The Forever Gate Ultimate Edition

by Isaac Hooke

  Hoodwink was bounding across the icy surface of the moon. Four machines were in hot pursuit. Hoodwink hadn't shot them down—so the energy weapon still wasn't working after all. Tanner watched the machines slowly overtake Hoodwink, and he considered going out there to help his friend, but then he realized he didn't have the access codes to open the outer hatch. Hoodwink had kept them to himself to prevent the children from hurting themselves. Or so he said.

  Hoodwink bounded over a particularly craggy area and vanished inside a crater in the ice. Tanner thought it was near the spot where Hoodwink had rescued him earlier.

  The machines followed Hoodwink down into the crater, and for long moments Tanner saw only the barren moon and the uncaring stars above.

  "Come on, Hood. Come on."

  He waited for either Hoodwink or the machines to emerge. But nothing came out.

  "Damn it." Tanner slid his helmet on. He was going to find a way to open that hatch, access codes be damned.

  Then he saw the machines reemerge from the crater. Alone.

  Tanner bowed his head.

  It was over.

  He glimpsed motion at the corner of his vision, and he peered back through the portal. A small, egg-shaped vessel floated from the crater. Black mist suddenly flowed across its metallic surface, enveloping the vessel so that in moments it was lost to the space backdrop. Tanner knew the thing was still climbing only because of the stars occluded by its passage, and he quickly lost track of it.

  "Good luck, Hoodwink," he said.

  99

  Today was the happiest day of Jeremy's life.

  The Direwalkers had been unleashed upon the world, distributed through the portal-hops to wreak havoc upon the cities.

  The New Users were crushed.

  He had the Dwarf.

  Ari was dead.

  "Reward reward reward," Jeremy said. Control. Power. It would all be his. The Great One could do things. Amazing things. Jeremy and the master were going to wipe this world and start again from a clean slate. They would turn this into a world of water, and soon Jeremy would no longer have to dream of such a place, but would actually live in it. Live. They would create an underwater utopia of unparalleled beauty, populated only by gols. The Great One would be emperor of course, but every ruler needed a second. Jeremy was going to be that loyal, deserving second. He would have the powers of the Dwarf. The ability to create objects at will.

  He would be the architect of the new world.

  "Reward reward reward."

  The Dwarf shifted beside him. "The only reward you'll get—"

  "Shut up!" Jeremy tugged on the Dwarf's chain and forced the gol to its knees. The Dwarf stank of alcohol from the wine and spirits Jeremy had poured all over the gol.

  "Master, oh great master." Jeremy fell to his knees beside the Dwarf, and stared at his own reflection in the mirror. There was a ghastly red pucker in the hollow of his neck where Hoodwink had burned him with the sword. It throbbed with pain, but it was nothing the Great One couldn't heal. "Master master master. Reward reward reward." He was wearing the black robes the master had given him. Jeremy had embellished the robe with a thread-of-gold tentacle on the sleeve. He did that with all his garments—his way of personalizing them.

  As sometimes happened while he stared into that mirror, he began to see random symbols scroll across its surface, and an unfamiliar part of his mind activated. His fingers moved seemingly of their own volition, and rearranged those symbols, exchanging one set for another, sliding some into the gaps formed by others, and so on and so forth. He didn't really know what he was doing, but he was doing something, because the world began to shimmer and fade around him.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the reflection of the collared Dwarf looking at him, its mouth agape in either awe or horror. Probably horror. As was appropriate. Jeremy was horrified himself. He shouldn't be able to do what he was doing, whatever it was.

  The muscles of the Dwarf's face abruptly grew slack, and its tongue drooped from its mouth.

  "Master!" Jeremy shouted.

  The symbols vanished, and then he saw it—the dark shape that called itself One, lurking in the mirror, near the bed, its face hidden in the shadow of its hood.

  Jeremy sighed with relief and ecstasy. "Master. Welcome back to the world." Jeremy felt insane with fervor today. Just insane with fervor and excitement. "Master master master. I love you."

  "Jeremy," the Great One said. It's voice came from behind him, as it always did when the master appeared in the mirror. "I love you too."

  Jeremy tingled all over. Tears welled in his eyes. "I'd do anything for you master. I'd kill, I'd rape, I'd mass murder. For you!"

  "I know you would, Jeremy." Only the master understood him. Others, like Hoodwink, thought him sadistic and cruel, but the master appreciated what he offered, and loved him for it.

  "Have you prepared Seven?" That was the Great One's secret name for the Dwarf.

  "I have." Jeremy stood, and shoved the Dwarf into the mirror. The alcohol on its face smeared the surface. "Precisely as you asked."

  "Send Seven to me, then."

  Jeremy scooped up the lit candle from the table and dropped it on the Dwarf.

  The gol ignited, screaming.

  Jeremy smashed his boot into the Dwarf's backside and the gol plunged through the mirror as if the surface were water.

  Inside the mirror the master was standing close now, right where Jeremy's reflection should've been, and it caught the howling Dwarf. The Great One embraced the gol, and together they burned.

  "I will get my reward?" Jeremy said as his master went up in flames.

  "Your reward comes." The Great One's voice sounded so welcoming, so loving.

  "Reward reward reward," Jeremy sung.

  Then the flames engulfed Jeremy.

  He screamed. How he screamed. He wanted to run around that room, howling in pain, but his body wouldn't respond. He was rooted in place. Burning.

  He remembered Hoodwink's words. Worse than being revised.

  And then as quickly as it had begun, it was over.

  The Dwarf vanished.

  As did the flames.

  There was no Jeremy—on both sides of the mirror, only One remained.

  The room darkened.

  Looking at its reflection, One flexed the fingers of its right hand. The two ridged digits sparked with electricity.

  "May the winds blow till they have wakened death," One said.

  The mirror shattered.

  Epilogue

  Hoodwink let the autopilot assume control. On the view screen, the icy surface of Ganymede slowly receded.

  He stared at the small metallic rectangle he held. That microchip contained all that Ari was. Her essence. Her psyche. It was the only thing still tethering her consciousness to this reality.

  "Have I done the right thing, Ari?" He held the microchip tenderly, afraid of breaking or harming it in any way. "Abandoning the world to save you? Should I just let you go? No. No. You've ended too soon. And it's my fault. You still have a place here, with humanity.

  "Since you were born, I've always tried to do the right thing, Ari. Even when I gave you up to Jeremy. Cora and I, we were so worried that you'd become a User. So worried that you'd ruin your life. Jeremy was rich. And I didn't know who he was at the time, nor who I was. We thought we were giving you a better life. I'm so sorry, my daughter. I'm—" His voice caught, and he took a moment to compose himself. So many losses. His wife. His daughter. He couldn't save Cora. But he could save Ari. "Yes. I've done the right thing here. I see that now. I've done you right. Know I have. The world can wait. You take precedence. You always have, though it took your dying for me to realize it. And maybe, just maybe, I can set things in motion where we're going, and help Tanner save humanity. Just maybe. After I save you." If I can save you.

  He carefully tucked the microchip away.

  The flyer approached the geostationary orbit of the Vargos, the mothership. This close, the m
assive ship filled the view screen, blotting out the stars. The Vargos reminded him of a thick saucer pasted above a downward-pointing cone. Rectangular sections protruded along the rim of that saucer, while canals crisscrossed the cone, latticelike. At the bottom of the cone, pipes of varying heights vented black mist.

  Hoodwink's flyer made its way toward the saucer's rim, the metallic edge of the mothership growing larger by the second. An opening came into view, and his vessel floated into a long tunnel of dark metal. Landing arms locked into place and the flyer halted.

  A rapid series of moans and clicks immediately filled Hoodwink's head. An ordinary man would have been driven insane by it.

  But Hoodwink was no ordinary man, and he recognized the meaning behind the cacophony.

  You have returned early. Why?

  In answer, Hoodwink merely grinned.

  Part V

  I Have Seen Forever

  100

  Graol stared at the broad spike that would impale his gastric cavity and four brains tonight.

  The death-dealing instrument was placed on a pedestal in the steel corridor outside, set there to remind the confinement bay occupants of what their short futures held. It was a simple spike, its sharp point gleaming in brutal anticipation. Scenes of agonized victims and delighted torturers etched its surface. The spike seemed rusted in places, perhaps from years of use—those who disagreed with the will of the Council did not live long, nor did those who even thought of disagreeing. But the underwater metal didn't rust, so those dark brown marks had to be something else. Maybe stains from the impaled dead who'd shit themselves.

  The light globes flickered and a cold current kissed Graol's epidermis. The touch brought his focus closer, to the energy bars that sealed him inside the cell, and to the murky water that gave him buoyancy.

  Around him, everything was silent.

  Silent as death.

  101

  Earlier...

  Tanner hurried along the claustrophobic corridors of the Outside, making his way toward Omega Station, where the children awaited. The pods of the sleepers lined the way. About one in ten of those pods were black inside, the occupants dead.

  He kept an eye out for the machines. He didn't think the A.I.s could decrypt messages sent from the Inside to the children, but he wasn't sure. So far, he hadn't encountered a single machine. He supposed they were occupied throughout the ship, cleaning up the dead and newly awakened—the aftermath of the rise in violent deaths on the Inside.

  Most of the ceiling lights were broken or flickering in this section, and in the dim light Tanner almost ran into a form sprawled on the floor.

  It was a man clothed in slime. Still connected to his belly, his umbilical ran to a placenta that was wrenched from a pod and lying on the floor behind him. His arms and legs were bone-thin beneath the slime, his torso all ribs, his eyes sunken.

  "Hepppp," the man said. Help.

  Tanner secured the helmet of his spacesuit to his utility belt, then he scooped up the placenta, wrapped the umbilical around the man's waist, and hauled the man over his shoulder. Tanner staggered forward, wondering if he'd be able to make it to Omega Station under the added weight. Already he was encumbered by the bulky spacesuit, which weighed 150 lbs. The man was at least another 90 lbs.

  After three paces, it became apparent that Tanner wouldn't be able to handle the man and the spacesuit both. He set down the man, who seemed to be worried that Tanner was going to abandon him.

  "No..." The man flopped his arms toward Tanner.

  "Just taking off my suit, friend." Tanner quickly stripped away the spacesuit, leaving himself dressed in the tight blue uniform with the calf-high black boots underneath—one of the standard uniforms of the crew who'd manned this ship over two hundred years ago.

  He glanced at the discarded spacesuit, which retained its bulky shape and reminded Tanner of a fat man who'd just come back from the guillotine. He sincerely hoped he wouldn't regret abandoning that suit. If there was a hull breach from an attack then he was in serious trouble, and an attack was definitely long overdue. It seemed a little odd to Tanner that the ship in orbit seemed to be leaving them alone lately. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

  Tanner scooped the man up and started the advance again. There, that was much better.

  The man abruptly squirmed, and pushed his fingers seizure-like against Tanner's chest.

  "What is it?" Tanner said. "Calm down, friend. I'm just taking you to—"

  "Gol," the man said. "Gol. Gol."

  Tanner followed the man's frantic gaze. He saw nothing but empty corridor ahead.

  But then one of the overhead lights flickered on and Tanner immediately understood what had spooked the man.

  102

  A machine blocked the corridor. One of the larger ones. Its body was a steel barrel on treads, its head a sword hilt with three glass disks for eyes, its arms wiry tubes capped by pincers. It gripped three writhing humans.

  Tanner wished the machine were one of the smaller models, because then he could slit open the blackened pod of a dead sleeper and lay the slime-covered body across the corridor. It was unpleasant work, but it had saved his life in the past. The smaller maintenance machines had shorter arms and couldn't reach obstacles on the floor, and would drive right over anything in their paths. The goo would get into their treads and short them out. But this larger machine would just slide the dead body aside or gather it up. The steel treads on this model were too closely-packed for the organic sludge to do any damage anyway.

  All of that flashed through Tanner's mind in the time it took the machine's head to swivel toward him. A red beam of light revolved with that head, tracing a path along the pods until it flashed into Tanner's eyes.

  He held the gaunt man close, turned around, and ran.

  There was a down-floor ladder here somewhere along the way. Tanner had passed it earlier. He kept his eyes on the floor, expecting the ladder to appear on the leftmost side any second now, but the dim, flickering light made it difficult to see. Tanner's back was beginning to ache from the man's weight, and his legs burned. He forced himself onward.

  The heavy moments passed, and still he hadn't reached the ladder, though it should have appeared by now.

  With a sick feeling in the pit of his gut, Tanner realized he'd missed it somewhere along the way.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Although the machine was burdened by the three bodies, it was closing. There wasn't time to go back.

  Tanner would just have to move on to the next down-floor ladder.

  A bulge appeared in one of the pods just ahead. A hand broke through the membrane, and Tanner was startled despite himself. An arm followed the hand, and finally a naked woman slid out in a gush of slime. She was bald—the umbilicals released a chemical amalgamate that stunted hair and nail growth, sometimes stalling it altogether—and her chest was flat from emaciation. The only reason he could tell she was a woman at all was because of her lower genitalia.

  She lay there on the floor, hacking up goo from her lungs.

  The machine was quickly bearing down on his position while Tanner stood there watching. But there was something he had to decide.

  He had a chance to save either the man or the woman, but not both. And whoever he left behind might potentially buy him much needed time.

  The man, or the woman.

  The withered figure in his arms sensed his indecision. "Please..."

  Choose, Tanner.

  He'd left Ari behind. She had died for him. A woman for a man.

  Tanner lowered the man. "I'm sorry."

  "No," the man said, and he reached up, extending his bony fingers. "No."

  Tanner couldn't keep the emotion from his voice. "You're saving us both, friend." A man for a woman. It was small recompense for the price Ari had paid, and a recompense given by another at that. But it would have to do for now.

  Tanner wrenched the coughing woman's placenta from the pod and then hauled her into his arms, re
sting her head over his right shoulder and the crook of her knees over his left forearm. He balanced the placenta on her belly. She was smaller, and felt much lighter than the man. She was either way younger or way older—he couldn't tell because of the organic slime that covered her.

  Tanner hurried forward, ignoring the incoherent screams from the man behind him, screams that quickly became a gurgle as the machine collected him. The woman hacked constantly in his arms.

  Two pods turned black as he rushed by. A third pod spat out another man. Tanner wanted to stop and help him, but he couldn't carry anyone else. He felt helpless, yet a part of him was glad, the darker, more selfish part, because that second man would buy Tanner and the woman a little more time.

  Finally he reached the next down-floor ladder, and he lowered the woman so that he could remove the floor grill covering it. The woman had stopped hacking at least, a sign that she was breathing normally. He draped her flaccid body over one shoulder and then struggled down the ladder, replacing the grill above him with difficulty along the way.

  At the bottom he patted the woman on the back. "Everything's going to be all right."

  She didn't give any sign that she heard him—no movement, not even a grunt of understanding. Worried, he gently lowered the woman to the floor.

  Her head lolled at an impossible angle and he realized her neck was broken. He'd seen it before, the muscles of the pod-born atrophied to the point where their necks couldn't even support the weight of their heads. Still, the sight stunned him, and he felt that familiar sense of disappointment and grief that came when you did your best to help someone, and failed.

  The machine rolled past just above, now carrying five humans pressed to its chest. They were all dead, as far as Tanner could tell. Destined for the meat grinder. Just like this woman. He was glad now that he couldn't make out her age or anything else about her.