The Deplosion Saga

by Paul Anlee

  Purely by chance, he’d witnessed the last two seconds of Mary’s transfer through the window. I arrived too late to prevent sweet Mary’s departure but, no matter. Darya is the main prize, and there she is. Idiots! They chose a corner booth away from the exit. He set his jaw and strode over toward them.

  Timothy jumped in front of Darya and extended his arms, valiantly intending to block the Shard’s access to her.

  Darya was ahead of them both. The Alternus sim was not amenable to “magic” tricks. She could alter the physical properties of a few, incidental props with limited, local effect, but she couldn’t simply “disappear” herself or any other player, or make a giant fighting troll appear. She’d tried and the Supervisor ignored her. Since Trillian had hacked Alternus, it seemed she had less influence over the inworld sim.

  But she was still far from powerless.

  She instructed the Supervisor to adjust the strength of the supporting ceiling beams and changed four stories of wooden walls above into cement.

  The whole structure above Trillian creaked. His smirk disappeared as he noticed the ceiling starting to collapse.

  Darya grabbed Timothy and pulled him out the back door as the building came down.

  Trillian darted back out the front door.

  Darya and Timothy escaped into the back alley, and right into the sights of Trillian’s watchdogs. Their guns were drawn.

  He’s counting on my inability to return to my trueself and my unwillingness to leave Timothy to his death—she thought. But, if Trillian thinks I have no option but to surrender, he’s in for a surprise.

  She couldn’t make their guns disappear, but she could change the chemical properties of the gunpowder in the bullets. Like Trillian, she could convince the Supervisor that the bullets were charged with something beside gunpowder.

  She and Timothy approached the two thugs, angry determination in their eyes.

  Trillian’s men aimed their guns to cripple her and pulled the triggers.

  Click! Click! Click!

  Her satisfaction at their useless weapons was plain to read on her face. She shoved Timothy hard into one of the thugs and lunged at the other.

  The man easily blocked her punch, and swung the butt-end of his pistol at her head. Rather than back away, she surprised him by stepping in toward him. Blocking the gun wrist with one hand, she chopped hard into the crook of his elbow with her free hand.

  The man grunted. The chop hit its mark, and he was powerless against the reflex reaction that shocked his muscles into giving up their grip on the pistol. He ignored the skittering gun, and reached out to yank the troublesome woman closer before she could get away.

  Darya pulled down sharply on his stunned arm, throwing her assailant off balance. He stumbled forward and she drove her knee into his groin. A strangled, animal sound escaped the man’s vocal chords as the incapacitating pain registered and he bent forward. She delivered a punishing elbow to the back of his head. He crumpled. One down, one to go.

  Timothy was enacting a commendable imitation of boxing with the second goon, and somehow managing to keep his opponent at bay. Barely.

  Darya retrieved the fallen gun from her attacker and messaged the Supervisor. It filled with gunpowder once again, and she pointed it at Timothy’s sparring partner. “Leave now, and don’t come back.”

  The man recognized a good opportunity and bolted.

  Timothy was visibly shaken but there was no time to comfort him.

  “We can rest later. Come on, we have to get out of here right now.” Darya grabbed his hand and pulled him over to a locked door across the alley. She shot off the lock and pulled Timothy into the building. Together they ran up three flights of stairs before bursting through a door into a long hallway. They ran two-thirds of the way down the corridor until Darya spotted a door without a “Housekeeping, please make up room” sign on it. She hoped that meant it was vacant.

  The lock was electronic and Darya had no trouble figuring out the access code. She pulled a credit card from her pocket and inserted it into the lock, convincing the Supervisor that it had the correct magnetic coding. The lock flashed green and she passed inside, yanking Timothy behind her.

  “Ow!” he yowled. She realized how keyed up she was.

  Darya looked around the darkened room, giving her eyes a few seconds to adjust from the hallway lights. The two double beds were rumpled and, thankfully, empty. She found the light switch and a bedside table light came on. She sat Timothy down on the bed.

  “I’m going to send you to the GameRoom with Mary. You’ll appear right beside her. I hope she hasn’t gone anywhere. The two of you stay right there. Do not move! I’ll be along in a few minutes, okay?”

  Still in shock, Timothy could only nod in dull agreement. Darya focused and a portal opened above the Footman. She watched him fade and disappear.

  She initiated her own transfer. The room shimmered and twisted. That’s a weird effect—she thought—not at all what I expected.

  The transfer pipe bent and gyrated as she poured through it. She watched the television and heavy table below it get drawn into the pipe along with her. The portal expanded in diameter. What the…! That’s not right!

  The pipe soon engulfed everything in the room and continued to grow. She looked around frantically. Something’s wrong! What’s happening?

  Through the confusion, she heard laughter—Trillian! He found a way to interfere with our escape!

  Rather than trying to stop her, he’d made adjustments to include the entire neighborhood in the pipe, including himself. Darya had to admire the move.

  Even through the pipeline distortion, Darya could hear his ominous tone, “You are not going to be so lucky this time.”

  How is he tapping in? I have to block him!

  She reviewed her code for the pipe but with her brain in transition between New York City and the GameRoom, it was impossible to focus on whatever changes he’d made.

  She could only watch as all of Manhattan was pulled along into the GameRoom with her. Millions of people, mostly Partials, some real, were sucked out of the Alternus inworld and mapped onto her maze.

  She’d modeled the maze on ten-dimensional mathematical formulas describing the physics of antique string theory applied to the virtual particles comprising protons. She’d permitted movement in all ten dimensions of the maze, providing there was some supporting surface but vision would remain restricted to three dimensions.

  The idea was to create a place where they could easily hide. She hoped it would give her enough time to get all three of them back to the real universe.

  She watched the busy streets and high rises of New York being pulled into the maze, and mapped onto the ten-dimensional topography. She had to assume her hunter was now in there somewhere, too. He wouldn’t even have to search the neighboring inworlds for them.

  And now, thanks to his meddling with the program, she wasn’t sure any of them would ever find their way out.

  32

  “Is it okay to move now? What happened? What kind of place is this?” Mary asked. She looked through the open window framing a diffusely lit New York City.

  Darya clasped her hands in front of her face. “You’re here! Oh, you two have no idea how glad I am to see you!”

  Mary and Timothy stood calmly in front of her, side by side, right where she’d sent them. To her great relief, Trillian was nowhere in sight.

  There was only one troubling detail. Instead of smooth walls running in ten directions through the local spatial dimensions, they were boxed in by the same four drab, pitted walls of that cheap hotel room in which she’d conjured a virtual pipeline and evacuated Timothy.

  The room looked exactly like it had in New York. She had no doubt Trillian was already in the maze, or soon on his way. They had to move fast. He could be closing in on them even now.

  “We’re in the GameRoom maze I designed. Trillian somehow expanded my pipe and brought the entire city over. At least, I hope it’s just the city
. I don’t think this inworld could handle the whole of Alternus.”

  “Well, that would explain why it looks like this.”

  Darya walked over to the window. New York was barely recognizable. Streets and buildings looked like a 3D jumble. She spotted a familiar shop on Madison Avenue, but no more than a few meters past, the street butted into a brick wall. Early morning pedestrians flowed along a section of sidewalk that appeared to come from nowhere and go nowhere. This is definitely not my New York.

  She traced the brick wall upward a few stories and saw a section of the Brooklyn Bridge jutting away at a right angle. The span ran about fifty meters and stopped abruptly, truncated in open air with nothing supporting it. Okay, so where did the rest of the bridge go?

  To their three dimensional eyes and minds, ten dimensional New York was a confused mess. The local Partials seemed to be oblivious to the changes. They continued along their merry ways to jobs, schools, and shopping as usual.

  The transition must have translated the Partials properly.

  The Fulls were not so lucky. The Supervisor permitted them to see only three dimensions at a time. Fulls could be easily identified by their hesitant, fumbling, and awkward movement.

  Darya shivered. The maze was only intended for the three of us and Trillian. Not for millions of Fulls. What a mess!

  “Let me see!” Timothy joined the two women at the window. “Good God! What happened to the city?” He put his hand to his head and sat heavily on the nearest bed.

  “Listen, we don’t really have time to discuss this right now,” replied Darya. “We need get moving before Trillian maps our location.”

  “I can’t go out there,” Timothy objected. “One would have to be insane. And if you weren’t at the start, you would be very quickly!”

  “I know it looks scary,” Darya responded reassuringly, “but it’s perfectly safe. If it’ll help, close your eyes and hold my hand. I’ll guide you. We can’t stay here any longer. We have to go now.”

  “Very well, I’ll follow you,” Timothy relented. “But I’m not walking around out there with my eyes closed.”

  “Okay, let’s form a chain until we can get used to it,” replied Darya. “Your bodies know how to move around in this world, even though your eyes can only perceive a small part of it at a time. Let’s go.”

  They joined hands and Darya led them into the hallway. They got about four meters before a street, busy with rush hour traffic, crossed their path. Cars and trucks proceeded as if nothing were unusual. They were visible only a short distance before disappearing. A few hundred meters above, they reappeared. It was as if they were driving through some invisible portal.

  “Why aren’t they disturbed by this?” asked Mary. “How do they stay on the road?”

  Darya explained the rules of the maze, and how the transition translated Partials into ten-dimensional beings but left the Fulls handicapped.

  At the edge of the road, Darya led them in what she thought of as the “charmed” direction. They emerged in another part of the hotel corridor. A man stepped out of a room a few doors down. Darya took a protective stance, ready to defend or attack if necessary.

  “Good morning,” the man greeted them, and he headed to the main stairs.

  Darya moved quickly, and stopped his door from closing all the way. She dragged the other two into the room behind her.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Timothy announced from the entranceway. The floor extended only a few meters beyond the threshold. The entire back half of the room was gone and in its place was open air. That alone might have been fine but the view was no ordinary street or cityscape. They were looking straight down onto the tops of buildings and traffic gridlock from a good kilometer above.

  The Footman’s instincts told him he should be falling; he pawed the entranceway for something vertical and solid to hold onto.

  “Great effect,” Mary whispered appreciatively. “This is the first time I’ve seen it simulated inworld.”

  Darya smiled. “I didn’t really expect this. It’s weird how the system combined local gravity and the ten spatial dimensions of the maze. On the plus side, it’ll make it harder for Trillian to find us. Let’s keep moving, though. He’s surprised us before.”

  She marched toward the open sky, pulling the other two along.

  Timothy kept his eyes locked on the floor. His senses told him he was walking toward a deadly precipice. He wanted to throw himself down and cling to the carpet, but he wasn’t going to let these two women appear braver than he was. He allowed himself to be dragged forward.

  Just before they leaped out into the open air, Darya led them “blue-ward” and they found themselves in the other half of the room, looking out a small window at the fire escape.

  “How did you figure out which way to move?” asked Mary. “I felt the direction you pulled us and I know I can move that way too, but how can you tell the floor continues in that direction and not others?”

  “You have to go by touch, not sight. At the boundary, I just stuck out my toe and moved it around in all possible ways until I could feel the floor.

  “Ah, okay.” Mary looked behind them. From this side, the half of the room they’d just left was no longer visible. In its place was a wall of water. The Hudson River? She took a tentative step toward the boundary and felt along the edge with her toe. At first, it met cold, murky water. After probing around a little, the tip of her toe disappeared from view. “I think I can feel carpet, here, in this direction.”

  “It will take some getting used to before you’re able to move around with any confidence,” said Darya. “Fortunately, the same will be true for Trillian. I’m hoping that’ll buy us enough time to figure out how to get around his blocks and get us back to our trueselves.”

  Mary glanced at Timothy. “What about him?”

  “If we can figure out a way back, we should be able to send Timothy into Gerhardt’s body.”

  “I’m not sure how much I’d like that. I’m quite content in this body,” said Timothy.

  “You’re not really in a body, Timothy. Remember? Right now, you’re just some code running on inworld hardware.”

  “Yes. And I have no idea what that means.”

  “I know. Just trust me. You don’t want to be here if Trillian decides to deactivate the local inworld sims.”

  “Do you think he’d go that far?” Mary asked. She couldn’t believe it would come to that.

  The Cybrids relied on the inworlds to help maintain the link to their ancestral humanity. While select inworlds had fallen into disfavor from time to time, and some had been permanently deactivated, none had ever been turned off while inhabited, not once in her exceedingly long memory. People could die that way.

  “I admit it’s extreme. But when was the last time you heard of a Shard hacking across inworlds? In fact, when was the last time you heard of a Shard inworld at all?”

  “You’re right about that. Trillian is unusual, and he’s driven.”

  “I think he’s determined to catch us, or at least me. It wouldn’t have been that hard to remove power to all inworld hardware and kill us. He could have ended the rebellion right there.”

  “Along with several million Cybrid deaths?”

  “Do you really think Alum cares about that? It might delay His program a few million years while He rebuilds the construction force. Just a blink of an eye for the Living God.”

  “Okay, so what’s your plan?”

  “First, we have to find somewhere safe, somewhere we can think for a while.”

  “Like where?”

  “What about Gerhardt’s office at the Fed? I still have my key.”

  “Are you forgetting that Trillian killed Gerhardt?”

  “No, that’s why it’s perfect. He won’t expect us to go there.”

  “You can predict what a Shard might think?”

  Darya almost reacted to Mary’s little dig but caught herself in time. Pushing back wasn’t going to help any of
them. “No, not at all. It just seems like our best choice. It’ll buy us a few hours or days to figure out how to get out of here.”

  “In that case, lead on,” Mary offered, and waved them through with an overly theatrical gesture.

  The pair followed Darya through the window, down metal stairs and a rickety ladder that rolled down to the alley. From there, they made their way through a folded ten-dimensional New York, from Lenox Hill near Central Park to Wall Street in south Manhattan. It was a long and difficult six kilometers, made harder by having to stop and feel their way forward at the ten-dimensional folds where they couldn’t follow visually.

  As they walked, Mary and Darya devoted most of their processing power to analyzing their predicament. The sight of two women and a man walking hand-in-hand didn’t draw more than moderate curiosity from people they passed along the way. After all, this was New York. Almost anything was acceptable if not already commonplace.

  Darya thought she spotted Trillian more than once while they walked. He would disappear around a corner before she could be sure. After a while, she attributed it to nerves.

  “I think I have it backward,” Darya realized as they passed through the neighborhood of the Empire State Building.

  “What do you mean?” Mary asked.

  “Well, you know how the Alternus inworld is different from the standard approach used in other inworlds?”

  “Yes. Usually, our minds remain resident in our bodies and just communicate with the virtual worlds.”

  “Right. Normally getting in and out is just a formality. The accepted gates or portals are a convention and only enforced by the Supervisor.”

  “That’s why we got trapped in Lysrandia that time.”

  “Exactly. Since my modifications, that can’t happen again.”

  “Except in Alternus.”

  “Yeah. I had to set it up differently. First, the normal communication bandwidth wasn’t broad enough to provide such a high degree of realism. Second, in order to inject the concepta virus, I needed full access to each Cybrid’s full mental system.”