by Paul Anlee
When she plunged feet first into the icy water as if she’d fallen no more than a half-dozen meters, the shock of it took her breath away. She swam upward, fighting for the surface and struggling not to inhale the freezing liquid.
Her vision narrowed to a dark tunnel with a bright light at the end. The light came from above the surface. Her lungs burned for oxygen, her skin stung, and her muscles cramped from the penetrating cold. Could she hold out long enough to get there?
She broke out of the water and heaved a desperate breath, coughing and sputtering. The air stunk of sulfur and it burned. Hell!—she thought. He transported me into Hell!
Her teeth chattered from the glacial water in which she was immersed but, above the surface of the pool, her head steamed. She contemplated doing rolls in the water to alternate the parts of her body exposed to the extreme temperatures. How long could I keep that up? No more than a few minutes.
The water felt like it was growing colder. I can’t stay here.
The fires of Hell were no more inviting, but she didn’t welcome the idea of slowly losing consciousness to hypothermia, followed by drowning.
Would Trillian permit me the release of unconsciousness? Could he keep me awake and alert at the icy bottom of the lake? Could he make me drown forever?
The thoughts were enough to make her swim toward the nearby shore and drag her shivering body out of the water.
For a few seconds, it felt good to be in the warmth. Then the fire surged around her, singeing the hairs on her legs and arms. She cried out as she felt the flames lick at her exposed skin. She staggered backward and turned to seek the refreshing, cool water of the edge of the lake, but it was gone.
All around her there were flames. They rose up, more intense than when she’d first climbed out of the water. Her hair caught fire. She felt searing pain and choked on the acrid smoke.
She screamed and ran, hoping to outrun the flames. Failing that, she could only wish to fan the fire. If I burn badly enough, the nerves will be destroyed—she thought. Then the pain will stop and I’ll be able to die. She hoped. Until then, all she could do was cry out and run.
Her skin blistered and peeled, but the agony wouldn’t end. The extreme heat should have destroyed her eyes and killed nerve endings but it didn’t. She didn’t understand.
There! Off to one side, the flames were a little lower. She turned in that direction and found her way out of the fire. Another lake! She plunged into the cool, shallow water.
Only it wasn’t water. The lake of pure alcohol made her raw nerves scream. She scrambled back out as fast as she could. Touching the flames again, her ethanol-soaked body burst into a searing blue flame. She fell and rolled, but the burning didn’t stop.
Thrashing on the bare ground, rational thought finally penetrated her excruciating pain.
This is stupid—she realized. None of this is real. I’m not even real. How can this hurt so much?
Trillian. He had to be enjoying seeing her suffer this way.
“Trillian!” she hollered.
He didn’t answer. Of course not. Silence only intensified her pain.
I’m such an idiot.
She stopped rolling, stopped reacting to the shrieking nerve endings. Darya had given her the gift of fast and powerful thinking; she used it.
She sought the calm display of her concepta and the connection from her operating system to the inworld system.
The pain receded.
She followed the source of the transmission from the inworld code, through her BIOS, to her perceptual routines. She choked off the flow of data along that route.
Her conceptual structures had automatically altered her body to match the inworld experience of the hellfire. Her skin had burned and blistered all over, and most of her hair was gone. Exactly as one might expect in those circumstances.
Except that the hellfire was virtual, not real.
She returned her body to normal, taking a few microseconds to improve her physical conditioning while she was at it.
Mary opened her eyes, and looked admiringly at the flames that surrounded her and lapped at her without touching her.
A nervous little laugh escaped. It worked!
“Impressive,” Trillian’s voice boomed from above. “Your time in meditation served you well.”
“Your assault on my senses won’t work anymore,” Mary replied. “I’ve reprogrammed my concepta to ignore your stimuli, however painful.”
“Hmm. A difficult balancing act, to be part of this world and yet apart from it. Perhaps we should explore how finely you can tune your sensations.”
The flames died out and she stood alone on an endless, scarred plane. As far as she could see in any direction, there was nothing but desolate landscape.
She picked a direction and started walking. As she strolled, she examined the inworld simulation. Everywhere she looked, the world was bleak and empty.
Where did everything go?
Without the barriers of her prison, she should be able to detect remnants of Vacationland. She scanned for quantum trickery in the code but found nothing. It was as if the local inworld hardware had been scrubbed of everything, save this infinite plane.
No landmarks. No animals. No people.
This can’t be all that’s left. Did Trillian erase all living beings here, as well? Or did he simply withdraw them to some segregated storage?
She looked for a link to any other simulation or to the Supervisor. There was so much software to search, a huge number of places to hide an external connection in the BIOS.
“Very amusing, Trillian,” she called out to the emptiness. Again, there was no answer.
Is he still watching? She couldn’t detect any monitoring code in the simulation software.
She stopped walking and sat down. Why waste my energy?
She laughed at her oversight. So long as there was power in the quark-spin lattice Darya had constructed in the inworld hardware, she had infinite energy. Walking, at least, felt like she was doing something. She could walk while she explored code.
So she plodded along in as much of a straight line as she could manage without landmarks or navigational aids. This world has to end somewhere, doesn’t it? But where? How far away?
Alternus had simulated the entire Origin planet. Earth—she reminded herself. How long would it take to walk something as big as a planet?
She figured it could take a long time.
She walked for hours, maybe even days. The landscape never changed, nor did the grayish-red light that illuminated it in permanent dusk. Dusk? Always the pessimist, Mary. Why not dawn? The dawn of new hope?
The hope leaked out of her, bit by bit. It came off her in tiny rivulets that were swallowed up by the parched and ragged dirt.
Trillian could leave me here forever.
The thought of endlessly wandering this barren land was more of a punishment to her than Trillian’s previous tortures. At least in the dungeon and in the hellfire, she had something to push back against.
Here, there’s nothing to fight. Just endless trudging.
Her pace eventually slowed to a depressed crawl. Despite the available energy, her legs became listless weights. Her body became a burden dragged down by her hopelessness.
No death for me. No way out. No end. Just this. Forever.
Without deciding, without realizing, she stopped walking and sank to a crumpled heap on the ground.
Stop struggling. Give up. Rest. The words resonated inside her head like a mantra, round and round.
Stop struggling. Give up. Rest.
Her simulated breathing slowed. Her heart, pounding in the endless exertion, grew quieter and quieter, each beat a little weaker than the previous. She closed her eyes and allowed darkness to replace the dim gray. Her head slumped onto her chest. Stop struggling. Give up. Rest.
Program Ouroboros complete—a voice announced.
Mary’s eyes snapped open.
Ouroboros complete!—The program she’d
let loose at the start of this encounter with Trillian called.
What had it been for? She struggled against despair and ennui to remember.
She waved her hand and her concepta appeared in the air in front of her, overlaying the endless packed clay of this bleak world like a mirage.
Something about it looked wrong.
She could see the damage; it was subtle and insidious.
Arcs had been trimmed from conceptual nodes representing anything that might elevate her attitude. Emotional weights to pleasant, optimistic thoughts and experiences had been tapered while those leading to cynicism and despair had been emphasized.
Trillian. He’d penetrated her security with subtlety and stealth. Anger flashed brightly through her concepta and persona.
She reinforced the connections whose weight had diminished to almost nothing. Vigor flooded back into her concepta, penetrating into all of her nodes. Despair retreated.
The Shard must have invaded her core while she was busy trying to survive Hell, warped her basic concepta, adding importance to thoughts favoring depression and surrender, while reducing her natural defiance and persistence.
Something Darya used to say floated to the forefront of her consciousness. It was an ancient saying whose significance was lost in the dark depths of history: Nevertheless, she persisted.
Mary was back. Saved by her Ouroboros program, and inspired by the strongest woman she knew, she would not accept defeat. She rose to her feet.
“Activate Ouroboros!” she yelled into the sky.
Nothing changed.
“What does that mean?” Trillian’s voice boomed from above.
“Why don’t you join me and find out?” Mary teased.
“Alright.” Trillian shimmered out of the air in front of her.
He surveyed the ground around him and, when nothing happened, threw his arms outward in question.
“Okay, I give up. What should I expect?”
“This,” Mary said, passing her hand between them with a flourish.
They were back in her prison cell. Snakes and rats scurried for cover under tables and torture devices.
Trillian’s mouth formed an ‘O’ of genuine surprise, and then he tipped back his head and roared with laughter.
Mary remained impassive. “I’m glad that amused you.”
“Oh, I’m not amused, I assure you,” Trillian answered. “I am pleased at your new-found abilities.” He walked to the window looking into Hell.
Mary followed and, together, they looked down. Rocks and flames had returned to the scarred terrain below.
“No more need for that, is there?” Trillian said. His hand passed by the glass and the flames subsided. Lush, green vegetation sprung from the barren land. Streams flowed and birds sang.
“Isn’t that better?” he asked. He waved again, and the glass disappeared. A refreshing breeze blew into the cell through the opening. He took a deep breath, appreciating the fresh air.
He turned to Mary. “Tell me, how did you break into the simulation code? Or was that Darya’s doing?”
“Darya provided the inspiration, but most of it was me.”
“Hmm,” Trillian nodded in approval. “Formidable talent, indeed.”
Mary’s head tingled. Incursion attempt—her lattice reported.
She raised an eyebrow at Trillian. “Uh, uh, uh,” she admonished, and waved a cautionary finger at him.
She leaned her head to one side, and Trillian fell to his knees, holding his head.
Mary smiled. “You should be more careful with your...investigations,” she warned.
“Aaagh!” Trillian cried out.
Mary released him from his anguish. He rested on one knee, looking up at her. All trace of humor was gone from his face.
“You should not have done that,” he growled.
He struggled to his full height, and glared ominously at her from under thick eyebrows.
To his surprise, it was his own body rather than Mary’s that shifted into the rack. He cried out in confusion and pain as the rattle of chains stretched his limbs to their natural limit.
Mary walked over and looked at his writhing form.
“This is Ouroboros,” she said quietly, “the tail-eating snake.”
His brow furrowed as he labored to recall legends of Earth Origin.
“How?” was all he could utter.
“Our operating code is linked—your tail to my head. Or is it my tail to your head?” Her hands fluttered. “I can never remember which it is.”
She loomed over him and smiled sweetly. “What does it really matter? What does it all mean, anyway? Will the spells you cast here touch me? Or will they rebound and affect only you? How will you know what is safe?”
“What kind of witch are you?” Trillian’s voice was filled with an unaccustomed dread.
“Ha!” Mary laughed. “Witches are imaginary. Even when your people were scrabbling about in the ages of ignorance, there were no witches, no supernatural. It was only different levels and kinds of technologies.”
“And what kind of technology is this?” Trillian demanded.
Instead of answering his question, Mary walked to the cell door and tugged on the rusted bars. The door swung open smoothly, silently.
She glanced back over her shoulder as she passed through into the outer foyer. “I’m surprised you don’t recognize your own specialty. How does it feel to be compromised?”
She turned her back to him and started walking away.
“You cannot leave without my permission!” Trillian boomed.
The cell dissolved, and the two found themselves strolling along the beach.
Mary stopped and watched the waves roll in. “You learn fast,” she said begrudgingly. “But the Ouroboros is finicky and unpredictable. We could spend endless pleasant days like this together. I think your true nature wouldn’t allow that for long, though. Soon enough, you will betray yourself.”
She plucked a shell from the wet sand at her feet. “So pretty,” she said. “But its nature is temporary, to be worn down by the pounding of the surf.” She glanced at Trillian.
He wasn’t amused. “I suppose your constant baiting is the surf against my shell in this little analogy?”
Mary threw the shell into the water. “It doesn’t have to be. You could simply release me. Release us both.”
“Will your program permit that?”
She shrugged. “Who knows?” She started walking toward the water.
“What are you doing?” Trillian demanded.
“Testing our limits,” Mary answered. “Perhaps I will swim to freedom. Perhaps I will drown and be released by my inworld death.”
Her feet touched the edge of the surf. “Care to join me?”
“No. But, please, join me.”
Before the water rose to Mary’s ankles, she was seated at Darya’s favorite table in Cloud 49. Trillian sat across from her, looking glum.
Mary laughed. “Oh, cheer up! What better way to while away the hours and days than enjoying all Vacationland has to offer?”
Trillian pondered the sand far below. He muttered, “I wonder what would happen if I simply threw you over the edge.”
“Would you like to try that?” Mary asked. “Shall I just jump? I’m not at all sure how Ouroboros would react to self-inflicted harm.”
She stood and stared coldly into his eyes. “Somehow, I doubt it will work out well for you.”
While they sparred, Trillian shifted his attention inward. He tried to follow the millions of lines of code Mary’s virus had woven into his lattice operating system.
The code wouldn’t stay still. It shimmered and twisted. It hid behind familiar routines and green clouds in his mind. Whenever he managed to focus on a portion for a few seconds, it altered itself right before his eyes.
I could leave. I could go back to the outworld and let this demon-woman escape—he thought. Then I’d lose Darya as well, and this will all have been for nothing.
&nb
sp; How many hours will it take my O/S to purge itself of the Ouroboros virus and regain control over the inworld? Impossible to say. Almost certainly longer than he could, or would, tolerate her taunts.
Mary pushed back her chair and stood. “Well, as pleasant as this has been, I really must be on my way now.” She stepped toward the spiral staircase leading down to the beach.
“Where can you go?” Trillian said. “I can find you anywhere inworld. There’s no escape for you.”
“Maybe I should tell the program your very presence is hurtful to me. I’m sure it could find ways to keep you from following me.” She took a few steps down.
“On the other hand, I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” she said. “Thanks to your help, I’ve almost found my way out.”
“I gave you no help.”
“Not deliberately.”
“I gave you no help,” Trillian insisted.
“You have an interesting mind,” Mary replied. “So many dark and devious secrets. They’ve been useful.” She sniffed and continued down the steps.
Trillian leaned over the head of the stairs. “I can keep moving us indefinitely,” he threatened. “You won’t be able to find your way out.”
Mary looked up. “Too late,” she said and her body grew faintly transparent as she began transmitting her persona back to her trueself.
“No!” Trillian shouted. He wove a block in front of her, a solid barrier to block her exit at the end of a long tunnel. He closed off the end leading back to Vacationland.
“Now you will learn how Gerhardt felt to die,” he snarled. Triumph had crept back into Trillian’s voice. He waved his hands and the tunnel began to shrink.
Mary spun around, surprise and anger on her face. “You fool! What have you done?” Her body solidified as parts of her persona rebounded off the barrier Trillian had erected.
The Shard wore a smug grin. The ultimate power is still mine, the power over life and death. Her mistake in leaving that part of the inworld interface will cost this Cybrid her life.
