by Dima Zales
“You have to forgive Alfred,” Frederick says. “He’s almost neurotically blunt.”
“I know my history, so I am best qualified to speak on these matters,” Alfred says pedantically. “Leachers want us dead. Someone who’s been to their compound would have been exposed to their propaganda.”
I wonder whether I can exploit their animosity for the Readers. They might want to help me when they find out that ‘Leachers’ kidnapped people I care about, including Thomas, a Guide in the Secret Service.
“He seems like a young man with a brain,” Frederick says. “I am sure a little propaganda couldn’t have done much damage.”
“Propaganda requires respect for authority,” I say. “I prefer arguments based on reason.”
A few more faces warm up, but Alfred doesn’t look amused.
“We don’t all share Alfred’s paranoia,” Louis says. “If we all thought you were working for the Leachers, you wouldn’t have gotten off that plane.”
“My brother is right,” Frederick says. “As I mentioned before, we know of your mixed bloodline. We also know that your aunt, Hillary Taylor, trusts you.”
“I didn’t come here wishing you any harm,” I say. “And that’s the truth.”
“I concede that your heritage mitigates the risk,” Alfred says, “but it’s still too great.”
“Allow me to play devil’s advocate, dear Alfred,” Louis says. “Let’s say he is a Leacher agent.”
“Which I’m not,” I interject.
“But assuming you are,” Louis says calmly, “our overall objectives when it comes to Leachers can still be served.”
“And those objectives are?” I ask, trying to hide my excitement. If they ask me to turn on the Readers, it could be a great segue into asking for help against the Enlightened.
“We want to make peace with them, of course,” Frederick says. “So, even if you are working for them, you can still be persuaded to bring them our offer of goodwill.”
I blink. “You want to be friends with them?” I hope I don’t sound as disappointed as I feel.
“Maybe being friends is too much to hope for, but we need to establish an amicable relationship with them. We don’t want to repeat any of our not-so-ancient history that so worries Alfred,” says another older-looking Elder.
“We want to coexist,” says yet another man. “We want them to know that our groups existing is not a zero-sum game.”
“It sounds like a pretty old problem,” I say, frowning. “What makes you think I can help solve it?”
“Ah, but don’t you see that in a very real way, you were born for such an endeavor?” Gustav asks.
“Indeed, no one is better suited to bridge this unfortunate divide,” says Frederick.
I consider this. It’s great that they think I could be helpful—it means they’re unlikely to actually shoot me—but this peace with Readers isn’t compatible with what I wanted to ask them.
“You know, if you want to be friends with them, you might consider calling them Readers rather than Leachers,” I say. “It’s a lot less insulting.”
“That’s it,” Frederick says. “You’re getting in the spirit of it already. I shall call them Readers from now on and encourage the others to do so as well.”
“I concur,” Alfred says. “Though I must ask, if you are not here on the behest of the Readers, then why did you come?”
“Umm,” I mumble, trying to figure out how much I can share with them.
How would they react to me blurting out all the business with the Super Pusher? If the Super Pusher is in this crowd, how would she respond? I also don’t know how to best introduce the whole ‘the Enlightened kidnapped my peeps’ situation. I get a sneaking feeling they might not want to help me if I broach the subject, since they want peace with the Readers and helping me storm the inner sanctum of the most powerful of Readers isn’t exactly friendly. But what pretext should I give them for being here?
I decide to try a basic approach and say, “I want to learn from you.”
Some of the warmth disappears from most of their faces.
“Darren, Darren,” says Gustav, shaking his head. “You must know we’ve had millennia to get very good at reading people’s expressions, so I am sure it is as obvious to the others as it is to me that you are hiding something.”
“I—”
Before I can finish my sentence, the world goes away.
* * *
The bright colors are gone. Everything is gone. I feel as though I’m falling into an abyss. Actually, that’s not correct. I feel as though I’ve ceased to exist.
I recognize this lack of feeling.
This is Level 2.
But how did I just reach it after so many failed attempts?
Struggling to not freak out about not feeling my body, not even something as little as my left earlobe, I concentrate on the neural network patterns I was able to perceive the last time I was here—the patterns that make up other minds.
There is one quite ‘close’ to me, though distance is a misnomer here. A dozen patterns are also slightly ‘farther away.’ I have to assume those are the Elders. The nearest pattern is alive, with its synapses, for lack of a better term, firing, while the farther ones are static.
Suddenly, the active pattern appears nearer to the frozen ones.
The dynamic pattern begins enveloping one of the frozen ones.
A familiar voice in my head states, “Darren, don’t trust—”
Before I can receive the rest of that sentence, the enveloping is complete, and my senses return.
* * *
“You what?” asks Gustav.
“Nothing,” I say, my head spinning.
I think I understand part of what just happened. I showed up in Level 2 because one of the Elders accidentally pulled me in. Perhaps he or she wanted to Guide me to make me do their bidding but ended up pulling me in instead. I figured that would happen when one Level-2-capable person tried to Guide another Level-2 initiate. If I’m right, then who just tried Guiding me? And what did they want to make me do?
I look over every Elder. Their faces reveal nothing. Whoever did it is very good at controlling his or her expression. Then again, given how experienced these people are, I’m not surprised.
I assumed that the Super Pusher knew about, or suspected, my Level 2 capabilities. Otherwise, why bother using my friends to try to kill me at Kyle’s funeral? She could’ve leveraged Level 2 against me and had me kill myself—a much cleaner solution. So this implies that whoever just pulled me into Level 2 is not the Super Pusher.
It would be great to talk to this person, if only I knew who it was.
Now the part that I don’t get—that voice in my head. It was Mimir; I’m pretty sure of that. He was warning me, again—that part is obvious. But whom was he warning me against? Why? Dread spreads through my body as I recall what almost happened the last time Mimir warned me about something. Did he want to say, “Don’t trust the Elders,” or “Gustav,” or “anybody?”
“Are you all right, lad?” Gustav asks. “You look distraught.”
“I’m overwhelmed,” I say, happy he gave me an out. “You kind of ganged up on me with all this.”
“Say no more,” Gustav says. “I hope I speak for everyone when I say that this conversation can continue at another time.”
“I agree. It would be very helpful for Darren to see the Celebration before we continue,” Frederick says.
“Indeed,” Gustav says. “Surely he will be more amicable once he sees our way of life.”
“Just please promise to think on it,” Alfred says. “Think about becoming a special Ambassador—our liaison with the Readers.”
I nod and try to look more out of it so they’ll leave me alone. Under the circumstances, looking confused comes easily.
“If we want to impress the young gentleman, why don’t I show him around?” Victoria offers. “I know all the good spots.”
“Remember, we have the Celeb
ration preparations to attend to,” one of the older Elders says with slight disapproval.
“Of course,” she says. “Please, follow me, Darren.”
“Nice meeting you all,” I say and follow Victoria as she leads me away from the fountain.
I feel slightly relieved. If I assume that Mimir was telling me not to trust a specific person, rather than, say, raw fish, then statistically speaking, the person he wanted to warn me against is one of the Elders. Leaving them puts me in relative safety, assuming Victoria is not the Super Pusher. But she, of course, could be. I did randomly decide to call the Super Pusher a she, and Victoria does embody femininity.
People claim that some women can walk seductively. I always thought that was just a figure of speech. I mean it’s true some girls’ butts look good in certain clothes, and when they walk, it looks hot. Some women sway their hips as they strut, which also looks appealing. But ‘seductive’ implies a certain premeditation, as though a girl is moving in a specific manner to provoke a specific reaction. I never noticed that before, but I think this is exactly what Victoria is doing. And I must say, the effect her walk is having on me is very similar to when I watch Mira undress, especially when Victoria leads me up a wide staircase.
Thinking of Mira forces me to do the right thing. I unglue my eyes from Victoria’s legs and focus on the other wonders of the Castle.
“What are your interests?” she asks over her shoulder.
“What do you mean?” I force my eyes to stay above her neckline.
“We have a great library I can show you if you like to read. We have a glass-blowing studio, a couple of rooms with different sculptures and gardens, rooms full of portraits in different styles, mechanical inventions—”
“This place sounds like the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” My concerns momentarily give way to wonder.
“The good people at the Met would sell their souls to have even a fraction of our masterpieces, as would any science museum. Aside from things done outside the Island, we have our own achievements on display, creations that chronicle the span of—”
“Some of the works of art you’re offering to show me were done by the Elders?” I look at a gorgeous suit of armor standing in a corner by a majestic floor-to-ceiling window.
“Yes, most, in fact. Also books, music, and—”
“How can you bring a book you wrote inside the Mind Dimension into the real world?” I fleetingly wonder if this is her strategy, to distract me from being wary. If so, it’s kind of working.
“We don’t always,” she says. “Sometimes the books just exist so that we can read them once. Come, let me show you how it works.”
She leads me down a corridor and into a huge room filled with manual typewriters.
“This is one of the rooms where I like to write sometimes.” She takes me into an adjacent room, which appears to be a humongous computer room with around two hundred frozen people sitting at their workstations.
“You Guide them to type out your books?” I guess. “And you use the manual typewriters for yourselves since you can’t use computers?”
“Indeed. We find it easier to Guide a single person to write a single page from the manuscript. Once all the pages are typed out, a special computer program combines the pages into one book. This way we can have a book ready and in the library by the next day’s Session.” As she talks, she walks through the rows of workstations, topping her earlier sexy walk with a worse, or better, one, depending on how you look at it.
To stop her temptingly swaying hips from distracting me, I focus on my awe at the image of books being written so fast. Then, not for the first time, I feel a strong pang of guilt. Mira, Thomas, and my moms are still in those vans, unconscious, and being taken to the Temple against their will. I shouldn’t find room in my heart for wonderment, and I definitely shouldn’t be checking out another woman’s ass.
Realizing I’ve been silent too long, I ask, “So the paintings are done the same way? You draw them and then a painter is Guided to recreate them?”
“When we bother doing so, yes. Though sometimes it takes a couple of painters, and sadly, sometimes the results are not the same as the original.” She waves for me to follow her and briskly walks out.
“I find the idea of works of art that exist only fleetingly in the Mind Dimension sad.” I quicken my pace to stay within earshot of her.
“If you became our Ambassador, you’d get to be in on our Sessions from time to time. That means you’d get to enjoy some of these creations for decades before they disappear.” Her smile makes sexual promises. “Sometimes you appreciate something more when you know it will be gone shortly after its creation. For years, I created sand paintings inspired by Tibetan monks. Not a single one appeared outside the Mind Dimension.”
“A shame,” I say as we practically run through the next room—the one with the manual typing machines.
“Despite what Frederick and some of the others hope, life itself is like art. We exist and our minds develop, becoming beautiful patterns over time—the ultimate works of art in a way. After life is over, they are gone. The ultimate shame.” She waits for me next to the door that leads back into the corridor.
“That’s pretty depressing.” In a bout of chivalry, I open and hold the door for her. “What is this hope of Frederick’s you mentioned? It sounds intriguing.”
“Despite the extreme longevity we, the Elders, get to enjoy, Frederick is afraid of dying one day.” As she walks through, she brushes her manicured fingers over my hand.
I don’t know why, but my whole body gets covered in gooseflesh at the light touch of her nails. Unwilling to show her my discomfort, I continue talking evenly. “That’s reasonable. Who wants to die? If there was a way not to, I’d take it in a heartbeat.”
“Then you’re going to be one of them.” She waits for me to exit and walks down the corridor at a slightly slower pace. “The ones I call the dreamers.”
“The dreamers?” I try not to get distracted by what looks like a painting by Rembrandt on the corridor wall.
“Yes. They believe that immortality can be achieved in our lifespan, or at least biological longevity that goes beyond the current hundred-if-you’re-lucky years.” She stops next to a large door.
“This is something my friend Bert likes to talk about,” I say, nodding. “And from what I understand, it could happen. There’s a bunch of biotech research that—”
“Please don’t go on. I do hate those boring details. You risk sounding like Frederick and the others.” Victoria places her hand on a door handle. “I think that the search for biological immortality is as foolish as the one for the immortality of the mind, be that with uploading human minds to computers or something more exotic. Having an end to life gives context and meaning to it.”
“I won’t argue with you,” I say, “except to ask that if you feel this way, why do you join the Elders in living a hundred years in a day?”
“Ah, that. Would you like to see my latest project?” She twists the door handle. “It might answer your question. It’s the result of the better part of a century of painstaking research.”
“Sure, I’d love to.”
With a flourish, she swings the door open and steps inside, the movement as seductive as her walk.
I follow her in and stop, my breath catching. My eyes drift from one corner of the room to the other. Fear for my life is completely gone, replaced with another emotion, one just as primordial.
When I can speak, I say, “What the—”
“I quite proudly call this Victoria Sutra.” She sweeps her hand out in an arc.
I do my best not to blush. Grown men don’t blush, or do they? This room is not something I’d expect to find in a museum, unless it was the museum of sex. The ‘art pieces’ are a mixed bag. There are statues—some of the Elders, some of the people who are holding me at gunpoint outside the Mind Dimension, and some of strangers. The sculptor has captured them in varying, mid-coitus positions. Almost all o
f them feature Victoria in some tantalizing way. I have to peel my curious eyes from one particularly interesting piece that features a naked, masculine-looking woman, doing something with Victoria that reminds me of a cross between wrestling and sixty-nine.
There are also paintings following the same motif. Some are abstract, and some are so realistic they could’ve come from the pages of Penthouse.
“I assume that bookshelf is filled with erotica?” I ask with a chuckle that comes out sounding more nervous than I meant it to be.
“Of course,” she says, giving me a sly smile. “Let me show you some of my more special creations.”
Before I can reply, she walks over to a large dresser and picks up a flute. It seems innocuous enough, especially given that it’s not penis-shaped, which would’ve fit the feel of this room better. It’s just a simple instrument made of polished red wood, no pun intended.
“Close your eyes,” she says. “Something will happen when I begin playing, and when it does, I want it to be clear that it’s the music causing it. I don’t want you to think the cause is somehow related to my lips moving in a certain way, or from my body movements as I hold the instrument.”
Cryptic, but hell, I’m curious. I close my eyes, even though this feels like a childhood ‘open your mouth and close your eyes’ prank.
Silence follows and my earlier excitement dissipates as worry creeps back in. I peek through my eyelashes. If she’s about to attack me, I want to know about it, but no. In the moment I was sightless, she merely raised the instrument to her mouth. I stop peeking and stand there, waiting for whatever will happen next.
When she starts playing the flute, it just sounds like a beautiful melody, but then I feel myself reacting in the strangest way. At first, I think it might be a coincidence, but it’s not.
The music is giving me an erection. No, that’s an oversimplification. The song is making me super horny. No, still too crude. I get progressively more and more aroused as the music goes on. Yes, that’s it. The whole thing is reminiscent of sex with Mira.