The Rising Tide

by J. Scott Coatsworth

  “It was beautiful.” Eddy looked wistful.

  “Who’s Jackson?” Shandra asked, frowning.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Andy said. “Let’s see where this leads, shall we?”

  The rock wall had hidden a dry cavern. Eddy looked around the place. It was about fifteen meters wide and half that deep, with a low ceiling just a meter above his head.

  He had to remind himself that all this had been built by the world mind. So much detail in this artificial world!

  Andy was touching one of the walls and frowning.

  “What?” Anything that made her uneasy made him uneasy too.

  “I can’t sense anything.” She looked around, her eyes narrowed. “It’s like we’re not even on Forever.”

  “What does that mean?” He tried his loop. There was no answer.

  “I don’t know. Something’s blocking the world mind here? It’s like the dead zone outside. I don’t know how to guide us.”

  “Um, guys?” Shandra pointed to a dark corner of the cavern.

  A perfectly round doorway opened from the cavern into a long tunnel. The tunnel itself was rough, natural-looking. But the precision of the doorway left no doubt about its human origins.

  Andy touched the smooth curve and jerked her hand away as if she had been burned. “Holy crap! It’s like it’s seething with energy.”

  Eddy touched it. “I don’t feel anything.”

  “It’s underneath. There’s something keeping this doorway open. Like the trap they set for you. Whoever did this knows how to leave commands in the system, like an application that keeps running after they leave.”

  “Are you two sure we shouldn’t go back and tell someone?” Colin asked.

  Andy shook her head. “I’ll go out and send Dad a message, but this guy might disappear again if we don’t stay on his trail now.”

  Eddy nodded. “I agree with Andy. Aaron knows where to find us. We should go after these guys now. Once we know more, we can call in the posse.”

  “All right. But no one barges into anything. We take it slow and steady.” Colin glared at each of them again.

  “Deal.” Andy put out her hand.

  Eddy had a bad feeling about all this.

  AARON LOOKED around. It was Frontier Station, down to the last detail. He could even smell the subtle lavender scent they used to keep the air fresh. The floor was hard under his feet, as centrifugal force created an artificial gravity. He could see it down to the minutest detail.

  And yet it was absolutely empty.

  “What do we do now?”

  Lex shrugged. “We look around. Did your father ever tell you about his past? Any of it?”

  Aaron thought back. They’d had long conversations in vee space these last few years, filling out the portions of each other’s lives they’d missed after Jackson had died. “Some of it. A lot of it, actually. When I was a kid, he used to tell me how he met my mother, here on Frontier Station.” He looked around. “She was a waitress at the Blue Moon Café.”

  “That place?” Lex pointed behind them.

  Sure enough. It was a long retail space that followed the curve of the station, filled with tables and chairs, with a bar along the back, fronting the runway of Frontier. “Yeah, that’s it.” The blue neon sign overhead said “The Blue Moon.”

  “It seems like as good a starting place as any.”

  Aaron nodded.

  I used to walk by the place every day, trying to work up the courage to go talk to her.

  Jackson’s voice echoed in his mind. So this was where it had all happened. And one day, his father had gotten up the nerve to sit in her section.

  Aaron entered the café and looked around. The place, like the rest of this virtual version of the station, was deserted.

  He looked down in time to see the green-and-blue ball of Earth roll by against a field of stars. He gasped.

  Stars, shining against the empty blackness of the void, spun past beneath his feet. And there was Earth, before the Collapse. The place of his childhood, of humanity’s childhood, that was no more.

  Lex steadied him. “You okay?”

  Aaron nodded. “Didn’t expect that.” He looked around. “He used to sit in one of these booths with the stars at his feet, but he only had eyes for Glory.”

  What had changed between them? Why had his father denied Glory her passage into this virtual heaven?

  Aaron paced by the booths, finding a table at last that felt right. “I think this is the one.” He couldn’t say how he knew. “Should I sit?”

  “Sure. We’re trying to find any traces he might have left behind—clues as to where he went.”

  “Got it.” Aaron slid into the booth, setting his hands down on the cool plas table.

  The station exploded into chaos.

  Busboys wiped down tables and carried away piles of plas dishware. A hundred patrons sat around the place, chatting, eating, and taking in the view, dressed in the fashions of at least thirty countries.

  “Shuttle to the Fargo Skyhook departs in fifteen minutes from Hangar Seven.” The AI’s voice was dry and loud.

  What the hell? He must have triggered something in the simulation when he sat down. None of this was real. His companion was gone. “Lex?” he called. There was no response.

  “No one named Lex here, sunshine.” A blonde waitress gave him a broad smile. “I’m Andra. Can I get you something to drink to start off?”

  Aaron closed his eyes and tried to contact the world mind.

  Nothing happened.

  He opened his eyes to find the waitress still staring at him. “All right, I’ll give you a couple minutes. If you need anything, just give me a holler.” She winked and moved on to the next table.

  “Thanks,” he muttered, acutely aware he was talking to a simulation.

  Where had Lex had gone?

  No worries. I can just wake up and then reconnect. Must be a glitch. He tried to back out of the system to wake himself up, but nothing happened.

  He closed his eyes and tried the manual protocol. “Disengage.”

  Still nothing.

  Aaron was starting to panic, his virtual heartbeat racing. He jumped out of his seat. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?” He looked around wildly—he was stuck all alone in this simulated space station. Surely Lex would come for him.

  A hundred heads turned to stare at him and then went back to their meals.

  “Hey there, calm down. You’re okay.” A beautiful woman with long black hair, tied behind her neck, guided him back to his seat. “Space gets to some of us after a while. They call it Spacer Sickness.”

  He allowed himself to be seated and looked up into the eyes of his benefactor. “You… you’re Glory.”

  She smiled. “Yes, I am. You been stalking me or something?”

  She was a lot younger, more like she had been when he was a child. But it was her. She was beautiful. Aaron could see how she had stolen his father’s heart.

  Aaron’s own heart started beating faster. He closed his eyes and slowed his breathing. You can figure this out. He tried to remember the stories his father had told him about this place.

  “You okay?”

  Aaron opened his eyes again to see her looking down at him with concern. “Yeah. I think so. I will be.” He looked around the restaurant. “Just a little dizzy. It’ll pass.”

  “Good. Hey, you’re that guy that works in hydroponics, right? Jimson? Jason?”

  “Um… Jackson?”

  “That’s it. Andra said you’d been staking out the place.” She winked at him. “I’ll get you some water.”

  “Got anything stronger?”

  “How about some Moonbeam? Got a fresh batch up from Luna Colony today.”

  “That’s perfect.”

  “Be right back.”

  “Okay.” He knew where he was now, and what had happened. If not how or why.

  He’d dipped into his father’s memories.

  DAVIAN STOOD on the wide balcony Gun
ner had constructed for him, surveying his domain, the broad cavern he’d named Agartha. He loved the dark beauty of that name, the history. He was the master of his own little world within a world.

  He’d built his own little empire under the mountains, after the chance discovery that the mountains were hollow inside. The world mind had needed to be thrifty with its materials, apparently, both to conserve them for other uses and not to create such a great weight along the world’s girth that it would present a danger of throwing the whole world off-balance, or even collapse it entirely.

  That much he’d surmised.

  Davian was proud of what he had accomplished here. What had been a vast, dark space lit only by tiny veins of cave moss was now a small world unto itself. Judicious harvesting of plants from the outside world yielded light during the day, and luthiel lanterns burned smoke-free at night.

  The new lambs grazed contentedly on a patch of grass along one edge of the small town where his people lived in perfect harmony. There was no crime in Agartha.

  His people were the dregs of this new society, drawn from the refugees who had arrived just before the Collapse of Old Earth. Young and old, rich or poor, none of them had the skills to fit into the new egalitarian society being built by the fools outside.

  Here everyone had a purpose. He assessed them and gave their lives meaning, creating in the process his own great society.

  Soon it would be time to impose it on the larger world outside.

  Chapter Six: Zombie Mountain

  DEVON POWELL stared up at the arc of the world. “Might be the last time I see it.” He’d come a long way in Forever, from showing Aaron Hammond around on his initial visit to the new world to his planned extra-Forever sojourn now.

  Rafe laughed. “You’ll be fine. Just think, you might be mankind’s last astronaut.”

  Devon rolled his eyes. Why he’d decided to take on this mission, he had no idea. Sure, it seemed simple enough—out to the new asteroid, Isis, place a few charges to stabilize her rotation, and then come home. In reality nothing in space was simple.

  “You ready to go?” Ana asked through his loop. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

  “Is she bugging you again?” Rafe grinned.

  “Yeah, gotta go.”

  Rafe hugged him and then gave him a big kiss, one of those only-in-the-movies, passionate, over-the-top ones where he leaned Devon down with a theatrical flair. “Wherever you are, whenever you’re lost, I’ll always come for you,” he whispered.

  “Devon….” Ana sounded impatient.

  “Promise?”

  For his answer, Rafe kissed him again.

  “Okay, I really have to run. Love you, Romeo.”

  “You too, Puck.”

  They parted.

  Devon climbed aboard the shuttle and took his seat in the pilot’s chair.

  Technically Ana was the pilot. He was only a passenger.

  Still, he would see the stars.

  He waved to Rafe as the shuttle ascended, until he could no longer see him below.

  Then he closed his eyes to rest, as much as he could manage, on the ride out to the asteroid.

  ANDY RAN her hand along the smooth side of the tunnel, wondering why she felt absolutely nothing but the cool touch of stone. It was disconcerting.

  All her life, she’d been just a touch away from another world. On Transfer Station, that was Ronan’s world, the station mind. He’d created hundreds of lands for her to explore and had been both her playmate and confidant.

  Even now, six years later, his death still stung. Sometimes she wished she had faith, like her grandmother. It would make things easier.

  Here on Forever, she’d been able to access the world mind, in small ways by playing with its subroutines and in larger ones by talking with Lex, Ana, and Jackson themselves and exploring their worlds.

  But now, for the first time in her life, she was cut off. Like one of her arms was missing.

  She sighed. If she couldn’t divine things from her extra senses, she’d have to make do with the five she had.

  The three of them had decided to proceed as silently as possible, since their voices would carry a long way in the confined tunnel. Everything was done with hand signals—a hand on the shoulder for stop, a tap on the back for go.

  Andy pulled Eddy to a stop.

  The moss that usually grew in Forever’s rainwater tunnels grew there too, casting a green glow and looking anemic and sad. These tunnels had been created by the world mind as it built out Forever and were used to carry runoff into the reprocessing systems, or stomachs, as her dad liked to call them.

  Eddy shot her a questioning look.

  She knelt and touched the ground. It was bone-dry, which was probably good for them, as it meant less risk of a flash flood sweeping them down into the bowels of the world.

  It meant something else too.

  It had rained the day before, rather heavily. The stone should at least have been damp and the moss thriving.

  Someone had rerouted the plumbing under the mountains. Surely it was the same someone who had left a trap for Eddy or whomever would be foolish enough to follow this trail. Somehow they had created a dead zone here, around their camp, where the normal rules of Forever didn’t apply.

  They were more than just a small group of outlaws or marauders.

  Andy gestured for a halt and placed her palms flat against the side of the tunnel. She closed her eyes. She was in absolute darkness. She felt around for something. Anything. Any bit of connection to the world mind. There was nothing.

  Andy shivered.

  “What is it?” Eddy whispered into her ear.

  “This whole thing is bigger than we thought.”

  He nodded, looking suspiciously down the tunnel ahead of them.

  On the plus side, if she couldn’t access the world mind down here, her unknown adversary probably couldn’t either.

  “Do we go on?” That was Colin.

  “We have to.” This was too important to let go. Andy shivered. Something bad was coming. She could feel it. If she had a chance to stop it, she’d have to find out what it was.

  AARON SAT in the middle of Jackson’s quarters on Frontier Station. He’d found his way back there after his encounter with Glory at the diner.

  The room was cramped, a square cubicle maybe two by two meters. On one side, there was a small utilitarian cot, on the other, a tiny white plas desk with a few knickknacks.

  Aaron looked around the room, wondering what his father’s life had been like here. Aaron had spent a chunk of his own life on a space station. It was a strange place for a human being to spend time. We were made to live under a blue sky. Not in a tin can.

  Aaron picked up the photoplas from the neat, uncluttered desk. It brightened as he lifted it, showing a picture of his father in an AmSplor uniform, with Luna Base in the background.

  He flipped the photo, and this time it showed Jackson standing in front of a garden—probably the Frontier Station garden he was charged with maintaining. Jackson had often spoken about it and how he had loved taking care of the plants. How Glory would come and spend time with him there, almost like a real date.

  Aaron flipped it again, and it showed a scene from New York. The drowned city was beautiful in its own postapocalyptic way, the old skyscrapers covered in ivy. He reached out to touch it, and the colors of the world swirled around him.

  Aaron’s stomach lurched, and he fell to his knees, throwing up on the rough gray ground. His virtual stomach emptied itself, leaving a foul taste in his mouth.

  He stayed there, one hand half-buried in gravel, until the nausea passed.

  Aaron got up on his knees and looked around for something to wipe his mouth.

  What the hell? He was on a rooftop covered in plants, a virtual jungle in the heart of a city. A cloth lay on the ground next to him. He picked it up and sniffed it. It was greasy, but it would have to do. Carefully he wiped the sides of his mouth.

  He threw it asid
e and stood to survey his environs.

  The roof was about twenty meters square, and it was covered by makeshift pots and garden beds. Black irrigation lines snaked through the man-made jungle, all running to a water tank at one corner, hooked to a condenser unit. The condenser was old, patched into working order with an impressive array of scrounged parts, including part of a trombone, some flexible plas piping, and loads of duct tape.

  The water tank looked far older, and with all the rust at the edges, it was a minor miracle that it held water at all.

  He turned to look the other way and gasped.

  It was New York City. The Big Apple. Hundreds of superscrapers reached for the sky around him, and below, the waters of the Atlantic roamed the city unchallenged.

  What a glorious place it must have been in its heyday, before it was drowned by the rising tide. Even now it was stunning, rows upon rows of feats of human engineering that would never be repeated in his lifetime, or likely even the lifetimes of his great-grandchildren.

  Though she was a sodden mess now, the city retained some of her former glory, like an elderly Hollywood actress pulling her green shawl around her shoulders in defiance of those who were ready to pronounce her dead.

  There was still life here, of both the vegetable and human kinds. Rope bridges crossed the canyons between many of the buildings, a primitive answer to the new challenges imposed on the population by Mother Nature.

  Boats plied the canals below, both “real” ones and rafts and craft lashed together out of urban debris.

  One of the rope bridges connected to his building was swaying.

  “Jackson!” A boy in his late teens bounded across the rickety structure as if it were made of concrete.

  Aaron’s heart lurched to see the way it swayed.

  “Yeah?” May as well play along and see where this led.

  “The Boss wants you.”

  Who the hell was the Boss? “Where is he?”

  The boy smirked at him. He could have been Huck Finn from the tri dee—barefoot, his pants rolled up, and a straw hat on his head. “Very funny. Come with me, I’ll take you to her.”