Waking Hell

by Al Robertson

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘We’ve come to see Cormac.’

  ‘You’ve just jumped us away from him,’ grumbled Leila.

  ‘No I haven’t. The Flurrytown Cormac was about to tell you to fuck off. Quite rightly, I have to say. So I bought you here. To meet my own little version of him. He’ll be happy to answer all your questions.’ She sounded very pleased with herself.

  Feeling that she had no choice, Leila started towards where East seemed to be. ‘I don’t trust you,’ she called out.

  ‘But I’m a god,’ replied East, sounding surprised. ‘And I want to make you a star. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Not these days, no.’ Leila sighed. ‘You of all people should know that. After all, you and Grey stopped Kingdom.’

  ‘Oh, I’m nothing like Kingdom.’ Her voice echoed round the room. ‘Or the Rose, come to that.’

  ‘You might still have fallen to Deodatus.’

  ‘If I had, you wouldn’t be able to do much about it. It took Grey and I thirty years to build the weapon that killed Kingdom. And we’re divine.’

  ‘Hugo Fist?’ asked Leila.

  ‘Jack and Hugo. The dynamic duo! But you’re nothing like them. And all this is so different too.’ She clapped her hands delightedly. ‘We’re just making it up as we go along!’ And then, in a more confiding tone: ‘My life is so scripted, Leila. You really wouldn’t believe. So refreshing to go off-piste like this.’

  ‘People have died,’ Leila called back. ‘And I’m losing my brother. I need to get him back.’

  East didn’t reply.

  As she walked, Leila examined the sculptures. Most showed people frozen in deep joy. Some looked thoughtful. A very few were almost sad. All gazed up at the dome, staring out into the light. The detail of each was extraordinary. Wrinkles fell like spider webs across shining faces. Individual eyelashes blazed. Folds and wrinkles softened hard, metallic clothes. Every single one was different. The only thing the statues had in common were their bases – round discs, about half a metre across.

  ‘What is this place?’ shouted Leila. ‘What are all these statues?’

  She broke out of the crowd. East and a man she recognised as Cormac Redonda waited on a small platform set against the room’s wall. There was a conference table, surrounded by chairs, and beyond it a window, filled with stars.

  ‘Hurry up,’ urged East. ‘This is a very important conversation.’

  ‘Don’t be so harsh,’ chided Redonda. ‘The slow travellers can be a big distraction. Especially when you’re seeing them for the first time.’

  ‘Thirty seconds of distraction was useful,’ East told Redonda, ignoring Leila. ‘Then I had all the establishing shots I needed. Now we’re just wasting time.’

  ‘You’re filming this?’ asked Leila, looking round for cameras.

  ‘Of course I am,’ East told her. ‘Pervasive micro drones. Honestly, I thought you’d take all this in your stride.’ She sounded disappointed. ‘Especially after the last few days.’

  ‘I’m not here for your benefit,’ Leila shot back. ‘I’ve come to talk to Cormac. If all you can do to help is drag us to some random location because it looks good on camera, then lecture me – well, screw that.’

  ‘Oh, we’re not just here because it looks good,’ replied East.

  ‘Then what is this place?’

  ‘Let’s start with the slow travellers,’ said Cormac. ‘They’re fetches. Just like you. But they’re travelling in time. Those discs they’re all standing on are individual fetch servers. They’ve each installed themselves in one, then slowed themselves right down. For them, a decade passes in an instant, a century in a moment. A couple of breaths, and we’ll all be gone. A few more, and they’ll arrive in the deep future.’ His words were passionate, but his tone was oddly flat. ‘This satellite was built to house them.’

  Leila wondered how it would be to close her eyes, then open them again, and find that centuries had passed. For a moment, she was jealous of the silvered fetches, of the ease with which they could leave the problems of the present behind. ‘Well, that’s very nice,’ she said, as she climbed up next to them. ‘But why come all the way out here?’

  ‘Because this is one of the safest places between here and Mars,’ replied Cormac, ushering her over to the table. ‘Very heavily shielded. With excellent comms if we need to escape in a hurry. It mounts an ultra-high bandwidth maser comms array that could blast a hole in Jupiter – so it can connect to pretty much anywhere in the Solar System and shift every fetch here to it at the speed of light, if it’s ever compromised. And hardly anyone knows about it.’

  ‘That’s why I bought you here,’ said East, sounding a little put out. ‘You can talk with Cormac in complete safety.’

  ‘And then you’ll broadcast it to Station and everyone will know about it.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll be long gone by then. And I won’t tell anyone what this place is. They’ll just think it’s a very impressive set somewhere.’ She glanced around at the slow travellers. ‘Nobody will disturb them. This whole place will stay nice and safe. Just like it is now.’

  Leila remembered the Fetch Counsellor taking her to the Memory Channel. ‘Everyone’s taking me to nice, safe places these days,’ she said. ‘And I’ve never felt more in danger.’

  ‘Ungrateful girl,’ purred East.

  Leila ignored her. She turned to Cormac. ‘I do have some questions. Our friend here said you could answer them.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ Cormac replied, still speaking in a neutral tone.

  Leila remembered the tortured face of the man she’d so nearly talked to in Flurrytown. ‘Before you do,’ she asked, ‘tell me one thing. What are you?’

  ‘I house all of Cormac’s historical research.’

  ‘I’ve been watching the Fetch Counsellor. I saw him come here and try to speak with Cormac,’ explained East. ‘And I saw Cormac send him away. He didn’t want anyone else to disturb him. So I agreed to protect him – in return for a copy of all that wonderful knowledge he had.’

  Leila nodded. ‘You’re not just a database, though?’ she asked Cormac, doing her best to keep East out of the conversation. ‘There’s more to you than that. More of him.’

  ‘I also snapped up full appearance usage rights for him,’ explained East. ‘And basic information about his life. You’re clearly having some wonderful adventure. I’m filming what I can and I’m looking forward to sharing it with Station. And the last thing I need is some dry info-dump halfway through the story. Or a minor character dropping a major tragedy on everyone. It unbalances things. This version of Cormac is the happy medium.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ groaned Leila.

  ‘I can convincingly simulate my originator,’ Cormac said. ‘I know there’s a family, friends out there. But I have no particular feelings for them.’ He leaned forward, pressing his hands together. He looked like he was about to pray. His sharp eyes met Leila’s. She felt a deep sense of concentration. ‘I am a library. I hold information. You need it. ASK.’ Then he froze, waiting.

  ‘You won’t turn the cameras off, will you?’ Leila asked East.

  ‘No,’ replied East. ‘You need what he has to tell you, Leila. And you’ll only get it on my terms.’

  A combination of rage and deep frustration threatened to overwhelm Leila. ‘I am not an actor in one of your bloody shows.’

  East waved an airy hand. ‘Oh, my dear, everyone is. They just don’t know it.’ She shot a dazzling smile across the table. ‘You really should be flattered, you know. I’m being far more honest with you than I am with anyone else.’

  ‘OK then, before we start, tell me one thing – how did you find me at Flurrytown?’

  ‘Because the Fetch Counsellor went there and screwed up. Cormac was very close to your brother. I knew that that other you was a fake. I was pretty sure the real y
ou would be along soon to try and talk to him. So I just kept an eye on him and – when you showed up – poof! Here we are.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ None of her security measures had worked. ‘How could you even see me? And how did you know that Lei is a fake? If you found out about her and tracked me down then the Rose or Deodatus might be able to as well. And if they do, we’re all screwed.’

  ‘Oh, there’s nothing to worry about there. Cormac made sure I could see anyone who tried to access him. And Grey spotted Lei – he told me about her because he knows I have an interest in you. He’s the only one of us who could have seen through her. Remember when you’d just jumped back to your flat, and you accepted some updates from him?’

  Leila nodded.

  ‘That’s what tipped him off,’ said East. ‘You updated, fine, Grey records it, totally normal. But then, a few hours later, something very unusual – a second you popped up, and downloaded the exact same files, and upgraded in the exact same way. And that’s impossible. Unless there are two of you.’

  ‘Ah. Shit.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have spotted it, and I’ve been keeping a very close eye on you. Partially because you’re so lovely, partially because the Rose is so interested in you.’ East leant in and confided: ‘She’s not at all herself at the moment. I think she’s gone the same way Kingdom did.’

  ‘You and Grey have known about this all along?’ Anger blazed in her. ‘And you haven’t moved against the Rose? You’ve left it all up to us?’

  ‘What else could we do?’ East held her hands up. ‘I’ve only just found you, after all. You hid yourselves so wonderfully well! And the Rose is a very powerful entity. She runs InSec and the military. She’s second only to the Totality when it comes to projected force. We’re not going to start a fight with her unless we know we really need to and we’re absolutely sure we can win it. Grey and I have our own resources, but we really need Totality support to take her on. And we won’t be able to convince them to come on board without really solid proof.’

  ‘Some of them have fallen too,’ said Leila. ‘Cassiel’s cut herself off from them.’

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’ enthused East.

  ‘What?’ Leila was astonished. ‘How is that in any way wonderful?’

  ‘It’s so dramatic! Such a lovely reversal. I’ve been building the Totality up as such good guys.’ She leant in to confide again. ‘Too squeaky clean, most people just don’t buy it. And the ones that do get bored.’ She sat back, beaming. ‘When people find out they can be evil, it’ll make all that good stuff so much more credible. And they’ll all be so much easier to relate to!’ She beamed. ‘That’ll please Grey. He’s very pro-Totality just now.’

  Leila realised she wouldn’t be denting East’s self-regard anytime soon. She decided to cut to the chase. ‘But who’s Deodatus?’ she asked. ‘How’s he managed to do all this?’

  ‘That’s a question for Cormac,’ East replied. ‘One thing before you ask him…’ She was suddenly more serious. ‘We’ll cut out a lot of what I just said. Backstage talk, not for the masses. But your conversation with him – it’ll be a big moment in the special. The unveiling of the truth about the bad guys.’ A moment’s pause, then: ‘Don’t fuck it up.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ muttered Leila. She wanted to jump away, far from East’s manipulations. But she needed Cormac’s knowledge and could see no other way of getting it.

  Cormac pulled out of his prayer pose, coming back to life. ‘Ask me anything,’ he said.

  ‘First you need to know what’s going on.’ Leila described her adventures. ‘So I’ve got to get Dieter back,’ she concluded. ‘And help Cassiel stop Deodatus. But we don’t even know what he is.’

  Cormac thought for a moment, then spoke: ‘Did your brother or Ambrose ever mention something called a Kneale Pit?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I think we’re dealing with here. He told you about the precursor gods?’

  ‘Ambrose did,’ she replied. ‘Gods like Mikhail.’

  ‘Oh no. They’re nothing like Mikhail. He’s old, but he was one of the Pantheon. Precursor gods are the parent organisations of the Pantheon gods. The corporate entities of old Earth. From the times before Station.’

  ‘Ah,’ breathed Leila. She glanced over at East. ‘Do you remember them?’

  The god shifted in her seat. Leila was surprised to see discomfort shimmer across her face. ‘We made many sacrifices when we split from Earth,’ she replied. ‘A thousand years of history was the least of them.’

  ‘You don’t, do you?’ asked Leila.

  East nodded at Cormac. ‘I bought you here to listen to him, not me. Let him talk.’

  Cormac continued: ‘So, I think we’re dealing with a Kneale Pit. They’re pretty obscure; there hasn’t been one for hundreds of years. They were clusters of technology left behind by the precursor gods. Not isolated fragments of psychoactive tech, but fully integrated systems, built to rewire the people who find them and use them to set certain clearly defined sets of events into action. To turn you into a component in a machine.’

  Leila remembered Dieter, Holt and the fallen minds, determinedly working for Deodatus. ‘Sounds possible. What do they get you to do?’

  ‘Sometimes it’s very simple. I’ve seen records of ones that made people build new gravity generators, or sow and tend a food farm. Sometimes it’s a bit more problematic. One of the bigger ones created a cell of fifty Kneale liches bolted to the outside of Station, trying to patch together shuttles to fly themselves back down to Earth. And sometimes – well, terrible things happened.’

  ‘Like we’re seeing now.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cormac. ‘Kneale Pits didn’t just rewrite minds. They rebuilt bodies, as well. The precursor gods judged people according to how efficiently they could contribute to their control and production systems. If they needed to be remade to make them more efficient – well, that would happen. As I think those wooden boxes are doing. They must be some sort of command and control device.’

  Leila nodded. ‘That’s what Cassiel thinks.’

  ‘And some of them worked really hard to spread themselves. When Dieter says he’s building an army, it probably means that the Pit’s setting him up to convert as many people as possible into Deodatus followers.’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘I’m afraid so. They’re dangerous things. They can even slip under the radar of the gods.’

  East nodded. ‘I’ve been watching everywhere on Station and I didn’t even know this was happening. This is bad, Leila. One of the worst Kneale Pits yet.’ Her delivery was rather stagy. Leila resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. She didn’t want to be forced into a retake.

  ‘And this new pit has some very distinctive new features to it, as well,’ continued Cormac. ‘The Totality didn’t exist when previous ones went live. It’s having a very powerful impact on them. The pressure men, the money they can access. All unprecedented. And there’s never been anything like the Shining City before.’

  ‘So how do we shut it down?’ asked Leila.

  ‘Well, let’s go through what it’s done,’ he replied. ‘It’s based in the Wart?’ Leila nodded. ‘That’s not a big surprise. It’s the oldest part of Station. Where exactly in there?’

  Leila called up the co-ordinates that Cassiel had recovered and passed them over. Cormac recognised them immediately. ‘Ah – they’re in the Alpha Pyramid!’

  Leila looked puzzled.

  ‘There are several pyramids in the Wart,’ he explained. ‘Very ancient structures. Been empty for centuries.’

  ‘I’ve shot in them,’ nodded East. ‘Wonderful locations. Very atmospheric.’

  ‘And hardly anyone ever goes to them,’ continued Cormac. ‘Excellent hiding places, the Alpha Pyramid in particular. It has a level carved out of the rock beneath it. The only one that goes deep like
that.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I wonder. There’s a tunnel running even further down. But it’s always been completely blocked. People have dug into it for tens of metres, found nothing. Perhaps someone finally broke through to the other side.’

  ‘The Totality have been overhauling Kingdom’s infrastructure,’ said East. ‘Maybe it was one of their work parties?’

  ‘Maybe they found whatever holds the Shining City,’ speculated Leila. She remembered looking out of Dieter’s workshop. Streets curved away to the left and right, and a tower arced up beyond them. ‘It’s very big and very open. If it’s down there, it can’t be a real environment. It has to be fully virtual.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Cormac. ‘There’s no room for that kind of space down there. Given the location readings Cassiel got, I think it’s safe to assume it’s sitting in a server or group of servers somewhere under the pyramid.’

  ‘We followed a sign that said “Down” to get to it,’ replied Leila. ‘Maybe that’s what it meant. Back from the satellite, down into the depths.’

  ‘And my guess is, you’ll find this Deodatus entity in or near it. I assume he was the first to be absorbed by the pit. If it was a Totality work crew, he’ll be a fallen mind. And he’ll be controlling all of the rest of them. A physical avatar of the Kneale Pit. Doing a good job of it, if he’s even subverted the Rose.’

  East held up a hand. Cormac froze. ‘The Rose might not have fallen,’ said the god. ‘She could be using all this for her own ends. Psychoactive technology could make her very powerful.’

  ‘Would she do that?’ asked Leila. But she already knew what the answer was.

  ‘Of course. If I’d found it first, I might have been tempted to.’ East smiled distantly. ‘That kind of tech is a wonderful audience management tool.’

  Her casual response shocked Leila. ‘You’re meant to protect humanity, not rewrite it.’

  ‘It’s not too far from what the Twins do at the climax of the Taste Refresh Festival,’ East mused. ‘They open up everyone’s memories and drop new flavours into them. You’d just need to reach a little bit further in…’