by Liam Clay
A wind picks up, coming in from the north. It peels back the yellow mist, and the Flow is revealed in all its grisly glory. We are at the southern edge of a floating hell of interlocked boats. Soldiers fight balancing-act battles on pontoons, crossbraces and overturned hulls. Arrows and mauls fill the air, and catapults from both islands add to the destruction. This is insanity. The tactics we learned were meant for altercations between a handful of ships. But with hundreds... all we can do is hack, slash and burn each other until a victor is declared.
The three of us are the only ones who can pull the Architect from this world, and so it is imperative that we reach her. For this reason, our ship was meant to skirt the main battle along with a handful of others from this flank. But we were naive to imagine things would go as planned. Crossing back to my ship, I help cut our outriggers loose. Then we extricate ourselves from the wreckage of the other vessel, leaving a handful of our dead behind.
But none of the enemy's. As they draw their final breaths, the Architect's soldiers vanish. This pulls me out of the moment, and for the first time in months, I am reminded that none of this is real. But then I slip, and my leg goes into the Flow. The pain is excruciating beyond description. Real or not, I don't want to die here again, with nothing but an eternity of limbo to follow.
Now we stalk the fringes of the fight. My maul is gone, so I use pontoon fragments and broken oars as spears. To Balthazar, looking down on this from her palisade, the battle must seem a grand, sweeping affair. But for us it is a succession of small, brutal moments. The channel has become a half-drowned forest, with games of deadly hide and seek played out within it.
There is an arrowhead lodged in my shoulder. I have no memory of it hitting me. Amy is lying in our boat, bleeding heavily from a knife wound to the side. Peace is unhurt, but she has a wild look in her eyes, and keeps flinching away from imaginary blows. The geyser is erupting with renewed furiosity, raining heat down upon our heads. But we are still in play, and nearing the Architect's island now.
There comes a point when our canoe will take us no further. A barrier of crossed stakes has been hammered into the riverbed, with ropes strung up between them. The beach is a hundred meters away. We aren't the only ones to have made it this far. Our 3,700 troops are overwhelming the Architect's 1,500, and dozens of unbloodied boat teams are weaving through gaps in the jigsaw.
I dip my hand into the water. This far from the geyser, the pain is just barely manageable. The three of us jump in, followed by the captain and his remaining men. Now we're climbing over stakes and under ropes, trying to ignore the smell of our own cooking flesh. My legs will never be the same. The water drops to our shins, and then our ankles. Leaving the shallows behind, we step onto dry land. But there is no respite. Arrows fly past us, deceptively quiet. We have to get off the beachhead.
We drop to our knees and crawl up the slope. My shoulder wound widens with every meter gained. But tufts of grass anchor the sand now; we are almost to the dunes. Then a soldier rises from his hiding place directly in front of us. I tackle him just as he fires a barbed arrow dripping with green ichor. The bolt goes high and wide, and I land with my knife in his chest. The soldier convulses once... and then vanishes. I help my friends into his foxhole, and we sprawl out in the tiny space, thankful for the break.
“This is a breeze.” Peace moans. “I can't understand why I was so worried. Are you okay though, Amy?”
“Yes.” The girl replies. “But not for much longer, so we should keep moving.”
“Why don't you stay here and rest? Me and Anex can handle this.”
“Resting won't help. I would bleed out just as quickly.” She rolls to her knees and looks up the channel. “We've taken the beach. Let's go.”
Joining a horde of Balthazar's soldiers, we enter the Architect's town. A lot of these people are only here because we convinced them to come. Seeing us fighting alongside them seems to ignite morale, and we are soon leading the charge. The enemy must have fallen back, because the streets are all but empty.
We reach the ring of barren sand that encircles the Architect's compound. But now, something strange: the gates are open. Amy raises her fist, and the attack grinds to a halt.
“Do you think it's a trap?” Peace says.
“It could be. Or...” She turns around, and curses.
The Queenfisher's palisade is on fire. Tongues of angry flame lick across its walls, sending spirals of black smoke into the blue.
“She's going after Balthazar!” Someone shouts. “Back to the ships!”
The horde reverses course, streaming back toward the beach. But Amy doesn't move. Peace walks over and shakes her.
“What are we waiting for? That's your girlfriend back there!”
“But this is what the Architect wants. Once we're back on the Flow, she will probably smash the entire gridlock to pieces with catapult fire.”
“But her own people are down there too. And it would take them weeks to return here from their spawning points.”
“Then she must be planning to torture the info out of Balthazar right now.”
“Fuck. What do we do?”
An idea comes to me. “Our funeral canoe. Maybe it's still where we left it.”
Amy nods. “It's our best shot. The Architect will have scuttled what's left of her own fleet.”
The road out of town is empty of life. Passing the last houses, we push on into the cliffs. And there it is: the dead tree I noticed during our first visit. The defile is right behind it. We scramble down. Peace is in the lead, and she lets out a whoop when we reach the cove. The canoe is still here, drawn up onto a familiar wash of black sand.
Rowing is death on an injured shoulder. But Amy's wound is far worse. I'm behind her in the canoe, and I can't help noticing that things are coming out of her. And not just blood. It could be entrails or an organ - I don't know. How's she’s staying upright is a mystery, never mind actively paddling. But she’s doing it, and we're making good time. The cliffs are behind us now, and half of the Burnflow too. As Amy predicted, the channel is under fire from above. The Architect's catapults are raining hell onto friend and foe alike. If any of our troops make it back across, it will be a miracle.
We reach the northern end of the Queenfisher's island and struggle ashore. But before we come to the funeral plain, Amy raises her fist for a second time. And now I hear it too: voices from just over the next dune.
“Your people have done a commendable job of hiding it from us. But that is over now. Within minutes, all but a few of your people will be in limbo. Tell me where the station is though, and I will resurrect them all.”
I raise my head just enough to see what’s happening. The Queenfisher has been tied to a post. She is in a seated position, legs folded beneath her, hair matted with blood. The Architect stands over her, surgical scar gleaming in the sun. Five of her soldiers look on. Two are wounded, though; their assault on Balthazar's palisade did not come without cost. I think the Queenfisher is unconscious at first, but then she speaks.
“Tell me why you want it, and the station is yours.”
“I suspect that you are not being entirely truthful, so I will give you half an answer. We need the black box. And more specifically, the engine blueprints for the smaller ship that are contained on it.”
“Why do you need them?”
“You first.”
Beside me, Amy is muttering to herself. “Just tell her, you stubborn bitch. She's going to carve it out of you anyway.”
The Queenfisher looks up at her tormentor.
“Go to hell, you dead-eyed hag.”
And now Amy is moving. She lurches over the dune and throws herself at the Architect, but the woman's soldiers step into the way. Peace and I join her, and the fight begins. These are no regular soldiers we're facing. They move like smoke, whereas I feel more like stone. The burns on my legs have stiffened, and my shoulder is almost useless. But Amy is a woman possessed. Her attacks are utterly reckless, carried out with no
regard for her own safety. She takes a spear to the thigh, slides along it, and stabs her opponent in the face. Then her thinking becomes clear to me. If we can reach the Architect, our digital bodies will have served their purpose. We can return to the Real, and forget the past year ever happened.
Peace has reached the same conclusion. And so we go straight at the remaining soldiers: trading wounds for wounds, hoping theirs are worse. Unprepared for these tactics, the enemy falters. Burying a spear in the guts of one, I get another in a tight headlock. He stabs me in the stomach, but I refuse to loosen my hold. He goes limp, and now all five soldiers are down.
“Stop.”
We turn. The Architect is crouched behind the Queenfisher with a knife to her neck.
“Come any closer and I will kill both of us.”
“Bullshit.” Amy says. “You need her alive.”
“But I can resurrect her. It will only take a moment to make the necessary code changes.”
“Is that so?”
Amy rears back and hurls her spear. The Architect rolls away, but the throw wasn't meant for her. The spear goes straight through Balthazar's heart, lodging in the post behind her. The general smiles briefly at her lover, and then she dies. The Architect stares at the corpse.
“Unexpected.”
We sprint toward her, arms outstretched. But she is too quick. Raising her knife, she slides it across the flesh of her neck. Blood spurts and then she's gone, faded on the wind.
Amy crumples to the ground. I am right behind her. Peace remains standing, but she is swaying on her feet like a tree in a windstorm. Then she starts to laugh.
“And now, we wait.”
.
Five days later, one of the Dead rows out of the west. It is the nameless man we met on that barren spit of land, months ago now. Only Peace and I are there to greet him. Amy died of her wounds two days ago, on a bed in the Queenfisher's tent. The man pulls his canoe up on shore. Reaching into its bottom, he throws the Architect onto the sand. She is bound and beaten but alive. Then he stands back. We make our approach.
“You are giving me to the Colonizer.” She says. Even cowed and crippled, the woman shows no emotion whatsoever.
“Yes.”
“That is a mistake. He thinks I am just a rival developer with low morals. But you know better. There will be repercussions.”
“There always are.” Peace replies.
Then we press our palms to the Architect's temples, and the archipelago dissolves around us.
CHAPTER 18
We reconstitute in a familiar nowhere.
“Well done!” The Colonizer says from the ether. “Although I am still having trouble believing it. The Architect must have been desperate, to backdoor herself into that world equipped with such minimal advantages. I assumed she had given herself extra abilities that I was not aware of.”
“Thanks for telling us that now.” Peace says angrily. “And I wouldn't call having power over life and death a minimal advantage.”
“Oh, it was an ingenious hack she carried out. But it was still a huge risk. Aside from that one ability, she had to play entirely by the rules of the Kogi world. And it backfired in the end, because once you captured her she couldn't escape back to the Real. Only additional code changes and another suicide would have made that possible.”
“So you've got her mind trapped?” I ask.
“Correct. The Architect's true body will remain an empty shell until I say so.”
“What are you going to do with her?”
“I will trace her network accesses backward, all the way to the Real. I want to know who is training architects so unethically.”
“That might be harder than you think. There is something very weird about that woman. And she wasn't working alone.”
“I will keep that in mind. Regardless, you have held up your end of our bargain. And now I will do the same.”
“You're going to uninstall the pooled link?”
“Yes. And it's a good thing you took so long to complete your task, because I only cracked it a few days ago.”
“Hold on. You sent us headfirst into that shitstorm without knowing if you could honor our deal?”
“I was confident that I could. It just took longer than anticipated. But you must understand: this is relic tech we are dealing with. And not just any relic. The pooled link was one of the foundational technologies used by the 9th Pyramid.”
“We've heard about that place. What is it, exactly?”
“It was the precursor to the Southern Software Arcology Union. Before its destruction a hundred years ago, the 9th was the most advanced society on earth. Their technology has not been equaled since, and may never be. So that is the puzzle I had to solve.”
“But if they were the greatest of all time or whatever, who killed them?”
“No one knows. But after the 9th was destroyed, the survivors spread across the planet. Some of them settled here, and founded the Union. None of this would exist without them.”
“Uh huh. And speaking of existing, have you brought Amy and the Kogis out of limbo yet?”
“I have not. It will take time to break through the archipelago's security, and disarm any traps the Architect may have left behind.”
“And once you do?”
“I should be able to reset the entire world to its day-one state. Minus the Architect's changes, of course.”
“And what are you expecting in return? And don't tell us you’re not in it for the money. The Kogis only went to the Architect because you were too expensive.”
“I charge what I am worth, and what the market will bear.” He says defensively. “But in light of their recent trials, I will do this for free.”
“Even if they still refuse to join the Worldpool network?”
“Yes.”
“That's... pretty decent of you, actually. So what should we do while you work on bringing Amy back?”
“Your bodies have been in stasis for six weeks. They will need to be rehabilitated before you can travel. And I can also offer you short-term employment as security consultants.”
“Why, has someone tried to attack Worldpool?”
“No, but I have grown concerned about the situation in Medival. They have not responded to our attempts to contact them. But you don't have to decide now. I would imagine that you are anxious to return to your own bodies?”
“Sure.” Peace says.
“Definitely.” I echo.
The Colonizer laughs. “Don't worry, it's common for people to feel uncomfortable about the prospect. Subjectively, you were gone a long time. Your real body is going to feel strange at first - like it doesn't belong to you. But the feeling will pass.”
“What about our friends. Has any subjective time passed for them?”
“Yes, of course. They have been riding in on your experiences this whole time.”
“Are you fucking serious? Why didn't you tell us that?”
“My apologies, I thought I mentioned it.”
“Unbelievable.”
.
I'm back in my stasis tube. The injection foam around my arms and legs has already melted away. The needles are gone too, although they've turned my skin into a piece of pointillist art. I can see Tikal through the glass. She looks as I remember her: strong cheekbones, full lips, perma-dyed crimson hair. But how much has changed that I can't see? Like, for example, how she feels about me? I had always intended to tell her about Amy's theory. But I was anticipating being able to break the news softly, so that we could talk through it together.
Now she's had a subjective year to form her own opinion on the matter. Has the link really imprinted my feelings onto her? When the Colonizer uninstalls it, will she still want the shared life we talked about? Oh, and here's a good one: how is she going to feel about the fact that I just spent a year as a woman?
.
“You weren't actually a woman.”
The 10 of us (the entire squad minus Amy) are leaning against
the walls of our circular stasis chamber. We're naked, with bloated joints and worm-pale skin, and must look freakish to the Worldpool admins who are undoubtedly monitoring us. The newly embedded shunts in my neck aren't doing my self-image any favors either.
“I sure felt like one.” I tell Tikal.
“Well you were wrong, and for a thousand reasons. But here's one for you: periods. You didn't have them, ergo you weren't the real deal.”
“That is a transphobic remark.” Francis chides. “And what about the elderly? Just because someone's post-menopausal doesn't mean they stop being female.”
“Old women used to get periods, though. Whereas Anex has never, not even once in his life, had to deal with that shit.” She turns to me. “So I don't want to hear any 'I know your pain' crap coming out of your mouth, okay?”
“I missed you too, honey.”
“Miss you? I was you, more or less.”
“I was Peace.” Lucy says quietly.
We go around the room, and it emerges that each of us had a handful of squadmates looking out through our eyes. Tikal, Delez and Rajani were me; Francis, Lucy and Jinx were Peace; and Den and Ryo were Amy.
“I've been dying to know something.” Peace says to the Threshers afterward. “Was Amy telling the truth about that nine orgasm night with Balthazar?”
Ryo doesn't say anything, but he turns a fantastic shade of red. Who knows how a year of lesbian love is going to affect his own sexual development? Den, however, is grinning broadly.
“She sure was. That girl has some serious potential. When she gets out of limbo, I want her to collaborate with me on an experiential art project.”
We all look at Amy's body in its stasis tube. I think of her as a grown woman now, and so this child seems like an impostor. Just one more change that will take some getting used to. Of course, the biggest elephant in the room remains. But it’s probably best if the persona-merge conversations take place behind closed doors. Then Delez speaks up for the first time.