by Toby Weston
The lift dropped and her ears popped before the doors slid silently open. The elevators discharged into recessed arches on the perimeter of a wide, shallow terraced bowl. Scarlet velvet ropes separated the tiers. At the bottom was the dance floor, already packed with milling, glittering bodies. A chaotic blend of AR projections and illuminated smart fabrics created a psychedelic kaleidoscope of barely human shapes. They skirted the upper rim, past the concierge desks, and headed to the lobby and the street exit beyond. A couple of heads followed them, but Stella was very much a niche celebrity. Her demographic was either too young to be allowed out after 8 pm, or too socially inadequate to be let in by the club’s critical doormen.
Beyond an invisible cordon outside the hotel door, KL’s night was just getting going. Faces with oversized eyes, scalps wriggling with sentient hair, bodies naked or adorned with shiny jewellery that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a pharaoh’s tomb. Some sported S&M thongs and studs. There was a smattering of Cosplay and the odd furry. Stella had to disable her Spex briefly to gauge what was real and what was AR. She was surprised at how much of the insanity was base reality, baryonic stuff, and light.
The city was simultaneously fleshy, dirty, glittering, and ethereal. A few shell-shocked huddles of men with beards and kurtas walked amongst the crazy. KL was famous for its lenience in applying the Caliph’s edicts and, in a kind of anti-hajj, many of the faithful came expressly to ogle its decadence.
The pavements were crowded. However, as they walked between towering, neon-encrusted buildings, the masses avoided Jeno, steering around him as if he was a physical peer—unless they chose to be rude and barged through his incorporeal body, confident there would be no retaliation.
Stella maintained a hierarchy of worth. She placed all the laughing flesh and blood humans at the top, Sages and simulated personalities below, and herself at the bottom; broken and stretched out, a two-dimensional meniscus over a sucking sore.
She thought of her friends again, Segi and Zaki. Then she smiled at Jeno, incorporeal and emotionally superficial, the perfect boyfriend…
…other fragments of personality tried to rise from her subconscious to protest, but she shut them down before they could fully form.
Chapter 15 – Near Earth Object
Water filmed the faintly glowing rock. Rivulets, channelled by the topology of the cave’s walls, meandered chaotically, while stray drops splashed the moss and liverworts which had taken root in the many cracks and fissures.
The tunnel gave the impression of age and of having once carried vast torrents of water. Now, the water was far below, but its roar still dominated the soundscape.
The adventurers fell into their standard formation and crept on into the grotto’s sinuous deeps. Several times they came across clutches of small bones forming irregular pyramids on the smooth, undulating floor. Phalanges and metatarsals dumped by the dying vortices of recent floods. A thigh bone projected from where it had become wedged deep in a fissure, calcified growth cementing it in place and decorating its surface with ridges of fine scrimshaw.
The cabin boy, their scout, wandering carelessly ahead with no apparent consideration for stealth, disturbed a nest of lung-eels. A short skirmish ensued; cutlasses and breach-loading pistols eventually dispatching the annoying creatures. Unfortunately, not before needle-sharp spines had injected incapacitating poison through the pale skin of the cabin boy’s bare ankle. Judging by the way he was stumbling and mumbling with delirium, he probably wouldn’t make it much further.
Not-Captain NoBeard, the rag tag posse’s leader, grumbled and pushed them on; there was nothing he could do. The cabin boy was toast. NoBeard had probably misjudged by not picking up an antidote, but they couldn’t spend all their Coin on healing cabin boys. The party was too small. Chaloska, the ship’s Voodoo priest, was still heartbroken and inconveniently absent. Without his magic, they were pitifully vulnerable.
Later, during a quiet interlude, they harvested rock crystal from a spectacular cavern then fought the mummy-boss-eel they found coiling about a chest in one of the many side chambers. They dispatched her without too much trouble, alternating between ranged attacks and close frenzied stabbing. Towards the end, when it should have all been over, the cabin boy took a flying spine in the neck and fell fitting into a pool of shallow water. His flailing limbs whipped blood and brine into a salty froth.
"Fuck! Not again!" NoBeard swore, watching the boy’s movements become weak and sporadic.
***
The exuberant bubble days for Astrocosmos were already a fading memory. Publicity and speculation had peaked in a frenzy when the Bogdanova had successfully fastened herself to NEO_73920, then begun the long lonely journey home. Caught up in the hype of mankind’s first commercial asteroid capture, derivative prices on the sixty million tons of rock and precious metals inbound from the asteroid belt had peaked way above spot prices; but, as space is big, so attention spans are short, and soon the gushing financial feeds had moved on and the irrational prices had fallen.
Bogdanova was still nearly a decade from home. She—the pronoun used purely in the nautical sense to designate a vessel, rather than to imply any form of gendered self—spent most of her time in the lonely depths of space. The long route back to Earth involved a whole bunch of flybys and gravity sling-shots, which took her in a series of wide elliptical loops around the sun. On each orbit, she dropped deep into the solar system, sometimes passing close to the noisy Earth before being flung out again by the sun’s gravity.
Complicated magneto confinement fusion engines powered up and fired in month-long burns at each aphelion. Over the years, the many subtle nudges and gravity-assist flybys would push her and her sixty-million-ton charge into a circular orbit ready for a set of breaking manoeuvres which would leave NEO_73920 in orbit around the Moon. If things went according to plan, Bogdanova would then be refuelled and sent back out to catch the next rock.
A glitchy engine burn in the second year had sent investors scurrying away in a panic. Dropping demand, as well as an increasing aversion to risk, had pushed futures through the floor. Unfazed, Niato had ignored his jittery bankers; instead of cashing out, he had used the tanking prices as an opportunity to up his stake.
Even with the most exquisitely finessed orbital mechanics, shifting millions of tons of rock around the solar system with chemical rockets would be hopelessly uneconomic. Bogdanova attempts nothing so crude. Her engines dance a complex choreography of matter and energy.
Streams of tritium ions are emitted into a flared chamber at one end of her engine’s ‘barrel’. The streams meet to form a blob of plasma, which is goosed, turned inside out, and blown like a smoke ring into the mouth of a magnetic funnel. The interaction of the blob’s magnetic field and the forces lacing the ‘barrel’ wrap the field-reversed plasmoid into a seething, tightly coiled knot. The tortured twists of flux-bound plasma are heated by radio waves and rapidly accelerated towards the rear of the engine cavity. Already at four million degrees Kelvin, it enters an ignition chamber. Here, complicated magnetic accelerators eject a set of ultra-thin aluminium foil hexagons, which are gathered up by more powerful magnetic fields and scrunched together. They close, like a clenching fist, just as the furious knot of plasma comes hurtling between then. Captured and smothered within the enclosing metal shell, the plasma is relentlessly crushed. Unable to bear the confinement and the appalling heat any longer, the tritium fuses in an angry blast.
The dance repeats twice a second, and the expanding cone of fusion by-products and vaporised aluminium plasma, guided by the engine’s magnetic nozzles, produces a thrust sufficient, given time, to incrementally adjust the orbit of the space mountain.
Astrocosmos had funded the mission by creating the NEO_73920_Coin in an Initial Coin Offering ceremony. The independent FAC, incepted together with the coin, had been given the intent to retrieve NEO_73920 and leave it in orbit around the Moon. Despite high volatility, the value of the NEO_73920_Coin had increased
steadily as delivery approached, but recently there had been a surge in price when one attentive financial feed noticed that, through various shell companies, King Niato had been patiently buying the dips and had managed to acquire 60% of the FAC’s coins. Nobody was sure what he was up to; but, since the King’s elegantly orchestrated stealth coup, his enemies were jumpy. The Astrocosmos ceremony that had generated the keys was based on solid maths, but a few forensic mathematicians pointed out that, if one individual could gather enough private keys, a brute force attack on the master certificate might become feasible. It was estimated that, with access to enough quantum computation, anything above 86.67% might allow a nefarious actor to gain access to the FAC’s mission planning.
Legal challenges and mounds of red tape had been hastily employed to prevent the King acquiring any more NEO_73920_Coin.
***
Not-Captain NoBeard was a pirate, but he was trying to go legit. It wasn’t easy. He wanted to be an officer—to have his own command in the Atlantean navy, to fight for good and freedom—but first he needed a uniform.
A sick light illuminated the cabin ahead. Something out on the brackish, seething lake was emitting an unpleasant green glow. Possibly it was the clumps of decaying weed, or perhaps the tangled serpentine forms of writhing, soft-bodied parasites.
Hat, shorts and shirt weren’t a problem, as they could be purchased at any auction house or market. However, an officer’s badge, the StarSigil, worn on the lapel or neckerchief of every commander in the Atlantean navy, was soul-bound and couldn’t be traded.
It was going to be a long shot now, with only three crew members surviving. Reaching the Sea Witch’s hut had been tough, but now there was virtually no chance they would be able to defeat her with such a miserable concentration of fire power. It was even less likely without a cabin boy happy to play the role of diversionary victim.
To keep exclusivity, the King kept a monopoly on the key components needed to craft each new StarSigil. To earn the Sigil badge legitimately was out of the question. Legitimate StarSigils were only awarded, at a passing-out ceremony, to successful officers who had completed the extreme physical training and extensive psychological profiling. Even if NoBeard was prepared to waste months grinding through a hundred levels of AOL to earn the right to try out, there was no way he would be able to travel halfway around the world to take part in the real-life physical selection process.
Being a pirate hacker, NoBeard couldn’t accept this limitation on his freedom. A StarSigil needed an ingot of relatively common silver and a shard of the excruciatingly difficult-to-come-by StarPiece, a mythical long-lost artefact. NoBeard had spent the last weeks hunting down rumours of a shard and, recently, he had learnt that the Sea Witch’s crystal ball might be just such a prize. Since then, he had made it his only priority to slay her, steal the loot, and go legit...
As expected, the fight was short and brutal. The Sea Witch had simply taken their pitiful stream of damage for a few turns, and then casually cast her raise-torrent spell and inundated the party with a deluge of poisonous water.
NoBeard was the only survivor, and only because he had a trinket that allowed him to hold his breath indefinitely. He was washed to the mouth of the cave and deposited by the receding filth next to the bodies of his erstwhile crew.
"Scheisse, fuck, titten!" he shouted in frustration back down into the grotto.
In retort, a nasty, irritating cackle drifted up from the twisting tunnels and caverns.
Again, he cursed the absent Voodoo priest—it was months since the rescue, he understood that his brother was in a lovesick funk, but he needed to stop it already with the brooding!
"I’m not doing this again," NoBeard said to nobody in particular. "I’m going to buy the bloody thing on the Mesh, screw the Coins."
***
While it was standard for games to have in-game loot and currencies exchangeable for real life wealth, Atlantis Online took the superposition of virtual and real further than most. The items in the game had counterparts in the real world, and game moderators continually made tweaks to align value between the real and virtual worlds.
Gamers had begun to take an interest in Bogdanova and the NEO_73920_Coin when an Atlantis Online patch had given the asteroid a bit-part in the roleplaying game’s backstory. The writers had cast it as the real life analogue to the mythical StarPiece. According to cannon, the StarPiece had been a weapon of power, which had been shattered long ago by White Beard Sam—the magnificent pirate and heroic ruler of the last age (or something… NoBeard didn’t pay too much attention to the game’s blurb). Old White Beard, anticipating his doom, had smashed the StarPiece and flung its sixty million shards into the heavens before his last unsuccessful battle with the dragon of the east.
***
A new cabin boy was waiting by the decrepit little ship when NoBeard returned. He was swimming back and forth beneath its keel, chasing colourful fish which easily evaded his feeble attempts to catch them. The cabin boy seemed to find this humorous. The Not-Captain said hello, but didn’t stop to talk. He was too pissed after the failed attempt to get his hands on a shard.
NoBeard opened a window onto the Mesh, located an auction house and, after a short search, found an outrageously priced NEO_73920_Coin for sale. He accepted a transaction to purchase it and waited for the cryptographic dance to finish. Confirmations began to trickle in from the peers as his Coin transfer was verified and, finally, the NEO_73920_Coin was successfully imported into his wallet. After a few more seconds, a final notification arrived; NoBeard had acquired one NEO_73920_Coin, which gave him the legal right to purchase one metric ton of NEO_73920… once it had reached lunar orbit. Luckily, he would not have to consider the daunting logistics involved, as his intention was to immediately import the ownership certificate into AOL, whereupon it would pass into the game and transmute into a much sought-after shard of the StarPiece.
The shard appeared in his inventory and NoBeard wasted no time crafting it into a StarSigil. He then changed into the rest of his uniform, fastening the neckerchief with his fancy new pin.
A mini crescendo sounded and ‘Achievement Unlocked - King’s Commission’, appeared in big, chunky, 3D letters that took up most of the space in his cabin.
Segi went straight back out to the beach to show off to Tinkerbell, but the dolphin didn’t seem interested. She was still preoccupied, ineffectually chasing fish with her cabin boy avatar.
***
Atlantis was itself an experiment, a deliberate disruption to the global systems of government, which the state’s founders insisted were predicated on persuading the democratic herds to vote against their own interests. Atlantis Online had been built to evangelise the libertarian cause. Seen cynically, it was a tool for propaganda, but AOL’s designers had attempted to create a platform that was more than a one-dimensional instrument: it was the Mesh avatar of the Atlantean state; a platform for e-government; a channel for disseminating ideology; a recruitment tool; a psychological evaluation platform for prospective citizens; and, most recently, a way for Niato, through gamification, to get his hands on the remaining elusive NEO_73920_Coins.
To the disenfranchised or stateless, citizenship of the affluent and liberal Atlantean state was the best in-game loot in the business.
Atlantis embodied hope and, while its supporters weren’t always the poor and downtrodden, its detractors were universally the rich and comfortable. They saw the very existence of Atlantis as a challenge. The superior way Niato dismissed, snubbed or abused these global players had created a deluge of powerful enemies.
Bogdanova tracks the stars with delicate optical instruments, plotting orbits, directing her antennae towards the rocky wet ball, which intermittently sends her new instructions. NEO_73920, the space mountain, is hanging as if motionless at the apogee of another long elliptical orbit: a cricket ball struck and sent high into the summer sky, at the top of its parabolic flight, suspended, stationary, watched by upturned faces, while sandwi
ches go un-chewed and flasks of tea are forgotten mid-pour…
The world itself is poised. The players have outgrown their pitch. The King would like to take his ball and go play somewhere else, but there is nowhere to go. Soon, he knows immovable objects will be met by unstoppable forces.
One never knows how things will play out; but, when push comes to shove, Niato knows that his sixty million tons of remote-controlled space mountain make a badass ace up the sleeve.
End of Book Two
Postscript
CLV7 is lying in the sun waiting amongst the sand and scrub.
Ve is aware, but passive. Autonomous subroutines are skimming all multi-sensory feeds, but finding nothing of note.
No bogies detected.
Situation nominal.
No orders in queue.
Time passes.
Intermittently, old datasets resurface above the churn of subconscious chatter, presenting themselves for further analysis to CLV7’s suite of analytical tools. These memory snippets often arrive without metadata; they are simply tagged as salient by deep and obscure algorithms, which are themselves unable to justify their choices.