But it wasn’t hurricane season.
“Oh no…” Phoenix said.
“What?” Dorian noticed her eyes were dancing with light from her ARC lenses. They’d had their augmented reality lenses and comm bands turned off so they could spend time as a family. Now Phoenix had obviously plugged back in so she could find out what was going on. “What is it?” Dorian pressed.
“We need to get out of here!”
Dorian grabbed his wife by her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Phoenix! Talk to me!” By now the column of light in the sky had faded to a dim glow, but there was a much brighter radiance blooming below it, like the sun rising.
Except the sun was already high in the sky.
“Turn your ARCs on!” Phoenix said. “It’s all over the net!”
“What is?” he demanded. Then he turned on his ARCs and saw for himself. Missiles fired at Earth at relativistic speeds. One of them got through and landed in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Dorian… we have to get out of here before—”
A deep rumbling started. It shook the entire building and shivered through Dorian’s bones. Behind them Andy screamed. Both he and Phoenix rushed to her side. Dorian swooped her up and ran back inside on trembling legs.
Paintings danced a jig on the walls. Dishes rattled in the cupboards and the sink.
“It’s an earthquake!” Dorian yelled to be heard above the noise.
“The stairs!” Phoenix shouted.
They ran to the front door and out into the hallway. They made it halfway down the first flight of stairs in the stairwell before the rumbling stopped.
A couple ran down past them, the woman screaming all the way down, her partner yelling for her not to trip.
Dorian paused. His heart pounded. Andy squirmed in his arms.
“It’s stopped…” Phoenix breathed, casting him a wide-eyed look. “We should keep going. Take our hover car and get as far away as we can.”
Dorian shook his head. “We don’t have long before the shock wave hits. We’ll be safer inside than in the air.”
“Not when the tsunami reaches us,” Phoenix said.
“This is Florida. Even if we run, there’s no high ground for us to get to. Nowhere nearly as high as this. The wave won’t be big enough to knock down a structure this size.” Their building was thirty floors high, and it had a wide base. “The lower levels might get flooded, but not ours,” he insisted.
Phoenix nodded reluctantly, and they went back up the stairs.
“What are we gonna to do?” Andy asked with a trembling lip as he carried her back inside.
Dorian gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. We’ll be safe in here.” Their condo was on the 25th floor.
He carried Andy through the living room and into the hallway leading to their bedrooms. He set her down on the floor, and turned to see his wife shutting the hallway door behind them.
“Are you sure about this, Dorian?” she asked.
He nodded decisively. “The Earthquake is over. It’s the only thing that could touch us in here, and it failed. Now we just have to stay away from the windows until the shock wave passes us.”
Dorian sat on the floor beside his daughter. Gazing up at Phoenix he patted the space beside them. “Come, sit,” he said.
She abandoned the hallway door with a frown and sat on the floor with them.
“I’m scared,” Andy said.
Dorian wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her tight. “Don’t be.” Meanwhile, he watched the latest news updates on his ARCs. A local news anchor advised people get to higher ground and stick to land evacuation routes because of the shock wave and high winds. That made him feel better about his decision to stay. How much higher could they get than 25 floors up?
After a few minutes of watching the news and comforting Andy, a deafening BOOM! sounded, followed by shattering glass. Then something hit the hallway door with a BANG!
Andy and Phoenix screamed.
Dorian eyed the door. It didn’t fly open, and the sudden noise was gone, replaced by a whistling sound. Wind.
The hallway door rattled in its frame with each gust. Dorian stood up slowly and crept toward the door. His heart thudded in his chest and his limbs trembled with spent adrenaline. His eyes felt like they might pop out of his head.
“What are you doing?” Phoenix cried. “Get back here!”
“That was the shock wave. It should be safe to come out now.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Don’t you want to see what’s happening out there?”
“No!”
“Well, I do,” he replied and opened the door.
The living room was a mess. The sliding glass doors leading to the balcony had been blown inward. Jagged glass glittered like jigsaw pieces on the floor. A towering wall of black clouds had blotted out the horizon.
A storm was coming.
Dorian walked up to balcony, and a wet, salty breeze blasted his face as he approached. Glass crunched under his moccasin slippers. He reached the balcony’s aluminum railing and leaned heavily on it, wondering who had just attacked Earth, and why. Whoever it was had to be responsible for the attack on Lunar City, too.
“Dorian? Is everything okay?” Phoenix called out in a trembling voice.
“It’s okay. We’re safe now.”
Half an hour later, they were still picking up jagged chunks of glass from the living room floor. Andy sat under a blanket on the couch furthest from the mess, hugging her shoulders and watching them with wide blue eyes.
Dorian walked over to his wife with a chunk of glass and dropped it in the box she was holding. He was about to go collect another piece when he noticed her staring fixedly out the broken doors to the horizon. Dorian followed her gaze and saw a dark ripple on the water, racing toward them at an impossible speed.
“Shit. Here it comes,” Dorian said, already striding out onto the balcony to watch.
“Dorian! Get back here!” Phoenix screamed.
“Relax! It’s tiny,” he said. “Look.”
“Mommy!” Andy wailed.
“It’s all right, sweetheart. Shhh. There, it’s all right. It’ll be over soon.”
Dorian frowned at the approaching wave as he reached the balcony railing. It was getting bigger—fast. A split second later it was a black wall of water towering over the thin golden bar of sand between them and the ocean. That wave had to be at least 20 stories high. It curled at the top like a claw reaching out for him, and Dorian’s heart froze in his chest.
How high would that water splash up when it crashed?
Phoenix and Andy screamed as the wave wrapped itself around their building and roared up the face of it, splashing over the balcony.
Dorian turned to tell them to run, but the water scooped him up and threw him back inside. It sucked him under in an instant, and then it smashed his head against something solid and darkness engulfed him.
* * *
Dorian awoke with a gasp to find himself in a featureless white room. His memories came back to him in streaks, like colorful streamers fluttering through his brain. Awareness warred with confusion.
“Where are they?” he demanded of the void.
“Where is who?” a kindly voice replied. That voice was familiar.
“Where is my family!” Dorian screamed, still riding high on adrenaline from the disaster he’d lived through. Was this Heaven?
“Your wife is alive and well.”
“What about Andy?”
“Andy? I’m sorry, Dorian, she’s dead.”
“What?” he shook his head, unable to accept that. Definitely not Heaven. “She was with us a second ago! If we’re alive, then so is…”
Awareness finally won the battle, and Dorian remembered. He collapsed on the featureless floor, sobbing. “No…” he croaked.
“Andy was not your daughter, Dorian. She and her parents all died in that condo in Clearwater. Thanks to you.”
“No!
” Dorian screamed. “You’re lying!”
“You know that I am not. By now you are feeling some small piece of the pain that you caused. Fifty million people like Andy and her parents died because of what you, Phoenix, and Orochi Sakamoto did.”
“It’s not true! You made it all up! Give me back my daughter!”
“Fighting the truth is counter-productive to your rehabilitation, Dorian.”
“You’re a monster!” he screamed, his eyes blurry with tears. “How could you let me go through that! You’re no better than I am!”
“Of course I am. I put you through a simulated tragedy to help you see that what you did was wrong. The corresponding tragedy that you put others through was real.”
“I’ll kill you! I swear it! If it’s the last thing I do!”
“I’m sorry to hear you say that. Perhaps your next parole hearing will go better.”
Dorian froze, a suspicion forming in his gut. “What? Wait!” He’d played this the wrong way, allowed his confusion and emotions to get in the way.
Andy wasn’t real. Those four years he’d spent watching her grow up had all been leading up to this. Ben had given him a chance for attachment to set in before ripping it all away. Dorian could see how that might seem like justice, how it might prompt a change of heart, but all he could feel was his own pain. Right on the heels of that was betrayal and confusion. The memories were so real. It all felt so real! Four years spent living and believing a lie. Ben had played him for a fool, hoping it would rehabilitate him.
Now he had to play along if he was going to get out. “All right, you win!” he screamed.
“I can see through you, Dorian.”
“I mean it! I’m sorry! If I could take it all back, I would! It was Phoenix. She convinced me. She manipulated me!”
“You’re going backward now, turning on the one person you claim to have loved. I’ll have to adjust your next mindscape accordingly.”
“My next mindscape?”
“Yes, this will be my final attempt. After that I’ll have to wipe your memory in order to save you.”
“What?!” Dorian felt his confusion and horror mounting. “You can’t do that!”
“Hopefully I won’t have to, but I am no longer optimistic for your recovery. Phoenix and Sakamoto were rehabilitated ten and four years ago respectively, but you’re a particularly stubborn case.”
Dorian’s mind swirled. Ten years… four years… “How long have I been in here?”
“More than a century.”
“You’ve had me in here for over a hundred years?!” Dorian gaped at the ceiling of the featureless room. “You’re lying! I would remember if I’d been in here that long.”
“I suppressed your memories of the previous mindscapes. Failed attempts at rehabilitation are not useful to your recovery. They only make you angrier and more depraved. I am sorry, Dorian. I truly thought you would be able to get out this time.”
Dorian gritted his teeth and shook his head. “How many times have I died? No—how many times have you killed me?”
“That is not important. Please try to clear your mind and relax.”
Dorian bolted to his feet and shook his fists at the invisible ceiling. “Fuck you! Do you hear me? FUCK YOU, BEN!”
“Goodbye, Dorian. I’ll see you again next year.”
Chapter 43
Catalina picked California for her house-hunt.
“Back to where we started,” she said, as she bought them two one-way tickets on one of Mindsoft’s supersonic jets.
It took all of an hour to get from the automated habitat where they’d been staying outside the City of the Minds to Northern California. On the way there, Catalina had browsed the net for a list of houses to see. They were all mansions in the fifteen million sol range. Alexander had wondered how she could afford homes like that.
“The wonders of compound interest,” she’d explained. “A hundred years is a long time to keep your money in a bank.”
If he’d known how long he was going to be in there, he would have saved up a larger sum himself before entering the Mindscape. Hindsight’s a bitch… he thought. And his name is Ben, Alexander added to himself with a wry smile.
“What are you smiling about?” Catalina asked as the self-driving hover car they’d taken from the airport glided up the driveway to the first home on Catalina’s list.
“Nothing important,” Alexander replied.
She nodded absently as she rolled down her window and peered up at a massive three-story mansion.
“Impressive,” Alexander said.
“You have reached your destination,” the car announced.
“Let’s check it out,” Catalina said, popping her door open.
“After you,” he said.
She climbed out and he followed her up a broad set of stairs to a set of heavy double doors. Alexander took his luggage with him—the same bag of hundred-year-old personal effects he’d received back in the habitat. It wasn’t a big bag, and not particularly heavy. For some reason he didn’t trust himself to leave it alone. Right now it felt like an anchor. The only real thing in his life besides the woman standing beside him on some rich stranger’s doorstep.
Alexander glanced at her as she engaged with the holocomm at the door. He wondered—not for the first time—how she was taking all of this so much better than he was. She had to be just as shocked and disoriented, if not more so. They’d both lost a century of their lives to a virtual world that neither of them were ever going to see again.
Catalina finished speaking with the hologram, and then she noticed his scrutiny.
“What is it?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.” Maybe she wasn’t real…
Alexander felt the world tilting away under him, and he shook his head, willing the sensation to pass. This is what we get for making the Mindscape so realistic that we can’t tell the difference between it and the real world.
The doors swung wide and an immaculately-dressed couple appeared. “Welcome to Lakeside Manor,” the man said. “I’m Leo, and this my daughter, Diana,” he said, both of them shaking hands with Caty.
When it was Alexander’s turn, he hesitated, suddenly afraid that these two were androids, but their hands were warm. Alexander nodded and smiled, forgetting to introduce himself. Catalina introduced him after an expectant pause.
“Come, let me show you around,” Leo said.
Alexander followed Catalina inside, hanging back to avoid conversation. He was locked in his thoughts. Troubled. He barely paid attention to the luxurious appointments of Lakeside Manor. The pool and lakefront property behind the house caught his interest, but only because the dock looked like a nice lonely place to sit and think.
He excused himself and went down to the dock to dangle his feet in the water. It felt cold, while the air was conversely warm. Floral scents wafted to him from the garden. Alexander took a deep breath and lost his gaze across the water. Something tickled his hand and he brushed it away.
That was when it stung him. Alexander yelped and glared at the wasp as it flew away. The pain served to focus his thoughts, to bring him back to the here and now.
It wasn’t just the lingering question of what was really real that bothered him. It was Caty.
What was he doing here with her? What were they to each other, anyway? They’d just spent a hundred years together! Married. Having children. Buying luxurious homes like this one. Visiting exotic places and living everyday life together. Thanks to Ben’s accelerated timescale, it was technically even longer than that, but now all those memories blurred together intangibly. The only part of that virtual life he could really remember was how he felt about his wife, and what they were to one another. The actual context of those feelings—all the moments they’d shared in the Mindscape—had become somehow vague and unimportant. Alexander felt sure that all of that was by design. He couldn’t be allowed to wake up with more attachment to a virtual life than his real one.
Alexa
nder reached for the bag on his shoulder and fumbled through the outer pockets before he really realized what he was looking for.
He withdrew an old engraved pocket watch, a gift from Catalina.
“So? What do you think?” Catalina asked brightly as she came to sit beside him.
He didn’t answer at first. Just stared at the engravings on the watch.
“You kept it…” Caty said softly.
He nodded and looked up to see tears sparkling in her eyes. “Time is an illusion,” he said, reading one side of the engravings on the watch. He knew them by heart.
“Love is the only truth…” Catalina went on, reciting part of the other engraving.
“Let mine be yours,” Alexander finished for her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head.
“For what?”
“He told me it would help you.”
Alexander took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh before reaching for both of Catalina’s hands. “It did. You did,” he said. “It’s just a big shock, that’s all. I’m still trying to understand how all the pieces fit together.”
Catalina nodded. “I can imagine. I’m also feeling… overwhelmed.”
“Really? You look like you’re taking it pretty well to me.”
“That’s just a face I’ve learned to wear.”
“Well you don’t have to wear it around me.”
“Don’t I?” she asked, her eyes searching his.
He knew what she was looking for. He looked away, back out across the lake. “You know, I’ve been thinking. All that time maybe you weren’t who I thought you were, but you were still you. What we had was real.”
“Yes. It was.”
“And you weren’t forced into the Mindscape to help me.”
“Of course not. Benevolence only keeps criminals in the Mindscape against their will.”
Alexander turned to look at her once more. “So you wanted to help me because you still loved me. Regardless of why Ben really had us in there for a whole century, that much at least is true.”
Catalina nodded. “I never stopped loving you. After I signed our divorce… I accused you of not fighting for the things you loved. I realized that you weren’t the only one. I needed to show you that I still cared.”
Mindscape: Book 2 of the New Frontiers Series Page 28
