by Isaac Hooke
She continued into a narrower passageway that was free of the human pods. Instead steel pipes and plastic conduits covered the overhead and upper bulkheads—plumbing and wiring that looked like it was jury-rigged by the robots and engineering teams. Portions of the underlying bulkhead were a brighter polish than the surrounding metal, indicating where the repair drones had 3D printed fresh material.
She smiled slightly. Robots. Bulkheads. 3D printing. There was once a time when all of those words had been so foreign to her. She had learned so much since she had come to the Outside. But with that knowledge came burdens and responsibility.
She approached a patrol robot. Its steel torso was embossed with geometric symbols; there was a vent in its side that covered different colored wires tied together in bundles. A corrugated, flexible black bag that reminded her of a smith's bellows connected the torso to the treads the machine used for locomotion. It had telescoping arms that ended in pincers. Its hilt-shaped head had three camera lenses for eyes underneath a red proximity sensor. Underneath the noise of the rolling treads she heard the subtle clicks and whirs of other servomotors at work.
"Good morning, Commander Ari," the robot said.
Stanson thought it would be a nice touch to have the robots greet the crew members whenever they passed. The younger Children loved it, but all it did for Ari was make her spine tingle. She remembered all too well how unsafe these corridors had been, with robots running amok, their programming instructing the machines to recycle any awakened human beings.
She didn't answer the robot and instead edged far to the side of the corridor to give the thing a wide berth as she walked by.
In a few minutes Ari reached her destination: the relearning center. Inside she found those members of the recently awakened. Their ranks had swelled since the last time she had come there. Precariously so: it was so crowded, there almost wasn't any room to walk. It was a good thing she had implemented that sedation policy.
Some of the newly awakened exercised on various machines. In the cardio area, men and women jogged on treadmills; plastic tubes were connected to masks over their mouths to monitor their oxygen efficiency. Other people sat in circles on cleared areas; they wore aReal glasses and made mime-like gestures, picking up objects that weren't there or manipulating screens only they could see.
All of them wore short-sleeved patient gowns that ended at the knees. Underneath it, almost everyone had on a mechanical exoskeleton of some kind: their muscles still recovered from a lifetime of sleep.
Readily identifiable by the dark blue service utilities they wore, the relearning specialists were dispersed among the room. Some trained people one-on-one, others led group sessions. There were about ten people for every specialist.
Ari proceeded to a small area on the far side of the room where an old woman was teaching a class. She was the relearning center department head, and lead specialist. Her name was Helen, and she was like a surrogate mother to them all. She was the oldest woman to have survived the rebirth. Despite her bodily age, she behaved more like a young woman, with the associated hopes and dreams, and the same youthful energy. Which made sense: she had been twenty-nine years old on the Inside before her rude awakening.
It must have been difficult for Helen to awaken sixty years older than she had been, her youth robbed. Ari could relate: before her own awakening, her use of vitra on the Inside had prematurely aged her body so that by the time she was almost thirty she'd looked a hundred.
The awakening had been hard on Helen's body and they'd almost lost her. But she had a strong will and devoted herself to the trainings: though it took her longer than most eventually she was walking on her own two feet.
Helen noticed her presence and looked up. A smile crinkled her features and her eyes shone with delight.
"I want you all to keep traveling to the different planets," Helen told her students, who were wearing aReals. "Note down the first thing you feel when you see each world. We'll discuss it in about ten minutes."
Helen got up and made her way across the room.
"Ari!" someone said from beside her.
Ari would have recognized that voice anywhere. It was Caylin, the little girl who was one of the first Children Ari had ever met. Caylin wrapped her arms around Ari's upper leg in a hug.
Ari knelt. "And how's my favorite Child today?"
"Very good. Look what I made today."
Ari received an access request on her aReal. She accepted and a three-dimensional swan appeared on her display.
"You made that yourself?" Ari asked the little girl.
"I did!" Caylin said. "See how good I am? I haven't lost my skills. When can I come back to the Control Room? I want to help change the Inside again."
Caylin had been instrumental in repealing the ice age, and she had been a good coder and excellent artist, but Ari hated to see the child wile away her youth inside a computer system. Unlike Hoodwink, she wasn't a big fan of child labor, especially considering that Caylin was both six years old in body and mind.
"You know you can't come back," Ari told the little girl. "Not for a long time."
Caylin blinked rapidly and for a moment Ari was worried she was going to cry. But the little girl forced a smile.
"I'm going to talk to Helen," Ari said. "We can catch up later. Okay?"
Caylin seemed a little disappointed. "Okay."
Ari rubbed a commiserating hand in Caylin's hair and stood.
"Ari, it's good to see you girl, it is," Helen said, hugging her.
Ari smiled. Helen had an accent that reminded her of Hoodwink.
"And you as well," Ari told her.
"So what can I do for you today?" Helen asked.
"I came to see how Zak was taking to the relearning." Since Ari had personally awakened him, she felt some responsibility for his reeducation.
Helen's face darkened at the mention of his name. The old woman shook her head. "I had high hopes for that one, but he's struggling to adapt. I have another specialist working full time with him. He keeps rejecting this world, keeps calling it an illusion."
"Maybe I should talk to him."
"By all means," Helen said. "Caylin, take Ari to Ben."
Lingering nearby, Caylin smiled and grabbed Ari by the hand. "This way, Ari."
She led Ari through the throng, eventually stopping beside a chest-press machine. Zak was inside it, moving the weights. A blue-clad male specialist counted out the reps. Ari's aReal identified him as Ben.
Zak stopped in mid-set. "You," he told Ari. "The gol."
"That's me," Ari told him. She glanced at Caylin. "Thank you Caylin. You can go."
"I want to watch."
Ari smiled. "Helen needs your help."
The little girl pouted, then quickly ran away.
"How goes the relearning?" Ari asked him.
"Just fine," Zak said.
"Tell her what you were just saying to me," Ben said.
Zak hesitated. "You tell her."
Ben looked at Ari. "He was complaining. Saying: 'why do I have to bother doing this, when none of it is real?' He says that constantly. He's got the worst reality disassociation I've ever seen."
"You think this isn't real?" Ari asked him.
"No it's not," Zak responded.
"Why?" Ari said. "They've turned the exoskeleton assistance way down by now. You're feeling the pain in your muscles as you train."
"Pain can be simulated."
"And what about vitra?" Ari said. "That's been ripped away from you. At least when you're collared, you can still sense it, just beyond reach. But now there's only nothing."
"It's an illusion," Zak said. "Vitra is still there. I know it is."
She glanced at Ben. "Have you tried sending him back Inside? Into the sandbox environment?"
"I have," Ben said. "We've done our workouts there, and returned here. It doesn't help. He says both environments are fake."
"I want to see my sister," Zak said.
"So that's wh
at this is about," Ari said. "When we got you out, I didn't know you had a sister. I didn't know she was there. I wouldn't have been so quick to bring you to the Outside if I knew. But you have to let her go. Has Ben told you that she's not your sister, not really? Not by blood, anyway."
"She is my sister by blood," Zak stated. "I've been taking care of her ever since I was a kid. Ever since we ran away from home together. You can't imagine what life was like on the streets, growing up like that. You can't."
Ari knelt to look up into his face. She rested a hand on his knee. "Zak, I'm not a gol. I'm flesh and blood, just like you. None of this is an illusion."
Zak's hand suddenly darted forward and he slapped her arm aside. "Don't touch me, gol!"
Ari stepped back. The blow hadn't been light. A portion of the exoskeleton that covered his hand had torn into her flesh, drawing blood.
She showed him the wound. "Does a gol bleed?"
Zak shrugged. "A trick."
"I'll get the first aid kit," Ben said, departing.
"Things will go easier for you the sooner you let go," Ari said. "As far as you're concerned, your sister no longer exists."
"I don't have to sit here and listen to this bullshit." Zak started to stand.
Ari pulled up the access controls for his exoskeleton on her aReal and disabled the suit.
Zak abruptly froze. He struggled against the steel cage of the suit that held him, to no avail. "What did you do to me?"
"Disabled your suit. So that we can have a proper talk."
Ben returned and wrapped gauze around her wound.
"Have you showed him earth, yet?" Ari asked the specialist.
"Yes," Ben said. "I ran the earth simulation on the same day he arrived. He doesn't believe it."
"Aliens on the earth," Zak said. "It's not possible."
Ari sighed. "You have your work cut out for you," she told Ben. "Help me carry him out of the machine so someone else can have a turn."
She and Ben lifted Zak from the chest press machine and set him down on the floor. The pair then sat down beside him.
"Sometimes it helps the healing to talk about your life on the Inside," Ari told Zak. "Tell me, what was your sister's name?"
"I'm not telling you anything," Zak said.
Ben glanced at her. "In the manual it's recommended that we don't dwell on the past, because friends and family may as well be dead to them."
"I don't intend to dwell on his past," Ari told him. "I just want him to get it out." She stared at Zak. "You know, I came to the Inside to collar you myself because I thought I sensed potential in you. I thought I sensed a man who could help make a difference in our cause. You evaded the guards for so long. That was real ingenuity. Or so I thought, until I learned that the hooded man was in fact helping you. He told you the guard schedule, and their patterns. He gave you the Lightning Rings. You weren't ingenious at all. You were just lucky.
"Did you know that this hooded man is actually one of us?" Ari gestured toward the people in the relearning center. "A man on the Outside who has been spreading chaos on the world of the Inside, pursuing some selfish, misguided agenda. By refusing to believe, you are indirectly aiding this man, who calls himself Amoch. He wants the world of the Inside to perish, you know. He will do to your sister what we have done to you. Is that what you want? Do you want her to awaken as you have? So that you can be reunited? Assuming she even survives the awakening... she could be sixty years old. Eighty. The Inside changes our ages. If Amoch succeeds in destroying the Inside, and your sister is old and frail, she will probably die.
"You have a choice. You can choose to help us. Or you can choose to fight us. The decision is yours. But know that the latter option will only doom your sister."
Ari waited a moment, letting her words sink in. When Zak didn't answer, she patted him gently on the exoskeleton and then stood up.
"Gemma," Zak said.
Ari paused. "What's that?"
"My sister's name. Gemma."
Ari glanced at the specialist, then asked Zak another question. "Tell us about her."
His eyes defocused as his mind traversed the land of memory, and he smiled inside the exoskeleton. "She was a good kid. I remember one time, when we were picking the pockets of rich nobles in Grassylane District, this one target caught me and grabbed me by the hand. He brought me to the nearest guard. A gol. So as the gol is dragging me to the city jail, talking shit about how I'm going to spend the rest of my days rotting, Gemma goes and cracks open the pen of some cattlemonger's stall, letting loose three woolly mammoths right in front of us.
"As the cattlemonger shouts and curses at her, she jumps on the back of one of the mammoths and starts kicking it in the ribs, exciting it and the others into a rampage. The gol lets me go to concentrate on containing the mammoths. Other guards rush in to help. Gemma and I escape in the confusion." He laughs to himself as he reminisces, and then sighs. "That day I nicknamed her Woolly. A little in-joke among the two of us. Man, I haven't called her that in years. I'm going to miss her."
Ari waited for him to say more, but when it was obvious he was done, she released the freeze on his exoskeleton.
Zak, taken entirely by surprise, promptly collapsed.
She offered him a helping hand.
"I'm glad you chose to help us," she said. "Rather than fight us."
He reluctantly accepted her hand. "I haven't quite made my choice, yet. I still think all of this is fake."
"Yes," Ari said. "But you've opened yourself to the possibility that it's real. And that's the first step in believing."
10
Amoch toured the grounds of his makeshift camp in the desert outside the Forever Gate of Rhagnorak. The metal ferrule of his staff left thin disks of molten glass in its wake where it touched the sand.
Tents crowded the barren landscape as far as the eye could see. Groups of uncollared individuals gathered around trainers, learning the intricacies of lightning and vitra, or practicing with fire swords.
Amoch's plans were going well.
A small group of loyal followers walked with him. Hadrian, the man he had uncollared in Dhenn, was among them. As was Sammuel, the old man from the same city whom Amoch had convinced to fall on a sword. Amoch had sent someone to find Sammuel's pod in the real world and he had been taken out and moved to an abandoned part of the ship, where he connected to the Inside via a wireless access port. The compartment Sammuel dreamt within had two exits, with proximity sensors outside the hatches triggered to wake him and the others who sheltered there on the approach of either robot or man. The security team would never catch them.
Amoch neared the main tent and the two hunters with their giant daggers and telescoping blade weapons parted to let him pass.
Wraylor was within. She wore a hooded black robe similar to his own, except her version was tighter and accentuated her figure. Also unlike his outfit, her face was completely visible. Her eyes stood out like two glowing emeralds underneath that hood. She had chosen a green skin tone for herself, so dark it was almost gray. Her face was blemish-less of course, and her features slightly different as compared to the Outside: her cheekbones more chiseled, her nose more pinched, her face less circular. You could be as beautiful as you wanted on the Inside. Or as ugly.
Wraylor smiled when she saw him. Amoch couldn't tell if that was tenderness he saw in those glowing green eyes, or contempt.
"Welcome, my love." She wrapped her arms around him, enveloping him with limbs that quickly quadrupled so that he was enwrapped in the hug of an octopus. When she released him, she had two arms again. "I've missed you."
"You shouldn't be here," Amoch told her. "I want you on the Outside."
"But I thought we could—"
Amoch raised a dismissive hand. "Do not think. Do not. Return to the Outside immediately."
Wraylor seemed about to protest but then curtsied instead. "As you wish." She left the tent, no doubt to go somewhere quiet and disbelieve reality. Then again, he wasn't
sure what exactly she would do.
"Follow her," he instructed Sammuel. "Make sure she leaves this world."
"Yes, my lord." Sammuel made his way toward the front of the tent.
"And Sammuel," Amoch told him. "Careful that you don't let her see you."
Sammuel nodded and hurried from the tent.
Amoch approached the planning table and stared at the layout of the miniature city before him. His advisors had already pinned out the best attack routes. Because of its sprawling size and the number of guards, the place wouldn't be as easy to take as Emerald, but Amoch had no doubts the city would eventually fall. No doubts whatsoever. Especially when he disabled most of those guards in one fell blow.
And when victory came, it would be their greatest yet.
"Sir." One of the hunters peered into the entryway. "There is a woman here requesting to see you. She says she met you before, and that you gave her brother a set of Lightning Rings."
Amoch waved a hand absently toward the gol. "Let her in."
An uncollared woman entered the tent. She was dainty and young, with a grimy face and torn clothes. Her movements seemed confident, though there was more than a hint of fear in her eyes.
"My lord," she said, bowing slightly.
Amoch simply stared at her, saying nothing. He would let the darkness that covered his face unnerve her for a few moments. At that distance, and with the current lighting, she could probably see the black swirling fog that made up the impenetrable mask. That darkness was only visible to outside observers, of course: his own vision was completely unmarred.
The young girl fidgeted, but to her credit, her fear didn't seem to increase. Amoch wondered if he should change that.
"My lord," she repeated. "My name is Gemma, do you remember me?"
