Turning back to the fore, Dorian walked toward the apartment building where Skylar had asked to meet with him. One71, it was called. Dorian reached the doors and a bot doorman greeted him.
“How may I help you, Mr. de Leon?”
Being greeted by name threw him, but then Dorian remembered that his comm beacon was broadcasting it for anyone to read. “I’m here to see Skylar Phoenix.”
“I’m sorry, no one lives here by that name. Perhaps you are looking for someone who is a guest in the building?”
“Yes,” Dorian decided.
“Do you have an apartment number I could call?”
“76C.” Dorian replied.
“One moment, please…”
Dorian tapped his foot while he waited, jittery from a combination of nerves and the cold.
“The owner has buzzed you in,” the doorman announced. “I notice her first name is Phoenix, perhaps she is the one you are looking for?”
“So Skylar was an alias…” Dorian mumbled to himself.
“I’m sorry, I have no reference point for that question.”
In her supposedly verified Mindscape profile her real name had matched her user name—Skylar Phoenix. She must have bribed someone to falsify it for her. The burning question was why? and what else about her profile couldn’t he trust? Maybe he shouldn’t go up.
“Sir? Would you like to enter the building now?”
Dorian nodded and the doors parted for him. He walked into a lavish lobby with high tray ceilings, massive crystal chandeliers, recessed lighting, shiny marble columns and floors… The sheer opulence of it made his head spin. He walked by a bot concierge that smiled and greeted him by name. Dorian continued on. If Skylar—Phoenix—whatever her real name was actually owned apartment 76C, then she had to be disgustingly wealthy. Dorian reached a bank of elevators with black mirrored doors. One of them opened automatically for him. Feeling eyes all over him, he hesitated before stepping inside. There was no control panel to select a floor. Instead the number 76 appeared on a display above the doors. The doorman must have already selected his floor for him. Nice security system.
It took all of a few seconds for the elevator to race up to the 76th floor, and Dorian’s ears popped with the sudden change of air pressure.
The doors parted, and he walked out into a private foyer, a miniature of the one in the lobby below with a pair of illuminated frosted glass doors at the end. As he reached them, a pleasantly feminine bot voice asked him to state his name.
“Dorian de Leon.”
There was a momentary delay, and then that voice returned. “Welcome, Dorian. I’ve been expecting you. Please come in.”
Dorian’s brow furrowed at the personalized greeting system. He started toward the doors, and they now parted for him automatically.
He gasped when he saw the apartment. The ceilings were fully two stories high with floor-to-ceiling, frameless windows running all the way around a large, open living area, giving a breathtaking view of New Central Park and the surrounding city. Thick, illuminated stone columns ran around the edges of the room. Dark hard wood floors polished to an immaculate luster contrasted with spotless white furniture and sparkling cream-colored rugs. The furniture looked like it had never been sat on, every chair, ottoman, lamp, and throw rug perfectly arranged. The kitchen looked equally disused.
“Hello?”
No answer.
Does anyone even live here? he wondered, glancing back the way he’d come in time to see the front doors slide shut behind him.
A soft, mechanical whirring drew his attention to one side of the open living space. It was a bot. A friendly housekeeper model with a holographic human face.
“Welcome, Mr. de Leon. My name is Matilda. My mistress is waiting for you in her room. Would you like me to accompany you there?”
Dorian nodded. Forcing some moisture into his mouth, he said, “Yes. Thank you.”
“This way, please,” Matilda said.
He followed the bot through the lavish apartment, still marveling at the views. They walked down a hall along the side of the building, more frosted glass doors to his left, floor-to-ceiling windows to his right. One of those doors lay open to a powder room that was big enough to fit a king-sized bed and still have room to walk—an excessive waste of space in a city where every square foot came at a premium.
They continued on, and Dorian’s gaze was drawn out the windows, back to the view. There was so much light pouring into the apartment that it almost hurt his eyes. The vertiginous view reminded him of the cliff-side home he shared with Skylar in Galaxy. No wonder she’d chosen to be a seraph. She lived in the clouds in the real world, too.
At the end of the hall they came to another set of double doors, not as wide as the entrance, but still wide enough to be grand. The doors parted as they approached, revealing not another room, but a small foyer. Dorian followed the bot inside and the doors slid shut behind them. Here the windows were darkened by a decorative blackout shade, and the only light was from a dimly-lit crystal chandelier hanging overhead. Another set of glass doors faced them, more opaque than the last. After just a moment those doors slid open, too, revealing a darkened room with more shades blocking the light from the windows. Thin bars of light glowed on the floor between the shades.
Matilda walked inside, but Dorian lingered in the foyer, too afraid to move. A beguiling floral fragrance wafted out from the room. A lure? he wondered, his whole body felt tense and ready for a fight.
Matilda announced him to whoever was waiting inside.
“I’m glad you came,” came the reply. It was the feminine bot voice that had first greeted him at the entrance of the apartment.
Dorian frowned. “Phoenix?” She couldn’t be a robot. Of all the hideous possibilities he’d imagined, that wasn’t one of them. It was absurd. He would have known by now if she were a non-player character (NPC). They’d spent too much time interacting virtually, and besides, bots couldn’t own apartments.
“Don’t be afraid,” the voice said. “Please, come in.”
The bot housekeeper turned to him with an encouraging smile and said, “This way, Dorian.”
As if there were any other way left open to him. Would the various sets of doors between him and the exit even open if he tried to leave now?
Not ready to abandon the comparative brightness of the foyer yet, Dorian said, “Your name isn’t Skylar.”
“No, but it is Phoenix. I’m sorry for the deception, Dorian, but it was necessary. I’ll explain everything in a moment.”
A mechanical whirring came from within the room, heightening Dorian’s sense of horror. She was a bot!
But the shadowy form that appeared before him wasn’t that of a traditional bot, or even a human. It was something else entirely. A squat, hulking shape, rolling toward him on wheels. As it drew near, Dorian’s eyes picked out more detail. The hulking shape was a wheelchair with a human sitting in it, head slumped to one side.
Dorian frowned. “What’s the point of getting me to meet you if you won’t let me see you?”
The wheelchair stopped in front of him, but still far enough beyond the dim light of the foyer that he couldn’t make out any features of the person sitting in it. That person could still be a man. A man with an artificial female voice for a cover.
Dorian shivered.
“I have the shades drawn to help lessen the shock for you, Dorian.”
“I don’t think that’s working. You have to use a wheelchair because your muscles have all atrophied from spending so much time in the Mindscape,” Dorian said.
“Yes, and no. My muscles have atrophied, but not because of the Mindscape. I have ALS.”
“ALS?”
“Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Juvenile onset. It’s a rare disease that attacks and destroys the motor neurons in the brain. It paralyzed me by the age of eight. My treatments have kept me alive, but so far none of them have been able to reverse the damage.”
Some of the t
ension left Dorian’s body as fear turned to empathy. “I’m sorry.”
“Besides my name, everything else you know about me is true. I am 32 years old, and I am a woman, in case you were worried. Shades up—”
The shades in the room rolled slowly upward, letting in a blinding river of light and once again revealing a startling view of New Central Park. Dorian winced against the sudden glare and held a hand up to shield his eyes. At first the woman in the chair was just a dark silhouette, but then his eyes adjusted and her features came clear.
Phoenix was beautiful in the way that a statue or a painting was beautiful, and she looked startlingly like her character from Galaxy—golden hair, amber eyes, pale, flawless skin, and fine feminine features. Dorian felt a familiar thrill at the sight of her, but it was diminished by sorrow and pity for her condition.
He grimaced in dismay. “Surely there’s something they can do for you.”
“There is not.” The voice came to his ears without the woman before him so much as twitching. Her thoughts translated directly to speech. “Believe me, I’ve tried. No amount of money in the world can fix me. At least not yet.”
Dorian walked into the room, feeling drawn to Phoenix’s side. Her eyes followed him as he approached. He reached her chair and got down on his haunches beside her. Reaching for her hand, he found it limp and lifeless.
“I cannot move, but I can still feel.”
Dorian nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I wouldn’t have been afraid to meet you if you had told me this.”
“I had hoped you would react this way,” Phoenix said, her voice smiling for her. “I knew you were different.”
“Now I understand why you spend all your time in the Mindscape. Where’s your life support?” he asked, eyes flicking over her wheelchair. There was a blanket drawn across her lap, perhaps to hide feeding and waste removal tubes.
“It’s all built into my chair. I’ve had it made to be as unobtrusive as possible.”
Dorian nodded. “How did you bypass the wake-up code?”
“My father did that.”
“So he was a mindscaper.”
“One of the first. He worked hard to build virtual worlds for me so that I could experience all of the things I never could in the real world. The money was always secondary to him.”
“Was?”
“He died tragically a few years ago. I inherited his fortune and his empire.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Dorian said, wondering at her choice of the term empire. “Who was he?”
“Bryan Gray.”
Dorian blinked. “Bryan Gray of Mindsoft? That Bryan Gray?”
“Yes. Now you know why I hid my real name. I’d attract too much of the wrong kind of attention if people knew I was Phoenix Gray, the trillionaire heiress and owner of more than half of the Mindscape.”
“I had no idea,” he said.
“I know. That was the point. I wanted to make sure you were interested in me for me, not for my power or fortune.”
“So why tell me now? Why ask me to meet you?”
“You recently graduated with a masters in synaptic processing. You’re looking to move to the city and get a job as a mindscaper.” Dorian nodded and she went on. “I own the world’s largest mindscaping company, and I have a vast apartment here, just a few blocks from Mindsoft Tower. More importantly, I love you, and I believe—now more than ever—that you love me, too. We live together in a virtual world, so why not in the real one, too?”
Dorian’s brow furrowed as he considered that.
“You won’t have to look after me. Matilda already sees to all of my needs.”
“Then what would be the point? I mean, what do you get out of it?”
“The pleasure of your company for the few hours a day that I am forced to spend in the real world. I had also hoped you would agree to become my representative at Mindsoft. The people I meet are mistrustful of my virtual presence drones. I’ve made them to look as human as possible, but that only seems to unsettle them more.”
“You want me to interact with the real world for you.”
“Wherever possible, yes. Using your InteliSense implant I’ll share everything that you experience, and we’ll maintain an internal dialogue.”
“You’re asking if you can take over my body?”
“No, you would need an illegal implant to accomplish that, and I would never ask you to relinquish control of your body to me. I know what it is to be a prisoner in one’s own skin. Rather, I would be a fly on the proverbial wall, a passive recipient of the data stream generated by your senses, nothing more.”
“I think I get it now.”
“Over time, I want you to participate in running Mindsoft with me. You won’t just be a conduit.”
Dorian smiled. “You don’t have to try so hard to convince me. I would have agreed to live with you even if you were poor and had nothing to offer but yourself.”
“I’m afraid to believe that, but I am a pragmatic woman, Dorian. You can tell me the truth. I have things to offer that will make up for having to live with someone of my limitations.”
“True love is limitless, Phoenix, and you aren’t limited in the Mindscape. So we’ll spend most of our time together there—isn’t that what we do already? You might be crippled, but that doesn’t change who you are inside. You’re still the woman I love.” Dorian eased up from his haunches to lean over Phoenix’s chair. She watched him, her amber eyes flicking from side to side, studying him as he moved in slowly and kissed her on the lips.
Her lips were as lifeless as the rest of her, but Dorian could care less. He didn’t shy away, but rather lingered, savoring the moment. He knew the passionate, lively woman trapped and raging just beneath her skin. Spending her life in a cage had only made her personality more vibrant. It was what had drawn him to her in the first place.
As he withdrew from that kiss, he saw a constellation of tears trembling on her eyelashes. She blinked and one of them fell down her cheek. He wiped it away with his thumb and smiled again.
“There is one other thing,” she said softly. “You want to know what happened to your real father. I think I may be able to help you with that.”
Dorian stepped back, his smile fading to a thoughtful frown. “Go on.”
Phoenix explained her idea, and Dorian was surprised that it had never occurred to him to use a mindscape to pry the secret out of his parents minds.
“Find out what happened, Dorian. You deserve the truth.”
He nodded. “Thank you, Phoenix.” He leaned in for another kiss, a quick peck on the lips this time, and then retreated with a tight smile. “I’ll be back to see you soon. After I tell my parents about my plans, we can set a date for the move.”
“They may not understand. I suggest you be as vague as possible for now.”
“Good point. Maybe I can move in next week?”
“Whenever you like. Until then, you know where to find me, Angel,” she said, using his alias from Galaxy.
Dorian nodded. “I’ll see you there tonight.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“I love you.”
“And I you,” Dorian replied.
Chapter 5
2824 A.D.
—Present Day—
“This is why we never should have cut funding to the fleet,” Admiral Durand, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
Sitting at the head of the table, President Wallace rubbed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “We don’t have funding for the fleet. It’s not a question of what we should have done, but what we could have done, and the answer was the same then as it is now—if we don’t watch our spending we won’t be able to continue making payments on our debt, and the Solarians will come and collect.”
“That’s a moot point if they’re the ones who attacked us,” General Russo of the Marine Corps said.
Wallace shook his head. “I agree, but we’ve got nothing t
o tie them to the attack.”
“Who else has the resources to do something like this? We know we didn’t attack ourselves,” General Eriksson replied. He was from the air force.
“Do we know that? What about the Humanists?” Durand asked.
Wallace nodded. “It’s possible, but I don’t know what they could stand to gain by destroying Lunar City.”
“What if it really was aliens?” Anderson put in.
Eriksson stifled a laugh. “Admiral Anderson, I fear your association with that disgrace, Becker, may have colored your view. There are no aliens.”
“Really. Over a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way and you’re going to tell me that not one of them apart from ours spawned intelligent life?”
“If one of them did, then why haven’t they made contact with us yet?”
“Maybe that’s what we’re looking at—first contact,” Anderson countered.
Wallace raised his hands to forestall further conjecture. “Gentlemen, we will find out who did this, but right now we need to focus on how we can defend ourselves from another attack. If those missiles had hit Earth, you can multiply the casualties by a hundred.”
“We’re doing our best, sir,” Fleet Admiral Anderson put in, “but we only have two fleets, and both of them are stretched thin as it is trying to cover all of our orbital space. To defend ourselves adequately, we’d need several rings of ships around Earth, all of them scanning for incoming ordnance 24/7. More eyes and more guns.”
“That’s the ideal solution,” Wallace replied, nodding, “but we still need to get the funding for that from somewhere.”
“Get rid of the dole and use the money to build a bigger fleet,” Durand suggested.
“You know we can’t do that,” Wallace replied. “Most people live off the dole because they have no choice. They’re unemployed because there aren’t enough jobs, not because they don’t want one.”
Anderson snorted. “They’re addicts of the Mindscape, sir, so at this point it’s fair to assume both conditions are true.”
“And a lot of those addicts are virtual producers in virtual economies. That means they’re no different than people who worked in the entertainment industry in years gone by. Regardless, if we take away or even significantly reduce the dole, anyone who can’t provide an income on their own will starve to death.”
New Frontiers- The Complete Series Page 41
