Analog SFF, September 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Or what?” Jack and Brody asked simultaneously as Rostov paused.

  “Or will take form of Eagle Glider Mech II, like you! Or maybe will stay stupid glowing lights, I don't know!”

  “That's not good enough!” Ted shouted. “That's my nephew in there—”

  “Okay, cool down, Uncle Ted,” Brody said. “We'll find out soon enough. Right now, Jack and I need to keep moving.”

  * * * *

  Governor Cho wasn't happy, and listening to Ted wasn't improving her disposition. “That's enough,” she finally interrupted. Her voice dropped to an intense whisper. “Ted, you know I don't give vac about synth-space or mirror neurons! And why are all these people in the Pit? This is not the kind of publicity we want!”

  Ted let his sharp retort die on his tongue as Rostov, Drune, and Blatt approached. “Drawing quite the crowd,” Blatt said, gesturing at the bustling stands above. “Good.”

  “You think so?” Cho asked.

  “I'm more certain than ever, in light of Dr. Rostov's new theory.”

  “What new theory?” Ted demanded.

  “Please, Mr. Uncle Ted,” said Rostov. “Is hard putting in layman terms.”

  Ted glowered across the table. “Try,” he said.

  “Perhaps I might attempt to explain,” offered Helen.

  “Yeah, you've been a real font of useful information,” Ted muttered.

  “Yes, please,” said Cho, with a sidelong glance at Ted. “I'm very concerned about those two boys, as well as about our reputation, as you might expect. Word of what's going on here has reached Earth Authority. They're asking questions and beginning to make noises about intervention. I haven't much time and I lack specific education in these exotic corners of science, so please, make it simple.”

  “I'll do my best, honey,” Helen said. “First, you should understand that quantum physics has long dealt with the possibility of alternate universes. Many scientists now consider zero-point energy to be a sort of ether that runs through all of the universes. In fact, it was the idea that vacuum fluctuations might be a sort of gravitational bleed between universes that led cosmologists back to a reexamination of Maxwell's original equations, which in turn led to our improved understanding of ZPE. By now everyone knows that ZPE can be manipulated to affect localized gravity, and the energy we've been able to extract so far is just a drop in the bucket. Personally I believe we'll eventually be able to achieve over unity energy ratios—”

  “Excuse me,” interrupted Governor Cho. “What?”

  “You thinking maybe perpetual motion machine,” Rostov said. “But second law of thermo—”

  “Okay,” said Helen, with a sharp glance at Rostov. “That's an argument for another time. Moving on. This next part isn't really my field, but I'll try. Dr. Rostov has discovered that ZPE manipulation can be used to support a matrix of Zero Planck nanoticles. Think of them as gazillions of very tiny, very limited individual machines that can form a powerful microcomputer when assembled in a modulated ZPE field. Yuri's interface creates a game world within this system and transmits the players’ consciousness into nanoticle constructs. Of course, maintaining a nanoticle matrix that dense takes enormous energy, but the real genius of the method is that most of the energy is drawn from the ZPE field, where the energy supply is theoretically limitless.”

  “I'm sure that's all fine,” said Cho. “But are we approaching an explanation as to why we can't just end this thing?”

  Helen shot the woman a brittle smile. “Of course,” she said, “but I'll let Dr. Rostov explain. It's really his theory.”

  “Ah,” Rostov said. “Actually, perhaps Dr. Blatt is explaining, was his idea same as mine.”

  Blatt cleared his throat, taking a moment to straighten his tie. “Yes, of course. You see, I'm just not convinced that Brody's implants can account for the events we're seeing, though Dr. Rostov believes that his system's attempt to create a second construct for Brody might have paved the way for what's happening. But we all agree that the only explanation is that somehow someone else has accessed the matrix. Except that Dr. Rostov and Dr. Drune both assure me that that is impossible. That is, they say it is impossible from this universe.”

  He let his last words hang in the air as he studied Cho's face. The Governor did not look happy.

  * * * *

  The battle rolled helter skelter through the sprawling forest, leaving a chaotic maze of burning trees, shattered mechs, and charred earth in its wake. Brody and Jack continuously fled the main engagement, but always the combat pursued them. They were the prey, it seemed, with three sets of enemies dogging their heels, and the Vipers had an annoying habit of appearing out of thin air right in front of them.

  Brody continued firing as an energy bolt knocked Jack from his feet. “You all right?” he yelled. “Uncle Ted was right. These Vipers are more aggressive.”

  Jack swore. “Better aim, too,” he said as he climbed to his feet. “I've got serious damage. Let's keep moving.”

  The dense foliage melted away before their battered suits as they retreated, and soon they found the air growing heavy with smoke. Brody cursed. “In this stuff, they could be anywhere. How's your recharge?”

  “Getting there. C'mon.”

  Their slow, zigzag retreat led them through thick underbrush and at last into a small, open tract. At the center of the clearing stood a tall, red-tinged phantom, swiveling at the waist to face them.

  “Brody, get down!” Jack yelled as the phantom's plasma cannon spat. A rippling orb slammed into Jack, hurling him backward into Brody. The two fell in a heap.

  “I can't move!” Jack cried. “My suit's froze! Damage overload!”

  Brody hurried to extract himself from the tangle, but as he turned, still on his knees, he found the phantom already looming above him. He knew the short-range lasers it was bringing to bear would slice through his armor like a hot blade through ice cream, but he raised his arm to return fire nonetheless, even as two blood-red Vipers stepped into view at the tree line.

  “Fire in the hole, Bro!” shouted Jack.

  Brody shifted all energy to shields and leapt away as a massive sonic pulse rippled through the air. He was flung upward, arcing skyward to land in a crash of splintering trees. The phantom and Vipers fared worse, the phantom shattering in the wave front and the Vipers falling prone, stunned by the dissipated pulse.

  Brody climbed to his feet, attention lights flashing. He looked down at the remains of Jack's ruined mech. He'd recognized his partner's kamikaze warning just in time, a moment before Jack had directed all remaining power into one last, desperate assault.

  Brody turned a vengeful eye toward the two Vipers struggling to rise nearby. “Jack is dead,” he reported icily as he started forward.

  “He's fine, Brody,” Ted said. “They're pulling him from the iso now. But we've got other problems.”

  Brody directed all remaining weapons energy to pulse cannons, firing again and again until the trees were awash in flames and the two Vipers were glowing fragments. It was overkill, he knew, but it sure felt good. He took a deep breath. “What other problems?”

  “Computers are going crazy. We're not sure if it's connected to Jack's suicide, but we won't be able to send him back in. And there's an EA colonel here. He's demanding we shut down. Governor Cho is stalling him, but I'm worried they may try to seize the Pit.”

  Brody turned at the sound of machinegun fire, then started forward at a run, ignoring the damage readouts that blinked like a Christmas tree on his reader. A grim expression on his face, he tore past skeletal trees, arriving at the rim of a shallow clearing just in time to see the first of two Vipers crumple to the ground under a barrage of lasers.

  Turning toward the source of the assault, Brody saw three phantoms, looking as if they had been carved from crystal and spitting beams of blue-white fire. Their combined assault was more than the remaining Viper could withstand. It exploded, raining shards of twisted metal across the lush, green grass.

>   Brody quickly scanned power levels, learning nothing new: shielding was almost exhausted, and he lacked the reserve to power a weapon. At such low levels, his only sane option was to run, but Brody was tired of running. He took a step forward as the phantoms turned to face him, but stopped dead in his tracks when they began to speak, their words clear in his headset.

  “Brody,” said three voices in unison. “You are Brody Bridges.”

  Then the world blinked.

  * * * *

  Tree limbs, leaf covered and impossibly long, jutted from rock outcroppings to span the Pit at various heights and angles, and to Brody it seemed no inch of space around him was unoccupied. Scores of crystalline birds, large, small, and in between, some pure white and others tinged with red, perched on every nearby limb and ledge, above and below.

  Brody recalled a version of this scenario from his playing days, but there were many big differences—and one enormous one: He had not assumed the form of an Eagle Glider Mech II. Instead, he had become a very large and utterly non-mechanized bald eagle.

  He had no data screen. There was no radio. Nor, he realized, did he have a human voice to use one. And yet, to Brody, it was an unimaginable thrill. He'd studied all about birds. He knew their tibio-tarsal articulations and mantles, their wingspans and metabolic rates, but all of that meant nothing compared to actually being a bird.

  Still, he realized he wasn't really a bird. For one thing, his vision was normal, not the telescopic perspective he would have expected from an eagle. This was a construct, just like his mech suit had been, and while this suit was far more bizarre, it was not entirely unfamiliar. Slowly he found himself settling into the raptor suit's sensorium.

  In many ways, it wasn't unlike accessing standard data feeds, except that he didn't read the output, he felt it. When he thought about viewing the status screen, he experienced a feeling of strength and fitness, a desire to be in motion. And when he asked for a battlefield schematic, he got a sense of exactly where he was and how every nearby limb was positioned.

  He was perched on a broad branch in an insane crystalline aviary, surrounded by hundreds of twittering, squawking birds, each as unique as an ice sculpture. From nearby, a ruby red pterodactyl cast a baleful eye on him, and somewhat farther away what looked like a large dragon, glowing white, spat fire as it bayed.

  As if in response to some unheard signal, the entire flock took wing, and Brody suddenly found himself under attack. Sharp talons tore at his feathered flesh as red-hued attackers swooped down on him. Leaping upward, he slashed back at his attackers with razor-sharp claws, but he could see it was no good. He was greatly outnumbered, taking two blows for every one he delivered, and despite his generally greater size, his body was all too vulnerable, and his counterattacks had little apparent effect on the phantoms’ glassy hides.

  As hope faded, a flurry of screeching white birds dropped into the fray, talons slashing. Some swarmed around Brody as others rammed themselves into the red phantoms, seizing them in their claws and dragging them downward and out of sight. Brody found himself encircled by protectors who seemed dedicated to repelling all attackers, including the single, ill-fated trainer mech that flew mindlessly into destruction.

  As Brody collected himself, he became increasingly aware of an enigmatic coherence in the birdsong that filled his ears. Gradually, he began to draw meaning from the cacophonous screeches, whistles, and clacks. He realized that he could understand more if he focused on listening to different songs together, and that the more songs he could bring into his ken, the more meaning he could glean.

  He soared upward as the battle raged in the space around him, and at the same time he climbed a ladder of comprehension as he drank in the overlapping songs, growing ever more amazed as understanding dawned. What he was hearing—what they were asking—seemed impossible. Yet, in another way, nothing seemed impossible anymore. And as he considered their offer, it began to make an odd kind of sense to Brody.

  He'd been in a state of limbo, he admitted to himself, ever since the accident. He was a tragic hero in Luna C, made all the more tragic by the looneys’ well-meant pity. He'd had such big dreams! How had he ever convinced himself he could be happy spending his days in the charity job Uncle Ted had arranged for him? Now, amazingly, he was being offered a chance to reclaim his life—albeit in a most unusual way.

  He opened his beak to speak, and while the sound that emerged was a wholly nonhuman squawk, he had no doubt that his meaning was crystal clear.

  * * * *

  “What the hell is going on!” Governor Cho demanded loudly enough to be heard over the deafening birdsong. “Can't we at least turn them down?”

  “No, is no controls!” Rostov shouted back. “Is all wire hay!”

  “Governor!” Ted shouted, his finger on his earphone. “I'm getting calls from all over the hotel reporting computer malfunctions! This could be citywide!”

  “Ted, get the EMTs ready!” Cho ordered. “As soon as they're in place, I'm pulling the plug!”

  “Wait a second!” Helen shouted. “Listen to the birdsong!”

  “Birdsong!” Ted spat. “Are you—?”

  “No, wait!” shouted Blatt. “She's right! Do you hear? Those are words! Hear? You have to listen to the different songs together!”

  Ted looked up into the vast hologram, finding it hard to believe his eyes or ears. So many birds, all made of glass—how could it be? But as he concentrated on the bedlam of their combined songs, he began to detect in the blend snippets of recognizable sound, like words heard through a chattering crowd.

  “Yes!” he shouted. “I hear it, don't you? Oh my god, they're saying ‘Brody!'”

  The crowd was also picking up on the recurring word, and soon they were echoing the birdsong in a roaring chant. “Bro-Dee! Bro-Dee!”

  “Listen to them!” Jack cried.

  “It's too late!” Cho shouted. “I have the whole colony to consider! Ted, get your medics ready! Dr. Rostov, prepare to shut off the power!”

  “Bro-dee! Bro-dee!” the crowd chanted.

  “You gonna pull the plug on that?” Ted shouted, gesturing upward. “They'll riot if you do!”

  “Hotel security is your concern!” Cho shouted back. “Ted, I have no choice!”

  Ted frowned but hurried toward the medics waiting near the iso-booths. A moment later, Cho turned to Rostov. “Doctor, the order is given! Shut it down!”

  Absolute darkness descended as Rostov threw a switch, and the chant of “Bro-dee!” quickly gave way to a confused susurration that threatened to become an angry roar. The audience turned its attention to the flat screens that showed medics hurrying to extract Brody from the iso-booth on the stadium floor.

  Jack pushed his way forward. “Where's Brody?” he demanded.

  “They're bringing him out now,” Ted said, close to tears. “He's not breathing.”

  The two men watched as Brody was lowered onto a gurney. A medic leaned over him, injecting something into his throat. “There's no reaction,” she said with maddening calm as she shoved Ted aside and began CPR.

  Another medic rushed forward to insert a trachea tube as the first medic continued pumping Brody's chest. The thousands ringing the walls above watched in silence broken only by the frequent sob and expletive. Then, slowly, the chant began to build once more.

  “Bro-dee! Bro-dee!”

  “Is he going to be okay?” Ted demanded, as an EMT attached a pacemaker to Brody's chest.

  Blatt took hold of Ted's arm. “Let them do their job, Ted,” he said, pulling him away. “But I feel I should warn you. I'm afraid it doesn't look good.”

  “Oh no,” Ted said weakly, tears rolling from his eyes. “Oh no.”

  * * * *

  There was an explosion of light, and a symphony of screams pierced the air. As the initial brilliance faded, a vast column of light remained glowing in the center of the Pit. Shadowy figures darted through shafts of shifting light, and the air was filled with the sound of atonally
musical birdsong growing in volume. Then, one by one, small crystalline birds began to emerge from the hologram. Soon, feathery flurries of white light flitted throughout the stadium.

  As the view into the new hologram continued to clear, it revealed a beautiful, sun-filled meadow. At its center was Brody Bridges, standing enormously tall in the midst of an avian tornado. He smiled as he glanced about.

  “Did you do this?” Cho demanded, facing Rostov.

  “No, system is off! Is not us!”

  Brody laughed. “Don't worry, they're not here to hurt you,” he said as the crowd ducked and swatted at the ethereal flocks that flew about their heads. “They're just trying to make a point. They want you to know they're real; that they're not a game to be turned on and off.”

  Slowly the birds began to light, some on railings, others on the shoulders and heads of nervously laughing people.

  “I can explain,” said Brody, his voice carrying clearly throughout the coliseum. “At least, maybe I can.” He looked down, as if at his own feet. “Hi, Jack, Uncle Ted,” he said. “I don't see me down there. I guess I didn't make it, huh?”

  “You're, uh, on life support,” Jack said.

  “You can see us?” asked Rostov. “That's impossible!”

  “Ah, Dr. Rostov,” said Brody. “After today, you're going to need to rethink that word ‘impossible.’ Where to begin? It turns out the alien theory is correct, or almost. The guardians—that's what they say to call them—exist in a world between universes.”

  “That's impossible!” Helen said. “Life could never evolve in that stuff!”

  “You're right,” Brody said. “The guardians were built to live here. They're made up of nanoticles very much like those you and Dr. Rostov use, although they're much more complex. Mostly, they traffic in information across the known universes. They discovered us when Dr. Rostov's system tried to create a second mech-suit for me. Somehow this opened a door and announced our existence to the multiverse. Fortunately, the guardians are peaceful.”