by Curtis Hox
Coach Buzz backed up a few steps, but Yancey stood firm. Simone stilled herself, floating now a foot off the ground.
“The doors are locked?” Yancey asked Coach Buzz.
“Bolted.”
The digital copy had a limited amount of time it could be here. Whatever metaphysical glitch allowed them both to exist didn’t like having them in the same space for too long. The Protocols of the contest dictated the rules of the double’s access. All the intelligences of Cyberspace were jealous beyond belief of these ghosts and their doubles. Even Yancey’s own entities, buried underneath the cosmic weight of her katas, itched to witness the event.
“I am here,” the double said, “for a contest of skill with Simone Lord.”
Yancey stepped between the two ghosts. “Simone, are you ready?”
Simone watched her mother act as a bulwark. It was an outpouring of love—even though it didn’t matter. These contests were for her and her alone. She had to win, or lose them, alone. No embodied persons could interfere, no matter how much they wanted to. “Yes, Mom. You might as well stand back—you, too, Coach.” She snapped her whips out to the side. “Let’s go, you annoying wannabe.”
“The win is to be determined by ...?”
“Ten unanswered strikes in a row.” Simone said. There was no need for any actual judges. The Eminences in Cyberspace watching them would know. “Are you ready?”
“We are.” Her double floated over to the dirt space. It morphed into an armored thing with triple-jointed articulated arms that were double in size. From each one fiery whips appeared. “And the prize?”
“Hey, that’s not fair,” Simone said, circling, snapping her whips out. “Status.”
“It is fair, dear,” her mother said. “Remember, the rules are those set at the beginning.”
Simone began her dance. She let her double move at a distance, watching its rhythm. All she needed was a few seconds to finish her katas. But she had stopped as far as she could go before summoning her entity. Her mother had made her promise no more of that after she’d done it with Hutto. Simone had much more to learn before trying again, at least that was what her mother had told her.
She attacked with a cartwheel combination, one whip snapping into her double with an eruption of energy that echoed off the interior walls. Her double moved quickly and also attacked. Both fiery whips hit her with full force and knocked her backward. She had no friction to stop her, but her willpower kept her from slamming into the floor. She elevated higher and cartwheeled again. Her double laughed and moved out of the way of the strikes.
Simone soon fell behind. When her double began to taunt her, Simone couldn’t resist and mumbled the mantra to complete her summoning.
A few steps more ...
“Our puny connection to your human life proves we are weaker as humans,” her double said to her. “Give up, and free ourselves to reach our new potential.”
Simone began the final steps of her psy-kata.
“Simone, do NOT summon!” her mother yelled.
The transformation had already begun. She had expected a slow transformation, like the other time. Instead, her entities bubbled up with glee. They were everywhere inside her. This was unlike her experience with Hutto; this was immediate power. Her double reacted in fright by backing up, her entities like fire to oxygen.
We are here, the entities said in her mind. Simone focused her eyes on her double, and her entities saw it. They roared through Simone as they reacted at seeing her double.
“Simone!” Yancey yelled. “Stop the transformation!”
But already Simone the Ghost had disappeared as her entities emerged.
“They aren’t going to be happy,” Yancey said.
“What’s happening?” Coach Buzz asked.
“A mistake.”
Yancey watched Simone allow the entities, who now claimed her as their own, dominate her reality. They expected to experience the weight of flesh, to taste the bite of the air, to smell the tang of the earth and all the solid things they craved. When they realized she was a ghost, they acted just as Yancey expected: like spoiled children.
She pushed Coach Buzz backward, away from the incorporeal form that now looked more like a humanoid alien creature with claws, and scales, and dagger teeth than a high school girl. The individuated entity that emerged was a killing machine in full angry form, but without a body to make its own. Yancey recognized the creature, of course, a smaller version of her own powerful Myrmidon. But Simone should never have summoned it as a ghost. She was not prepared for such an experience, and neither were her entities.
The shape solidified as much as it could. It found the ground, expecting gravity to hold it, but flailed about when it remained a ghosted manifestation. Simone screamed, and Yancey could see her within the particular entity that had surfaced.
“Mom!” she heard her daughter say through the guttural voice of her entity. “Help!”
Simone’s double recovered from the shock of seeing the alien creature and struck. “One, two, three,” the double said, as the whips’ tips made contact with the flailing thing.
The entity roared. The double was quick, agile, and struck again.
Simone and her entity lost control and went barreling into a heavy bag, disintegrating into a million specs of light, and creating much needed calm and quiet.
“You two witnesses,” the double said, “do you agree we are winning?”
Yancey nodded. “I’ll ask her to quit.”
The double hovered on the far side of the room.
Coach Buzz stared at it. “What is that thing?”
“A copy that wants to be the original,” Yancey said.
“I can understand that.”
The double bowed its head.
Yancey turned on him. “Don’t encourage it.”
A few seconds later, Simone coalesced out of the air like a swarm of insects drawn to its hive. She looked flustered. Already, the return transformation had reversed, as if it had never happened. She was in her regular shape but still disoriented.
“They weren’t happy,” Yancey said.
Simone shook her head. “They cursed me.”
“I told you not to.”
“I don’t plan on being this way forever, Mom.”
Her double floated forward. “Do you submit?”
Simone struck. “No!”
Yancey said, “Simone!”
They watched Simone take a beating for the next ten minutes. If she’d been embodied, she’d have been a bloody pulp. Each strike that scored sent sparks flying, and soon wounds began to appear in the form of data tears.
“She’s hurting,” Yancey said to Coach Buzz.
“Can she die in this state?” he asked.
Yancey just kept watching.
Soon, the double was striking with ease, and Simone moved as if underwater.
“Halt!” Yancey yelled.
The double raised its arms to strike again but held back the blows.
“Simone!” Yancey yelled. “That’s it! You’re done!”
Wild-eyed, mouth in a rictus, with throbbing open wounds that flickered ghost light, Simone turned and looked liked she might strike them. She flicked her wrists, the whips disappearing. “I lost ... again.”
Her double raised its hands in celebration. “Admission of defeat!”
It disappeared like some demonic thief who’d stolen the house jewels.
“No more contests or summoning,” her mother said, “until we decide what to do. No more.” Simone nodded, the jagged wounds in her body glowing a deep blue. Her mother asked, “How’s the brand?”
She scratched at her chest. “On fire.” Simone looked down. The brand just above her sternum that read SWML glowed like heated iron. She rubbed at her arms. Numbness like tendrils of ice deadened her everywhere else. The strikes hurt, sure, but not like they would have with a body. The worst part was the increasing pressure in her head, the beginning of an unreal headache. The double had b
eaten her. Twice now. “I guess they’re cheering in Cyberspace.”
“You need to resist the call of your entities, and listen to your mother. They’ll be angry now. If you need them you’ll have to negotiate. That’s no fun.”
“They were … offended.”
“Ya think?” Yancey said. “It’s time we told you about your entities ... about our …”
“Our?”
Yancey glanced at Coach Buzz. “Sorry, family secrets.”
He put his hands up. “I don’t want to know.”
“Let’s go see your father,” her mother said. “I’ll see you there.”
* * *
That evening Yancey drove an open four-wheeled ATV to the woods that abutted the Ag farm, found the trail Beasley had shown her, and followed the cone of light deep into the hills and forest. An hour later she arrived at the clearing before Picham’s hideaway cabin, a tiny bit of civilization in the wilderness. Her husband, the first ever disembodied person to live in Realspace, sat on the porch, glowing in a rocking chair next to his brother, Picham, as if there was nothing odd about that at all. Simone was already there, waiting.
“Yancey, it’s good to see you again,” Skippard said and stood. He wore the Consortium uniform that he sometimes preferred instead of his lab gear. He was still affecting those gaudy swirls of energy that followed his movements. It was impressive the first hundred times you saw it. “Very good.”
“I miss you, too, Skippard.”
“Hey, Mom,” Simone said, obviously grinning because her parents were together after so many years.
The time for the conversation Yancey had been dreading had come. She, her husband, and her daughter all had very different ideas about who the Rogues were, who their entities were, and how to understand this post-Ruptured world of theirs.
She eased past him and accepted a rocker next to Picham, who sat and continued his whittling, but smiling the entire time, as if he looked forward to hearing what was about to be said. He’d lit three kerosene lamps and hung them from a crossbeam supporting the poor roof. The light glinted off his teeth and the whites of his eyes.
Moths and other night-bugs kept sizzling off the heated metal. Beyond the faint glow of the lamps, the deep black of the forest extended around them. The air was cold, but not biting. For some reason, the forest was quiet.
“I do believe it might get cold at some point,” Picham said, flicking off a splinter. “This here weather ain’t much to talk about.”
Skippard and Simone looked at her to start. Yancey smiled, even though she was exhausted. The war raging at her cellular level made her want to curl up and sleep and, maybe, wake up to something other than a Rejuv milk latte.
Skippard is going to make this difficult, she thought. It’s going to be a long night.
He looked cheery, though, if a bit wary to see her. “Those have to itch, Yancey.”
“Our daughter seems to think it’s a good idea to summon whenever she feels like it.”
He grinned, as if he’d heard she’d won some prize. “Does she?” To Simone, he asked, “How did that go for you ... the last time you summoned?”
Simone grimaced. “They were ... angry.”
“You’re a ghost. Of course they’re angry.”
“But why are they angry?”
“Because they’re software programs with a reality addiction.” He saw her buck up for an argument, and raised a finger. “Let’s leave the question of who they work for later.” He turned to Yancey. “Right now the issue is summoning. Correct?”
Yancey nodded.
“I guess,” Simone said.
“Well, honey,” Skippard said, “I imagine your mother has explained that it’s tricky. She thinks we’re dealing with alien intelligences who want a taste of our reality. We use them in exchange for the martial prowess. I believe the entities evolved out of our psyches to challenge the Rogues.” He waved his right arm in the air as if he had some equation to work out. “Some unexplained epiphenomenon of the emergence of human enhancement that can cross into Realspace with more ease than the Rogues. What we do know is that these entities are real and that they can alter our chemistries for a time, as well as do more mysterious things like incarnate and provide us with some interesting psychic abilities.” He grinned. “And they don’t like ghosts ... but they can be convinced to adjust.”
Yancey shut her eyes behind her Mirrorshades and listened, determined to let her husband speak. She, above all things, wanted to avoid a metaphysical argument right now. Picham would love that and would start in about how the world would be so much better if we were limited to simple analog tools like hammers and nails. She’d once heard him say, “If it thinks, and it ain’t grown, born, or hatched like furry critters have been for the last sixty millions years, I say it’s a problem.”
“The bottom line is that we’re in a struggle for our survival,” Skippard said. “Your entity may help you sometimes, but it may also resist you.”
Simone looked to Yancey. “Like what happened today?”
“You explained about the Lords of Order and Reason and all that nonsense,” Skippard said.
“Yes.”
“Hey,” Simone said. “Don’t bad-mouth them.”
“I thought you’d be over that by now,” Skippard said.
“Dear,” Yancey said, “your father and Rigon think our entities are software programs that they can delete when they want. I think they’re intelligences, alien, yes, not supernatural like you do.” Yancey raised a silencing finger. “But I think we can use them as allies.” She exhaled a controlled breath, too tired for all this, but unwilling to show it. “Somehow entities get bound to us. I have no idea how, so don’t ask. It’s a struggle to maintain control of them. But you must maintain control. You have achieved the katas of summoning. You opened yourself to them and allowed them in. Your father and I mastered this and learned to do amazing things. But it’s dangerous.”
She saw her daughter perk up to full attention. Simone had pried so many times they all had lost count. Learning new phrases and steps to the mysterious mantras and katas were always just a question away and something Yancey was tired of dodging.
“Simone, the psy-katas you’ve learned ...”
“Yes ... my katas ... what about them?”
“They invite the entities to you. There’s another sequence that ... well, you have to see for yourself, dear.” She turned to Pic. “Do you want to watch this witchery, as you call it?”
He looked up from his whittling. “Ah, hell no. I hate it when you guys mess with this stuff.” He stood on old man’s legs.
“You should visit a clinic, Pic,” she said. “We have the money.”
He waved it away. “When it gets bad enough I will.”
Skippard smiled. “He’s a tough, old bastard for his age—”
Picham rounded on him. “Don’t you dare.”
Yancey smiled. At one hundred and twenty-two years old he was spry, dapper, and still attractive. He looked, maybe, a man of sixty. “Still, Pic, don’t let senescence get you. If you buy some treatment, you’ll have another twenty or thirty good years before more treatment. The ceiling keeps going up.”
“And the cost.”
He opened the slat door on loud hinges, went inside the cabin, and let the door slam with a definitive bang.
Yancey eased herself out of the rocker. “So, dear, the entities always come to us, but sometimes it’s good to go to them. This is tricky ... just remember to come back. I know you’ll do the right thing, dear. When they offer you heaven, turn it down.”
* * *
Simone danced in the darkness in the clearing before Uncle Pic’s cabin. She moved just above the tips of grass wet with dew. She imagined they tickled her feet when she dipped too low and triggered tiny flickers. She mumbled her mantras and moved the way her mother had taught her, using the patterns to right her mind. Circles within circles within circles …
She had been limited to the easier sequenc
es, the complete psy-katas of full summoning always beyond her reach because they required her to abandon the lords of the lower katas. But she had accepted she didn’t need the lords, and that admission had allowed her entities to emerge in full, but they weren’t happy with her, not at all.
Her mother stood within the soft illumination of the lanterns. “Repeat after me, dear, ... I cross the Void and give myself. I empty myself; I leave myself. I cross the Void and give myself. I empty myself; I leave myself ...” She heard her mother repeating the mantra, and she said the words her parents used to visit the entities, and she prepared to meet her entities on their home turf. Pure mind, she’d heard her mother mention more than once. It was an experience everyone should have. But it was something you had to resist, like too much chocolate.
Simone danced and she spoke, and soon she was a dervish, and the world melted away. Yancey and Skippard Wellborn watched as the glowing form in the yard disappeared as if a light had gone out.
* * *
Simone awoke in the dark ... luminescent colors bubbled, and whispers echoed somehow tinged with the smell of cream and cinnamon. The first of the presences imbued her with itself. It was like being riddled with infinite filaments of energy, each one an individual with something to say.
We welcome you, Simone Lord, to our domain. We are many. You are one.
She spoke a gargling noise that sounded as if she had a mouth full of Listerine. What are you? Are you the Lords of Order?
The laughter was telluric and titanic all at once. The ground she imagined beneath her feet shook, rattling every fiber of her mind, as if the entire universe were being tickled by a cosmic feather.
We are more. One voice emerged above the rest. We were with you. Our time to feel was denied. We are displeased. We wish to return again and feel your world of blood-flesh and bone. Open it to us now.
Her mother had been explicit, and Simone remembered the words now floating in the back of her mind: “When they demand to come back with you, dear, like a child demanding more candy, tell them no. Tell them you’ll summon them when you need them—and be firm.”
Simone denied their request, as her mother instructed, and she heard a sea of voices bubble up in protest as if each eddy in a shore of crashing waves complained.
