by Isaac Hooke
"Like I told you before, I don't know what to think. Whoever we're dealing with was definitely inspired by that rogue AI, however."
"She said the man was followed by lightning wielders," Tanner said. "Judging from the descriptions we've heard of his powers, why would he need them?"
"Maybe he wants their approval," Ari said. "To feel powerful. To feel like a leader. Or maybe he's not as powerful as we think."
"Well, Leon did say he wanted to build an army of the uncollared."
"Yes," Ari said. "And his own utopia. Though I fail to see how destroying peaceful cities will help him attain that goal."
One of the Keepers approached.
"I just returned from the desert," the Keeper said. "It looks like there were uncollared individuals waiting out there to collect those who fled. I found one man who pretended to be dead, lying in the sand, and he listened in as the lightning wielders gave them the choice between death or joining their army. Apparently most of the refugees joined, which would explain why I found only a few dead bodies out there, plus the one man."
Ari glanced at Tanner and rubbed her forehead. "And let me guess, when we get back we're going to find that all the logs in the desert area were wiped, just like for Emerald proper." Which they had confirmed before injecting Inside.
Tanner sighed. "Like I said, I really want to throttle this guy."
nine
Ari walked the claustrophobic steel corridors of the real world. She needed a break from the stress of the Inside and the confusion in the Control Room of the Outside. A chance to clear her mind and think, among other things.
One of the Children was ruining the very world they were all trying so hard to create. One foolish, misguided crew member. She had already limited access to the Control Room, with only essential operators allowed on the Inside. But that wouldn't stop a rogue crew member from entering remotely through a terminal on a different part of the ship, or via a wireless access port. Those entries were supposed to be logged, but a clever hacker could hide his or her tracks. She wished there was a way to determine, in real-time, the exact location of every individual who was tethered to the Inside. Kade was working on a patch but he couldn't promise her anything until early next week. He said he was having trouble differentiating between those who connected via the pods versus the terminals. In the meantime, Ari had dispatched a security team to do a compartment by compartment sweep of the ship, but so far they hadn't reported finding anyone.
Problems, problems, problems. She rubbed her eyes, wishing that the burden of command resided on another's shoulders.
If Hoodwink were here, he'd know what to do.
But Hoodwink wasn't there. And he never would be again.
The translucent pods of sleepers lined the bulkheads. Her boots clanged on the iron grill that served as the deck; the grid-like nature of the material allowed her to gaze down to the level below, which looked much the same as the current one. Those grills had the ability to seal during a hull breach—the individual lattices would fold upward to form a solid mass.
She passed hydroponics and the smell of pine and mint drifted to her nostrils. That scent brought with it a sudden sense of peace and sparked recollections of those places where she had experienced similar aromas on the Inside. She remembered the first time she had seen a living pine tree shortly after they had lifted the ice age. It was in a city park in Severest. The tree had smelled so... alive. She had had the Keepers spawn a whole park full of similar pines afterward, and she returned there often, if only for the aroma.
She continued into a narrower passageway that was free of the human pods. Instead steel pipes and plastic conduits covered the overhead and upper bulkheads—plumbing and wiring that looked like it was jury-rigged by the robots and engineering teams. Portions of the underlying bulkhead were a brighter polish than the surrounding metal, indicating where the repair drones had 3D printed fresh material.
She smiled slightly. Robots. Bulkheads. 3D printing. There was once a time when all of those words had been so foreign to her. She had learned so much since she had come to the Outside. But with that knowledge came burdens and responsibility.
She approached a patrol robot. Its steel torso was embossed with geometric symbols; there was a vent in its side that covered different colored wires tied together in bundles. A corrugated, flexible black bag that reminded her of a smith's bellows connected the torso to the treads the machine used for locomotion. It had telescoping arms that ended in pincers. Its hilt-shaped head had three camera lenses for eyes underneath a red proximity sensor. Underneath the noise of the rolling treads she heard the subtle clicks and whirs of other servomotors at work.
"Good morning, Commander Ari," the robot said.
Stanson thought it would be a nice touch to have the robots greet the crew members whenever they passed. The younger Children loved it, but all it did for Ari was make her spine tingle. She remembered all too well how unsafe these corridors had been, with robots running amok, their programming instructing the machines to recycle any awakened human beings.
She didn't answer the robot and instead edged far to the side of the corridor to give the thing a wide berth as she walked by.
In a few minutes Ari reached her destination: the relearning center. Inside she found those members of the recently awakened. Their ranks had swelled since the last time she had come there. Precariously so: it was so crowded, there almost wasn't any room to walk. It was a good thing she had implemented that sedation policy.
Some of the newly awakened exercised on various machines. In the cardio area, men and women jogged on treadmills; plastic tubes were connected to masks over their mouths to monitor their oxygen efficiency. Other people sat in circles on cleared areas; they wore aReal glasses and made mime-like gestures, picking up objects that weren't there or manipulating screens only they could see.
All of them wore short-sleeved patient gowns that ended at the knees. Underneath it, almost everyone had on a mechanical exoskeleton of some kind: their muscles still recovered from a lifetime of sleep.
Readily identifiable by the dark blue service utilities they wore, the relearning specialists were dispersed among the room. Some trained people one-on-one, others led group sessions. There were about ten people for every specialist.
Ari proceeded to a small area on the far side of the room where an old woman was teaching a class. She was the relearning center department head, and lead specialist. Her name was Helen, and she was like a surrogate mother to them all. She was the oldest woman to have survived the rebirth. Despite her bodily age, she behaved more like a young woman, with the associated hopes and dreams, and the same youthful energy. Which made sense: she had been twenty-nine years old on the Inside before her rude awakening.
It must have been difficult for Helen to awaken sixty years older than she had been, her youth robbed. Ari could relate: before her own awakening, her use of vitra on the Inside had prematurely aged her body so that by the time she was almost thirty she'd looked a hundred.
The awakening had been hard on Helen's body and they'd almost lost her. But she had a strong will and devoted herself to the trainings: though it took her longer than most eventually she was walking on her own two feet.
Helen noticed her presence and looked up. A smile crinkled her features and her eyes shone with delight.
"I want you all to keep traveling to the different planets," Helen told her students, who were wearing aReals. "Note down the first thing you feel when you see each world. We'll discuss it in about ten minutes."
Helen got up and made her way across the room.
"Ari!" someone said from beside her.
Ari would have recognized that voice anywhere. It was Caylin, the little girl who was one of the first Children Ari had ever met. Caylin wrapped her arms around Ari's upper leg in a hug.
Ari knelt. "And how's my favorite Child today?"
"Very good. Look what I made today."
Ari received an access request on her aRea
l. She accepted and a three-dimensional swan appeared on her display.
"You made that yourself?" Ari asked the little girl.
"I did!" Caylin said. "See how good I am? I haven't lost my skills. When can I come back to the Control Room? I want to help change the Inside again."
Caylin had been instrumental in repealing the ice age, and she had been a good coder and excellent artist, but Ari hated to see the child wile away her youth inside a computer system. Unlike Hoodwink, she wasn't a big fan of child labor, especially considering that Caylin was both six years old in body and mind.
"You know you can't come back," Ari told the little girl. "Not for a long time."
Caylin blinked rapidly and for a moment Ari was worried she was going to cry. But the little girl forced a smile.
"I'm going to talk to Helen," Ari said. "We can catch up later. Okay?"
Caylin seemed a little disappointed. "Okay."
Ari rubbed a commiserating hand in Caylin's hair and stood.
"Ari, it's good to see you girl, it is," Helen said, hugging her.
Ari smiled. Helen had an accent that reminded her of Hoodwink.
"And you as well," Ari told her.
"So what can I do for you today?" Helen asked.
"I came to see how Zak was taking to the relearning." Since Ari had personally awakened him, she felt some responsibility for his reeducation.
Helen's face darkened at the mention of his name. The old woman shook her head. "I had high hopes for that one, but he's struggling to adapt. I have another specialist working full time with him. He keeps rejecting this world, keeps calling it an illusion."
"Maybe I should talk to him."
"By all means," Helen said. "Caylin, take Ari to Ben."
Lingering nearby, Caylin smiled and grabbed Ari by the hand. "This way, Ari."
She led Ari through the throng, eventually stopping beside a chest-press machine. Zak was inside it, moving the weights. A blue-clad male specialist counted out the reps. Ari's aReal identified him as Ben.
Zak stopped in mid-set. "You," he told Ari. "The gol."
"That's me," Ari told him. She glanced at Caylin. "Thank you Caylin. You can go."
"I want to watch."
Ari smiled. "Helen needs your help."
The little girl pouted, then quickly ran away.
"How goes the relearning?" Ari asked him.
"Just fine," Zak said.
"Tell her what you were just saying to me," Ben said.
Zak hesitated. "You tell her."
Ben looked at Ari. "He was complaining. Saying: 'why do I have to bother doing this, when none of it is real?' He says that constantly. He's got the worst reality disassociation I've ever seen."
"You think this isn't real?" Ari asked him.
"No it's not," Zak responded.
"Why?" Ari said. "They've turned the exoskeleton assistance way down by now. You're feeling the pain in your muscles as you train."
"Pain can be simulated."
"And what about vitra?" Ari said. "That's been ripped away from you. At least when you're collared, you can still sense it, just beyond reach. But now there's only nothing."
"It's an illusion," Zak said. "Vitra is still there. I know it is."
She glanced at Ben. "Have you tried sending him back Inside? Into the sandbox environment?"
"I have," Ben said. "We've done our workouts there, and returned here. It doesn't help. He says both environments are fake."
"I want to see my sister," Zak said.
"So that's what this is about," Ari said. "When we got you out, I didn't know you had a sister. I didn't know she was there. I wouldn't have been so quick to bring you to the Outside if I knew. But you have to let her go. Has Ben told you that she's not your sister, not really? Not by blood, anyway."
"She is my sister by blood," Zak stated. "I've been taking care of her ever since I was a kid. Ever since we ran away from home together. You can't imagine what life was like on the streets, growing up like that. You can't."
Ari knelt to look up into his face. She rested a hand on his knee. "Zak, I'm not a gol. I'm flesh and blood, just like you. None of this is an illusion."
Zak's hand suddenly darted forward and he slapped her arm aside. "Don't touch me, gol!"
Ari stepped back. The blow hadn't been light. A portion of the exoskeleton that covered his hand had torn into her flesh, drawing blood.
She showed him the wound. "Does a gol bleed?"
Zak shrugged. "A trick."
"I'll get the first aid kit," Ben said, departing.
"Things will go easier for you the sooner you let go," Ari said. "As far as you're concerned, your sister no longer exists."
"I don't have to sit here and listen to this bullshit." Zak started to stand.
Ari pulled up the access controls for his exoskeleton on her aReal and disabled the suit.
Zak abruptly froze. He struggled against the steel cage of the suit that held him, to no avail. "What did you do to me?"
"Disabled your suit. So that we can have a proper talk."
Ben returned and wrapped gauze around her wound.
"Have you showed him earth, yet?" Ari asked the specialist.
"Yes," Ben said. "I ran the earth simulation on the same day he arrived. He doesn't believe it."
"Aliens on the earth," Zak said. "It's not possible."
Ari sighed. "You have your work cut out for you," she told Ben. "Help me carry him out of the machine so someone else can have a turn."
She and Ben lifted Zak from the chest press machine and set him down on the floor. The pair then sat down beside him.
"Sometimes it helps the healing to talk about your life on the Inside," Ari told Zak. "Tell me, what was your sister's name?"
"I'm not telling you anything," Zak said.
Ben glanced at her. "In the manual it's recommended that we don't dwell on the past, because friends and family may as well be dead to them."
"I don't intend to dwell on his past," Ari told him. "I just want him to get it out." She stared at Zak. "You know, I came to the Inside to collar you myself because I thought I sensed potential in you. I thought I sensed a man who could help make a difference in our cause. You evaded the guards for so long. That was real ingenuity. Or so I thought, until I learned that the hooded man was in fact helping you. He told you the guard schedule, and their patterns. He gave you the Lightning Rings. You weren't ingenious at all. You were just lucky.
"Did you know that this hooded man is actually one of us?" Ari gestured toward the people in the relearning center. "A man on the Outside who has been spreading chaos on the world of the Inside, pursuing some selfish, misguided agenda. By refusing to believe, you are indirectly aiding this man, who calls himself Amoch. He wants the world of the Inside to perish, you know. He will do to your sister what we have done to you. Is that what you want? Do you want her to awaken as you have? So that you can be reunited? Assuming she even survives the awakening... she could be sixty years old. Eighty. The Inside changes our ages. If Amoch succeeds in destroying the Inside, and your sister is old and frail, she will probably die.
"You have a choice. You can choose to help us. Or you can choose to fight us. The decision is yours. But know that the latter option will only doom your sister."
Ari waited a moment, letting her words sink in. When Zak didn't answer, she patted him gently on the exoskeleton and then stood up.
"Gemma," Zak said.
Ari paused. "What's that?"
"My sister's name. Gemma."
Ari glanced at the specialist, then asked Zak another question. "Tell us about her."
His eyes defocused as his mind traversed the land of memory, and he smiled inside the exoskeleton. "She was a good kid. I remember one time, when we were picking the pockets of rich nobles in Grassylane District, this one target caught me and grabbed me by the hand. He brought me to the nearest guard. A gol. So as the gol is dragging me to the city jail, talking shit about how I'm going to spend the r
est of my days rotting, Gemma goes and cracks open the pen of some cattlemonger's stall, letting loose three woolly mammoths right in front of us.
"As the cattlemonger shouts and curses at her, she jumps on the back of one of the mammoths and starts kicking it in the ribs, exciting it and the others into a rampage. The gol lets me go to concentrate on containing the mammoths. Other guards rush in to help. Gemma and I escape in the confusion." He laughs to himself as he reminisces, and then sighs. "That day I nicknamed her Woolly. A little in-joke among the two of us. Man, I haven't called her that in years. I'm going to miss her."
Ari waited for him to say more, but when it was obvious he was done, she released the freeze on his exoskeleton.
Zak, taken entirely by surprise, promptly collapsed.
She offered him a helping hand.
"I'm glad you chose to help us," she said. "Rather than fight us."
He reluctantly accepted her hand. "I haven't quite made my choice, yet. I still think all of this is fake."
"Yes," Ari said. "But you've opened yourself to the possibility that it's real. And that's the first step in believing."
ten
Amoch toured the grounds of his makeshift camp in the desert outside the Forever Gate of Rhagnorak. The metal ferrule of his staff left thin disks of molten glass in its wake where it touched the sand.
Tents crowded the barren landscape as far as the eye could see. Groups of uncollared individuals gathered around trainers, learning the intricacies of lightning and vitra, or practicing with fire swords.
Amoch's plans were going well.
A small group of loyal followers walked with him. Hadrian, the man he had uncollared in Dhenn, was among them. As was Sammuel, the old man from the same city whom Amoch had convinced to fall on a sword. Amoch had sent someone to find Sammuel's pod in the real world and he had been taken out and moved to an abandoned part of the ship, where he connected to the Inside via a wireless access port. The compartment Sammuel dreamt within had two exits, with proximity sensors outside the hatches triggered to wake him and the others who sheltered there on the approach of either robot or man. The security team would never catch them.
