The Softwire: Awakening on Orbis 4

by P. J. Haarsma

  “Don’t get your uplink in a tangle. I’m not going to do anything. But that’s why we haven’t gotten the warmest reception around here. All these other Space Jumpers evolved this ability. It made them exceptional on whatever planet they came from. You and I, on the other hand, were tinkered with. They needed the process speeded up so baby-malf could be the Scion. Humans were their last hope.”

  “Don’t call her that.”

  “Sorry. Old habits.”

  “So that’s what they meant by calling us psuedos?”

  “Yep.”

  “What about this popper thing I keep hearing?”

  “Even I can figure that one out. It’s because you were popping in out of space and time when you were getting angry. And you were doing it without a belt. No one else can do that, by the way.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “I think it makes them a little jealous. We can’t jump without a belt.”

  “We?” I said.

  “Us softwires. I’m one of you now, my friend!”

  Switzer punched me in the shoulder and laughed out loud. I couldn’t believe how much he was enjoying this. I had spent my entire life hiding my softwire ability, and he was wearing it like some sort of medal. I couldn’t even imagine acting like that. I wondered if the other Space Jumpers were stuffed with this much pride about their condition.

  Switzer flopped onto his sleeper, still smiling.

  “What are you thinking about?” I asked.

  “The future,” he replied.

  “What about it?”

  “How great it’s going to be!”

  As I lay in my sleeper, waiting to sleep, I tried to see Switzer’s point of view, but it was impossible. Being a softwire was not something I looked at with such optimism. As a kid, my abilities had only garnered me ridicule and shame, but when I thought about it, Max was excited when my abilities were first discovered. It was just the Space Jumper part she didn’t like. And I had promised her I wouldn’t become one. So much for keeping my promise.

  Insomnia. A side effect from the tablets that I kept popping despite Quirin’s instructions. While Switzer snored in his sleeper, I lay in mine, staring at the darkened lid. It was no use. I wasn’t going to fall asleep. I pushed the lid back and sat up. I was really missing Max. I wanted to know what she was doing, and the same with Theodore and Ketheria. I pulled on my clothes and headed for the observation deck.

  Someone else was sitting there when I arrived. It was a Honock. He turned and looked at me when I entered.

  “You bad!” he hissed.

  I remembered that voice.

  “Hey, I know you.” It was the same voice I heard the first time I was taken to the Hollow, when I had popped during the Chancellor’s Challenge on Orbis 3. This Honock was the one outside my room. “What’s your name?”

  The Honock stood up and moved away from me. “You bad,” he repeated.

  “No, I’m not. My name is JT. What’s yours?”

  He didn’t reply. His back was against the glass, and he was sidling along it back toward the entrance. I didn’t push him. I kept my distance.

  “I’m not bad. Why do you keep saying that?”

  He pointed at my waist. “You bad.”

  “What?” I said, patting my waist. “I’m bad because I don’t have a Space Jumper’s belt? Why would that make me bad?”

  “You bad!” he yelled, and bolted for the door.

  “Wait! Tell me why!” But the Honock was gone. At first I thought about following him. It made me wonder if Honocks even slept. How much of them were machine, anyway? Instead of following him, I sat near the glass and looked out at the stars. “Where are you, Max?” I whispered. “I miss you.”

  The next cycle, I was forced to endure Switzer’s whistling as he strutted around the room, getting ready for the cycle’s training. I allowed myself to take pride in the fact that he wouldn’t be feeling this way if I had not gotten him out of that hole and brought him to the Hollow. Despite the rotations of abuse I’d taken from Switzer when we were kids, and even later when he was a wormhole pirate, I could see that he was a completely different person now. Secretly, I took a little credit for his change.

  I started my cycle with a visit to Brine Amar, who asked me if I could help him fix his O-dat. I had to use my softwire ability again, and I started to wonder if the Nagool only thought of me as his own little handyman. Where was the connection to the Source? Where was the guidance? At least he was extremely thankful, and I liked using my softwire to help people, for a change.

  Once at Quirin’s, I uploaded more files — simulated experience memories, or SEMs, as he called them. This cycle, I learned how to pilot a shuttle that I had never even been on. Now, that was definitely something I would like to try. I could only imagine how much fun Switzer was having.

  During mealtime, I caught myself thinking about Max again, as well as Ketheria. Switzer was knee-deep in friends now, and even I began to feel a little camaraderie with everyone sitting at our table. But enjoying myself made me feel guilty for not knowing what was happening down on the rings. I wished there was some way to contact my friends, but when I had mentioned this to Quirin, he’d quickly shut me down, saying it was out of the question.

  During the sleep spokes, I often found myself back in the observation deck. This routine continued for many cycles, but the Honock never showed again. I did spot him once, working behind the food wall, but he acted as if he didn’t know me. I don’t know why the Honocks interested me so much. Maybe I saw them as knudniks and felt some sort of connection to them.

  “You look like crap,” Switzer said to me one cycle as he was headed out our door.

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “No, I mean it. When was the last time you slept?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Are you still popping those pills?”

  “Yeah, aren’t you?”

  “No. I’m fighting it,” he replied, but I found that hard to believe. The headaches, the nausea, it was too much to endure this far away from Ketheria.

  “How?” I asked.

  “I just am. It’s not as hard as you think. You have to put the pain to the back of your mind and focus on something else.”

  Switzer would have made a better Tonat, I told myself. “I can’t,” I said. “I’ve tried.”

  “Well, try harder. You think you’re going to be able find a lifetime supply of those things when we’re done? What if you get stationed in another galaxy?”

  “What do you mean stationed in another galaxy? Who told you this? I’m going back to the Rings of Orbis. I’m supposed to be protecting Ketheria. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Switzer had stopped at the door, but now he walked back to my sleeper. “Give it up,” he growled. “This is your life now. You are an instrument of the Trust, a protector for the Ancients. You have a far greater purpose than all the split-screens on Orbis combined.” Then he left.

  Switzer definitely would have made a better Tonat.

  The next cycle was the first phase of our physical training. Using the Quest-Nest arena at the most physically demanding settings I had ever seen, a team of seasoned Space Jumpers ran us through coordination, endurance, flexibility, and strength drills. And then we did it again. The playing field had been replaced with what was mostly an obstacle course, which re-formed on me when I was too slow. With each run at the course, the computer would slip in new elements that required the use of another SEM, usually one that I had uplinked in a previous session with Quirin. The Space Jumpers had us take single turns, as well as switching out partners, using Gora, Switzer, and one of the trainers. We were often in pairs.

  “Do Space Jumpers always work as pairs when they are on missions?” I asked the instructor, a big militarized Space Jumper.

  “Concentrate on the now, popper. You’re in no condition to be thinking about a mission,” he barked.

  So much for camaraderie, I thought.

  Whenever Switzer was asked
to “run the Nest,” as he began to call it, he didn’t just walk up to it; he attacked it. Each obstacle was something else for him to conquer. I had to admire how good he was at it. He even completed one run ahead of the trainer. Not something he let slip by, either.

  “You should have used that immobility cube on those spheres near the end. I find it acts as an adhesive on inanimate objects,” he boasted.

  The trainer did not snap at him. In fact, he seemed to be absorbing what Switzer was telling him. I often saw them discussing a move Switzer had tried or an unorthodox manner in which he employed his weapon.

  “You were made for this,” I said to him once at mealtime.

  “Technically, I was,” he said, his mouth full of something green. “But my experiences as Captain Ceesar taught me to be resourceful. I have to think it’s going to get a lot harder than this if we are to live up to the Space Jumpers’ reputation.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. Switzer stuffed something with a tentacle into his mouth. I guess being a wormhole pirate had also broadened his appetite.

  “Out there, in the real universe, these guys are gods,” Switzer whispered. “On some planets, the mere mention of a Space Jumper can send an enemy scurrying for cover. I just thought it would be a little tougher.”

  “Or maybe you’re just that good,” I told him.

  “Hey, don’t worry — you’re going to get better.”

  “I don’t need your pity, thanks.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. Look, what are you now, seventeen? I have ten, maybe fifteen years’ experience on you. That’s all. How can anyone expect to be good at this right off the launch? That’s what the training’s for. I’m sure you’re much better than me when you’re using that thing in your head and jumping around computers and stuff. I’m still grasping working the interfaces on O-dats.”

  “You really like this life, don’t you?”

  “It’s better than what I used to do.”

  We finished our meal in silence. We were both exhausted and sore. It even hurt to stand up. As I limped back to our room, I hoped I might get some sleep, but it did not come. I lay in my sleeper, thinking about what Switzer had said, about the reputation of Space Jumpers elsewhere in the universe. I thought about how they were feared. Max had heard those stories as well. I’m sure a lot of people on the rings shared the same sentiment. I wondered if Max would ever take me back now.

  Over the next few cycles, I watched Switzer begin to dominate the trainers during the Quest-Nest drills. I then decided that instead of sitting there and grumbling about it, I would watch him and learn. Switzer was good, often combining two movements at once. But when I tried to repeat the task, it was simply impossible for me.

  “Don’t give up!” he encouraged me.

  And I didn’t. Whenever I trained with him, I stayed close, trying to reenact his movements even if it resulted in a painful drop to the floor or being blindsided by a moving obstacle.

  Despite my exhaustion, I still wasn’t sleeping.

  One spoke, I caught another Honock in the observation deck. This one did not resort to calling me bad, but he was still afraid of me. I wondered if they had always been afraid. Had this individual almost been killed by a Space Jumper, only to be reincarnated as a machine and forced to live among us? How horrible would that be? No wonder he thought I was bad.

  “Do the Honocks ever ask to go home?” I asked Brine Amar during one session.

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “I’ve seen them in the observation deck, looking out at the stars, almost as if they were reminiscing about something. I thought they might be thinking about their former lives.”

  “Honocks are not designed that way. Yes, some of their personality is maintained, but you really must think of them as machines, just as you would a cart-bot or an android.”

  Before I left, though, he made the oddest request.

  “Could you do me a favor?” he asked. “Would you play in a match of Quest-Nest with Randall Switzer? I would enjoy that very much.”

  “Me? I guess. Sure, why not? Whom will we play against?”

  “No, I want you to play against Randall Switzer. You will use one of your instructors as your partner.”

  “Against him?”

  “Yes. Do you mind?”

  “Um, no. I guess not.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  Instead of training this spoke, it appeared I was going to enter the labyrinth and play against Switzer. When I arrived, Switzer was already waiting, as were most of the other Space Jumpers I had seen in the Hollow.

  “Just like old times,” he said.

  “You know?”

  “Yeah, my guy asked me to play you.”

  “Mine, too. Don’t you think that’s weird? I mean everyone in the Hollow is here.”

  “Why should I? I’m looking forward to watching you lose.”

  Switzer yanked the helmet over his head and launched into the labyrinth. One of my trainers walked up and asked, “You want to be the bait or the tracker?”

  “Tracker,” I said under my breath, and pulled a helmet off the wall.

  The labyrinth on the Hollow was different from the one I had been using on the Rings of Orbis, in that it did not have a sort. I was glad that I did not have to think of a sort strategy to use against Switzer. I was comforted by the fact that I would not be floating in a vacuum while trying to navigate multidimensional mazes after the door opened. No, this match would be familiar to me. This would be just like on the Renaissance.

  Waiting for the computer to set, I felt the sudden urge to run. What if I was wrong? What if it was different here as well? But you’ve already been practicing here, I reminded myself. Concentrate! When the door peeled away, it was like stepping back onto the Renaissance. It was exactly the same! I sprinted along the curved purple walls and jumped over the blue lights embedded in channels on the floor. I knew the first obstacle of metal crates was just ahead to my right and the immobility cube would be waiting on the other side.

  I dragged the metal crate next to the other two and used it to hop up and over a half wall. I grabbed the immobility cube and then used the ladder I knew would be there to sidestep two more obstacles, just as I had done so many times before on the Renaissance. This is almost too easy, I thought. It was obvious to me now that Quirin had designed our Quest-Nest on the Renaissance. Didn’t they know I had played this version many, many times before? Was this some sort of trick? It certainly must have been boring for Brine Amar to watch.

  I was ready for the four frontier pilots hiding in the deep trenches past the next doorway. An additional immobility cube and a plasma rifle took them down before they even started to scream. I ran across the darkened room, past a sparking electrical circuit that provided the only light. I was about to run through the doorway when I stopped.

  The door was on the wrong side of the room. It should have been on the left, but it was on the right, on the other side of a snaking electrical wire that was torn loose from the wall. I wouldn’t even have even thought about it if everything hadn’t been so exact up until this point, right down to the color of the lights and scars on the walls. It was a complete reenactment of the Renaissance.

  Except for this door.

  I approached the door and saw that it was slightly open, as if someone had tried to open it but it had jammed. Had Switzer already been here and messed with the door to slow me down? I searched for some sort of control panel near the door, but there was none. I peered through the crack and saw a pink light flickering on the other side, so I figured this was the way to go. I even tried to pry it open with the butt of my fedaado blade, but the door was stuck.

  I flexed my arm, used my softwire to adjust the torque and pain levels and then clobbered at the door with my right arm. The metal buckled, but I knew I was going to have to destroy the door to get through. I had to admire Switzer for jamming it like this. The delay was definitely going to set me back.

&n
bsp; I pounded on the door several times; each effort widened the crack a little more. When I peered through again, it was mostly black beyond except for the beams of pink light that crisscrossed the darkness. I figured it was coming from some light source on the wall. With one final lunge, I hammered at the door, and whatever had jammed it came loose. The door jerked to the right with such a jolt that I lost my footing and fell forward, through the opening.

  It was a hole.

  I was falling through the beams of pink lights that flicked on as I passed them. This is going to hurt, I thought, but I didn’t scream. Who would hear me, anyway?

  And then I hit water. Water isn’t as hard as concrete, but it still hurts. I felt my right leg jam up into my hip socket and the water crash in on my face.

  It was over. I had lost.

  I looked up through the tiny beams of pink light, waiting for the labyrinth to turn off. The water would drain away, and I would be left with my sore leg and my loser self. I had wanted to beat Switzer. I knew I didn’t have a chance, but I wanted to beat him.

  “Hey!” I called out when no one turned the maze off. “I’m down here. You win!”

  But the water was not draining. In fact, I noticed that the water level was creeping upward, swallowing the little beams of pink light as it rose. Soon there were just as many pink lights in the water as there were above me.

  Is this part of the match?

  When I floated up to the door that I had fallen through, some sort of force field swallowed the opening before the water could spill out. The well, or tunnel or whatever I had fallen into, was filling up.

  As I passed the broken door, I searched frantically for some sort of computer device. I knew I wasn’t supposed to use my softwire to aid myself in the game, but that was on Orbis. Everyone here was a softwire. Everyone was on equal ground. I searched the walls for something to push into, but I found nothing. What put up that force field? I wondered. Where was the computer that ran this thing, for that matter? Surely there must be something around here to manipulate, I thought.