by Isaac Hooke
"I know," Tanner said. "I blame it on the whole relearning process we go through after awakening. You know, how we're not supposed to dwell upon our former lives on the Inside and all that."
Ari scratched her chin. "I guess I always assumed you were from Severest like me."
Tanner pointed at the road ahead. "My mother used to take me down main street right there to see the parade once a year. I remember one time I sneaked out early to catch it with friends. That was when I had the first hint that all of this was a simulation."
"Why, what happened?" Ari asked.
"I got separated from my friends by the parade goers and ended up in a tunnel section lit entirely by torches, rather than light globes. I proceeded through that tunnel for what seemed miles—the torches were everywhere. When I got back to the tunnel, I started noticing where other torches burned. Every day, I noticed torches. And I began to wonder why, without fail, did they always continue to burn?"
"That scared you?"
"It did," Tanner said. "Because in school they taught us that torches burn oxygen. All of us should have been choking to death because of the lack of oxygen, and the flames should have petered out long ago. But they burned on. I asked my science teacher about it, and he said some sort of draft system replenished the air, seeping through the walls of the cave to renew the oxygen. But I didn't buy it. I set out to prove him wrong by bringing my own torch throughout the farthest corners of Dhenn. I'd keep an eye on the flame, looking for the slightest flicker that might indicate a draft. And I pressed it to the rock at intervals, again searching for any waver in the flame. I went out every day after school, making my own paper map as I went. I must have covered at least ninety percent of the city. But I never found a spot where the torch flickered."
"You've never told me why you woke up prematurely," Ari said. "Unless you don't want to talk about it..."
"I can talk about it," Tanner told her. "As far as I'm concerned, the rules of relearning only apply for the newly awakened. I let go of my former life a long time ago. So my awakening... well, it was a funny thing. I was headed down to watch that famous parade with my wife—"
Ari halted in mid-stride. "I didn't know you were married."
"Yes," Tanner said. "I was married on the Inside, like you."
"Did you ever try to contact your wife?" Ari said. "Even though it's forbidden?" The relearning process forbid contact with former friends and family members from the Inside. It made the transition far easier.
Tanner shook his head. "No."
"But you were tempted?" Ari asked him.
"Of course I was," Tanner told her. "How could I not be? I loved my wife very much. And it pains me, knowing that she's out here right now at this very moment, trapped, wondering what the hell is happening to the beloved city she grew up in. She would be ten years older by now. Probably remarried. It's for the best, really, that I never contacted her. And to be honest, I hope I never see her again. I really do."
"I didn't know," Ari said. She reached out, squeezed his hand.
Tanner nodded, squeezing back. He looked into her eyes. "I have you now, Ari."
She gave him a hug in the middle of that lightning-damaged street.
"I awakened spontaneously," he told her with his lips next to her ear. "I was striding down that street with my wife one moment and the next I was choking in a pile of sludge, accompanied only by darkness. My guess is there had been some malfunction with the umbilical that provided oxygen and nutrients. My brain realized there was something wrong and woke me up. I broke free of the pod and when I could breathe and see I found myself surrounded by steel walls. Hoodwink was there, standing above me. I still remember the first words I ever heard with my own ears. 'Well shit on a popsicle stick.'"
Ari smiled at that.
"Hoodwink carried me to shelter," Tanner said. "Evading at least three recycling robots along the way. If he wasn't there, the machines would have scheduled me for protein reclamation."
"All of us owe Hoodwink in our own way, don't we?" Ari murmured.
She heard shouts up ahead, followed by the characteristic sound of clanging swords. She saw a bright flash, accompanied by a loud sizzling.
She released Tanner and the two of them hurried down the street toward the commotion. They drew their fire swords.
Five gols had surrounded two uncollared individuals. The gols were hunter class, armored in colorful insect-like armor: bright red carapaces with spikes running along the surface; helmets with pairs of large, flat mandibles; arm guards with sharp spikes curving from the elbows; leggings with similar hooks on the knees; boots with razor spurs.
In their right hands the hunters held impossibly large daggers, having the length and breadth of man-sized cleavers. If the world had obeyed proper physics, there would be no way those gols could even lift weapons like that.
In their left hands the hunters wielded strange segmented weapons composed of hundreds of tiny razors. Those segments telescoped outward when swung, the countless razors hissing loudly as they sliced through the air.
Just as Ari arrived one of the hunters flung its razor weapon outward, running its multiple segments through the chest of the first uncollared man. At almost the same time, another hunter swung its man-sized dagger and beheaded the second individual.
"Stop!" Ari said. "Your orders were to collar, not kill!"
One of the hunters turned toward her and unleashed its razor weapon. Ari barely dodged to the side as the telescoping blades sliced the air beside her.
"What—" Before she could finish, another hunter swung its man-sized dagger down on her. Again Ari narrowly sidestepped.
"Tanner!" she said. It was a warning, and a plea for help. But Tanner was already fending off two more of the hunters.
A third hunter came at her. This one swung down its heavy dagger while telescoping its razor weapon at the same time.
Ari dodged the ponderous dagger, batting aside the razor weapon as she did so. At the periphery of her vision, she sensed motion as the other two attackers came at her.
She reached for the vitra inside the sword. Electrical energy filled her. The source of life. It was a false source, but it refreshed her nonetheless as the wires inside her real-world body stimulated the pleasure, pain, and lust centers of her brain at the same time.
She unleashed a wall of flame at the first hunter, sending the enemy flying backward. She heard the loud hiss of an incoming razor weapon from the second hunter and rolled to the ground. A hundred razors cut the air above her. She got up, batting the weapon away with her molten red sword; she bent backwards as the hunter swung its heavy dagger horizontally. If she had moved like that in real life, she would have sprained her lower back severely. But there, she could contort to unreal levels.
She straightened as the razor weapon retracted beside her, cutting into her arm. She ignored the pain inflicted to her gol body, and drove her sword home, her hot blade easily penetrating the carapace of the enemy.
Beneath that insect helm, the hunter's eyes widened. Not with pain. But surprise.
She tried to wrench the weapon sideways to defend against the incoming razor blow from her third attacker, but the carapace proved more durable than she had thought, and her weapon didn't move. Perhaps she had allowed her blade to cool too much.
She was forced to abandon the fire sword in order to dodge the incoming segments. The stricken hunter fell backward, gripping the hilt that protruded from its belly.
She ducked as the third attacker's broad dagger came in.
And then another razor weapon came at her from the left side. She dodged it, and saw that it was the first hunter she had knocked down. The gol's armor was blackened from the wall of fire she had sent, but otherwise he was unharmed.
Ari retreated a few paces, her path to the embedded fire sword blocked by the two aggressors.
Beside her, Tanner had kept the remaining two hunters occupied during that time. As she watched, he pierced the carapace of one gol, only to ta
ke a shallow wound to the leg as the other hunter caught him with its razor weapon.
Just then five more hunter class warriors burst from the doors of the nearby buildings. Time seemed to slow... actually, time really did slow, because the system was apparently struggling to keep up with the number of complex actors it needed to render. Stanson had been right: hunters were extremely resource intensive.
"Ari!" Tanner said. "We have to get out of here! We'll come back, respawn with some Keepers."
Ari was loathe to abandon her fire sword to the hunters, but retreat seemed prudent. She had learned that recklessness was not the solution to problems, and only put her life at risk, not to mention other people's lives.
"Retreat, then!" Ari said.
She turned about and ran. Tanner joined her immediately. He sprinted with a slight limp thanks to the wound in his leg.
Behind them, the encumbered hunters easily kept pace with the lightly armored pair.
"We're not going to lose them," Tanner said.
They rounded a bend. Up ahead, she spotted two Keepers in crimson capes alongside two Users with Lightning Rings on their fingers.
"Help!" Ari shouted. "The hunters have turned!"
The two Keepers immediately drew their fire swords. Ari joined them and the group formed a defensive line in front of her. She resisted the urge to ask for their weapons. She had lost her own. She would watch.
"Aim for their faces," Ari instructed the group. "They have no armor there."
The eight remaining hunters approached at a run. The system slowed precariously.
The Users unleashed lightning into the faces of two hunters, and the gols fells to their knees.
The Keepers and Tanner unleashed a stream of flame into the faces of three others, downing them as well.
The three remaining hunters closed with the group.
One of the Users was out immediately as a razor weapon tore him in half.
Tanner released a fiery half sphere, knocking two of the hunters back. He leaped on one of them and stabbed his sword into its neck. One of the Keepers did the same to the other.
The second Keeper plunged her molten sword through the carapace of the last remaining hunter, driving it through the gol's heart. The Hunter fell to its knees and then collapsed.
"Thank you," Ari humbly told the Keepers and the User.
"What the hell was that?" Tanner said. His mouth movements were slightly delayed thanks to the continued rendering complexities of the scene.
"Someone obviously reprogrammed them," Ari told him.
"Our rogue Keeper?"
Ari nodded. "We're going to have to step up our efforts to catch this Amoch."
"You think he's acting alone?"
Ari shook her head. "At this point I don't know what to think."
Another Keeper dashed onto the scene. He panted as he spoke. "Ari, I've been sent to retrieve you!"
"Why, what's happened?" Ari asked him.
"Something terrible."
eight
Ari stood at the heart of the city that was once known as Emerald. It had been one of the most beautiful places in the realm after the artificial ice age was lifted, and was named after the mighty oak that had grown at its center, a titanic tree whose leaves glittered in the sunlight like emeralds. The gigantic branches swept across the entire extents of the city, reaching to the very top of the Forever Gate that enclosed the place. Shops and houses had been built directly into those wide branches, forming extensive neighborhoods, though smaller districts existed on the ground.
But that massive, life-giving tree was no more. It had been chopped down near its base and toppled into the eastern wall of the Forever Gate. The branches themselves had suffered a terrible conflagration—most were black, others gray. Several sections were still smoldering. All of the homes and shops had been destroyed. There was not a single emerald leaf left.
The buildings on the ground had fared little better: all that remained were burned, hollowed out shells. Even the transit centers were destroyed—Ari and Tanner had to inject directly into the city from the Outside.
A hole had been successfully blasted into the Forever Gate underneath the fallen tree. Ari had dispatched Keepers to search for those denizens who had escaped into the barren desert beyond.
"The attack against us in Dhenn was obviously a distraction," Tanner was saying. "It had to be. They wanted to keep us from this place."
Ari frowned. "I'm not sure we would have been able to do anything even if we were here." She was still smarting from her loss against the hunters.
"When I find out which of the children is Amoch, I swear I'm going to throttle him," Tanner said.
"We're not even sure it was Amoch who did this. Let's go talk to the witnesses."
She left the base of the fallen tree and wandered through the ruins of the ground district. She reached an area where a Keeper named Jag had rounded up the survivors. He had given them food and water while other Keepers placed a new transit center nearby so that the refugees could transfer to other cities.
She approached a young woman who held a baby in her arms. Her face was covered in soot.
Ari knelt beside her and tried to project as much empathy into the woman as she could with her expression. She offered her a small bag of gold.
"Thank you," the woman said, accepting the money. "I lost everything."
"What happened?" Ari asked her.
"I was at my home on Bole street when the entire oak began to shake. My husband told me to stay put. That's what we were taught to do during an earthquake. But this felt different than an earthquake. It seemed like someone was taking a giant ax to the base of the tree and hitting it again and again, with the vibrations of the impact carrying to our doorstep. I gathered up my babe and raced out the door. Others joined us on the wooden street. It was pandemonium.
"I made my way to the rope baskets and waited for a place. The oak shook violently, and I knew it was going to fall soon. I begged a man to give up his space in the basket for me, or to take my baby to safety. He reached out to grab my baby, but then grabbed me instead, pulling both of us aboard despite the protests of the other passengers, who had to shove aside to make room.
"The conductor tried to kick me out, but still other passengers told him to forget about me and just lower the basket. And so he did. We made our way down the trunk as he pulled at the ropes. My baby remained quiet through it all. So stoic, so strong." She rocked her baby in her arms and looked at it sweetly. "You're so strong."
She continued the story. "When we emerged from the branch cover, I saw a machine entirely unlike anything I'd ever witnessed. It was this great cutting contraption. Gols cranked a dial that drew back a massive blade at least three houses long and two wide. When the blade reached a critical point, the gols did something to the machine, and it released that blade directly into the base of the oak. It drove into the deep gash that had already been scored there, and the tree shuddered terribly. There was a cracking sound, and the oak began to list toward the cut in its base.
"The gols quickly withdrew their machine. Emerald continued its precarious tilt. Another crack, and then the falling motion increased. People in the basket screamed as we were hurled sideways. Then the motion ceased with a shudder as the top part of the oak struck the upper boundary of the Forever Gate.
"The conductor hastened our descent, the tree listing awkwardly above us. Flames erupted at the base of the oak, fanned by something I could not see. Those flames quickly rose higher and higher. The basket reached the ground and I hurried out. I made my way toward the nearest transit center, but everyone else had the same idea as me. A huge crowd had gathered outside it. I was lucky that crowd was there, because a moment later countless bolts of lightning struck the transit center, and it collapsed, killing everyone inside.
"There was an incredible explosion behind us. When the dust cleared, I saw that a hole had been blown into the Forever Gate. The throng fled toward that gap. I was nearly trampled
in the onrush. I hid behind a boulder and waited for the rush to subside. I heard explosions around me and saw a hooded man moving between the various buildings of the ground district, a white staff in his hands. He was surrounded by men who wielded lightning. A group of city guards rushed to confront him, but his men incinerated them with their electricity.
"The hooded man pointed his staff at a building and a fireball erupted from the tip. The building was engulfed in flames. He moved on to the next building and did the same. And the next."
She shook her head. "I hid there, crouched low, hoping to avoid notice. I don't know how much time passed, but finally the hooded man and his followers were gone. When I deemed it safe, I scrambled to my feet and made my way to the hole in the Forever Gate. But when I found the waiting desert and its relentless heat, I turned back. I couldn't bring my baby out there to die.
"And so I returned to the damaged buildings, and the fallen oak. I hoped to scrounge what food I could for myself and my baby. And then the Keepers came and fed us. I am grateful to you gols. You tried to protect us from the hooded man and his crazy lightning wielders. I only wish... that my husband had come with me." She had been strong the whole time, but with those words, she finally teared up.
Ari rested a hand on the woman's shoulder. "Poor woman."
Ari got up and walked among the remaining survivors. Vacant eyes, grimy faces. Some were burned or maimed. She reached the last of them and then switched her gaze to the smoldering, fallen oak beyond.
Tanner joined her.
Ari reached out to grip his hand. She needed the reassurance of his touch in that moment, even if it wasn't real. She squeezed once and he returned the gesture. Then she released him.
"I told you it was Amoch," Tanner said from beside her.
"The abilities of this Amoch remind me an awful lot of One." That was the designation of the primary AI that ran the system. It had gone rogue, thanks to the alien computer virus Jeremy had programmed into the system. She had believed that virus destroyed. Perhaps she was wrong.
Tanner regarded her uncertainly. "You don't think..."
