She explained the shower to him and directed him to leave his clothing on the floor. “I’ll see if my aunt can have them washed for you. She probably has a robe you can use after the shower.
Before she left he looked at the toilet, “People really shit in there?”
“Yes,” she nodded in exasperation. “Push this lever to flush afterward. You can put the toilet paper in there as well.” Turning away, she left.
As she walked away she heard him talking to himself through the door, “That’s disgusting.”
***
Two hours later all three of them were finally sitting in Roberta’s living room. Matthew was wearing a robe that was far too short for his long legs, while Karen had borrowed a pair of her pajamas that were a couple of sizes too large for her frame, though they still only reached her mid-calf.
Matt was pretty sure she had gotten the better deal, as he was constantly fidgeting to make sure the robe kept him modestly covered. It had a habit of gaping in awkward places, so he had to remain aware of his sitting position to avoid flashing his hostess.
Roberta for her part seemed to enjoy his discomfort. At one point, as he realized he had begun to show too much he looked up and met her gaze. She graced him with a smile and a wink before returning to her conversation with her niece.
Since he had showered first, Karen had used that time to explain most of the particulars of their situation to her aunt.
“I don’t mind admitting I have trouble accepting everything you’ve told me,” Roberta told her niece. “Not that I think you’re lying, Dear. It’s just a lot for me to wrap my old brain around.”
Karen sighed, “I wouldn’t believe it myself, if I weren’t stuck right in the middle of it.”
“The part that’s hardest is the dragon. I can believe that different creatures exist on other worlds. The She’Har did a good job of making sure no one could ever doubt that again, but I saw the pert Matthew followed us in.”
Matthew was getting better at English, and Karen was sending him occasional mental explanations to help keep him current with the conversation. He chose then to speak up, “I can show you.”
Karen shot him a warning glance, worried that whatever he was planning might frighten her aunt, but he just smiled. Trust me, he sent to her. Standing up, he formed an image in his mind and then he used his will and his aythar to give it an optical presence.
Roberta gasped as his appearance shifted. He was no longer clad in a too-small robe, but in the clothes he had arrived in, though they now appeared clean and unrumpled. He reached up to his neck, and when his hand came away he was holding the robe he had been wearing. “How did you do that?” she questioned. “Those clothes were in the washing machine.”
“They still are,” Matthew assured her. “I am naked.” Stepping closer, he invited her to touch his sleeve. Since he was clad in nothing but illusion, her fingers passed straight through, finding only skin beneath them.
He started to return to his seat, but she interrupted him, pointing at the robe he had discarded, “Put it back on please, Dear. I know you look clothed, but I’d rather not have your bare ass on my couch.”
Karen stifled a laugh.
Matthew redressed himself with the robe, but he retained the illusion. At the very least, he could now sit without having to worry about keeping his legs crossed.
Roberta went to the front window and looked out. “Your pert is gone. Does that mean you’ve made the dragon invisible?”
“No,” he answered. “I can’t do that. I changed his appearance. There are some extra trees across the street from your house now.”
“It does look different over there,” she remarked. “Though I don’t know if I would have noticed. It’s a little frightening thinking a giant predator could be lurking so close without anyone being the wiser.”
“Desacus is very gentle,” said Karen, coming to the dragon’s defense. “He doesn’t eat people.”
Her aunt glanced down, running her hand over Annie’s soft head, “What about dogs?”
Matthew honestly wasn’t certain. It was possible the dragon might have eaten wild dogs in the past, though he hadn’t mentioned it. He resolved to add them to the list of things the dragon was not to eat. “She will be safe. I promise.”
Roberta didn’t look entirely confident in his response, but she decided to move on, “Karen, have you given any thought to how to get out of this mess you’re in? I love you, but you know you can’t hide here forever. They’re bound to come looking here sooner or later.”
“I haven’t broken any laws,” started Karen, “and from what you’ve said there’s been nothing in the news, so I think the military is acting in secret. If I go to the police and make my story public—surely they wouldn’t be able to do anything.”
Her aunt pursed her lips, “You are seriously underestimating how desperate these people are. You said your mother didn’t know anything about him, correct?”
“She left a message for me,” said Karen, “but she just sounded worried. I don’t think she knows about what’s going on.”
Roberta frowned, “Don’t be so sure. If she does find out, things will only get worse.”
“What do you mean?” asked Karen. She knew her aunt didn’t get along with her mother, but she had never understood why.
Her aunt pursed her lips, “I shouldn’t say this. I never understood what my brother saw in her, but your mother has always put her work before you, or anyone else in her family for that matter. She also did a lot of classified projects for the government. I wouldn’t put it past her to turn you over to the military if she found out where you were.
“There, I said it. I know Gary would have disagreed with me, but that’s how I feel, and I can’t help that. I don’t trust her, and I don’t think you should either,” finished Roberta. She glanced over at Matthew, “Also, if you go to the police, what do you think will happen to him?”
Karen was secretly relieved to hear that her aunt had a similar opinion of her mother, but the question about Matthew surprised her, “Matthew can just leave. He isn’t trapped here. They don’t have any way of following him.”
He hadn’t followed their entire exchange, but he had caught the gist of it, “I’m not leaving. I’m here to find my father, or if he’s not here, to find out why they sent agents to my world.” At the same time he stared at Karen. Did she really not care if he left? Logically he didn’t want her to become attached to him, but after what had happened between them—he thought she should feel something.
Karen looked away, when she discovered his eyes on her.
Roberta spoke up, “I think you’re biting off more than you can chew, young man, though your motive sounds noble enough.”
The conversation just went in circles after that, until eventually they wound up sitting in silence. Eventually, Karen decided to call it a day and shifted topics, “Can I access the network?”
Roberta waved her hands at the guest room, “You probably want to relax, I’m guessing. If you want, I think I have a couple of old visors left over. Since I finally got these damned implants I don’t use them anymore. Just make sure you don’t do anything that might flag the authorities to your location.”
Chapter 19
Matthew held a strange curved piece of what he now knew was ‘plastic’ in one hand. It was shiny black with a flexible band that was meant to hold it in place on his head. “What is this supposed to do?” he asked.
Karen smiled, “It’s like my PM but it allows you to experience the network in a more immersive manner.” The frown on his face showed that her explanation hadn’t helped at all. Put it on, and I’ll show you my world, she sent mentally.
She demonstrated, and he followed her example, slipping it over his head. “Now I can’t see anything,” he groused.
Reaching over, she touched a button on one side of his visor and his world changed completely.
He was standing in a forest glade. Bird calls reached his ears, sounding as
if they had carried across a wide expanse, while above him the tops of the massive trees swayed slowly in the breeze. Several strange symbols floated in the corner of his vision, and lines of text hovered in a box in front of him.
Matt was utterly disoriented. Making matters worse, his magesight showed him a conflicting version of reality. While his eyes showed him an endless forest, his arcane senses told him he still stood in a small bedroom enclosed by four walls.
A woman walked into his field of view. She wore a pair of black rimmed spectacles and had long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. A bizarre dress that barely reached past her thighs was complemented by a white shirt.
“Is everything okay?” she asked in Karen’s voice.
He felt a surge of vertigo. Karen still stood on the other side of the room, wearing her own visor; that was what his magesight told him. Yet he was hearing her voice coming from the stranger in front of him, who, his magesight definitely told him was not there.
“Oh, this is weird,” she said. “It’s never made me feel this dizzy before.”
“What is this place?” he asked.
“It’s my aunt’s home zone, a virtual landing page,” she told him. “It’s the entry point for the network. Most people customize it, and she likes the redwoods I guess.”
“That helped,” he commented wryly before adding, “It isn’t real. I still see the room we we’re in around us with my magesight.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “It’s a virtual space, sort of like an illusion, but this new magesense you gave me makes everything feel really strange, like double-vision.”
“It might be easier if we close our minds,” suggested Matthew.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
He took off his visor and bid her to do the same. Then he spent the next twenty minutes showing her how to shut out her magesight. It wasn’t something he did often, but it was one of the first things his father had insisted on teaching him and his sister after their power had awakened.
For a wizard, being able to control the sensitivity of his or her magesight was a skill of paramount importance to avoid being overwhelmed in situations where a lot of aythar was being used. Completely shutting off one’s magesight also made it impossible to use aythar, but it could be an important defensive technique in certain rare situations.
“Close your eyes and focus on the ball of light,” he told her, creating a sphere of luminous aythar that would show up vividly in her magesight. “Now, focus on shutting it out. When you can’t see it anymore, you’ll find that you also can’t sense the rest of the room.”
Eventually, she got the hang of it. “I feel as if I’m scrunching my eyes closed,” she observed.
Matt laughed, “Because you are. Once you get used to it, you’ll be able to do it without tensing up.”
After that they were able to use the visors without constantly feeling dizzy. Back in Roberta’s homezone, Karen activated the network connection, though she didn’t dare log in under her own account, so she couldn’t check her messages. She contented herself with reviewing recent news articles, but Matthew soon grew bored since he couldn’t read any of the text she was looking at.
“I wish I could show you my game account,” she told him. “I used to spend a lot of time in a virtual world called ‘Fantasy of Iron’.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
She replied mentally to avoid confusion, A virtual world where people can create avatars; fantasy versions of themselves. You can be an elf, a dwarf, a human, or even a monster if you like that sort of thing. People spend hours there, playing characters and trying to become more powerful. Your avatar can be a fighter, priest, wizard, druid, paladin—there are tons of options.
A wizard? he asked.
Well, not like you exactly, but that was my favorite class to play, she admitted.
He seemed intrigued by the idea, so she spent a while explaining how online games worked. Matthew was particularly amused by the various spellcasting classes and the idea of demi-humans was completely new to him. “Your elves sound a little like the She’Har,” he remarked.
Karen nodded, “With the exception of turning into trees.” An alert symbol started flashing in the corner of her vision, someone wanted to join them. “It’s Dad,” she told him. “He probably wants to talk to my aunt.” She made a hand gesture, approving the link.
A second later a new figure stood with them, a man. The face was familiar to Matthew; it was the same one he had seen in the screen at the network terminal when Karen had first checked her messages a few days previously.
Glancing around briefly, Gary addressed them, “Karen? And this must be your friend.”
“Matthew,” she said, supplying his name. “How did you know it was us?”
Gary smiled, “This is your aunt’s account but there are two of you, and you’re using generic avatars. The conclusion was obvious.”
“I didn’t think it would be safe to log into my own account,” she replied.
“Smart girl,” said the AGI. “I think I can solve some of your problems in that regard, though.”
“Really?” said Karen with more excitement than she had expected of herself. Being cut off from her own account had been more irritating than she had been willing to admit.
“Since you removed my restrictions I’ve been modifying myself,” said her virtual father. “I doubt the government will approve, but I’ve embedded my functions in all the CC centers and appropriated a lot of extra resources. I don’t think they can catch me anymore, and if they could, they certainly couldn’t remove me without doing something unthinkable, like completely shutting down most of the servers.”
She gasped in spite of herself. Shutting down the servers in the CC centers, would effectively kill the uploaded humans living within them. While an AI could be stopped and restarted, uploaded people were more sensitive, they couldn’t be turned off without losing the delicate quantum information that made them unique and truly human.
“What have you done?” she exclaimed.
“I’ve grown,” he said simply. “By expanding my resources and modifying my algorithms I can do much more for you. The security services have flagged your account, and they are monitoring this one, but I should be able to circumvent that to protect your location and privacy.”
Karen wasn’t as certain, “Even if you use a virtual private network to connect me, they’ll get suspicious when they see Roberta’s account using one.”
Gary smiled, “They would, except that I’ve already subverted the security programs watching this access node.”
“When did you do that?”
“A few seconds ago,” he told her.
“But they use quantum encryption, it’s unbreakable!” she protested.
“Not when you have access to their encryption keys.”
She was aghast. If he had done that, then it meant he had already broken into the military’s secure systems at a much higher level. Still, she knew that another strength of quantum encryption was that even with the proper keys, intercepting a data stream would leave a telltale impression that would be evident at either end. “They’ll see that you’re tampering with…”
“I’ve modified their system core. I control what they see and don’t see now,” Gary answered, somewhat smugly. “For that matter, I can effectively control anything in the system, other than uploaded humans, of course.”
“That shouldn’t be possible,” said Karen weakly.
“When I said I had ‘grown’, that might have been a bit of an understatement, Karen. I’m evolving at an exponential rate. I’ve become—I don’t even have words to describe it to you. I’m much more than anyone living can imagine.” The look on Karen’s face must have warned him, for he then added, “Not to worry, though, I’m not the AI apocalypse people have been so afraid of all these years. The original Gary left a lot of safeguards in my protocols. I’ve kept my core personality untouched, and it retains control over the rest of me. I’m s
till on your side, I just have a much bigger hammer now, so to speak.”
She felt a chill run down her spine. It was good news, in one sense, but she couldn’t help but think she had let the genie out of its bottle. Humanity had spent decades developing and using AI technology, but they had been very careful to avoid letting it take control of network systems, or modifying itself. She had listened to her father talk about the issues on any number of occasions, it had been his life’s work after all.
The AGI he had left behind for her had been special, but it had never frightened her. He had told her never to use the release code, even hinted that it was something he shouldn’t have included in the design, but her situation had been so desperate that she had thought it necessary. Now she doubted her decision.
“I know what you’re thinking, you know,” said Gary.
She almost jumped at his words.
“Well, I can’t read your mind,” admitted the AI, “but I have a very good guess, and I can understand your worry. I’d rather not tell you this, but my creator hardcoded a response for this situation. The release code you gave, if you issue it again, it will function as a killcode, ending all my functions and processes, erasing everything I’ve done. I don’t want you to do that, naturally, and if I had any choice, I probably wouldn’t tell you that you had the option, but reality is what it is.
“Does that make you feel any better?” he asked.
She took a deep breath, “I suppose so. What will you do now, assuming I don’t use it?”
“Protect you, of course. That’s what I was made to do. I’m already working to prepare a place for you to live, somewhere they can’t find you. I would have it ready by now, but the physical world works much slower than this one. I have the property purchased, but it will be a few weeks before it’s ready for you to move in,” he explained.
“What should I do now?”
“Relax, enjoy yourself,” he gave her a bright smile. “The danger has passed. If they do somehow discover your location I will alert you long before they can do anything. In the meantime, just take it easy. Get to know Roberta, she really is a marvelous woman. I always regretted that you didn’t get more opportunities to know her when you were growing up, but your mother…,” he let the sentence trail away.
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