Enter the Shroud: In the Pursuit of Knowledge (The Shroud Discord Book 0)

by Bran Nicholls

  “Gravity,” LeRoy explained, “shapes the direction of the lozenge.” He picked up the rod from my lap. I shook my head when he offered it to me. “I think you shocked new life into the inhibitor disc,” he said, and smiled. “You ready for number two?”

  “I might pass out,” I said.

  “Go ahead. That would make it easier, for both of us.”

  He loaded a second lozenge, and I screamed again, caught the glitter of the shimmer shell, and then it turned black, reducing the canopy to a night sky, pin-pricked by stars. A new star formed with each prick of LeRoy’s needle, followed by the fibre fire in my muscles, and the stretching of my new skin. I woke for a second at the stab of the last needle into my heart, recognised LeRoy’s curse as he struggled to withdraw the needle, and then I was gone again, lost in the black beyond the reach of stars.

  The stutter of the infochannel drifted through the shimmer shell, and I wondered if LeRoy had turned up the volume while he waited. I caught the end of the newscaster’s piece about the Valhalla Group, the black market share index, and the renewed discussions of merging the two markets. There was opposition, of course, but the Valhalla Group had declined to comment, content perhaps with the strength of the illicit market, and the challenge it presented to the ruling corporations. I wasn’t the only one undergoing change, it seemed.

  I opened my eyes and looked down at my body. The lozenges were still working through my muscle fibres, I could feel the changes at the molecular and hormonal level as tendons were tied, ligaments reinforced, and a strange pulse began to twitch and fidget through muscles. I started to jerk within the electrowraps, now tight around my bulging biceps, thick wrists and ankles.

  “What’s happening to me?”

  “You’re jonesing,” LeRoy said. “Your muscles have been enhanced and tricked into thinking that they are used to a different level of activity. Unfortunately, your mind thinks it knows better. The twitch is really an argument, a difference of opinion. We need to get your mind and your muscles to communicate, to develop a shared memory. Until we do that, you are going to literally bop until you drop. So,” he said, as my twitching lifted the legs of the chair, up and down, thumping against the floor, “phase three.”

  Phase one had been unpleasant, a slow suffocation. Phase two was fire followed by electrocution. I watched LeRoy pick up the flat oblong disc. He held it up before me, turned the base to reveal tiny holes and slits, and I imagined him pasting it to my body, and a soothing salve flowing through my veins. That was before LeRoy thumbed the pad on the front of the disc. Hooked razors clicked into view emitting tiny sparks between the tips of each jagged tooth.

  “Joe,” he said, “I’d like you to meet Synthea.”

  PART 4

  Synthea took pain to a whole new level. The needles had hurt, but the razor-tipped jagged teeth that LeRoy slapped into my arm dug into my nerves and tapped into my body. Even my muscles gave up jonesing for a few seconds. Synthea’s arrival threw my body out of kilter in a burst of pain and a deep plucking at my nerves, like when you pick at a cut in your skin and realise you are digging into your flesh. I wanted to vomit, and, considering I was bound to the chair with electrowraps, I told LeRoy he had to release me.

  “It’ll pass,” he said. “A few minutes.”

  A few minutes?

  I threw up on my lap, just as my body started to shake again, muscles twitching, searching for lost memory.

  “Synthea stands for Synchronised Exercise Algorithm. What’s happening now,” LeRoy said, with a gesture to my body, “is the synchronisation. Synthea is exploring your body, travelling the nerve pathways beneath your skin, through your muscles, and tapping your brain. She needs to integrate with and receive the same synapses and signals that your body does, mapping them, anticipating them, and exploiting them. Once the synchronisation is complete, Synthea will know you better than you know yourself.”

  I tried to listen, I really did, but my body was twitching, and the only memory my muscles seemed to recall was how to retch. I vomited again.

  “The really fun part is that after the synchronisation, Synthea will tap into your metabolic energy and project herself as a hologram. See,” LeRoy said, “here she comes now.”

  He stepped around the vomit spattered on the floor and lifted my head by the chin. I opened my eyes and saw a beautiful black woman in her thirties begin to take shape on the kitchen floor.

  “Synthea is programmed to take the form of the host’s opposite sex, but we can tinker with that once we start your training.”

  “Training?”

  “That’s right. You have new muscles, but they are not trained. It’s like you haven’t earned them yet, if you know what I mean?”

  “Not really,” I said, as Synthea twirled in front of me. She smiled for a second, and then projected a thin training suit onto her holographic curves.

  “Your body needs to adapt and catch up. In other words, you need to train your body to use your new muscles. Once you are in sync then you can begin to work on the memories currently dormant. Synthea will help draw them out and train you to use them.”

  I was beginning to understand. Synthea was here to help, and, after all the pain LeRoy had put me through, I was ready for a friendly face.

  “There’s a few things you need to know before I let you and Synthea get acquainted.”

  “Such as?”

  “If you’re tired she gets tired. When you sleep Synthea fades and disappears. If are groggy in the mornings before your first cup of coffee, Synthea is too. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s something else,” LeRoy said as he started to untie my electrowraps. “You and Synthea are shadow-linked. If you stretch your right arm, she stretches. If you walk forwards, she walks forwards. She will be on your right or left depending on where you wish to position her.”

  “On my right,” I said, as LeRoy unbound my ankles.

  “Fine. But the reverse is true too, and this is where Synthea comes into her own.” LeRoy took a step backwards as my feet started jerking with small kicks. “To get the most out of Synthea, we are going to allocate several times a day when she leads.”

  “So when she walks forwards?”

  “You walk forwards, except you won’t be walking, Joe, you’ll be running.”

  “I haven’t run anywhere in years.”

  “Right,” LeRoy said, and suppressed a smile. “That’s going to change from now on.” He untied my arms, and then released the electrowrap securing my stomach to the back of the chair. “You’re going to have to eat more, too, and I don’t mean extra supplement tabs.”

  “I can’t afford real food, LeRoy, not on a curator’s salary.”

  “Which is why I’m going to treat you to three squares a day. You can eat supplements as snacks,” LeRoy said, as he held out his hands and helped me to my feet. “Steady there.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You will be. A quick run will take the edge off, and allow your body to settle.”

  “I don’t have any running shoes.”

  “You won’t need any. Synthea is barefoot,” LeRoy said.

  “She’s a hologram.”

  “And barefoot.” LeRoy let go of one of my hands. “It’s raining outside. You can clean up while you run.”

  “You want me to run naked?”

  “Covered in vomit, yes. If anyone is on the street, they won’t even notice you.”

  “I can’t take the inhibitor disc?”

  “It doesn’t work like that. It shields sound only.”

  “I don’t know about this,” I said, as LeRoy led me to the door.

  “Try not to think about it. Synthea comes preloaded with everything she needs to plan a safe route through the lower diamond. She’ll take you through the park. It’ll be nice.”

  “I’ll get locked up for indecent exposure. You’ll never get me to the Shroud.”

  LeRoy held up his hand and opened the cupboard door in the hallway. S
ynthea stepped back as I did to allow the door to swing open. There was a mirror, and I held my breath as LeRoy pressed cool hands on my shoulders and moved me in front of it.

  “There’s nothing indecent about you, Joe,” he said.

  The sagging skin was gone, stretched taut across new muscles. There was something Adonis-like about my body, and I blinked at the glow of my skin, the form of my muscles, and the length of my hair.”

  “It’s grown,” I said, as Synthea flicked at my tight curls of grey hair.

  “It will continue to grow until your body settles. I just can’t do anything about the pigment. It stays grey, I’m afraid.”

  “I like it,” I said. “But if it continues to grow…”

  “Dreadlocks,” LeRoy said, “to match your beard.”

  I had a beard, more tight twists of grey hair curling below my chin.

  “Off you go,” LeRoy said, and opened the apartment door.

  Synthea led the way, jogging down the stairs, compelling me to follow with rapid steps and slaps of bare feet on the old wood. She paused at the door, and I thought she was going to speak. She smiled instead, and I felt a wave of calm flood through my body, from my core to the tips of my fingers, hairs, and toes. The storm broke as Synthea opened the door and leaped outside.

  There is no pavement in the lower diamond of the citysphere, just mud. The private, personal, and professional vehicles glide above the surface of the street on suspenders, perhaps three metres above the ground. The few pedestrians walking at mud level are either too poor to commute, or too sick to care. The corporate police move them on twice a day, and I realised my first run with Synthea was scheduled an hour before the evening clearance. LeRoy was right, the pedestrians ignored me, and the occupants of the vehicle above mud level were too preoccupied to care, faces pressed as they were to pitchscreens or darkware glasses. If I had taken a moment to look I would have recognised the classic look of the commuter – a blank expression with an open mouth. The more affluent dwellers of the lower diamond paid for a non-dribble augment to offset the inevitable side effects experienced by the weary commuter.

  Synthea forced me to run alongside her as the shadow-link kicked in and I felt the first clench of my lungs and a tightening of my chest as we ran barefoot through the mud. After ten metres I had forgotten I was naked, and I could not recall ever throwing up. My chest began to burn, as did the original fibres in my muscles. But not the new lozenge-enhanced muscles that LeRoy had implanted. As my old frame began to crumble, the new muscles geared-up, generating a heat and an energy that I could not remember ever experiencing. Synthea lapped it up, drawing on my energy, and picking up the pace. I could see that her shape was more solid, her muscles tighter, and her ambitions far more realistic than I believed were possible.

  “Stop,” I said, my voice crackling within a dry throat.

  Synthea shook her head, pointed at the triple-peaked gate at the entrance to Commuter’s Park and increased speed, tugging my legs forwards, pushing my body, and pushing me to the limits necessary to trigger a total assimilation of my new skin, my new muscles, and the new memories waiting to be unlocked. She paused at the park gate, and I wrapped my hands around pre-flood iron as Synthea stepped through the pedestrian entrance and ran on.

  I noticed a flicker in the sheen of Synthea’s body as we ran beneath the eves of a corridor of trees. I once read about the Holloways, hidden paths protected by thick thickets of brambles and overarching branches protecting users of the path, drawing an obsidian canopy above them, much like the shimmer shell emitted by the inhibitor disc. Synthea was losing energy, tiring because I was tired. More than that, I was exhausted.

  We stopped beside a rotten bench cut into one side of the corridor. Synthea sat as I sat, slumped as I slumped. I caught my breath, filled my lungs with the damp, cold air that hung heavy beneath the trees, swirling and misting at knee-height above the ground. Synthea began to glow, and I cursed my new body and its new-found powers of recovery. Synthea stood up, and I felt myself stand alongside her, lifting my feet and running as she ran, swinging my arms just a few microseconds slower than she did.

  I believed my body was possessed, and I cursed LeRoy for the devil he was, and vowed to have nothing to do with the Shroud. That was just before we ran into an oval clearing at the end of the corridor of trees. A soft sphere of light projected warmth onto the arena below, and I felt sand beneath my toes. Lithe black figures encrusted with hardpoints protruding from their shoulders, chests and backs, danced to the tune of a fierce choreographer, twice as tall, twice as black, and I realised we must be in one of the few Martian sanctuaries, approved for the training of young Martians. They were naked too, but, unlike the commuters and pedestrians of the lower diamond, they stared, their eyes boring into my body until the choreographer called them to order and they chanted a beat at once exotic as it was chilling. Synthea led me to the end of the back row of Martians, and mimicked their movements, drawing my shadow into the same thrusts, squats, kicks, spins, and splits. She faded towards the end of each set of repetitions, only to recover in the gap between, forcing me to push my body over and over until the muscles stopped twitching, and tatters of memory shredded into my fibres and I felt a rush of exhilaration as I began to anticipate the next set of exercises. It seemed I even knew how to shout, to Synthea’s delight, as I purged the air from my lungs with short Martian chants.

  The Martians were young adults of various ages. But whereas I had received my augments, they had earned theirs in the life and death conditions on Mars. They were tolerated because they were of the same species, but the similarities stopped there. I studied them and then turned at a pricking of my conscience, as if someone was tapping me on the shoulder.

  “Magnificent, aren’t they,” LeRoy said, as he stood next to the bench.

  “Yes.”

  “Even more so in battle.” LeRoy dumped a pile of my clothes on the bench beside me and told me to dress. “It’s been a long day,” he said, as he thumbed Synthea’s disc to engage the dormant function. “The least I can do is buy you dinner. Real food,” he said. “The first treat.”

  I dressed with slow tugs of my clothes over my unfamiliar body. Nothing fit, until I removed the sleeves of my shirt, and the lower legs of my trousers. LeRoy took a grip of my arm, steadying me as he led us out of the park and onto a three-tiered street of restaurants, cafés and food kiosks. We were in the financial sector, the heart of the citysphere.

  “Synthea will have recorded the Martian’s exercises. I want you to study their moves, their response rates.”

  “Why?”

  “Because tomorrow you are going to fight one of them.”

  PART 5

  The corporate police had begun to assemble outside Commuter’s Park when LeRoy led me through the southern gate and onto the smooth streets of the economic district. My feet, bruised from Synthea’s brutal run to the park, welcomed the change of surface, it was warm, soothing almost. The police barely glanced at the three of us, and, with a gentle nudge of my elbow, LeRoy led us to a strip of cafés and restaurants pressed beneath the economic towers of the citysphere. The sphere dimmed to its evening setting as LeRoy stopped outside the door of a sand red restaurant, the foot bath shimmered electron blue at the entrance.

  “This is a Martian place,” LeRoy said, and I noticed that his body was still. It wasn’t his tell and I didn’t need Synthea’s help to realise that he was on tense, excited even. “They have been on edge ever since the re-immigration taxes were introduced, ten years ago. You’ll have to turn Synthea off before we go inside.”

  I felt a light brush of electrons on my arm and a strange flood of longing as Synthea faded. We had been synchronised for less than a few hours, but already she was a part of me.

  “That’s normal,” LeRoy said, as I sagged. “It’s the nature of synchronisation. You have literally found your soul mate, and you will feel a little lost each time she fades.” He slapped me on the back, and said, “Nothing like a
Martian beer to drown your sorrows. You’ve earned it.”

  The foot bath tickled and rinsed my feet as I followed LeRoy into the restaurant. He gestured at a booth towards the back, by the door to the kitchen. I had to remind myself that the Martians were human. It was a challenge. Their blaze black skin and the brown diamonds around their noses and mouths, circling their eyes, challenged the typical image of a human, regardless of race. Each of the restaurant’s patrons returned my stare, eyes locked, until LeRoy ushered me onto the bench in the booth.

  “How old do you think they are?”

  I took another look at the Martians sitting at the table closest to us. “In their thirties?”

  “Everyone in this room is under nineteen,” LeRoy said. “All of them are soldiers.”

  “Soldiers?”

  “Retired. You exercised alongside them in the park.”

  Some of the faces did look a little familiar, or similar, each one resembling the next. I couldn’t even tell the difference between the sexes.

  “They are children?”

  “Children make the best fighters.” LeRoy paused to nod at the Martian who came to take our order. He pointed at me, and said, “He’s just had a work-out.”

  The Martian nodded, and then looked at LeRoy. “And you?”

  “A cold dish. A dessert maybe. I’ll let you decide.”

  “Beer?”

  “Two.”

  The Martian nodded and walked away. A female, I thought, but no trace of breasts. I watched her walk through the door of the kitchen, and then I noticed the walls, squares of grey, black, and ash white. They were photographs, I realised, printed not projected.

  LeRoy noticed as I turned to study all the walls, and said, “Families. Pre-launch.”