Whenever he went online she found him. Then they would play her game. He would run, she would chase. He would change his avatar and she would twist it. He pushed her off, but sooner or later she ate him up and mutilated his soul. ‘I am Dungeon,’ she would say and his little body would flail with excitation.
Zach tried something he’d seen Dungeon do in their last game of cat and mouse, burrowing into the nodes of the Weave that acted as data conduits. They were the invisible traffic conductors, but from within he could watch anybody’s stream; he only had to identify it. Which was easy because he could filter the flow to the specific location.
It seemed his teacher was immersed. Zach followed his stream, piggybacking so as to leave no trail of his own. He found himself looking at that street corner where Dungeon had first dropped his chewed-out avatar. Now what would Mister Lizney be doing here? Zach wondered.
His teacher didn’t do much. He looked along the street and up towards one of the housing units. It looked exactly like the others, though this one had an edge of flowers where the walls met the turf. Zach looked at the address, and saw it wasn’t where Zach had been dumped. This was a different sector entirely.
He began looking for connections between Lizney and the area, and discovered that this house was where his teacher had grown up. In a relocation town, which meant that he was ...
‘Spawn,’ he said, whispering into Lizney’s ear.
Zach demersed and sat on his couch. He looked around the small room. It was dark. Hail was hitting the roof like a snare drum and everything seemed to rattle with it. He folded his visor up and put it in his pocket. It was time to graduate.
With a hard umbrella, more like a shell that went over his top half, Zach ventured out into the storm. It was grey, the pavements strewn with white slippery hailstones all the way to the track entrance.
He wasn’t sure what he was going to say. He would be punished for going on the Weave, but he had also succeeded in finding out his teacher’s secret.
Lizney didn’t meet him at the door. He sat in his chair breathing loudly as Zach entered.
‘It’s not time for our session,’ Lizney said.
‘I thought I should come. To see what happens next.’
‘You should sit. We must discuss this.’
‘Discuss what? I know what you are now. I’ve passed your little test.’
‘You weren’t meant to be going on the Weave,’ Lizney croaked. Zach shrugged. ‘I’ll have to report this.’
‘Well, now I know your secret it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing more you can teach me.’
‘So you found a different teacher, did you? That hakka?’ Lizney asked. Zach didn’t answer or look to meet his gaze. Mister Lizney stared over his spectacles at him and sighed deeply. ‘If you don’t talk to me, Zach, I see no point in you being here.’
‘You can’t kick me out. I need to be here.’ Now he looked up, but Lizney could no longer read what was in his eyes. Zach used to be so open, but now the mix of emotions was heavy and impossible to discern.
‘Why do you need to be here?’
‘If I’m not in your classes, then I’ll be downgraded. I’ll be moved out of the home.’
‘And you don’t want that?’
Zach twisted. Anger flared and he bit at the inside of his mouth. ‘I don’t care. Do whatever you want, spawn.’
Lizney shuddered as if bitten, his cup of tea spilling down his legs. Zach looked at the floor, a greasy grin splitting his mouth.
‘What did you call me?’
‘Spawn. That’s what you are, isn’t it? Örjian spawn.’
Lizney felt his blood heating and he jumped up, running to the kitchen, where he tore open a drawer and peeled a patch. He felt its prickle go through his skin and at the count of five he felt the calm. The tension went out of his fists and his jaw stopped reaching to bite.
One patch wasn’t going to be enough. Bent over, arms and legs longing to lope, he reached into the open drawer for another fix. The patch released its soothing drugs and he sat down on the tiles. Calm at last.
‘You’re disgusting,’ he heard the boy say from behind him.
Then the front door opened and shut and Mister Lizney stayed on the floor calmly cursing himself.
~ * ~
Zach’s feet took him homeward. His mind echoed with the argument. He took the stairs down to the tracks and was three along before he realised he had no home to go to. Zach stood where he was and let the track pull him along.
It was always night down here. Rectangular lights paused overhead and the tracks hummed and ticked at their own speeds. Zach watched all kinds of people who were going to all kinds of places. Most stood like he was, others strode along the ninth track, speeding past at seventy clicks an hour, plus their walking pace.
These ones seemed accelerated. Faster than your average human. He looked at them, trying to see what it was that made them so intent. But they were all different. Girl cliques and suitboys, repairmen and Servicemen. Freakers, mutators and transcenders. He wondered where they were going.
He let the tracks take him south through Corona, the Angeles, all the way to the end of West where he had to dismount from the fastest to the slowest footway so he wasn’t thrown off at the end.
There was only one exit, a wide ramp to the surface with cargo lifts sliding up and down with boxed goods. He’d never been this far before. It was all farms and pharma out here, straight fenced-off tracts patrolled by servitors. Beyond that were the parks, the wild lands that had been returned to mother nature.
Zach went and stood by the first fence. There were three separate cordons, each decorated with warning signs not to enter. Humans didn’t go on the pharms without protection suits, but they didn’t need to either. A frame of rods and wires carried hanging automatons from plant to plant, inspecting, pruning, spraying and watering. Some of those crops would just be enhanced with minerals and vitamins for food consumption, others contained medicinal modifications that animals shouldn’t come into casual contact with.
The bots didn’t change what they were doing with him there; they zoomed around in their efficient business and he watched.
Behind him a long, champagne-coloured squib slowed down and honked. One of the back doors opened and a girl about his age called out to him. ‘Hey, Musashi. You wanna come for a ride?’
Zach peered inside. It was a luxury model, plush and clean and buffed so that every surface radiated the glow of the lumen edging. The girl sat on the crimson seat. She had white hair and was covered neck to toe in black rubber.
‘Are you Dungeon?’
‘She sent me to find you.’
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Alicia.’ She patted the seat beside him. ‘Come, sit with me. We’ll go somewhere.’
Zach looked around. Nobody was looking, there was nobody to look. The servitors continued their routines. He looked Alicia over, the rubber hugging her slight form, and got in.
The door closed and the squib pulled swiftly to speed. She turned to him, one elbow on the headrest so her hand could play with his hair.
‘Dungeon says you’re a bad boy. I think you look kind of sweet.’
‘Thanks?’
She moved her face closer to his. ‘Do you think I’m pretty?’
Zach swallowed. ‘Yeah, of course.’
She kissed him savagely and began moving her hands over his arms. Zach had never been kissed and he followed her lead — if he didn’t he feared she would eat him — grabbing mouthfuls of air when he could.
‘What’s this?’ She took his visor from his pocket and broke off the kissing to pull a cable from her belt and zap it. The helmet threw off a spark and smoke. She opened a small window and tossed it outside.
‘Hey, that’s —’
‘They can track you with it. Now get your clothes off, there might be residues they could use.’ All this went out the window until he was naked and wr
iggling into new rubber trousers as fast as he could. Alicia watched him the whole time with her emotionless face. She seemed to have lost interest in kissing him.
Through the windows he could see derelict buildings and streets. ‘Where are we?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I want to know where you are taking me,’ he said.
She looked at him but didn’t answer.
He knew they hadn’t gone far, they hadn’t taken to the air, just kept on. Hovering away from the pharms. Which could mean they were heading into a park, but the disused buildings meant they were in the hot zone: areas contaminated with radiation, chemical hangover and extreme pollution.
‘Will this protect me?’
‘Long enough. We won’t be outside for long.’
They drove for another hour, not speaking, just Zach looking out the windows at the once-populated city. Some of it looked new, but was darkened with grime.
At last the squib pulled into a dock and Alicia handed him a mask. ‘Don’t ever go outside without this. Okay?’
‘Yeah, I got it.’
‘Turn around.’ He did as he was told and she began pulling the straps so the mask squeezed tight against his face. Then she took a spray can and panned it back and forth over his back, coating the seams. ‘Lift your arms.’ The can went up and down his sides. ‘Now, front.’ Alicia finished him and then sprayed her own joins until the can was empty and she tossed it to the floor.
‘Let’s go.’
‘Wait,’ he said.
‘No. Follow me or get lost.’
Zach jumped out of the squib and walked behind her.
Around them a grey-brown mist hung, a cold smog that was thick enough to move in swirls as they passed through it. He looked up, but couldn’t see through the dirty mist. The buildings just disappeared within it.
‘Inside.’ The door looked just like any of the others. He’d never be able to recognise it for himself. They passed through sheets of hanging plastic, the corridor ahead had rudimentary lighting, and a short flight of stairs took them down to a hermetic door.
Alicia stood waiting. There was no handle. Soon the door clicked and swung inward.
‘Arms up,’ she said. He copied her, and jets of steam blew at them from the walls.
A panel opened and they walked through. Alicia took off her mask and began stripping out of the rubber. He did the same. She turned a pair of taps on the wall and began showering, rubbing herself vigorously with soap.
‘Dungeon likes us to be clean.’ Her voice seemed to have lost its colour since they had come inside.
‘What for?’ Zach asked.
She turned to him. ‘You should learn not to ask questions.’
~ * ~
Ben Harvey waited at home for his wife Freya. Along with their two children, they lived in one of the many ziggurats of West. Thanks to his Services commission, they had a family block with a balcony, yard and potted trees. There was room enough for a swing and a bouncer for Bobby and Molly in the back corner. He had wanted one when he was young, but his children were bored with it now. That they could be bored by anti-grav dismayed him.
Home wasn’t much, but it was comfortable, and spacious for four people. It was a little old, and built in the rush of peacetime when people were still afraid the Dark Ages would return, but there was nothing Ben couldn’t fix if he put his mind to it. He lay on his back with a wrench and stiff wire, working through the clog in the disposal unit. Truth be told, he could work with his eyes closed and his hands tied behind his back, but you never knew who was watching.
He had taken the day off sick. He was sick. His nerves were giving him reflux. He distracted himself with odd jobs but every time the door banged, or the floor creaked, his stomach jumped and his heart froze. Ben waited without breathing for the marauders to swarm in and mask him. They would find him eventually. They found everybody.
Ben scuttled out from under the sink and leant back onto his knees, breathing through the urge to vomit. He couldn’t go on like this. Even thinking about it unsettled him. He went to the bathroom and slapped calmers on both wrists then went to sit on the back steps with a cup of peppermint tea.
They had a thin view of the city between the two ziggurat blocks behind theirs. He watched the lines of air traffic march and twist through the sky. Ben had sat in this same spot a week ago and watched as ten armed marauders had chased down a woman in one of the apartment blocks. At first he didn’t know what happened — there was an explosion of glass and he had fetched his binoculars. Then watched in horror as soldiers shot the woman’s feet with gloop, tranquillised her and put a mask over her face. He tried to tell himself she might not have been a psi ...
A ball rolled into his back, one of Bobby’s toys, and he twisted around to see who was there. A boy stood shadowed in the dark interior watching him quietly. ‘Hello,’ Ben said. The boy took a few steps towards him.
‘Hi, Dad. Are you feeling better?’ Bobby asked.
‘A little bit. What are you doing home?’
‘I wanted to see how you were.’
‘Shouldn’t you be in memeology?’ Bobby didn’t answer. ‘That’s okay. You can catch up later. It’s nice you coming to check on your old man. Here, have a seat.’
Bobby dropped his bag and came to join Ben on the step. They had the same sandy-coloured hair and eyes. If Bobby pulled on an orange jumpsuit, they would make quite a pair. ‘I need to ask you something, Bobby.’ Ben tried to keep his voice calm and not too serious. ‘I’m not sure how to ask ...’
‘You don’t need to,’ Bobby said.
‘Oh. Because you can ...?’
‘Yes.’
Ben nodded. He was afraid that would be the answer. ‘Does your mother know?’
‘She isn’t sure yet.’
‘How long have you known?’
‘Six weeks.’ Bobby took his dad’s shaking hand. ‘I think you should take something for your stomach.’
‘I’ll be fine in a bit.’ Ben smiled weakly. No wonder the kid was acting so strange recently. ‘What about Molly? Is she?’
‘I think she takes after you, Dad.’ Bobby rolled up the sleeve on his right arm.
‘What’s that?’ Ben asked. There was a circular red mark in the dip of Bobby’s elbow.
‘She bit me, kind of.’
‘Oh.’
Ben cursed his luck. He’d accidentally married a telepath, after years hiding his own abilities — though she had known about him — and now both the kids had followed in their footsteps.
‘I am being nicer to her now,’ Bobby said.
‘Good idea.’ Ben turned back to look out at the city. The sun was going down. Their side of the building was black with shadow against the orange and pink sky.
‘Do you have a plan?’ Bobby asked.
‘The beginnings of one.’
‘What does Mum think?’
‘She thinks it’s too risky.’ Ben put an arm around his boy. ‘But she’ll do it for you two, I’m sure.’
There was no hiding anything from his wife. Freya’s abilities were short-range, but she could sense what people felt. She needed touch to understand and share thoughts. The day the psis declared war on the Will, she was close to Ben on the couch and his fear had rushed into her. She knew he had been thinking about it for a long time. Escape. The trick was that he hadn’t quite figured out how to do it. How do you escape from Services’ omnipresent eye?
The principle they were counting on, and had been making use of throughout their lives, was that large systems can only observe a portion of their whole at any one time. The Weave was too vast and dense for every scrap of data to be checked and verified — even with its algorithm-eyes.
The movements of people and traffic were always passively monitored, looking for pattern deviation, but rarely focused upon unless they became interesting. High-profile people could never escape the watchful lens. Ben’s family had one thing in
their favour: they were lows. Zeros and zilches. People so far down the food chain their actions weren’t important enough to be actively monitored. They had streams like everyone else, but the only thing that would throw up a flag would be behaviour that deviated from their established recorded patterns. So long as they stayed ordinary they could go unnoticed.
Ben tried thinking this through. One false move and Services would be onto them. The Weave was all data, active streams, recordings, and the information collected by the trillion or so sensors and omnipoles in the WU. But not all that data was accessed; it was too big for in-depth processing, it was just there so it could be accessed. It was about finding the blind spots. A blind spot that would last long enough for them to get some distance from the city. Any vehicle they took would have to be wiped, reinstalled and fully manual and every day Ben had been watching the twenty-year-old bus that picked his children up for classes and returned them home before dark.
Manifestations Page 10