The Deplosion Saga

by Paul Anlee

  “What, you don’t like the décor?”

  “A little stark and utilitarian for my tastes.”

  “Well, you’ve spent most of your existence in the lavish halls of Casa DonTon.”

  Timothy sighed. “Yes, this place does make one homesick.”

  “I could de-instantiate you and return you to your former position as a Partial, if you’d rather.”

  “You can do that?”

  Darya couldn’t help laughing at the horrified tone in his voice. “Sorry, a poor joke. Don’t worry. Your security is solid. No one will be messing with your persona without your permission ever again.”

  “Thank goodness for small graces.”

  They had arrived at Secondus a few days earlier after a meandering voyage through local space. When the rock appeared out of the blackness, Timothy had never been so happy to see solid ground.

  That felt like ages ago. Darya had shown him around and he’d committed a map of Secondus to memory. Sadly, there was no part of the asteroid base that fueled the imagination. From the small recharging station where they filled their matter-antimatter tanks, to the numerous labs, to the endless tunnels, the place was stark and ugly.

  “Why do I need beauty in this world when I can have all I want and more inworld?” Darya had challenged. He had no good answer. So, he spent as much time as he could in the Recharging and Reconnecting room, as Darya called it.

  A little R&R time in the virtual fairytale lands Darya had designed was a welcome respite from the harsh reality of this universe and from the virtual training ground where he’d spent the past months.

  They turned off the corridor and into a bare, nondescript room.

  “What’s this place for?”

  “Mary is still trapped in Alternus. I need to see if I can help her,” Darya answered.

  “Wait. You want to go back in there?”

  “I have to,” Darya answered flatly.

  “But if you go back to the recharging station, you could be captured or killed.”

  “I don’t need to go anywhere. I can access Alternus from here.”

  Timothy noticed the pair of interface stations at opposite ends of the chamber. “What if you’re discovered?”

  “The main risk is that they could trace my signal back here. That’s of minimal concern. I route my interface through a variety of small satellites; if anyone starts tracing the network back toward here, I can simply blow them.”

  “But wouldn’t that trap you in Trillian’s insane inworld?”

  “No, I’ll leave my trueself here and just send in a puppet Partial.”

  “Like what you sent to me when I first woke up in Gerhardt’s body?”

  “A little more enhanced and less independent.”

  “I don’t understand; how would that work?” he said.

  “I’ll maintain a constant link to the Partial. It will transmit back to me in real time and I’ll set general directives for it to follow while it moves around inworld. Operating a Partial completely by remote slows it down too much, especially over these distances, so I have to give it a fair bit of autonomy on the details. I’ll be able to sever the link and erase the Partial instantly if I get into an untenable situation.

  “Don’t worry; there’s no danger,” she added.

  Timothy didn’t look convinced. “If there’s no danger, why are you taking such precautions?”

  “Okay, there’s always some danger. In this case, the biggest problem will be if I inadvertently alert Trillian and have to leave before I’ve learned anything useful.”

  “I don’t imagine I can talk you out of trying?”

  “No.”

  Timothy heaved a long, tired sigh. “Very well, then. I’m going with you.”

  “You’ll only complicate things.”

  “We’ve already been through this. I’m useless to you out here on my own. It’s too new and foreign. Even with the updates you’ve made to my concepta, I can’t manage your revolution without you. Remember?”

  “It’ll be dangerous,” she countered.

  “You just finished trying to convince me that it wasn’t. Besides, I’ve been training for this a long time,” he replied.

  The force of his determination surprised Darya. “Are you honestly looking forward to going back to Alternus?”

  “Truthfully, it’s a little boring here and, as you pointed out, Mary needs our help.”

  “Did you just manipulate me into taking you inworld?” For a moment, Darya wished Cybrids had faces; she was sure Timothy’s would be wearing a smirk.

  “Are you suggesting I could outsmart you?”

  “I may have let my guard down. Briefly.”

  “Well, you won’t make that mistake again anytime soon, will you?”

  “No, I promise never to underestimate your skills, or your wit, again.”

  Timothy moved over toward the nearest interface station. “Then, let’s get going, shall we?”

  18

  Mary’s virtual consciousness floated in a haze of golden light sandwiched between two infinite jade plains.

  She manoeuvred through clouds of words and symbols, lines and circles, images and neural networks that, collectively, comprised the high-level representation of her software and knowledge base. The plane above represented the inworld simulation in which she was trapped; the plane below, her concepta. Between the two was the most fundamental level of her operating system, the BIOS.

  Some areas appeared hazy or patchy; others were clearer. She recognized the latter as sections of her BIOS machine code that she’d rewritten into a programming language she could follow. The crude, inelegant code even in those areas revealed her shaky understanding of her connection to this simulated prison.

  It’s rudimentary but I’m making progress.

  Given more time, maybe a few more years, she’d have no trouble unravelling the program and turning the odds to her favor. But she didn’t have that luxury; Trillian could be back any minute, and this time, he wouldn’t be in the mood to go easy. She was pretty sure of that.

  What other tools and powers did you bury in my system, Darya? Is the answer already inside me? I’ve let you down; I didn’t make the time to explore the tools you gave me and now it could cost me my life.

  If I make it out of here, I’ll have some homework to catch up on. In the meantime, I’ll just have to make do with what’ve I’ve got.

  She went back to thinking about the Alternus program. There’s got to be a weak point here somewhere. One more time, what do we know?

  The simulation runs on its own quark-spin substrate. It’s grown on the same spintronic microchips found on inworld computers. Some routine or subroutine would have to connect the simulation code to its exotic hardware.

  Which means….

  The beginning of an idea was germinating. Mary struggled to coax it forward into her consciousness.

  Which means….

  Which means…. Come on, think!

  Which means, somewhere in the billions of lines of code that make this prison cell, there’s a connection between Vacationland and the basic Alternus code. And from there, to the quark-spin hardware.

  That’s it! If I can just find the code and figure out how to interface with it, I’ll have Darya’s ability to hack the inworlds. I can get out of here!

  Except, I have no idea what the routines look like. How am I going to find the interface in all that code? She looked with despair at the billions of instructions streaming by in the plane overhead?

  It didn’t help that her present environment was less than optimal for concentrating. I have to keep trying. If I don’t find a way to win against Trillian, what little time I have left in this life will be painful.

  I just need more time.

  The drawn-out creak from the rusty prison door hinges penetrated her concentration. He’s back!

  Mary opened her eyes. Not one but four Trillians stood at the entrance to her cell, all wearing the same smirk. She blinked and shook her h
ead to clear it. Was she seeing double? Rather, quadruple?

  “Come for another chat, have you?” she said to the Trillians.

  The left-most Trillian answered for all four. “Not exactly; it’s time to take our little game up a notch.”

  Mary stood up and took a strong stance. She was ready to confront him. Correction, them.

  Since becoming a guest of Trillian’s special hospitality, she’d been working out intensively, something unheard of to inworld Cybrids. Why would anyone exercise when you could simply change your avatar’s body type on a whim? When Trillian cut her off from the Vacationland Supervisor, that all changed. No more commands or requests. No ordering up any physique she wanted. If she wanted something, she was going to have to make it happen all by herself.

  More proof that the realistic physics of Alternus has leaked into this inworld. Alternus had been the first inworld she’d ever heard of in which people had to exercise if they wanted to become stronger.

  And so, for the first time in her long existence, she threw herself into building up her muscle naturally, through hard work. She was determined not to be held back by the physical limitations—the burden—of her defiantly overweight, under-muscled inworld body choice.

  Her efforts had paid off. Her bulky avatar had grown slim and solid, and her mind had become sharper through rigid discipline and determination.

  The four Trillians advanced, and Mary backed away warily. As she retreated, she relaxed her body and breathing. She held her hands open in front of her in a standard Wushu stance—another gift from Darya—left hand in front, both palms up.

  She glanced around for a weapon. A short wooden pike with a metal tip on a nearby tabletop was the closest thing she could find. Where did that come from? No matter. Keeping her eyes on the men, she lunged for the pike, secured it with one hand, and yanked hard toward herself

  Ow! Her fingers came away empty and scraped. Surprised but not ready to give up her prize, she grabbed the pole with both hands. The rough wood tore the skin from her hands but didn’t budge.

  The Trillians laughed in concert, rushed forward, and grabbed her arms and legs. She’d been tricked, again, by Trillian’s control over everything in the room.

  She struggled but they held her fast. They lifted her onto the tabletop and secured her wrists and ankles in iron cuffs. Heavy chains ran from the cuffs to a large, ratcheted wheel.

  She put on a brave face. “Really, Trillian! The rack? Could you be any more cliché?”

  Inside, she was petrified. Not the rack!.

  The four Trillians stepped back and watched Mary pull futilely against her bindings. The Trillian closest to the head of the table turned the wheel enough to take up the slack in the chains.

  She braced herself. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Exist outside your perception of pain.

  The Trillian at her side looked on with the appearance of compassion. “I am sorry about this. Truly. I’d hoped that passing a little time alone here might make you more amenable to cooperation. Sadly, you’re more stubborn than that.

  “You’re right, of course.” He looked around the cell with distaste, “Once recognized as such, this inane parade of psychological threats has no more effect on a strong-minded Cybrid than a circus fun-house.

  “But I promise you that this, however cliché it may be,” he said and patted the slab supporting her, “this is going to be different. So I’m going to give you the courtesy of asking you again, nicely, to cooperate. If you do, we can be done with all this nasty business and set you free.

  “I would really rather not hurt you. That’s the truth, but you’re not giving me any choice, Mary. Alum has ordered that this rebellion of yours be quashed, and placed me in charge of carrying out his command. I will do whatever is necessary to fulfil my duty to The Living God.

  The wheel tightened a fraction more, pulling Mary’s arms and legs uncomfortably taught. She could no longer twist or pull. She stopped resisting and let her body slump in the device.

  “Don’t worry, dear,” one of the Trillians said. “You will feel pain and it will be excruciating, I assure you. But the damage won’t be permanent. Not today. This is just a taste of what’s to come. We’ll return another day, and do this all over, and over again if needed, until you tell us where Darya is.”

  “Please…” she whimpered.

  “What’s that?” Trillian said, moving his ear closer to her mouth. She lunged her face upward, snapping, but he pulled away before her teeth could clamp onto his flesh.

  “You’re going to regret that,” he snarled. He nodded, and the Trillian at her head wrenched on the wheel. The chains tightened several more centimeters.

  Mary’s body exploded in agony, and her screams echoed down the outer passageway. It took her minutes to return to her senses. Her joints screamed, and every limb felt stretched to the limit, just short of tearing.

  One of the Trillians extracted a scalpel from a roll on the table and held it up for her to examine. The jagged, rusty blade was sure to make a painful mess of anything it cut.

  Mary’s pupils contracted as she focussed on the knife. She sobbed shamelessly. “No. No, please,” she begged.

  Trillian moved his face closer to hers. She could smell his breath and feel the puffs of air on her face as he addressed her in a quiet, sweet voice.

  “It’s entirely up to you, Mary. You will tell me everything you know about Darya, where she is, and what she’s planning. You will tell me today, or tomorrow, or the day after. But you will tell me.”

  He placed the cold blade against her sternum. He signaled to one of his other selves to tighten the rack a little bit more.

  Mary cried out as every last bit of slack was removed along the length of her spine and limbs.

  “First I’m going to open you up,” Trillian said in a cold, diagnostic voice. “Then, I’m going to release your entrails.” The blade traced the proposed arcs along her stomach. “And then, we’re going to see how you like the stench of your own guts burning.”

  She yelled and clamped her eyes shut, anticipating the searing sting of the first slice. It didn’t come. She waited.

  Nothing. The room was silent. She opened her eyes.

  All four Trillians were staring, mouths agape, at what she’d been calling the Window to Hell. She followed their gaze.

  Darya and Timothy stood on the other side, flames licking at their legs, swords drawn. They stared back at the four Trillians surrounding Mary.

  No one moved. The seconds drew out.

  Darya’s mouth worked silently, and tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Mary didn’t need to hear to understand what Darya was saying. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Two of the Trillians popped out of existence, and instantly reappeared on the other side of the glass, beside Darya and Timothy. The Trillians grabbed for the intruders, but a blinding flash forced them backward. When they could see again, Darya and Timothy were gone.

  The Trillian standing over Mary glared at her. “We will continue this tomorrow,” he growled. The four Trillians gathered at the door. As if by afterthought, the last one to depart waved his hand back over his shoulder, and Mary was released from the rack.

  She looked to the window but it was dark and empty again save for the eerie glow of the flickering flames below. She was alone again.

  Was it really Darya and Timothy at the window, or did I hallucinate that? It must have been, or why would the Trillians have left so abruptly?

  Mary rolled herself off the table and collapsed onto the cold floor. She agonized her way to the nearest heavy wooden leg, slumped against it, and gave into her pent-up tears.

  She knew better than to get up her hopes. Clinging to hope could be deadly here. Besides, it was likely just another ploy to crush her spirit.

  If so, it was pretty effective. I’ll give him that—she told herself. She couldn’t help but to hope.

  What if it was them, what if they did come for me? And where did they go?
Did Trillian capture them, too? Or worse, kill them? Oh, Darya, you shouldn’t have come. I hope you got away.

  19

  Darya and Timothy emerged in a dingy hotel room in Alternus.

  “Hey, I recognize this place,” Timothy said. He opened the characterless stain-resistant curtains and looked outside at a jumbled New York City.

  Nothing had changed since they’d escaped that madhouse some months ago. The streets and buildings still ran at impossible angles, and a section of the Brooklyn Bridge still protruded into the air halfway up the wall opposite the window. He pressed his hands against the glass to steady himself as he marveled at the urban tangle before him.

  “Switch your vision to ten dimensions; it’ll all fall into place,” Darya advised.

  He adjusted his virtual perceptual processing. Buildings, streets, and sidewalks arranged themselves into sensible order.

  “Yes, that’s better,” he said.

  Something was still odd about the scene, though. He let the rhythm of the city permeate his mind.

  Most of the people were walking along calmly as if there were nothing different about their world. Others were gingerly feeling their way along, carefully checking the sidewalks before them with outstretched umbrellas or toes. They’re not relying on sight alone. It looks like they can feel but not see the 10-D twists in their paths. Interesting.

  Timothy watched for a while longer, remembering how lost he felt last time he was here. So many mindless carbon copies, all on their way to…whatever they’re on their way to. Copies?—his eyes flitted up and down the street.

  “Trillians,” he hissed. “Dozens of them!” He grabbed Darya’s arm and tugged her away from the window.

  “I see that,” Darya replied nonchalantly. “They’re everywhere.”

  “If Trillian has clones of himself all over out there, how will we be able to leave this room?”

  Darya waved her hand between them and transformed into yet another Trillian.