Once Upon a Star

by Anthea Sharp

  The elevator doors slid open to reveal a cold, dark room with three doors. “The door on the left,” said Jack. “When you’re inside, find the warmest part of the room as quickly as you can and leave the bun there.”

  “Carmen the bun maker’s not going to walk me through it?”

  “She would, mate, but she’s deaf. The room’s most likely shielded, so you won’t be able to hear us anyway.”

  “What if I have any questions?”

  There was a pause, and the sound of typing. “Carmen says you won’t. But if in the event there’s some giant squid monster or something you can’t defeat, come back out into the hallway and let us know.”

  “Got it.” Brandon lifted his ID to the pad on the wall. “Catch you later.”

  “Not if the ghost catches you first,” Hammer chimed in. Jack punctuated the comment with an eerie ghost moan.

  Just at that moment, a door opened and a woman stepped through. Brandon almost jumped out of his skin…and then laughed to cover himself.

  “Sorry,” he told the woman. “I thought you were someone else for a second.”

  She raised a thin eyebrow, but then nodded and made her way past him to the elevator. Brandon ignored the sounds of Jack and Hammer laughing in his ear.

  The moment Brandon stepped over the threshold of the server room, he heard nothing at all. He quickly made a loop around the room—no one place seemed warmer than any other, so Brandon chose a spot where the bun wouldn’t be seen should someone happen to walk in before the shield evaporated. They’d smell it before they saw it first anyway.

  He stared at the server for a moment, not wanting to exit the room too quickly. Amazing how something so small could control a database so large. That it could connect people in so many ways. There would definitely be a backlash when this went down. Mal wanted everyone to revert back to relying on destiny, but Brandon knew better. A million lesser sites would pour in, trying to fill the gap. Chaos would reign for a while, but billions of people would sort themselves onto those sites. Soulmates would still find each other…if they’d signed onto the same site. So perhaps there would be some fate involved after all.

  Not that Brandon cared. Dyrlland had found him more friends than True.love ever had. He couldn’t care less if this one imploded.

  “And that’s that,” he said as he walked back to the elevator.

  “Cheers, B!” Jack exclaimed. “Get topside and you’re all clear.”

  Brandon smiled at himself as the reflective doors slid closed. As favors went, that wasn’t too bad. He’d be able to hold this over Mal’s head for the rest of time. He pushed the button for the Lobby.

  It didn’t light up.

  “Jack?”

  “We read you, B.”

  He’d take the stairs if he had to. Brandon pushed the button to open the doors. Nothing. “The elevator’s not responding.”

  Jack didn’t respond either. No one in his ear said anything. And then finally…

  “Hang tight, Bran. We’re working on it.”

  Mal.

  He was screwed.

  “What if I—?” He stumbled as the elevator started rising.

  “I said ‘hang tight!’” screeched Mal. “That means don’t touch anything!”

  “I didn’t,” Brandon responded. “None of the buttons are lit. I’m just rising. Fast.” So fast that the number readout had gone blank. His ears popped. “What’s at the top?”

  “We don’t know,” said Mal. “Not security—they’re on three. For some reason, the top floor’s shielded.”

  “What do I do if—?” The elevator came to a stop before he could finish asking. “Mal?”

  There was no answer. The earpiece had gone dead.

  All his instincts told him to stay in the elevator. He tried to stay calm. The Cut would get control again. They’d get him out.

  The doors slid open.

  Brandon cursed and gasped at the same time. In a glass case before him, larger than life, was a full suit of Rosenthorn armor.

  “Forgive me, Mal,” Brandon said, in case his sister could still hear him.

  He stepped off the elevator.

  The room was small, containing only the suit of armor and a tapestry with some animals in a wooded scene that hung against the far wall. The armor was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. The metal shone so brightly that he could see his face reflected in it. Each bud and thorn stood out in crisp detail. The roses on the shield and breastplate were such a deep crimson that they looked as if they’d been colored with blood. He could make out some sort of scrollwork inside the winding briars themselves, but if it was some sort of script, Brandon was unable to read it. He cursed again for not being better at handwriting.

  And then something moved.

  He would have called it a trick of the light, but there were no windows in this room. And yet, out of the corner of his eye, he would have sworn that the unicorn on the tapestry had shifted.

  Brandon didn’t know anything about furniture, much less antique room dressings. Nor had unicorns ever been his thing. But for a piece that should have been centuries old, the tapestry looked as fresh as the armor.

  It moved again. As if the unicorn’s mane had been caught up in an invisible breeze.

  Brandon tore his attention from the armor and walked around the glass case to get a closer look. He waved his hand in front of the tapestry, but nothing happened. Not a projection, then. The light in this room was so diffuse, it didn’t even cast his shadow. He touched the edge of the fabric. He had no idea how thick tapestries were supposed to be, but he couldn’t feel any fiber optics in the weave. Of course, if the piece was expensive enough, he wouldn’t have.

  There it was again. That flutter. Only the unicorn. No other beast pictured in that forest moved. Every leaf on every tree was frozen in place. It was just the unicorn.

  Brandon wondered what level of nanotech could achieve such a feat. Bots might have been spot injected into the fabric, controlled by a tiny circuit board on the other side. Curious, Brandon pressed his hand against the unicorn, trying to see if he could discern the presence of a board without having to flip the tapestry over completely.

  His hand pushed much farther than he’d expected.

  There was no wall behind this tapestry.

  Quickly, Brandon lifted the fabric.

  There was a door.

  “Hello there,” he said to no one.

  Brandon didn’t need The Cut for this—hidden doors were his territory. Such secrets had always fascinated Brandon, be they fictional or cybernetic, discovered in a dusty old castle or the dark web…or a shiny office building. Gooseflesh raised on his forearms from the excitement.

  It might also have been a response to the cold draft coming from the other side of the door.

  The door was older than the tapestry. Brandon placed a hand on the thick, dark wood without even thinking. It was cool to the touch, but not in the same way as polymer or bioplastic. His eyes fell to the lock, anticipating disappointment, and he found it. No number pad. No wireless entry plate. Just a handle, bolt lock, and a keyhole.

  Brandon sighed. All he had in his pockets was an empty bag and a useless ID card. He bent down to examine the lock’s mechanism better, using the handle to steady himself. The doorknob warmed to the touch beneath his fingers…and he heard the bolt click open.

  “Shit,” he said to the door.

  The lock had a biometric backup. It made sense. What didn’t make sense was how his biometric signature could authorize anything in this place, least of all a hidden door on a floor that didn’t exist.

  Brandon pulled his hand off the doorknob as if he’d been burned.

  The elevator. The buttons in the elevator had warmed to his touch as well. He hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. There might have been a thousand other hidden sensors in this building, but the elevator was the perfect place to acquire the most pertinent data. It was possible that this building had everything from his height an
d weight to his fingerprints and DNA. Brandon’s eyes slid closed and he bowed his head in defeat.

  It was a trap.

  He could turn and run, but that elevator wasn’t about to take him anywhere. He wanted to rip down the tapestry and give that ridiculous unicorn a piece of his mind, but if security had been notified, he probably didn’t have much time. Not that it mattered. His clock started ticking the moment he’d left the electrobomb.

  Brandon raced through possible exit strategies. Every single one came back to the same thing: he wasn’t going to die in prison without knowing what was on the other side of this door.

  He put his hand back on the handle, turned the knob, and pushed the door open.

  The small room was cold, the air stale and climate controlled like the server room. Colored light streamed through an elaborate stained glass tree set in the far wall. That wasn’t an outside wall, so it couldn’t have been real light, but the effect was subtly impressive. The ersatz window illuminated the small room enough for Brandon to see bookshelves lining the walls, more tapestries, some furniture. In the center of the room sat a glass coffin.

  It was empty.

  There were two steps down into the room—one, two—the floor was stone, not concrete. Actual stone. He moved closer to the coffin, drawn to it. His first thought was that it was for him. The gaping, translucent glass mouth mocked his impending doom.

  As he got closer he could make out impressions in the side of the coffin. The telltale glint of a needle’s tip. A few drops of…blood?

  A slight movement in the corner of his eye made him jump and spin. He expected to see a unicorn, mane waving in an absent breeze. Instead, he realized, a woman had stood to greet him. She was rail thin, with a long dark mass of hair. Her white gown hung on her frame. Her skin was so pale it looked as if she were on the verge of death.

  He caught her before she collapsed, easing her back into the chair in front of some kind of antique desk with a mirror. She had been as quiet as a ghost in the mottled shadows created by the strained glass tree.

  Ghost.

  The coffin was hers.

  Brandon glanced in the mirror, reassured to see her reflection there. He silently cursed Hammer for putting ridiculous thoughts in his head.

  “How can I help?” he asked as he knelt beside her. “Can I call a doctor? Anyone?” Someone was probably coming anyway, wearing uniforms and carrying restraints.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said weakly, placing her hand on top of his. It was little more than skin and bones. “I’m just not very good at standing yet.”

  It was a strange thing to say, and a strange place in which to say it. Brandon felt like he had walked into the middle of a game without knowing the rules. “I’m Brandon,” he said.

  She stared at him for a moment. Her eyes were large and brown and…compelling. He knew nothing about her, except that she was a puzzle he wanted to solve.

  “I’m Talia,” she replied. “Talia Karian.”

  Brandon stood so quickly his head swam. He took a step back. He wanted to run back to the elevator. Or to the other side of the world.

  “Talia Karian is a myth,” he whispered.

  The woman lifted her thin arm and waved a hand at the room. “Welcome to my fairy tale.”

  “But this can’t…I mean, you can’t…I mean, you’re…” Brandon felt himself starting to hyperventilate. This was so much worse than the train. He put his hands on his knees and lowered his head, trying to catch his breath before the anxiety attack took hold. He wished Hammer was in his ear again to talk him through it.

  As if she’d read his mind, the woman started to speak. “Once upon a time there was a girl who loved her sister very much. So much that when her sister got married, the girl found herself desperately alone. Try as she might, she couldn’t find anyone else who matched her in mind and spirit. She came up with what she thought was the greatest plan ever: to give a computer the task of finding such a person for her. Someone with an enthusiasm as great as her own. Someone who would fight for her.”

  “Did she find that person?” Brandon managed to ask, even though he already knew the answer.

  “No. The universe cursed her bravado. Her program found a match for everyone in the world except her. So, while in the depths of despair one night, the girl chose to end her life.”

  “Or so she thought.” Brandon started putting the pieces together. There was one way this could really be Talia Karian. But that would mean…

  “In her severely compromised emotional state, the girl had forgotten how much her sister still loved her. Death was not the only alternative to a lifetime of loneliness.”

  Brandon’s gaze returned to the coffin in the middle of the room. It was unfathomable. Improbable. But with a genius mind, advanced technology, and tons of money, it wasn’t entirely impossible. After all, he had a sister like that.

  “Her sister put the girl to sleep instead,” he guessed.

  “Until the computer found a match for her,” she continued. “Or created one.”

  Brandon’s head reeled again.

  Almost every match on the planet for the last century had been orchestrated by this woman’s creation. She had been the application’s first user. Presumably, the computer would not have stopped trying to find her a partner. Or…given enough time…created one.

  His parents had been matched by True.love. And their parents before them. Everyone’s parents had. It’s where most people went when they wanted to have a child. The True.love website knew everything about him down to his DNA. So did this building.

  Brandon pinched himself. This was too unreal, even for him. He had to be in some sort of drugged hallucination—maybe the elevator had poisoned him. Or maybe he was still in the elevator, experiencing some crazily advanced VR game. Perhaps the building was sentient and this was the true security measure, a subversive trap made to hold radicals and revolutionaries until they could be brought to justice.

  As his mind began to spin out of control, Brandon heard a voice. Not in his ear, but in his head. Little brother, a girl could walk right up to you and say that you were literally her reason for living and you wouldn’t know what to do with her.

  If this was the Real World, and the woman sitting before him really was Talia Karian, then he was the reason she was currently alive. And she was his.

  Mal would have called it destiny.

  A tear rolled down his cheek unbidden. “Sorry,” he said as he wiped it away. “This is kind of a lot to process.”

  “Oh, I get it,” she said. “Try waking up in a strange room and realizing everyone you ever loved—and everyone you didn’t even care about—is dead.”

  “But you did wake up.”

  She gave him a wan yet mischievous smile. “I did.”

  “You might not even like me, you know,” he told her.

  “I have the rest of my life ahead of me, in a future no one of my era could have guessed at,” she said. “I’m willing to take the chance if you are.”

  Love takes faith, said the Mal voice in his head. Brandon smiled, too, despite himself. “And there’s something else I should probably tell you.”

  “Go on,” she said. “Surprise me.”

  “Any minute now, an electronic pulse is going to wipe out that system you worked so hard to create.”

  He waited for her to scream. To cry. Instead she…laughed. By all the gaming gods, she laughed. Her body shook with it.

  “I get to live but my creation dies. The universe does love messing with me.”

  As soon as she spoke the words, the room plunged into darkness. Carmen’s bun-bomb had done its job. They both lingered in the silent blackness.

  “Brandon?” Talia asked calmly. “Do you have a sister?”

  “Oh, yes.” He smiled again, even though she couldn’t see it. “You’re going to love her.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This story took me sixteen years to tell. The concept was always the same: a futuristic retelling of Sle
eping Beauty where a woman creates a matchmaking software, and then puts herself into cryogenic sleep until the computer finds her soulmate.

  The problem was, I didn’t have the skill in 2003 to tell it properly. Or again in 2007. At which point “True.love” seemed destined to die a dusty death on my hard drive.

  But perhaps it was just sleeping.

  When Anthea first proposed a futuristic fairy tale anthology, I knew I needed to tackle the story one last time. With over a decade of writing experience under my belt, I felt equal to the task. I challenged myself further by not reading my old drafts before I started this new version. But I did reread the Grimms’ “Briar Rose”—known in the original Italian as “Sun, Moon, and Talia.”

  Almost immediately, I realized that there was a fundamental flaw in my original concept. It was not Briar Rose who cursed herself to sleep. The princess was destined to die, until the twelfth Wise Woman changed the death curse into a sleeping spell. It made far more sense for Talia’s sister to have placed her in a cryogenic chamber, after Talia, in despair, attempted suicide.

  This version of “True.love” exploded in my head as I wrote it. It wanted to be a novel so badly…I recognized the feeling from when I wrote “Sunday,” the short story that inevitably became the novel Enchanted. Unfortunately, I have too many projects on my plate at the moment to follow that dream. For now, I am content knowing that Brandon and Talia’s story is—finally—out in the world, where it should be.

  And if this story is destined to become a novel one day…well…I will keep the faith.

  (BONUS SIDE QUEST: I have hidden a special Easter egg inside this story. The first person to find it and email me with the correct answer will win a signed paperback copy of this anthology!)

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  New York Times bestselling author Alethea Kontis is a princess, a voice actress, and a force of nature. She is responsible for creating the epic fairytale fantasy realm of Arilland, and dabbling in a myriad of other worlds beyond. Her award-winning writing has been published for multiple age groups across all genres. Host of “Princess Alethea’s Fairy Tale Rants” and Princess Alethea’s Traveling Sideshow every year at Dragon Con, Alethea also narrates for ACX, IGMS, Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and Cast of Wonders. Born in Vermont, Alethea currently resides on the Space Coast of Florida with her teddy bear, Charlie. Find out more about Princess Alethea and the magic, wonderful world in which she lives here: https://www.patreon.com/princessalethea