All the King's Men

by Alex Powell

“I need to let them go.” Which made very little sense to Fox, but he needed to get out of King’s domain now, and had no time for cryptic messages.

  “No!” Karl appeared at their side instantly. “You can’t do it. I told you, I wasn’t even sure it would work. You could permanently damage your mind!”

  “Joanne’s project. It showed me the way,” King muttered.

  “Wait!”

  Karl’s desperate cry went unheeded, and King closed his eyes, concentrating hard.

  “Delete.”

  Everything disappeared.

  * * * *

  Fox came to, finding himself somewhere in the public domain. His head was pounding from the force of being ejected from King’s domain, and no one else was anywhere near him. He’d lost track of his companions while the agents were after them, and now he was hopelessly lost. He kept trying to think of where he wanted to go, but his thoughts weren’t coalescing.

  “Excalibur” had been the password.

  He hadn’t been sure what was happening during that last exchange, but it sounded dire to him. He had to find out where King had ended up, and whether anyone else was still there.

  He searched for “Excalibur” and found the article on King Arthur still there, but the domain King had slotted in was gone. Wherever King was, his private domain had been moved.

  He was still standing there, at a loss, when several figures appeared around him. He turned, expecting it to be Joanne or Simon or someone.

  It was the government MindHacks.

  Fox swore and changed shape before dashing back into the public domain. It was harder for them to find him here when he had access to the vastness of the Cerebrum. They all gave chase, and Fox tried to think past his aching head. He wondered if they were the same agents and if they were suffering the same effects as he was. It was impossible to tell, because all of them were identical, from goggles to boots.

  It occurred to him that they were a program, and not people at all, until he remembered that his psychological trick had worked on one of them. A program wouldn’t have fallen for that, would it?

  He should have known better than to come back. Of course the agents had considered that some of King’s people might return to the same spot. Fox just hadn’t been thinking beyond what might have happened to King, because the one thing he did know was that they had King’s body.

  Fox was tired, and the ache in his head intensified. He couldn’t leave the Cerebrum until he’d lost them, or he’d lead them straight to his physical location. These agents were expert enough to break through King and Karl’s combined Mindwall. There was no way he was giving them access to information that could lead to his own body being dusted.

  As he jumped down link after link, he wondered if he was being herded into a trap. He wasn’t giving any thought to his next move, just blindly leaping through the public domain. The agents were right behind him, so his trail was blazingly obvious. A novice would be able to follow his path.

  His head gave another throb, and his back molars ached fiercely. It was a bit strange, because foxes didn’t have molars like humans, but they felt like they were real.

  Great. That probably meant that when he finally logged out of the Cerebrum, his physical head would hurt like a bitch, too.

  He hoped the agents behind him were suffering equally.

  This wasn’t working. There was no way for him to pull ahead, even as a fox, he just wasn’t fast or smart enough to lose them. He had to go somewhere, to an established domain, a social networking platform or something. There would be tons of people there. He really didn’t like involving the public in his hazardous lifestyle, but if he didn’t, eventually the MindHacks would catch him. He knew he didn’t have the endurance to outrun five agents.

  He dove in, bypassing the required log-in by feeding the Cerembrum a code that tricked it into thinking he already had. People did have permanent log-in codes, but it made it easy to track down someone’s identity. Most people didn’t really care, because their government already knew everything about them.

  Fox wasn’t one of those people. Being dusted was one thing, being doxxed was almost as bad.

  He changed back to human as he entered. The programming on this social platform was putting pressure on him to change form, because having animals running willy-nilly among people would be too chaotic. It would take too much mental energy to maintain form when there was pressure from the system to remain human. It might not be a common ability, but most platforms took no chances.

  Luckily, the same applied to weaponry, so it would be unlikely the agents, especially the one with the dual pistols, would be able to shoot him. Injury in the Cerebrum was highly unpleasant.

  It looked as if the agents also had a similar bypass code, one sanctioned by whatever government they were working for. No one actually knew who King was or where he was from. The Cerebrum made knowing the same language unnecessary as it had an auto-translate function. America was his best guess, but it could possibly be any of the central African nations or even one of the Caribbean islands.

  Judging by the training these agents had, he was betting on America.

  As soon as he was in, he immediately jumped into a group chat. Different groups with common interests always formed on social platforms, and this one had several where he could hide. This one was Japanese-make, and had been designed to look like the interior of a cosplay café. His bright red hair blended in among the myriad of colours around him.

  The agents didn’t stand out either, and Fox soon lost sight of them in the crowd. It was a relief to lose them, at least momentarily, but he couldn’t be sure how long that would last.

  He sidled up to a few people standing near him, trying to make it look as if he were a part of their group. The agents might take longer to notice him if he were in one of the clumps, and not wandering about by himself.

  “Who are you?” one of the girls standing closest to him queried, holding a tiny little cup of tea in her hands—for show, as one couldn’t eat or drink in the mindnet.

  “Careful, it might be a virus,” one of her companions warned. “Look at his ID code.”

  The girl drew back, clearly alarmed by the jumble of meaningless symbols that made up his ID. It was no wonder they thought he was a virus. Sometimes bugs were disguised as people, but a virus couldn’t hold its form long. Holding a corporeal shape was made slightly easier by the fact the system was imposing a human form on entrants, but a bug was made up of corrupt data and would disintegrate rapidly.

  “I’m not a virus,” he tried to assure her. “My name is Fox.”

  The girl snorted. “As if there aren’t thousands of variations on that name since the 2310 debacle in England.”

  “It’s been very popular lately,” her friend added.

  “I expect now that the Dream Dust story’s broken, we’ll see more names based off the Maid’s,” the first girl replied smugly.

  The Maid was Joanne’s mindnet alias. In response to their conversation tags, a few more groups began discussing Joanne’s story, and it broke into one of the trending topic spots on the nearest board. Now that Fox was paying attention, he did notice a few more people in the vicinity with the word “fox” in their alias.

  Fox grinned easily at them and ran a hand through his red hair. “That is really very flattering, I suppose.”

  He caught a glimpse of an agent flitting through the mass of bodies, looking for him. The girl followed his line of sight and noticed the agent.

  “What’s that?” she asked, voice quiet, although volume made no difference. Her message was lost among all the chat data flowing in the room.

  “Government,” he answered. “They don’t even have ID markers.”

  It was true, they didn’t. The space above and to the right of their heads that usually displayed ID numbers was empty. Even Fox couldn’t completely erase his.

  “What are they doing here?” she asked, and some people nearby turned to look as well.

  As soo
n as people began noticing them, the question popped up again and again until it spread throughout the room. Within moments, all five agents were highlighted as the data in the room fell silent except for the repeating question: What are they doing here?

  The first person to try and leave the chat bounced directly back in, revealing to all assembled that the agents had blocked their retreat, locking them in the domain.

  “I can’t get out.”

  The cry repeated again, as more people tried to escape the domain. It grew louder and louder until Fox could barely hear anything else as people banged on the walls, screaming. The agents were trying to press through the panicking crowd, but while some backed away from their presence, others attacked them.

  Fox did neither. He walked to one of the walls and gently placed his hand on it, trying hard to concentrate past the noise and the renewed pain in his temple.

  A section of the wall melted away, revealing the seething MindWall on the other side. Someone was preventing the passage of data, meaning that no one could get out or in. They were trying to catch him by a process of elimination.

  Fox smiled. They’d thought that the Wall would hold him, and that was a mistake.

  He looked at the code in front of him and picked out bits of data, fitting it to a pattern that he knew in his head. He’d seen this one before, and while it wasn’t exactly a complicated code to unravel, it was time-consuming. He glanced over his shoulder. No one had noticed what he was doing, and he could see no agents from where he stood.

  It would have to do. He sorted out the different strands, unwinding them from one another in their neat braids. The strands resisted him, trying to wind back together to keep the Wall whole. Fox struggled to keep them apart, trying desperately to make a gap large enough to fit through.

  He hoped that whoever was holding up the MindWall was on the outside and not in here with him, because if they were inside, they could warn their fellow agents that he was breaking through. It was doubtful, however, that these agents would be so thoughtless as to allow their communication link to be broken by their own Wall.

  One of the strands slipped, and with a whispered curse, Fox tried to grab it and missed. He dropped another one as he did, and they both realigned. Now he had to wait for the right piece of code to show up again to get back those strands.

  Fox painstakingly kept the strands he already had tightly in hand as he separated the ones he had lost again. They had to be parted in a certain order, or it wouldn’t work. He saw the data strand pass by that would have opened the next one, but was forced to let it go while he waited for the strand he’d dropped to loop back around.

  He was almost done when a voice behind him said, “Got you.”

  One of the agents had found him. He couldn’t move, or he would drop all the strands he’d already unbraided, but if he didn’t move, the agent would catch him. The agent grabbed his shoulder, his fingers digging in hard.

  The last strand of data appeared.

  Fox grabbed it and threw himself through the newly opened hole in the MindWall, dragging the agent along with him. They both tumbled out, back into the endless links of the Cerebrum, falling without latching onto anything. Fox’s head whirled as he watched the data fly past in a blur of glowing blue.

  The agent finally stopped their descent, and the two of them slammed to a halt, jarred together by the force of their momentum. Before Fox could say or do anything at all, the agent grabbed his head in both hands and pressed their foreheads together, forcing himself into Fox’s mind.

  Fox was prepared for such an occurrence, as King would have been had his body not been compromised. They landed in a vast desert that stretched as far as the eye could see, with the pain in Fox’s head translating into a relentless sun burning down on them.

  Fox became a tree. It was much easier to change form when inside one’s own domain.

  The agent turned about, looking in all directions, but Fox and the agent were the only things around besides sand. Perhaps not realizing that Fox was the tree, the agent sat underneath his branches.

  “I think you’ll find my domain quite inhospitable,” Fox suggested.

  “I’ve never seen a more desolate place,” the agent agreed.

  The words made something in the pit of Fox’s non-existent stomach twinge.

  “Surely I’m not the only one with a tactic like this,” Fox argued.

  The agent picked up a handful of sand, spilling the fragmented memories and thoughts of Fox’s head back on the ground.

  “No one I know could easily subject themselves to this,” the agent said.

  Fox wanted to object. He could make his head look like the beaches of Bora Bora with all its crystal clear water, or the top of the Eiffel Tower at night, with all of Paris lit below.

  “You’re trying to goad me,” he accused.

  Fox resisted the urge to show the agent what he could do with his imagination. The agent would immediately take advantage of any change.

  The agent didn’t answer, just stood and started walking.

  Fox didn’t want this intruder wandering about unsupervised in his mind, so he changed into a hawk to follow him from overhead. There was nothing he could do but try to compel the agent to leave. Fox concentrated on forcing him out of his head, but a wave of pain crashed into his temples at the attempt. The chase must have weakened him more than he first thought.

  The oppressive heat and harsh sunlight weren’t real, but the pain fuelling them in his imagination was. The agent set off at a swift pace, but soon slowed to a steady slog. The sand kept shifting, giving the man uneven footing. The agent finally sat on top of a dune and surveyed the endless desert.

  “You don’t have an oasis somewhere?” the agent asked at length.

  “I’ve never needed an oasis.”

  “That you can even imagine such an unforgiving wasteland is unbelievable.”

  Fox didn’t understand. His head wasn’t like this all the time. He’d planned to use such a repellent landscape only if someone else was in his head uninvited. He had several other ideas in case this one hadn’t worked. He had beautiful places that he could go in his head, and yet it appeared this agent was sorry for what he was seeing.

  The agent didn’t say anything more, but shaded his head with his hands. The intensity of the sunlight made it hard to see anything distant, but if the agent walked far enough, eventually he’d reach the pyramids of Giza.

  The agent didn’t get up again. He wavered in a jerky motion and fell over sideways, only just catching himself before hitting the sand. He slumped forward, clearly unconscious, not even putting up his hands to keep his face out of the grainy dust.

  Fox landed next to him and shimmered back into human form.

  “Hello?” he asked, poking the man with his toe.

  Fox did this a few more times before being satisfied that the agent wouldn’t suddenly wake up and seize him.

  He picked up the agent and transported them out of his domain. He left the agent adrift in the public domain, wondering if he should invade the agent’s head while he was sleeping. Fox decided not to, because often people who were unconscious in the Cerebrum had personal domains that looked like their current dream-state. It could be terrifying.

  No one else was around, so Fox chanced returning to where he was logged in to the Cerebrum. He logged out, and as his eyes blinked open. He took in the sight of his own bedroom window, slick with rain. He watched raindrops collect in the pane and considered that his head had never before rendered someone unconscious.

  Chapter 2: A Crown for a King

  Seven watched as the man the Cerebrum called “the King” woke up. They’d kept him in Seven’s private domain, because out of all the MindHacks that worked for the government, only Seven could split his mind in such a way that he could travel the public domain and still have people inside his private domain.

  He’d put the King’s slumbering figure on one of the couches in the sitting room. He’d waited for this
moment, when the leader of the rebel cause would finally be awake enough to interrogate.

  The man had a strong brow, and as he stirred, his bushy eyebrows drew down, etching wrinkles across its broad plain. “Where am I?” he asked, groaning and trying to sit up.

  Curious, Seven came closer, edging toward him. None of his fellow agents were sure what had transpired when they’d invaded the King’s domain. Now, the King caught sight of him, but showed no sign of recognition or fear.

  “You’re in my home.”

  “Where is that?”

  Seven wasn’t sure how to answer that one. There was no such thing as “where” inside someone’s domain, and he didn’t know how to explain his ability to split his mind.

  “Who are you?” the King asked. “Also, if you know who I am as well, that would be convenient.”

  “I’m Seven.” There wasn’t much else to add.

  “You don’t look seven,” the King answered, studying him. “I’d say about mid-twenties.”

  Seven was again struck speechless, wondering if the King was being facetious. Was this some sort of tactic to avoid interrogation? Surely acting like a fool would not give the leader of such a successful group any satisfaction.

  “I’m not sure you understand,” Seven said stiffly. “You are our prisoner.”

  “This doesn’t look like a prison.”

  “Try to get out then.”

  His Domain had no doors or windows at the moment, and Seven waited for the King to do something to demonstrate his abilities. The King simply looked around the room for a moment, then got heavily to his feet to investigate. Seven had blocked off the rest of his domain, leaving behind just this one room.

  “How did we get in?” asked the King, tapping his knuckles on the wall. “Was this built around us? I suppose the two of us are walled in.”

  The King didn’t seem to find this news alarming in the least, and he sat back on the couch. Seven couldn’t believe he wasn’t trying to escape. He was the leader of a group of expert MindHacks, yet seemed content to stay in a MindWalled room that he no doubt had the means to escape. It made no sense to Seven, but maybe the King had a strategy.