Warden 1

by Isaac Hooke

  As she sat there, trying to figure out what to do, she realized she didn’t have to leave her room to explore the city.

  She accessed VidTube via her HUD and searched for “Rust Town at night.” She didn’t really find all that much. The settlement was pretty much dead after dark. She tried the same search for Aradne and discovered multiple videos of two different areas: Brandywine Street and Orleans Avenue. These two streets were filled with nightspots, but apparently they were only open once or twice a month, during certain holidays: young people met and hooked up almost exclusively online these days. With the advances in teledildonics, they didn’t even have to leave their homes to have a sexual relationship with another person. Supposedly some people lived out their entire lives without physically meeting their partners in person. Rhea didn’t really buy it, and she thought people like that must be the exception rather than the rule. After all, even Will had invited a woman to his room, rather than engaging in remote intercourse.

  Still, for someone like Rhea, who was a full body cyborg, remote intercourse, and never meeting her future partner in person, might be the only option for her, unless she wanted to invest in a body that was more human. Otherwise, in virtual reality, she could be whoever she wanted to be. But even if she did go the virtual route, she’d have to purchase the necessary mating upgrades for her existing body, and that would have to wait until after she paid off her debt. Still, there was something to be said about not feeling any sort of arousal. It was liberating in a way, because she didn’t have to look for sexual relief like most people. She could only imagine how much time had been lost throughout human history because of horniness. Then again, humanity would have never colonized the world, let alone the solar system, without sexual reproduction.

  In one of the videos for Brandywine street, fireworks lit the air as some sort of national holiday was celebrated. The sparkling pyrotechnics were often occluded by the profusion of drones that zipped back and forth overhead.

  Drones…

  She shut down the video and cleared her HUD.

  “Hey Horatio,” she sent. “Can I borrow some creds?”

  “Why?” Horatio said. “I’m busy now. Critical moment. My villagers are revolting. And PKs are attacking. Talk to Will.”

  “Playing that MMORPG of yours again, huh?” she said. “Just send me a few creds and I’ll be out of your hair. Add it to my debt.”

  “You still haven’t told me what you need it for,” Horatio said.

  “I want to rent a drone,” she replied.

  8

  Rhea flew high above Rust Town, viewing the world from the camera lenses of Gizmo. Horatio had conferred with Will, and they concluded that they might as well lend her Gizmo rather than paying for a rental. Cheaper for everyone involved.

  She had full control of the drone, inasmuch as she didn’t try to fly into a wall or tree or something—the obstacle avoidance tech wouldn’t let her. She also had an altitude ceiling of four hundred meters, which was the maximum allowed for drones of that size in the city.

  It felt so good to travel by air like that in the dark, without having to worry about someone trying to rob or attack her. Of course, there were professional thieves who stole drones for a living, but they concentrated on the higher end models—it wasn’t worth the effort to steal a drone like Gizmo, considering one just like it could be rented for a few creds.

  She could see the pools of light cast by the glow lamps below, which illuminated the streets in a pattern that reminded her of beads because of the spacing. She headed directly for the walls that surrounded of Aradne.

  As she approached, lights flashed from the walkway of the city wall, and more flashes came from overhead—robots and drones were scanning Gizmo. Apparently she passed the threat assessment, because she received no message to turn back.

  And thus, she entered the city by drone.

  The well-lit skyscrapers arrayed before her matched the images and videos she had seen online. They were so very colorful, with each building seeming to compete with the next to see who could be the most extravagant. They competed not just in lights, but height, and design. There were an assortment of geometric shapes, some stacked one atop the other: a needle with a diamond on top; a thin ellipse with a broad globe in the center; two pyramids stacked tip to tip to form a shape vaguely resembling a giant hourglass.

  She increased Gizmo’s altitude until she reached the four-hundred-meter mark, giving the drone enough clearance to fly over all save the tallest buildings. She had AR mode activated, which labeled every skyscraper and point of interest below.

  She spotted the mushroom-shaped hydroponics plant where much of the city’s plant-based edibles were nurtured. Beside it were several tall, metal silos placed in neat rows—the Aradne meat production factory, where beef, pork and poultry cells were coaxed into ready-to-eat patties without ever birthing conscious entities. According to what she’d read online, the various food pills sold to the poorer denizens were derived from the refuse of that plant and meat production.

  On the other side of the hydroponics plant, four squat, huge concrete cylinders formed the tanks that stored the city’s water supply. Because Aradne was relatively close to the ocean, the city had no need to manipulate the weather to divert rainfall—which was nonexistent in this region anyway, due to all the other cities that did manipulate the clouds. Instead, large pipes led away across the surface, past a processing plant near the city walls, before vanishing into the darkness outside the city. Those pipes led to the ocean a hundred kilometers away, whose waters fed the city. A small pipe led away from the tanks to supply water to Rust Town.

  Menacing turrets lined the perimeter of both production plants, and the water tanks, warning away those who might be contemplating attacks on the city’s food and water sources. She made very sure to give those sites a wide berth with Gizmo.

  Long strips of light delineated Brandywine Street and Orleans Avenue on opposite sides of town—the glow lamps were brighter there than in the rest of the city, as were the lights on the various buildings, even though they were small. The small silhouettes of drones told her that there were other curious pilots checking out the party districts, and she saw very few actual partygoers on the streets themselves. She zoomed in on a group of them with Gizmo’s camera—robots in suits and dresses. At least, she assumed they were robots, judging from the metallic skin. They could have been cyborgs, like herself. She was too far away to do an ID lookup on them.

  She decided to veer toward Orleans Avenue, where they walked.

  As she flew that way, her gaze was drawn to a series of sprawling, low to medium rise structures to the west. They looked to be part of a campus of some kind, and enclosed well-lit parks and fountains. On the farthest side, the buildings culminated in a large, dome-shaped structure.

  She couldn’t see anyone on that campus. There weren’t even any drones, as far as she could tell.

  She checked the AR labels. That area of the city was called “Aradne Parliament,” and the dome-shaped structure was tagged “Parliament Building.”

  Interesting.

  She found herself drawn to it, and she steered Gizmo toward the structure.

  When she was within two hundred meters, a warning appeared on her HUD.

  Warning, approaching illegal zone. Stopping.

  Gizmo halted. She tried to force it forward, but the drone wouldn’t obey.

  Sighing, she moved south along the perimeter, and descended at the same time, until she could see the entablature at the base of the building. It was supported by pillars that formed a colonnade. As she moved forward, she was able to see between those pillars, and halted, zooming in.

  There was a circular, vaulted chamber inside. Along the walls, columns formed archways that branched off into different chambers and hallways.

  A memory came to her.

  She stood in a room, next to a doorway that opened out onto a circular chamber very much like the one she saw below—archways branched o
ff from it at regular intervals, offering access to other rooms and halls.

  A hologram floated before her. A man dressed in white robes, with a red, tasseled rope wrapped around his waist. He wore a golden medallion of some kind from his neck. He was clean-shaven, square-jawed, with high cheekbones and an aristocratic chin. His head was shaved, and he wore a stern expression.

  “Do not fail me in this task, my Dagger,” the man said.

  And then it was gone.

  Rhea blinked.

  Dagger.

  He had called her his dagger.

  Rhea wasn’t sure what to make of that. She had no idea who the man might be, though he was beautiful. Well, except for that stern expression.

  On a whim, she looked up Khrusos again, and studied the pictures of the President of the United Settlements. He looked nothing like the man who had called her Dagger. The President usually wore a suit with a red tie, with a beard that reached well below the chin, and short-cropped hair. His face was chunky, with his cheeks mostly hidden beneath fleshy lobes. Definitely not the same man.

  Well, at least she’d triggered a memory. That was something. Even if she really couldn’t make sense of it. That meant there was a good chance there were still other memories in her head that had escaped the mind wipe.

  Now if only she could figure out how to get them out.

  With a sigh, she redirected Gizmo back toward Rust Town.

  Rhea stood outside Bardain’s lean-to. He’d placed his “Training in progress” signs farther from his abode today, indicating he intended to expand the virtual battlefield.

  “Bioweapons aren’t the only creatures you’ll meet in the Outland,” Bardain said. “Perhaps even more dangerous are the more human variety. Let’s see how you fare against bandits.”

  The virtual vaulted ceiling covered the sky, signaling that the training had commenced.

  In the center of the street, four men appeared. They were dressed in black leggings and shirts, with scarves wrapped around their heads and faces, and thick visors hiding their eyes. Bandits.

  Some lowered rifles from their shoulders, other drew pistols from their hips; they opened fire as one at Rhea. Her body flashed white four times to indicate four successive hits.

  “Well, don’t just stand there,” Bardain said. “Take some cover!”

  In addition to the bandits, several small boulders she could use for cover had appeared. She dove behind one of them, which was situated next to a lean-to. She pressed her side against its metal, and peered over the virtual rock, aiming down the pistol sights.

  The bandits had gone.

  Their potential hiding places were limited by the real-world homes that lined either side of the street; then again, it was possible they’d taken cover on top of some of those homes. Doubtful, given how hard it should have been to relocate to the rooftops in such short notice, but still possible, considering they were virtual.

  She glanced at her overhead map, where red dots marked the last known locations of her foes as recorded by her vision. She correlated their positions to the street in front of her but saw nothing. There were a series of virtual boulders strewn over the ground near where they had vanished, so she ran her pistol sights across them… there! A glint drew her eye toward one of the rocks: a pistol was poking out from behind it. She ducked, and a chip of virtual stone flew over her head—an energy bolt had struck the boulder just above her.

  She waited a moment, then peered over the small rock, intending to fire at the bandit. But her body flashed white as she immediately took a hit to the face.

  “Little tip for you,” Bardain said. “Never peek from the same spot twice. Your opponents will be expecting that. Always relocate, even if only by a short distance. Obviously the more you can move, the better.”

  He stood behind her, residing on the battlefield like a ghost, his body visible only as an outline so as not to interfere with the action. Interesting HUD effect.

  “And if I have no room to maneuver at all?” she asked the ghost, nodding toward the minimal coverage afforded by her current boulder.

  “There’s always room,” Bardain said. “Right now, you can lean out to the right and fire from the side of the boulder, for example. Then back to the top again, but from a slightly different spot, maybe closer to the lean-to. And then to the side once more. Keep them on their toes. The more unpredictable you are, the better.”

  She did what Bardain said and peeked from the side this time. She knew that the bandit’s pistols would be homing in on her, giving her only an instant to get off a shot. But she’d lost site of the target and was forced to duck again.

  “I can’t see them!” she said.

  “That’s one of the sad realities of gunfights,” Bardain said. “You’re not always going to know where your enemies are. If you had friends with you, you could use them to offer covering fire, allowing you to relocate to a better spot. But at the moment, you’re pinned. That means waiting for them to make a mistake. Eventually, they’re going to make a play to close on your position. And that’s when you’ll strike.”

  “How do I know when they’re going to do that?” she asked.

  “You don’t,” he said. “You’ll just have to peek.”

  She glanced at Gizmo but couldn’t see the drone past the vaulted ceiling. “Maybe you should let me use Gizmo. In a real-world scenario, I’d have eyes in the sky.”

  “Until your drone was shot out,” Bardain said. “No, you must do this on your own, Rhea.”

  She sighed and took a deep breath. She was about to peek from the side once more, when she remembered Bardain’s words: never peek from the same spot.

  She rolled left, until she was pressed against the lean-to. She started slightly when two little girls walked past. They gave Rhea a strange look before continuing on their way. She’d almost forgotten she was on a public street. Feeling a flush of embarrassment, she pulled her hood tighter around her face.

  She peered over the top left of the boulder and caught one of the bandits out in the open, making a run for a closer series of rocks. She got off a shot, but his friends were ready to offer covering fire, and before she could duck, she was struck.

  “Good,” Bardain said. “But next time you’ll have to be a little faster on the draw.”

  He took her through several more such training scenarios. Mostly, she learned that it sucked to be outnumbered by bandits in the Outlands. The best she could do was stay in cover until they made a rush for her position, and then take out as many of them as she could. However, in the process she had to be careful not to let them outflank her or get the high ground; a few times, the virtual bandits managed to clamber onto a nearby lean-to, and because she was lying flat, her legs and lower body became exposed to them. She had no idea she was in their line of sight until her body flashed white to denote the kill. She learned to crouch as often as possible, rather than lie prostrate, if the cover allowed for it.

  Close to noon, she took a fifteen-minute break. She had a fat pill for lunch, which Horatio had given her for just such a purpose that morning.

  Speaking of Horatio, the robot arrived with Will shortly thereafter. Will’s dreadlocks seemed tangled, his eyes were sunken, and he had stubble lining his jaw, as if he’d had a rough three days. Rhea realized she hadn’t seen him since the first day.

  “Come to watch my torture?” she asked.

  “Nope,” Will said, sounding tired. “We’re here to partake in it.”

  9

  Rhea raised an eyebrow. “Really? That’s news.”

  Will gave Bardain a resigned glance.

  Bardain nodded. “I’ve invited Will and Horatio to participate in today’s training. If you’re going to be fighting at their side, you might as well learn to do so as part of a cohesive team. It’s time for a crash course in small unit tactics.”

  Bardain gave Will a pistol similar to her own, and no doubt just as inert. Bardain strapped a long tube underneath each of Horatio’s forearms. Noticing her curi
ous glance, Bardain said: “Virtual rifle barrels.”

  “Why can’t I get a virtual rifle?” Rhea asked.

  “Will wants you trained on the actual weapon you’ll use in the field,” Bardain explained.

  “Rifles are expensive,” Will agreed. “Maybe if we encounter some highwaymen in the real world, you can take theirs.”

  Bardain activated another bandit scenario and Rhea took cover immediately; Will and Horatio also dropped behind small boulders nearby.

  “Spotted them yet?” Rhea asked over the comm as she peered from cover, aiming down her pistol sights as she scanned for targets amongst the virtual terrain.

  “There,” Horatio said.

  Red dots appeared on her overhead map. Her eyes darted to the corresponding location in the real-world: the virtual terrain formed a wide hollow, from which the bandits were peeking out and similarly scanning.

  Horatio suddenly opened fire with his energy rifles, forcing the bandits to duck from view.

  “Rhea, go!” Will leaped from cover while Horatio continued laying down covering fire.

  Rhea jumped to her feet and rushed toward the bandits. Will fired as he ran, and so did she, mimicking his example. It was hard to aim properly while running, but she realized the point of firing was merely to keep the bandits down.

  One of them popped up on the far side of the hollow, pistol aimed at her. She was forced to drop. Will joined her, and together they rolled behind the same virtual hump in the ground.