Atlas Alone

by Emma Newman

  No reason aside from the hell of—

  I take another deep breath. I can handle it. It’s a flat. That’s all. And if this is a carbon copy of London—which is still damn unlikely, but if it is—eleven-year-old me will be away at Jannie’s house.

  Shit, I haven’t thought about her for years. I remember her braids, her laugh, her cat. Not much else. We didn’t stay in touch. Hanging out gushing about media stars lost its appeal once I was on my own and trying to hide that fact. It doesn’t matter. She’s probably dead now.

  The breath catches in my throat. Damn tube trains and their shitty air-conditioning. There are only two stops left. I jiggle my knees up and down, desperate to get moving again.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to announce that this train will now be terminating at Embankment Station. I repeat, this train will be terminating at Embankment Station.”

  There’s a collective groan from my fellow passengers. The elderly man switches the console screen to his news feed and holds it between us so I can see it too. “Looks like that protest is getting out of hand,” he mutters as we scan the headlines. “I reckon they’ll have to shut the Circle and District line stations near the Houses of Parliament. Do you have far to go?”

  “I was getting off at Embankment anyway,” I say. “You?”

  “I live in Pimlico. Normally I’d walk, but by the look of this”—he waves a finger at the latest drone footage of the escalating violence—“I might just get the Northern line, change at Stockwell and come up to Pimlico from the south.”

  I can’t help but smile at the way he talks about the route. Proper Londoner; knows all the viable routes home and can adapt at a moment’s notice. We had to. It was the first underground train network built in the world, so we inherited the crappiest system, which made all the mistakes the rest of the world could learn from. “Well, good luck. I hope . . .” I trail off, remembering that in less than twenty-four hours the riots will be rampaging through Pimlico. “I hope you have friends or relatives outside of London you can stay with, until all that bollocks blows over.”

  “I might just do that. Got a daughter in Devon. Lovely there this time of year.”

  He smiles and I return it. Why did I say that? It’s not like I’m some bloody time traveler, doing all I can to save one old dear. And probably inadvertently condemning a future civilization to death, knowing my luck. But these people seem so much more realistic than the other NPCs I’ve interacted with; no wonder the immersion is deeper.

  We all pour out of the carriage at Embankment and I slip through the press of people from one spare spot to the next, weaving my way around confused tourists needing to find a map to replan their route, unaware that they’ve chosen the worst time to visit the city.

  By the time I emerge at street level the air is filled with the sounds of dozens of police and ambulance sirens. The din makes my heart race. It was the background sound for days that stretched into weeks. And for the couple of years afterward that the police existed, the mere sound of one of their sirens sent me into a breathless panic spiral.

  I rest my hand over my chest. This is just an echo in my body, a trained response like in Pavlov’s bloody dogs or any other poor bastard who’s been hot-housed like Carl and me, survivors of the Machine. It isn’t real. I don’t need to be afraid of them now.

  This is just a game, after all.

  The credit card proves to be useful once more, enabling me to buy a cold drink from one of the vending machines that line the hill running up to the Strand. I chug it down, wondering if Carolina is actually very close, given the location of the safe house that Charlotte gave us. I push the can straight into the recycling slot at the side of the machine and, feeling refreshed, sprint toward Shaftesbury Avenue.

  I don’t have to think about the route; it’s just there, in my mind, even though I haven’t had to use it for so long. Running through streets that were part of my childhood, I have to constantly push away memories that were merely moments of banality back then, and have been gilded by the passage of time. The first road I was allowed to cross alone, without a parental hand to hold. The park I used to be taken to if I was especially good—though now I see the height of the iron railings around it, the security gate, the way all those flowers and swings and the slide are shown to all children, but only accessible to the privileged few. The postbox where I used to deposit Mum’s scented letters to her grandmother, another mark of our wealth, given that the postal service had stopped collecting mail from so many areas by then.

  It’s strange, viewing my childhood stomping ground through my jaded adult eyes. It had already lost its luster by the time I had to move on, having transformed into a place too controlled, too geared toward those with money, to be of any use or refuge to someone who had none. But now what I once had is revealed in sharp relief, too painful to appreciate. And as much as I hate it, as much as I try to relegate it to some mental oubliette, I can’t help but wish for that time once more. A time when I never had to plan, to evaluate, to manipulate, just had time to eat and have somewhere warm and dry to sleep. A time when there were people who loved me and cared for me and placed my well-being at the top of their priorities, rather than what they could extract from me in return.

  And there’s the familiar, bitter counterspell to this dark magic: the realization that it was never that way at all. If they had really cared about me, really put me first, my parents wouldn’t have died the way they did. All of the nostalgia and the romantic glow of the streets around me collapses, merely a collection of stupid ideas defeated by a rational argument. I run faster.

  The door to the lobby is open, as it always was, and the concierge, that awful man, steps out of his office right on cue. “Good afternoon,” he says with that smile that always bordered on a sneer. “How can I help you?”

  “Visiting a friend on the eighth floor,” I say. “They’ve given me the code for the lift already.”

  “Could you sign here, please?”

  I sigh, jog over to the desk and scrawl on the tablet he’s held out to me. None of this is necessary. If he really needed to gather data on all the people visiting, he’d be asking for my thumbprint. But he knows he doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on, and all of the residents are of the mentality that it’s worth putting up with an irritating prick if it deters thieves.

  “And proof of identity, please?”

  I look him right in the eye. “You don’t need that. It’s only a brief visit and I won’t be staying overnight, which you should have asked me first. And if you ask me for ID again, I’ll tell Robert you were a pain in the arse.”

  His eyes widen at the use of my father’s Christian name spoken so casually, his odious little brain making the link to my mention of the eighth floor. “You are absolutely right. My apologies,” he snivels, pulling the tablet back to hold it against his chest, as if he needs to protect it from the sweaty, stern harridan in front of him.

  I walk away from him, feeling a profound sense of satisfaction, and stab the button to call the lift. The last time I was here, there was no electricity and the stairwell was filled with dead bodies. I can’t help but feel relieved when the lift pings and the doors open. When I step inside, the sophistication of this game strikes me; that NPC reacting so plausibly to the mention of my father’s name is so realistic it’s creepy.

  As the elevator rises, making me feel briefly heavy, I’m filled with the sense of there being some ulterior motive behind all this. There are too many coincidences. This level doesn’t feel randomly generated at all; it feels like a pantomime put on just for me, or rather, one created to cast me as a reluctant star. That isn’t narcissism. Its being in London alone, that would be fair enough. But London, on this day exactly, with a mini-quest that involves the place my parents met, that rewards me for going back to my home on one of the worst days of my life? No. I’m being fucked with, and it’s obvious that bastard’
s behind it all.

  Weighing up my options, I see I’m left with very few. Regardless of his interference, I still need to make sure we win. I’ll play it cool, I’ll do what needs to be done, we’ll win, I’ll get out and then work out what to do when I’m in my real body in my cabin, and not in a world he could theoretically control. A world in which I’ll feel pain. My mouth is dry again.

  At the eighth floor I take a deep breath as the door slides back, revealing the hallway. Even the smell is correct: the floral scent of the polish used by the cleaning drone that is at the far end, running a cloth saturated with the stuff along the skirting board.

  Banishing irritating echoes of my life here, I stride toward the door to the flat and type in the access code without thinking. There’s the familiar little chirrup and green light that verify I’m a resident, and I open the door. Of course, if this were the real world, the concierge would be getting a notification that I had returned, only looking several decades too old to be Robert Whittaker’s daughter. I’d better be quick, just in case the game really is aiming for the most realism it can and he comes up to investigate my identity properly.

  Even though I am prepared for it, the sight of my old home still steals my breath. I’ve never been back here since the day I finally left. I didn’t record any personal mersives here, for one thing, and besides, I would never play them back anyway. It has been decades since I stepped foot in this place, and no matter how much I try to deny it, or how many times I tell myself that it’s just a game, it feels like coming home.

  16

  THERE’S A MOMENT when my legs wobble and I’m sucking in a breath that feels like it will burst back out of me on a tsunami of tears, and then I shake my head, close the door behind me and do my best to remember where my parents kept the guest passes for the club.

  A low inquiring bark makes my heart judder and Dragon bounds into the hallway, tail wagging, head cocked to one side as he appraises me. Of course he doesn’t recognize me; he knew me as a child. I crouch slightly, pat my knees three times, just like I did when I was a kid. “Dragon! Draaaagon! Here, boy!”

  He gives a high, excited yelp and in one big leap is pushing his nose into my face, making joyful yips as he tries to lick me. I throw my arms around him, burying my face in his fur for a few precious seconds before his excitement pulls him away so he can push his body against me and weave in and out of my legs.

  A few more indulgent moments and I pull myself out of that state of willful ignorance, forcing myself to get back in the game. “Go lie down now. Go find Fuzzy!”

  As he always did before, he scampers off to his basket where his favorite chew toy is, and I follow him into the living room. There are pictures of my parents and me as a child dotted all over the room. I look at one, of my parents on their wedding day, without even thinking, and look sharply away.

  My gaze falls upon the mantelpiece, on a vase shaped like a pink tulip that both Dad and I absolutely hated. It was something that belonged to my great-grandmother—it might even have been made by her—and that provenance meant that it had pride of place regardless of how we felt about it. It was always there, for as long as I can remember, aside from one day. The day the riots started.

  That morning it ended up on the floor, smashed, after a row between my parents. I had never heard them arguing before, but that morning it woke me up. I remember Bobby Bear telling me that sometimes adults who love each other get angry with each other, but it doesn’t mean they stop being in love. I stayed curled up in bed, holding him tight, until the sound of the smash and the awful silence that followed made me throw back the covers and run in.

  I look around the room, examining it, looking for any other details that are out of place. Everything looks exactly as I remember it. How the hell could it be rendered so accurately? Then I spot the little ornament of a train that hid the nanny cam used to check on Dragon when we were out for more than a couple of hours. There were two in every room. JeeMuh, did the US gov-corp pull all the data from those when they were vetting me? How did they even find it? Surely it wouldn’t have been stored for decades after the account was closed.

  So that’s why the vase is there; it was intact in whatever footage that bastard is using to—

  The vase disappears. I blink at the space on the mantelpiece, amazed. Is he watching where my eyes are focusing, like a marketing bot? Did my face show confusion and—

  There are pieces of broken pink porcelain on the floor that were not there moments ago. And not just scattered randomly; they are in exactly the same positions as they were all those years ago when I got to the doorway and looked in. I can remember them, so clearly, because they looked like a distorted smiling face. Two similar-sized chunks rested above a long sliver for the nose and then five little chips close enough for my eye to force them into the pattern. I saw the smile and thought it seemed so wrong when my parents had said such hateful things.

  When the intensity of the memory passes, it leaves a sense of disconnection in its wake. This flat seems suddenly unreal, the appearance of the broken vase too incongruous with reality to trick me anymore. I step back, look away, draw a breath in and out. I go over to the cam and crouch down to its level. There’s no way that pattern could be seen from this location, from this angle. I go to the other cam, the one hidden in the picture frame on the opposite side of the room, and even from this angle, it’s not in view.

  This is a distraction, but I can’t let it go. How has he done this? I remember sweeping up the pieces after my mother left the flat just a couple of minutes later with a loud slam of the door; I took such care to find every tiny piece so that I could glue the vase back together again. I was such a stupid kid, thinking that fixing the vase would somehow make all of it better. Bobby Bear was in my bedroom. Dad was in the kitchen, kettle on, enacting the timeless English tradition of making a cup of tea in response to a crisis. I can’t see how he got this data. Neither of my parents recorded it. Why record an argument? And even if they had, their data would have been lost when they died without anyone there to preserve it for them in the chaos of the time. The riots were only the start of it.

  In fact, I can’t see how this could have been done at all. To re-create this flat, a mersive coder would be using tags from the primary sources: any relevant neural chip recordings and any cam data. If—by some wildly improbable set of circumstances—the cam data survived all that time and was dug up by the US gov-corp, making this rendering of the flat could pretty much be handled by a skilled coder working with an AI. But reproducing something so accurately, that only I have seen—in response to my confusion—is beyond any of the capabilities of the coders I knew and worked with. And they were some of the best in the world.

  I thought the person behind the star beast avatar was a genius. But now I’m wondering if the gaming AI on this ship is actually far more advanced than I appreciated, and in concert, they are able to work what feels like magic. If he’s that good though, why make the correction midgame? Why shatter the immersion? To prove how leet he is?

  Obsessing about this is not winning the sodding game though. I spot the guest passes for the club in a shallow clay dish on one of the bookshelves and grab them both. I’ve got what I need and it’s time to go.

  As soon as I head for the door, Dragon—no, the reproduction of him—starts to whine. It stops me before I even realize what I’m doing. I don’t let myself turn around, instead going back out into the hall with every intention of walking straight out of here and—

  He barks but I don’t let it stop me. He’s not real.

  Without even a glance toward the copy of my old bedroom door, I cross the hall, grasp the door handle and—

  “Deanna.”

  The call from my parents’ bedroom freezes me. It is my father’s voice, rasping, weak. Like it was the day after the riots, before the head wound he got as he searched for my mother killed him slowly and his body—


  No. This is just a game.

  “Deanna. Can you bring me some water, please?”

  I grip the metal tighter, squeezing my eyes shut.

  I don’t have to go in there to see him lying on the bed, the blood . . .

  What if I went in there and his eyes were open and his mouth was open and he was dead and the flies the flies!

  The door handle rattles as my hand shakes. Of all the things that bastard has done, all the things he’s made me see again and hear again, it’s this one that really hurts.

  And then it doesn’t. I shrug that shit off like an old coat. It isn’t real; it’s a game. It is just a game. It is just a fucking game!

  Minutes later I am sprinting toward Covent Garden, the guest membership cards for the Hospital Club gripped tight in my hand, my mind fixed firmly on the task ahead. Carolina is waiting for me, her body a study in tension until she spots me and literally jumps up and down on the spot, waving with glee. When I get to her she hugs me so suddenly I don’t have a chance to rally myself and return it, just stand there like a stick until she lets me go.

  “I got the drive!” she says, patting a pocket of her trousers. “And I’ve moved him to a different safe house. There was this chase and I had to cross between two buildings and I nearly freaked out but I did it! I made it across and I beat that phobia and it was awesome and, oh, who cares! He’s secure. What about you? What happened? I haven’t seen the other team at all.”

  I give her a grin. “I . . . slowed them down.” Holding up the guest passes, I add, “And these will get us into the club, no questions asked.”

  Her jaw drops open. “Seriously? Brace is gonna freak!” She hugs me again, but this time I’m ready for it. “Let’s go win!”

  And we do. It’s a straightforward dead drop, almost anticlimactic in its ease. But it would have been so much harder if we’d done it without the cards, and as Carolina says, we acted within the boundaries of the game world. No rules were broken.