OtherLife

by Jason Segel

  It’s an odd time to strike up a conversation. You’d think James would be eager to leave. Then again, he probably hasn’t spoken to anyone in years.

  “Go see for yourself,” I urge him. “Tell Bird that Kat and I are here and we found Ilo. We’ll meet you in Albion. We can talk more when I get there.”

  James nods and closes his eyes and his avatar disappears in a flash, leaving me alone in the shell of the apartment he’s inhabited for so many Otherworld years. I can’t imagine how miserable it must have been. On Earth, solitary confinement is reserved for only the most hardened criminals. I’ve heard that most of them crack. I don’t know how James could have endured the isolation. How did he manage to stay sane? What has he been waiting for?

  Even after a few short minutes in the apartment I’m depressed as hell, but I’m still not quite suicidal. Which is unfortunate because I need to die in order to get back to setup. I could jump out the window, but that seems like a waste. If I’m going to go out, I’d rather do it with a bang. So I head downstairs and outside in search of the front line in the White City’s battle against the Empress. The vehicles that once flew through the sky, zipping around buildings, have all been abandoned in the streets. They’re piled in heaps as if they plunged to the ground midflight.

  I pass the site of Bird’s old business. The flashing signs have all dimmed. I see no lights in the buildings. The entire city has gone dark. I walk by an alley where three emaciated Children stand huddled around a flickering fire. I have no idea what’s kept the Empress’s troops out of the White City. Whatever powered the realm must have run out long ago. A new, dark age has begun.

  When I finally reach the realm’s border, I see what has saved it. When the city became a part of Otherworld, it was fortified to keep out the residents of Otherworld. Now those old protections have been put to use again. The Empress’s army has gathered at the base of the city’s walls. I see a few NPCs mixed in with the mob, but most of the soldiers are Children. There are thousands of them, all pressed into service by the monitors they wear somewhere on their bodies. The gates have held and the walls haven’t been breached. Buzzing flying machines form another front line in the sky. As they advance toward the city, they’re shot out of the air one by one. Each crashes into the mob below, incinerating the Children they’ve hit and sending balls of fire shooting upward.

  I don’t know how long the White City’s inhabitants have managed to keep the Empress’s army at bay. Even a day would be a miracle, and it looks as though their luck might change very soon. The Children who stand guard at the wall appear thin and sickly. I watch as one slumps down against the battlements. By the time I reach him, he’s already dead. As I bend down to double check, I spot movement out of the corner of my eye. While the White City’s fighters defend their realm against the threats from above, another attack has been launched from below. Mechanical creatures are scaling the wall. The first reaches the top a few feet from me. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It looks like the mechanical skeleton of an apelike beast the Empress decided was too bizarre to finish making. My hand goes for my dagger before it occurs to me that it will do me no good. A long arm shoots forward, gutting me with the claws it used for climbing. Blood splatters the ground, and one of my lives disappears. He drops me to the ground and stomps on me. The move would have killed a Child, and the mechanical beast seems to think I’ve been eliminated as a threat. It wasn’t designed to fight someone like me.

  Before it realizes I’m not down for the count, I hurl myself at the monstrosity, sending it sailing back over the wall. I hear the crash, but I don’t have the satisfaction of watching. Two identical beasts have appeared farther down the line. They’re immediately surrounded by the Children manning the wall, giving a third creature the opportunity to climb up unchallenged. I charge straight at it, using my right shoulder as a battering ram. It, too, flies backward off the wall. This time, I look over the edge to see the impact, only to see another one climbing toward me. I stand up, position myself and jump. My body collides with the beast’s metal skeleton, knocking it off the wall. When we both hit the ground, my second life disappears. My third and last life begins lying atop the mangled carcass. I’ve landed in the center of the Empress’s army. Children of all shapes and descriptions surround me. I wait for one of them to deliver the coup de grâce, but none does. They just stare down with empty eyes. Then the crowd parts, giving me a brief glimpse of the wall. Three more of the metallic skeletons are beginning to scale the rocks. If the Empress’s army doesn’t bother to stop me, I figure I might have a shot at taking one of them out. Then an NPC appears in front of me.

  “The Empress would like to meet you,” he says.

  Not without Kat. “Tell her I need a rain check,” I say. Then I pull out my dagger and plunge it deep into my own chest.

  * * *

  —

  I’m back at setup, staring into the mirror at my naked avatar. This time, the amulet is gone. With a few quick orders, I dress myself once again.

  I finish the process and head back to the pile of hardened lava that was once the City of Imra. I couldn’t have been in the White City for more than an hour, but I know in an instant that I was gone too long. Kat’s here, crouched over what I now realize is Ilo’s body. It’s hard to believe that the puddle of blood beneath it could have come from such a tiny creature. Kat tore off the hood of her jumpsuit and attempted to use it as a tourniquet. But she wasn’t able to save him. Ilo’s giant amber eyes stare up at the bright Otherworld sun. Kat stands and takes my hand. The two of us are surrounded by NPC warriors wearing armor emblazoned with the insignia of Imperium.

  Kat and I are marched down the volcanic mountain and loaded onto a transport vehicle—a small pod made of a dense transparent material. From a distance, it looked like a bubble floating atop the sand. Once we draw closer, we can see the bench that circles the interior. There’s no room for soldiers inside the vehicle, but there’s no need for them either. The door we entered through seals invisibly. Even if I had the foggiest idea of how to unseal it, I doubt I could find it again if I tried. I feel terrible about what happened to Ilo. The order to kill him was cruel and unnecessary. Kat and I wouldn’t have put up a fight. We’re headset players now, and our own safety is guaranteed. There’s nothing even an Empress could do to us. The two of us are completely invulnerable. Ilo wasn’t.

  Kat and I sit in silence on our way to Imperium, as we glide across the Wastelands between the realms—over deserts and through swamps. For a few minutes outside Imra, we’re joined by a herd of the mechanical beasts the Empress created. She gave these ones skin and hair, and they look every bit as real as Otherworld’s originals. Maybe they are. It’s hard to know where the line gets drawn. One group of beasts was digital and the other’s mechanical, but both were created by humans playing God.

  I’ll give it to the Empress, though: Otherworld has never looked better. The garbage that once littered the Wastelands is gone. The burned-out realms are green again. Smog no longer smothers the cities. There are Children everywhere, erecting new structures and working in the fields. They look remarkably healthy and well fed. It all seems idyllic until you notice the sinister black monitors they all wear.

  We’re traveling through the swamp where Alexei Semenov’s avatar once lived when our vehicle is joined by a flying machine. It bears no resemblance to any drone or plane you might see on Earth. It appears to be a mechanical bird without feathers or skin. It stays with us long enough to give us a good look—then suddenly veers off to the side and dives beneath the murky water. When it resurfaces, it holds a struggling Child in its beak. The creature’s silver skin sparkles in the sunlight, like the scales of a fish. A black monitor around its tail is flashing. It must have thought it could hide, but even the swamps aren’t safe anymore. We continue on our path while the machine flies back in the opposite direction. Wherever the Child is being taken, it’s certainly n
ot Imperium.

  Soon the skyline of the Empress’s realm appears on the horizon. The city is built at the base of a cliff. We can only see the upper stories; it resembles a forest that’s sprung from the wasteland’s barren ground. The highest tower still bears the name Moloch, though the sign is no longer illuminated. There’s no land for farms or vegetation in the realm, so the Empress has installed vertical gardens. Those were the patches of green that Kat and I saw when we flew past with Bird. I haven’t set foot in Imperium since Moloch’s time, when towers were under constant construction and hundreds of players were vying to build the tallest. Now the workmen are gone, and lush vegetation hangs from the windows and climbs the walls.

  “It’s beautiful.” Kat’s voice is flat rather than filled with awe. She thinks the city’s looks are deceiving. I agree. It’s all too perfect. The place is extremely dangerous. There’s no doubt about it.

  Our vehicle glides down the side of the cliff and into the city’s canyons. The towers above still crowd out the light, leaving the streets unnaturally dark. But the bottom floors of the buildings around us have been put to good use. Crops grow beneath multicolored lights, forming a neon layer cake of farms. I only recognize mushrooms and asparagus. The rest must be unique to Otherworld.

  Just as on my last visit, a door rises, and our vehicle descends into the basement of one of the towers. But this time, Kat and I don’t need to leave our bubble. It enters an elevator shaft and shoots upward until it reaches an open floor that’s surrounded on all sides by the sky. We glide out into a flower-filled meadow. A beautiful tree grows in the center of the floor. Someone is sitting there, her back leaning against its trunk. She’s wearing a straw hat with a bow, and I recognize her flowered dress. It’s the same one she wore in her interview.

  Kat and I watch in silence as Daisy finishes tinkering with something in her lap. Then she looks up. When she smiles at the two of us, an opening appears in our bubble, and Kat and I are able to step out.

  “Hello,” the Empress says. “Welcome to Imperium. Did you both enjoy the trip? I thought it might be nice for you to travel by ground so you could have a good look at all the improvements I’ve made.”

  It’s hard to believe this is the same woman who’s enslaved the Children and who murdered Ilo. Daisy’s changed nothing about her physical appearance. She looks exactly as she does in the real world. Short, pretty and dainty as a doll. I have to force myself to remember that when it comes to Daisy Bristol, all is not what it seems. As she draws near, I can see she recognizes us too.

  “You know who we are?” I ask.

  “Certainly.” She sounds amused. “You two are the Tech Avengers. I made copies of you both.”

  I feel myself blush when I realize this woman has seen me buck naked. The perfect little birthmark on my clone’s right thigh? That was her handiwork.

  “Tech Avengers?” Kat asks.

  Daisy smiles. “You must not have time to watch much news. That’s what they’re calling you back in New York. Silly, isn’t it? Wayne came up with the name, and somehow it caught on. He’s got a real knack for PR. Now that I’ve answered your question, maybe you can answer one for me. What are you two doing in Otherworld?”

  “We’re looking for someone,” I tell her. I don’t think it’s a good idea to lie unless it’s necessary. There’s something in Daisy’s eyes that tells me she knows far more than we do. And the cutesy crap is all a façade. Inside, the woman’s a monster. She’s wearing a disk, but she doesn’t seem scared in the slightest. She’s got something up her sleeve.

  I glance down at the item she was toying with when we arrived. Daisy’s holding it like a softball. It looks like a tiny mechanical head.

  “The person you’re looking for—is it the boy or the man?” she asks.

  “Actually, both,” says Kat. She’s obviously chosen the same strategy I have. “But we need to find the boy’s body back on Earth. Can you tell us where it is?”

  “I have no idea,” Daisy says. “I wish I did. The kid’s brain holds secrets I’d kill to have. But even if I did know, I wouldn’t share that information with you. The kid belongs to my boss, and I’m not going to mess with Mr. Gibson. I have no intention of losing everything I’ve built here in Otherworld. Did you ever visit Imperium back in the old days? When that idiot engineer was masquerading as Moloch?”

  I’d rather keep her on the subject of Declan, but I don’t think she’ll go back right away. “You mean Todd?” I ask.

  “Is that his name? I’ve heard he was supposed to clean the place up. Then he got kicked out and the whole world fell apart. The Children got their hands on the tech that was left behind and went nuts with it. Imperium was a total shithole when I arrived. It’s taken me decades and decades in Otherworld years to restore the place.”

  “Yes, it’s amazing what slave labor can accomplish.” My head spins in Kat’s direction. She’s decided not to play nice after all.

  I’m expecting the worst, but Daisy laughs. “Oh, come on. Do I look like I enslave anyone?” she asks. “I come to Otherworld to work. The extra time has proven to be a great advantage. I can make years’ worth of progress every Earth night. I wish I could show you what’ve I’ve accomplished back in New York. But no one will ever know about it, I’m afraid. That’s all part of the deal. Mr. Gibson takes care of that world, and I get this one.”

  So that’s the bargain? I want to know more, but Kat jumps in. She’s utterly furious.

  “How can you say you haven’t enslaved anyone? The Children in your realms all wear monitors on their bodies. You’re watching them every second of the day.”

  “Me?” Daisy titters as if the suggestion is ridiculous. “That system was automated ages ago. The Children’s leaders helped me come up with the work requirements. We agreed on the laws and hours each inhabitant would have to contribute. I merely created the systems that enforced the rules. Now, at least in Imperium, everything runs like clockwork. I can leave Otherworld for years at a time. When I return, things are even better than I left them. I’ve never had to crack a whip, and I certainly don’t want to!”

  “Then set them free now!”

  “And have things return to the way they were? When I first came to Otherworld, half the realms were at war. The Children were starving. Chaos is just as powerful a force in Otherworld as it is back on Earth. I’ve had to conquer the other realms just to ensure Imperium’s quality of life. I can’t let things return to the way they were—for everyone’s sake! But…”

  She looks down at the head in her hands and toys with it for a moment as if she’s considering another option.

  “But what?” Kat demands.

  “I might consider easing some restrictions and reducing the Children’s mandatory work hours if you agree to help me with something in return.”

  “What?” I ask warily.

  “My troops have been unable to take the White City. The citizens of the realm are harboring an avatar they call the Ancient. I would like to meet him.”

  “Why?” Kat demands. “What do you want to do to him?”

  “Nothing at all! I’m James Ogubu’s biggest fan!”

  So Daisy knows. “Did Wayne tell you he was here?”

  “No, he insisted I inform him if I encountered any unfamiliar avatars. I figured that meant someone important was here. At first, I thought it might be Milo, but when the Ancient was described to me, I knew it had to be James Ogubu instead. I met him once at a conference. I had so many questions that I wanted to ask him, but he said he had to get home to his daughter. Now he and I will have all the time in the world to talk shop!”

  Kat raises a skeptical eyebrow. “You’re telling us you’ve been attacking the White City just so you can talk shop with James Ogubu?”

  “I’m dying to find out how he managed to download his consciousness into an avatar. My dream is to live on in Otherwo
rld after my human body has expired.”

  I think of the bombed-out apartment where James had been trapped for God knows how long. That’s probably not the kind of existence that Daisy has in mind.

  “Why do you need James for that?” Kat asks. “Wayne already has the technology.”

  “There’s a big difference between having the tools and knowing how to use them,” Daisy says. “We still haven’t figured everything out. Look at what happened with you two. Wayne wanted a simulation so he could see what you’d seen, but the whole thing turned out glitchy. Now he’s worried that the robots won’t be ready.”

  “For what?” I ask.

  Daisy smirks. “Who knows what that creepy old man has planned. Why do you think I’m itching to get downloaded into an avatar?”

  “Yeah, well, that’s not going to happen,” Kat tells her.

  “Oh, I think it will.” Daisy sounds confident.

  “Are you threatening us?” Kat responds. “Go ahead and kill us if you want. It won’t do you any good.”

  “I’m not going to kill you, sweetie,” Daisy replies. “I’ll simply confiscate your avatars. You guys can come to Otherworld as often as you like, but you’ll always find yourself locked up here in Imperium. It might make it quite difficult to reach your friends in the future. How badly do you want to find the boy?”

  “It doesn’t matter how much we want to help you. We can’t take you to see James,” I tell her. “He’s in Albion now. I sent him there myself.”

  Daisy shakes her head in confusion. “Why can’t I visit him in Albion?”

  Kat and I share a look. “We heard you were at war with Albion.”

  “Who on earth told you that?” she responds. “I have no beef with Albion, as long as my people stay out of the realm. Their leader, the Bird, has done well for herself. She’s taken a different tack, of course, but the results have been the same. The land has healed and the citizens are healthy.”