by Isaac Hooke
He landed on a hard floor, the goo splattering all around him. He thrashed, coughing the fluid from his lungs, spitting the snot-tasting liquid from his mouth. He scooped the goo from his eye sockets, and he was able to open his lids for short spurts, though his eyes still burned, and he saw flashes of an iron hallway.
As his cough subsided, and the air flowed in and out of his lungs, he devoted more time to clearing the goo from his eyes. He blinked rapidly, letting the tears flow, and he was able to open the lids for longer and longer periods. His right eyelid had a bit of a painful tic, but he ignored it.
A rotating red light mounted near the pod bathed the scene alternately in shadow and light. He was lying on an iron grill. There was a siren sounding.
He forced himself to sit upright. A strange weight pressed into his gut.
He glanced down.
An umbilical cord was attached to his belly. Pulsating blue veins ran down its surface.
A sudden repugnance overcame him and he pulled frantically at the cord. Pain flashed through his insides, and he immediately let go of the thing. The opposite end was still buried somewhere inside the pod he'd emerged from, so he grabbed the cord in the middle and yanked. It slurped from the pod with a loud "pop." The placental end slapped his cheek, and he tossed the gory tissue away from his face in disgust.
He attempted to stand, but his feet refused to obey. His eyes were drawn to the scrawny limbs that made up his legs. His muscle had vanished. His legs were just skin stretched over bone, the knobby shape of his knee the only indication that these even were legs. His arms fared little better, thin pipes of skin and bone.
What had the Gate done to him?
He tried to access the power inside him, but the spark didn't exist anymore. It was as if that part of his mind had been snipped away.
He dragged himself along the iron grill that was the floor, using the gaps for purchase, the beacon lighting the way in swathes of red and black, the siren keening. The wasted muscles in his hands and arms screamed in constant protest, just as if he'd never used them his entire life. Inch-by-inch he crawled, like the lowest of worms, the umbilical cord dragging along behind him. He was careful not to put too much weight on the tender section of his belly where the cord was still attached.
The hallway was circular, and more pods lined either side. The vessels were slightly translucent, and he saw human forms floating in each, umbilical cords attached. Through the floor grill he perceived another level of pods. And above him, past the ceiling grill, still another level, with more pods.
Pods upon pods upon pods.
A doorway in the rightmost wall opened onto a massive room. He crawled forward, onto a balcony of sorts, and stared through the grill at the strange activity below. Mechanical monstrosities were at work, though at what they worked at he had no idea. They moved pincers to and fro above compartments that spilled long threads of different colors. Below them, the metal floor was blackened in several places, as though the area had suffered recent fire.
The siren wailed on.
There was a flash, and he heard a loud boom. The hall shook. He glanced upward. The ceiling was a dome made of glass, or so he thought, because he could see the night sky beyond. But this was not the night sky he was used to—a large, multicolored ball floated amid the stars, about the size of his fist when he held it at arm's-length. Amid the chaos of colors in that ball, he noticed a pattern near the lower right that was eerily similar to a human eye.
Another flash. Another boom. The floor shook, and cracks spidered across the glass dome.
"Warning," a female voice droned. "Decompression imminent. Warning. Decompression imminent."
He heard a whir behind him. One of those mechanical monstrosities had rolled onto the balcony from the hall he'd left. In place of legs it had treads. In place of arms, pincers. Its body was a barrel of steel. Its head looked similar to the hilt of a sword, with curved cross-guards and haft. Three glass disks stared back at him from the depths of that hilt, and a red light floated above the center disk.
The thing wrapped a set of pincers around his leg and dragged him back into the corridor. A door sealed shut behind him. The monstrosity hauled him through that hallway of pods. The world shook, and he heard a distant boom. The monstrosity turned into another room, and lifted him over a strange moving floor as if to dump him.
"Wait!" Hoodwink said.
The monstrosity paused.
"John Baker," Hoodwink said. He slurred the words, like someone who knew how to talk, but had never used his tongue and lips. "Son of Arrold Baker, 18 Market Street." What was that the dwarf had called his city? "9th section. John Baker. The Users want to help. Meet John Baker."
He thought he saw an iris in each of those three glass disks enlarge, as if the monstrosity considered his words, then its head tilted up once, and then down. A conscious expression of agreement? Or the mechanical equivalent of a nervous tic?
The monstrosity unceremoniously tossed him onto the middle of that sliding surface, then wheeled about and left.
This floor was soft compared to the previous one. And slightly pliable. His stomach tightened when he saw that he had company. But it wasn't the kind of company anyone would want. Two human bodies lay not far from him, pale bodies crimped in death. Burned.
His face felt suddenly hot. With his eyes, he followed the motion of the floor to its destination—a meat grinder.
He groped frantically along the rolling surface, pulling himself toward the edge.
But he had too much distance to cross, and too little time to cross it in.
The grinder took him, and the last thought he had through the death-pains was: I did it, Ari.
I did it.
He died with a smile on his face.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hoodwink awoke.
He floated in water.
He glanced down at his body.
Small particles passed in and out of his flesh. His hands were tentacles. His legs, suckers. His torso, a bell-shaped, glowing mass. He had a tail. Fleshy cords moored him in place.
Around him, other forms floated, secured in place by similar moorings to long, horizontal tubes. No matter where he looked, these glowing beings hung, giving light to the otherwise lightless waters. They were like living versions of the skeletal leviathans he'd seen in the desert, though they seemed much smaller to his five eyes.
A telepathic message voiced in his mind then, a rapid series of moans and clicks that he shouldn't have understood, but he did.
Welcome to the real world, Hoodwink.
He screamed.
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Ari sat by the frosty window, and sipped rosemary tea with shaking hands. She stared at the snow-covered street outside, and contemplated a life that was nearing its end.
She was only twenty-nine years old, though she looked ninety-nine. Vitra had ravaged her body, sucked away her youth, leaving a shriveled shell. Like all Users, she was destined to flare blindingly bright in life, only to burn out all too soon.
Ten years had passed since Hoodwink had gone. Somehow he'd gotten his message through. Somehow he'd passed the Forever Gate and communicated with the gols. He'd become legendary among the Users for it.
But the contact had proven disastrous. The gols used the opportunity to lay a trap, and almost every last User had died. Only Ari and Leader survived.
She was Leader now. In those ten years, she'd relaunched the group, and given everything she had to them. Body. Mind. Soul. For what? It hadn't mattered. She hadn't changed a thing. The world was still dying and there was nothing she could do about it. The snowstorms worsened, the cold became colder. More and more of the gols fell victim to the mind plague. And then there was The Drop, a relatively r
ecent phenomenon that involved human beings dropping dead for no apparent reason. Not just one at a time, mind, but hundreds throughout the city. Men, women and children. Young and old. It didn't matter who you were, or what you were doing, you weren't immune to The Drop. If you don't watch out, The Drop's going to get you. Don't do any wrong, or The Drop'll have ya. The Drop. The Drop. The Drop.
Society was falling apart. Despite her best efforts. Despite her attempts to seize power from Jeremy, the mayor. Jeremy. She'd had to leave him, seven years ago, when it became too obvious she was a User, and aging at a rate far faster than normal. Jeremy probably wasn't all that happy, given how much he'd paid to have the gols revise her against her will. Then again, he'd taken another wife soon after, so maybe he was glad Ari left. Glad to replace her with a young, beautiful wife.
Beauty. It'd been a curse, in her youth. Suitors had pursued her relentlessly, never granting her peace. Jeremy had protected her through it all, and only he won her heart in the end. He was—no, those were false memories. Just as most of her personality had been false, fashioned specifically for the marriage. Her knowledge of poetry, music, and painting. Her comprehension of politics, social intelligence, and manipulation. Her skills in the bedroom. She was programmed to be his perfect mate.
Only her political talents were still of some use. The remaining skills? Utter chaff. She had no piano to play. No canvas to paint. No one cared about her poetry. And no one would make love to her.
She was alone in this tiny shack of a house, which was a pittance compared to the luxury she was used to, and her only contact with the outside world was through the furtive missives sent to the New Users. That and the human nurse who visited once a day to bathe her and prepare her meals. Sometimes she confused him for Jeremy, and even addressed him "Mayor." The nurse always humored her, saying "yes Ari" to most everything she said. Because of that, occasionally she played tricks on him, or told him terrible swear words involving her most intimate body parts to see how he'd react, but the response was always the same. "Yes Ari."
She set down her cup angrily. Yes Ari. How she despised that patronizing nurse. Didn't he understand the power she wielded? Didn't he realize that she could vaporize him with a thought? She'd grown so vast in power these past ten years. She was one of the strongest Users, despite her outward appearance, and vitra literally stormed within her.
Her tea had grown cold. She allowed electricity to spark from her fingers, and instantly the liquid boiled. She took a tentative sip. Ah, much better. She remembered a time when hot tea scalded her tongue. These days it was the only thing she could drink—everything else felt cold. It was getting so very hard to keep warm at her age. So very hard.
But I'm not that old! a part of her shouted. All she had to do was look at the liver spots on her trembling hands. Oh yes you are.
A hurried knock came at the front door and she almost dropped the cup.
"I'm coming! I'm coming!" She crankily grabbed her cane, and steeled herself for what would come. She stood all at once, and flinched at the agony in her left knee. Something always hurt these days. Her left knee. Her right shoulder. Her lower back. She massaged electricity into the knee, and it helped, a little.
The knocking at the front door became more frantic.
"I said I was coming!" She began the long journey to the door. The shack was small, but so was her stride, and she crossed the room step by tiny step. She wondered who was bothering her this morning. The nurse wasn't scheduled to visit for another three hours.
She finally reached the door, and paused a moment, not at all looking forward to the cold that would come. The blasted fool outside the door knocked again, and she opened the door irritably.
A wave of frigid air assailed her. Damn this cold!
Shivering, she recognized Jackson, a messenger who'd joined the New Users a year ago. He was the highly-connected cousin of the mayor. A little on the dumb side.
"What is it?" Her breath misted. "Why have you come here in broad daylight? Were you followed?" She glanced at the snowy street behind him. There were only a few people about. Human.
"Leader Ari!" Jackson bowed excitedly.
"Yes yes." Ari waved a dismissive hand. "Spare me the formalities and answer the question damn you."
Jackson bounced on his heels rather exuberantly. "He's done it. He's really done it. He's crossed back!"
"Who's crossed back? Speak plainly, idiot!" Old age had made her a little crabby, she had to admit. That, and the irrepressible cold.
The man offered her an open journal.
Ari no longer noticed the man, nor the breath misting between them, nor even the cold. All of her attention was on that diary, which she recognized immediately. It was the diary that was twin to the one Hoodwink had taken with him, a diary rigged to instantly reflect any words written in his copy. It was the diary that was kept on display in the New User headquarters deep underground, reverently left open to the page of Hoodwink's last missive ten years ago. It was the diary she'd sat beside for weeks after he'd gone, futilely waiting for a message from her father, a message that never came.
Something new was written beneath the last entry, in Hoodwink's own handwriting. A single sentence:
Told you I'd come back.
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Acknowledgments
I'd like to thank the good folks at TwistedSciFi.com for their feedback on an early draft of this book.
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