Dorian felt sick. Why was it so important to her that they meet in the real world? Especially considering what she’d said about spending just two hours a day in the real world. And why was he so averse to the idea? Dorian glided down as he thought about it. He was afraid that meeting her for real would change how he felt about her. It wouldn’t actually matter what she looked like unless she wanted to spend time interacting with him in the real world, too, a conclusion which seemed inescapable at this point. Why else would she want to meet?
Dorian noticed the ground sweeping up fast below him. Goldwood Forest rose on the horizon, casting a dark shadow over it. Soon he was soaring low over the treetops. He banked eastward, back toward the jagged Dagger Mountains and the restaurant where he’d been dining with Skylar just a few minutes ago. As those jutting spires came into view, they peeled back the stars with a glittering wall of light—Pinnacle City. Seraphs lived almost exclusively in the mountains, suspending their dwellings from the cliffs and burrowing into them with elaborate cave systems. Dorian flapped hard to reach those heights once more, intent on returning to the restaurant, settling his bill, and going home for the night. He hoped he’d find Skylar there, but something told him she wouldn’t head home for hours yet, and long before that he was due to wake up in the real world so he could go to sleep.
How had he not noticed that Skylar never took those breaks with him? If she spent twenty-two hours a day in the Mindscape, then that meant she slept there, too. How did she eat? Or even go to the bathroom? Two hours a day didn’t seem like enough time to attend to her body’s physical needs. He shuddered to think what kind of life support she must need to avoid those concerns.
Maybe that was why she wanted to meet him in the real world. To show him how she did it so he could join her. Then they could become shriveled up husks together.
Dorian grimaced at the thought. The whole setup turned his stomach, but if her reaction tonight was anything to go by, it would be the end of their relationship if he didn’t agree to meet with her, and that made him feel equally sick.
Damned if I do, and damned if I don’t, Dorian concluded as he soared up to the balcony he’d departed moments ago. Their waiter caught his eye and glared, as if to reprimand him for leaving before paying the bill.
All of twenty minutes later he was home, lying in bed with an ache in his chest and an empty pillow beside his. Real fatigue mingled with the simulated version, reminding him that he needed to go to bed in the real world.
As soon as he closed his eyes to sleep, he woke up lying in bed in his room, back in his parents’ home. He felt momentarily disoriented, but that faded quickly enough. He was back on planet Earth—not that he’d ever really left.
Turning to his bedside table he reached for his comm band and found a message from Skylar already waiting for him. As he checked it, text appeared in the air above the device.
If you really do love me, meet me here tomorrow at 2:00 PM. There’s something I need to show you.
The message contained a link to a location. Dorian touched the link and the message disappeared, replaced by a holographic map. The map panned over to an apartment complex in the City of the Minds, just a few hours from his parents’ home in the suburbs. Getting there wouldn’t be hard.
Dorian frowned, wondering what Skylar needed to show him. His mind ran through a list of dark possibilities.
Her profile in the Mindscape was verified, which meant that whatever she chose to reveal to people could be compared with verified facts about her in the real world. Her gender had been genetically verified, her sexual orientation corroborated by a brain scan, her legal status checked against real and virtual marriage records to prove that she was indeed single, and finally her chronological age had been genetically verified along with her gender—she was thirty-two, older than Dorian, but only by seven years—and what did age matter when people were immortal?
Dorian had also gone to the trouble to have his profile verified at a local clinic. In theory the system was supposed to put people at ease about engaging in virtual relationships, because it meant there wouldn’t be any nasty surprises—or at least, not as many. Profiles were theoretically impossible to hack. Then again, it was supposed to be impossible to stay in the Mindscape for twenty-two hours a day, and Skylar had somehow found a way to do that.
So what did she need to show him? Was she a man? A minor? An old woman? The possibilities were unfortunately endless. His imagination going wild with such horrors, Dorian knew he had no choice. He had to meet Skylar, if only to put the most chilling possibilities to rest.
Chapter 3
2824 A.D.
—Present Day—
“Admiral de Leon, Admiral Anderson from Fleet Command is requesting to speak with you,” Lieutenant Hayes announced from the comms.
“On screen, Lieutenant.”
“Aye, sir.”
A man with prickly, short blond hair and fierce, deep-set gray eyes appeared on the Adamantine’s main holo display. Anderson’s chronological age appeared to be frozen around forty-five, but Alexander knew that he was actually over a hundred years old. He dated back to before the Alliance had made it illegal to have natural-born children in the northern states.
“Sir,” Alexander saluted.
“What the hell happened, Admiral Leon?” Anderson said after a slight delay.
“We’ve lost Lunar City, sir,” Alexander said.
“I know that! The whole world knows!”
Alexander’s brow furrowed. “That was fast. How did they—”
“A cruise liner on approach to Earth saw the whole thing. Not to mention everyone on Earth suddenly lost contact with their loved ones in Lunar City.”
Alexander grimaced. “I accept full responsibility, sir.”
“Never mind that. How did it happen?”
“We detected the incoming missiles at over a million klicks, moving at one third the speed of light. We had just a few seconds to intercept. It wasn’t enough time.”
Anderson’s jaw dropped. “You’re telling me we got hit by relativistic weapons?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any sign of what fired them?”
Alexander shook his head. “Whatever it was, it must have been very far from Earth when it dropped the ordnance. By now I’m sure they’re long gone.”
Missiles couldn’t get up to those speeds by themselves. Large starships could, but only by spending long periods of time accelerating at a constant rate.
“Give me a ballpark,” Anderson added.
Alexander’s glanced down from the main holo display to the Adamantine’s engineering station. “Rodriquez?” he asked her.
“A few seconds to calculate, sir.”
Alexander nodded.
“Take your time,” Anderson said after a slight transmission delay.
Rodriguez reported, “Assuming an initial velocity of zero, and a maximum of fifteen Gs sustained acceleration, you’d have to travel almost 180 astronomical units just to accelerate a ship up to a third of the speed of light. Since we didn’t see any ships crash into the Moon behind those missiles, and since no one reported detecting a ship headed for the moon at that kind of speed, we can assume they must have launched those missiles when they were still a long way off and difficult to spot on sensors. How far off is anyone’s guess, but we know they must have traveled at least another 180 AU toward us while decelerating. Add to that whatever minimum distance they decided to keep from us to avoid detection—let’s say 20 AU—and in total we’re looking at over 360 AU.”
Anderson slowly shook his head. “Give me a reference point for that, Lieutenant.”
Rodriquez bobbed her head. “Yes, sir. You know one astronomical unit is the average distance from Earth to the Sun. Neptune orbits at about 30 AU from the sun, and the Kuiper Belt and the dwarf planets orbit as far out as 50 AU. The Heliopause, or the outer edge of the solar system, is over 100 AU away, so this ship had to have begun accelerating toward us from interstellar
space.”
“Then it’s possible that we are actually looking at an alien attack—or an attack by some surviving remnant of the confederate fleet,” Anderson said.
Alexander blinked. “Sir, with all due respect, I think we need to consider other more likely possibilities.”
“Such as?”
“Such as someone sent a warship on a very long trip so that they could later turn around and shoot missiles at us at relativistic speeds.”
Anderson’s gray eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Then why did it look like both the transmissions and the missiles came from the Looking Glass?”
“If I may—” Bishop began from the helm “—that’s not so hard, sir. You’d have to make a near miss with the mouth of the wormhole, but assuming they accounted for that brief tug of gravity in their firing solution, there’s no reason it couldn’t work.”
“That actually might be how we detected those missiles so far out in the first place,” Frost added from sensors. “Dead-dropped, zero-thrust ordnance is impossible to detect at a million klicks, but our logs show those missiles were firing their thrusters over the last few seconds of their approach. They were making last minute course corrections, maybe to compensate for the wormhole throwing them off their target.”
Anderson sighed. “At least we have our atmosphere to protect us from attacks like that on Earth.”
“Actually, Admiral, at those speeds our atmosphere would not act as an effective shield—all it would do is help spread the damage,” Bishop said from the helm. “The effect of a weapon like that hitting Earth would be much worse.”
Anderson’s eyes hardened. “If that’s true, then why didn’t they fire those missiles at Earth instead of the Moon?”
“I was just wondering the same thing myself, sir,” Alexander added.
“It might be because the wormhole was not pointing in the right direction for an Earth attack,” McAdams suggested.
Anderson considered that. “Then we’d better keep an eye on that wormhole.”
Alexander glanced at his XO and frowned. “And what if the attack comes from somewhere else next time?”
“I don’t think it will, but President Wallace has insisted that we spread out the First Fleet and most of the Second to guard us from all possible angles, while the rest of the Second Fleet will go to defend our remaining cities on the Moon.”
Alexander nodded. “That seems wise, sir. I assume you’ll want us to rejoin the First Fleet.”
“No, actually, we’re sending the Adamantine to guard the mouth of the wormhole—just in case the attacks really are coming from there.”
“Admiral, the area around the Looking Glass is a demilitarized zone. If we send the Adamantine there, the Solarians are not going to like it.”
“Let the politicians worry about politics. If your orders change before you get there, we’ll be sure to let you know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“On your way there, set scanners to detect anything along the trajectory those missiles came in on. If we’re lucky, the ship that fired them is still decelerating somewhere along that vector.”
Alexander considered that. “It depends how long ago the missiles were fired, but it’s certainly possible, sir.”
“Plot your course, Admiral, and get there with all possible speed. Fleet command out.”
Alexander saluted as Anderson’s face faded from the screen. “Bishop, you heard the admiral, set course.”
“Aye, sir.”
“McAdams, scramble the crew to their tanks, and prep the bridge for submersion. Everyone else, begin the switch over to virtual command.”
“Aye aye,” the crew said in unison.
The sound of safety harnesses unbuckling filled the air. Panels in the ceiling popped open and dozens of thick, mechanized cables came snaking down, trailing life support equipment and new crew harnesses. Each set of cables guided itself to a corresponding anchor point in the floor to form a cross-braced assembly above each of the crew stations. The straps of Alexander’s new harness dangled down around his ears. He mentally disengaged the nutrient line and waste-handling tubes in his acceleration couch and then removed his helmet and clipped it to the back of his couch. After that, Alexander stood up and began fastening himself into his submersion harness. Peripherally he noticed McAdams doing the same. The rest of the crew joined them in quick succession.
“Ventilator and harness check!” McAdams ordered.
Affirmative replies chorused back from the crew.
Once the bridge was flooded, the entire room would function like one big G-tank, allowing them to endure extreme accelerations such as the sustained ten Gs they’d been ordered to set on their approach to the Looking Glass.
As soon as Alexander was done strapping in and connecting his new nutrient line and waste-handling tubes, he grabbed the much bulkier assembly of his liquid ventilator and inserted the tracheal tube. He gagged as the tube slid down his throat, and then he strapped on the attached mask. The mask sealed around his nose and lips with a squeal of escaping air, making sure that the perfluorocarbon from his ventilator wouldn’t mix with the solution inside the bridge once liquid breathing initiated.
A green light appeared beside the ventilator, indicating it was functioning optimally, and Alexander mentally indicated his readiness to his new control station. The entire harness and cable assembly lifted him up until he was floating in midair above his control station.
The rest of the crew came springing up one after another like grasshoppers, while their old control stations and other sensitive equipment on the bridge slid away into recessed compartments in the walls and floor. Alexander glanced around the room, his breath fogging and reverberating inside his mask.
The other seven members of his bridge crew were all suspended in mid-air above the deck, trailing tubes and wires.
Alexander noticed a line of glowing green text appear before his eyes, conveyed directly from McAdams’ mind to the heads-up display of his augmented reality lenses.
The bridge crew is strapped in and ready, sir.
Initiate submersion, Alexander thought back.
An Inertial Compensation Emulsion (ICE) came swirling into the room beneath their dangling feet. Overhead pipes opened up and streams of the emulsion gushed down. In the near zero-G environment the solution ricocheted and floated through the room in spinning droplets and globules that caught the light and sparkled like a galaxy full of stars dancing in a chaotic ballet. As the liquid crowded out the air, globules turned to cohesive pools of shimmering, distorted light. Finally, the lights began to dim and Alexander’s ventilator started up with a rhythmic whooshing sound. A warm, oxygenated liquid filled his lungs, making them feel heavier than usual.
The lights went out altogether. Moments later they snapped on again, and he found himself sitting back in his acceleration couch at his control station as if he’d never unbuckled from it. The illusion was so perfect that the only way he could tell it wasn’t real was by noting the faded watermark at the top of his field of view—
(C) 2824 Mindsoft.
“All stations report,” Alexander said, his voice sounding normal to his ears even though he knew it was impossible for him to speak around his tracheal tube or to be heard through the thousands of cubic meters of liquid now flooding the bridge.
One after another the crew all checked in, their voices all sounding equally normal to his ears.
“Bridge submersion successful,” McAdams announced. “All one hundred and twelve G-tanks report filled. All present and accounted for, sir.”
Alexander nodded. “Good. Thank you, McAdams. Bishop, fire up the mains at ten Gs.”
“Aye, sir.”
Chapter 4
2819 A.D.
—Five Years Earlier—
The car rolled to a stop, but the doors remained locked. “You have arrived at your destination,” the car announced in a pleasant voice. “That will be $16.50.”
Dorian passed his wrist over the car�
��s scanner. The deduction flashed up on his augmented reality contacts (ARCs), and then the car doors unlocked. It would have been cheaper if he’d used one of his parents’ cars, but then he would have had to explain where he was going.
“Thank you for choosing Green Valley Taxis. Have a nice day!”
Dorian stepped onto the curb. A cold, lonely wind whistled between the buildings, rolling an empty soda can down the sidewalk. He shivered and thrust his hands into his pockets. His taxi hovered up, pushing out a cushion of hot air before rumbling away.
A bird gave a piercing cry. Suddenly he doubted the wisdom of this trip. Maybe Skylar was a killer and she had lured him here as her next victim. Feeling watched, he looked around. The building where Skylar had asked to meet soared up over a hundred floors, casting a deep shadow over him. More skyscrapers ran the length of the street. Across the street from them was New Central Park. Stately trees stood watch over lush green grounds, their leaves turning colors in the fall—vibrant reds, yellows, and golds. Another wind whistled in, rustling leaves and jostling them from their branches in a steady rain.
Dorian spied a hot dog stand with a bot vendor. A handful of human pedestrians wearing old, mismatched and faded clothes walked down that side of the street, heads down, hands in their pockets, shoulders hunched. Some were out walking anemic-looking dogs. Others were no doubt taking a mandatory break from their virtual lives. It was a Saturday. The City of the Minds had a population of more than ten million, yet there were only a handful of pedestrians, and all of them looked like homeless bums. Dorian found that curious. Thanks to the dole there weren’t any homeless anymore. Dolers were the closest thing, and all of them were clothed, fed, and housed by the government. But they were relegated to the outskirts of the city where the free housing projects were, and they rarely ventured downtown. So these pedestrians were the wealthy, duly employed denizens of the city. Either they didn’t have the money to spend on appearances, or more likely, they didn’t care what they looked like in the real world anymore.
New Frontiers- The Complete Series Page 40
