Chapter 4: Elizabeth: a little catching up to do
She had been using the same old link bed model for twenty years. Now that Wu had unplugged her from the old beast, she could see how much the technology had changed.
She imagined Wu must feel the same way about the new her. The patient he had called Kemushi ('woolly bear') had emerged from her chrysalis. The abrupt remission of her symptoms must have shaken him, she thought.
He had known her as a paralyzed physicist in real life, and a blind and complacent avatar in virtual space. Now he had to deal with her as an alert and bossy professional.
To his credit, she believed he was secretly delighted. She had been afraid that coming back to the real world and reestablishing ties with her husband and daughter would leave Dr. Wu feeling left out, stranded on a sand bar of reverse transference. But he showed no signs of it.
It was only expected that she would have difficulties reentering normal life. For one thing, her body had been lying down for twenty years. While the early model medical link bed had kept her brain active, her lungs breathing, and her body chemistry balanced, it had been unable to exercise her muscles and joints and tendons fully, the way the new models could.
For now, she was back in the Realm of Bushido, holding Manny's hand and watching a sunset that could last as long as they wished.
“It's funny,” said Manny. “Darla thought I was being sentimental, refusing to start dating again. All those years everyone kept telling me you must be dead. I couldn't believe it, but I couldn't think of anywhere else to look. And all the time you were in PanGames under a different name. You were in there with her and none of us knew it.”
“I thought you and Darla were dead, too,” she said. “It was a conspiracy of coincidence.” But she felt a stab of guilt as she said it. She had not gone to Dr. Wu to grieve. She had gone to hide. If she had not been so busy hiding from the UE Strategic Weapons Division she might have discovered Manny's whereabouts in short order.
But how could she explain that to her husband?
“Darla was always worrying about me staying a widower,” he told her. “I swear she was trying to set me up with Agnes...or maybe she just learned that bringing Agnes up was an easy way to change the subject when I bugged her about studying. She's majoring in engineering now. Her acorn didn't fall far from your Physics tree.”
“Engineering? That's your influence, your practical genes,” she said with a smile. “Remember the time you jury-rigged a stretcher from a pair of skis and a bearskin? Me, I would have been examining possible configurations, but you just grabbed what you had and made it work. I think our daughter is more like you. I can hardly complain, since you are the one I fell in love with. If she were a physicist we'd probably argue in equations and be competitive.”
“Oh, I don't know,” he answered. “We both know engineering is just applied science. And science is applied mathematics. For all we know she could change her mind next month and decide to become a mathematician, or a programmer.”
She just shook her head. “If she's like me, do you really believe she would change course? With my math and your stubbornness?”
He laughed softly. “You have a point. But she's been through a lot lately. None of it happened in the 'real world', but it still happened.”
“Actually,” Liz corrected, “It all happened in the real world.”
“Huh? It was all in virtual space, in the computers.”
She sighed. “Yes, dear, but everything that people experience while logged into the virtual world of PanGames is the result of spintronic quantum computer programs – which I know is a mouthful but the computers still run in the real world. The imaginary world is built on real calculations. It's founded in the real world.”
“So what you're saying is that Aes and Am-heh, that they were...”
“...were real-world entities interacting with us via the virtual world. Yes. Some coordinating awareness had to interfere with the PanGames hypercomputer in order to manifest them. Call them whatever you want: angels, demons, gods, whatever. They're out there, and they're real. Trust me,” she said, and shuddered. “I know from direct experience.”
He turned to look at her. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Am-heh wanted to prove he wasn't just a human role player, so I asked the PanGames system to let me share memories with him,” she said. “He was real. I can't remember all of it, but he was mortal, once.”
“You're saying he was a ghost?” he asked skeptically.
“I'm saying he was a god.”
“Don't talk blasphemy,” he admonished her.
“I'm not. I'm not saying Am-heh was God. I'm saying he was something between us and God. One of the little 'g' gods. More than human, but less than the Creator. Angel or demon or Nephilim if you prefer. Superhuman. Whatever. He was real, not some souped-up simulation. And unlike Aes, he knew what he was doing here.”
“And what was that?”
“They were both pawns in a chess game of gods,” she said. “And the game isn't over yet. I saw that in Am-heh's memories. There are at least two groups of these entities, and they're fighting for dominance. For dominance over Earth.”
Manny brushed a strand of golden hair away from her face. “And how long has this been going on?”
She shrugged. “That's hard to answer. You'd think it would have been settled one way or the other a long time ago. I can say for certain that Am-heh's people, the Children of Nuit, have been operating here since the Pharaohs. They attached themselves to the civilization in Egypt back when it was called Khem.”
“So the other group came here only recently? Did they have anything to do with Roswell?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “They've been here almost as long, attached to the civilization on the other side of the Mediterranean. From Am-heh's group, we got the Egyptian gods and goddesses. The other faction gave us Greek mythology. We might as well call them the Olympians.”
“But...if they've both been here so long,” he objected, “then why isn't the struggle over yet? Are we humans the meat in a stalemate sandwich?”
“I don't pretend to understand it all,” she admitted. “You'd think that two bullfrogs in the same small pond would sense each other's presences. But it didn't happen. The Children of Nuit didn't realize they had competitors here for quite a while. It must be because of the fundamental difference between the two groups.”
“I don't understand,” he told her. “Are you saying they can only sense the presence of their own species?”
“Not exactly. What fooled the lot in Khem was the fact that the Olympians were founded by an alien named Cronus who mated with a human. Her child was Zeus, the first of the hybrids, and he – ”
“Now wait a minute,” he interrupted. “I may not be a scientist, but I do remember that different species cannot usually interbreed. And even when they do, their offspring are sterile, like mules. Something about needing to have the same number of chromosomes.”
“Correct,” she agreed. “But the rules are different for these beings who, for the sake of discussion, I'm calling the 'gods'. Technically, they have no physical bodies, having left all that behind when they Transcended to the next level of awareness. They can, however, create temporary physical bodies compatible with the local lifeforms.”
“But if they made human bodies and mated with humans, the offspring would be just...human, wouldn't they?”
“Could be,” she agreed. Or the incarnated god can tweak the DNA of the fertilized egg to fast-forward it on the evolutionary path. It's impossible for us to imagine how to do that, but apparently it's something a god can do easily. In that case, the child will be superhuman, a demigod, and he or she will Transcend to the next level of awareness when the physical body dies, instead of reincarnating in another body. Cronus made some of these demigods, and then he left Earth, apparently.”
“Why didn't the Egy
ptian faction do the same thing? Create demigods?”
“It's against their rules,” she explained. “Cronus was some sort of misfit or renegade from another group. All of the normally Transcended follow an ancient set of protocols called the Covenant. It specifies how different groups are allowed to fight over client species, and it prohibits making demigods. They're supposed to leave evolution alone, but Cronus broke the rules. By the time the Children of Nuit discovered what had happened, there was another group of gods here, descended from humans. As far as the Egyptians are concerned, our Transcended are bastards, technically. But since the Olympians are Transcended, the aliens have to fight them to own us.”
(End of preview)
Other books by Matthew R. Kennedy
Gamers and Gods
Gamers and Gods I: AES
Gamers and Gods II: MACHAON
Gamers and Gods III: ALEXANOR
The Metaspace Chronicles
Pathspace: The Space of Paths
Spinspace: The Space of Spins
Tonespace: The Space of Energy
Gamers and Gods: AES Page 81