by Unknown
On the right, a low bowl with a large white rectangular box above and behind it caught his attention. He could sense the water within, though it was covered by a lid of some sort. Opening it, he saw an inviting pool of fresh water. “Maybe that’s for washing up,” he told himself.
He stil wasn’t certain where he was supposed to handle his more serious business, so he continued to explore. A partialy transparent door
across from him opened into a smal cubicle with a drain in the floor. The wal had another set of levers and a spigot of some sort was set high up.
With his magesight he could sense the pipes that fed water to it.
After considering it for a moment he wondered if it was meant for elimination. The setup made it possible, but the drain had a strange grate built over it that would probably block his solid waste from exiting easily.
“None of this makes sense,” he admitted. Most likely they had misunderstood his needs. It was ridiculous to think anyone would defecate in their own home to begin with. Glancing back at the wal mounted basin he decided it was probably only meant for liquid wastes, since it was
mounted at waist height. He would have to explain himself better when he returned.
For now, he could at least take care of one of his problems. Unfastening his trousers, he relieved himself in the basin. Afterward, he glanced back at the wash bowl ful of water. Sniffing at himself, he decided it might be wise to take the opportunity to wash up a bit.
He removed his shirt, bent over, and started to use a hand to lift water up to his armpits but he knew that what he realy needed was a
washcloth. A large towel hung from a rack on one wal but he figured that was probably for drying. Then he noticed the rol of white tissue beside the wash bowl.
Unroling some of it he marveled at its fineness and soft texture. When he had a good handful, it puled away easily, and he dipped it into the water to wet it before using it to scrub at his underarms. Unfortunately, it began to disintegrate as soon as he started rubbing, leaving bits of wet tissue stuck to his skin.
He sensed Karen approach the door, and of course, with her newly developing magesight she could see the broad outlines of what he was
doing within.
“Matt?” she said through the door.
“Yes?”
“What are you doing?”
“Washing up,” he told her as he reached into the washbasin once more.
Able to see his action she recoiled, “Stop! Don’t do that!”
“What?” he said, pausing.
“Oh my god. Open the door.”
His shirt was off, but it wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen, so he complied. “This room is very strange,” he told her.
Karen pointed at his ‘washbasin’. “First, that’s a toilet.” The look on his face told her that he didn’t understand so she expanded on the remark mentaly, That’s where people shit. The stuff in your hand is meant to be used for wiping your ass afterward.
He stepped back from the toilet suddenly, and then almost as an afterthought he dropped the wet tissue to the floor where it formed an
amorphous blob. “Oh!” He started to wipe his hands on his trousers but she stopped him.
“No. Wait! The sink…,” she pointed at the place he had just used as a urinal. “This is the soap,” she demonstrated the liquid soap dispenser, washing her hands as an example. “Then you use the towel.” Giving him a thorough examination, she added, But I think you should probably just take a shower at this point.
She explained the shower to him and directed him to leave his clothing on the floor. “I’l see if my aunt can have them washed for you. She probably has a robe you can use after the shower.
Before she left he looked at the toilet, “People realy shit in there?”
“Yes,” she nodded in exasperation. “Push this lever to flush afterward. You can put the toilet paper in there as wel.” Turning away, she left.
As she walked away she heard him talking to himself through the door, “That’s disgusting.”
***
Two hours later al three of them were finaly sitting in Roberta’s living room. Matthew was wearing a robe that was far too short for his long legs, while Karen had borrowed a pair of her pajamas that were a couple of sizes too large for her frame, though they stil only reached her mid-calf.
Matt was pretty sure she had gotten the better deal, as he was constantly fidgeting to make sure the robe kept him modestly covered. It had a habit of gaping in awkward places, so he had to remain aware of his sitting position to avoid flashing his hostess.
Roberta for her part seemed to enjoy his discomfort. At one point, as he realized he had begun to show too much he looked up and met her
gaze. She graced him with a smile and a wink before returning to her conversation with her niece.
Since he had showered first, Karen had used that time to explain most of the particulars of their situation to her aunt.
“I don’t mind admitting I have trouble accepting everything you’ve told me,” Roberta told her niece. “Not that I think you’re lying, Dear. It’s just a lot for me to wrap my old brain around.”
Karen sighed, “I wouldn’t believe it myself, if I weren’t stuck right in the middle of it.”
“The part that’s hardest is the dragon. I can believe that different creatures exist on other worlds. The She’Har did a good job of making sure no one could ever doubt that again, but I saw the pert Matthew folowed us in.”
Matthew was getting better at English, and Karen was sending him occasional mental explanations to help keep him current with the
conversation. He chose then to speak up, “I can show you.”
Karen shot him a warning glance, worried that whatever he was planning might frighten her aunt, but he just smiled. Trust me, he sent to her.
Standing up, he formed an image in his mind and then he used his wil and his aythar to give it an optical presence.
Roberta gasped as his appearance shifted. He was no longer clad in a too-smal robe, but in the clothes he had arrived in, though they now
appeared clean and unrumpled. He reached up to his neck, and when his hand came away he was holding the robe he had been wearing. “How did you do that?” she questioned. “Those clothes were in the washing machine.”
“They stil are,” Matthew assured her. “I am naked.” Stepping closer, he invited her to touch his sleeve. Since he was clad in nothing but ilusion, her fingers passed straight through, finding only skin beneath them.
He started to return to his seat, but she interrupted him, pointing at the robe he had discarded, “Put it back on please, Dear. I know you look clothed, but I’d rather not have your bare ass on my couch.”
Karen stifled a laugh.
Matthew redressed himself with the robe, but he retained the ilusion. At the very least, he could now sit without having to worry about keeping his legs crossed.
Roberta went to the front window and looked out. “Your pert is gone. Does that mean you’ve made the dragon invisible?”
“No,” he answered. “I can’t do that. I changed his appearance. There are some extra trees across the street from your house now.”
“It does look different over there,” she remarked. “Though I don’t know if I would have noticed. It’s a little frightening thinking a giant predator could be lurking so close without anyone being the wiser.”
“Desacus is very gentle,” said Karen, coming to the dragon’s defense. “He doesn’t eat people.”
Her aunt glanced down, running her hand over Annie’s soft head, “What about dogs?”
Matthew honestly wasn’t certain. It was possible the dragon might have eaten wild dogs in the past, though he hadn’t mentioned it. He resolved to add them to the list of things the dragon was not to eat. “She wil be safe. I promise.”
Roberta didn’t look entirely confident in his response, but she decided to move on, “Karen, have you given any thought to how to get out of this mess
you’re in? I love you, but you know you can’t hide here forever. They’re bound to come looking here sooner or later.”
“I haven’t broken any laws,” started Karen, “and from what you’ve said there’s been nothing in the news, so I think the military is acting in secret. If I go to the police and make my story public—surely they wouldn’t be able to do anything.”
Her aunt pursed her lips, “You are seriously underestimating how desperate these people are. You said your mother didn’t know anything
about him, correct?”
“She left a message for me,” said Karen, “but she just sounded worried. I don’t think she knows about what’s going on.”
Roberta frowned, “Don’t be so sure. If she does find out, things wil only get worse.”
“What do you mean?” asked Karen. She knew her aunt didn’t get along with her mother, but she had never understood why.
Her aunt pursed her lips, “I shouldn’t say this. I never understood what my brother saw in her, but your mother has always put her work before you, or anyone else in her family for that matter. She also did a lot of classified projects for the government. I wouldn’t put it past her to turn you over to the military if she found out where you were.
“There, I said it. I know Gary would have disagreed with me, but that’s how I feel, and I can’t help that. I don’t trust her, and I don’t think you should either,” finished Roberta. She glanced over at Matthew, “Also, if you go to the police, what do you think wil happen to him?”
Karen was secretly relieved to hear that her aunt had a similar opinion of her mother, but the question about Matthew surprised her, “Matthew can just leave. He isn’t trapped here. They don’t have any way of folowing him.”
He hadn’t folowed their entire exchange, but he had caught the gist of it, “I’m not leaving. I’m here to find my father, or if he’s not here, to find out why they sent agents to my world.” At the same time he stared at Karen. Did she realy not care if he left? Logicaly he didn’t want her to become attached to him, but after what had happened between them—he thought she should feel something.
Karen looked away, when she discovered his eyes on her.
Roberta spoke up, “I think you’re biting off more than you can chew, young man, though your motive sounds noble enough.”
The conversation just went in circles after that, until eventualy they wound up sitting in silence. Eventualy, Karen decided to cal it a day and shifted topics, “Can I access the network?”
Roberta waved her hands at the guest room, “You probably want to relax, I’m guessing. If you want, I think I have a couple of old visors left over. Since I finaly got these damned implants I don’t use them anymore. Just make sure you don’t do anything that might flag the authorities to your location.”
Chapter 19
Matthew held a strange curved piece of what he now knew was ‘plastic’ in one hand. It was shiny black with a flexible band that was meant to hold it in place on his head. “What is this supposed to do?” he asked.
Karen smiled, “It’s like my PM but it alows you to experience the network in a more immersive manner.” The frown on his face showed that
her explanation hadn’t helped at al. Put it on, and I’ll show you my world, she sent mentaly.
She demonstrated, and he folowed her example, slipping it over his head. “Now I can’t see anything,” he groused.
Reaching over, she touched a button on one side of his visor and his world changed completely.
He was standing in a forest glade. Bird cals reached his ears, sounding as if they had carried across a wide expanse, while above him the tops of the massive trees swayed slowly in the breeze. Several strange symbols floated in the corner of his vision, and lines of text hovered in a box in front of him.
Matt was utterly disoriented. Making matters worse, his magesight showed him a conflicting version of reality. While his eyes showed him an endless forest, his arcane senses told him he stil stood in a smal bedroom enclosed by four wals.
A woman walked into his field of view. She wore a pair of black rimmed spectacles and had long brown hair puled back into a ponytail. A
bizarre dress that barely reached past her thighs was complemented by a white shirt.
“Is everything okay?” she asked in Karen’s voice.
He felt a surge of vertigo. Karen stil stood on the other side of the room, wearing her own visor; that was what his magesight told him. Yet he was hearing her voice coming from the stranger in front of him, who, his magesight definitely told him was not there.
“Oh, this is weird,” she said. “It’s never made me feel this dizzy before.”
“What is this place?” he asked.
“It’s my aunt’s home zone, a virtual landing page,” she told him. “It’s the entry point for the network. Most people customize it, and she likes the redwoods I guess.”
“That helped,” he commented wryly before adding, “It isn’t real. I stil see the room we we’re in around us with my magesight.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “It’s a virtual space, sort of like an ilusion, but this new magesense you gave me makes everything feel realy strange, like double-vision.”
“It might be easier if we close our minds,” suggested Matthew.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
He took off his visor and bid her to do the same. Then he spent the next twenty minutes showing her how to shut out her magesight. It wasn’t something he did often, but it was one of the first things his father had insisted on teaching him and his sister after their power had awakened.
For a wizard, being able to control the sensitivity of his or her magesight was a skil of paramount importance to avoid being overwhelmed in situations where a lot of aythar was being used. Completely shutting off one’s magesight also made it impossible to use aythar, but it could be an important defensive technique in certain rare situations.
“Close your eyes and focus on the bal of light,” he told her, creating a sphere of luminous aythar that would show up vividly in her magesight.
“Now, focus on shutting it out. When you can’t see it anymore, you’l find that you also can’t sense the rest of the room.”
Eventualy, she got the hang of it. “I feel as if I’m scrunching my eyes closed,” she observed.
Matt laughed, “Because you are. Once you get used to it, you’l be able to do it without tensing up.”
After that they were able to use the visors without constantly feeling dizzy. Back in Roberta’s homezone , Karen activated the network
connection, though she didn’t dare log in under her own account, so she couldn’t check her messages. She contented herself with reviewing recent news articles, but Matthew soon grew bored since he couldn’t read any of the text she was looking at.
“I wish I could show you my game account,” she told him. “I used to spend a lot of time in a virtual world caled ‘Fantasy of Iron’.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
She replied mentaly to avoid confusion, A virtual world where people can create avatars; fantasy versions of themselves. You can be an elf, a dwarf, a human, or even a monster if you like that sort of thing. People spend hours there, playing characters and trying to become more powerful. Your avatar can be a fighter, priest, wizard, druid, paladin—there are tons of options.
A wizard? he asked.
Well, not like you exactly, but that was my favorite class to play, she admitted.
He seemed intrigued by the idea, so she spent a while explaining how online games worked. Matthew was particularly amused by the various
spelcasting classes and the idea of demi-humans was completely new to him. “Your elves sound a little like the She’Har,” he remarked.
Karen nodded, “With the exception of turning into trees.” An alert symbol started flashing in the corner of her vision, someone wanted to join them. “It’s Dad,” she told him. “He probably wants to talk to my aunt.” She made a hand gesture,
approving the link.
A second later a new figure stood with them, a man. The face was familiar to Matthew; it was the same one he had seen in the screen at the network terminal when Karen had first checked her messages a few days previously.
Glancing around briefly, Gary addressed them, “Karen? And this must be your friend.”
“Matthew,” she said, supplying his name. “How did you know it was us?”
Gary smiled, “This is your aunt’s account but there are two of you, and you’re using generic avatars. The conclusion was obvious.”
“I didn’t think it would be safe to log into my own account,” she replied.
“Smart girl,” said the AGI. “I think I can solve some of your problems in that regard, though.”
“Realy?” said Karen with more excitement than she had expected of herself. Being cut off from her own account had been more irritating than she had been wiling to admit.
“Since you removed my restrictions I’ve been modifying myself,” said her virtual father. “I doubt the government wil approve, but I’ve
embedded my functions in al the CC centers and appropriated a lot of extra resources. I don’t think they can catch me anymore, and if they could, they certainly couldn’t remove me without doing something unthinkable, like completely shutting down most of the servers.”
She gasped in spite of herself. Shutting down the servers in the CC centers, would effectively kil the uploaded humans living within them. While an AI could be stopped and restarted, uploaded people were more sensitive, they couldn’t be turned off without losing the delicate quantum information that made them unique and truly human.
“What have you done?” she exclaimed.
“I’ve grown,” he said simply. “By expanding my resources and modifying my algorithms I can do much more for you. The security services
