Both were reduced to tears as they hugged.
I asked a random sister. “What’s going on here? Do you know where you are?”
“Of course. This is our penance until such time as the world moves out of the Remainder. We sisters keep this place in order so that our loved ones can talk to us until they can join us.”
“You can talk to the dead?”
She laughed. “We are the dead, sister. We talk to the living.”
I shook my head, not knowing how to answer.
“You see, when we first arrived we were told to remove the stones from that room. For each stone we removed we’d get to talk to those loved ones, but we had to walk directly to the lake and toss them in. We couldn’t dither.” She giggled. “And we never do.”
“Thank you, sister.” I turned to find Vince.
“Vince. Uh, hi, Sue-Ann.”
“Hi. And thank you for bringing him to me.”
“No problem. I’m happy to do it.” I wasn’t really happy to hear I was dead, but at the moment I didn’t feel dead, so I was ignoring that. “But can you tell me what memory you sought as you walked with your rock?”
“My time with Vince, of course. That last meeting before the sisters took us both away.”
“The sisters punished you, too?”
She nodded, but smiled at Vince far to the opposite of the gravity of her words. “They tricked me into capturing him, but in the end it was worth it. He knew I never meant for that to happen. That memory kept me going every second I’ve been in this prison.”
I laughed. “Everyone looking at you thinks this is heaven. You look so peaceful and serene.”
“Really? Do they not see we do the same thing—forever? How can that be heaven?”
Vince laughed, but not with a trace of hostility. “You should try our side. I had to walk in a lake of fire to see pictures of you. And while I wouldn’t call it heaven, it wasn’t hell, either. Hell would be never seeing you again. Yet, here we are.”
They embraced in a kiss, which I found a little embarrassing, given I was right next to them.
“So you got to talk to a fake Vince as you walked down the hill, and you got to see a fake Sue-Ann as you walked down yours?”
Both of them stopped kissing long enough to look at each other, then at me—shaking their heads yes. They wasted no time in returning to their embrace.
“Vince. I have to find my own boyfriend. You stay here until I get back. If, uh, I don’t make it, please show the others how to cross between the two scenes. Can you do that?”
He gave me a thumbs-up without looking at me.
“Okay, then. I’ll be back.”
I took a moment to look at the monastery. It was huge from where I stood, and stretched for hundreds of yards. I couldn’t see the men at the lake of fire, though I could see the lake until it was obscured by trees, heading in that direction. Yet I knew the entry would get me across the scene in only a few yards. The computer was stretching dimensions, or something.
I crouched through entryway and got back into the little room with the rocks. I stood in the middle and was positioned just perfectly so I could see the third opening. If I imagined myself on the wall of the Cathedral I was inside a space linking the two halves—good and bad—but was standing just behind the third part of the scene. The mysterious hole with my Alex.
I stomped over to that side of the room and hopped into the mysterious third opening.
3
I stepped out of the castle wall and wasn’t surprised to see the perspective change. To my left, in a sweeping arc of hillside I could look at the path of the sisters as it went down to the lake. To my right, the hill dropped from the castle to the waterfront in much the same way.
There was no fire present. Both sides looked pretty much identical.
Yet, in front of me …
I trotted down the tree-lined hill until I came to a clearing at the waterfront.
“Bells!” Alex ran up to me with a look of initial surprise, then fear. “What are you doing here? How?”
“Don’t worry. I, um, did this to myself.”
I could see the confusion.
Xandrie, sadly, was there, too. Her hand seemed totally restored, which was good for her. But her attitude remained, which was bad for me. “Let me guess. You jumped into the men’s Icer, just like you threatened.”
Alex had the look of someone waiting for me to dispute the statement, but of course I couldn’t.
“No,” he said with sadness. “Elle, why?”
“Listen to me. This whole thing is a computer program. It isn’t natural. I want to get you out.”
Xandrie cackled. “Good luck with that! No one gets out of the wall. Not one person in eighty-seven years.”
“I’ve been to both the men’s side and the side with all the sisters. Neither is what we thought they were. All of them were waiting for this to happen. A time when they would be reunited with their loved ones.”
“I—” Alex began, but was cut off by Xandrie.
“My mom and dad aren’t here, are they? My sisters? My grandma and grandpa? My town? The state of Colorado? The world?”
“Unless there’s more to this program than I’ve seen, there’s only the thousand or so people YOU put into this place, sister Xandrie.”
Her laugh was doused with sarcasm but she spun on her heels and looked back into the chasm. That feature dominated the landscape.
“Felix? Scarlett? No!” they sat calmly on the other side of the pit. I’d missed them when I came from down in the Cathedral. I noted Scarlett's dress was pure white again.
They waved.
“How did you get here?”
They got up and supported each other as they walked around the hole, grim-faced as they arrived.
“Hi, sister Elle,” Felix started. “The voice in the dam led us with those red lights until we were forced into a blue light. We just appeared here. I’m not sure what’s going on.”
I got that funny tingle in my tummy, as if I had made a huge mistake about Meg’s intentions.
“You are on the wall of the Cathedral. We all are. This place—this hole—appeared between the lake of fire and the peaceful hill. You two and those two are the only people I could see here before I jumped in to find you.”
Scarlett’s jaw dropped. “You’re one crazy girl.” She patted her yet-to-be-born baby.
I wasn’t sure I could dispute her.
Alex pulled me aside at that moment. “I appreciate you coming here for me, but you were home free. Why’d you do this? What do you owe these people?”
“At first I was only doing for, uh—for you.” I smiled with embarrassment. “But once I saw you in this middle section I began to understand what this place really is. Meg’s job is to preserve humanity in these bunkers, but something isn’t right with her. She’s taken this too far.”
Alex rubbed his forehead. “So you’ve figured out where we are?”
“In the Cathedral this place was between the other two. It linked them together. Computers are literal, I’m discovering. Whatever this hole represents, it has to be staring us in the face.”
He laughed. “So you came here on a hunch, after all?”
“I guess that’s what girlfriends do.”
He beamed, then looked all around. “Can you say that louder? I want them to hear that back in the Cathedral.”
I thought of Vince and Sue-Ann embracing and longed to do the same with him, but a new voice ruined all thought of spending any amount of time in there in peace.
“Elle is correct.”
I recognized that perfectly calm voice and turned around. Meg had appeared out of nowhere, as a real flesh-and-blood woman—or at least she looked like one.
“About what?” I asked, with growing impatience at how I was being manipulated and guided by others.
“About this place. There is a way out, but no one has assembled the team necessary. Yet, the building blocks are here, now.”
&nbs
p; Alex spoke before I could address her. “Us?”
Meg was an attractive older woman—I’d guess in her forties or fifties. She wore the black top and white skirt of the sisters, but she didn’t speak like one of them. She also didn’t have the stereotypical braid of that tribe. Her hair was a pretty shade of platinum and fell to her shoulders, though she had a shining green hair clip holding it in place.
“Yes. Although it isn’t clear to me yet which of you six will comprise the team that will unlock the remaining safeties on the security system. There are—”
“There are only five of us.” Xandrie chided the computer in her typical haughty manner. I almost cringed after she said it because Meg was stopped in her tracks by the rude interruption.
Meg smiled. “Sister Scarlett, how many people are here in this circle, not including me?”
“I count six.”
“Ha! She’s gone mad from loneliness.” Xandrie chuckled.
I studied Scarlett as she rested those hands on her baby and realized the implications.
“Her baby is the sixth.”
“Very good, sister Elle. There are indeed six people here, and you should know the young woman inside her is listening to us, even now. She may be the most intelligent being here, besides me, of course.”
I smiled at Scarlett and she returned it. Her missing tooth was her only blemish as a picture of motherly beauty.
Meg continued. “For generations I’ve waited for the right combination to come into the Quantum Engine. But always they came in ones and twos. In the rare instance there were three, they were never in the correct order, or the correct age. Now there are six, but again the order is incorrect.”
My tummy fluttered again. I’d thrown all my dice on this gamble.
“It is no wonder. Each of the six vaults has been corrupted from the original design. Some have disappeared entirely. And few are running the original code with the properly aligned Quantum Inputs.”
“The Icers,” Xandrie said matter-of-factly.
“Even a nearly-omnipotent computer such as myself cannot properly run the failing machinery of the hydro-plant and keep each vault on its assigned mission. I’ve learned to accept chaos as part of my sub-routines.”
I thought of the voice inside my head. It called itself Meg’s conscience.
“So, what now?”
Meg turned to Alex and walked closer to him. “I have to work with what I’ve been given. As I always have. The dam is nearing the end of its service life. Sisters Elle and Xandrie know this better than anyone. The dam provides power for the vaults. Without that, the vaults will fail. Humanity itself will fail.”
“And what can we do about it from in here?” I asked, and in that instant I knew it was the ultimate reason I’d taken such a chance.
She told us.
4
“Okay," Xandrie said. "I was way wrong. It isn’t Scarlett who’s crazy. It’s her.”
I looked at Meg, too. Xandrie—the jerk—was right.
“I assure you, this system was designed with very specific requirements. Once the security protocols were engaged early in what you call the End of the World it became exponentially more difficult to access the mainframe. There were early successes. Many of my subsystems were restored with the help of a unique three-person triad but so many things went wrong in the chaos, they were lost to me before they could finalize the code for the last connection. The link between this node under the dam and the rest of the network needs to be established.”
“So what do you want us to do about it?” Xandrie didn’t sound very enthusiastic.
“You can find the original triad to complete the task, or find a new grouping of suitable genetic makeup.”
“Sounds easy,” she replied with even more sarcasm than usual.
I tried to be of a little more help. And the easiest way would be to find the people who already accomplished what needed to be done. “Do you know where the original, um, trio is?”
“2017.”
“You want us to travel back in time?” Alex laughed.
“No. That is impossible. I was merely answering your question. The original triad hasn’t been inside the system since the year 2017.”
“Eighty-seven years ago.”
“Correct.”
Xandrie and I shared a look. I had to appear smug to her. She'd lived those eighty-seven years as if they were the same day. The Remainder. But no matter how much she hid that from her sisters, she knew the truth.
“So, where do we find replacements?” I said, returning attention to the matter at hand.
“You six are the most promising candidates. The system requires the following: one pair-bond and one elder with untainted DNA sequences. Designers coded the system on the assumption this was the most efficient method to ensure propagation of the species along with transfer of genetic wealth and associated cultural inheritance.”
Pair-bonds and elders. I’d heard the terms long ago.
“That’s a bunch of—of gobbledygook!” Xandrie stomped her feet and became agitated. My embarrassment for her continued. Were they watching her on the wall of the Cathedral? I measured my own statements for that reason. Even Meg seemed taken aback.
That was Alex’s opening. He leaned toward Meg. “I could push her into the hole for you.”
“Oh, shut up! You two have it in for me. I’m not going to take it. Whatever this nonsense is, I don’t want any part of it.”
Meg spoke to Alex. “I sense your humor and know you aren’t serious.”
“I could be.”
I poked him in the waist. “Shh.”
We shared a smile, but he took the hint.
“Can you, uh, dumb it down for us, Meg?” I asked as nicely as I could.
“The builders of the Quantum Bridge used biometric coding to ensure only the proper humans could access this advanced piece of hardware. However, human blood was free of contaminants when the system was constructed and that was the archetype for security purposes. As humans handled plastics and were poisoned with hydrocarbon molecules, that original archetype morphed into something new. With the addition of chemicals from life-saving drugs and recreational hallucinogens, minerals in drinking water and other fluids, as well as a host of other modern technology entering the bloodstreams of humans—it became impossible to match that first type. New disruptions began with the onset of the war, including the molecular tracking beacons you all carry inside your blood.”
Xandrie giggled in an unhelpful way. “She just made it MORE complicated!”
“No. I get it. I think. I understand pair-bond all too well.” I looked at Alex, and felt that uncertainty in my middle. It was leaning back toward a good kind of unsettled, though. I smiled at him. “And I think I understand the thing about the blood. We need to find someone who hasn’t been in the Outside. They won’t have all those beacons shot into them by the war machines roaming around out there.”
Meg nodded in respect. “Absolutely correct. The pair-bond aspect was never the difficulty. You can see both sides of this lake have plenty of potential pairs. That’s why they have filled up while this middle—the link between the two—has remained completely empty all this time.”
I raised my hand as if I were in Mr. Bracken’s class again. I don’t know why; it just happened.
Meg smiled and pointed.
“Thanks. Sorry. Let’s say there was a pair bond among us—”
“We aren’t stupid. It’s gonna be you and him.” Scarlett brightened as she pointed at us. Felix laughed, though Xandrie remained unmoved. She stood with crossed arms watching from outside our little group.
Strangely, Alex wasn’t bragging. He seemed focused intently on Meg while I spoke to her.
“Okay, but all of us—including me—have tainted blood. Xandrie pulled up my blood and saw all the little robots in it. We all have them. Doesn’t that mean we can’t possibly be the, uh, pair?”
I didn’t use Alex’s name, which still didn’t elicit the c
omplaint from him I thought it would.
“Only the elder has to be pure of blood. That corner of the triad is most responsible for the unlock programming archetype. The man and woman aspect are involved in human reproduction, which is the eventual point of this entire Quantum Engine.”
We all stood there in shock.
“I think I’ve got this,” Alex said with unnatural calm. “We could have opened this computer right now if Elle and I were the pair-bond, and Felix was the elder. But because he’s been on the Outside his blood has been ruined for it. Is that right?”
“Correct.”
“Can we clean his blood?” I suggested.
It took a few seconds of thought before Meg replied. “In theory, yes. In practical terms there is no way to know how long such a process would require. Each molecule in his body would have to be scrubbed down to the quantum level. In any one human this might require quadrillions of manipulations by the system. Though it reveals one limitation I'd rather not share, in the spirit of what we are trying to accomplish I will admit the entire mainframe would not be powerful enough. Maybe if we had the whole network. But if we had the whole network we would not need to clean an operator.”
Alex was getting into it. “So if Elle and I were to remain as the pair, we’d have to bring another person the same age as him but somehow we have to bring them here without letting them get tagged by the robots out there.”
“There are other Quantum Inputs in the six vaults, though none of them are online. So, yes, you would need to bring them back here for final insertion into the system.”
“You guys are making a mistake listening to her. I’ve worked with Meg for the whole Remainder. She is not to be trusted. She helped me and the Commander—among others—have our way with our bunkers. She is not on your side! She is on her own,” Xandrie said, then giggled.
“I mean, did anyone ever think what good a couple of lovers would do inside a freaking computer?”
5
A man appeared next to Meg. He was young and dressed in olive drab military garb. A soldier, though he was oddly out of place. My knowledge of military uniforms was minimal, but I recognized his uniform as coming from well before the time I ran into the Complex. Meg was visibly annoyed when he first appeared, but seemed to regain her composure as he stepped into our little scrum.
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