Eventually I gave up and started walking. Almost right away, on turning around the nearest corner, I saw a little motor scooter parked in the shadows of a dark alley, right under the zigzagging scaffolds of a fire escape.
I won’t lie, seeing this little thing filled me with joy. It wasn’t a gyroscooter either; it was more of a leather chair with two little wheels and a steering column, the ancient kind. Still, the thing resembled a motorbike so much I had no doubt I could hotwire it and ride it. I’d spent all my life around real bikes in the Wakeworld, after all.
It turned out even easier than that. All I had to do was untangle some wire holding the fire escape ladder in place, then fiddle with the scooter’s ignition, quite symbolically, and the little machine came alive, its lights aglow and its engine purring.
What also came alive was its alarm thingy; a loud whistling device trying to inform everyone around that someone was trying to steal a motor vehicle from its parking spot.
“Hey!” I heard a shout from above, followed by the sound of heavy boots clattering down the metal scaffolding. “Hey you, stop now! Hey, I need that scooter, dammit!”
So I kicked the little thing into full gear and fled, its headlight still blinking and its little alarm box going crazy. Not one of the drivers on the road tried to intercept me — they parted and made a corridor for me, in fact, and I heard a couple encouraging shouts from the cars. I suppose this kind of thing happened around their NYC reality all the time — a bank robbed here, a car jacked there — so the locals were used to it and treated such events as a promise of a grandiose car chase they could watch and enjoy.
This wasn’t what I wanted, however. I didn’t know how to deal with the local police except for dying in a shootout or a car crash while they were chasing me around. Same as with the local criminals, the cops were hunters; many of them silly kids, yet some of them cybersportsmen. All of them were into it for fun, and when you commit a crime in here and someone calls the police and the whole party kicks off, you buy into a big game which you are not likely to win.
In any case, I didn’t want to even try. My scooter purring along the street and wailing like crazy, I quickly examined its construction. Just as I thought, it wasn’t as tangled and complex as the Wakeworld thing would have been. It was quite simple in fact: a fuel tank attached to the engine attached to the wheels and the exhaust; simplicity itself, like parts in a kid’s toy. I located the alarm pretty quick — and yes, it was housed in a separate little box right under the dashboard, connected to it with two colored wires. I snapped the wires off and the alarm shut up the same instant. After a short consideration, I tore the alarm out altogether and tossed it on the road, where it died a second later under the wheels of a huge oncoming truck.
No longer in danger of being spotted by police patrols, I pushed my stolen scooter to the limit, up to its highest gear. I buzzed through the dark tenement blocks of whatever shady New York neighborhood I had spawned in, entered a wide avenue with five lanes of traffic on each side, and soon saw the bridge to Manhattan towering in front of me like a giant gateway made out of Christmas lights. The river — was it called Hudson? — must have been immense, as the wind felt as wet and fresh in here as one expects to find on the coast.
Dodging the slower traffic, I entered the bridge and rode along under the repeating garland patterns of these shiny orbs and crisscrossing iron beams; the immense superstructure of the bridge rising and falling on both sides. All this illumination looked so impressive and festive I could hardly believe it all used to be real once, that there was a world where people would dress their bridge in garlands of shiny lights just to make it look pretty. In the Wakeworld, no one cares much about this stuff being pretty anymore. When robots build things, they make them as practical as possible, which rarely involves eye candy. Our future world is more or less an endless sea of towering grey prisms with IKEA interiors, and some pieces of ancient crumbling architecture with rotten insides thrown in between.
A striped wooden arm came at me so fast I simply had no time to react. Yes, it was a toll bridge, which meant I had to stop in the middle of it and pay for visiting Manhattan. I would have, honestly, it’s just I’d been watching all the pretty lights overhead and simply didn’t notice the roadblock — neither the booth and nor the red-and-white wooden plank protruding out of it and blocking my way.
I was hit pretty hard. In the Wakeworld, the impact would have probably been hard enough to kick me out of the saddle and send me flying, to be followed by my death, my fate reminiscent of that alarm box just crushed by a heavy truck.
This was the Gangworld of NYC, however, which meant everything was made to be scenic in the first place and traumatizing to the very minimum. The wooden bar did hit me on the chest, then it snapped and broke in two with a cloud of dust and a deafening bang. It did hurt, and made my ears ring and my vision blur, but I could hardly feel the momentum, like I’d been slapped across the chest with a rolled-up towel.
After a second, the feeling was gone, along with the special FX accompanying it. My body was as indestructible as ever, only killable by another human being.
“NYPD! STOP IMMEDIATELY!” A police bullhorn woke up behind me, its echo rolling above the dark waters. “Attention all units, the suspect is leaving on a red… miniscooter?”
A siren blared up next, an angry staccato only a human could produce, and new lights started to flash in my rearview mirror: red-blue, red-blue. I glanced over my shoulder. This was really bad news. My scooter was definitely slower than the police patrol car chasing me. It was quickly eating up the distance, and I knew it wouldn’t just stop when it caught up with my modest vehicle — it would ram into me instead, or run me over, and then collect me after I hit the asphalt, which might actually be painful this time.
I had to think fast, and I did. The oncoming traffic was roaring past behind a narrow concrete wall, waist-high, painted with black-and-yellow stripes. The scooter, though light enough, wasn't really meant for stunts, so I couldn’t simply jump over this strip of concrete, but I kept watching for an opening and I did see it up ahead — the concrete wall replaced by a short stretch of narrow traffic cones, fluorescent orange. I swerved my scooter to the left and rushed full-speed down the wrong lane, maneuvering between the torrent of blinding headlights and roaring signals coming at me.
The cops were stupid enough to follow, just as I hoped they would, being human. In fact, they had a pretty good chance to catch up with me and just roll along all the way on the other side of the wall. Even if I could make it to the end of the bridge without crashing the scooter, they could just stop me there in any way they liked.
They chose to follow, though. As fast as their cruiser was, its maneuverability was far from perfect at a speed this high. As I dove left and right, avoiding the other vehicles, I heard a loud crash behind me, and then another and yet another one, cars and trucks piling up against the cruiser they met headfirst — hopefully killing off its entire crew.
In any case, soon I wasn’t being chased anymore. Breaking the toll gate wasn’t a major crime in this version of NYC, and the cops I just offed didn’t really count as my kills, so I knew no one else would come looking for me now that I’d gotten rid of the only tail. All I had to do from this point on was survive the oncoming traffic.
As I rolled down the ramp and exited the bridge at Manhattan, I swear I was sweating like I had run five miles. I got very lucky, as I met no other openings on the way, with traffic cones or otherwise, so I had to navigate between headlights and blaring horns all the way to the other bank.
Fortunately, driving like this was not a crime at all. If you crashed your vehicle, you were punished with pain or even despawned — and that was it. A couple times I nearly bought it — my entire body hurt from desperate steering, sometimes assisted by the sole of my boot pressed lightly to the asphalt. The things I did to survive this obstacle course were insane, totally impossible in the Wakeworld — but the Dreamweb, esp
ecially its American part, is a land of entertainment and thrilling adventures, so my exploits were rewarded by a successful getaway.
My joints hurt like hell in any case.
From there, it was more or less easy — the virtual version of Manhattan wasn’t all that big, and there was a road sign on every corner and intersection. I felt like a winner all the way towards Third.
Then it happened. The diner from last night wasn’t there. Even worse, I couldn’t even recognize the avenue. I rode up and down and couldn’t see a single familiar thing about it.
No, somehow, everything had changed in this inexplicable, subtly disturbing way. I found another diner nearby, not the Bradbury, and it was closed, its windows boarded up. There was a park across the street, but it had neither a concert stage nor a pond — it had a fountain and a bowling alley instead. I searched the surroundings and even found the cinema, with Terminator 2: Judgment Day posters still up. I wasn’t sure it was the same movie theater anymore. This street also seemed disturbingly different.
I called out to pedestrians then.
“Excuse me,” I kept asking, “how do I get to Little Italy from here?”
The local people were genuinely surprised.
“Little Italy?” they replied. “Oh, it’s the other way. It’s a twenty-minute ride.”
Never in my life had I been so scared and unsure of what to do next, not in the Wakeworld and not in the Web. It was like a recurring nightmare; the whole familiar world subtly changed over a few hours, as if to poke fun at you. I did realize the Dreamweb wasn’t real and such things were theoretically possible — still, it all felt real. A cool autumn breeze on my face, the scooter purring under my touch, the smell of burnt rubber and the sound of police sirens in the distance — everything felt more than real, and I knew underneath this convincing reality, sinister forces were at work.
I knew I had to find Daphne no matter what. I felt like something terrible might have happened to her, and this thought kept haunting me and gnawing at me like an invisible annoying insect under my skin.
The police station at the corner of Third, and some other street I didn’t bother to look up, seemed empty and quiet. I knew there should be a few cops inside no matter what. It was their spawn and rally point, after all.
Two officers met me at a water cooler. They were drinking virtual coffee and trying hard to play real cops. They were obviously quite young in the Wakeworld — could even have been below the legal age. They seated me across the table and questioned me for a while, looking genuinely puzzled. After I finished, the three of us sat in silence.
“Umm, so, this lady who you say disappeared, so where do we find her?” one of them managed. His companion looked at him with a painful grimace, and the officer corrected himself quickly. “I mean, where shall we look for her, do you think? Is there a start location? Also, what’s the reward?”
“Folks,” I said. “I mean officers. This is serious. This is not a game scenario. Okay? I need you to pretend you’re real policemen for once.”
“We are real policemen,” the second cop said, frowning. He definitely took his position more seriously than the first one, so I turned to him.
“Look, something is going on,” I said. “And it’s something big. There was a diner on Third, and now it isn’t there.”
“So what?” the first cop asked. “These places disappear often; no one goes in there anyway.”
“Tell me this,” the second officer scowled at me. “You said you rode all around on a scooter. Is it yours? Or did you steal it?”
“It’s…” I was caught off-guard. “It’s mine of course. How else would I get around? Why would I steal a scooter?”
“I see.” The cops exchanged a stare. “Sir, you’re not a… New York City resident, are you?”
“No,” I said. “I’m a citizen of the European Union.”
“Umm.” The first cop rummaged under the table and pulled out some kind of board. “Umm, sir, could you please give me your right hand? Or the left one?”
“He needs to take your fingerprints,” the second officer explained.
“To check your ID and all,” the first one finished.
“Of course,” I said. The two cops looked so unsure and miserable I was only happy to help them deal with the formalities and move on. I offered both hands to them at once… and the more serious cop handcuffed me the next moment, then took a step back. I just sat there and stared at him in disbelief, the two of them staring back at me.
“You sure it’s him?” the first officer finally asked.
“Who else?” the second one replied. “It’s just like they said. He stole a scooter, and he’s looking for a girl.”
“So what now?”
“Now you take him to the docks, what else? I’ll call them and tell them to pick him up.”
The first cop shook his head. “No. Not before they pay us.”
“How else? What do you think I am, an idiot?”
And so the second cop walked me to the street outside, pushed me towards a parked police cruiser, and opened its trunk in front of me.
“Get in,” he said.
“What’s happening, officer?” I asked him. All kinds of thoughts kept rushing through my head like a whirlwind. Who called them? How did they know? Was it Mr. Reaper’s doing? What happened to Daphne?
“I’m sorry, citizen of the European Union,” the cop said, urging me to climb into the trunk. “The Cartel wants you for some reason. Not that it’s my business anyway.”
Then he slammed the trunk lid shut and I spent the next twenty minutes amidst absolute darkness — claustrophobic, suffocating, and impenetrable.
Who called them? I kept thinking along the way. How did they know? Could this be the same cops who attacked the Baron? Did someone send them to do that as well? Someone able to control the Dreamweb itself? Who could that be? And what happened to Daphne?
The point was — nothing could have happened. And no one could possibly control the Dreamweb except for computers themselves, this was also the point. Even the Wakeworld governments — they could, theoretically, request access to private information, they could even keep an eye on you if they had a warrant for surveillance, but that was it. No single human was allowed to manipulate virtual reality. No private VR spaces were allowed. Fifty years back, when sonotech just emerged, there were no laws and this stuff was normal. Many dark things happened in private virtual realities. Tortures, interrogations, extortions. Personal hells. These things got so gothic and decadent at some point that the Wakeworld governments had to intervene, and the new law was that computers must have supreme authority, watch over everyone, and prevent such things from happening again. Since then, the Dreamweb was solid, consistent, persistent, and transparent.
Or at least it was supposed to be that way.
The police cruiser stopped. The cop lent me a hand and I half-climbed, half-rolled out to the cement floor of some vast garage or warehouse; all metal racks and wooden boxes towering around me, rows of neon lights and crisscrossing iron beams overhead.
Before I could ask him anything else or even get up with my hands still cuffed in front of me, the police cruiser’s door slammed shut, its engine roared, and the car left, the big garage door humming down and locking in place before I had a chance to reach it and squeeze underneath.
I was left alone, handcuffed, powerless, and locked inside another box — well-lit and spacious, but as confined and suffocating as the trunk.
For the first five minutes, I was scared. I roamed around the warehouse, trying to find a suitable hiding place, yet there wasn’t one around. All I found was a workbench, some pipelines which were far too thin to hide behind, more wooden crates with unknown contents, and a forklift.
Next, I got bored. Then, I got angry.
Bent cops, a ride inside a trunk, an empty warehouse, the Cartel… I couldn’t help but feel it was all a stupid game for them, some cops-and-robbers miss
ion they had to complete to be rewarded for staying in character. They couldn’t see it was all getting far too real — the Baron’s disappearance, my Daphne being gone, the virtual world reconstructed. Weird stuff was going on all around us, and it didn’t look good at all.
Alright, I thought, gritting my teeth and trying to sift through the workbench’s many little compartments using my two cuffed hands. You want to play a game? I can play, too.
I found a spool of wire in the third compartment. I freed a piece of it using my teeth, bent it sideways, then managed to insert it into the handcuffs’ little lock. I wiggled it around a bit and the bracelets popped open the next instant. I was hardly surprised. This was an American part of the Web, and when I say American, I mean Hollywood. It was all about easy escapes and scenic shootouts. Even the physical laws of this Gangworld seemed to reward all kinds of criminal behavior, and I knew creativity of any kind would pay off immensely throughout the entire Web; this was set in stone.
My Wakeworld job being a bike mechanic, I was creative enough.
And this was the whole point behind the Dreamweb, the reason why it was supported and developed by the Wakeworld governments despite all its escapist decadent appeal. It wasn’t just meant for fun and leisure. The Web was built to educate its users and reward them for displaying practical knowledge. Most people made their living working in the Dreamweb alone. Everyone knew about the four basic ways to earn on the Web: sports, erudition, roleplay, and crafting.
It was the latter I wanted to put to good use. In another section of the workbench, I found a neat little crowbar, so the first thing I did was pop a couple wooden crates open to see what was inside.
They were full of construction stuff. The first one contained assorted pipes. The second crate was full of steel plates and rivets. The third one held a small air compressor pump and some welding tools.
The next thing I did was examine the forklift. I noticed some barrels on the upper shelves, high above. And sure enough, after fiddling with the little machine, I was able to start it, then to make sense of its three levers and two pedals, then to use my knowledge to pick up one of the barrels and lower it safely down to the floor. I’m sure I was rewarded for performing the task — being able to operate a forklift is a valuable skill — but I hardly had time to check my wallet for new cash and congratulation notes from a computer.
Enter the Clockworld Page 6