in pods—but this place would be a test of anyone’s nerves.

  Finally they emerged into a small open space hewed from the guts of the station, barely high enough to stand up in. There were boxes stacked at the far end, with an array of small bottles next to them. A large covered urn was tucked under an air duct.

  “This is their supply station,” the Sarkassan told her. “There’s food in the boxes if you’re hungry, and the bottles have water in them. At least that’s what I was told. I have no idea how old everything is, but hey . . .” He shrugged. “Probably not more than two years, right?”

  “I’ll check to make sure nothing smells bad,” she said, with a hint of a dry smile.

  The boxes were full of nutrient bars in clear plastic wrap. They were gray and mealy-looking and appeared to be homemade, but given some of what she’d eaten on colony planets, they looked reassuringly uncomplicated. She stowed a few in her pocket before unwrapping one and biting into it. It tasted every bit as bad as it looked, but food was food, and her body needed refueling. The bottles all had laboratory labels on them, dire warnings about poisons and acids and dangerous interactions. She chose one that said it contained a dangerous alkali and tucked it into her jacket as well. Then she headed over to the urn to see what was inside. As she lifted the lid the Sarkassan started to say something, but if he was trying to warn her, he was too late. The fetid odor of human waste hit her in the face. Gagging, she pushed the cover quickly back in place.

  “Chamber pot,” he said.

  “Yeah.” She coughed. “I guessed that.”

  “They said they would wait here as long as it took for the exos to show up. Days, if necessary. I guess no one wanted to have to hike all the way back just to piss.”

  She looked at him solemnly. “The bios never stood a chance, did they?”

  Expression grim, he shook his head.

  I’d be dead if I had stayed with them, Ru thought. Noticing the secret door that Vestus has overlooked and taking the time out to investigate had saved her. “Is this where we wait?”

  “No. They might come here for supplies. We’ll go one more room up the line.”

  Back into the guts of the station they crawled. The Sarkassan paused several times along the way to consult a map in his headset. It must not have been very detailed, because sometimes he seemed less than certain about which way to go. Far from reassuring.

  Eventually they emerged in another makeshift clearing, a bit more spacious than the first. He went to the far side and then, with a sigh, lowered himself to the floor. There was a weariness about him that matched her own—not merely physical, but spiritual. “We’ll be safe here, as long as we keep our voices down.”

  She followed his lead, lowering herself to the floor opposite him, stretching out her legs in front of her with a soft groan. It felt good to sit. “I guess it’s time for introductions.”

  He chuckled weakly. “Y’think?”

  “I’m Ru Gaya, outrider.” She paused, wondering how much she should add to that. “The locals think I’m a bounty hunter, but there doesn’t seem to be much point to that story anymore.”

  He took a green bottle out of his pocket and twisted off the cap. “Micah Bello, game designer. Specializing in multi-player virtual immersion reality transposition programming.”

  “Virts?”

  “That’s not nearly as impressive sounding, is it?” He took a deep drink from the bottle. “But yeah, virts.”

  She smiled slightly. “Make-believe worlds.”

  “Hey.” He glowered. “It pays the bills.”

  She pulled her own bottle out, opened it, and sniffed. Looked like water. Smelled like water. She glanced at the Sarkassan for confirmation, and when he nodded, dared a sip. Water. For all its staleness, it was blissfully refreshing. She drank deeply.

  “So,” he said. “Names are all taken care of. Is this when we talk about why we’re really here?”

  She hesitated. She trusted him as much as she trusted anyone on this station, but that wasn’t a very high bar. “Someone wanted data from Shenshido,” she said at last. “Since the station’s independent, I was paid to come here and retrieve it.” She sighed. “If I’d known what that entailed, I would have charged more.”

  “Not an outrider’s usual work.”

  “I’m between assignments.”

  “And the bounty hunter part?”

  “Fewer questions that way.” She took another drink. “Your turn, now. And I do hope you’re not going to stick with that ‘I took a wrong turn’ nonsense.”

  “Hey! It’s the truth. Granted, I was trying to get away from someone who was trying to kill me . . . and no, I don’t know who he was or why he was doing that. Shenshido was the nearest station, so I came here seeking refuge. Apparently the security system doesn’t like visitors.”

  “Spiders got you?”

  He nodded. “I evacked, just in time. Didn’t stick around to see what they did to my ship, but I expect it’s gone now.”

  “Yeah, spiders are pretty thorough. Was that your jet suit tethered to the ring?”

  He nodded.

  She whistled softly. “Impressive evac.”

  “It’s amazing what you can do when the alternative is death in deep space.” He took another drink. “Now. Please. Tell me you have a ship that can get us off this godforsaken station. Because if you don’t, nothing else really matters, does it?”

  Again she hesitated, but only for a moment. She’d avoided telling Ivar anything about her real situation, but this wasn’t Ivar. And if this man was going to help her get back to her skimmer, he needed to at least know it exis
ted. “I have a ship.”

  “Praise the Ancient Ones!” he proclaimed. Then, seeing the surprise on her face, he added quickly, “Sorry. Industry joke.” He grinned sheepishly. “I usually hang out with people who would get the reference.”

  “It’s okay. I’m getting used to not understanding things in this place. Speaking of which,” she bit her lip for a moment, “what was up with those boxes?”

  For a moment he said nothing. Finally he asked, “What did you see in them?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  She spread her hands.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  “What did you see?”

  “Rotting provisions. Moldy, liquefied. Disgusting. You didn’t see any of that?”

  “Not so much as a mold spore, I’m sorry.” Puzzle pieces were coming together now, and she didn’t like the picture taking shape. “We weren’t seeing the same thing, were we?”

  He whispered it: “No.”

  “And the lack of smell? What was that about?”

  “Virt programs can create sensory illusions, but they rarely include smell. So the fact that I was seeing something that should have a strong odor and didn’t, suggested that what I was seeing wasn’t real.”

  She blinked. “You’re thinking . . . what? That we’re in some kind of game?”

  He shook his head sharply. “Games don’t inload. They’re controlled by the headset. Once you remove that, all sensory feed should terminate.”

  “But yours didn’t.”

  “No. It didn’t. And I don’t know why. I should know. This is my field. I should understand it.”

  “I think . . . something similar might have happened with Ivar.” She told him about the door that Ivar hadn’t seen, the warning light that everyone thought had turned green, when it was still really orange. “They told me down in Bio that everyone up here was disfigured. But all the people I’ve seen looked perfectly normal. Were the bios seeing something that didn’t exist? All of them?”

  “They told me everyone from below was mutated. But that part at least was true. I saw it myself.”

  “Where?”

  “The two bodies in the warehouse. Their faces were covered in some bark-like growth. Didn’t you see it?”

  “Micah.” She said it softly. “They looked perfectly normal.”

  “Ah, jeez.” He looked away. “Don’t tell me that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “How can we be sure that anything here is real? How are we supposed to function if we can’t trust our own senses?” Suddenly he looked back at her. “You seem to be immune.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The door you found was real, right? The orange sensor light probably was, too. You saw the truth of those things, when no one else did. And you weren’t affected by the illusions in the storeroom just now. Jeez, maybe everyone on this station looks totally normal, but you’re the only one who can see their true faces.” He shook his head, clearly frustrated. “Why you? What’s different about you? It’s not just that you came from the outside; I did too.”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “What the hell am I missing?” Shutting his eyes, he leaned back against a cluster of small pipes. His eyes flickered back and forth beneath his lids as he scanned some inner vista.

  “They said their weapons tests failed,” Ru offered. “Could that have been an illusion as well?”

  “Sure,” he said without opening his eyes. “They could have blasted the hell out of practice targets and never seen the damage. A real person would have gotten wounded—no sensory program could mask that—but if they never took the weapons into combat, they’d never have a chance to observe that.”

  “Which caused them to abandon those weapons in favor of simpler tools.”

  “Barbaric tools. Primitive warfare, bloody and intimate.” He looked at her. “Someone—or something—has been disarming these people through trickery. Manipulating them like pieces in some dark game, to get them to fight like beasts.”

  “Or as an experiment,” she said softly.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Isn’t that what this station was designed for? Scientific experiments?”

  “Yeah, but how long has this gone on? And how many have died here? Hundreds? Thousands? Beaten to death, starved to death . . . would anyone consider that a reasonable cost for experimentation? No.” He held up a hand. “Don’t answer that. I know some megacorp executives who would. But how could it go on for two years with no one interfering? Something like this couldn’t be kept a secret for that long. People on the outside must have been working to keep Shenshido isolated.”

  A sudden thought occurred to her. It was disturbing enough that she hesitated to put it into words. “Micah . . . could all this be related to what happened on Harmony?”

  His eyes narrowed. “You mean the terrorist attack?”

  “They were playing some kind of game at the time. Multi-player virt.”

  “Dragonslayer,” he said testily. “I wrote that game. There’s nothing in its code that would explain what happened. But . . .” His eyes narrowed slightly. “Players have to be in constant contact with a game controller, to make sure everyone who’s immersed in the virt is receiving the same data. If someone hijacked that signal . . . I guess it’s possible. But what makes you think that, aside from the fact that virts are involved?”

  She put her water bottle down beside her. DANGER, the label said. IN CASE OF CONTACT WITH SKIN SEEK IMMEDIATE MEDICAL ATTENTION. “The players were in communication with someone—or something—off-station. The signal was coming from Shenshido. That’s why I was sent here, to gather information on it. My employer wanted to know if it originated here, or was being channeled from somewhere else.”

  “So which was it?”

  “Don’t know. I copied the communication log for him, from the time of the bombing, so he could analyze it when I got back. Not my forte.”

  “Net it to me. I’ll take a look. Use tempcode . . .” He paused, consulting some inner databank. “SEV928A.”

  She had her headset download the information she’d gathered earlier onto a data chip, removed that, and offered it to him.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “The data you wanted.”

  “Just net it to me.”

  “Sorry, but I’m not connecting to this station’s innernet just to pass you a list of numbers. Just plug this in.” She continued to hold out the chip to him.

  He made no move to take it. Just stared at her. “You’re not connected?”

  She shrugged. “It’s not a big deal for outriders. Most of our time is spent out of range of public networks. We don’t have the same hunger for constant connection that you do.”

  “You’re. Not. Connected.” He said the words slowly, as if testing the weight of each one. “You, alone. Everyone else on Shenshido has an open channel to the station’s innernet. But not you.”

  She lowered the chip as his full meaning sank in.

  “Jeez,” he muttered. “That’s why you’re not seeing what everyone else is! The sensory input must be coming through that connection. And that’s how it’s getting the feedback it needs to run this thing . . . only you’re not providing any. Shit. Whoever’s running this may not even know you’re here.” He held out his hand. “Give me the chip.”

  She did so, and he slotted it into his headset, right behind the dragon’s head. His expression grim, he leaned back and shut his eyes, focusing attention on some inner landscape where, presumably, the numbers and symbols of communication code danced a surreal ballet. His eyes flickered back and forth as he watched the display, an eerie simulacrum of dream sleep, and his fingers twitched periodically, like the paws of a sleeping animal.

  She studied him as she waited, observin
g the markings that framed his face: tiger stripes, deep brown against his pale skin. She hadn’t seen many Sarkassans before.

  “Signal wasn’t originally from here,” he said at last. “Looks like . . . Sector Nine.”

  She exhaled in frustration. “That’s empty space.”

  “No. Not empty. Undeveloped. Uncontrolled. Ideal for people who don’t want to be found. There are scavs and other unsavory types who supposedly take refuge there. Or maybe that’s just in viddies.”

  People who don’t want to be found. She remembered how intent Ivar had been on escaping the station before a rescue team arrived. Was he connected to all this? “Can you pull up any information on Ivar?”

  “As in, use Shenshido’s innernet to access data for you? So you don’t have to connect with it yourself?” He waved short her protest. “It’s fine. You need to stay disconnected until we know what’s going on here. And yes, I can access anything that’s public record, provided it doesn’t require a passcode.” He closed his eyes again and leaned back. A minute passed. “Not seeing that name on any station manifest.”

  “Possibly an alias.” She thought back to her conversations with Ivar, trying to remember anything that could provide a clue. “He said he arrived about two years ago. Right before the trouble started.”

  “All right.” A longer silence this time. “Not seeing any arrivals then. Official ones, anyway.” A pause. “Looks like there was a big fight with scavs. That’s probably when the outer ring got trashed.” He looked at her. “Station Commander thought they might have come from Sector Nine.”