“Cut it out, huh? Fine.”
Julie suddenly began to strip off her clothes.
Her body slipped out of the white linen in a flash. She produced two pieces of fabric from somewhere inside the clothing she had just removed and wrapped them neatly around herself to cover her chest and hips as a swimsuit.
After noting Jules’s thunderstruck expression with satisfaction, she reached out and plucked the stone from his hand. “I’ll take that,” she said. “Let’s go to the other end.”
The two of them walked across the beach to a small rocky area at its far edge. Although it was difficult to see from the surface, there was a deep hole carved out of the rocks below.
Within those depths lay a treasure hoard of Glass Eyes.
Jules and Julie had found any number of highly refined Eyes here, specimens of charmingly individual character. Reasoning that the conditions in the hole must favor the Eyes’ development, whenever the two of them found a new Eye they brought it here as soon as they could.
They sat side by side at the edge of the rocks. Julie peered into the Eye Jules had found, then grunted in surprise. Without taking her eye from the stone, she elbowed him. “These colors are all anxious and restless,” she said. “Looks like your anxiety to me. You have to treat the babies with care, or they’ll catch a cold.”
Jules stammered.
His contact with the stone—his fingers, his eyelids—had left his influence imprinted on it.
Just as the Singing Sands turned their footsteps into spreading waves of Sound, the Eye had acted as a mirror for what lay in Jules’s heart, overlaying those hues onto the sights it had drunk in. Eyes were like that: they sampled emotion as well as sensation. The scenery inside this Eye was now rather pale.
The truth was, their encounter with the old man still nagged at Jules.
When Glass Eyes were newborn and still weak, contact with strong emotion could actually damage them in some cases.
“What should we do?” asked Jules.
Julie snorted. “Leave it to me!” she said. She held the pale blue Eye up to the sun, directly exposing it to those dazzling rays. “Feel how hot that is?” she crooned to it. “Go ahead and work up a sweat. Sweat it all out!”
At that, the stone quivered between her fingertips, forcefully expelling something.
It was the anxiety the Eye had taken in, now isolated and excreted. It amounted to about a puff of cigarette smoke, although its embodiment was more like pale blue steam, or perhaps a veil. It drifted briefly in the air before sizzling up in the sun’s rays.
In this way, whatever Eyes absorbed they had the power to emit again in a different form.
These powers of transmutation could also be directed at other objects. External objects.
If the person holding an Eye could visualize and control its powers of transmutation finely enough, the world around the stone could be changed. A sufficiently skilled user could even use an Eye to create entirely new objects, like Julie’s dragonfly. And even this was only the simplest manifestation of the power of the Eyes.
Jules lay back against the rocks.
Jules was unable to get a certain thought out of his mind.
Could that old man be my papa?
When exactly had this idea taken up residence in his head?
He did not know.
I’m resident of this Realm, this virtual resort space, thought Jules. Just an NPC AI, built in from the beginning.
My thoughts, my memories, my body—all a precisely designed set of objects running on the Realm’s system.
But Papa’s different.
Papa’s a guest.
An unidentifiable face in the crowd of thousands who lived in the real world but held memberships in the Costa del Número. Papa used his membership to come to my house, after choosing our Realm of Summer out of countless other Realms and reserving the open role of my papa.
The Realm had many open roles like this. As long as they weren’t already in use, anyone with Costa del Número membership could fill them, regardless of sex or age.
And in that way, a new Papa sat at Jules’s table every day.
His family shared a range of summer pleasures with “Papa.”
But not that old man. So what’s this mysterious kinship, almost like a bond of blood, that I feel around him?
“Here I go!” Julie called, breaking his reverie. She leapt off the rocks and plunged into the water. Jules followed her in.
Under the surface, the rocks fell away in steps, like the inside of a funnel. Each level formed its own rocky shelf, and on each shelf was a thick bed of singing sand occupied by a host of Eyes—countless Eyes, lying quietly, passing the time.
Julie placed the Eye they had just found among their number. The newcomer was bathed in warm light from the surface. All the shelves got plenty of sun, thanks to the funnel-shaped arrangement. It helps them get big and strong, Julie said. Whether this was true or not, Jules wasn’t sure.
Julie sank lower into the funnel, looking around at the shelves. Silently greeting all the Eyes, no doubt. Calling them by the names she had given them like pets. Good morning, Chilled Martini! Silk Hokusai, Cracked Mirror, nice day, isn’t it? Some of the Eyes were dozing, but others were engaged in ultrafast internal calculation. How are you feeling today, Asterism, Handbell, Ear Whorl? As she addressed each Eye, she also checked for any there she hadn’t seen before—newborns.
As she neared the bottom, Julie slowed her descent. She picked up a single Eye, then turned to Jules, smiling and giving him the thumbs-up. The Eye was a magnificent one, Jules saw as he drew closer. It was about the size of a chicken egg and looked like it would be heavy even underwater.
The milky white of the Eye was mixed with an intricate arrangement of other colors, something like an opal. When Julie raised it into the light from the surface, minuscule strands of white light rose from it like fur, making it look like a newborn mammal curled up asleep in her palm.
They returned with the Eye to the surface, where they lay on the sand gasping. The sun’s rays had grown stronger, but the Singing Sands had not heated up. In fact, they were comfortably cool.
“It’s really grown since the last time we saw it,” Jules said, still lying on his back as he reached across to touch the Eye in Julie’s hand.
Julie had lavished particular attention on Cottontail, as she called it. Its fur of white light rippled in the breeze. When Jules stroked its radiant fuzz with his finger, a pleasant Sound like shade from a tree came through his fingertip. A gentle coolness like the touch of a living thing.
“He’s such a gentle, kind little guy,” Julie said, smiling gently. “Let’s give him a tickle.” She scooped up a handful of sand and let it trickle down on the Eye. The Singing Sands were so fine that they formed a single white stream, almost like a liquid pouring from her hand. Cottontail’s fuzz of light bristled as if it were a puppy startled by a splash of cold water. Then, also like a puppy, it shook itself to get the sand out of its fur. The radiance of the fur and the mineral glitter of the sands combined to create tiny rainbow rings that flew off it like bubbles in soda. Julie and Jules threw their heads back and laughed at Cottontail’s surprise. Their laughter became a Sound that spread quietly across the pure, cool carpet of sand.
“You want a tickle, too, Jules?”
Julie put Cottontail on Jules’s stomach and sprinkled sand on top. Jules was startled by the sensation of innumerable Sounds pinging over his skin. The thickness of the feeling of walking on the Sands was absent, and the lightness and immediacy of the sensation was heightened to a thrilling stimulation. Mixed in with this were the tiny animal-like Sounds that came from Cottontail, and the motion of its fur—and as the sand continued to pour down, the sensation was constantly renewed. Jules closed his eyes and let out a small cry.
Julie scooped up a double handful of sand
and let it stream down on him from between her fingers.
The vivid stimulation arose on his stomach again, and this time he realized that what he felt was extremely close to sexual pleasure.
A shiver ran through him, head to toe.
Contained within the flow of sand was a sexual message from Julie.
A whisper, not in her voice but in the hiss of the Sands.
Jules opened his eyes. Her fingers had turned translucent as the sand flowed between them, a glowing fluorescent lattice appearing where her skin had been. The same light could be seen on Jules’s stomach. The identity boundaries of the two AI programs were flickering. The boundaries of an AI’s identity were defined by its skin, which was a seamless metaphor of its periphery program. That wall against the outside world had been temporarily put in a permeable state by the Sands. Their internal perception was exposed, as were the subtler sensations and feelings deeper in. These were the true “insides” of an AI. External force could not usually render them visible. Flesh and blood would appear in their place, most likely, just like normal objects. But to the AIs of the Realm, those were nothing but ornamentation. Their true selves were these intricate tapestries of light that appeared only when their boundaries were permeated. As a result, Jules was gripped by fierce embarrassment, as if someone had stripped him naked and was examining his aroused sexual organs.
Julie was showering him with feeling through the medium of the Sand …
From between her fingers, the feeling poured directly down on him …
Unnamable feeling.
An invitation that was neither word nor gesture.
In the sense that it stimulated his external periphery, it was a caress; in attempting to open him up, it was a kiss.
As the sand washed over him, Jules took a handful himself and waited for it to trickle through his fingers down onto Julie’s shoulders. The same fluorescent lattice glowed on her skin as the sand flowed down from her shoulders to her breasts. The two of them embraced, kissed. The Eye on Julie’s tongue stud clicked against his teeth. Their sensations, which had already begun to merge, flooded through this point of contact, mingling with each other in exchange.
But—
When Julie shook her head broadly, the silver of her earring leapt into Jules’s vision.
The gleaming fish swayed.
Jules’s excitement faded.
He pulled his face away from hers. Strength drained from his arms, and her breasts, pressed so tightly against him a moment ago, drew away. He heard a crackling sound, like static electricity. Julie turned her face away, as if to keep him from looking into her eyes.
Hoping to dispel the awkward mood, Jules had just opened his mouth when—
It began.
A Sound.
A terrible Sound.
A devastating Sound, roaring up at them from directly beneath like the initial shock of an earthquake.
The Sound passed through their boundaries, still in permeable mode, and went straight to their cores. Shock and pain ran through them, just as if someone had stabbed them at full strength with a blunt knife. Writhing in agony, they sealed their boundaries without consciously willing it. They could neither breathe nor speak.
But still, they understood.
This was a warning.
The Sands were bellowing as loud as they could.
Screaming and rage. Anxiety and menace. Such was the extent of the danger the Sands had sensed.
What was this?
Jules and Julie rose to their feet. The temperature and viscosity of the Sands changed with every step they took. Thin plumes of dry sand kicked into the air all over the beach, like the sea roiling in a storm. They felt an intoxication resembling seasickness.
Jules closed his eyes, then opened them again and looked up at the sky.
It was darkening rapidly.
As he watched, the white and solid clouds from earlier turned black as if rotting before his eyes, disintegrated like gangrenous limbs. They became a stream of bricks that filled the sky.
But could this really be the sky?
Harsh, barren mountains seemed to be growing down out of the sky. Their gray and black were those of the winter Jules and Julie had never known.
Whatever this was, thought Jules, it was not of this Realm. It had pried open the summer sky to force its way in from elsewhere. The clouds billowed and grew as if streaming in through an unseen entrance, rippling across the sky.
Summer was under attack.
“Hey …” said Julie. All the blood had drained from her lips. “Hey, look at that.”
“I see it.”
“No. Over there.”
Julie pointed to a corner of the clouds that was leaning at a precarious angle, like a cliff about to crumble. It was a cloud on the verge of unleashing a torrential storm—a cloud unable to bear its own weight and about to become rain. As they watched, a mass of tiny forms like a swarm of bees poured off the edge and tumbled downward.
The forms looked tiny, but each was actually quite large. Much bigger than a person. Some were as big as a house.
“They’re over there, too. And there.”
In Julie’s hand, Cottontail’s fuzz of light flattened.
“They’re coming.”
“Huh?”
The Singing Sands had goose bumps.
“They’re coming down. That’s what this little guy says.”
The tiny forms began to move as one, looking like a column of mosquitos changing direction.
They were not just falling. They had their own means of propulsion; their speed and direction were under their own control. They were descending.
“We have to hurry.”
Julie sprinted for the cliff. The Sands frothed violently under her feet, but she pushed on regardless.
A sudden clarity seized Jules’s thoughts. He screamed to her at almost the same time as the Sands:
“You can’t go that way!”
you must not come here!
The frothing had been a warning. The Sands had been trying to keep her away.
But it was too late. The sensory net had already been laid across the beach, and Julie had stepped directly into it.
Then, from behind the solitary Pointed Rock—which had concealed it from them until that moment—it emerged.
A Spider.
Pointed Rock, true to its name, tapered to a point high above. It was at least five meters tall—so high that, standing at its base, you had to crane your neck to see the top. That was why Jules and Julie used it as a landmark for finding the beach.
But the Spider was taller still.
At that point, whether or not it was correct to call it a Spider was not yet clear. It wouldn’t be until a short while later, after the first real battle was fought in the east bay, that everyone began to use that term.
Intuitively, though, Jules knew it was a Spider. There was something about it that conveyed its fundamental similarity to the familiar, even beloved little repairmen of their Realm.
And there was another sense in which it called for the use of the word—more than just similarity of form. Its essential nature was to ensnare everything it encountered, injecting stillness and death. “Spider” was the closest word they had, though it wasn’t a true arachnid.
The Spider stood tall on ten legs. You could even say that it was made of legs.
Ten long, narrow legs joined together at the top, and that was all: no head, no body, no eyes, no mouth. Its legs had more than seven joints and were scabbed with a substance that defied identification, blue-green and dry but neither moss nor mineral.
It noticed Jules and took an immediate interest in him. Lacking eyes or even a head, it was not even obvious which way it was facing, but that much was clear.
With a quick motion of its legs, the Spider clea
red the way between them by eliminating Pointed Rock.
Several legs seized the landmark, wrapping themselves around it like fingers. The rock did not dissolve or shatter—most of it simply vanished. The face of the part that remained was as smooth as if it had been polished.
At that moment, Jules sensed clearly the Spider’s powerful appetite. Its primitive desires were communicated to him through the Singing Sands.
The spider had eaten the rock. Not with a mouth. By some other method. And the rock was now vanished from this Realm entirely.
The Spider’s black legs flexed and extended as it crawled over the remains of Pointed Rock. Jules felt its drives even more strongly.
It wants to eat us. It will eat us. But that won’t satisfy it.
What drove the Spider, Jules understood already, was not so much appetite as hunger—a bottomless, utterly insatiable craving. No matter how much this Spider ate, it would never be enough.
Suddenly seized by a despairing certainty, Jules looked up at the sky again. Already knowing what he would see there.
The forms in the sky had descended low enough to be made out individually.
They were coming.
An uncountable horde of Spiders.
They had different shapes, different sizes, but they shared the same essential nature, they were overflowing with exactly the same hunger, and they were on their way down.
Jules was unable to move.
I’m going to be eaten.
So was Julie. So was this beach, his house, his mama, the whole town. Nothing would be left. The Realm itself would be devoured in a moment, leaving nothing but blank memory space.
This despair spread through him like fast-acting venom. He felt paralyzed; all his perception drew sharply inward. He could no longer see any of his surroundings—not even the Spider’s claw extending rapidly toward him.
There was a scream, angry and preverbal—
Someone seized his shoulders and yanked him backward. The claw grazed the tip of his nose as he fell.
“What are you doing?!” Julie demanded.
Jules finally snapped out of it. For a moment—and there was no other way to put it—death had bewitched him.
The Thousand Year Beach Page 3