Enter the Clockworld

by Jared Mandani

  This is when the crowd truly got mad. The robot spider’s limbs were hit with metallic objects again and again, until every joint was cracked, a few metallic paws torn off completely and turned into weapons. People cracked the spider’s shell then, and some bald camouflaged fellow with a bandanna over his face had a little Molotov cocktail at hand, which he lit up and tossed inside the shell, so the spider erupted in flames, collapsing on the ground and forming another bonfire, and the crowd rejoiced.

  “Go see your father, kid!”

  “Sign digitization right away!”

  “Let the boy through, his FATHER — ”

  Ben and Susan kept walking non-stop now, the crowd forming a corridor for them to pass, opening up all the way to her truck.

  “Oh no,” Susan said.

  Her truck stood there vandalized top to bottom, many anti-DC and anti-robot slogans crisscrossing it in holographic spray paint, all colors of the rainbow present. Its jets bashed in with a sledgehammer, its cabin window smashed, the truck’s interior burned out — they could clearly see it wasn’t going anywhere all too soon.

  “What the — ” Ben said.

  “WE’RE NOT HERE TO PLAY! WE ARE HERE TO STAY! STAY-STAY-STAY! STAY-STAY-STAY” People all around them chanted.

  “Susan, we’re in hell,” Ben moaned into her ear. “I always knew this place was sorta-kinda like hell, you know? Neo-escapist. You have to live in hell to go to heaven once in a while. Now I see I was right. It’s the true hell. Just look what’s happening here, is it even supposed to happen?”

  “Whatever you suppose,” Susan said, her teeth clenched. “Is nothing. It’s what life deals to you.”

  “This is like an evil miracle,” Ben said.

  And then another evil miracle happened. A hovercar, long and huge, materialized out of thin air inside the drone cloud above. The stretch limo of Mr. Reaper. It lowered itself down before Susan and Ben, pushing the crowd apart carefully with its air pillows. It went from sparkling neon to matte black, and then opened its door like a maw, its red plush interior beckoning.

  The limo was empty. It was on autopilot.

  “Shall we get in?” Ben asked, keeping his distance.

  “If anything takes you to your father today, kid,” Susan said. “It’s this thing. We have no other choice.”

  “But what if — ” Ben started.

  “It’s all technicalities,” Susan interrupted him. “We’ll make it, somehow.”

  She sounded like she had a plan, so Ben shrugged and boarded the limo. Susan followed him inside, the door went down and locked itself, and they took off in a heavy blast of air, straight through the crowd of dispersing drones and on through the city.

  “What’s our destination?” Susan asked.

  “Six-fifty-sixth District Hospital,” the limo replied in a pleasant Frank Sinatra tenor. “No stops en route.”

  “This is the correct address,” she muttered. “Weird.”

  Then a holoscreen came on above the ceiling, a semi-translucent head of James Reaper himself, hanging in space.

  “Hello, Benjamin,” it said. “It’s getting harder and harder to locate you. I can see you were introduced to Academia and their little mind games pretty recently.”

  “Who is it, Ben?” Susan asked.

  “I think it’s him,” Ben said, his hands forming fists involuntarily. “This is the man who wanted to buy our workshop. And I think it was him who attacked my father with a police drone. I think he’s one of the Ethereals.”

  “And now you’re riding inside me,” Mr. Reaper informed him rather happily. “Yes, you don’t see me on video, I’m not posing here as an oldschool villain. This hologram might as well be my actual head, and here I am, looking at you and driving you at the same time. And I do intend to deliver you to the hospital.”

  Susan remained silent, slightly recoiled from James Reaper’s semi-translucent head. Ben looked at Mr. Reaper closely, but the cyborg’s holographic face remained friendly and warm, a smile flashing almost literally at them both.

  “What do you want from me?” Ben asked.

  “I want you to stop appearing on the Web. As an alive person, or a dead person, in any form.”

  “Why?”

  “For your own safety. Or should I say, for the safety of your father? He’s to become a DC soon, or am I wrong? I told you, Ben, I represent the interests of every Dead Creep there is, your own included. Once your father is a part of the Dreamweb, I shall be directly responsible for his wellbeing and comfort. Do you understand what this implies? Or do you, perhaps, intend to skip the procedure for your dad?”

  Ben made a painful grimace, and then said: “I don’t know yet. I don’t know.”

  “Benjamin, this is the only immortality available, I don’t have to explain it to you,” Mr. Reaper’s voice sounded as if he had this conversation at least ten times a day. “Will your father’s fierce character, his knowledge, his experience be gone from this earth forever?”

  “I have nothing to pay for the procedure with,” Ben said slowly. It was a bitter thing to say, but he did feel better after he managed to say it.

  “But you do!” James Reaper looked genuinely surprised. “The insurance money?”

  “I didn’t receive it yet.”

  “Oh,” the cyborg said. “My bad. Wait a second.”

  Mr. Reaper closed his eyes, then opened them and smiled once again.

  “Now you did. Good money. Use it wisely.”

  Ben expected the holographic head to say something else, but the cyborg’s face merely regarded them with glee, first him, then Susan.

  “What happens now?” she asked.

  “Now, I’ll drop you by the hospital. A talented young doctor will meet you in the hall. He will ask you one question. The answer is yes. Did I make myself clear?” James Reaper’s face remained friendly.

  “Y-yes?” Ben muttered.

  “Perfect.”

  ZZAP! A special effect of holographic sparkle, and the semi-transparent head was gone.

  Chapter 10: Order Violated

  I still went into the Dreamweb; how could I not? Daphne was all alone by that Well of Rejuvenation, and the oasis, however pleasant it was, was fully surrounded by desert, with Barbarian parties roaming it.

  Besides, we were officially in the sands of the Crescent. Which meant Assassins, Spiders, and Janissary, amongst other dangerous things the virtual Orient was famous for.

  I woke up to the Moon, and swam for it, and it wasn’t a Moon of course, but rather a circular piece of whitish-blue desert skies, the mouth of the Well itself, its waters bubbling and pleasantly cool. It’s always a trick what the Moon actually stands for. Daphne kissed me as soon as I showed my face above the surface, and helped me get out. She was fully alive, same as I — a neat exploit of the respawn rules Spark told us about.

  “Wait, wait!” I laughed and held her back. “I need to write things down before I forget them.”

  Spark told me more this time, enough to get us from here to La Republique, but I’m a person of 2099, and my memory is not that good.

  So I grabbed a stick of some dry plant which was like a desert reed of sorts, growing already dried up, a perfect tool for many goals, of which we needed the information sharing thing. So I sharpened this piece of dry stick at one end, and I strained my memory as hard as I could, and soon I produced a complex maze of lines in the sand, and was able to tell her what Spark told me before sending me in.

  “So Academia is sure we’re on the right path, and this digital boogeyman calling himself Mr. Reaper represents someone who wanted the war to happen, maybe even someone behind the Baron’s murder,” I said. “And their agenda is, La Republique cannot know a big war is about to begin, because if Digital Citizens there learn what me and you, Buff, know, it’s going to be somehow bad for this cyborg mage and his agenda.”

  “The Ethereals,” Daphne muttered. “I’m sure this Reaper or whatever he’s r
eally called represents the Ethereals. I can say this openly now.”

  “What about Divine Kingdom, the Asians?” I asked. “How does that one fit in?”

  “I think the Ethereals are afraid of Asia. I think it’s some unresolved conflict of old,” she said. “You see, Digital Citizens often don’t feel like they belong to the real world anymore.”

  “The Wakeworld?”

  “The real world. The only world that matters, the world everything depends on,” she said. “We Dead Creeps lose touch with it, you see?”

  “Umm, yes?” I walked a few steps away from the cold breath of the well and laid my Teutonic uniform out to dry on a massive sandstone slab fully covered in hieroglyphs. I said: “Still, you DCs have the knowledge of the real world. The Web is ripe with knowledge, so to speak.”

  “But it’s all stylized and hyperbolized, don’t you see?” Daphne nodded at the slab. “Everything is clear in the Web. Here’s us, there’s the other guys, and we beat each other once in a while, to release tension, eh? Or to build curious machines that beat each other. Entertainment that teaches you practical things. Newtonian physics. Elementary warfare where death — at least until now — wasn’t real. Everything far too safe, far too forgiving.”

  “This is what I always used to think about the Wakeworld,” I told her.

  “Such endless freedom! And it goes much further when you’re digital and you don’t really exist,” she said. “I’m afraid certain characters, villainous people, in this kind of world…”

  “They will become truly bad,” I said. “Or maybe cartoonish, overblown bad.”

  “Or just reckless.” Daphne nodded. “Careless. Treating people like toys.”

  “Well,” I said. “Maybe we love to be treated like toys. Care to look at the map?”

  “Sure. I already took a mental snapshot of it. My memory is perfect.”

  “Oh, fine.” I waved my hand. “Erase it if you want. Just the sight of it hurts my brains.”

  “Why, I like it, I never saw you draw anything, I like your strokes and your feeling of proportion.”

  “Alright,” I said. “Show me around then.”

  “Yes-s!” Daphne jumped and clapped her hands. “It’s been five local days since you left. I thought I’d go crazy. Well, I probably was compulsive.”

  What I saw next, I hardly believed. Half the oasis was recrafted anew, refashioned, made into a big Japanese ikebana, one so amazingly done by her talented hands. Sand was sifted and combed thoroughly, festooned with Daphne’s own works, which were sometimes as complex as a Tibetan mandala. Same as everything else in Clockworld, the desert tried to reward your creativity, and the Oasis was meant for all kinds of neat customizations, including the wonders my girl made happen.

  There was a hammock carefully positioned the way it always remained in the shade of tall date trees, their crowns lush and green. There were stone gardens everywhere, arranged as neatly as a golf course. There was a palm hut as well, of thick logs — Daphne must have found a way to thin out a small date palm forest nearby. The hut was spacious, hollow wood banging underfoot, two crank-up air fans creaking overhead. The hut’s insides smelled of cedar and palm oil.

  “Where did these come from?” I nodded at the windup fans.

  “Looted them from a caravan nearby,” Daphne said.

  “You mean some caravan was hit nearby, and brought down?” I turned to her, eyebrows raised.

  “And nothing taken,” Daphne confirmed. “Weird, I know. Then again, it’s war. Perhaps a diversion. Or a raiding party. Coconut milk?”

  “Yes please,” I said.

  She poured us two coconut halves of iced white milk, sprinkled them with vanilla and some spices, a drink easily crafted within this oasis, which was supposed to be a resort zone of the Web, a place you can take a stop at while returning from some desert foray, rejuvenate, revive your dead — something Spark exploited to help us bypass the despawn ban and come alive prematurely.

  “There’s also some jasmine oolong to wash it all down,” Daphne said.

  “A Kingdom caravan though?” I asked her. “This far in the desert?”

  “Pan Asian Virtual Comforts,” Daphne said. “A corporate delivery perhaps. The Crescent did receive all this gunpowder from somewhere.”

  If a whole trade caravan was wiped out nearby though, it meant the place was no longer as safe as Daphne was trying to make it look by tidying it up. A posse of this faction or another one might show up at any moment; and we were, by our looks, Teutonic deserters wanted by the Kaiser’s justice at best, or someone’s sworn enemies at worst. Who was fighting whom in Clockworld while we were trying to contact La Republique and warn them about Divine Kingdom’s treachery? This was no longer apparent. People were discussing it all the time now, online and in the streets — whose force clashed with whose in the Web today, and which faction was diplomatically bound to respond.

  “Ew,” I said, drinking my share of oolong. “I hate jasmine.”

  “We have to,” she said. “It has to look proper.”

  She carefully positioned our cups with dregs of tea on the table of sandstone. Now it all finally dawned on me, her decorations, the tidying-up. She was trying to make it look like it was these Asian caravaneers who stopped here, our own traces dissolved, us still being virtually dead. The weird feeling of being unwatched and invisible within a dream descended on me, something rarely heard of in the year 2099.

  “We need transport,” I said.

  “I was hoping you’d craft us one.” Daphne nodded at a few crates hiding at the back of the spacious hut. “There’s some stuff in here, be my guest, get creative.”

  “Fine,” I said. The stuff was all from the Moon aka Divine Kingdom — weird mechanical things serving exotic purposes. A few of them were mechanical thumpers.

  “Uh oh.” I nodded at these, suddenly aware of our surroundings, especially the shifting sands at the edge of our little oasis.

  “What?” Daphne looked at the thumpers.

  “Sandworms,” I said. “Were there giant sandworms on Earth back in your times, Buff?”

  Daphne shook her head. I said: “I have no idea why, but every second virtual desert just has to have these giant sandworms. So if you drag something heavy across the sand, they may just swallow it. Along with you.”

  Sometimes it was giant spidery things, sometimes they looked like tentacles or burrowing mollusks of sorts, but the principle was always the same. Walking on sand was unsafe — you needed something to scare them off or lure them away with. Something like this thumper.

  I grabbed one and threw it up like a juggling pin, then caught it.

  “It’s supposed to make desert interesting, see,” I said. “Otherwise, nothing too thrilling in the desert, except barbarians, and these are human and boring too.”

  “Why are we humans so bored with ourselves?” Daphne asked, also regarding the distant sands. “Goodbye supplies then?”

  “No, we’re alive now sadly, so we’ll die without supplies,” I said. “Spark even wanted us to stay dead while we cross, all along to the Pigeon Post, but there’s some temple on the way which Spark says is a ‘vortex’ or something, which means it could mess with us being able to leave the area while remaining dead.”

  “We can’t use these musical instruments.” She nodded at the thumper in my hand. “We don’t have time. We need to move real fast. You said yourself they’ll be on our tail.”

  “It’s supposed to happen,” I told her. “Spark says the Web has these ley lines, like adventures it builds around you and their key points and so on. These Ethereal fellows, they’re able to walk them and teleport and do other nasty things, like make fate itself drive you one into another, because this world is a dream, see, it’s all possible here, such pre-arrangements. It’s all little exploits of course. But the fact remains: they can estimate our whereabouts, to a point, and then try to track us down manually. We’re dressed as a different fact
ion, this is good. Plus one layer of camouflage.”

  “We were lucky to have this caravan approach the oasis,” Daphne said.

  “Wait, you mean it was you who wiped it out?” I looked at her, not quite believing.

  She merely shrugged. “Two layers of masquerade,” Daphne said. “Sandworms would be a nice third layer. Like they ate us or something, but we ride them instead, and get away.”

  “I have an idea,” I said. “Are you by any chance trained to use a personal Montgolfier?”

  This was a Musketeer skill, and Buff did show some skills with a rapier and a self-made gossamer cape, so it was very likely she could handle this La Republique thing as well. A personal Montgolfier is something a Musketeer trooper would use while on the move. It’s a small hot air balloon that works by floating above the ground and carrying all the heavy equipment after you, mostly camping stuff, because oh boy, those Musketeers fellows like to camp out with gusto; while on the move, they have feasts nearly every night.

  “I know how to fly one,” Daphne said. “I don’t know anything about their maintenance though; I had a boyservant to take care of one.”

  “You’re lucky you still have one,” I said.

  “No Montgolfier though.” Buff shrugged.

  “I’ll craft something.”

  It was a bit fun in fact. The invention I had in mind would look Pan Asian for certain. If anyone was there to pore over our fake trail, they’d find this thing — a personal Montgolfier built out of several paper lanterns.

  So the first thing I did was gather enough stalks of this dry desert reed and procure the lanterns themselves.

  Crafting . . . Sitting Dragon

  Plank, Reed x28

  Paper Lantern, x4

  “A silly name,” Daphne said, examining my new invention, a squat thing resembling a quad chopper with a paper lantern in place of each of the four rotors.

  “Just in case,” I said. “If our Ethereal friends decide to look it up or something.”

  The lanterns were huge, red, and festooned, meant for one of Divine Kingdom’s famous big festivals. These lanterns hover in the air when lit up, and, given the simplified quasi-Newtonian physics of Clockworld, the power of four of them was quite enough to pull a cart.