by Ted Weber
Kiyoko rose from her golden throne. “I am Princess Kiyoko, ruler of Yumekuni, the loveliest realm in BetterWorld.”
“Indeed it is,” Iwisa said. “Rivaled only by your personal loveliness.”
“You are a gentleman.” She held out her hand, palm down.
He kissed it, then gazed in her eyes. “I am Iwisa.” He gestured toward the girl. “This is Steampunk Girl.”
“That’s Grrl with two R’s and no I,” his companion said.
“I see.” An interesting couple. “And you’re both in the music business?”
“Yes.” Iwisa passed her a large envelope, secured by red twine. “I have a proposal for you.”
Kiyoko unraveled the twine and opened the envelope. Text appeared in a popup portal. “Only you can see this message. I am here on Waylee and Pel’s behalf. Sorry about the false pretense. I can get you away from the people monitoring you on the Comnet, and tell you more about your sister, but you must be willing to change avatars temporarily. Please say ‘it’s a wonderful idea’ if you agree.”
Kiyoko wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or grateful. “It’s a wonderful idea.”
“Great,” Iwisa said. “I will come back with more details.”
Was he leaving, then?
Steampunk Grrl extended a hand. “It was nice to meet you.”
Kiyoko shook her hand… and all of a sudden she was staring at her own porcelain features, whimsical smile, pink locks cascading past her shoulders.
She peered down. Cast iron bands now twined around her forearms. A leather half top cupped her breasts. She looked at Iwisa.
“Shall we go?” he said.
At first, she wasn’t sure. “Yes,” she decided. Her voice sounded pleasant but alien.
Kiyoko and Iwisa teleported to the largely unused Western Continent, then boarded a bullet transport. The four-seat capsule flew through a transparent tube faster than the speed of sound. These transports didn’t exist on the Fantasy Continent, but were common elsewhere.
“Can we talk here?” she asked.
Iwisa held up a hand, then brought up a navigation map. “We get out here.” He pointed to a dot marked “Horse trails.”
The trail stop was deserted. Two horses stood next to a communications interface mounted on a metal pole. A woodland stretched in all directions, trees spaced far apart and grass growing between.
They mounted their horses and she followed Iwisa into the woods. The grass looked green and uniform, not brown and weedy like her yard in Baltimore. The horses seemed to know where they were going, or maybe Iwisa was directing them.
“We can talk now,” he said.
“So what happened to me? I’m not into steampunk, by the way.”
“You look different, that’s the point. Steampunk Grrl is a bot. Before you switched, I mean. She runs on the best AI scripts out there, but follows my commands. She jumped over to your princess avatar when you shook hands, and moved you over to her body. And to anyone monitoring you, you’re still in your palace.”
Kiyoko didn’t know that was possible. “Can’t the admins still follow my data packets?”
“Nope. You’re going through a totally different server now and the bot is ghosting I/O through your login server.”
Interesting. “Are you a bot?”
“No, I’m real.”
“So what’s this bot gonna do as me?”
“Whatever you want her to. You can tell her what to do just by sending a message, but you have to be really specific. She doesn’t have much imagination. She has access to all your avatar files, though – how you move, what your voice sounds like—”
“That’s all the same as the real me.”
Iwisa looked over at her. “That’s ‘cause most people want to be more attractive in BetterWorld, but you don’t need to. You’re like an angel.”
“Your flattery is noted and appreciated.”
He bowed.
“So you’re real,” she said, “and you know me outside.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you Francis Jones, or do you work for him?”
“Who?”
“My lawyer.” My champion. “He saved me from imprisonment.”
“Everyone’s happy you’re out.”
“Especially me. So where are Waylee and Pel? How are they doing?”
Iwisa stopped his horse. Hers did the same. “They want you to know they’re safe and doing fine. They’re nearby, and they’re going through with the New Year’s plan.”
It took a while for that to register. “Are they total retards? I thought they’d be in Canada by now.”
“Maybe after they pull this off they’ll go to Canada. Never thought to ask.”
“I doubt Waylee’s planned that far ahead. Tell her to get out and seek asylum someplace the government isn’t bombing, then I’ll join her and we can move to Tokyo or someplace where our band’ll break to the top.”
“I’ll tell her.”
Kiyoko sent a message to her possessed avatar. “Retire from public interactions until further notice, practice all my avatar’s skills and build them up.”
“Understood,” it replied.
Iwisa maneuvered his horse until they were close enough to kiss if they wanted. “Pel needs your help. He might want to sell the immersion suit, wall skin and band equipment.”
She sidled her horse away. “He can sell his gaming stuff and the Genkisan, but no way is he selling our band equipment. We make decisions together, and I say no.”
Iwisa sat on his horse, face blank. “I’ll tell him.”
“And tell him he’s an idiot.”
“He’s not an idiot.”
“You’re not Pel, are you?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m not Pel.”
He must be Charles, then. Dingo didn’t have the skills. Best not to mention it, though, since Homeland was after him.
They rode on, Kiyoko furious at her sister and everyone else, but also unable to get those words out of her mind, ‘you’re just a deluded little girl who can’t deal with real life.’
Iwisa turned to her again. “There’s other ways you can help too.”
“How? I’m not a hacker like you.”
“How can you tell?”
She rolled her eyes and pointed at her face.
“Think that’s a good trick? You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
“Can you teach me some of these tricks?” All this time in the Comnet, and she was practically helpless.
“It’s like anything else, you gotta put in a lot of hours – 10,000 they say – to be elite. I started little, spending afternoons and weekends in the library. I’d love to spend the time with you, though.”
Another pickup line. “So what do you want my help with?”
Iwisa nudged his horse forward again. “Like I said, I’m with Waylee and Pel. I… I’ve made some bad mistakes on my own. I thought with you along, that wouldn’t happen. You know BetterWorld and people here, and you won’t turn us in, and you can tell me if an idea sounds bad. Or good.”
“So what’ll we be doing?”
“A lot. Mainly, find some MediaCorp execs or board members. Pel and I looked at MediaCorp’s public site. Thirteen directors on the board. We’re hoping one will be unreachable soon, so Pel and Waylee can be spoiled relatives.”
“That sounds risky.”
He shrugged. “We’ll see. But first we need to find some programmers or administrators. The only way to get god powers in BetterWorld is to have programmer privileges.”
“God powers?”
“To do whatever you want. Like teleport wherever you want, or fill your bank account. And use BetterWorld as a platform to hit outside targets. I was thinking we could get into MediaCorp’s databases that way. Unlikely we’ll find their directors on BetterWorld, but they’ll be in the corporate intranet.”
She turned her horse around. “We could look, maybe some of them do have avatars.”
“Even if they do, we can�
�t own them. Pel said it would tip them off. We gotta be indirect.”
“Well, let’s start looking. I know where all the admin types hang out, the ones who have avatars anyway.” She just had to remember she wasn’t Princess Kiyoko if she met anyone she knew.
Kiyoko would try to talk Waylee out of this mission of hers, but her sister almost never listened to her. If she didn’t, she’d try to help her.
* * *
Pelopidas
In the shuttered living room, Fuera handed Pel the flat rectangular boxes he’d been expecting. They were addressed to a fake name at a townhouse down the street, and Fuera had picked them up as soon as the delivery man drove away. The “From” label listed “Pandora Productions” in New York.
“Christmas presents?” she said.
He decided not to open them there. “Something we paid for.” Besides Kiyoko’s credits, he had traded all his VR gear. He’d never give Big Red away, though.
“You celebrating Christmas with your family, or you still gonna be hiding here?”
Was that a hint to move on? “My family’s Eastern Orthodox. They celebrate Christmas on the Julian calendar. January 7 on the modern calendar.” He’d been bringing Waylee and Kiyoko to the Christmas Eve feasts, one of the ways he tried to mitigate their horrific childhoods. Kiyoko even attended mass with his family, saying she loved the spirituality and pageantry, although Waylee always refused.
“We’ll be gone by then,” Pel said, “but I thought Waylee told you we’d like to stay ‘til the end of December.”
She frowned. “Sure, I’m just hoping you have a long-term plan.”
“We do.”
“We’re taking an awful risk, you know.”
“No one knows we’re here. And we’ll leave soon.” Pel picked up the cardboard boxes and returned to the basement, where they spent most of their time. Watchers could see through walls but not through the ground.
He laid the boxes on the coffee table. “Got our gear.” Waylee, Dingo, and Shakti crowded around as he cut open the first box with his Leatherman blade. Beneath a layer of bubble wrap, a transparent vacuum pack compressed layers of black and white fabric. “This one’s mine.”
He opened the pack and unfolded a single-breasted dinner jacket, matching cummerbund and trousers, white shirt, cufflinks, and bow tie. He tried on the jacket. A perfect fit. He held up the bow tie. “Anyone know how to tie one of these?”
“So that’s your gear?” Dingo said. “A tux? I admit, you’ve got that James Bond swank thing going on, but…”
Pel pointed to the top shirt button. “I halved the size of our equipment order and applied the savings to embed it into our clothes. That button is actually a nonreflective fish eye lens. Optic software corrects on the fly to create a normal image, which is stored in memory chips embedded in the seams.”
The ghost snares – amplifiers, processors, and carbon nanotube antennae – had been woven into the jacket. Indeed, the whole jacket was one big passive electronics array, none of it detectable. A small plastic bag in one of the pockets contained a memory wafer that presumably housed the decryption software.
Pel gave the other box to Waylee. “This one’s yours. I hope you like it.”
She tore it open, ripped apart the bubble wrap and vacuum packing, and unfurled a long silver dress full of ruffles and embroidery—ideal for hiding her spyware. “This is beautiful, Pel. I… wow.”
“Everything’s here,” Pel said. “I have to test it all.”
“We need shoes and accessories,” Waylee said.
“They’re coming. This broker’s the epitome of refined taste, so everything will match and pass the snoot test.”
“And more importantly, we need ID’s. Kiyoko has a friend that makes fake ID’s for underage students.”
He thought about it. “I think I’ll go through M-pat.” Assuming he’s not done with us. “Less likely they’ll talk. Out of state driver’s licenses would work best.”
Dingo flashed the eyes on the backs of his hands. “Yo. I should go get those drugs you wanted. Maybe there’s a cheaper source than Rosemont.”
“You just want to get out of the house,” Shakti said. Charles was the only one not going crazy from the confinement, but he lived in the Comnet, surfacing only when forced by bodily functions.
Waylee stood. “We all want to rejoin the world. It won’t be long now.”
“Where you gonna go?” Pel asked Dingo. “You don’t know anyone around here, and someone’ll turn you in if you show up in West Baltimore.”
“Can M-pat search for us?” Waylee asked.
“He already did,” Pel said. “Too expensive, and too late now.”
Shakti squinted her eyes. “I don’t even know why you need those drugs. It’s a New Year’s party. Everyone’ll be drinking.”
“Yeah, that’s one of the reasons I picked this event,” Waylee said. “I guess we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.” She folded her hands. “And I’ve been thinking, we shouldn’t be supporting the drug gangs anyway. I know Kiyoko’d frown on it.”
“Kiyoko doesn’t want us to do this at all,” Pel said.
Shakti nodded. “Me neither.”
Waylee’s eyes shifted. “Yeah, yeah.” She glanced at Charles, oblivious in his immersion helmet. “My sister’s right about one thing. When we’re done collecting our material and broadcasting it, we’ll have to skip the country.”
Pel’s chest tightened. He didn’t want to leave Baltimore, leave his family and friends forever. “The government can kidnap or kill people anywhere in the world. They do it all the time. We’ll have to change our identities or we’ll never be safe, no matter where we go.”
17
Charles
Charles/Iwisa and Kiyoko/Steampunk Grrl stood together on the foredeck of a sailing ship. A cloth air cylinder filled the space overhead. Houses and farms passed below. Iwisa held Steampunk Grrl’s hand. Charles could feel the touch of Kiyoko’s palm, the grasp of her fingers, all the way across Baltimore.
They had rented an airship to take them to Club Elite, a huge structure that defied the laws of gravity and floated around with the clouds. Most BetterWorld residents couldn’t see it, nor knew it existed. But as a V.I.P. with her own realm, Kiyoko could visit whenever she wanted.
“I model my costumes there sometimes,” she told Charles, “and jam with other musicians. I’ve made some good connections there.”
She had asked for the club’s current coordinates and entry password. Like his old club, Swagspeare’s, anyone could enter once they had the password. Steampunk Grrl and Iwisa, for instance.
Charles hoped Kiyoko would find the success she and her sister and Pel deserved. He still hadn’t revealed his outside identity, although she probably suspected. She’d been nice to him at the band house, but hadn’t shown any signs of interest. He was underage and overweight. At least here, he had a chance. And BetterWorld romances spilled outside all the time. He just had to be patient.
“So how we gonna find the admins?” he said. They were alone except for the pilot and crew, all bots. And a hold full of vampires.
She looked back at him. “I was hoping you’d know. But I have an idea.”
“What’s that?”
“If they have god powers, we just have to get them to show off somehow.”
“How do we do that?”
“I’ve noticed hackers can be brilliant on one hand, but suckers for sex, money, or technical challenges.”
He thought about it. She was probably dead on. “So what’s your plan then?”
“I thought I’d go for the technical challenge. A scavenger hunt. Like my palace, Club Elite has one fixed teleport site, a pad at the air dock. So anyone who teleports from inside the club is likely to be a programmer.”
“What’s a scavenger hunt?”
She stared at him. “And I thought my childhood was deprived.”
“Is it like hunting for Easter eggs?”
“Kind of. The or
ganizer—me in this case—gives the participants—everyone at the club hopefully—a list of things to retrieve, and the first one who comes back with all the items wins.”
“So the ones who can teleport wherever they want, and can search through BetterWorld’s databases, will have a big advantage.”
She smiled. “Exactly.”
“After the contest, I’ll send the vampires after their avatars. They’ll take them over and I’ll have access to their computers. ‘Course, you know, we can only do this once, because the admins will go on a vendetta and destroy all the vampires and close the exploit. And cybermercs will converge as soon as they figure out what’s going on.”
“Cybermercs?”
“Hired hackers.”
“Then we should surprise our targets, and strike them all at once.” She winked. “I learned a lot fighting Prince Vostok.”
The airship slipped into a berth along others of its type and everything from biplanes to flying saucers. Steampunk Grrl led him down a walkway toward a nine-story pyramid. A wide platform, held up by black columns, ringed the third floor.
The walkway ended at a fancy looking gate. Two bling-covered gorillas, just like the one at Swagspeare’s, stood in front, arms crossed and faces frowning.
Steampunk Grrl gave them the entry code. The gorillas uncrossed their arms and stood aside. The gate swung open and she strolled in.
Iwisa followed her into a giant room vibrating to dance music. Smart-dressed people and half-animal creatures danced amidst pulsing lights. Some posted texts while dancing, which scrolled by on a sidebar. Too loud for vocals.
A private message popped up from Steampunk Grrl. “This club has nine levels. We can message all nine if the club manager thinks it’s interesting enough.”
Kiyoko seemed to know where she was going. He followed her into an elevator. She pressed the top button, and seconds later, it opened to a lounge. People sat on couches or at small tables, the music quiet enough for conversation. Open sky blazed through glass walls.
