The Deplosion Saga

by Paul Anlee

  No time to analyze. Keep moving!

  Darya started down the hovering restaurant’s long stairway, making no attempt to hide her drawn sword.

  Timothy followed in her wake. “Where should we start? Do you have any idea where she might be? Where are all the patrons?”

  “Trillian’s masking Mary’s location, but there’s a perpetual cloud of quantum confusion around her. I think she’s over that way, in one of the cabinas.”

  “He won’t make it easy to reach her.”

  “I don’t expect so. We’ll take an indirect route.”

  They reached the bottom of the stairwell and headed for the lush vegetation across the beach.

  Darya plunged in.

  Timothy struggled to keep up. “Do you plan to approach through the underbrush?” he panted.

  “No, Trillian will have guards on all routes between the restaurant and the resort area. We’ll find someplace quiet in another direction, and I’ll see if I can hack into a more direct route from there.”

  “Couldn’t we have done that from the Alternus maze?”

  “It was too complicated from there, and Trillian already had too many safeguards established.”

  “We made it here, didn’t we? How much harder could it be?” Timothy asked. He was beginning to think Darya enjoyed the chase more than the accomplishment.

  She stopped abruptly and faced him. “You’ll just have to trust me on this,” she said. “I think I can get us close to Mary, but I can’t do it from a different inworld, and I can’t do it if I need to keep watch for enemy Trillians descending on us. We need a hideout.”

  She turned and resumed picking her way through the vegetation.

  After what he hoped would be a safe while, Timothy ventured another question. “Do you have somewhere in mind?”

  “I do. There’s a recreational cave system not too far away. It rearranges itself randomly with each user, or every twenty-four hours. It’s impossible to map. I’m sure Trillian won’t be able to track us there if we go in deep enough.”

  They began making their way uphill, leaving the idyllic resort area behind. The trees thinned, and the pair picked up a trail to the cave system.

  “If the caves can’t be mapped, how do people get out?”

  “They don’t,” Darya answered, digging into the loose gravel underfoot. “That’s a big part of their charm; visitors pay extra for that,” she explained. “They are led deep inside by an automated guide they hold in the palm of their hands. They walk in for about an hour and then the guide shuts down. The challenge is to find their way out. Almost no one does.”

  Timothy slipped on the loose rocks. “And they consider that “fun”? Do visitors die in there?”

  “No, they call the Supervisor to let them exit. That won’t be possible for us.”

  “Okay...so…how will we get out?”

  “We’ll pipe across to Mary.”

  “If you can track her down.”

  “When I find her, we’ll cross over to wherever she is.”

  “But won’t we be walking right into Trillian’s trap?”

  “Yes. Once we find her, we’ll rescue her, and I’ll set a pipe back to New York in Alternus.”

  “Are we any safer there?”

  “At the very least, she’ll be out of Trillian’s hands. I think I can get her back to her trueself from there.”

  The incline was getting steeper. Darya pulled herself upslope by tugging on a thick tuft of grass. She pointed out some better footholds to Timothy, who’d paused to catch his breath and was looking back wistfully toward the jungle and beach.

  “I feel rather exposed out here,” he confessed.

  “It’s not much farther now, and I doubt Trillian has any eyes on the ground up here.”

  Timothy face brightened at the thought. “Why is that?”

  A loud, wild snarl came from a nearby bush. Darya and Timothy jumped; they’d been so busy making their way and watching for Trillian, they hadn’t given much thought to the wild animals that drew hunters to this area of Vacationland. They froze and scanned the area for the source.

  “Make some noise; maybe we can startle it away,” Darya said, and slapped her hands together sharply. “Be careful, though. We don’t want to alert the Trillians,” she warned.

  They clapped and hissed. “Psst! Scat! Ssst!”

  Timothy stomped his foot down hard against the ground and was rewarded with an annoyed roar.

  An enormous cougar leaped from its hiding space. The sight of its fierce jaws and claws almost paralysed him, but the past few weeks of intense training with Darya had heightened his automatic response.

  As he rolled backward, he whipped his sword up and slashed the air in the direction of the feline. The big cat flew over him, unleashing an irate cry as she avoided the blade. She landed heavily and crouched for another attack.

  Timothy rolled to the side and into an upright ready position but he was shaking uncontrollably.

  The cougar eyed his fear and trembling hands, as did Darya.

  Easy prey—they both concluded.

  Darya lunged at the wildcat, thrusting and rattling her sword. The big cat gave a throaty growl and bounded away. Darya watched until it disappeared into the tall grass. Her gaze swung to Timothy. “We were lucky,” she said. “I know these creatures; they’re vicious. They hunt the hills around here, and they don’t usually give up so quickly. She must have eaten recently.”

  Timothy dropped to the ground in a relieved heap. “I don’t feel lucky,” he said. He was so tired.

  Darya continued, but kept a wary eye on him. “These ones are based on cougars but they’re even more stealthy, persistent, and deadly than the trueform. They’re also why Trillian won’t have many eyes on the ground here,” she reassured him. “He knows these animals will kill anyone walking around this area, including us and his Trillian clones.”

  “That’s not very comforting,” Timothy replied. “If it had wounded me, what would you have done?” he asked.

  “I’d have finished the job. You forget, we are not real here, either. No more than the enhanced Partials, the servers, or the surf instructors. Same for those predator cats. They’re programs; for them it’s kill or get killed. If they get killed, they just start over. If you’re killed here, you’d wake up back in your trueself on Secondus.”

  “But that…that would hurt, wouldn’t it?” he asked. His teeth were chattering now and he was shivering. Shock was setting in.

  Darya stepped forward and hugged him. “It’s okay. Take some deep breaths. You’re doing great, Timothy. You really are, and we’re almost there.”

  Timothy hugged her back, and forced a deep exhale that would allow his lungs to draw in maximum oxygen as they refilled.

  “Thanks for saving me. I was mentally prepared to fight as many Trillians as it took. I wasn’t ready to face animals. People are one thing. Animals, vicious or not, that’s a whole different thing.”

  “Some say people are the most vicious animals in the universe. Regardless, we’re okay now. The cougars have a large range, many square kilometers. It could be a while before that one comes back to check on us, but we don’t want to be here when she does. She’ll be especially aggressive.”

  Timothy pushed aside the images of massive teeth and razor claws intent on dispatching him from this world, breathed as deeply as he could, and loosened his desperate hold on Darya.

  “I’m okay now,” he said and took another deep breath. “Let’s keep moving.”

  Darya held him at arm’s length and examined his color. It was back to normal; close enough, anyway. “Okay. It’s not too much farther, now. We can rest a bit once we get deep enough inside.”

  They carried on a short way up the hill and turned away from the resorts.

  “I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind fighting through those animals just to get to caves with no exit,” Timothy said.

  “Define ‘right’ mind,” Darya joked. “Cybrid life, making thi
ngs, fixing things, pushing things around, that all gets boring. People will do all kinds of crazy things for thrills and adventure.”

  Timothy shook his head. “I don’t understand that drive, not at all.”

  “Give it time. You will. And you have to keep in mind that, inworld, we’re essentially invulnerable. Well, unless potential death is part of the draw, which is exceedingly rare. To a lot of people, nothing matters more than the chase and to experience the thrill. Anything else is background noise.”

  “Alternus didn’t used to be particularly thrilling, not before Trillian arrived.”

  “That was a special case; it was my attempt to get people interested in being in charge of their lives. Their real lives.

  “Ah, here we are! The caves. See? I told you we were close.”

  A roughly carved wooden sign warned, “Despair all ye who enter!”

  A little cliché, but it does set a tone—Darya thought.

  Timothy shrugged. “It’s smaller than I would have expected.”

  “It’s not much to look at from out here, but the system has hundreds of kilometers of cavern.”

  They pushed aside some leafy vines that cascaded over the entrance from the rocky hill above, and plunged into the dark cavern.

  Recessed lights popped on and a voice announced, “Welcome to Caverna. Please select your exploration gear and a guide from the shelves to your left. We remind you that the caves reconfigure automatically every twenty-four hours. Your guide will walk you in for one hour, at which point the caves will rearrange and your trek outward begins.

  “Pressing the green button on the side of your guide will return you outworld with a two-day penalty before you will be permitted to return to Vacationland. Good luck.”

  Darya grabbed some rope, crampons, a pick, and a helmet with a mounted light. She motioned for Timothy to do the same while she selected a pair of sturdy footwear.

  “Aren’t we going to take a guide?” Timothy asked.

  “What’s the point? Our only acceptable way out is a pipe to wherever Mary is.”

  Timothy looked doubtful, but he didn’t object.

  They checked their gear, turned on their headlamps, and walked a few hours into the labyrinth. Occasionally, they arrived at dead ends and had to retrace their steps back to their last turn. They chose a path that wound steadily downward. When it dropped precipitously, they used their gear to belay to the next level below. They encountered no one along the way. They heard nothing but their own footsteps and echoing drips of moisture from the damp ceiling.

  Several levels down, they came to another dead end and Darya announced, “I think that’s far enough for now. Even if Trillian was alerted to our arrival in the caves, I don’t think he’d have a chance of finding us.”

  “He can send enough clones to fill these caves.”

  “True. But there’s only one way in and it takes a time to walk every possible route. More than a few hundred instantiations, and they’d be tripping over each other. We’ll have to stay alert but we should be far enough in to get at least three or four hours of peace. I’ll need at least that to locate Mary.”

  “Will that be enough?”

  “It’ll have to be.” Darya plunked herself on the ground against a boulder and closed her eyes.

  “What should I do?” Timothy asked.

  “This will only take a few hours. Get some rest. Meditate. Reflect.”

  “It will do me no good to sit idle for hours.”

  “You won’t be of much use in looking for Mary, either, I’m afraid.”

  “Couldn’t I at least follow your search?”

  “I’m not sure how much you’ll understand.”

  “I’ll keep quiet and stay in the background. You won’t even know I’m there. It’ll give me a chance to learn something about inworlds and their programming.”

  Darya frowned, weighing how much of a distraction Timothy would be. “Alright,” she said. “I’ll take you inside with me, but it has to be in tandem.”

  Timothy grinned eagerly.

  “Stay in the background and keep quiet,” she admonished. “No questions.”

  He nodded and sat on the ground beside her. “What do I do?”

  She sent him instructions through the lattice. “This will allow you to observe what I’m doing. I’ll do all the driving.”

  “Very well,” he said. He closed his eyes and executed the code she’d sent him.

  21

  a mesmerizing world of data structures and code swirled all around him. Timothy spotted Darya a few meters away. She was swathed in a roiling cloud of words and thin, curving lines with arrow tips. He anchored his attention to her.

  The structures looked similar to the ones from their conceptas and personas that she’d shown him. A question drifted from his lips before he remembered his promise.

  “Do the inworlds use data structures and programs like ours?”

  She glared back. “You said you’d stay quiet.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  She sighed. “It’s okay. I haven’t gotten very far into it yet. Let me familiarize you with what you’re looking at. I’ll answer this question and then, please, either leave me alone, or you’ll have to exit and wait for me there.”

  Timothy gulped. “I’ll stay with you, and be quiet.”

  “The answer is, yes. The inworlds and our own lattices have a lot in common. That’s only natural, given the concepta is the best way we know to organize high-level data.

  “But where we have a persona, the inworld has data structures related to its own rules. Underneath that is an operating system designed for efficient implementation of the local rules and for interfacing to Cybrid minds.”

  “I see,” Timothy said. “I think.” He didn’t.

  “Most inworlds provide basic hosting support for our avatars. Our personas are copied in but they only have whatever capabilities the host O/S provides.

  “The Alternus inworld does a lot more than that. It hosts our full capabilities, even my full capabilities.”

  “What do you mean, your full capabilities?”

  “You may have noticed that my lattice design is more advanced than most Cybrids.”

  “I don’t have much to compare you to.”

  “I guess that’s true. Okay, take my word for it. Anyway, my quark-spin lattice system is supported in Alternus.”

  “How will that help us? We’re not in Alternus right now.”

  “True, but I designed the hardware to be invasive. If it’s done its job, it should have replaced the majority of the Vacationland hardware by now. I hope it will provide me with enough of a boost that I can find Mary and rescue her.”

  Timothy seemed satisfied with her answer. He wisely withheld his follow-up questions and watched in silence for the next three hours as Darya injected little bits of code into various parts of the larger structure.

  She marked some areas in bright red and avoided them. “Trillian’s traps,” she remarked over her shoulder. It was the only thing she uttered for hours.

  Timothy used the time to make sense of bits of code and to familiarize himself with the complicated structures. He became so engrossed that he was startled when Darya next spoke.

  “I think I found her,” she said.

  He blinked. “Where is she?”

  Darya motioned to a piece of blue data surrounded by angry red patches on a green background.

  “This is one of the quantum cabinas right near the pool where we fought Trillian. I’m fairly certain she’s in there.”

  “I would have thought that would be one of the first places you’d look,” Timothy replied. “What took you so long?”

  Darya’s face remained studiously flat, emotionless.

  Timothy squirmed inside, knowing he’d been unfair. I didn’t mean to be unkind; it must be killing her that we left her friend behind in Trillian’s hands. The guy may be working for the Church of The Living God, but he has a dark, wicked streak in him.

 
Darya’s face softened as she sensed his guilt. “I did look there first. As you pointed out, it was a fairly obvious place to take her. Too obvious, in fact. All the signs point to her being detained there, but I have to be careful. You can see all the traps Trillian’s placed around her.”

  Timothy nodded.

  “I spent most of that time just verifying that Mary is actually there.”

  “What did you find? Is she there?”

  “Yes, she is. I’m certain of it, and I think we can avoid the traps.”

  “Can we get to her?”

  “That’s the tricky part. We can get close, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to reach her safely.”

  “I’m willing to risk it. We have to try.”

  “Can you read the code here?” Darya pointed to a tiny green section next to the bit of blue code where she guessed Mary was being held.

  Timothy stepped up to examine the green code. He traced it with his fingers. “Let’s see. Small chamber. Glass window. Rocky. Dark. Very hot.”

  “Hot is one way to put it. It’s inhospitable enough on its own that Trillian didn’t bother putting any traps in it. That’s why it’s green. And it’s the closest I can get to Mary. Are you ready to walk through Hell, itself?”

  “Hell? As in, Satan’s den? Really? I thought Alum was above all that, being the All-Benevolent, Living God, and all.”

  “Alum’s not above a good scare, when needed, and neither is Trillian. Most definitely, not Trillian.”

  “Can we survive it?”

  “It’ll hurt—more than you can imagine—but just remember that you’ll be okay. The flames won’t damage us. I can guarantee our integrity for a brief visit. Just focus on our task and remember that, so long as we pop in and out of there quickly, the effect won’t be lasting.”

  “Will we be able to help Mary?”

  Darya slumped. “Rescue her? No, I don’t think so but I’ll be able to send her something useful.”

  “Like a weapon or a way out?”

  “Not long ago, I gave her a gift, an upgrade similar to my own lattice. I have to trust that she’s been looking for a way to access her full capabilities. In this world, or in Trillian’s twisted version of it, her best chance to survive will be using her wits. She’ll need to be smarter than Trillian. I can send her the code to unlock the direct access to the Alternus quark-spin lattice.”