“Here we go,” said Ani. “Get ready for the fun.”
Junco knew to expect anything other than fun. He then saw what Ani saw. A massive column of metallic liquid was rising up from the sea, less than a hundred yards from where they were seated. The column slowly grew in height and width until it blotted out the red sun completely. Then it started to spin. Junco expected it to start moving like a waterspout would but it didn't do that. It was as if an invisible hand was turning the water column on a giant invisible lathe.
First a tapered base appeared, broadest where it touched the sea. Then an embossed ring and then another tapered section. On top of this section a new shape started to form, that of a horses head. While the apparition was taking shape it was also changing color and substance. The metallic gray of the sea was being replaced by black stone with fine white marbling . This whole scene seemed to be playing out in real time which meant that it was happening at an incredibly fast pace. Only a minute had elapsed in the Jupiter Moon which meant that everything they had just witnessed occurred in under a tenth of a second. The object, which Scoter identified as a knight and which Junco and Teal recognized from the alarming Chess sim had now stopped spinning. It was now looking off to one side.
The knight then raised itself several feet above the water, and moved in the direction it was facing, until it was exactly in the middle of the view from the Moon. It then turned, facing the bar head on. Then it started coming towards them. Ani closed his eyes, and started to mumble furiously. The giant black stone object grew rapidly as it gained speed and headed for the bar. Ani looked up, and said. “That should do it. But we need to get behind the counter Now!”
The next second there was an almighty crash. Thousands of pieces of black onyx like stone came flying through the open front of the bar, sticking into the walls, counter, floor and ceiling. Teal was the first to emerge. “Everyone Okay?”
“I'm good.” said Junco. The others echoed him. The pieces of stone embedded in the Jupiter Moon then all returned to their liquid metal state and dripped from their resting places onto the floor. The white surfaces repaired themselves.
“Well, I'd call that one a draw.” Ani continued. ”There was a message there though. Somehow the rogue Mechanik knew about the chess sim that the good Mechanik set up. That is news.”
“Any news from elsewhere?” Asked Teal.
“Hold on one second.” Said Ani. “I've set up an internal encrypted link that should hold for a couple of minutes.” The others jumped into the link and were privy to what Ani was receiving.
18. THE GOOD MECHANIK – A SMALL VICTORY
They were looking out over the water at the scene unfolding before their eyes. The table stretched out across the metallic water and the red sun was setting directly over the vanishing point. The figures seated along both sides of the table started to hum. All of them, all humming exactly the same note. There was no discord, no dissonance. But there was also no harmony. The sound was not a chord but a single sustained note with no undertones, no flavor or nuance.
The volume grew, slowly at first then faster. Now Junco was covering his ears but it made little difference. The sound was inside his head – inside his bones. It was as much a part of him as his muscles or nervous system. Teal and Scoter looked as if they were in agony and Junco knew that he looked no different to them. Ani was a different story. His expression was serene, as if he were undergoing a deep spiritual or religious experience. Junco could see that he was part of the note, that he was a small part of the noise that was obviously something more than noise to the Mechanik.
The crow-like birds were gathering but they would not go anywhere near the source of the note. Their squawks were cries of anguish. Junco had never heard a sound like it. It almost made him feel sorry for the black mass – almost.
Tears were streaming down Teal's cheeks. Her eyes were swollen and red. Scoter was in a similar state. Only Ani appeared deeply and profoundly unaffected. Suddenly there was a thud. One of the monstrosities that Junco, Teal and Scoter were now empathizing with
fell out of the sky and exploded on the table in front of them. Entrails and blood where there had previously only been smooth black stone. Then another, and another. It was raining big ugly black birds.
The note had leveled off now. It was not getting any louder but it wasn't getting any quieter either. Scoter and Teal were past the worst of their distress and Junco suspected that he was to. The gross scene unfolding in front of them was infinitely preferable to the rising intensity of the note. The table was now piled high with feathers and guts yet there wasn't as much as a mark on any of the two rows of the Mechanik. The sea surrounding the table was no longer visible. It was now a mass of black slowly rising and falling.
The red sky was again visible and there wasn't a single bird airborne. The collective had ceased playing its note and a calm had descended.
Junco turned to Ani. “What just happened – that noise, that single note was awful. I never want to be around that again.”
“It probably saved your life,” said Ani. “That note was the carrier wave for a stream of pure code. That code weakened then broke a very specific part of every bird's circulatory system. The same blood vessel on every bird was targeted. To be more specific it was one of the vessels that feeds the heart muscle.”
Teal jumped in. “You mean that the birds all suffered heart attacks.”
“That is about the strength of it,” confirmed Ani. “More than worth being slightly inconvenienced, I'd guess.”
“Fair enough,” said Junco.
19. NEON COVE – THE RIPS GET BIGGER
The group found themselves back in the Jupiter Moon, sitting at the bar and staring down at the metallic gray silver liquid that was now puddled on the floor like mercury.
“We have a big problem.” Ani said. “Down at Neon Cove.”
“The rips?” asked Teal.
“Yes, they have gotten bigger.' replied Ani.
Junco asked. “How much bigger?”
“Wait a second, and I'll try to show you. Comms are really flaky at the moment with all the stuff that both sides of the Mechanik are pulling but I did manage to get a bead on this.” The long white wall opposite the bar counter became a projection screen and a three dimensional rendering of the now-battered Cove appeared on it.
At first Junco thought that the dancing, twisting black shapes were interference caused by the ongoing battle but then he realized that he was looking at the tunnels, the rips in the fabric of Rubidium Beach. Now though, they were inches and in some cases feet across and not microns as was the case up until very recently.
The group watched the screen intently and it was Teal that noticed the pattern. The nothingness was growing overall for a couple of minutes then receding for a similar amount of time. The two sides of the Mechanik were obviously fighting hard. The rogues had obviously made gains but it was looking as if the good Mechanik had dug in and were holding their own.
This state of affairs did not last for long though, maybe ten minutes in Jupiter Moon time, less than a second in Rubidium Beach time. Suddenly the tunnels exploded in size. The diameters at the openings were now measurable in yards. Now that the whole scenario had scaled up it was possible to see more of what was happening. The things that went to make up Neon Cove were folding into the tunnels. It was as if reality was pouring itself down thousands of tiny black holes.
The tunnels were now getting much larger and were beginning to collide with each other. When that happened, they merged. It wasn't long until the tunnels could be measured in hundreds of yards. Whole shrubs, mile wide strips of mirror tile and gallons of liquid metal were being swallowed. Nothing was snapping or breaking, it was just becoming like rubber then disappearing. A few seconds later there was nothing – just black on a white wall. Ani stopped the projection or whatever it was.
The atmosphere in the room was suddenly heavy. All of them, apart form Junco, had strong emotional and material ties to Neon Co
ve. Ani often said that Neon Cove was his favorite part of the Beach. Scoter had even set up what could loosely be called a business from his recently demolished shack. No more surfing the storms with the Terminals for Teal. She had watched at least a hundred of their number disappear down into the blackness. Even though they all were ecstatic at the moment of their death Teal felt numb. Even the ones who called her a weekender or poser she thought of as friends.
20. RUBIDIUM BEACH – NO WAY OFF NOW
Ani kept the group updated fro the next hour or so. There were losses as parts of Rubidium Beach were either destroyed or taken by the rogue Mechanik. There were also some small victories as the rogues were pushed back from areas that they had already seemingly won. Of course the real battlefield was the ones and zeros of the code that underpinned Rubidium Beach. One side would get past some defensive code and launch what was to all intents and purposes a virus and the other side would battle to rewrite the damaged code and to shore up their own defenses as best possible.
Rubidium Beach represented a lot of code, millions and millions of bits of code. The battles were raging within many different parts of the code. Teal, Scoter and Junco were witnessing a very small part of the action – the surface part, the one tenth of the iceberg. For Ani things were very different. He was seeing and working on all the layers of the problem – underlying code and overlaying the visual representation.
The outer parts of the Beach were suffering the most, as these represented the easiest to get at code. Ani's security could be viewed as a series of concentric circles with the Jupiter Moon and White Room combination being the innermost circle. What had become known as the 'Black Knight Attack' shook Ani up a lot more than he let on to the others at the time. This hit at the heart of his creation. Granted the attack was fended off without any great difficulty but that wasn't the point. The rogue Mechanik had managed to launch an attack from and in Ani's backyard. The destruction of Neon Cove was sad but not as tactically important. That strip of the Beach had been under attack for longer than any other part of the Level and was becoming more compromised by the second.
Ani had got message out to all of the Beach's inhabitants that things were likely to get really bad. He also issued a reminder (though he was sure that none was necessary) that death was very real on this Level, and that mortal injury and failure to get to the body shop was the end. Despite the fact that death was a very abstract concept to those who lived on the Beach, the majority took heed and dropped back down to Level Zero to wait things out.
Of course a few stayed behind, the thrill seekers, the ones who feel invincible and the terminally disorganized. By now they were deeply regretting their decision or indecision. There was no longer any way back – all methods of dropping down the Levels had been cut off by the fighting.
21. THE MECHANIK LINES UP
The white wall opposite the bar counter went dark again. “Something big happening here,” said Ani.
Teal asked, “And where exactly is here?”
“About six miles along the coast heading west – the opposite direction to where Neon Cove used to be.”
The projection wall suddenly came to life and the sun was green. A great big green disk hung in the sky in exactly the place where a red one should have been.
“Why are they doing this? It doesn't make much sense.” said Teal.
Ani replied, “I suspect that the sun's color is a byproduct of something else.
“But the sun here is still red,” Junco said looking through what had once been the Jupiter Moon's front wall.
“Which means that the effect is very localized,” said Ani. “As far as I can tell, it is only green when viewed from about a mile of the shoreline.”
The metallic sea liquid was also changing. It was no longer like the sea through the opening of the Jupiter Moon, or for that matter the mercury like puddles on the floor. It was becoming clear. Not just clear like normal water but clear to the point where it almost has no impact on light at all. The mirror tiles were now visible right out to the horizon. Only a very slight shimmering and rippling indicated the presence of a layer of liquid on top of them. Even looking out to where they knew that the depth of water could be measured in hundreds of yards, the mirror was almost perfect.
Then the liquid vanished altogether and two long onyx like tables appeared. They ran parallel as far as the eye could see. The gap between the slabs was around twenty yards. Their width was about two yards. Something was happening out on the horizon. Ani zoomed in on that part of the scene. Four very long columns of people were walking in apparent slow motion towards what used to be the shoreline.
At this point the scene cut and restarted again with each column occupying one side of a table. There were no seats and the individuals were standing.
“So this has already happened then?” said Junco.
Ani replied. “Correct. Very recently though.”
“One side dressed in white robes and one side dressed in black – that's a bit corny isn't it?” asked Scoter.
“That is just the way the coding chose to interpret it. Remember that, to a large extent, this is all analogy – a model so to speak,” Ani responded.
“So the guys in black are the rogue Mechanik?” asked Junco.
“I think so,” Ani replied. The view changed almost imperceptibly and Ani continued. “I've just brought the view up to date so we are now watching in real time.” The Mechanik stood at their tables, all but motionless.
22. THE JUPITER MOON – FULL SCALE ATTACK
Ani was in the middle of updating the others on some minor skirmishes that were happening on the southern outskirts of Rubidium Beach when Teal pointed towards the horizon in front of the Jupiter Moon. Something was happening out in the distance. A thin black jagged line was coming towards them. The line was thickening as it got closer. The pink sky was being torn apart. Within a minute the crack had reached the Jupiter Moon, which meant that events were unfolding very quickly in Rubidium Beach time. The rip had moved miles almost instantaneously. The gap was widening, not as fast as it had lengthened but at an alarming speed nonetheless.
Then another crack appeared. This one ran at right angles to the original one and, as far as the group could tell, followed the shoreline.
“Okay Ani, tell me this isn't as bad as it looks.” pleaded Junco.
Ani replied. “Unfortunately it is every bit as bad as it looks. The rogue Mechanik have just scored a massive win.”
The cracks in the sky were widening in some places and narrowing in others. Junco assumed that the good Mechanik and Ani were running some rearguard action to attempt to repair the damage. Their efforts appeared to be pretty futile, though, as the cracks in the sky were increasing in both number and size.
Then the whole room shook, an initial massive shock followed by half a dozen smaller ones indicated that something very bad was happening very close by. Ani broke his intense concentration and looked up. “It was the body shop. Something either from one of the cracks or a piece of the sky itself just landed on it. Next door is now nothing more than a very big crater.”
Junco realized the significance of this immediately. “So, if we get injured here we stay injured – even if and when we go to the other Levels?”
“Yup, whatever happens from here on in you are stuck with,” said Ani. “Mind you, I think the chances of not being killed today are very, very slim.”
“Gee thanks, a pep talk would have been better,” said Teal.
Stuff was now falling out of the sky all around them. The view through what used to be the front of the Jupiter Moon was a surrealist nightmare. Bits of sky were falling and creating bits of sky shaped holes wherever they landed. Other stuff was coming out of the cracks, some of it familiar and some not. Vegetation and cracked pieces of mirror from the now gone Cove were among the more recognizable bits. Several Terminals were also falling from the gaps – ,more slowly than the inanimate things. The oddest thing was not the inane grins that they were all we
aring but the fact that about half of them were very much alive.
The Terminals could also perceive the Jupiter Moon, a fact that baffled everyone including Ani. The live ones landed on their feet then proceeded to walk towards the Jupiter Moon. Of course it took a while for the group to work this out as the walk was a painfully slow one and movement was as imperceptible as that of an ancient clock minute hand. To the four in the bar it appeared as if dozens of manically-grinning statues had just landed. Of course some of the Terminals went straight down the holes created by the pieces of falling sky. This struck Junco as more than a little ironic.
Junco then stood up, and without saying a word, walked out into the chaos that was Rubidium Beach beyond the confines of the Jupiter Moon. Everything suddenly sped up. The Terminals were no longer statues but were walking towards him at normal speed. The sky was cracking all at once. Many objects were crashing to the ground every second. The noise just added to the pandemonium. As soon as the first few terminals had crossed the Jupiter Moon threshold Junco followed them into the bar. He was outside for maybe ten seconds yet the best part of three hours had passed inside the Jupiter Moon.
Half a dozen Terminals were rolling in the mercury like pools that dotted the floor. “You idiot!” yelled Teal.
“Huh? What's the problem?” asked Junco.
“Next time you are going to pull a stunt like that at least tell us,” said Teal.
Ani said, “Bet it's a lot more scary out there than it looks from in here.”
“Much.” Junco agreed. “I had no idea just how fast it was all happening – out there really is hell.”
As he spoke another piece of sky created another massive hole – this one completely cut the Jupiter Moon off from its surrounds. Now there was no way out – at least through the front.
The Rubidium Beach Series - Episodes 1 Through 4: Cyberpunk/Dystopian Science Fiction Page 13