The cart I restored out of the caravan property dismantled by Daphne beforehand. It was a standard desert board meant for sand surfing. It used to have a large leaf-shaped sail of silk attached, so it would roll through sand on its thick wheels driven by wind, but my girl burned the thing down, and the sail was gone.
So I just went on and replaced it with my quad copter made of flying lanterns and reed.
Crafting . . . Flying Dragon
Sitting Dragon x1
DK Desert Boat, Small x1
“That’s it?” Daphne said, looking at my invention.
“That’s it,” I said. “Well, it won’t follow you around like your LR Personal Montgolfier would, you cannot just tether this thing to your belt and worry about nothing.”
“So how do you steer it around?”
“With a rudder. This sand board has all the controls you need, and the Sitting Dragon, once up in the air, will serve as its sail. You’ll have to adjust to the wind much more of course, but — no sandworms.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Pretty much. Anyway, we’ll walk without rhythm, and we’ll drop down a thumper once in a while, primed and ready. That’ll lure away everything, and we’ll be safe.”
If only I knew how silly I was when I said that.
We left at sunset, hoping to swallow as many sandy leagues as we could before the swift sun of Clockworld showed up in the east again. There, in the direction of the dawn, next to the sandy Crescent, lay the lands of our strange foe working from behind the scenes. Divine Kingdom. Pan Asia. The lands we called the Moon back when I was a kid.
I thought this was our enemy. And we thoroughly kept up with the masquerade, as much of it as we could muster while staying dressed like two Teutonic deserters, tired and ragged. I swear I felt like a hobbit who’d been there and back again and more. Yet our Flying Dragon ate up the distance quickly; its gondola drifting some four feet above the ground, loaded up with canned virtual food and fizzy virtual drinks in self-opening containers. We were quite content, even though tired out of our minds.
The vistas opening before us were never boring though. That’s the common Web magic: always a pretty picture, a romantic ridge of dunes, curious patterns in the sand, always a small goodie or gold coin to find here and there underfoot. Nothing like your Wakeworld life, devoid of meaning and direction. The desert around made sense, its breeze was fresh and full of spicy smells. These evening sands were beckoning, mysterious, made for a romantic adventure, and our plan to warn La Republique’s authorities about an invasion seemed to be working so far, so my thoughts were bright and merry like the setting sun.
If only I knew about the dark nightmare on our tail.
“Buff, I have a personal question,” I said as we made camp among the whispering cicadas and twilight sands, all tinted purple, pink, and violet.
“Ask it then,” she said.
Sliding above us was the beautiful outline of some predatory bird departing for the night, the first mysterious constellations already circling further above. We spread our military camping rolls along the handy, windless side of a dune.
“What do you dream about when you sleep here, inside a dream?” I asked her. “Is it also gasses, molecules bumping into each other, or something like stars? I mean, I dream of fireworks here, this is my dreamsaver. You know, festive, booming things, and then the Moon, and I wake up here again, if there’s still Web time. But you’re a — ”
“A Creep, yes,” Daphne said, looking at more and more stars appearing overhead, her eyes big and serious. “Do androids dream of electric sheep?”
“No idea,” I said. “Do they?”
“It’s a movie.” She giggled. “Or a book. Something ancient. I mean, yes, I think I dream actual dreams when I sleep here, don’t you?”
I didn’t understand her. “What do you mean, actual dreams? Of what?”
She turned her head and looked at me. “Are you serious? Dreams of what your imagination cooks up for you?”
“Imagination?”
Did she mean some mental app, or perhaps a device to help you paint an image?
“Fantasy? Hello?” Daphne kept staring at me in disbelief.
“Fantasy is a setting,” I said. “This desert, for instance, is quite fantasy-ish.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed, and then a gust of cool night breeze caught up with us, and Daphne remained silent for a while.
“Yes, I think we did lose something when we went digital,” she said finally. “We lost power over the next generations. And you turned into this.”
“Into what?”
“Forget it.”
She turned around and soon fell asleep, dreaming of her weird fantasy imagination or whatever this thing she meant was. I closed my eyes and saw shadows spinning, then boom-crackle-crackle — and the first complex flower of tiny glowing particles exploded before my eyes, and I felt like I was swimming through black invisible waters again, a passive standby sonodream one layer above the Web.
And then I suddenly was awake, like a timer inside the sleeping capsule had decided to pull me out…
Except I wasn’t in the Wakeworld. I was back in the desert, Daphne sleeping nearby, many stars and constellations glittering above my head — and there was the Moon, the bloated dramatic moon of Clockworld dominating the sky, a single pin of a cloud chasing it.
Then, as I watched the Moon, I heard another sound, and it was like a fluttering of giant wings above. I even thought it was another predatory bird trying to hunt us down or steal something of our inventory — the desert was full of these nasty little surprises. I tried to sit up, but something, some invisible field, pushed me back down, forcing the air out of my chest. So I looked up and there, all across the Moon, a shapeless dark shadow was quickly forming, which then became rectangular, and then I was snatched right off the sand.
I merely watched in amazement, first the sand surface scrolling past, then Daphne sleeping on her cot, growing smaller and smaller, unaware of me being pulled away. I wanted to call out to her but I could not speak, crushed by the force of this swooping upward spiral. Desert fell away and dissolved into darkness, and soon I was swimming through empty space, nothing beneath me but the ocean of black; the Moon upfront, and constellations swirling all around.
The silence up here was absolute. In strange jelly-like slowness, I prodded the surface underneath me.
It felt like a carpet. It smelled like a carpet, like dewy and moldy carpet fur. And yet it gave way under my touch like it was stretched across thin air.
“Yes, it’s a flying carpet,” I heard a voice from behind me, a deep and terribly familiar voice.
I sat up and turned around, and there he was — his face hidden under the dark cowl, only the pair of eyes glittering in the dark, playing with electricity. James Reaper, the Ethereal Archmage.
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s all an illusion of course. It’s just a gravity well, a few local physics laws bent and exploited for administrative measures.”
“What to do you want from me?” I asked, watching his steady white hands resting on his knees. Mr. Reaper even bothered to sit like a magician.
“First I’d like to question you, Benjamin,” the dark figure said. “Just a few hours ago, by the Standard Wakeworld Time, I asked a simple thing of you. What was it? Let me remind you. I asked you to stay away from here. Don’t go online. Leave the girl alone for a while. Let us figure out the situation first. Was that what you did?”
“Look, I told you it wouldn’t work this way,” my answer was. “I told you I must be with her. I did tell you where to find us. You think you’d see through her Pan Asian camouflage? Or find us without the map I left behind for you? You think you’re this powerful? You fellows must be really insane.”
“I’ll show you something,” Mr. Reaper promised me without moving an inch. “Pan Asian, you say? This is an interesting choice of words. PAC belongs to your w
orld, not mine. Or hers.”
“You promised you’d leave my world alone,” I said. “And I wanted you to make them let Diego out. I promised you I’m done with all these virtual games, and I am done. But I want to know everything before I go.”
“Everything?”
“The meaning of all this,” I said. “Who are the Ethereals, and what are your goals, your plans? I need to be sure you’ll keep your promise and leave us all alone, me and my friends in Academia.”
The face under the cowl let out a long sigh. James Reaper said nothing, but the flying carpet took a sharp dive, and I had to grab its furry side as my body slid down its bulging surface. I set myself straight and looked. We were above nothing special, merely another breathtaking postcard view of the desert at night.
Then the carpet landed, whipping up a cloud of hissing sand, and we disembarked in turns, the rag still hovering and fluttering a couple inches above the ground. As soon as we jumped down, it rolled itself up and stood upright for James Reaper to pick up and fix behind his back like a long furry pole.
“This is the nearest thing to a limo I can afford in this Clockwork place,” he told me. “I apologize for the discomfort.”
Mr. Reaper approached a massive boulder — a pretty-looking boulder but not special among the others like it — and pushed it away.
This is when it got seriously disturbing. The boulder moved, same as others around it, and same as the sand itself. The entire panorama seemed to budge and flex, and then a gap opened in the air, with another world shining through, sort of like a glistening and rippling watery sphere hanging above the ground, big enough to step in.
“A doorway,” I said. “I think the last one I saw looked like more of a door.”
“Wouldn’t it be out of character?” Mr. Reaper asked me. “A wooden door standing right in the sand, in the middle of nowhere? Look around! We’re in the world of 1001 Nights, Benjamin.”
He said it as “one-oh-oh-one nights,” in this unpleasant mechanical manner even computer voices don’t use these days.
I stepped into the sphere, which felt a bit like a giant can of cool fizzy drink splashed into my sunburned face, and I was surprised to smell books and wood.
Then, as it happens in a dream, I suddenly found myself walking through a real door, a small and mundane room emerging from darkness to greet me, an ancient-looking waiting room with an old leather sofa and a water dispenser in one of the corners.
Mr. Reaper caught up with me then. To my surprise, he was no longer wearing a robe and a cowl. Now, he wore a simple old-fashioned business suit. He rattled a ring of metal keys, unlocked a door in the back, and walked us into an office — a non-descript business office in some corporate tower, the vista of New York skyscrapers behind full-height windows. Mr. Reaper clicked the light on, pointed me towards a leather chair, and went for the coffee machine.
He said: “I had a strong feeling you’d be more comfortable if we talked like this, and not in this pathos-filled desert setting. You see, the desert often infects people with messiah complex, or so I’ve found.”
I felt isolated from Daphne and uncomfortable. I didn’t like to see skyscrapers behind the window, me still dressed in Teutonic rags, spilling sand on the office carpeting. It felt like a wrong kind of dream, one I had no powers in, an exclusive dream of this man in front of me.
He saw my discomfort and flashed me a smile. “Alright, alright, we’ll take you back, I promise. Or rather, I’ll show you a place up ahead, and you’ll return from it like you were on a scouting mission.”
Mr. Reaper poured two plastic cups of coffee, something unimaginable, both in 2099 where plastic is restricted (or we’d die buried under huge mounds of it), and in Clockworld where there’s no plastic (because in 2099, plastic is restricted). The US Web worlds use tons of plastic though, because otherwise no one would find them authentically American.
“The reason I wanted to talk in this environment is it makes me look much more ordinary, more human, doesn’t it?” James Reaper handed me a cup of stinky machine coffee and lowered himself on the heavy redwood table across from me. His business suit was immaculate, but the man inside was relaxed and friendly as ever, radiating fake warmth and flashing his smile around, not really bothering if you take him for a good or a bad guy.
“I understand now who the Ethereals are,” I said. “They are the DCs who think too much of themselves. It must seem quite real to you, this virtual world and your status in it, since you’ve got no other world to care for.”
Mr. Reaper raised his eyebrows, looking like a diplomat who just heard the dumbest thing ever but pretended it all to be a joke.
“See?” he asked. “You want me to be another human being. No matter what, I must be human. So I will be. Why not?”
I opened my mouth to say something more, but James Reaper raised an index finger and interrupted me.
“You know, Benjamin, my father was a military man. He sent me to West Point — you don’t know the place, it used to be in the Wakeworld, a military school — and I spent pretty much my entire youth in there, learning important stuff about life.”
I shrugged and sipped my coffee. It was just disgusting enough to be a good imitation of the real thing. Mr. Reaper went on:
“So, you see, Benjamin, back at school, we laughed at guys like you, little busy fellows, always holding something in their hands, examining it with all their seriousness, always unaware everyone is making fun of them.” He flashed me a smile. “And yet, can you believe it? When my company saw some real action, years later, when I was a field commander, these calm busy guys, little guys, they were the key. The percentage of them among survivors was incredible. They always remained calm, and useful. They didn’t rush into battle like romantic or bloodthirsty types. I used to think I needed to be bloodthirsty, or even a romantic, in order to be a good soldier. But it turned out it’s best to be this alienated nerd to whom it’s all a game, someone whose hands are always busy, building stuff, repairing stuff, modifying stuff. This was of real use, not our own stupid sacrifices in the name of nothing! This was when I really started to respect you guys!”
James Reaper clapped me on a shoulder. And I, I coughed and splashed around my hot coffee. Mr. Reaper’s cold eyes stared into mine. He went on:
“These spy games though, they’re not your games, Benjamin. In these, you’re nothing. You will never win a spy game.”
I coughed harder. Poison?
“Not poison, Benjamin. Something to make you talk.”
I stared at a poster behind his back. It depicted the Moon.
The Moon?
And then I woke up.
***
It was pure darkness, empty vacuum around him first, and Ben had to remember his usual life-saving tool — the ancient book about space astronauts and their VR training, cruel and primitive. Find yourself stranded in empty black space? First locate the sound of your pulse. Think of it as something you must smooth out, make flat. As soon as your pulse rate drops below the levels of shock and paralysis, move on to controlled breath. Breathe in every time you count to three. Breathe out slowly, counting to three. Examine your reflexes, enable your body awareness. Take the measures you can to make locating you and saving you easier.
Ben knocked on the insides of his sleeping capsule.
Spark didn’t answer.
Ben knocked again and again, trying to keep his pulse steady and his breath controlled.
POP! The capsule opened to the sudden smell of bleach and blinding xenon lights. Ben realized his metal cocoon was unlatched from the ceiling and moved halfway towards the exit from the concrete cave.
There were two ninjas standing in front of him, their headbands bright red, their faces unseen except for the Oriental eyes, staring through a slit between two scarves of dense raven-black gauze.
One of them was offering him something. Ben picked it up and heard the voice of Francis Kowalski murmuring in his ear, an
audio recording. In the background of the professor’s speech, fireworks popped and crackled and crowds chanted — the big Wakeworld revolution rolled on, its motives and causes still unclear.
“Ben, you have to follow these men to safety,” the professor’s druidic tenor told him. “I will meet you there and explain everything. Don’t worry about us. Academia was evacuated. I repeat, Academia was evacuated successfully. We left behind a team to create distractions, but that’s it. Susan and I are safe. I still have nothing on Diego. Kowalski out.”
Ben rose and looked at the two ninjas once more. “Aren’t you the fellows who torched my workshop?” Ben asked them.
“We are not responsible,” one of them said with a heavy Vietnamese accent. “We tried to stop it, disarm the bomb. We tried to warn you before the bomb. All in vain.”
“So you were the ones who Diego… Wait, do I know you?”
“Yes,” the answer was. “Yes, you do know me, because my name is Tranh.”
“Tranh? Are you serious?” Ben looked at the figure clad in a black ski suit, its face hidden behind two scarves of black gauze. It was impossible to tell from his eyes if he was telling the truth.
The figure nodded. “But you must follow us.”
And then the two ninjas turned around and left without bothering to wait for him, like they knew Ben would have to follow them no matter what. He stayed in one place for a while and cast a final glance around the huge vault carved within a huge pile of rubble, then hurried after the ninjas.
The area outside Academia’s celestial hideout was free from the raging crowds of revolution. Still, marauders and vandals were aplenty here. No one looked strangely at ninjas escorting Ben — their attire fit the spirit of the deserted blocks real well: two masked hooligans escorting a fresh-awoken, scared citizen. No one even glanced their way.
“What’s happening?” Ben asked.
“It was a place where many anti-protesters lived,” Tranh explained to him in this thick Wakeworld accent. “It was designated for pillaging by the powers of revolution, on some secret Web meeting. Now everyone knows if you want some real world fun, you must come here, break some windows, or make a wall smudgy all over with your spray can. Everyone wants to leave their trace now, in the real world.”
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