This Virtual Night

by C. S. Friedman

  Ramiro watched as Van opened his spell-chest and began to remove items from it, arranging them on top of the sarcophagus: amulets, herb bundles, tiny parchment scrolls . . . all the stuff they’d spent the last ten days collecting. The placement of each piece had to be perfect, Ramiro knew, and he watched as Van placed them, adjusted them, stepped back to study them, and then reached out to adjust them again. He turned some pieces around and flipped others over, and then started combining them, stacking them like checkers, one on top of the other. At one point he pressed two items together and rotated them, as if he was screwing one into the other. Ramiro’s brow furrowed as he watched. Van was the team’s sorcerer, and it was his job to know how such artifacts worked, but the game they were playing didn’t usually require motions like that for activation.

  Are they real props too? Ramiro wondered suddenly. Normally he’d have assumed they weren’t, but the box had been real, right? So maybe the magical items were as well.

  He hesitated, then visualized the pause icon again. Suddenly the game was gone, and in its place was a large mechanical room. There were switches and valves and pipes and data screens all over the place, and the sarcophagus turned out to be a control console. Red ring: Oxygen, one screen read. In the game that had been a picture of a demon. Red ring: Pressure. More demons. Green ring: CO2.

  They were in Environmental Control.

  Life support.

  No game should have given us access to such a place, Ramiro thought. Suddenly the sense of wrongness was overwhelming. Fear was stirring inside him—real fear, not the fake gaming stuff. “Van!” he called out. His voice was shaking. “Pause the game! Look around!” His voice echoed from the cavern walls, filling the chamber with his fear.

  But Van was too wrapped up in arranging his magical items to listen. He did really have props for them, Ramiro noted, but not simple physical markers. Each one was a small device of some kind, and as Van connected them to one another, tiny lights blinked in acknowledgment. The game was directing him to assemble something.

  “Van!” Ramiro yelled. He could hear the panic in his own voice. “Stop it! Stop putting those damn things together! Listen to me!”

  But Van didn’t respond. Ramiro could have been a ghost for all his words mattered.

  Maybe he can’t hear me, he thought suddenly. Maybe the game is keeping him from hearing me. But why would it do that? What purpose could it possibly serve?

  Deep within his brain, a primal voice urged him to flee. Run! Run as far and as fast as you can! Don’t wait! Go now!

  But he couldn’t leave Van behind. Not if there was real danger here.

  He sprinted toward the console, meaning to break apart the strange device before it could do anything. But even as he did so Van threw up his hands triumphantly and stepped back, and Ramiro knew that in the virt the sarcophagus was probably cracking open. On top of the console, the small device blinked and beeped. Too late. Ramiro was too late! One by one the red lights on the device were turning green, while behind the thing, in the real world, security screens displayed various elements of environmental control: oxygen, pressure, circulation, air quality.

  All the services that human beings needed to stay alive on a space station.

  Then whiteness exploded, consumed him, melted him. A roar like a thousand ships’ engines filled the room, then was gone. He was aware of being thrown back into the wall, but felt no impact. What little was left of his body was no longer capable of sensation.

  Then the world was gone.

  Both worlds were gone.

  GAME OVER

  SAKUNA

  That which was forgotten, the sakuna remembers.

  That which was lost, the sakuna seeks.

  That which was divided, the sakuna reunites.

  KAJA: An Outworlder’s Guide to the Gueran Social Contract, Volume 1: Signs of the Guild

  GUERA NODE

  TIANANMEN STATION

  THERE WERE five suns hanging over Ru’s head. White suns, identical in size, evenly spaced, as if they marked the points of an unseen pentagram.

  Strange.

  Dimly she remembered that one should not stare at suns. She tried to look away, but her motor control wasn’t back yet, and she couldn’t turn her head. She closed her eyes, but the suns blazed crimson on the insides of her eyelids, mocking the effort.

  Outrider Gaya?

  The words buzzed in her ears like insects; if she could have moved her arm she would have swatted at them. Slowly the fog of stasis was lifting, sensation seeping back into her body. She was aware of tender bruises where the contacts of the stim suit were still attached to her skin, soreness in her throat where the respiratory tube had been, and an itching deep, deep within her flesh, beyond any hope of scratching. They were familiar discomforts, and she welcomed them as a sign that she was coming out of stasis properly.

  Still the voices buzzed in her ears.

  Is she awake?

  I saw her eyes open for a moment.

  Ru? Ru Gaya? Are you awake?

  Proxima Five had insects that could mimic human speech. Maybe that’s where she was.

  Readings say yes.

  Ru. Respond if you can hear me. It’s important.

  Slowly she opened her eyes again. This time the suns resolved into the lights of an examining room. Still very bright. Painful to look at. She uncurled her fingers and felt the hard shell of the stasis pod beneath her hands. Why was she still in the pod, if she wasn’t on her ship?

  Then memories enveloped her.

  Screaming voices coming closer: alien voices, hate-filled voices. The words are foreign but the bloodlust behind them is clear. The lander is only a few yards ahead of them and she and Tully run toward the ramp, desperate to make it before their pursuers catch up to them.

  Suddenly Tully gasps and goes down. As she reaches out to grab him she sees there is a slender metal dart sticking out of his leg. Cursing, she drags him forward those last few feet. Up the ramp. Through the hatch. Darts strike the ship as the door whisks shut behind them, but one dart makes it through in time. It misses Ru by inches, hits the far wall, and clatters to the floor. Its tip, black with poison, gleams in the dim emergency lighting.

  Shit.

  Tully is moaning in pain, and she knows that if there is poison on his dart he can die if she doesn’t tend to him. But if she doesn’t get the lander off this damn planet they will both die for sure. She can hear a distant banging on the hull as she sprints for the navigator’s console. “Hang on,” she mutters, as she forces the lander to skip half the steps of its launch protocol. The engines roar to life and suddenly the banging ceases; no doubt the locals are running for cover. Good. Good. Her hands dance feverishly over the console. As soon as the seals are confirmed they can get the hell off this benighted rock—

  Something sharp stabbed her arm. INJECTION, her wellseeker informed her, red words scrolling brightly across her field of vision. DAMASOL. The drug started burning away the last of the stasis fog, scattering her planetary memories. The room around her was coming into focus now, as were four people flanking her open stasis pod, two male and two female. All Gueran, from the look of them. Guild, most likely. The room itself was stark, white, sterile. Some kind of medical facility?

  “What happened?” she gasped. “Where am I?” Then the post-stasis sickness hit, and she leaned over the side of the pod and vomited. Someone had put a container by the side of her pod, and she aimed for it as best she could. Small cleaner bots whirred into action, racing to clean up the mess that had missed the target.

  When she was done she just hung there for a moment, draped over the edge of the pod, trying to catch her breath. Damn. Normally she wasn’t this sick when she woke up. What the hell was going on?

  “Vital signs normalizing,” a woman’s voice said.

  She pushed herself up to a sitting position. Th
e stim suit made it hard to move, but the thin tubes of fluid that had cushioned her flesh for years were starting to empty now, and each passing minute made motion easier. “Where the hell am I?”

  “Tiananmen Station.” The man who was speaking was wearing a medical tunic and a headset with two golden snakes spiraling around its central band, reminiscent of a caduceus. “Your ship was damaged. Our scouts caught up with you outside Omarus Node.”

  Omarus Node. But that hadn’t been on their route—

  Ru shut her eyes. Shit.

  “I’m Medic First Class, Evan Chase. I was asked to oversee your awakening, in case the stasis pod had been compromised.” A pause. “Can you tell me your name and number?”

  “Ruisa Gaya. Birthworld Guera. Outrider First Class.” Reciting the data had no purpose other than to verify that her mind was functioning well enough for her to . . . well, recite data . . . but the ritual nature of it helped her focus her mind back in the real world, and in that sense it was comforting. “License Number 108-A-59923.” Then she leaned over the pail and vomited again. Nothing but green fluid came up, the last residue of the stuff the stasis program had been pumping into her system for years now. It felt like she’d been asleep for three hundred.

  Someone handed her a towel and she used it to wipe her mouth clean. Meanwhile the four people watching her were suspiciously silent. They were probably using their headsets to net a private conversation, which to her mind was pretty damn rude. “What’s up?” she demanded.

  “Tull Syng isn’t in his pod,” one of the women said. “There’s a note about a neurotoxin in his med log, but no body.”

  Full memory returned then, and with it a wave of knife-edged guilt. “I buried him in space,” she muttered. “It was what he wanted.”

  “You should have brought him back. We need blood and tissue samples to verify the cause of death—”

  “And you’ll find them in biostorage,” Ru said testily. “I do know how to do my job.” She shook her head sharply. “They hit him with something as we were leaving. Some kind of metal dart. That’s in storage now. And I took samples of every part of Tully that I thought you might want to look at.”

  By the time the autopilot had taken over, and she was finally able to tend to Tully, his skin was a ghastly gray and he was struggling to breathe. She had managed to get him into the med pod and assigned all the ship’s free resources to saving him, but it was too late. The neurotoxin on the dart had done irreparable damage. For three days she’d hovered over him while the medical programs struggled to stabilize him, cursing her own helplessness. Then he’d exhaled his final wheezing breath, followed by a cold and terrible silence. There was nothing to do after that but weep, curse, and deal with his body appropriately. “He told me he wanted to be buried in space,” she said. “So I honored that.”

  Bury me in space, Tully had begged. Otherwise, they might find out. . . . He didn’t finish the sentence, but she understood. There were some parts of his life a man wanted to keep private, even in death.

  Slowly she swung her legs over the side of the pod, eased herself onto her feet, and tested her balance. It wasn’t good, but it was within the normal parameters of stasis recovery. Returning to full function after years of suspended animation wasn’t easy. “Am I free to go?”

  “We need to run some tests,” Chase said. “Given the extension of the stasis period—”

  Ru’s eyes narrowed. “The what?”

  “Your ship was damaged during launch. It went off course while you and Outrider Tull were in suspension, and missed its scheduled return. The stasis program rebooted automatically—”

  “How long?” Ru demanded. “I was on a three-year mission. How long was I gone?”

  “Twenty years.” Was that pity in his voice? “The Guild had to wait until your ship got into range before it could initiate recovery. I’m sorry.”

  Twenty years. Holy shit. Ru shut her eyes for a moment, fighting the urge to be sick again. If there was one scenario all outriders feared, it was that somewhere in the darkness between the worlds their ship would fail them, and they would hurtle forever through the endless night, neither fully alive nor dead, with no hope of rescue. This time the Guild had rescued her, but barely. Maybe next time she wouldn’t be so lucky. “The ship?” It took effort to force the words out. “What about my ship?”

  “Under repair. All the data’s in here.” The woman took a small clear chip out of her pocket and handed it to her. Ru looked around for her headset, but nothing was visible in the stark white room other than medical equipment. What did they expect her to do, eat the chip and absorb its contents?

  Doctor Chase tapped on one of the walls and a white drawer slid forward. Inside was Ru’s simple crescent-shaped headset, resting on a neat pile of her clothing. Her smaller personal possessions were next to it, mixed in with her partner’s. She had to turn away for a moment as a wave of guilt came over her.

  I’m sorry, Tully. I should have known it was too dangerous. I should have stopped you.

  “We won’t keep you long,” Chase promised. “The Guild just wants to make sure no biological functions were compromised by your long sleep.”

  Ru’s first instinct was to protest that she didn’t need any help, but then a wave of exhaustion overcame her. It might have been twenty E-years since she had consigned her partner’s body to space, but she’d slept through most of that. To her body and mind, it felt like it had happened yesterday.

  My partner’s dead. My ship is damaged. The mission was a failure. I almost didn’t make it back. Now here I am, seventeen years behind schedule. So where am I rushing off to? She sighed. I’ll bet my timeshare is occupied.

  “What the hell,” she muttered.

  If the Guild wanted her to get an official certificate of health before she left here, then that’s what was going to happen. No one denied the Guild anything. She spread her arms like a martyr awaiting crucifixion and told them, “Do your worst.”

  I’m sorry, Tully. Whatever universe your soul is in now . . . please forgive me.

  * * *

  She paid for a private cab to Red Sector. She probably shouldn’t have—God alone knew what seventeen years of automatic rent payments had done to her savings—but she wasn’t in the mood to deal with public transportation right now.

  Twenty years, this time.

  Twenty fucking years.

  Shit.

  She hadn’t put her headset on yet. It was in her lap, ready to serve as interface between her brainware and the outside world, but she couldn’t bring herself to activate it. During the mission it would have done nothing more than give her access to the ship’s private database, its innernet. But she was in the domain of the outernet now, and the minute she connected to it her brain would be flooded with public data. Semi-sentient ads for services, networks, gadgets, resorts . . . each one designed to analyze a person’s likes and dislikes and craft images designed to entice her into performing the desired action. Her adblockers were twenty years out of date, so the minute she connected to the outernet she was going to get blitzed by two decades’ worth of crap. Not something to look forward to.

  She did put her wellseeker through its paces, and it checked out her bodily functions one by one, offering to adjust any chemical balance that didn’t seem quite right. Given that she’d just been inspected top to toe by the Guild’s medics, such an inspection wasn’t really necessary, but the familiar medicinal murmur was comforting.

  FATIGUE LEVEL 4, it informed her at the end, letters scrolling red across her field of vision. STIMULANT DESIRED?

  She visualized a cartoon hand making a thumbs-down gesture. NO.

  Ironic, wasn’t it, that sleeping for seventeen years could leave a person so tired? But she knew that what her body craved now was not sleep, but normalcy. It wanted to run her through the natural stages of sleep at its own pace, her muscles completel
y relaxed, her lungs drawing in air and then releasing it without the help of a respirator. There was no way to explain to someone who hadn’t experienced extended stasis how pleasurable—and emotionally necessary—that first natural sleep was.

  Soon, she promised herself. Soon.

  Soon, too, she would have to report to her Guild masters for debriefing. That prospect was considerably less appealing. The thought of sitting in front of a panel of Gueran authorities and answering their questions echoed the disciplinary courts of her youth, reminding her that though she enjoyed considerable autonomy during her missions, her lords and masters on Guera still called the shots. But there was no point in cursing a contract with the Devil after you’d signed it.

  Hopefully the Guild would pay for her ship’s repairs. If not . . . well then, she wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

  * * *

  The foyer of the timeshare complex was crowded as always, full of businessmen in faux silk suits, commuting politicians, migrant station workers, and of course, outriders. It wasn’t the most luxurious apartment complex on the ring, but it was in a decent neighborhood and the internal security was tight, so it stayed busy.

  She didn’t recognize anyone. She barely even recognized the lobby, given how drastically it had been redecorated since last she was here. That’s what happened when you slept for twenty years. It made for an odd sense of disconnection, as if nothing about her was real. Occupational hazard. You either got over it or you quit outriding.

  The man behind the desk (she thought it was a man, but with some Variants it was hard to tell) nodded a polite greeting. He had three long fingers on each hand, and when he rested them on the desk it gave him a bird-like aspect. If Ru had been connected to the outernet she probably would have called up information on his sourceworld, just out of curiosity, but since her headset was still not activated she just smiled back and said, “Ru Gaya.”