The Thousand Year Beach

by TOBI Hirotaka

  “Right.”

  “And you don’t want it to get into Cottontail too.”

  “Right. That’s why I’ve been making people carry it for me. Come on, that thing’s gaining on us.”

  Suddenly the door two rooms ahead burst into the corridor.

  Julie was peppered with fragments of wood—

  —No, she was all right. The fragments lost their momentum and fell to the floor. Somehow, Cottontail had reached out to protect her.

  Their pursuer had done an end run around them.

  They watched as a fusion of Spider and AI forced its way through the hole that yawned where the door to a guest room had stood. Legs striped yellow and black stabbed into the floor ahead of them, blocking the way like the bars of a cage.

  The chimera was covered in plaster dust. It had punched its way through the rooms to get ahead of them, instead of using the corridor.

  And then its rear portion caught up with them from behind. They were surrounded.

  “I told you José wouldn’t have come up to this floor,” Jules muttered. “It’s too high.” He had argued the point several times already.

  Julie ignored him. “Could you maybe let us go?” she asked.

  She was speaking to René’s face, which was just one of many scattered over the Spider’s head where its eyes would normally be.

  René didn’t answer. He didn’t even appear to be conscious.

  “No good?” Julie’s shoulders fell. “Did René forget about me?” She was crying now. “That hurts. Dammit! Why would he not remember me? Why?”

  You’re empathizing too much, Jules wanted to say. But he knew she couldn’t help it. This empathy, strong enough sometimes to make her lay down body and soul, was Julie’s whole reason for existence.

  That fish-shaped earring in her ear. José, Jules knew, had the other half of the pair.

  Julie rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, erasing all trace of her tears.

  “I’ll avenge you,” she said to René. “I promise.”

  The Spider’s head rotated like a tank’s gun turret. There was a series of short, squeaking whirs like lenses being focused. Then the attack began.

  The short bristles covering the Spider’s head split apart, and a pair of lips appeared.

  They were the lips of a woman, glossy and crimson. White teeth gleamed evenly between them. Entrancing in a way, but almost six feet long. A component from some AI the Spider had absorbed? No, not quite. Jules and Julie realized almost simultaneously that the lips belonged to the Femme Fatale.

  They puckered as if about to blow out birthday candles.

  Then, all at once, they were engulfed in flames. The Father of Flame at work.

  Immediately, Cottontail raised a windless wind that forced the fiery breath away from them. By the time the flames died down, however, the corridor was badly burnt.

  The lips smirked. Jules and Julie caught a glimpse of a lascivious-looking tongue behind the teeth before the lips puckered again.

  This time the fierce winds of Snowscape blew out. Even with Cottontail’s protection, the chill was so severe that they felt as if their eyelashes were crackling as they froze.

  The lips smiled again. The mutant Spider had meant this as a demonstration. The power of the TrapNet and the Eyes belongs to us now.

  “And?” Julie asked the Spider. “What’s next? Daggers, maybe?”

  “Thanks for the assist, by the way,” added Jules.

  A beam extended from Cottontail in his hand, drawing a circle around them on the floor. Outside the circle of protection Cottontail had provided, the floor was ruined from fire and ice. Now Cottontail was using a ring of heat on that already-weakened circumference.

  “See you,” said Julie.

  “Bye,” added Jules.

  The two of them waved to the Spider surrounding them with vaguely goofy grins. Then the circle of floor they were standing on fell through to the floor below.

  Julie and Jules dashing out of the casino; Julie and Jules holding hands and climbing the grand staircase to the second floor; Julie and Jules chased down by the mutant Spider, then escaping—there was one perspective which followed the whole thing as witness, and that was José’s.

  Watching them fall through the hole Cottontail had cut in the floor, José wondered what they were doing. Looking for him, probably. But wherever they might run to, Langoni had them under surveillance. José was seized by the weariness of despair. That’s enough, he wanted to tell Julie. You don’t have to look for me anymore. Langoni already has you in his clutches. He’s just toying with you. When it suits him, he’ll crush you and be done with it. I don’t want to see that.

  José was intensely aware of Langoni’s existence. The boy was right alongside him, but he had no presence at all. His thoughts and emotions, he knew, were an open book to the kid.

  How can I get the jump on you? he thought, burning with the desire to get in Langoni’s way.

  He heard a faintly smiling voice at his ear.

  It’s no good. You can “shout” as loud as you want, but it won’t hurt my ears. They are concerning, aren’t they, those two? Never fear, though, José—the girl will get her wish. She’ll find you even if I have to signpost the way for her.

  Cheerful laughter.

  That was when it happened.

  Jules and Julie abruptly vanished from José’s field of view.

  For a moment, José tamped his emotions down completely and listened for the presence of the boy behind him. Langoni seemed to be watching for José’s reaction too. Which confirmed that he had lost sight of Jules and Julie as well.

  What on earth had happened?

  Julie’s mischievous grin came to José’s mind. He tried not to think of anything else.

  Yve was roaming through the TrapNet, enduring her agony.

  No, not roaming—fleeing.

  How many times had she jumped now?

  She moved desperately, trying to flee the face of her husband that looked down from above. She made decoy jump after decoy jump to throw him off the trail. She emerged from the Chandelier, went back in, wandered every level of the net.

  But he was inescapable.

  She fled into the guest room put aside for mothers with small children. One of the mothers met her eyes. Then, as she watched, the mother’s face transformed into Felix’s, complete with habitual sneer. The child in the woman’s arms looked up at its mother’s transformation curiously. Then the mother began to gnaw at her child’s head. Yve understood at once that the mother’s AI had been preserved under the mask. Felix’s mouth, now stained bright red, continued to grin—but from his eyes, piercing the mask, the tears of the mother flowed.

  Yve bolted from the room.

  She did not know where she was. Even whether she was inside or outside the net was unclear.

  I left him to die.

  She had left her husband to die. She had reacted to his disappearance with relief and joy at the prospect of devoting herself entirely to the net.

  Her husband’s face appeared like a ghost everywhere she looked, but she could not look him in the eye. The moment he came into view, she averted her gaze. Then he would appear again, and she would look away again. She repeated the cycle over and over as she ran. Her eyes were balls of pure pain like two white-hot coals.

  It hurts.

  My eyes.

  Somebody help me.

  Somebody ease this pain.

  José’s mood was dark as he watched this.

  How could someone as bright as Yve be fooled by such an obvious trick?

  Felix was hiding in her eyes. Unable to see her own face, she would never realize that Langoni’s apparatus of destruction sat within it in the guise of her pupils. That apparatus of destruction consisted of a Langoni child system fused with Felix’s image, and it was being
scattered throughout the net via Yve’s gaze.

  It was not that Felix appeared wherever she looked. The Felix-Langoni infection was spread by the act of looking itself. The more skillfully Yve fled, the more far-flung and obscure the places she jumped to, the more Felix would cover the net.

  Like minutely dispersed cancer cells, Felix—as an agent of Langoni—commenced operation in various parts of the net, each infection cultivating wormholes before tearing its way out.

  The seeds had first been sown long ago, and repeated many times since then.

  The TrapNet had been a suicide device from the start.

  The three sisters were moving independently. They remained in communication with each other as they searched the TrapNet.

  They were looking for Yve.

  They had turned their identity thresholds down dangerously low, to levels where a normal AI would risk self-collapse. This heightened their interpenetration with the net. They would extend their bodily sensation to cover every last bit of the net, identify Yve, and then secure her form.

  She posed the most danger at this point. They had to secure her at once, even if it meant putting protection for Jules and Julie on the back burner. Yve had to be captured and neutralized.

  The disturbance in the net was so severe that the net itself was almost impossible to handle.

  The enemy had Femme Fatale and Stella now, and destroyers dressed in their skins were fanning out. Countless locations had been forcibly branched in the same way as the ocean terrace. The boy and the dandy, both calling themselves Langoni, had been confirmed in multiple records. They seemed to have control of the Spiders, and if the records they appeared in were true, they had transcendent, system administrator–class power in their own right.

  And now Yve was wandering through the net scattering Felix’s image as she went. The three sisters followed her trail, but the dummy jumps and repeated surfacing and reimmersion made her difficult to trace. The only explanation for her movements was panic. The sisters had no choice but to split up and continue their search.

  Luna, the youngest sister, followed Yve’s trail into the lobby. She substantiated, but left her identity boundary threshold low for greater sensitivity. Catching sight of her vague outline in a mirror, she realized that she looked just like a ghost.

  Following the corridor toward the dining room, she passed the array of framed photographs on the walls.

  She was embarrassed at the sight of herself in a white skirt holding a tennis racquet.

  Looking down, she saw that Felix’s face had become a carpet pattern that was reproduced as she watched. It was still in its early stages.

  She sighed irritably, called on the power of the net, and overwrote Felix with the original pattern still preserved in the net’s history. Yve must have been here quite recently. I hope I’ve just about caught up to her, Luna thought.

  Passing the Clement family portraits, Luna felt the same solemnity as most of the other AIs.

  It was like seeing a photograph of a deceased grandmother. For the women of the Realm of Summer (and the men, too), the Clement women were a constant presence deep in the soul. Their unflagging dignity and piercing gaze seemed to reassure the AIs that their existence was meaningful and just.

  Luna’s eyes happened to come to rest on the brooch at Régine Clement’s breast. The design of the cameo was not the usual one. It had been replaced.

  Felix again?

  No. It wasn’t Felix. But it was a man.

  Who could it be?

  Donna, the middle sister, followed Yve’s trail into the lobby. She substantiated, but left her identity boundary threshold low for greater sensitivity. Catching sight of her vague outline in a mirror, she realized that she looked just like a ghost.

  The lobby was quiet. Apart from Donna, it was deserted.

  Following the corridor toward the dining room, she passed the array of framed photographs on the walls. Perhaps that white skirt had been too short after all.

  Passing the Clement family portraits, Donna felt the same solemnity as most of the other AIs.

  Donna’s eyes happened to come to rest on the brooch at Régine Clement’s breast. The design of the cameo was not the usual one. It had been replaced.

  Who could it be?

  Anna, the oldest sister, leaned close to the framed photograph, pushing her glasses up her nose to examine it carefully. That profile in the cameo—whoever could it be?

  José wanted to shout a warning. The lobby had been branched, just like the ocean terrace. There were three lobbies now, and Langoni had used Yve’s presence as a lure to trick each of the sisters into a different one. Now they would be disposed of, just as José had been, and the TrapNet would fall entirely into Langoni’s hands.

  “Who on earth can this be?” muttered Anna.

  “It’s me, Granny.”

  She smelled cigarettes.

  An elegant man with a blue five o’clock shadow was beside her, grinning. “Look,” he said. “See?” He turned his head away from her.

  Anna studied Langoni’s profile carefully, then shook her head. “No,” she said. “It can’t be you. You don’t look anything like him.”

  Langoni was taken aback by her response. “Well, then,” he said at length. “Hard to come back from that one.”

  “I’m not your grandmother, either.”

  Another pause. “True enough,” said Langoni. “But come on, take one more look. That’s definitely my profile up there, wouldn’t you say, Anna?”

  “‘Anna’? But I’m Luna.”

  Langoni fell silent.

  “And you?” asked the woman.

  The smile vanished from Langoni’s face. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. She was leading instead of him.

  “What made you think I was Anna?” the woman pressed on. “Are you absolutely sure it was Anna you led into this branch?”

  Langoni was shocked, but quickly recovered. He was, in fact, quite sure that he had led Anna in here. There was no question about the accuracy of the operation. Was her claim to be Donna a bluff?

  “Listen to me, Langoni,” the woman said.

  Why did she know his name? This is bad, his intuition screamed, but he remained silent. Was this happening in the other two branches as well? Were the other two of him having the same conversation?

  “Are you familiar with the Eye called the Three-Way Mirror?” asked the woman. She opened her hand, revealing an Eye in her palm.

  Langoni remained silent.

  “Who are the ‘three sisters’? Did you think there were really three of us?”

  Langoni remained silent.

  “All three of us, actually existing AIs? Is that what you thought?”

  Langoni remained silent.

  “How confident are you that you really forked the stream?”

  The woman raised the Eye to eye level. An illusory Langoni appeared on either side of him. Was this what the Three-Way Mirror did? The illusory Langonis turned, one putting its hand on its hip, the other to its chin, and observed his consternation with amusement.

  Langoni turned his left hand into a long blade like half a pair of scissors. Then he thrust it toward the woman before him in an attempt at a direct attack.

  That was when he realized that he had made a critical mistake. He felt himself being scanned. Someone had reached into him and was rummaging around. This woman, he remembered, was an expert at feeling inside other AIs like this. He had let down his guard at his identity boundary momentarily to attack, and she had seized the opportunity to scan him.

  At the last minute, Langoni changed the course of the blade and brought it back to slit his own throat. Bright blue blood sprayed out, covering his escape.

  The three corridors became one.

  The branches had been merged again.

  In the corridor sto
od the three sisters.

  “Never underestimate the power of winging it, eh?” said Donna with a shrug. The Three-Way Mirror was a common and entirely unremarkable type of Eye. It could project mirror images of other AIs, even animate those images independently, but that was all.

  “Calling him by his name was a good move. I think that was key.”

  “Just like … Jules told us.”

  The three of them compared the results of their individual scans. The three-dimensional information Langoni had about Yve’s location was restored. They went straight there.

  The women of the Clement household remained proudly in their frames long after their spiritual descendants had left.

  The wheezing had faded from Yve’s breast. Her breaths were dying ones now, growing weaker by the minute. Soon it was no longer clear from looking at her if she was breathing at all.

  Around her stood the three sisters.

  They had found Yve in this state upon their arrival.

  She lay on her back, motionless. The rich sensations that had once filled her body were gone.

  But her thoughts and feelings were not dead yet.

  They were leaking out of her, detectable even to the three sisters.

  Yve stared upward with unblinking eyes. Her eyeballs had been swallowed up entirely by the pupils, like black globes shoved in between her eyelids. Thin threads sprouted from them. Too many threads to count. The parasite was fleeing its dead host, but this lightly wafting thread was unwilling to give her up yet, and so it branched, creeping across her soft, large breasts, her deep navel, her surprisingly small ears and her meaty limbs, opening holes in her white skin to bury its black tips inside.

  “Is that …” Donna trailed off.

  “Felix’s hair? I think so,” replied Anna.

  Its color was wrong, but it had the texture of corn silk.

  They were in the Mineral Springs Hotel’s sewing room. Located in a corner of the dry cleaning station, it was where the guests’ clothing and shoes were brought to be mended. Felix and Yve had met working there together.

  Yve’s thoughts continued to leak.

  I just wish it’d leave me alone.

  My husband’s obsession, entangling me.