by Jean Johnson
One day, it might be interesting to feel real pain again . . . and I probably will when my supplies run out. Peering out the window, he saw nothing but the courtyard of the castle, some landscaped gardens, and trees in the distance. Time to lie upon the bed, I guess.
It was a comfortable bed, at least. In previous versions when he had been the prince, he had spent several enjoyable hours seducing and deflowering the real Sleeping Beauty. Stretching out on the velvet bedspread, Shen tucked his arms behind his head. “Computer. Tell me when my rescuer has entered gameplay.”
“Understood. Princess Leo has now entered the game.”
“Do I have to stay on the bed while she fights her way to the castle?” If he did, he would be utterly bored. I never really thought of how passive the female’s role is, in this particular scenario . . . and what kind of a name for a Princess Charming is Princess Leo, anyway? How far did I throw the normal scenario parameters out of whack, randomizing everything?
“Consulting . . .”
That was an odd thing for the computer to say. Shen frowned, but it didn’t take long for the systems monitoring the entertainment matrix to speak again.
“You are permitted to move around within the royal suite. You may watch the action from the windows. When your rescuer is within one minute of arrival, you will be given a warning to return to the bed and assume the correct position for your role. You will not be released from your prison until you cooperate.”
That was a very odd thing for the computer to say. Rising from the bed, Shen crossed to the window. In the minute or so since pricking his finger and lying down, a massive wall of brambles had grown up between the castle walls and the forest beyond. He remembered previous versions of this game, the strain of his muscles as he hacked and hewed his way through the enchanted hedge, struggling with the cruel, barbed vines which “magically” slithered and regrew, attempting to thwart any entry. How good it felt to bash and slash, venting his frustrations with this self-chosen solitary existence.
How odd it is that I’m now the Sleeping Beauty. How very realistic, too.
BZZZZAPP!
The windows rattled with the force of the explosion.
What the—?
A huge chunk of thorn-sprouting greenery was now missing, and the edges of the gaping hole were on fire. BZZZZABOOM! Another chunk vanished, this time along with a section of outer wall. The windows rattled again and Shen swayed with the force of the explosion.
Staring, he watched the debris fall and the dust settle, revealing a strangely dressed woman. Instead of the armor and tabard of a medieval warrior, she was clad in black leather pants, matching vest, and a ruffled white shirt. Her hair had been pulled into a long blonde braid fastened with a black bow at her nape, and the top of her head bore an odd, triangular hat. In her left hand, she hefted a large canister of some kind, probably a power pack, and in her right, a cone-tipped cross between a small rifle and a handgun.
With the stock of the mini rifle braced between elbow and ribs, she spun to the side and shot the nearest patch of regrowing, enchanted vines, disintegrating them before they could grab and tear into her flesh.
Science-fiction meets fantasy? What random parameters did I flip?
As he watched, dumbfounded, she leaped with athletic grace over the rubbled remains of the courtyard wall. Once she was inside the castle boundaries, the brambles subsided as they were programmed to do. Dumbfounded, Shen watched her tuck the gun into a clip on the side of the canister and set it down. Stepping back, she snapped her fingers. Gun and energy canister dissolved, vanishing like a discarded game parameter.
She then tilted her tricorn hat back, shading her eyes peering up the length of the castle. Though he couldn’t see her eyes over the distance between them, Shen knew the moment she spotted him at the window. He knew it because she grinned and lifted her black-clad fist, thumb poking up in ancient greeting. Stunned, he stayed at the window as she walked up the steps and entered the castle.
An interactive rescuer?
“This is your one-minute warning. Please lie on the bed and close your eyes so that the next scene may progress.”
Bemused, Shen turned to do so. He caught sight of himself in the cheval mirror standing across the room and detoured abruptly. Up close, he could see the gray hairs stippled along his temples in his reflected image. Gray hairs he had seen just minutes before in the mirror in the Administration Halls simulation. This isn’t right . . . I shouldn’t look like my real self. I always look young and handsome in these stories, not middle-aged and, well, like me . . .
The computer spoke up. “This is your thirty-second warning. Please lie on the bed and close your eyes so that the next scene may progress.”
“Computer, adjust my apparent physical age to about twenty-seven years old.”
“Consulting . . . Negative. Your appearance is to remain true to reality. Please lie on the bed and close your eyes so that the next scene may progress.”
What? Shen stared at his image, his brown eyes opened wide enough in shock that he could see their whites all the way around. Something is seriously wrong—
A knock startled him further. As did the voice, feminine and unfamiliar, calling through the stout oak door. “Hello in there! Could you please lie down on the bed and close your eyes, so I can come in? This door is not going to open until you do, you know . . .”
“You think so? Computer, end program!” Shen ordered. He didn’t like the way this entertainment simulation was going.
“Consulting . . .”
“What the—? Computer, end program!”
“Player Two does not concur. Please lie on the bed and close your eyes so that the next scene may progress.”
Something was very wrong. “Computer! Emergency override, code—”
“F.G. number three, execute!”
Shen tumbled backwards under the force of that feminine command before he could complete his own. He thumped onto the bed, arms and legs pulled out by the bonds that abruptly appeared. Before he could regain his breath, a leather strap wrapped around his mouth and a velvet sash covered his eyes, leaving him blindfolded and gagged.
He knew this scenario, but not from this side of things. He didn’t arrange for it often, and Shen knew he hadn’t tapped anything remotely like this on the options panels, because he hadn’t accessed the subfolders for kinky sex scenarios. Even as he tugged futilely at the bonds holding his now shirtless body to the bed, he heard the door open.
“Thank you for your cooperation. I apologize for the forceful-ness of my entry, but the circumstances have rendered it absolutely necessary.”
“Comffufer! Wha fe heff if goih om?” Frustrated, Shen yanked at his bonds, but was unable to budge his arms more than a few centimeters. He tried spitting out the leather strap, but that didn’t work, either.
The mattress on his left dipped. Fingers touched his face, making him flinch. They didn’t harm him, just gently eased the blindfold up over his head. Greenish eyes and a warm smile met his furious glare. She wasn’t the prettiest woman the entertainment simulations had ever generated for him, but she was reasonably good-looking for a blonde.
“I’ll remove the gag and the other bonds once you’ve calmed down. In the meantime, you have my word of honor that I don’t intend to harm you. Not that I could; this is only a simulation, after all,” his rescuer-turned-captor offered wryly. “Allow me to introduce myself. Leo Castanides, Minutemaid and rescuer-for-hire.”
“Wha?” None of this was making sense. Not unless his program had been hacked. The last attempt of that, however, had been over . . . Shen didn’t know, exactly, just that too many years had passed. “Who ah hyu? Ah hyu reah?”
She frowned a little in concentration, then smoothed her expression and nodded, comprehending his question. “Yes, I’m very real. If you were to ask the computer how many people are playing in this simulation, it would tell you that there are two of us in here. Well, technically you’re in the master control room
and I’m hidden in a safe spot roughly halfway into the complex, because that’s as close to you as I can physically get without getting killed by the defense mechanisms,” the woman Leo added dryly. “But I’m very real, and very much interested in rescuing you. A real rescue, not a simulated one.
“I am here to unhook you from this forgotten machinery you’ve been protecting, pull you out of the suspension fluid you’re floating in, and ensure you get physically back in touch with reality.”
Shen stared at her, trying to comprehend her words. Either I’ve gone mad . . . or the system is finally breaking down . . . or . . . she really is real, and here to rescue me . . . or she’s here as a trick of the geneticists.
That last one didn’t ring very true. No one had tried to get at him for far too many years. Shen stared up at her, this youngish woman, confused.
She leaned over him, and he felt her lips pressing gently against his forehead. That felt . . . real. Very real. Only an actual kiss could have felt that good . . . or the simulated touch of another electrokinetic. A long, long time ago, he had interacted with others with similar gifts, geniuses at programming computers to do what they wanted because their minds could literally manipulate the electrons of the various programs. It had been so long, he had forgotten what it felt like.
Leo blushed as she spoke, sitting upright again. “See? I’m not going to harm you.”
She has to be real, Shen thought, staring up at her. She has too many contradictions to be a stable program. The no-nonsense approach, the sudden kiss . . . unless she’s a symptom of the system crashing . . . and if it is, I have to fix it, fast. If this program crashes while I’m in it . . . !
“Let me give you a brief synopsis of the last one hundred and two years. After you sealed yourself into—”
Closing his eyes, Shen concentrated and snapped his fingers, activating the inbuilt, wordless escape program. Three short, three long, three . . .
“F.G. number thirteen, execute!”
Shen oofed as she dropped on top of him, wrapping her arms tightly around his ribs while the bed and its bonds dissolved.
I can’t believe I kissed him! Why in the stars’ names did I kiss him? Most of her brain was devoted to wrapping her mental presence into a skin-tight package around the retreating electrokinetic in her metaphysical arms, but a corner of Leo’s mind kept repeating that question as virtual existence stabilized around them. There was no need for me to kiss him, so why did I do it?
Unscrunching her eyes, aware of a long, lobby-like corridor lined with doors now surrounding them, Leo peered up at Shen Codah’s face. He looked stunned that she was still with him—thanks to the coding of her Fairy Godmother program and the way she still had a bit of a death grip on his virtual body—but he was . . . well . . . in a word, handsome. Quite handsome. Quite fit, too; she could tell from his programming that this was a projection of his real body in her virtual arms.
“How did you . . . ?”
“I can explain!” Leo quickly asserted. Her virtual skin was beginning to buzz, a warning that his security programs were trying to lock onto her unauthorized presence. “Just don’t shoot me! Pause your virtual security protocols, and I’ll tell you everything.”
He narrowed his eyes, thinking it over. Leo felt the security programs charging up and whirled them around. He stumbled in her arms, but their sudden change in position confused the intruder targeting systems.
“Call them off, Shen! The last thing either of us need is me dying in here,” she ordered.
“If you’re an intruder—” he warned.
“—I am your rescuer,” she countered, jerking them around again as a metaphorical bolt of laser light shot past her waist. “Call them off, and I’ll explain! I won’t go anywhere or touch anything, I promise!”
Not that she could; her ability to be in this corridor, this deep into his systems, depended entirely upon her retaining tight virtual contact with his electrokinetic self-projection. The moment she let go, the moment she tried to look at anything else in this corridor, it would be a race to see which would happen first: her virtual presence being kicked out automatically by the system, or the defense grid vaporizing her mind.
Lifting his hand, Shen stayed the defenses. “Who are you? Who sent you? How did you get in here?”
She relaxed some of her wariness as the buzzing of her skin eased, but she didn’t relax her grip. “Like I said, my name is Leo Castanides, and I’m here on behalf of the Raider Clan—they’re a group of free Gengins of broad diversity. They’ve formed a coalition where our kind can live in peace. No Projects, no breeding programs, and no internal wars for superiority. Just fellow human beings cooperating and getting along. Some of them are the descendants of Gengins you yourself freed. As soon as the Raider Clan realized this facility was still active, they hired me to break in, find, and rescue you.”
“You?” he challenged, shifting in her arms.
Leo didn’t let him pull back very far; she had to maintain close contact to maintain this direct link. She tried not to let the projected, firm warmth of his muscles distract her. “I’m an electrokinetic, like you. I’ve made a hobby of studying archaic tech, and combined with my electrokinesis and my Minutemaid skills, it’s allowed me to get into old labs like this one to rescue many of the things we’ve forgotten or lost over the decades.”
Shen frowned. His next question wasn’t expected. “How long has it been?”
“Since you locked yourself in here?” Leo asked. “One hundred two years, six months, three days . . . or maybe four by now. I’m getting rather hungry and thirsty, and I haven’t had a chance to use a bathroom for several hours. I’d appreciate it if you’d make up your mind to trust me, at least long enough so I can.”
“You’re definitely not a malfunctioning program.” He stared at her a moment, then glanced down at the tight way she was holding him, still clad in her black-and-white clothes, her breasts pressed to his sternum.
His naked sternum, she realized belatedly. They were too closely pressed together, with her arms wrapped around his bare, steel-banded back, to tell if he was wearing pants or not, but his upper half was definitely shirtless.
“Do you have to hold me so tightly?” Shen asked her.
“It’s the nature of my piggyback program. The moment I let go of you, I snap back out of the system . . . and given the sheer strength of the security protocols I’ve just slipped past, I might be knocked unconscious if I have to do it in a hurry. You have a few too many defense robots patrolling the physical corridors of this place for me to risk losing consciousness.
“I know you don’t have reason to trust me,” Leo added candidly, “and I wouldn’t if I were you, having endured all that you have . . . but part of that lack of trust is your own fault. You destroyed all of the external relays that could have connected you with the outside universe. To use the metaphor of that entertainment program we were just in, you were your own evil fairy godmother, and grew your own barricade of briar thorns to keep everyone out.”
“I did it so no one could override my mind and reopen this facility. I didn’t . . .” He broke off and looked past her shoulder. She could tell he wasn’t looking at their virtual surroundings.
“You didn’t want the sadistic bastards in charge of the Borgite Project getting out and recapturing your fellow Gengins,” she stated. He stared at her again. Leo nodded. “Well, you’re not the only one who had to kill his creators in order to escape. Or to let others escape.”
“So you’re really here to rescue a murderer?”
“The first obligation of all prisoners is to seek a means to escape, and that includes by any means necessary. You weren’t imprisoned because you broke the law. You were imprisoned because you were enslaved . You are a human being, Shen Codah, just like everyone else in this galaxy. You have the same right as anyone else to defend yourself, and to defend those around you. You have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—I should know; I’m a Minutem
aid,” she reminded him dryly. “My progenitors’ Project was based on the ancient Earth belief of being ready to fight for one’s freedoms and rights on a moment’s notice. You fought to give others their freedom, as you had every right to do. Now I’m here to fight for yours.
“But I can’t do it without your help,” she stressed. “Yes, I broke into the entertainment files. And I just about gave myself a headache doing so. I’m surprised I don’t have a nosebleed. But this is as far as I can get. From here on in, the physical and virtual security systems are under your active control. From what I uncovered in the reports of the fleeing Borgite Project survivors, whatever you did to hook yourself up fully to this complex, it has to be physically unhooked by a second person. But you also sealed yourself in your inner sanctum so that only you can unseal the place.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” he challenged her, lifting his chin.
“Because I came alone. There were three attempts to get to you, roughly a hundred years ago. The records hold the speculation that the first two failed because you thought both groups were infiltration forces sent from the people backing the Borgite Project. The first two were sent by the Gengins you rescued. The third one . . . that group was backed by the Project managers, but civil war broke out on this colonyworld, and this corner of the continent was torched and abandoned. All three times, large groups were sent in to get you, and you treated them like hostile invasion forces.
“In the intervening decades, there were five more known attempts at getting into this facility. Most of them were tech treasure hunters. The only ones who got in past the first layers of security were solitary hunters. They didn’t get very far, but it was far enough to know you’re still expecting a large force to try to retake control of this place. I took a chance that a single visitor wouldn’t trigger a massive counterattack . . . and it’s finally paid off. Provided you don’t trigger the system to actively hunt me down and kill me.”
