by Ari Bach
As they elaborated on her persona in terms so personal she felt terribly exposed, she gained comfort from the fact that these new partners not only knew her this well and still seemed to like her, but they were clearly selected for sharing every trait. She had never met people so like herself. She listened to stories of Valhalla accomplishments and of the lives of her new comrades, but she would remember little. Somewhere around 0445 she drifted off to sleep, landing facedown in her sugary gray putty.
VIOLET AWOKE in her own bed. It was the same size, shape, and firmness as her bed in Arcolochalsh, which she hadn’t slept in for months. It had the same kind of purple blanket that she had left to be incinerated back in the arcology. There was also a new thick purple quilt. The rest was duplicated in every detail, except that it was in a small four-bunk room in a rocky pit in the far north. Violet remembered a fragment of conversation from the night before, something about how they’d researched every detail of her life before they brought her in. If the bed was any indication, they weren’t exaggerating.
Her link was off, but a small display on the wall noticed her looking at it and stated the time as 1349. They had let her sleep in later than she ever allowed herself. She was alone in the room. Across from her bed were two made beds, one above the other. Above her own was an empty slab to hold a fourth. The only other object in the room was on the bed with blue covers, a small leathery block with text on its side. She assumed it to be Vibeke’s. Somehow she could picture Vibs and Veikko at home in the room, sleeping, waking, adjusting the light of the fake window. She could as easily picture them working somewhere in the ravine, right then, letting her sleep in late after her busy yesterday. When she opened the blinds on that fake window and saw a terrible fiery hellscape, she knew which of them had programmed it last.
She found the bathroom and medicine cabinet stocked with the objects and brands she kept at home. Upon seeing them she realized that she must have missed them in the military barracks. The shower was set loud and scourging, which she preferred to the arcology’s gentle, high-pitched showers. These were preferences she had not told anyone, online or off. Had they broken into her mind directly before she came in? She had never been hacked into and didn’t know if she would recognize it if they did.
After a very long and loud shower, she checked the drawer under her bed and found a drape like those commonly worn in Scotland. She threw it on and walked to the door. She half expected to be locked in, but the door opened with a touch and let her into the barracks halls and atria. It felt like a luxury hotel, with sofas and fires, rock and wooden architecture. She saw people milling about at ease. One man in a hot-pink uniform waved to her. She waved back. In some ways the casual tone still offended her military expectations, but she got the impression that when the time came, these people would be far more reliable than her old comrades. There was no need for strict Achnacarry order here—the people were organized on their own. Something in their eyes reminded her of the scarred Sergeant Cameron, something that said their training must have been every bit as brutal as what she had enjoyed.
She stepped outside the building to find Alföðr waiting for her.
“God ettermiddag,” he said. She didn’t need her link to hear “Good afternoon.” “I hope you found everything to your tastes?”
“Eerily,” she said. “How did you, uh—”
“Vibeke demanded up front to know if we hacked into her brain,” he said. “Veikko was downright frightened at the prospect. I am happy to say we did not. We merely do our research well. You’ll learn to do the same shortly and will exercise the ability once we have another prospect for your team.”
“You really check our shower settings, mattress firmness? Has it always been like that?”
“Not at all,” he bragged gutturally. “When they brought me in, they only had mint toothpaste, to which I have the utmost animosity,” he said with a snarl. “I prefer orange flavor and implemented the reforms that demanded attention to such details. Shall we start the tour?”
“Please.”
“Then first, let me introduce you to Governor Quorthon.”
After a short walk, they came to a cylindrical building with a lit dome and several triangular buttresses.
“This is city hall. The civilian population, two hundred and ninety people, enjoys a company structure, though they share our independence and the spoils of our wars. Governor Quorthon was a company representative for the Ares Corporation, who first built the labs here about sixty years ago. He’s one hundred and twenty-eight years old, and has been reelected every year by the populace. He treats us all most kindly, keeps the residents out of our way in times of emergency, and has never failed to keep the cafeteria full of food or the specialists happy. From time to time he gives us a project, little things mostly. He also settles any disputes between the teams and the residents, but we haven’t had any in, oh, at least ten years. Did Veikko and Vibs tell you about the treaty?”
“Don’t Fuck Shit Up?”
“Exactly. It applies to the ravine as much as the rest of the world, as I’m sure the governor will tell you at least seven times. Humoring his remarks is a full 20 percent of my duties. It’s best you have a go at it now in case you have to take over someday.”
The governor was a tall man with long white hair. Beside him stood a short man in no fewer than three thick winter coats.
“Valfar!” said Alf. “I’m glad you could make it. Violet, this is Valfar, another man from the Ares company and our groundskeeper. He’ll be showing you around today. Governor, this is Violet.”
“Pleased to meet you Violet,” said Quorthon softly. “I assume you have been told the treaty?” Quorthon went on to repeat it anyway, several times. It seemed like a lecture to kids but she didn’t object this time, partly because he was seven times her age and partly because he was clearly just concerned for his people, admirably so. After a brief boilerplate introduction, he expounded on the treaty and pretended not to notice Alf’s yawn. Violet was impressed at how long Quorthon could talk without actually saying anything. A skill she assumed kept him in office. After he and Alf said their good-byes, the trio left his office. Once in open air, Alf laughed.
“Was it the same?” he asked Valfar.
“Exactly,” he responded with a thick accent. “Not a word different from when Vibs came in. Exactly thirteen minutes and four seconds.”
“I’ll have H team make sure his brain hasn’t been stolen again.” He turned to Violet. “Some of the younger civilians hack into it from time to time—an old tradition. Last time they left it on a loop, and we didn’t notice for two years.”
The two men gave each other a complex fist jab, and Alf headed away.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Violet, for training. Enjoy your tour!”
“Thanks,” she responded and looked to Valfar. “Where do we begin?”
“At the core,” he said. She thought he said “car” at first, his voice was so different from what she was used to. With her link on, the word would have come with knowledge of its intended meaning. But without the available footnotes and terminology options at her disposal, his accent obscured it. Veikko and Vibeke sounded only slightly strange, but Valfar reminded her just how alien the English language could sound around the world. Millennia of linguistic diversity had left their mark.
She figured out he meant “core” as they headed to the trunk of the giant glowing tree. The branches extended over her head in all directions, bringing power to every structure. She could see more clearly that people were walking on them; the Branches’ apparent frailty was an illusion. When they reached the central trunk, Valfar rubbed his hands over it and nodded for her to do the same. The surface was warm but not hot. It was as hard as the hardest stone, and the glow seemed softer up close than from afar. She was about to ask what it was made of when Valfar spoke.
“YGDR S/L power system and distribution lattice, built to power the Ares project but repurposed with eighty-eight new S/L nodes to pow
er Valhalla.” His accent seemed to grow thicker as he went on. “Ya note the rainbow effect it has on the ice in the walls. Pretty, neh? Neh. Nah, the energy harnessed by splitting atoms can’t compare to that earned more safely by flipping quarks. Sadly, thanks to old man Heisenberg, we can’t really see the damn quark without moving it, so his theory was compensated for by having yer friends watch instead while you do the work. Then ya provoke disputes between muons and their massless partners. That’s another orientation trick. See, when an overzealous muon can be convinced to leave its aging life partner for a young exotic atom, that releases the old electron from his duties, leaving his hot young neutrino home alone and desperate for attention!” She thought he’d just made a joke, but between his demented vocabulary, personification of subatomic particles, and accent, she couldn’t be sure. He gave her no chance to ask what he meant. “I tell ya, when we started the first generator, someone got between a tau lepton and her young, got a furious outburst of third generation antineutrinos, and blew up an automated lab. Made an ugly, sticky lake of spare gluons and other particles that were rumored to be pentaquarks, if you believe in such nonsense. In any case there was no resulting radiation, so the resulting sludge lake was surrounded by a stone-and-turf barrier that we called Hadron’s Wall.”
He leered at her as if waiting for her to laugh. She was sure he had just said something that Vibeke might have understood and found amusing, but she was utterly lost, worried he had just told her something she might one day need to know. All she got was the word “atom” and a good sense that the thing powering Valhalla was way beyond her comprehension. Even if he’d not had an accent, the very first thing he showed her was so far past her understanding that she didn’t even know what to ask about to clear it up.
“Ha?” she said to let him move on.
“Neh! Yar from Scatlin after all!” He laughed heartily and continued. “Ol’ Alf spent days up there, wandering the branches to come up with the rune system. Clever guy, yah know. Yeh, yah can walk on the branches. Just watch out for nidhoggs an’ be sure to get yer feet defuzzed on a defuzz pad.”
He showed her a black pad on the ground, of which there were many around the ravine. She understood that she’d have to touch one to get rid of the static charge if she touched the power grid. He showed her how and spoke slowly to ensure she knew how much repair work he’d have to do if she forgot. He moved on to the doors of the nearest building and began to tell her how the doors worked and how to open them in an emergency. She understood less and less of what he said but more and more of what he showed her. Before long she gave up on the words and just watched.
She had expected to see only the parts of the city meant for the youngest of its residents, but the tour continued with the heaviest machinery and the depths of the place. She was shown the functional core of the heating and electrical systems, which had always been off-limits in the outside world. He gave her an overview of each machine, letting her know how to turn it off in an emergency, where to find the people or net files who knew how to repair it, and even the basics of how to do so herself. He took great pride in every system and gadget and didn’t mind slowing down or repeating a critical bit of explanation when she really needed it. The rest of his remarks, most of which she assumed were humorous, were lost in his accent, speed, and esoteric terminology. She saw him demonstrate the emergency fireplace foamer system and learned how to use it herself, but she knew she would never know what he meant by “Farghplatz fough-marsissymn.”
When they passed a closed door, he would open it, and if he didn’t, he explained honestly why. She was never told that she wouldn’t understand, never told that a section was not her business or something she did not need to worry about. The city gradually became familiar and lost its mystery in favor of a moderate understanding. Valfar even showed her the arsenals, special arsenals, and secret caches that housed weapons beyond her most sadistic imagination. He did not explain them only because she would be briefed on them later in a devoted session by K team. As they came to the pogo landing pads along the walls, he showed her a few things she never knew about how she had been traveling all her life.
“They’re ground effect vehicles, like the old Caspian Sea Monster, but with field wings that extend out forever, allowing any height, so long as the craft is in motion. Early generations of the craft had to depart and land on a rather lengthy runway, but that was abandoned upon invention of inertial suppression systems, allowing the craft to just kick off hard into the sky and hit the ground just as fast. That hard liftoff and equally amusing landing earned the craft its name and inspired a sport in which the dampening effect was turned off to prove one’s machismo, leading to the pride of dozens and deaths of hundreds.”
He showed her a plethora of other vehicles she had never seen before. She would in time learn to fix, drive, tactically crash, and peel every one of them to the basic parts. He said little about each on that first tour, but Violet saw one contraption she had to ask about. She had seen a skiff before in a school video. The school wanted her to see it so she would never try to use one, ever. They were by far the most dangerous vehicle ever invented, and like their ancient relative the “skateboard,” they were banned in all GAUNE companies and countries. Valfar confirmed what it was and that they used them from time to time.
“Just start its field and stand on its tiny frame as it floats over the ground, and try to keep balance as it flies one hundred and fifty kph over any terrain, but not now. Live a few more days,” he said. Violet looked forward to training on it.
They finished the tour at the top of the spiral walkways near the surface, in the communications building, which hung like a bat from rocks that overhung the ravine. Valfar’s voice was going hoarse and getting even less comprehensible.
“Com tower. Has the heaviest magnetic shield in the pit. Best place to broadcast, worst place for a magnetic system. The shield is so thick it’ll render most magnets useless. They won’t even show up on a mag scan. Makes for crystal-clear link signals. Also the com tower houses the HMDLR, the defense system, so accurate it can hear the grass grow, sounds the alarms if it hears anythin’ we don’t expect. Then we got the rampart.”
He pointed out where the rampart (“Raghpurtht.” She assumed he meant rampart) would rise up. In an era of repulsion fields and automated targeting beams, Valhalla had a new twist on an ancient safeguard. It had walls. Actual, physical walls. Nobody flying or even walking over Kvitøya would notice the glacial rock at the island’s edge. It was just rock. But on short notice, seventy thousand tons of that rock was mechanized to lift up and close off the ravine entirely, to make an outer shell around the entire island complete with what was jokingly referred to as a “drawbridge” at the southmost point—a photonically selective gateway that could let vessels and personnel in and out through solid rock if they were tuned to the right rotating spectrum. The rainbow capabilities of Valhalla jumpsuits were not just for camouflage and décor. They were the only outfits that could pass in and out of the fortress when it was sealed up. Anything that tried with any single color would get halfway in, but then the spectrum would shift, and they would be trapped in solid rock.
“The rocks are very loud,” he explained. “Haven’t used it in years. Won’t use it short of an all-out attack.”
She could see over the ravine’s jagged edge that the sun was going down.
“Ahh, night. Ya remember where med bay was?” he asked.
“Yes, north end of the floor, by the gymnasium.”
“Yah, stuck in yer head, all right! Go there, they’re expectin’ ya. Great stuff in the med bay—phospholipid polarity drives that can back up fifty brains. They used to use neural nets, but the things kept changing their minds, ha! Ya have a nice night, Vielaht!”
“Thonks—Thanks. You too.”
She walked down the path around the sides of the ravine. She was relieved to be heading to the med bay. Valfar’s accent had given her a tremendous headache. But the man was kind, cl
early brilliant, and constantly assured her that once her link was up, everything he said could be reinforced by maps and manuals. Despite the complexity of it all, she felt that she might not need them for some of the simpler elements of the city. She might never comprehend quark inversion, but she knew how to walk the branches. She could function the same way she’d worked through school—with the bare minimum. But would that be enough here?
The medical bay had a clear front wall, which let her see every patient inside. It seemed a cruel architectural blunder, but it let her find the doctor quickly. She could also see the tons and tons of machinery that allowed Valhalla’s medical team to work at an exceptional speed. The doctor would program the machines to perform the surgery at hand, and then they would perform it with inhuman swiftness, removing and replacing a heart between beats or attaching a new limb before a drop of blood could spill out.
Dr. Niide was from the Nippon Company islands. His mumbles were easy to decode compared to Valfar’s accent. He had a thick red beard and eyes that seemed to X-ray her as they looked. She realized quickly that that’s probably what they were doing. They had silver irises and were clearly implants.
“Valfar…. Hmmm, show you everything?” he muttered.
“Yes.”
“Here…. For the headache.” He applied something directly to her forehead, and the pounding of her brain ceased immediately.
“Thank you,” she said most genuinely.
“Mm…. Valfarism, everyone gets it…. I myself cause drowsiness…. Let’s take a look at you.”
