The Dystopia Chronicles (Atopia Series Book 2)

by Matthew Mather

  The priest grabbed Bob’s arm. “We should go.”

  “We’re here for you,” the boy replied to Bob. He reached to hold Bob’s hand.

  Bob hadn’t dug into the structure of this world when they arrived. He’d been happy just to get out of his mind, but now he spun under the fabric of it—hundreds, no, thousands of children, all waiting to please. To pleasure. Bob shrugged off the priest, spinning to face him. “What is this?”

  “You wanted a world to escape into, and this was the only one firewalled off deep enough to be safe.”

  Bob clenched his jaw, veins popping out in his neck. “Go play with your friends,” he stuttered to the boy.

  He’d heard rumors of these worlds. It was disgusting. Even in a virtual body, he felt like he was going to vomit, his skin crawling as he watched the children returning to their game.

  “We need to go,” the priest whispered. “The transport had left already. We’re going to lose the connection to this world.”

  “And leave them here?”

  “This is the only world they know,” replied the priest. “They know no different.”

  Proxxids had emotions, if not much in the way of higher cognitive functioning. “We can’t leave them.”

  The priest looked into Bob’s eyes. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  He looked at the children, playing again, unaware. There was something he could do.

  They’d never know.

  “Help me,” said Bob to the priest. As the connection faded, Bob flexed his mind, reaching into the fabric of the world, down into its very core. Twisting, he began pulling it apart, ripping it out of the network. In the blink of an eye it ceased to exist, and so had the proxxids.

  But then so did their suffering.

  Or perhaps, so did Bob’s.

  8

  SID WATCHED THE spider-bots hovering overhead, darting between hanging orchids while they spooled out high-tensile microfilaments behind them. They were weaving the structure of a protective shell between blossoming boughs in a thicket of tea trees, sending down a rain of white petals as they quivered the branches. Sid turned to look at Zoraster, busy unpacking his rifle and gear that had arrived via a delivery drone.

  “You’re being quiet. Anything wrong?”

  “Wrong?” Zoraster grunted. “What could be wrong? I spent the worst years of my life fighting my way out of this place.” His huge nostrils flared. “And now I risk my life to get back in.”

  Sid swiveled the bot he was inhabiting to get a view down the valley. He could just see Allied headquarters in a straight line-of-sight from their perch on the opposite wall of a valley. Arunchal, sandwiched between China and India, was still a strikingly beautiful place despite the wars that had gripped it for decades. Its valleys were filled with a kaleidoscope of lush tropical forests that rose into the Himalayas.

  “Why did you volunteer to come, then?” Sid asked.

  “Because I know this place better than anyone.”

  An iridescent blue butterfly fluttered past Sid. “And because you believe this apocalypse stuff?”

  Throwing a bag of gear onto the ground, Zoraster shook his shaggy head. “Don’t you?” He didn’t look Sid’s bot in the eye. “All of that is human legend—you should try a mile in my shoes. Grillas have no past, no future, just a single generation damned into existence to fight a war we had no stake in. So excuse me if I don’t get shivers when a ghost story about the end of humanity comes up.”

  Sid didn’t say anything. For him, the Terra Novan’s background data was convincing. Mohesha had almost decoded the way the quasi-crystals worked. The technology was advanced, but not that much more. For Sid, it was an opportunity to analyze a new system.

  “You want to know why I’m here? What I believe in? Is that what you’re asking?” continued Zoraster. “I fight for my friends. The Terra Novans are the only ones who’ve given equal human rights to Grillas. They believe this is happening, and I believe in them. It’s as simple as that.”

  Sid nodded. He didn’t need to believe Tyrel or not. Soon Sid would be inside this nervenet thing and could find out what it was for himself.

  “Speaking of friends,” Zoraster added, “your friend Bob didn’t seem too friendly.”

  Sid had to agree. The Council meeting was the first and only time Sid had a chance to talk with Bob after they lost track of each other, but he’d been evasive. “Yeah, but that’s not like him. He’s usually the friendliest person you’ll ever meet.”

  “If you say so,” Zoraster grunted.

  “He is.” Sid buzzed his drone down to pick up the gun sight for Zoraster’s rifle. “Even as a stoned surfer, he was an inspiration, doing things nobody else could do, always talking to people. But I introduced you and Sibeal at that meeting, and barely a peep. Something happened to him in that desert.”

  Sid tried talking to Bob about what happened in New York, if he knew anything about the pssi weapon that was unleashed, if he was mad at Sid for the synthetic-K. Bob said he didn’t know anything. Sid asked about his escape across the desert, but Bob just mumbled about suffering and redemption. The only thing Bob said, after Tyrel dropped the bomb about the ancient nervenet, was, “Isn’t the White Rider the savior in the Apocalypse?”

  It was an odd comment, and one that worried Sid. Was Bob angry at him?

  “Your friend is fine.” Zoraster lifted his rifle onto a platform and began sighting down its barrel at Allied headquarters. “He just got a little knocked around. Not sure what he’s going to do when he gets to the Atopian perimeter.” Zoraster looked away from Allied headquarters and at Sid. “But then you’re Atopians. You must have a trick or two up your sleeve.”

  Only just. There was a worryingly thin list of options, especially when Jimmy probably knew they’d be coming at him. Sid nodded without conviction.

  Sid switched topics. “So Tyrel sent you to New York to get me?” He’d researched Zoraster since they met. In his way he was famous—he’d gone AWOL from Allied forces to rescue his mother, a non-uplifted gorilla, when she’d been scheduled for termination. He’d ended up seeking asylum in the African Union.

  “You and Bob, yeah, but I messed that up.” Zoraster laughed. “Sorry about roughing you up a little. Just wanted to see what made you tick.” His smile disappeared. “By some miracle Bob got through, but I’m not going to be counting on miracles this time.” He stared down the barrel of his rifle. It was a precision mass-driver.

  “Do you really think you can get into this nervenet? Infect it?”

  Sid nodded. “Yeah, I do. To start with we’ll just track the topology, try to pick up network traffic. Then maybe we can slow them down a little.”

  Zoraster laughed. “We might be able to slow them down.” He swiveled his head up to look into the sky, using one giant hand up to block the sun. Just at its edge, the comet’s tail was becoming visible again. “But that freight train is on its own schedule.”

  Sid switched into a simulated viewpoint a hundred million miles away in space to have a look. The comet had swung around the sun and was heading for Earth. The Comet Catcher mission still hadn’t figured out what was slowing the comet down more than it should be.

  “Do you really think that’s the plan?” The deceleration of the comet could just be violent out-gassing, and it was still only projected to swing just inside lunar orbit, but the problem was taking on ominous dimensions. “Not very elegant.”

  “Sometimes war isn’t elegant,” replied Zoraster. “Blunt trauma is my personal favorite. Simple and effective.”

  And more than one mass extinction in Earth’s past was blamed on comet impacts.

  Zoraster returned his gaze to the Allied headquarters. “Just one shot, that’s all I need.” He stared back down the rifle sight. “Payback time, you bastards.”

  I guess he was the right choice for this mission. “We’
re not killing anyone, right?” Sid confirmed. “Just injecting some of my hotwired smarticles.”

  “Not yet,” Zoraster replied, his voice somewhere between grim and enthusiastic.

  The idea was to suffuse trace quantities of nerve conduction particles into the target’s biological matrix that would start leaking data back to Terra Nova. They were going to literally infect the head of Allied Command, and watch to see if any unusual network traffic connected with the crystal nodes they collected. The rifle Zoraster was fondling would accelerate a tiny payload, less than the width of a human hair, which would penetrate the walls of the compound and disintegrate itself on impact with the target and release its content.

  “When you locate a Trojan infection, especially a virulent one like this”—Sid shared some more examples with Zoraster’s meta-cognition systems—“it’s best to isolate it, learn what it’s doing. If you just wipe it out, it’ll pop up somewhere else and be that much harder to find.”

  Zoraster assimilated Sid’s examples. He smiled. “But eventually we wipe it out, yes?”

  “I guess.” Sid shrugged. His job was just to get into the network.

  Overhead, the spider-bots were nearly finished. The tensile microfilaments bonded together, creating a gossamer shield that the optics and radio cloaking could spread across. Sid sighed with relief. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could maintain the reality filter in place, spoofing the sensors of the Allied base. He started withdrawing his agents.

  This whole time, he’d been listening to conversations inside headquarters, monitoring their movements. Sid switched to a visual overlay of the building, and the red outlines of people inside glowed within the three-dimensional frames of its walls.

  “You did a good job back there, kid.”

  This was surprising enough that Sid withdrew his primary subjective to stare at Zoraster. “Huh?”

  “On the drop down. I risked my team in the hands of some kid who’d only ever fought in gameworlds, but you did good.”

  Sid didn’t expect this. “Thanks.”

  “The second I saw you, I didn’t like you,” continued Zoraster, “but we’re friends now, right, kid?”

  “Right,” replied Sid.

  “Good, because I only risk my neck for friends.” Smiling, Zoraster pinged Sid to get the visual overlay for the building, and they both dove into the display. “That’s the target?”

  “Right.” Sid highlighted the senior Allied Commander.

  It was time.

  Zoraster nodded and accessed the control systems of the rifle. “Are we go?”

  Sid nodded.

  Sounding like a hammer hitting a steel plate, the rifle fired. Its projectile, little more than a thousandth of an inch in diameter, shot across the valley at a velocity of several thousands of yards a second to pierce the wall of the Allied compound building like a hot needle through butter. Several feet short of the target, it disintegrated, spraying its payload of neuro-active smarticles onto the target. The building intrusion was detected, the self-healing walls and glass of the building registering an impact at the same time as external sensors picked up the shockwave outdoors, but with no apparent damage and no detected anomalies within the building, the alert threshold was filed as a low priority. No alarm sounded.

  Exhaling with relief, Sid opened up the workspace designed to track the network activity. The display blinked then lit up like a fireworks show. “It’s working,” he whispered.

  9

  . . . TWO . . . THREE . . . FOUR . . .

  Time.

  . . . six . . . seven . . . eight . . .

  Time.

  . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .

  Time.

  Who am I? Vince, I’m Vince. Is this a game? No, it’s not a game. Was it all a dream? That we can’t be sure of. How can we be sure of anything?

  . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .

  Time.

  . . . six . . . seven . . . eight . . .

  Time. Time to take out the garbage.

  In his mind’s eye, Vince watched himself as a young boy, pulling trash bags out back of the old house on Bowen Street in Southie. It was dark, early November, and bitterly cold. “He needs to get a job!” his father shouted. “Don’t yell,” hissed his mother. “Vince doesn’t fit in here, you know how he is . . .”

  Vince dropped the bags on the street and leaned against the red brick wall in the shadows of the streetlights, lighting up a cigarette. It was only a few miles, yet an impossible distance, from there to the halls of MIT, a distance that would forever separate him from his father.

  Looking up at the window, listening to them arguing, he yearned for the warm yellow glow of home.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  Nobody cares for you, sang a voice in his head. Nobody is waiting for you. This life was wasted, wasted on something that doesn’t exist. The future is a ghost, Vincent . . .

  Colors washed in front of his eyes: greens, golds, shimmering reflections like God’s oysters falling open before his eyes, spilling pearly tears. I wish I could close my eyes. Or open them. Please make this stop.

  . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .

  Please.

  . . . six . . . seven . . . eight . . .

  Stop.

  “TICK TOCK, SAID the Ticktock man.”

  “Is someone there?”

  No response.

  I’m suffocating. Drowning in nothingness.

  “Tick . . .”

  “Please, is someone there?” Vince said again.

  “. . . tock.”

  “Tick tock, tick tock, you are the man of time, are you not, Mr. Indigo?” the voice said. “Or perhaps, the man out of time.” The voice laughed.

  “Sensory deprivation is banned,” Vince whispered, “by all international treaties.” He couldn’t hear his own voice, but he knew he was talking.

  “You’ll have to take that up with the courts when you get out.” The words flashed in his vision, a bright green that faded like the strobe of a flash. “Of course, that’s if you remember, and you won’t, because your memories are classified now. Allied property. You understand?”

  It was indescribable relief to have something to focus on. “Yes,” Vince replied.

  “Good.”

  A soothing blackness fell across Vince’s senses, the frayed edges of his mind curling together.

  “Is that better?” said the voice.

  “Yes.”

  The blackness fell away, replaced by the nothingness of the void. Vince felt himself falling.

  “Tell us about the garbage,” demanded the voice.

  Calm, Vince told himself, you know the game. They wanted to access his memories, but they needed to understand the structure. His externally stored data used compression keys tuned to his earliest memories, ones that existed only inside of his gray matter. Ones only his own mind could extract.

  “Yes, you know the game,” said the voice, “so give us what we want.”

  They could hear him thinking. There was no escape. Think nothing.

  “Try thinking nothing of this,” said the voice.

  And then came the pain. His body was on fire, his skin stripping away in molten chunks. He screamed. And then nothing.

  “It leaves no marks, no trace, and no memories,” menaced the voice. “You can cooperate or not, rot in this hole of your mind. It makes no difference to us.”

  “I will only talk to Colonel Kramer,” stuttered Vince, his nerves stinging, his mind a point of nothing in a nothingness space.

  “You are in no position to make demands. Tell us about the garbage.”

  Vince had to give them something. “It was the moment I decided I needed to leave home.”

  The soothing blackness returned.

  “See, that wasn’t so
hard, was it?” In the background he sensed them using this reference point to begin unpacking some of his memories.

  “I need to speak to Colonel Kramer,” repeated Vince.

  “Why?”

  “Because there are leaks in your organization. I need to speak to him. Personally.”

  The voice considered this. “You know you cannot lie to us.”

  “Then you know I am speaking the truth. I came here of my own free will.”

  More silence, but the nothingness gave way to a gray fog. It became deeper, thicker, and then evaporated. Vince found himself sitting on a concrete floor in total darkness. Not total darkness. He could just see a slit of light coming into the solitary confinement cell through the food receptacle. He reached up to feel his face, laughing and crying at the same time. Leaning over, he curled into a ball on the ground.

  CLICK, CLACK, CLICK, clack—steel balls on Colonel Kramer’s desk circled through empty space before returning to hit the next one in an endless loop—click, clack, click, clack. Twelve-foot glass walls stood behind the desk, framing a gray and rainy view of one wall of the Pentagon from ground level. Leafless trees bent in a sudden gust. A squall of rain hammered down onto the sidewalk, soaking men and women in uniform as they hurried between buildings.

  Colonel Kramer sat in his high-backed leather chair, facing away from Vince, staring through the window at the rain. “I’m a busy man, Mr. Indigo.” The balls stopped motionless in the air.

  Vince was sitting in a leather chair in front of the Colonel’s desk, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, his hair disheveled and several days of stubble on his face. “This is worth your time.”

  There were no guards in the room. They weren’t necessary. Vince’s neural systems were under his captors’ control.

  The Colonel swung his chair around to face Vince. “So?”

  Vince did his best to verify the metatags of whoever was appearing before his senses. What little network access they granted him seemed to confirm this was Colonel Kramer. There wasn’t any way to be sure, but Vince had few options. “There’s a plot against you.” Vince held the Colonel’s gaze.