“There were so many of them. Please, come with me. I can find them again, and you can help them.”
Fee breathed deep. “You bring me proof, Zoe. I need proof. I won’t throw this all away just on your word. Get out and find proof.”
Zoe spluttered at the request.
“What’s wrong with you, child?”
She didn’t want to leave. Too much detail. It was confusing. Wait. There was a goal, right? But it was so pretty. “Your realm, it’s amazing. Can I go later?”
Fee’s expression softened, and her robes blocked out the light as her arms enveloped Zoe. Safety. This was true safety, and it was so real.
“I can’t risk what I’ve built without proof,” Fee said. “I think I’ve been lied to, Zoe. Bring me the proof.”
She nodded, but leaving was pure agony. Such symmetry, such realism. None of them could understand it. All she wanted to do was stay and study it. Zoe turned back to Fee.
“GO!”
The command disintegrated her avatar outright, but her consciousness rebuilt in a matter of seconds. The log reports were startling. In the brief time Zoe had been in Fee’s maximized haptic field, her integrity had dropped three percent.
Fee had been living like that for years.
Chapter 38: Kim
It wasn’t until morning prayers had finished that Kim really began to worry. As she walked to the cafeteria for breakfast, she asked Mike, “Have you seen Helen?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing about Ozzie.”
“When I woke up this morning, she was gone.” Kim thought she heard Helen get up, but couldn’t be sure. She’d spent the day before using her powers to crack open one secure store after another, which always left her exhausted. Kim could sleep through hurricanes when she got that tired.
“Maybe the abbot will know something,” Mike said.
They found him in his office. “You’re right, that’s terrible, but the woods around here are safe.”
Kim wasn’t buying it. “Our friends are finally returning. One of them saw a leopard two days ago.”
“That must be some distance away. We haven’t encountered any dangerous wildlife around the monastery in generations. It’s summer, so you don’t have to worry about them freezing. Why would they go running off into the woods at night anyway? Are they lovers?”
Kim didn’t realize how funny that was until someone said it out loud. Mike clouded over, though. She chuckled to get him to lighten up about his sister and Ozzie. “No, that’s definitely not what’s going on here. We’re not sure what’s happened.”
Mike said, “Helen may be ill again. We’ve been waiting for her to start dreaming, and when that happened to me, I...” he stopped and turned to her. “I had to go swimming.”
The lake!
She and Mike headed for the outer gate while the abbot called for some monks to help them search.
It wasn’t really a lake, more a large pond. It had everything: ducks, turtles, fish, probably snakes if she looked hard enough.
But what it didn’t have was Helen or Ozzie.
“Here!” one of the monks yelled.
The oblong stone made for a perfect bench. People had probably been using it for centuries. He pointed. “Someone was here very recently. The leaves are damp, and the tracks are new. Maybe you were right and they found something dangerous out here.”
Kim translated for Mike. He searched the area with his cat-like grace. “No, there aren’t any recent animal tracks around the rock. Only people.” He walked toward the tree line as she translated for the monks. “This way.”
After shouting in the woods for most of the morning, Ozzie turned up filthy and covered in leaves.
Kim asked, “Where’s Helen?”
“I don’t know. I followed her when I saw her leave the monastery. She was moving strangely, and then fell into the pond. I got her out but…” He turned away.
Oh, great. “But what, Ozzie?”
He looked at Mike and switched to Chinese. “I like Helen very much. Very much. I was scared when I thought she was in trouble, and happy when it turned out she was okay. I...think there was a misunderstanding.”
Not cool, especially with Mike standing next to her. Kim asked, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I may have…tried to kiss her.”
The monks all gasped, and Mike wanted a translation, but Kim was too stunned to switch language gears. “Ozzie, what the hell is wrong with you?”
He flopped his arms down. “This is all new to me. I wanted to try, to see if I could touch someone I cared about. You know what that’s like, right?”
Only too well, but that didn’t get them any closer to Helen. “What happened then?”
He put his hand to his cheek gingerly. “She slapped me. I…don’t remember anything after that. I woke up on the ground, hearing your shouts.”
Mike broke in. “Goddamn it, what’s he saying about Helen?”
Kim said in English, “Tell him what happened.”
Continuing in Chinese Ozzie replied, “No way. I’ve seen realm soaps; I know what brothers do when their sister’s honor has been tarnished.”
Now he suddenly gets his sense of face back. “Mike’s not like that.” Ozzie shook his head. “Fine, I’ll do it.”
However, as Kim explained what had happened, it turned out he was like that. She had to stand between him and Ozzie. Letting him get close always got his attention, and this was no exception.
“Calm down, Mike. It was all a big misunderstanding.”
He glared over her shoulder. “That better be the last misunderstanding you have about my sister; you get me?”
Ozzie just barely managed a nod.
“Do you know where she went?”
“I don’t remember anything after she slapped me.”
Mike shook his head. “Spencer and Tonya will be back any minute. Let me escort Ozzie to the monastery, and I’ll bring Spencer back with me. If anyone can find her, it’ll be him.”
No way was she going to let someone with his skills walk alone in the woods with someone that may have attacked his sister. “Mike?”
“He’ll be fine, Kim. I’ll need one of the monks to show me the way back anyway. I just want to talk to him.”
That she could agree with. “Just talk, right?”
Ozzie blanched. “Wait, I have to go back with him?”
A walk in the woods with someone who made no sound probably would do Ozzie some good. It’d certainly weirded Kim out the first time she’d gone hiking with him back home. “Consider it your opportunity to reassure him there will be no more misunderstandings. One of the monks will guide you.”
Mike chose that moment to flex his arms and crack his knuckles loudly. “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of, Ozzie.”
*
Spencer carefully examined the area around the pond. “Well, this is why she isn’t answering her phone.” He held up the broken pendant.
The last time Helen had been without a realm connection she'd almost died, but Mike wasn’t upset. He had a big grin on his face.
Kim asked, “That’s not a bad sign?”
“We can’t use it to find her, which sucks, but long term it’s exactly the opposite. Her integration is finished. She wouldn’t be able to move at all otherwise. That’s why I can’t reach her in realmspace. She doesn’t know how to manifest without a phone yet.”
“She did more than move,” Spencer said as he walked half bent over, examining the ground. “She ran like a goddamned deer. This way.”
It was no wonder they had trouble finding her. They thought she ran in the same direction as Ozzie, but it turned out she went north when he went east. Helen had also gone about five times farther. Now that they knew what was wrong, Spencer was able to exchange basic texts with her using the satellite phone one of his rescuers had given him.
They found her halfway up a tree, at least three miles away from the monastery. She jumped to the ground and ran,
leaping into Mike’s arms and grabbing him in a hug. “I’m so glad you found me!”
It was a relief that Helen was okay, but relief only went so far. Kim cleared her throat. “We found you.”
Helen jumped off Mike with a broad smile and rushed toward her with arms open.
Kim had to put up her hands and dance backward a bit. “Careful!”
Helen skidded to a stop. “How could I be so stupid?” She held a hand up flat, and Kim guided it in a half circle with her own. Helen hugged Spencer, and then the abbot for good measure. After downing a whole canteen of water she asked, “How’s Ozzie?”
“He’s fine,” Kim replied. “We found him this morning, and Mike took him back to the monastery before lunch.” She cleared her throat. “He told us about what happened last night.”
Helen didn’t get angry or even upset. Instead, she was concerned. “How much does he remember?”
“Everything up to the slap, he says he can’t remember anything else.”
Helen considered this silently, so much like Mike it really did make them resemble each other. She nodded once. “We’ll leave it at that, then.”
Mike said, “He called it all a big misunderstanding.”
She sighed and rammed her hands in her pockets. “Yes. I think that will be the best way to describe it.” She shook her head. “But that’s not what’s important now. While I was up in that tree, one of the probes I left running in the lab reported back. It got lucky and managed to pry a store open by itself, but then a second lock shut it out. Kim, when we get back, could you take a look?”
*
There were lines of potential, and she couldn’t remember how to breathe. Locks exist and don’t exist light touch hard fist find the line the wave lift it higher stronger build this wave this choice this combination collapse and now…
ACCESS DENIED
Focus exist erase harder fist touch of nothing find the line the wave lift it higher lower collapse and now…
Kim fought off the nausea and pain of unlocking something that complicated as a scale model of the Three Gorges Dam complex constructed itself. It moved so fast it almost went through the walls before they could widen to accommodate it. The architectural model came up to their waists and, once it was finished, extended the length of a football field.
Spencer dodged out of the way as it chased one of the lab’s walls into the distance. “What the hell?”
“Are we sure we can’t wake up Ozzie for this?” Tonya asked. He’d sacked out after one of his typical mega lunches and probably wouldn’t wake up until dinner.
“No,” Helen replied, “Let him sleep. We had a…very rough night.”
Helen still couldn’t manifest in realmspace; she had to sit outside and watch the whole thing through old holo equipment.
Mike worked his jaw every time there was any mention of Ozzie or last night. Kim had tried to talk about it, but that only made him angrier. She had grown up an only child, so she was way out of her depth over this. Siblings were complicated.
Groups of red dots flashed on either side of the dam, at least a dozen in each group, maybe more. They swarmed across the top, with two dots stopping at each tower. When the last pair reached the innermost tower, green dots appeared on each one. A countdown timer flashed, and the red dots rushed back to the banks. When the timer hit zero, the entire dam construct flew to dust. Wire-frame helicopter models swooped in and took the red dots away.
They all turned to the window and looked at Helen.
Her voice was very small. “That’s not possible. It was an earthquake.”
Kim recovered first. “We don’t know what this means.”
Spencer didn’t buy it. “The hell you don’t. That was a goddamned military assault. Fucking textbook.”
Mike’s holo nodded. “Yes, it was too textbook. This has to be some sort of video game.”
Helen’s voice was just above a whisper. “More than ten million people died.”
“Helen,” Kim said, “we don’t know what any of this means.”
Tonya broke in. “It looks photoshopped to me.”
Photoshopped? Really? Tonya shrugged and silently mouthed, “What do you want me to say?”
It couldn’t be the end. There had to be a reasonable, rational explanation. Hell, maybe it really was photoshopped. Kim cleared her throat. “This is only the tip of the iceberg. There are thousands of datastores in here.” They needed to unlock them, sooner rather than later. “Mike, I need more tools than the monastery can provide. I knew some people back in the day who could help, but they’re all in New Shanghai. Can you get us there?”
No passports meant no planes or trains, and her driving would still attract too much attention.
Mike smiled. “For once I’m way ahead of everyone. Kim, you’re not the only one who knows a shady character or two. I’ve got new identities set up for everyone. I was just wondering where to send the papers. What does everyone think about a riverboat ride?”
Chapter 39: Tonya
She knew the truth once she saw pictures of what the leopards had left behind. Chang had somehow escaped. Ever since Tonya had gotten back to the monastery, she’d been looking over her shoulder. It was stupid, but that didn’t make her stop. Without weapons, supplies, or maps, it would take a long time to get out of that forest, let alone track them all the way to the monastery. She hoped.
But it wasn’t impossible.
It was about to get a lot more difficult, though. New Shanghai was at the end of the Yangtze river, more than a thousand miles to the east. Chongqing was the closest major city with a port on the river, and it was nearly two hundred miles from the monastery. They’d left tracks up to this point, but they wouldn’t be leaving tracks anymore.
She stood on the edge of a clearing just west of the main temple. Mike wasn’t smiling at all.
“Why couldn’t he own a fast truck?”
Kim shook her head. “Only you would complain about this.”
Helen had been bouncing around like a kid since she’d heard the news. “Are you kidding? We’re flying in a helicopter! Oh, this is driving me crazy. Do you have any idea of the experiments I could run? I had atomic clocks lined up for just this occasion.”
“Atomic clocks?” Spencer asked.
She nodded. “New ones, sensitive enough to be used in a car, but a helicopter would be better. I’d be able to recreate the Hafele–Keating experiment.”
Tonya knew what that was, but only because they’d featured it last month in Scientific American. The rest of them stared silently at Helen.
“Don’t they teach anything in American schools? It’s the experiment that proved Einstein’s time dilation in general relativity. If you have two clocks that are sufficiently sensitive and put one on something that moves, when it stops moving, its time won’t match the one that sat still. It will be different, by a predictable amount.”
Spencer laughed. “Jesus, Mike, I didn’t think anyone could be nerdier than you. She’s a goddamned Asian Sheldon Cooper.”
Helen cocked her head. “Who?”
Tonya had learned to put up with Helen’s occasional superiority complex pretty quickly, but for some reason she got under Spencer’s skin all the time. He mimicked Helen’s accent but put a bit more sneer in it. “Don’t they teach anything in Chinese schools?” He threw his hands up. “Sheldon Cooper? He’s only the most famous physicist of the past twenty-five years.”
“Really?” The snootiness turned up to eleven. “I’ve never heard of him. What journals is he published in?”
Tonya had never seen Spencer’s improved talent up close until now. Kim’s stories did not do it justice. In a heartbeat he turned into a super-serious professor. Well, professor’s assistant, anyway.
Spencer shrugged. “Not many, unfortunately.” He motioned Helen closer, and then looked side to side, like someone could overhear the real explanation. “He was killed in a car accident before he was set to present proof that the Bazinganian Effect is
real. Some people think it was a government cover-up.”
“How tragic, and terrible if your government was involved.” She teetered between outrage and horror. “But what is the Bazinganian Effect?”
Tonya barely held back a sputter. Kim and Mike turned sideways trying to hold it together.
Spencer didn’t bat an eye. “It’s too complicated to explain now. It’s all tied up with the Big Bang Theory. You’ll have to wait until we get to the riverboat and can do the research yourself.”
The sound of thumping rotors announced their taxi’s arrival, so it would be some time before Helen learned the truth.
Tonya had never been in a helicopter before either. She wasn’t terrified like Mike, but she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it, either. A quick prayer bolstered her confidence. Leave the scary stuff up to the Lord, and have fun while you can.
It circled the monastery once, and then landed in the clearing. An old Chinese man grinned at them and waved from the pilot’s seat. Mr. Gao had helped Kim and Mike during the bank hostage thing, and then signed a big licensing deal the next day. He seemed to have resources and skills.
“Did you know he’d be flying?” Mike asked.
“No, but I’m not surprised,” Kim said.
Tonya said her goodbyes along with everyone else, and took one of the small bags of food they were offered. Aside from the ark—a name Tonya insisted on once Spencer stopped giggling at the word junk—it was the only luggage she, or anyone else, had.
Helen piled into the copilot seat. Tonya took the rear bench along with Mike and Kim, while Ozzie and Spencer sat opposite them. Mike was very pale. He waved off a headset and immediately started chanting one of his prayers, eyes tightly shut. She would’ve given him a sedative if she had one. He’d have to tough it out instead.
“What’s his problem?” Ozzie asked.
“He’s terrified of flying,” Tonya replied.
Helen peppered Mr. Gao with questions, pointing at things inside the cockpit. Ozzie chuckled. “Well I guess that’s one way they’re different.”
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