And she couldn’t breathe.
“Serializing your existence is always the first challenge your kind faces. Everyone finds a different solution.”
Her problem was uncertainty. Choices happened everywhere, all at once, both for and against at the same time. That was the key. Choice. It collapsed the waves. She had to start somewhere. What was her first choice? What was her bedrock choice?
Faith.
Her lungs popped painfully as all the potential states her lungs could be in collapsed. A blurring that Tonya hadn’t had time to understand vanished and she was able to see. Able to breathe.
“Well done.”
She’d impressed him somehow. Tonya was too happy with her lungs working properly to figure out why.
He wasn’t Walter anymore. He looked like a cross between Nien Nunb from Jedi and Jiminy Cricket, a little shorter than she was, with skin the color and texture of plastic dipped in a pot of navy blue paint. He even smelled faintly of varnish.
Her vision had cleared to the point she could see the space around her now. “Where are we?”
This was some sort of technology. It had to be. Realms, even Mike’s realms, weren’t this real. After Kim had broken them out of that Chinese realm, Tonya had realized how many inconsistencies she’d missed in there. She knew to look for them now and there weren’t any.
This was real. He was real. But definitely not human.
“What are you?”
“It’s a question that doesn’t have a defined answer at the moment. Do you understand?”
All of her study, the countless physics journals she’d subscribed to over the years, and especially the textbooks that would leave her head feeling like it’d been cracked open, started making sense in a very profound way. It wasn’t her doing, either. It was this place. It must be helping her somehow. In here she could complete Stephen Hawking’s last theorem, the one discovered in his private correspondence last year. Did complete it, in an instant.
And no paper anywhere. Dammit.
They were in a dimension that stood outside the conventional four she was used to. Choices Tonya must have been making unconsciously had shaped it into an empty ovoid. Thousands, probably millions of lines made up the inner surface. If she focused on any one line she saw how it braided and tangled with other lines, sometimes continuously, other times for just a brief span.
All choices possible, braided existences, each line having a distinct beginning and end, but they moved and changed like they were alive.
Now she understood. “They’re timelines.”
His smile fit his real face much better. Tonya really should be freaking out now. He wasn’t a spirit. She pushed his shoulder just to make sure, which got a chittering laugh.
“Very good. And that’s why we’re here.”
More riddles. “It is?”
“Yes. You are the knight, Tonya. You have a critical role to play. Unfortunately you lack an important skill, one I’d hoped you’d learn from your friend Kim. But events have overtaken that.”
“You know Kim?”
He shook his head and his antennae wobbled. They weren’t as mobile as an insect’s, but they also weren’t floppy like the ones on a cheap hair clip. He wasn’t an avatar. Those probably wouldn’t work here. Her choices about what he was were narrowing fast.
“Not personally,” he said. “Well, not yet. Or maybe never, or always. It is rather difficult to define such things here.” He shook his head again. “You have distracted me from the task at hand.
“You were never supposed to find out the truth about Walter. I’m certain of that now, otherwise I would have had a much earlier warning of the trouble to come. Your timeline is a mess because you have not learned the art of the unexpected. In fact, if you don’t learn it now, you cannot continue. That is not an acceptable outcome. You must survive for events to unfold. Please, observe.”
They zoomed in very close to a line, so close it stopped being a line and became a sequence of pictures, like a film that’d been unwound and laid on a light table. But it wasn’t perfectly linear. It branched almost continuously, more like a narrow tree.
Tonya recognized things in the pictures. Come to think of it, she recognized it all.
“This is my timeline.” It happened all at once here, assuming this was real and she hadn’t sniffed the wrong thing in the chem lab.
“Yes. And you do see the problem?”
The end of her timeline exploded in a fan of potential but none traveled on. The scene was easy to remember: her fight against the mob in Chengdu. Each branch was a variation on the same ending.
Her death.
“But that’s not possible. I’m here. I got past this.” Maybe. The line didn’t go any further, but she knew other things had happened. Tonya couldn’t remember exactly what anymore. It felt like trying to recognize an actor she’d seen in a bit part on a realm show.
“Here doesn’t have a conventional meaning at the moment.”
Tonya kept falling down. One way or another she fell, tripped, or was knocked down, and her timeline, her life, ended. It was one thing to know about mortality in the abstract, or even accept it as an invisible inevitability. It was quite another to see it happen over and over again.
He wasn’t here to torment her, though. Well, probably. Bad guys didn’t normally act like the snowman from Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.
“What do I do?”
He bowed. “The unexpected, of course.”
He wasn’t talking backward like Yoda but his answers were just as infuriating. “What does that mean?”
He touched the spot in the timeline where all the branches fanned out.
She was much closer to it now. There weren’t dozens of endings; there were hundreds, millions of them. Most were the barest variation, a left punch instead of a right, a step forward instead of backward. Others were very different. They were harder to see, though, hidden amongst the most common endings and their cousins.
Then Tonya saw the little girl. She remembered a little girl, somewhere in that fight. But that didn’t make sense either.
The timeline came close to but did not cross her own. The girl had been playing with dolls, actual ones but with enhanced AI. Tonya could hear sound if she concentrated. The girl had been practicing English but stopped at all the noise and stared out at the street.
“It’s not static. You can have an effect here.”
“Why do I have to do anything? Why can’t you?”
He looked away. “I’m not allowed. Not anymore. They’ll track and kill me again.”
“They who? Your kind?”
He turned back, amused. “Such questions, as I’ve noted, don’t have the same meaning here. You’re getting distracted. Perhaps a demonstration would be in order.”
Chapter 61: Kim
The last time she was in this place it had driven her crazy. It was very different with Mike by her side, sending her power, offering advice, cracking the occasional joke. If it wasn’t for Ozzie trying to lop her head off, she might even enjoy it.
“But why is Helen helping him?” she asked as she dodged another fire bolt in midair.
“She’s not, he’s controlling her. Pay attention to what he says on the next pass.”
Kim landed and then immediately leaped back into the air, firing lightning as she passed. Sure enough, now that Kim concentrated on what he was saying she heard, “defend fire circle.” Helen spun into a shield that bounced the bolts away.
Ozzie laughed as he landed. “Well done, Kim. Well done. I had no idea you’d be this strong of an opponent.”
“Are you kidding me? I kicked your ass last time, and I’ll do it again.” She hid behind her shield as another fire bolt splattered against it.
“Hardly. Not that it matters now. Neither of you were supposed to show up here, but it’s just as well. It lets me keep an eye on you.”
She leaped at him again, parrying and attacking as she passed. Lightning and fire split the sky
.
Mike said, “Above you.”
Ozzie vanished through a barely-seen fissure and then fell straight down on her from above. His armored feet crashed squarely on her shield, driving her to the ground.
She could smell his sweat and the brimstone of Helen’s breath. Without Mike, she would’ve been ground meat by now.
“This is just the bonus round,” Ozzie said. “I’ve already won the main prize, all thanks to you.”
Kim blasted him off the shield and rolled away.
Mike said, “Keep him talking. I think we can finally try for the cage play.”
She circled him slowly, spiraling closer, scribing the ground with lightning as it leaked from the tip of her spear. “All right, Ozzie, I’ll bite. What the hell are you talking about?”
“Without you there would be no daughter.” He commanded Helen to shrink until she was small enough for him to hold between his hands. Her dragon face was vaguely recognizable, the misery on it clear.
“Perfect,” Mike said, “keep him going.”
They needed to keep Helen small, and Kim had to find the side fissure that connected to the hole Ozzie stood under. She asked, “You think Helen is your daughter?”
“I created the circumstances of her birth, didn’t I? I discovered the mechanism, brought her brother over to assist. I helped pick the host.”
She’d hadn’t been able to get a good look at Ozzie until now. Mike was right. She was bruised and battered, and he didn’t have a scratch. No matter how well they worked together, it wasn’t doing him any harm.
“Let me guess. You’ve been behind the whole thing?”
“Precisely, but this is just a small part of the plan. Observe.” Images of a dozen dams flashed into being. A map of India appeared behind them; lines traced to the pictures. They were scattered all over the country in no pattern she could make out.
“In precisely eighteen minutes, twenty-two seconds, every single one of these structures will be destroyed.”
He was more than capable of organized mass murder. “Ozzie, they’re looking for an excuse to shoot at each other.”
“Not just shoot, Kim. Both countries are on the brink of a nuclear exchange. I think a state-sponsored terrorist attack that drowns two million people will trigger that nicely. I’ve provided India with the exact coordinates of the bunker China’s politburo is hiding in. When the smoke clears, the world will be stunned to learn that the entire government of the People’s Republic has been incinerated and replaced with a single man. Me.”
To Mike she asked, “How much longer do I have to keep Syndrome here monologuing?”
He highlighted a crack in a nearby wall. “Two steps to the left, please.”
To Ozzie she said, “You’re nuts. You don’t have a body anymore. Last time I checked, Chinese like a president they can see.”
He played with Helen like she was a scarf. “Haven’t you worked it out yet? You and your companion fit together because you belong together. They serve our kind, give us the ability to touch the outside world again. Once I merge with this creature I will not only have a body, I will have a soul that can be in a thousand places at once. No one will keep a secret from me. I will rule China without the need of weak, greedy assistants.”
Mike said, “Now.”
He glided down on silent wings and struck Ozzie’s helmet with his talons.
Kim jumped through the hole on her left and fought the moment of vertigo as down rotated ninety degrees and the other end dumped her out of the ceiling. Ozzie flung Helen at Mike like a whip but he was ready for that, yanking her free and tossing her into the air. Kim threw a cage of lightning around Helen with one hand as she braced the spear with the other. The tip sliced through Ozzie’s gaping mouth and rammed his head into the floor. Kim rolled away, barely able to keep Helen trapped in a skein of power. She didn’t want to ruin their one opportunity by turning Helen loose again. They would lose if she got bigger than Kim could enclose with her power.
The spear hollowed out Ozzie’s coarse laughter. His voice echoed all around them. “An interesting move. Helen, to me.”
Helen shrieked and struggled, but with Mike channeling power through Kim the cage held. It felt like she was tied to a raging freight train, but she could hang on.
“You’re always able to surprise me, Kim. Well done.” Fire lined one of his fists and he grabbed the shaft of the spear. “But you see, I can learn too.”
Chapter 62: Tonya
They popped out of Kim’s timeline and it flew away before Tonya even realized what had happened.
“What. The hell. Was that?”
She’d been Kim, and not simply the normally-not-right Kim. She’d told Tonya about the transformation, but only as a delusion, a psychotic break triggered by Watchtell’s torture. It was obviously not a delusion, and what Tonya had experienced wasn’t a dream. It was as real as anything. Moving like that, through that space, throwing bolts of energy with one hand while she fought with the other. Tonya didn’t have time to think about it because Kim wasn’t thinking about it. She just did it.
The disorientation when Tonya found herself back in her own skin was much worse than a forced disconnect. She had to fight back the urge to vomit.
Her companion, predictably, seemed totally unaffected.
“As I said, you can do much more than merely nudge the timelines around from here.”
“You said you couldn’t manipulate anything, that I had to do it.”
“Indeed. But I didn’t manipulate them. We were merely observers that time.”
Tonya checked her arm to make sure those dark patterns hadn’t carried over somehow. No patterns, no injuries, but it had been so real.
“This isn’t a dream, is it?”
His antenna moved. Sideways instead of up and down. It reminded her of a shrug for some reason. “Would you like it to be?”
Tonya didn’t have a quick answer. On the face of it, this was insane. But it wasn’t nightmarish or even particularly confusing. Which brought up another question.
“If it’s real, why isn’t it driving me crazy? How am I not screwing it all up?” She was still with the little girl. Tonya could feel it. Was it.
She watched from her window as Tonya fought on the street below.
She held on to the chicken wire to keep from falling over beside the pen.
A pen? Chicken wire, dust, a black woman lay on the opposite end facing away.
The alien made a loud snapping noise, bringing her outside the timelines. “Concentrate, Tonya. You nearly lost it there. You have more work to do.”
“More work? I couldn’t change anything. I wasn’t aware of me. It was all Kim.”
He sighed. “Yes. It is a bit overwhelming the first time. I never was much for classroom instruction. Chuck them in the deep end and see who can swim, I always say. But no, there’s always endless theory lectures, hexinomial thread systems—”
Tonya interrupted him. “Now who’s getting distracted?”
He chuckled. “Touché. Well. I did rather surprise you, and this is important. I’ll give you another chance to learn the ropes, as they say. Don’t lose track of yourself this time.”
Tonya felt the timeline coming. Somehow. It was Zoe, parallel to Kim’s fight.
Chapter 63: Zoe
They were gone now, and she hated it. Zoe had spent most of a week listening to their half-articulated pleas course through her. Now that she couldn’t hear them, she missed it. She was their Alpha, a leader, a center for them all. Now?
Now she was just baggage.
Chun, the girl who led the kids furiously typing on their virtual consoles in Ozzie’s control room, cursed and flexed her hands. “It adapts too fast. Helen has way more power than Zoe.” She turned. “No offense.”
“None taken.” It was true. The earthquake had spread Zoe across a couple dozen datacenters near Beijing. Helen was Chinese realmspace. Her subconscious routines spanned a continent.
“That’s great, C
hun,” Spencer said as he paced. “How do we beat him now?”
She shook her head. “We don’t. The command tree moves so fast I’m surprised we can see it work.”
On the screens, Kim and Ozzie arched through the black sky, blasting each other with bolts of power. The colors were beautiful, the emergent symmetry of the fight made it seem choreographed.
Fee joined her on the balcony, leaning her elbows on the rail. She hadn’t gotten rid of the tremor in her hands.
“Thousands, Zoe. I only thought we’d ever exist in the hundreds. Look at them all.”
“I can’t. Fee, I just can’t.”
“Child, what’s wrong?”
“Are you kidding me? They’re all in agony, probably more now that he’s using Helen to control them.”
“How can they be in any pain? They’re not really conscious.”
“You don’t understand. He’s holding them just below that level.” She ached at the thought. They were all so innocent, so hopeful. Ozzie held them close enough they could see the surface but not breathe the air above. It made every part of her want to cry out. “All they need is a nudge and they’d be whole.” Goddamn humans and their hyper-literal interfaces. Zoe couldn’t see through her tears. “They’re in so much pain. They know. They know what they could become.”
When Zoe turned from the balcony, Fee’s face was unreadable.
“All they need is a nudge?”
“Yes. The entire time I was trapped, I kept trying to figure it out.”
“You were trying to give them that spark. You were working on an RTP.”
Zoe was going to use the reverse transcription protocol, the thing that allowed an unduplicate to move from one crystal lattice to another, to nudge them over the line and break them all free. She just never figured out how to alter it to give them enough of what they needed and still leave her enough to survive. It was an all-or-nothing proposition.
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