by Liam Clay
But that's not what has been fucking with our heads since we materialized here 10 hours ago. Now, I get that we will need disguises in this world. None of us look like Kogis, and no other nationalities exist in this place. What I take issue with is the fact that I am a Kogi woman. Please don't read this as sexism: it’s just a little hard to get used to, is all. Peace is in a similar state of shock. She is a towering brute of a man with a barrel belly and a voice like a bus engine. Amy is still female at least, but she's gone from 10 years old to 30 in a day.
I would like to say that I'm handling my sex change with maturity and aplomb. But that wouldn't be exactly, or even remotely, true. For the past three hours, we have been felling trees for a raft. Now the rudiments of that vessel are taking shape, and we have pulled our creation into the shallows to see if it will float. And each time I see myself reflected in the water, a miniature anxiety attack sets in. I've always felt a vague sense of non-ownership over my body - a side effect of being grown in a tank, I suspect - but this is a whole different thing. It might not be so bad if there was anything noticeably false about our surroundings. But this virtual world is pitch perfect in every way.
My new body has round cheeks and a wide, expressive mouth made for laughing. My skin is mahogany, my eyes close to black, and I am much shorter than in real life. I won't go into any neck-down details, because there is no way to do so without sounding extraordinarily creepy.
Amy could be my older, taller sister. Of the three of us, she seems the most upset about the whole thing. As our first attempt at a raft falls apart before my eyes, I decide to raise the subject.
“Amy, are you going to be okay?”
“Yes. I just miss my physical body, that's all.”
“I understand. It's hard to switch your sense of identity so quickly.”
She gives me a disparaging look. “It's not that.”
“Then what's the problem?”
“People are going to take me more seriously now. So it will be harder to kill them.”
When she hears this, Peace stops kicking logs and points a finger at Amy.
“This has gone on long enough! I'm calling a team talk.”
“But it's just the three of us now.”
“I don't care. What I want to know is, are you actually turning into a murderous psychopath, or is this all some weird cry for attention?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Threatening Jinx, breaking Rook's thumbs, that scary-ass shit you said just now. What's it all about?”
“You're probably better of not knowing.”
“Well tell me anyway.”
“Fine. I've just been filling the gap that you, Tikal and Lucy left when you went soft.”
“Excuse me?”
“Peace, you used to be a happy little serial killer. Tikal was gunning down refugees from the cockpit of her Spitfire, and Lucy was lying for a living and twisting men around her little finger. And now look at you. Lucy is mourning a man she never really loved, and you and Tikal are both ecstatic about the idea of settling down.”
“People can change.” Peace says slowly.
“Can they, though? Or is the pooled link altering your personalities? Let's face it: the men were always the weakest members of this group. Delez's killer instinct is fading with age, Francis just wants to be everyone's friend, and Anex is addicted to self-hatred and regret. Francis would rather be back in Opacity hosting a cooking show, and the other two secretly want to retire and have babies. And you are letting them imprint their needs onto you. It's sad, really. And as long as it continues, I will have to keep picking up the slack.”
If a flock of baby geese were to attack me and Peace right now, I doubt we would be able to defend ourselves. Both of us are dumbstruck by what Amy is asserting.
“So I'm just projecting my desire to settle down onto Tikal?” I say in a strangled voice.
“And I agreed to move in with Delez when we get home for the same reason?”
“You did?”
“I know!” Peace wails. And then, “Oh my god, it's true. You people are turning me into a pussy! I can't even remember the last time I wanted to kill someone just for looking at me funny.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” I say.
“I suppose not. Argh, there you go again. Amy, make him stop!”
“I'm not doing anything! This is all just a theory.”
“That's true.” Amy says. “And the only way to find out for sure is to uninstall the link. Which we can't do until we capture the woman who created this place.”
“How do you expect us to function after that mindfuck you just pulled?”
“You're both adults. So handle your shit and let's build this raft.”
It takes the rest of the day, but we eventually produce a seaworthy vessel. It's just a framework of crosshatched logs woven over and under each other, but it will have to do. That night, we sleep on the beach under the stars. And although we have yet to consume anything, I feel no hunger or thirst. Recalling the Colonizer's comment about lack of scarcity, I begin to suspect that we never will.
The next morning, we push our raft out to sea and climb aboard. Amy's theory and Peace's acceptance of it have driven a wedge between us, and the strain of paddling gives everyone an excuse not to speak. By previous agreement, we have decided to head for the smallest of the three islands on the horizon. In addition to being the only one that isn't on fire, it is also the closest.
The sun climbs the sky. But the heat never becomes uncomfortable, and a fresh breeze cuts what little humidity there is. V-winged birds dive for fish off our starboard side. To port, dolphins play in the corridors between colored shelves of coral. Even the grainy bark of my paddle feels natural and right. Despite my mood and what the Colonizer told us about this world, I can already feel myself falling for it.
Our journey ends as sunset splashes the sky with shades of orange and pink. This new island is convoluted in shape. Its many inlets are framed by embankments thick with ferns and bamboo thickets. Hiding the raft in a dense section of foliage, we venture into the interior. The palm jungle closes in. And as the last light fades from the sky, we meet our first authentic Kogis.
We achieve this by blundering straight into their camp. There are about fifteen of them. We stare at each other in the twilight, and it's hard to say who looks more afraid. Then Amy raises her hands slowly to the stars. Peace and I follow suit, and some of the pressure drains out of the moment. One of the men speaks.
“If you are Respawns, find somewhere else to hide. This island is big enough for all of us.” A livid burn stretches across most of the Kogi's face. Looking closer, I see that all of them have similar disfigurements.
Amy wrinkles her brow. “Respawn. I don't know that word. What does it mean?”
“How can you not know?”
“Because we don't know anything. The three of us woke up yesterday on an island not far from here. Our last memories are of the Real. How long has the New World been live for?”
“Almost six months. There have been glitches, though. Maybe you were caught in one.”
“Possibly.” Amy glances around. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting out the war.”
“War? Surely not. We paid dearly for this paradise. The Architect wouldn't allow such a thing to occur.”
“Allow it? She started it. Her forces wiped out the government right after go-live. You know Balthazar, the fisherwoman who discovered the downed space station?”
“Of course.” Amy replies smoothly.
“Well she started what has become the resistance effort. They call her the Queenfisher now, but her rebels are struggling. When Balthazar's forces die, it is for good, but the Architect can resurrect her soldiers an infinite number of times.”
“So you were fighting with the rebels?”
“Yes. But we all fell into the Burnflow during battle, and it carried us here.” He raises his chin defiantly. “And none of us are going bac
k.”
I want to ask what the Burnflow is, but Amy is running this show.
“And if we don't want to stay here?”
“Then you are welcome to go join the fighting. Just don't try to enlist with the Architect. She would be more likely to kill you for spying than to take you on.”
“How do we find the Queenfisher then?”
“Did you see the two burning islands today?”
Amy nods.
“That is where the war is being played out. One island belongs to the Architect, and the other, to Balthazar. The rebels control the nearer of the two.”
“Thank you. And may your wounds heal quickly.”
Then she leads us back into the jungle. Our second night in the New World is spent on the ground next to our raft. When the sun rises, we hit the sea again. The warring strongholds are no longer burning, but twinned plumes of black smoke still ride the wind. We close the distance, and the geography of the area becomes clear.
The two islands may once have been a single landmass. But now a wide channel separates them. A thundering geyser at its mid-point hurls steam into the sky, and the remnants of war canoes jut from the smoking waters around it.
The islands themselves look much alike. The shorelines on both sides of the channel are dead zones, congested with shattered palisades, staked barriers, trip wires and rebel bodies. Behind them, the jungle has been cleared away to make space for the competing war machines. To call them towns would be an insult to the word. They represent the worst aspects of the industrial/military complex, but dragged backward by a thousand years. I see tanneries and ropemakers and outrigger canoes bringing lumber in from other islands. We follow them into a bay on the rebel island's ocean facing side. The rowers are wind-eaten vets with top knots, facial tattoos and arms hard as petrified wood. We receive a few looks, but strangers must not be uncommon because nobody stops us.
We tie up under a ramshackle dock that looks closer to 60 years old than six months. Then it's up into the rebel encampment. I wonder at the lack of technology here. Has the Architect created a world in which electricity does not function? Where science is just a useless pastime for old men with nothing better to do? If the Kogis were seeking a return to the past, that may have been exactly their wish. What they wouldn't do now for a good old-fashioned machine gun.
I had assumed that we would approach the Queenfisher now, and reveal our true identities. But Amy kills this suggestion.
“Our goal is to capture the Architect, not to defeat her army. And we have no idea how this Balthazar woman would react to our presence. She might think we were lying, or demand that we pull her out of this simulation entirely.”
I find her use of the word simulation jarring. This place feels so real, and adheres to its own internal logic so completely, that I have already begun to accept it as my reality. And maybe that's not such a bad thing. While we're in this world we have to play by its rules, and holding ourselves apart is only going to get us killed.
“What do you suggest then?” I ask.
“We need to learn everything we can about this place. It's obvious that nobody has to eat or drink. But what else is different? Can we breathe underwater? Take a spear to the heart and keep fighting? In the real world, this island would smell like one huge latrine. But it doesn't, so does that mean no one needs to shit or piss?”
Peace stares into space, trying to wrap her head around the implications. Then she undoes the drawstring of her pants and looks down.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Just taking a look at my dick. Do you think it's functional?”
“Like, for procreation?”
“No, for screwing.” Her mouth forms an O shape. “I never even thought about making babies. But how would that even work? All of these people have real bodies somewhere - probably in a cryobunker half a click beneath the earth. And unless they have non-popsicle friends popping out kids, any child born here would just be a construct.”
We both turn to Amy, who looks thoughtful. “Even popsicles die eventually, so this society will have to replenish itself at some point. But that's not relevant to this mission, so let's shelf it for now. A better question would be, what is happening to the rebels who die here? We know they don't respawn like the Architect's soldiers.”
“So either they're being kept in stasis like the rest of our squad, or they're...”
“Kaput for real.” Peace finishes cheerfully. “Imagine that, huh? Thousands of brain dead bodies, rotting away inside their stasis tubes like mummies.”
Is the sniper trying to prove that she's still the cold-hearted killer she once was, before Delez came along and ruined everything? And if so, who is she trying to convince? Probably no one but herself. I'm almost grateful for the impossible task ahead, since it’s helping us avoid our personal problems.
Now that the decision to run reconnaissance has been reached, we need a way to do it without drawing attention to ourselves. And since drug dealers specialize in making new friends and turning them into clients, I am well suited to the task. What is less clear is how I'm going to chat up members of an ancient tribe that I know nothing about. But an hour later, I have my answer.
CHAPTER 15
It would seem that alcohol is still a thing here, and that soldiers like to drink it in ramshackle bars near the fortified beach that slopes down to the Burnflow (the name they use for the superheated channel). I'm already five drinks in, and since the rum pours endlessly from a magical jug on our table, we are probably just getting started. My companion is a heavyset rower who keeps trying to pinch my ass. He's giving me a crash course on what sexual harassment feels like (not great) but he's also giving me information. Peace and Amy are watching from a table across the room. Both of them look ready to knock the guy's teeth out, but so far necessity is prevailing.
“... so like I was saying, most people think it was just the Architect that screwed us over. But I say it was the government, too. Sure, we used to live on islands that might have looked something like this. But that was hundreds of years ago! And what is this obsession people have with the idea of the noble savage? We could all be wearing designer bodies and living in palaces on Saturn, but instead we get damp sand and our real flesh.”
“The bottomless booze is pretty good.” I say, pouring myself another glass.
“Okay, so there are a few nice touches.” He admits grudgingly. “But most of this world has been modeled strictly on the Real. That's why the Architect only needed to sneak one little change into the build. She fudges a few lines of code so that dead people stay in limbo unless she resurrects them, and boom, say hello to your new god!”
The man is roaring drunk, spilling his drink onto the sandy floor, and I'm not far behind. But everyone else in the bar is just as far gone. Free drinks will do that.
“What about assination?” I say.
He leers at me, showing rotten teeth and black gums. “Was hoping you'd say that. Your bunk or mine?”
“Uh, I actually meant assassination. Has anyone tried sneaking onto the Architect's island and killing her?”
“It's already been done, twice. But she just respawns somewhere else and travels back to the front. Same with her soldiers, although some of them get tired of dying and never come back.”
Beneath the rower's bravado, there is a desperation that makes him (slightly) harder to hate.
“Why is all of this even happening?” I ask in a querulous voice. “What does the Architect want from us?”
“Word is, she's trying to find our sunken space station in the Real. The government managed to hide its location from her, so now she plans on torturing it out of the Queenfisher.”
“But I thought you... I mean we, already stripped it to pay for this place.”
“Ha. That station is the size of a city. We only scratched the surface.” His eyes narrow. “You ask a lot of questions, girlie.”
“I only spawned yesterday.” I remind him. “Systems glitch.”
> “Or maybe respawned. You a spy or something?”
“A spy asking questions that everyone already knows the answers to?”
“Guess that's true.” He allows. “Anyway, I'm tired of talking. Are you gonna come back to my bunk, or do I have to drag you?”
For the first time, I become aware of just how much larger this man is than me. It's not a feeling I'm used to, and a sick fear wells up inside me. Then the bar's front door crashes open, so hard that the entire structure shakes. And into the room strides perhaps the most memorable person I have ever seen. Her long sealskin coat has been cut off at the elbows, revealing forearms tattooed blue as the sea. Her hair is a salt-fused mass drawn up on top of her head. Lilac eyes stare out of an exotic, almost leonine face, and her boots have spurs of sharpened bone at the toes. But the strangest part is, she can't be more than 19 years old. Everybody stops what they're doing, and there is a deafening cheer.
“Queenfisher!”
Glancing across the room, I see that Amy has risen to her feet without seeming to be aware of it. Balthazar turns, and the two lock eyes. Then the rest of the bar rises as well, and the moment of connection is lost. And now the Queenfisher is jumping onto a table with a jug of rum in one hand.
“We all know why I'm here! You've been sitting here drowning in self-pity, thinking about how your next time out on the Burnflow will probably be your last. But that was before I, your esteemed and sexy leader, arrived to restore your fighting spirit! So here's to me!”
Raising the jug to her lips, she slugs it back in one hit.
“Did you like that little show? Well I have to do it twenty more times today, in twenty different bars. So I'm going to head outside for a puke, and then be on my way. But before I go... what do we say to the Architect if we meet her on the battlefield?”
“Get fucked!” The room shouts back.