by Rusty Coats
"Wait, wait." Levy waved his hands in pinwheels. "We're forgetting something.”
Van Meter's eyebrows formed a sideways S. "Oh?"
"Yes," Levy said. "We're forgetting about Jack. He doesn't come here anymore. He hasn't set a virtual foot in Avalon in almost ten years."
"Yes," Marrs said, sheathing the saber. "Something about his parents."
Benedikt nodded. "Taylor and Ramona." His face softened around the edges. "The couple from the Library. Exceptional programmers. And Ramona. Her work for archiving consciousness was breathtaking. That Library would have become a new wonder of the world if they’d been allowed to finish."
"Of course!" Marrs said, snapping his fingers. "Jack swore off Avalon because this is where they died."
"Just up the street, actually," Levy said. "Somewhere inside that Library they'd built. Among the exhibits." He blinked at Benedikt. "Ghastly stuff, Snap."
My shoulders flexed against the dioxide-bubbles in a scuba suit, dangling somewhere in the burned-out basement of another universe while my consciousness somersaulted through time. I'd known these men in another age, before the slow corruption of the city infected the men who had helped create it. But now I was in a room with strangers. Strangers, who remembered the city's heritage in pathetic, broken images that faded each year, until the past -- once so crystal, so noble -- became myth.
Monk sat silently in the subscreen and Rita's gray body had not moved and the Sysops sat frozen. For a moment, the world was quiet and I closed my eyes and gave the silence to the dead.
Van Meter ended the prayer by chuckling. One by one, each of his guests -- seen and unseen -- leveled their eyes on him. And he grinned.
"Jack will come back," he said, his hand disappearing into the desk. "Because I can offer him what no one else can."
The Digerati bosses exchanged confused glances. Van Meter merely smiled and nodded toward the interactive screen on the wall. The screen hitched as somewhere a laser skipped across a scratched ROM, then threw a ghost on the wall.
My mother.
She was smiling, her red hair pulled away from her scalp with a scrap of fiber-optic cable, leaning over the chipped-green Formica table in our Campus apartment to help my sister Gretchen carve a banana-nut birthday cake. She grinned up at the camera so that her eyes met mine -- met everyone's -- and the flecks inside her irises gleamed. Beside her, stabbing himself with a las-needle, was Monk -- younger, a Monk with thin black curls. Gretchen's hand was completely covered by my mother's grasp, but when my father said "Gretch!" she pulled her hand away so that the knife clattered to the floor, flipping frosting across the kitchen, just so she could wave at the camera, her front teeth as big as glaciers and her freckles sprayed across her cheeks like fresh-ground cinnamon. Next to Monk was my plate, empty, the seat behind it empty, because somewhere I was in Lucky No. 7 at Echo Wharf, diving into Avalon.
"Taylor," my mother said, "turn that thing off so we can eat."
And then the screen went blank.
A lead ball fell twenty stories inside me. My ROM album. Van Meter had my ROM album. Taken from my apartment the night Regan was killed, the night they finally drove me back to Avalon. And for a moment I only wanted Van Meter to keep the ROM playing, on and on until I'd seen them all again. And I knew that if he baited a trap with those discs, I would walk into its jaws.
"You see," Van Meter said. "I have the only thing precious to Jack: The past."
The Sysops mumbled approval while I felt the rage boil inside me.
"Very well," Benedikt said. "Make us copies and we'll load them."
"Yes," Levy said. "Let's put this behind us."
"Monk," I said, "load the ROM. Let's show Jenny some home movies our own."
The men who once wrote a God program called Merlin were sharing a laugh over a new orgy sensation called "Cloudburst" when the screen suddenly came alive to show Jenner Van Meter plotting the overthrow of Avalon.
"What the --"
Jenny didn't have time to say anything else. His past was on the screen, looking sharp in a black Stygian and a pair of scrollwork Lauder shoes, staring across his online office at a perfect duplicate while his parakeet cussed.
"The bombs hit, I move in, we position ourselves for ownership."
Van Meter's face turned to eggshells. He groped at his desk for the controls, trying to cut the movie short and having no luck.
The Digerati bosses gaped. Then the image changed and now there was only one Van Meter, and he was talking to a ponytailed doctor with azure eyes, and Van Meter's past opened its mouth and said, "Avalon is nearly ours."
Across Avalon, every telepresence screen and billboard showed Jenner Van Meter, caught in the act of mafia treason. To say that this stopped foot-traffic would be an understatement.
The men in the room were on their feet immediately, screaming.
"You traitorous bastard!" Marrs yelled, drawing the sword. The blade buried itself deep in Van Meter’s bicep.
"The nerve!" Benedikt screamed. "These traps we were to lay for you, I'll wager they're nothing but time-release logic bombs! Saboteur!"
Only Levy had the presence to ask: "How did that get on every screen in town?"
In the streets, the same image continued playing. Monk set the ROM to loop, so every time Van Meter said "nearly ours," the file we'd retrieved from the Flux doubled back, showing everyone online that Van Meter planned to turn Avalon into a monarchy.
"The bombs hit, I move in, we position ourselves for ownership."
It played until it fell into a rhythm, a funeral rap.
"Get this blade out of my arm!" Van Meter shouted. He groped for the screen controls. He found them easily. He also found that someone had over-ridden them.
"To think that we nearly gave you our heads on a platter!" Marrs hollered. "We're a brotherhood, damn you!"
But Van Meter was too busy to hear any of the screaming. His eyes had become slits, scanning the walls while digging the saber out of his arm. Levy and Benedikt were yelling at each other over which of them had suffered greater. Marrs was screaming another line from a Flynn movie and Rita stood in the corner, laughing a voice only Monk and I could hear.
On the three-tiered dance floor, the music had stopped. The party was over.
Jenny eyed the room. Finally, he yanked the blade free and tossed it across the room. Marrs went with it, his virtual body tumbling, no match for Jenny's rage.
"DENYS!" Jenny's voice cut the room like lightning. "Show yourself, Jack!"
The Sysops were stunned to silence, staring at Van Meter as the realization of his words washed over them. Because nothing scared Digerati more than ghosts. Ghosts didn't play by their rules. Ghosts laughed at the gods they'd created in Merlin. Ghosts came and went. And sometimes they came back.
"DENYS!"
I was there, of course. Standing right behind him. So, with my back to the panoramic view of the University, I drew back and let fly a punch that had been a decade in coming. And it hit Jenner Van Meter the same way Prohibition had struck WPA hard hats. It was hard and crippling, and it came from out of nowhere.
The punch clipped him at the base of the skull with enough force to throw him over the desk. He landed in Roddy Benedikt's lap, but he didn't stay there long, because Roddy was already running. He was three steps behind Baxter Levy, who was two steps behind Danny Marrs, who had torn off his pirate's mask so he could see his way out of Club Troc. They scrambled from Jenny's office like animals before a wildfire.
Meanwhile the ROM kept playing its loop. “Nearly ours."
When the Digerati bosses spilled into the hallway and were shoving each other to make room in the private elevator, I came out from behind the desk and kicked the door shut. Van Meter's body vibrated like a tuning fork.
He turned over, rubbing his head, and I moved in to repay him for the soccer game he'd played on my ribs. Kick him out the door. Kick him into the middle of his dance floor while his face glistened on the interactive screen, telli
ng Doc Cassady how Avalon was theirs. Kick him until Merlin flushed him across the Leap.
But when he turned over, I saw the cowering softness of a beaten man. And that more than paid the bill.
I called up the dashboard in the visor, let the scroll bar rest on Mohican and ordered the pack to disengage the gauze. The Mohican icon flared, acknowledging the command, and began to unravel.
Polygon by polygon, my body emerged from the air. Form, then color, then angles and shadows, and as my body seeped into the realm of visibility, Rita disappeared, her cloak hiding her even from me.
Van Meter's mouth opened, but the only sound I could hear were the Digerati bosses fighting in the hall. I said, "Hello, Jenny."
A sound escaped his mouth. "Juh, juh-Jack. Please."
That's when the first explosion hit Club Trocadero.
The jolt knocked me off balance and the room blurred, its continuity thrown off by the surge. The door spat open. In the hall, the Digerati bosses pounded the elevator.
As the reverberations died out, Jenny scrambled on his knees toward the door. I grabbed him by the collar and held him high enough to let his wingtips dangle.
"What are you pulling here, Jenny? A diversion? Huh?"
His virtual face twisted. "Not me, Jack. None of it. Understand?"
In the hall, the Sysops had become a men's choir, and tonight they were singing a panicky ballad called "The Elevator Is Not Working." I’ve heard catchier tunes.
I shook Van Meter, hard. “Minutes ago, you wanted to feed me to a dragon. How about that?"
His head was a blur of auburn hair. "No! I --"
I threw him over the desk and into the window. His body made a perfect X as it struck the amber glass. And then the X became a wad of celluloid on the floor.
The subscreen lit up. Monk said quickly, "Jack, you'd better hang --"
A second explosion hit Club Trocadero. This one tossed us all to our knees, me and the four Digerati princes, and the floor swelled like lava. The room's colors lost focus and seemed to drip. In the hall, Levy, Marrs and Benedikt were stacked triage-style, while the elevator doors refused to open.
"Big explosion, Jack," Monk said. "But it's not over. Those were the precursors."
"Precursors?"
"Yeah. It's a wave. I think it's one of those fusion bombs. It -- huh? Oh. Rita's talkin'." He stared at another spot on the screen, nodding, then said, "Rita says the blast that hit The Palms started with three tumblers. The jolts are the fuse-caps. Then it roasted the house." He rubbed his face. "Ya better unplug, Jack."
I shook my head. "Not until I get some answers."
I pulled Jenny off the ground and shoved him against the glass. "Talk, Jenny. There's a bomb in your house and from my end it looks like an inside job. You hit Levy and Benedikt and now --"
"I did no such thing!"
On the screen, Van Meter's face looped again. "The bombs hit, I move in, we position ourselves for ownership." I lifted him away from the window, carried him to the screen and slammed his body into his recorded image.
"Tell it to this guy, Jenny, because he seems to think he's the heir-apparent."
Van Meter's face smacked against his recorded twin. "That's not me! I swear!"
"Don't LIE to me!" I struck him across the face. The impact jerked his perfect beard sideways. "You were working with McFee, using him to plant bombs around the city so you could kill off your competition. And when he pulled out, you hired me to find him. When I did, you killed him. And then you came after me, to clean up the evidence, while suckering your Digerati pals into loading a bomb into their maintenance programming. They'd be wiped out in a week."
He shook his head, but when I moved to hit him again, he blurted: "OK, OK! It's me! One of them is me! And the other is McFee!"
"That's better. And the bombs?"
"Not me. That was McFee."
I tightened my grip on his collar. "Jenny...."
He held up his hands. "I swear, Jack. McFee was working for someone else, a big operation. He was one of their fuse-boys and I got wind of it. Through Magdi. The kid loved her, told her everything. And I got interested."
He stuttered. "He, he was in pretty deep to me -- his bosses never knew how addicted he was, he kept that silent, I don't know how. The kid was insatiable. His debt was bigger than I'll clear in a night from all my clubs combined."
He licked his lips. "So I made him a deal."
"Business. The traffic."
He nodded furiously. "When Sparta went up in flames, my numbers tripled at Bloodbath. It was business, Jack. Just business."
I held him, remembered the rest of the conversation we'd pulled from the Flux, of Van Meter telling himself that their agreement only covered short-term profits, not long-term objectives. About how Van Meter wasn't part of the big picture.
"But McFee flaked on you."
Van Meter glared. "One day I call my accountant and he says, 'McFee's bill? It's paid.' In full. No traces on the money, nothing. Just a wad of credit in my account with a note that says 'Re: Adam McFee.' I left messages at our drop stations, with Magdi, everything. No dice. No more kid, no more plans, no more brave future."
"But you knew he was still around."
"I knew the kid couldn't stay away. I don't care what the Neuromantics say. He may not have had the disease, but he had the taste. Especially for Magdi. So I set up the recorders and pored over them until I saw the first glitch, that smear. I knew what it was. The problem was catching him."
"So you called me."
He nodded. "Using you to crack his cloak was my only shot at being inside. The gauze was the key. I thought the kid had given it to you. Thought you hid it in your family ROM album. Regan let me in to get it and then got greedy."
"Seems to be a lot of that going around."
"The gauze was everything. I knew that if I could catch him in the gauze, I'd have a foot in the door. Get me? Gauze makes them vulnerable. Then I can sneak in, just like them. And that's all I'd need. Make them vulnerable enough so they're willing to cut a deal, give me a little territory. With these people, you're either inside or you're nobody."
I shook him again. "Inside what? You and those three Sysops own this city."
He shook his head slowly and stared out at the turquoise sky. "Not for long."
The third explosion hit the club, a magma-jolt force that threw Van Meter and I across the office. A wound opened in the floor, split across the geometric-pattern rug and spreading eight meters across. The opening gave us a window -- a balcony seat -- to the transparent tiers of dance floors below Jenny's office and I saw the first licks of flames, the first splotches of acid begin to eat through the walls, the tables, the people.
And the people were screaming.
AVALON XX: Extermination
The Sysops in the hall had given up on appearances. They were hollering to whoever was at the controls of their private uplink stations to get them out, please, get them the hell out right now. Because Club Trocadero had a bad case of exploding leprosy, and the disease was eating through the place, polygon by polygon.
Van Meter lay on the floor, trying to stand. The explosion had flung shrapnel onto his leg, and it was devouring his online body with corruptive code. The muck was the color of rust, and made wet, sucking noises as it chewed away his left foot. Now it was moving toward his knee. The sight of the stump made him moan.
I turned around and called out to the room, "Rita?"
"She's OK," Monk answered from the subscreen. "Shaken but standin'."
Downstairs, the corrosive sludge was burning through Van Meter's prized club, hitting the physical features first -- the black marble and transparent dance floors melting to wax. The building shuddered, its continuity beginning to slip. A brass number called "Loving in the Pines" played on, an odd swing soundtrack for hysteria.
The guests ran for the doors, but the walls were covered with flames. One woman made a dash and the boiling wall spat a glob of rust on her dress. She had a se
cond to scream before it ate through her shoulder, then her neck. Then Merlin popped her off-line, still screaming, her virtual body turned to ghostly alabaster.
This did not calm the other guests.
The burn-through started at La Femme Lounge, where Van Meter sold cosmetic upgrades. The flames licked the sign and then, as if someone had stopped time, the flames dug in like a projector light burning through old film. I didn’t have much time.
I lifted Van Meter off the floor. His body was lighter; the cancerous stuff had just taken his kneecap. "Tell me this is an inside job."
"It's out of my hands, Jack. You've gotta believe me."
"I don’t. You said McFee was in on a bigger score. With Cassady, right?”
"The doc?" Genuine confusion. "You mean Freud?"
I gave his body a rag doll shake. "Don't play stupid with me, Jenny. In the buffer file you tell Cassady that Avalon is nearly yours. Is Cassady leading the takeover?"
The flames bubbled through the floor and spread toward the chrome desk. And Jenny kept getting lighter as the cancer chewed toward his hip.
"That's not me in the memory file."
Two quick smacks, his head jerking like a toggle. "The past doesn't lie, Jenny. What's Cassady running?" I shook him so violently my arms lost continuity; the motion came out in staccato bursts. "What's your angle?"
"None! Maybe it's McFee. He sometimes wore my online skin to spook me." He looked down at his mangled leg, then at me. "Look at me, Jack! If I was a player, do you think I'd let you toss me around while my leg burned off my goddamn body?"
In the hall, the Digerati bosses squealed. I sat Van Meter on a clear patch and turned to investigate. Flames had eaten through the floor, trapping the Sysops on a small ledge by the elevator. Marrs had lost half his arm to the slag. Levy and Benedikt were trying to make distance from him, but their ledge was shrinking.
"Monk," I said to the subscreen, "tell Rita to scram. Use the hard hat tunnel."
