Rune Universe: A Virtual Reality novel (The RUNE UNIVERSE trilogy Book 1)

by Hugo Huesca

  We didn’t have much visiting time left. When it ended, my friends and I would go our separate ways. My family waited for me at a protected location, far away from San Mabrada. Rylena and her dad were hiding, just as us, in some town away from the cities. I only knew there were mountains nearby, and a lake. The police wouldn’t allow me to visit.

  Walpurgis would go do… whatever she did when she wasn’t Walpurging. Darren and his girlfriend hadn’t made any plans yet, but they knew they couldn’t stay here. Too many prying eyes and we all knew our State-sanctioned allies were circumstantial, at best.

  I didn’t know what the future had in store for us. Perhaps we would never meet again in the flesh.

  But we would always have Rune Universe.

  “Yes, Irene, I’m right here,” I told her, at last. Outside, in San Mabrada’s sky, the sun was setting. The crowd didn’t seem so big from up here, and the stars were appearing over the cloud’s curtains.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Antarctic Report

  The laboratory had been built in Antarctica’s underground, beneath several thousand tons of snow, ice, and rock. Hidden from the world by a mixture of the best in counter-espionage technology, the lab had been quietly working in absolute secret since its construction. Built the year after the Signal pinpointed in the Antarctic Report was discovered by the Patels.

  The discoveries its scientists had made while backwards-engineering the mathematical principles contained within the signal would make humanity jump several decades in its development, after they were fully understood.

  The laboratory had already given mankind the mindjack-technology, and now it was nearing the most amazing human discovery since fire.

  Before, you see, they had been working with an incomplete Signal. Recently, thanks to the intervention of one Cole Dorsett, that Signal was incomplete no more.

  The Woman watched as the construction machines and the engineers slaved over the huge vault where the prototype was being constructed.

  The machine would be as big as a small building when it was finished, but right now, it had the moderate size of a store.

  Stefania Caputi studied it with a frown on her perfect face. She calculated (she was a Grandmaster-ranked Battlemind) the workforce could be outputting 4% higher than they were right then.

  That 4% could be the difference between life and death, for people like her. History only favors the victors, after all. And this was a race. A very important one, since the country that won it would enter history as the new Superpower of the century. Her job was to ensure the right country won the race.

  Last time civilization raced like this, the race had ended with one name. The Manhattan Project. If she was good, the next name would be Project Antarctica. And she knew there were few people in the world as good as she was.

  “I hope this machine of yours is worth it,” said John Derry, who was standing at her side, two steps back. “You may have signed our death sentence for it, you know?”

  If there was something John was, Stefania thought, it was consistent. Not even dying had changed the man’s thoughts over humanity’s grim future.

  He was, technically, her guest. The laboratory had done for him what San Mabrada’s doctors had done for Darren. He had been dead for longer than the street-rat, though. He would never walk straight again, nor would regain motion in his right side of his face. It would serve as a reminder of what happened to the people that went against her.

  John wasn’t her prisoner, either. He was her trophy. What was the point of changing an entire country’s fate if there was no one to gloat to? She had learned that bit from studying Alexander the Great.

  “I did nothing of the sort,” she smiled, “it was Cole Dorsett who activated the Signal. Do I need to remind you I was the one who put him in jail in the first place? Wasn’t that just what you wanted in the first place?”

  “And it was the constant vigilance you put his home under that stopped me from taking him out before the situation went out of control,” John said. “Don’t think you can patronize me, Madam. I was a CIA director. I know what an ‘I win no matter what you do’ situation looks like. You never cared who activated the signal. You only cared that someone did.”

  Ah, that’s why I keep you around, dear John, thought Stefania. You’re smart enough to figure out enough of my plans to flatter me, but never to get far enough you’re actually dangerous.

  The costs of his surgery would’ve been worth it just for that. But she didn’t keep him only to mock him. If, among the social and political chaos that was sparked after the Signal went public, someone, somehow, managed to point an accusing finger at her… Well, she only had to prop John Derry up and say very loud: “Hey! Everyone! Look this way! I captured the man who got us into this mess!”

  An “I win no matter what” situation indeed.

  “You’ll come to thank me after we’re done here,” she told her trophy. “It’s time mankind enters the big leagues, John. This will be our first step forward.”

  “We may be stepping straight into the abyss,” he told her, grimly. “But you already know that. You don’t care at all, do you?”

  Caputi’s smile faltered for an instant so brief, only the most trained observants would’ve noticed. John Derry was one of those trained observants. “I care very much, dear John. Don’t you see? There’s no turning back now. The eggs are out of the basket. We can float or drown, but I assure you, if we don’t build this machine first, then some other country will. The States still have enemies, remember? More than people realize.”

  John Derry did not answer. He knew she was right. Whatever paths they could’ve taken before, it was too late now.

  The race had begun anew, after being dormant for a century. The Cold War, once again.

  Stefania Caputi and John Derry turned in silence to the machine as it was slowly built by the construction robots.

  Out there, all over the world, hidden in deserts, in mountains, in lakes… everywhere with enough resources to buy a ticket for the race, machines like this one were slowly put together. The winner would win the world.

  And out there, after distances unimaginable, submerged in a darkness permeated by a single, unifying Signal, waited the players of a game with a thousand names. They waited in perfect silence, hoping Earth would heed the warnings before it was too late.

  Cole Dorsett’s story will continue in…

  Cold War Rune

  Do you want to know how this story unfolds?

  Read on to Cold War Rune

  Acknowledgments

  Rune Universe would’ve never seen the light of the day without the help of a lot of fine persons, all of them better than myself. Friends and family —very much the same thing, in my opinion—, that believed in me even when they had no good reason to.

  Still, we had some close calls there. Funny how that works. A tiny change in a decision here or there, and suddenly your life is headed towards a very different course. Some times have been harder than others.

  I’ve written all my life but it’s only thanks to the support of my friends and my readers that I’m here today, pursuing a career as a writer.

  For that, thank you.

  About the Author

  It was the night after Christmas. My extended family used to get together to celebrate until late at night in a reunion that usually filled my uncle’s house to the brim.

  I was ten and had spent most of the night sulking in a corner while my cousins played with their Christmas’ toys. I don’t remember what gift I wanted —perhaps it was a Gameboy? I honestly can’t remember— but I hadn’t got it. While everyone played with their shiny new Gameboys, my parents had given me a brick of a book. The cover had green edges and a kid fighting a snake.

  The book’s name was Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, part two (I didn’t read the first one until later) of a series that was recently being translated into my mother tongue. I hadn’t deigned to open the thing in the entire night
because my ten-year-old’s dignity was hurt. It wasn’t fair I was stuck with a book (and to my ten-year-old self it was a doorstopper. I’d never read something as big), while my cousins could enjoy their Gameboys.

  Yeah, I was being a little douche. That book was what we could afford back then. Sadly, It would take me many years to realize it.

  While my cousins played and the adults were adulting inside the house, I wandered alone to the park nearby and tried to convince myself of throwing the book into a puddle. To me, the idea was the ultimate act of self-defiance, of rebelling against the injustice of the world —or something like that.

  So, I stared into the puddle and thought of bleak ten-year-old things.

  If life is made of moments that define us, I think next moment may have changed my life. I would be a totally different person if I’d thrown my book away. Probably, someone I would hate, now.

  Instead of throwing it away, I thought: “What the hell, I don’t have anything else to do. I may as well check it out before getting rid of it.”

  Even then, I wasn’t much of a crowds’ guy. So, I went to a corner of the house and cracked open my book. I started reading.

  And I’ve never stopped.