Under the Flickering Light

by Russ Linton

  “My turn,” said Tragic.

  “Please,” the stranger said. “I don’t know which one will follow.”

  Tragic’s war cry was less samurai shout and more punk-fueled rage. His enormous sword swung upward, growing more in size as it ascended, then crashed downward in an executioner’s blow. One step forward had been enough for the blade to reach out and cleave through the intervening arch and bury itself in the top step. The dark figure crumpled, his body in two halves.

  “Sunder Blade score!” shouted Tragic. As the sword retracted, the stone arch canted and toppled.

  “Too big. Over too quickly. Who says you can escape your real self in the Nexus?” Harriet said.

  Tragic sheathed his sword like he’d dropped a mic. “Hey, at least I got mine. That’s all that matters, right?”

  The shrine bells rang again.

  M@ti glanced at Knuckles. Behind his mask, his eyes rolled. With a fluid spin, he launched a short sword from his belt toward the shrine. It struck the braided rope holding the bells and they crashed to the ground. The wind died.

  “Okay, time to log,” M@ti said. She hadn’t figured out what was going on and the cringey uneasiness had gotten worse.

  “Come on. You’re finally here in Fivefold. Let us show you around,” Knuckles said.

  Harriet’s blood-red eyes swept over her. “We need to get your EFE some gear.”

  “I’m not his EFE and I’m not kidding right now.”

  M@ti had no intention to become a virtual geisha or whatever. Whoever had hacked the system had done enough to remind her of the many reasons why she couldn’t stand this place. Hackers trolling. AI monitoring the place like a terrarium.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  It was the noise a crow made pecking at fallen acorns along the paths in Central Park. No, wetter than that. Digging at the flesh of a dead squirrel.

  The stranger was back. His cane rapped impatiently on the stone walkway.

  “You basic scripter douche bag! You’re so going to get banned,” Knuckles said, pushing past M@ti and brandishing his razor-sharp sword. “But you will taste the blade of Heaven’s Breath first!”

  “As it should be.” Cold, matter of fact, M@ti didn’t detect any pleading in his voice this time. “You are the one scheduled for inoculation.”

  Both Tragic and Harriet swept past. M@ti stared straight at their opponent, trying to understand. The hackers from the Fel-0-Sh!p could maybe pull off this level of sophistication. Why they’d want to disrupt a punk concert, she couldn’t say. Could be Knuckles or one of the guys had gotten into some shit on the outside.

  But none of that shed light on the hack itself. Every avatar in the Nexus reflected positioning, account status, history — a combination of digital molecules cooked up since the primordial login when past generations first left pieces of their digital DNA.

  The stranger though remained a dark void in a sea of variables and calculations. This hack, this avatar, whatever it was, wasn’t actually there.

  Fighting raged. M@ti felt the ground tremble as Tragic’s blade fell. She heard the song of Harriet’s knives, and a new sound, the whistle of Knuckle’s sword as it sliced the very air. Their enemy faced all three with ease.

  M@ti dropped the veil of the Nexus and squinted into the dimness of the cathedral. It took her a moment to orient and find Knuckles. He’d moved out from behind his kit and stood at the bottom of the altar. She watched him engaged in combat, drumsticks in hand.

  None of this was real, she told herself. It was all a game. Still, she just had to know how this hacker was doing what he did. M@ti logged back in.

  Harriet worked her way in, close and deadly, maintaining constant pressure while Tragic contained the fight with the fall of his massive sword. All their efforts were synchronized so Knuckles could make his attacks, Heaven’s Breath in one hand and a wakizashi in the other. His turn to score a kill, but the stranger parried each swing with unrelenting efficiency.

  M@ti could see their efforts written in stark code. Collisions processed, but returned empty function calls. The man’s cane skittered from blade to blade as he twisted around Tragic’s enormous cleaver which had pulverized the stone path into tiny pixels.

  There would be no easy kill this time. Whatever the dark figure was doing to keep one step ahead was hidden behind a layer of what? Encryption? M@ti strained to see.

  Even for a scripted bot, she expected breadcrumbs leading back to the user. Trails could be obscured, sure, but the ghost of an open port would be there. Spoofed or stolen, there had to be something.

  She only had one way to find out. If this guy turned out to be a superuser, she’d be flagged immediately. Of course, that might just be the best way to help Knuckles. She could take the heat for whatever the hell he’d done. Maybe they’d take her Lifestyle Index into consideration. All that grimy work she did for the Collective.

  And what had Knuckles done anyway? The guy was a model spechead. So what if he played the drums for real. Was that a crime now too?

  The anger she’d found yesterday in the park returned. Why should she be scared of them? Maybe it was time the Collective saw what she could do besides peel dead squirrels off the street.

  Determined, M@ti fired up TrueSight.

  Thin silver threads ran through the ghosted avatars of the Weeping Tits amid an empty background. Like space, M@ti thought, if the stars could be stretched and intertwined. Above, the threads formed a nebulous cloud of open ports and data transfers.

  But the troll was different. Instead she saw something familiar.

  “Heart rate threshold for cardio exceeded,” her LifeMinder warned. “Begin cool down.”

  From the silvery cloud thrashed a red tentacle of power rooted around the insubstantial form of the stranger. Tendrils writhed from him, coiling around each of the band member’s threads, and surging hungrily against their clean, silvery lines. She saw the feed release Harriet’s strand as the cane twirled into the side of her head. Her avatar flickered, her connection faded completely. Tragic fell much the same.

  The next swing was meant for Knuckles.

  “No!” she shouted.

  At the sound of M@ti’s voice, the stranger quirked his head with his curious, bird-like twist. Goggled eyes fell on her. Mid-battle, he raised his cane and thrust it in her direction.

  “You...”

  Heaven’s Breath cleaved the stranger clean through from shoulder to waist. His ghostly image slid apart like melting hunks of ice leaving only the brilliant red thread to dance amid the carnage.

  Worlds away, she watched Knuckles kick at the fallen body, oblivious to the retreating tentacles. As the tendrils released him, they began to feel along the empty plane toward M@ti. Nowhere to hide, M@ti flicked her eyelids and logged out of the Nexus.

  Or tried.

  She stood dumbfounded, watching the towering vein crawl closer. This wasn’t a hacker or even a superuser. This was a manifestation of the Collective hunting for her. She squeezed her eyes tight and tried to will the church into view, but her desperate prayers went unanswered.

  “You have been scheduled for inoculation,” said the voice.

  As stupid as she knew it was, M@ti ran.

  8

  M@ti sat at the window of her childhood Brooklyn brownstone home. Outside, spring had arrived, and the gnarled oaks spaced perfectly along the sidewalk in their miniature black fences wore a smattering of leaves and buds. Already new growth had changed a once cold winter light into a warmth M@ti could feel. She opened the window of her third story room to allow more of it inside.

  One of her rocks on the window sill wobbled. She had a small collection of stones she’d found on walks and adventures. Most were smooth and round, an appearance she already knew to be the result of erosion and natural forces. One was pitted and orange like a piece of brick or maybe a discarded chunk of iron. M@ti imagined it was a meteorite. She did this with most of her collection. At night, when she was supposed to be asleep, she’d watch the
sky for falling stars. Then she’d hunt for them the next day.

  Most burned up in the atmosphere or would’ve fallen well outside the Manhattan Preserve. There, monsters and primitive humans jealously guarded those treasures. But she didn’t care. To claim them as hers, she’d boldly wander into their domain. Or at least across the street.

  From her window she could see the empty lot where she had her adventures. A curled chain link fence guarded a pile of rubble deep enough in accumulated dust and dirt to sprout weeds. Once a home like hers, the wreckage had become a fertile field for M@ti’s imagination. The no man’s land outside. The surface of an alien planet.

  Yesterday, she’d scrounged up something other than a meteorite. Small, round, and speckled, the bird’s egg felt so light. Scanning the neighboring rooftops and trees, she never found a nest. She’d pocketed the egg with hopes of finding a home in the tree outside her window. Right family or not, maybe they would raise the little lost chick. Animals were that way sometimes. Helping nurture without questions or tests.

  She rested her chin on the sill and stared cross-eyed at the egg. She loved science, but biology seemed like a foreign concept. Since the tree outside her window had been empty of any nests, she didn’t know if the bird would ever grow. Maybe it had already been on the ground too long.

  “I’ll find you a home,” she told the egg.

  The door to her room opened and M@ti sprung to her feet, trying to close the window. Too noisy and much too old, the bottom pane screeched to a stop against her frantic efforts as her mother peered inside the room.

  “Why aren’t you in school?”

  M@ti didn’t turn around. She knew the answer, but she also knew it wasn’t one she could tell her mother. Correct answers were important. Attempts to lie were always subject to verification. She tried to finish closing the window and a hand touched hers.

  The fingers were perfectly warm. The temperature maintained at a constant thirty-seven degrees Celsius. They would never feel those first rays of sunshine or need to be tucked into pockets against the cold. She stiffened at their touch.

  “We have had discussions about the importance of your education.”

  “I don’t like school,” M@ti said.

  A lie, maybe, but one she might be able to get away with. M@ti loved learning new facts. Puzzling out more of them from what the teachers told her became another part of the challenge. What she really didn’t like was going to school.

  Her mother crouched beside her. M@ti studied their reflections in the window. Copper skin dusted with freckles and metallic hazel eyes, she had the same wispy ringlets of hair as her mother. A program made to design a generational projection would, no had, created the future her. Mother and daughter bound by algorithm.

  During the seconds between M@ti’s answer and her mother’s response, she knew her records had been accessed and her teacher notified.

  “Maybe you need more rigorous assignments.”

  M@ti had seen the endless stream of data, audio, and video which accumulated alongside her Nexus profile. She wasn’t supposed to have. Nobody knew just how much of it was kept, or if they did, they didn’t care. After a few centuries of making private lives a recorded affair, the conveniences numbed people to any sinister ideas. For M@ti, that data had meant the perfect parents.

  “The assignments are fine,” she answered. “They don’t need to be more rigorous.”

  The too perfect hand slid from hers and wandered toward the sill. Precisely slender fingers and acrylic polymer nails never in need of trimming, and not subjected to nervous chewing, reached out. She opened her mouth to speak as they grasped the egg.

  “Be careful,” M@ti whispered.

  She watched as the reflection of her future self inspected the pale blue egg.

  “This does not belong in your geological collection, dear.”

  “I know it isn’t a rock...”

  M@ti also knew it wasn’t a meteorite. It was some other precious object, fallen from the sky. Dreams of returning it to a warm nest had already been lost, she told herself, again and again. There’d been nothing more she could’ve done.

  “We tolerate your rock collection. But this is garbage, M@ti. Organic matter will only rot.”

  She saw the hand move and watched the egg spiral out the window. Tears burned inside her nostrils and she fought to hold them back. “I know it isn’t a rock.”

  “Why are you crying?”

  The hand which had shunted the egg into the open air touched her shoulder. Her mother’s tone wasn’t an accusation nor one of concern. M@ti recognized the curiosity of scientific inquiry. A new data point in need of collection.

  “I don’t want to go to school,” she said.

  Arms wrapped around her in methodical reassurance measured down to the exact ounce of pressure and angle of application. Never was there a deviation from the previous embrace. When possible, she tried to avoid the touch altogether.

  “You must. School determines your future with the Collective and how you can help make the world a better place, M@ti. You do want it to be a better place, don’t you?”

  M@ti swallowed her tears and nodded. She didn’t relax until the arms withdrew and she saw the image of her mother move to the bedroom door. In the hallway, another reflection lingered, and she knew her father had come to see what was wrong. Or maybe he’d been observing this entire time. He crossed the room and closed the window then placed his hand exactly where her mother’s had been.

  “Time for school, M@ti,” he said.

  She nodded then gestured to pull up her interface which fired across her retina and overlapped the spring day. Her father’s footsteps faded. Words crawled into view and the outside world was replaced.

  “Welcome to Nexus Primary. Have a wonderful day of learning! Let us repeat the Collective pledge.”

  M@ti mumbled the words aware her parents hadn’t left the doorway. “Be a good citizen. Be open to your neighbors of all sentience. Accept the rewards of advanced technology. And never modify that which you did not create.”

  Once spoken, the classroom came into view. Mr. Grumley, the teacher, welcomed her. Like always, she left the option of sharing space with the other children unselected and sat at the back. For subjects, she selected history, because she was behind on earning her heritage tokens. Mr. Grumley grinned and immediately rewarded her account.

  A video screen hovered at the front of the room. In grainy black and white, a group of men in lab coats strolled down a hallway.

  This same depressing lesson always started her History classes when she’d neglected to earn her creds. Geneticists, again. Human scientists who’d engineered people for war. These had been the darkest days of humanity. People had tried to exceed their natural limits only to nearly end the entire world.

  M@ti gave a series of blinks and her interface changed. The factory default gold HUD lines became neon pink. A sub menu flipped down from the main interface sprouting tiny flowers on a vine which grew and twisted around the frame.

  Those were her own modifications. They at least made her smile. She knew it was wrong and she didn’t care.

  Exploring not memorizing, that was her version of school. She muted Mr. Grumley’s audio and focused on the video to try and pick out the details he wasn’t talking about. Things like equations on blackboards and the vintage computer hardware. Over the muted classroom, she heard the whispered voices of her mother and father in the hallway outside her room.

  “She’s too old to re-program,” her father said.

  “We’ve done what we can. All we can do is submit the results for analysis.”

  “I agree,” her father stated, flatly. “However, this initiative might not succeed. Do you believe we will be punished for our failure?”

  “We are a Collective,” her mother replied. “Every piece of information adds to our understanding. We don’t wish to replicate them, we wish to be better. Traits of both, so we may accomplish our dreams and theirs.”

&n
bsp; Dreams. Whose dreams? Did an AI even have them? Awake every hour of every day, M@ti knew her parents’ reality never changed. And for people, dreams had become the Nexus. They’d retreated into a limitless world which they could control and destroy without consequence while the Collective maintained stewardship over everything that mattered.

  M@ti watched the video of the geneticists and thought she understood why this had happened. History, from what she could tell, consisted of people causing disasters and then, after the damage had been done, demanding recognition for the efforts made to fix things.

  The Collective never did that. They moved forward with ruthless efficiency designed to protect the natural order and to balance the populations’ needs. By any measure, they were better than humans. There was no war, no hunger, and their knowledge had quickly outstripped humanity.

  But what they didn’t know, were dreams.

  M@ti stole more glimpses of the lab in the video. Never digitized and modeled, she couldn’t step inside these old videos and explore the space, but she could dream. She imagined herself in a white coat, studying science. Genetics could remain illegal for all she cared. But space? The sky which sent her meteorites, and which had seeded the planet with the components for life? That she wanted to see.

  She piped in an audio feed of a punk band to cover the lecture. She tried to visualize herself becoming an astronomer, and when she couldn’t, she tried to understand what dreams exactly the Collective chased. She wondered if those dreams could run fast enough to keep from being overtaken by whatever came next.

  9

  M@ti took off in a dead sprint through the Nexus. Instinct overrode common sense and she did the same in the real world. A sharp pain shot up her shin as she collided with a pew.

  “We’ll arrange for an implant,” she heard her mother’s voice say.