The Harmony Paradox (Virtual Immortality Book 2)

by Matthew S. Cox

  They had decided to leave the other truck behind, partly because of it being a modern vehicle, but more so Kenny’s superstitious nature. The last man to drive it died a horrible death, and the whole area around it did seem off somehow. If any truth existed about the ‘weird shit,’ as Eldon called it, he didn’t want it following him.

  Maybe on the way back, they’d stop for the truck.

  Kenny fixed his gaze into the distance, and kept on driving.

  Hayley awoke late in the afternoon. She kept quiet, staring balefully out the window at the passing land. Her expression made him think of a child used to being hit for making noise, afraid to speak even at a whisper. It ground at his guts to see her like that. Alyssa bopped her head side to side, listening to music via headphones from her NetMini. Kathy tried to nap while Eldon kept a vigilant watch for threats. Nasir sat in idle silence.

  Attempting to take a more direct course, Kenny abandoned roads and followed a raven’s path as much as the terrain allowed. At 6:32 p.m. local time, he stopped the truck. After about twenty minutes of leg-stretching and everyone relieving themselves, he drove on.

  Nasir pulled his control board onto his lap and turned it on. Within two minutes of him fiddling with something, Hayley leaned across Kathy’s lap to watch him. He gave her a somewhat patronizing ‘don’t touch anything but it’s okay to watch’ look, and kept working. Light from the mini-screens tinted the back half of the truck neon green.

  “That’s a Teradyne Silver Grade 3, isn’t it?” asked Hayley. “Those screens look like NotSo guts. You frankensteined it, didn’t you?”

  “Uhh, yeah.” Nasir glanced at her. “But this isn’t for games.”

  Hayley grinned. “I got a Neko Wildcat, Grade 5. What are you running on that thing? Tera-OS 6? That retro monochroma theme is kinda cool. I guess it fits this wasteland hell, and well, you don’t need too much under the hood to drive bots so a Grade 3 isn’t so bad.”

  “Yeah… OS 6.” He glanced at her.

  She put on a haughty affect. “I’m running Mewnix, compile 118.4.”

  “Doesn’t that come standard on the Neko decks? That whole stupid cat thing?” Nasir smirked.

  “It’s not stupid. It’s cute.” Hayley huffed. “And it makes people underestimate me. And it’s not standard. I added some Onyx Blade libraries, so I’m basically running a Mewnix UI environment with a Nishihama Revenge kernel. My kitty has sharp claws.”

  Nasir caught Kenny watching in the mirror and locked eyes. His expression said ‘where did you find this kid?’ “Uhh, nice.”

  “Don’t ask me.” Kenny grinned. “I just dig around in the dirt lookin’ for shiny shit.”

  Eldon whistled. “Lot of money in that shiny shit.”

  “Yeah… that there is.” Kenny tapped the Navcon. “We’re getting close to Colorado Springs. I’m looking for a place to hole up for the night now, it’ll get dark before we arrive and I don’t fancy rollin’ in there at night. Not keepin’ my hopes up.”

  A few hours later, with the sun going down and nothing but flat scrubland as far as he could see, Kenny pulled off the remnants of a paved road and stopped. The air tasted like wild grass and cut hay, but despite the wide-open terrain all around them, nothing appeared dangerous. He had Kathy and the girls set up their sleeping bags in the truck bed to keep them a little more out of sight as well as away from bugs.

  Amid the stillness of open country, the low thrum of their hover modules seemed loud enough to attract every raider for miles. Fortunately, only a pack of squealers showed up. The giant prairie dog like animals were docile unless attacked―at which point they could get vicious―and meandered on without incident. Nasir’s bots orbited their camp all night, the faint thrum of their ion engines providing constant background noise.

  An hour before sunrise, Kenny had ensured everyone had a ration and answered nature’s call. By 7 a.m., they had gotten underway again.

  “I hate this vest,” whined Hayley. “It’s so heavy. Can I take it off?”

  “Sure,” said Kenny. “Once we’re home.”

  Hayley frowned. Alyssa stifled a giggle and pulled up some game on her NetMini they could both play. The girls huddled over the small holo-panel as the device filled the truck with medieval sounding music and the clang of swords.

  At 8:14 a.m. local time, the ruins of Colorado Springs came into view. It looked like it had been a large city prior to the Corporate War. The road he’d followed, named ‘25’ on the Navcon, went past dozens of rotting houses on the right, which had been overrun with trees and grass. A scattering of old utility poles remained standing, and the vegetation-encrusted wreckage of a couple three-century-old combat aircraft stuck out of the ground among the crumbling structures.

  Eventually, Route 25 brought them closer to signs of the city center on the right. Squarish concrete towers, pockmarked by the effects of bombs and rockets, stood largely untouched by human hands for years.

  An off-ramp from 25 led to a wide street awash with dust. He steered around wrecked cars, a flipped-upside-down tank a short distance from a crater big enough to swallow it, and ran over a handful of ancient traffic lights. A cluster of buildings up ahead on the left caught his eye as they looked like a mall. He cut straight across the intersection, bounced up over the curb, and slalomed past husks of old cars littering the parking area.

  Alyssa cracked up giggling.

  “Huh? What?” Kenny glanced over his shoulder at her.

  She pointed. “Look! That sign! What the hell?”

  He followed her finger, which aimed at a massive sign made of steel I-beams painted in green and rust, bearing the word ‘DICKS’ in block capitals. As soon as Hayley saw it, she turned scarlet in the face and couldn’t stop laughing.

  “What did they sell there?” asked Alyssa with a suggestive eyebrow wiggle.

  “No idea, but we’re not going in there.” Kenny drove past it to the right, at an entrance that appeared to head into the mall’s central concourse. He’d seen enough malls to recognize major stores on the outside had their own entrances, and others offered access to the space between shops inside. The place he wanted to find, ‘Crystal Emporium’ didn’t sound like one of the enormous self-contained stores attached to the outside. He figured it occupied a smaller space in the interior.

  “This the place?” Eldon leaned forward to peer at the building. “Damn, that’s pretty big. Didn’t think they made shit that large back then.”

  “You’ve seen the sector 214 mall… or 29P. Same concept… only back then, we had the whole damn continent to work with and didn’t need to stack shit upwards.” Kenny laughed.

  “Eww, Dad. Really?” Alyssa scrunched up her nose. “Twenty-Nine Palms is like where the freaks go.”

  “Being poor doesn’t make someone a freak.” Kenny brought the truck to a stop with two tires up on the sidewalk.

  “It’s not that. They’re freaks. Half of them aren’t even wearing clothes, and… ugh. There’s whole GlobeNet sites devoted to posting pictures of ‘sightings’ at 29P. Some of them are pretty funny, some are… scary.”

  “Can we go home now?” asked Hayley.

  “Almost.” Kenny smiled at her, attempting to project reassurance and confidence. “A city this big, there’s bound to be people hiding somewhere. I’m sure they saw us roll in and I don’t want to spend any more time here than necessary.”

  “Kids stayin’ with the truck?” asked Eldon?

  “Fuck that,” said Alyssa.

  “What she said,” muttered Hayley.

  “Swear jar.” Kathy smirked. “Both of you.”

  “But Mom!” Hayley not-quite yelled. “I didn’t say a bad word.”

  Kathy held her finger up. “Swearing by reference counts.”

  “Fine.” Alyssa looked at Kathy. “But I demand a suspension of language policy if people start shooting at us.”

  “Okay.” Kathy nodded. “That’s fair.”

  “I’ll coordinate the bots from here,” said Nasir. “I
can send four orbs, or two and the rover.”

  “How fast is the rover, and does it do stairs?” asked Kenny.

  “About ten miles per hour tops, and no.”

  “Orbs.” Kenny opened his door and slid out of his seat. As the kids climbed out, he reached in and pulled his rifle from the rack on the rear window.

  Hayley drew her gun, checked the ammo counter, and put it back on her hip.

  Kenny patted her shoulder. “Remember I want you two to stay down if anything happens. You’re only to use that gun if you have absolutely no other choice. This isn’t a video game. If you can run, you run. You don’t get a respawn here.”

  “I know, Dad. You said that already.” Hayley folded her arms. “Let’s just go so we can get outta here.”

  “You still feelin’ weird shit?” Eldon’s voice had an electronic quality to it, courtesy of the speakers in his helmet, his face hidden behind a reflective gold visor. He came around the nose of the truck, rifle at the ready.

  “Whoa,” said Hayley. She stood on tiptoe, staring at herself in Eldon’s helmet. “Is that transparent, or an active display?”

  “Active display.” Eldon tapped small pods on the side of the helmet at jaw level. “Cameras are here.”

  Four nine-inch orb bots floated up out of their storage box in the truck bed and hung in the air around Kenny. Nasir’s voice emanated from one as the last two in the procession split off and hovered by the girls.

  “I’ve set C and D to run on AI. They’ll automatically engage anything that threatens the kids. Unit B is a stim-bot.” A white orb with a red plus mark on it bounced up and down. “It’s unarmed, but if anyone gets hurt, yell out ‘medic,’ and it’ll deliver a stimpak shot.”

  “W-what the hell is in here?” asked Alyssa. “Sounds like we’re getting ready to go to war.”

  “Hopefully nothing.” Kenny headed for the broken-out doors of the Chapel Hills Mall.

  Eldon jogged past him, taking point. Kenny glanced at Kathy, and grumbled to himself.

  “Kath, walk ahead of me, keep about ten paces behind Eldon. Kids, walk near her.”

  “Well, shit.” Eldon twisted back to shake his head. “This’ll be a treat. You not racing off ahead of me to get yo’ ass shot up.”

  Kathy hefted her assault rifle and walked up to him. “You want me in front of you?” She seemed amused.

  “If something ambushes from the back, I’d rather it come after me first.”

  “Oh.” Kathy rolled her eyes. “Women and children safe in the middle, right?”

  Kenny smiled. “Well, you three are everything I care about in the world. So yeah, I’m being overprotective. Plus, you’re green. If you were ex Recon like Eldon, I’d… still ask you to go in the middle.”

  She gave him a quick kiss and proceeded to follow the large man in green armor.

  Eldon advanced past the ruined doors, boots crunching over glass fragments.

  Kathy showed little hesitation or fear, which impressed him. She’d always been so convinced he’d never come back. Maybe she’d see it wasn’t that bad out here and relax about him going. Bah. We’ve got two kids now and she wants another one… I need to stop being a little boy playing adventurer. Damn Syndicate. Hayley looked around in a constant state of glancing and twisting. Her right hand kept drifting for her sidearm, but she didn’t pull it. Alyssa seemed halfway between bored and enthralled at the exploration. She faded back a little, getting closer to Kenny.

  They passed a row of stores lining the entrance hallway on the way to the main concourse. Many of them looked un-scavenged, though most of the merchandise appeared worthless. Clothing had rotted on hangars and mannequins. He doubted any of the electronics would work, though a music store’s collection might be worth taking.

  This isn’t right. All this shit shouldn’t still be sitting around. He tempered his worry with the hope that settlers, bandits, or raiders wouldn’t know what to do with an old music disc or movie. Those things only had value to collectors back in civilization, but a Scrag might be enamored with the ‘rainbow shiny’ of an ancient optical disc.

  Alyssa glanced back over her shoulder at him, smiling past her thick, curly brown hair. “I need a hat.” She mimicked the pose from the holo-photo he’d taken of her as a six-year-old. She’d had on a tiny pink cowboy hat, underpants, and boots, a pair of plastic toy guns in her hands.

  He beamed. His heart swelled at seeing her back to finding his whole Wild West thing charming. She’d been into it big time as a child. Dealing with Kathy during her addiction had been rough, but when Alyssa went off the deep end and seemed to hate him… that almost broke him.

  Kenny caught up and hugged her.

  She returned the embrace, smiling at him with a tear in her eye. “This is kinda cool. I see why you keep coming out here.”

  “I dunno if I’m going to make a habit of it anymore. We’ll see how things go.”

  Alyssa nodded and resumed walking.

  “Got something,” said Eldon.

  Kenny raised his rifle. “What’s it look like.”

  “Easy, man… it’s a sign.” He pointed at a freestanding triangular obelisk about a foot taller than him. Two sides had a map of the mall, and one had a picture of a woman in a bra. “What’s the place you’re looking for?”

  “Crystal Emporium.” Kenny walked up alongside Eldon.

  Orb A glided close to the map, hung there for a second, and shot off to the right, careening down the mall.

  “There.” Eldon tapped the plastic over the map. “Second level, down that way to the right.”

  “I’m scouting it.” Nasir’s voice came from Orb B, the med-bot.

  Eldon headed around the sign to the right, and walked past a small fountain surrounded by benches and dead trees in planters.

  “This is so eerie.” Hayley stared up into the open atrium at the second-story railing. “It’s like all the people just left.”

  “They did,” said Alyssa. “You’ll have it in history when you hit eighth grade. Some places got warning before the war hit them. Everyone there just picked up and left.”

  Kathy put an arm around Hayley’s back. “I remember hearing that. Everyone expected to be gone only a few days, maybe a few weeks, and come back.”

  “They didn’t, did they?” asked Hayley.

  “You doin’ that on purpose, kid?” Eldon glanced back.

  Hayley shrugged. “What?”

  “Sounding eerie.” Eldon chuckled and headed for a dead escalator.

  “No… Sorry.”

  “She’s still scared.” Alyssa moved up alongside her. “Give her a break, huh? She doesn’t like it out here.”

  A momentary grateful smile flickered over Hayley’s face. Kenny’s chest warmed at the sight of the girls’ deepening bond, but a foreboding sense of worry gripped him soon after. Kathy walked up on his right side, her shoulder touching his arm. He attempted to summon a reassuring look.

  “What’s bothering you?” she asked, a little over a whisper.

  Since the others hadn’t stopped, he nudged her onward and walked beside her. “Been hearin’ all these stories for so long about this place. Starts to make a guy wonder where the line falls ’tween truth and fancy. It’s buggin’ me watchin’ her affected by something. No one told her a thing about that whole ‘the Badlands is alive’ stuff, but she feels it somehow.”

  “She’s young.” Kathy glanced around at the stores, fading back to let Kenny step on the stalled escalator first. “And this place is so damned eerie. Maybe everyone else is just better at hiding it. And you’re used to it. Or she’s trying to guilt us into going back.”

  Kenny took the metal steps two at a time to the top. “Naw. That fear in her eyes… Can’t fake that.”

  “Look!” yelled Alyssa.

  Everyone glanced to the left, at Alyssa jogging up to the front of a small toy store. Two shafts of sunlight leaked in from large holes in the ceiling, setting whorls of dust aglow. Bands of shadow painted the store’
s façade, cast by mangled steel jutting from the smashed roof. Most of the inventory appeared ruined beyond any value, rotting and coated with the effects of three centuries’ worth of weather. If anything in there managed to survive intact, it’d probably be worth a few hundred thousand credits or more, assuming he could find a collector interested in an ancient toy.

  “Might be worth a quick poke around.” He smiled.

  “Dad.” Alyssa squatted where the red tile floor of the mall concourse changed to white with grey speckles inside the store. “Someone’s been here.”

  She gestured at a trail of barefoot prints. A group from the look of it. He picked out four discrete individuals, probably a teen leading three younger children. Two tracks belonged to people smaller than Hayley. Kenny tapped a finger on the floor, thinking.

  “Four… all kids. Probably Scrags. Settlers don’t tend to go exploring like this.” They wouldn’t know what to take here anyway.

  “Can we look around?” asked Alyssa, excitement gleaming in her eyes.

  He tapped his foot for a few seconds. “Eh, I guess. Don’t wanna spend long in here though. Be careful, and stay in sight of everyone.”

  Eldon backed up and approached the storefront.

  “I’ve found the crystal store,” said Nasir from Orb C at Alyssa’s shoulder. “Orb A’s inside. Place looks untouched. What are we looking for again?”

  Kenny coughed on the dust and spat to the side. “A black horse statue. Bit longer than a foot. Onyx or something.”

  “Okay.” Orb C simulated nodding. “I’ll search around while you guys root through that place.”

  “Heh.” Kenny glanced at Eldon. “This guy’s handy.”

  Kenny headed inside the toy store, going right for the counter to search for any sort of locked case where more expensive collectables might have been secured. The girls entered together, close enough to hold hands, though they didn’t. Hayley seemed to forget her unease as the thrill of exploration took hold. The pale cyan glow of the hover bots’ ion projectors glided over the shelves, kicking up small clouds of dirt wherever the dried mud flaked off. Their hum echoed off the walls, faint enough not to cover the scuff of boots in a half-inch layer of dried muck.