by John Moralee
And Kelsor reached the reef one second before she did. But it did not matter, for the race had been the pleasure, not the winning. Iranda accelerated for the surface, breaking free in a white spray of dancing droplets. She cried out in pleasure, the sound coming out as a series of ultrasonic clicks. Then, after taking a joyous breath, she somersaulted and plunged into the foaming water.
An hour later, exhausted on pleasure, Iranda circled slowly.
How do we do this?
The sprite links in to the brain of any creature of sufficient intelligence, Dison answered. He seemed to be more interested in the science explanations than the others. You are really on remote experience. What you feel as another creature is in your own brain, back in the Tower. The sprite provides a link and translates into the human sensorium. You can be any creature with a respectable neural network. Dolphins are excellent because they have large brains, so are sharks and -
Why don’t we just show her? Kelsor said, sounding irritated. Iranda, retract the sprite from the dolphin.
She was reluctant to do so; it felt too good, but once she had thought it then it happened automatically. She said goodbye and was outside, floating in the water like the zooplankton. The dolphin continued swimming as if nothing had happened.
Her sprite had collated into its basic form. The lack of sensations was stifling. It was like being in a room with no doors or windows. She craved to be inside the dolphin’s mind again, but she watched it swim away, to do whatever dolphins did when not under control.
Kelsor’s sprite orbited her.
Down, Iranda. Go deeper and down.
Just the two of them left the surface far behind, until the water changed from green to blue to black. The sprite had radar and echolocation, but these systems were basic compared with the dolphin’s. The water bustled with fish, moving in chaotic patterns. There was something big below, no, two somethings. The sprite enhanced optical sensitivity. She could see a white shape mottled with black. As she approached she realised the blackness was a covering of large barnacles on a white surface. The barnacles were riding on the back of a humpback whale.
And then she was that humpback whale.
The humpback whale was pregnant.
*
When Iranda opened her own eyes, the sky was tinged with pink clouds. The sun was orange and close to the horizon.
There was a dull pain in her stomach. No, it wasn’t real. A phantom pain, for a phantom pregnancy. She removed the crown and walked stiffly to the staircase, followed by Kelsor.
“Didn’t you enjoy today?”
“Yes,” she said.
“What’s wrong?”
“The whale was pregnant,” she said.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Kelsor held her then, and they cried together. Minutes later they were in the pink bedroom, making love. The massive bed did not seem large enough for all of the positions they tried. Iranda tried to purge herself of grief for the baby that never was. Afterwards, Iranda looked into Kelsor’s eyes. “People used to have babies, didn’t they?”
“All of the time.”
“So why can’t we?”
“Living above the water has problems. Before the atmosphere repaired itself, the cosmic radiation made us sterile, damaged our cells. Our nanotech keeps us alive forever, but reproduction is ... complicated. Our nanotech thinks of it as an infection. Dison’s worked on the problem for centuries, and we’d thought we’d cracked it, but ... but it failed. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “At least we tried.”
*
The tinkle of metal woke her. Butler was standing at the bed, holding a silver tray weighed down by a china tea service. Iranda was alone in the bed. Sunlight streamed through the windows. “What time is it?”
Butler did not reply. The Tower did.
“A quarter to noon, Miss Iranda.”
“What is Butler doing here?”
“You always drink tea now, Miss Iranda. Butler is merely following your instructions.”
“I don’t want tea, whatever it tastes like,” she said. Butler bowed and removed himself from the room. “Tower, where is Kelsor?”
“Mr Kelsor is presently in the Game Room. He’s expecting you at one o’clock. Your shower and clothes are ready.”
*
The Game Room was just above sea level, in a level inaccessible by elevator. She had to walk down several flights of stairs, then through an archway. It was a vast room that filled an entire floor of the tower. Presently, it was a replica of the St Peter’s Basilica. (Roman Catholic architecture was Helen’s favourite style, and the Tower had decorated the Game Room to suit her taste.) Iranda’s footsteps echoed eerily as she joined the group in the room’s centre. They were already wearing their crowns. The kings and queens of the new world. The air above was filled with a shimmering cloud of sprites, nebulous and milky. The Six stood around a dark, square hole in the floor. The shaft looked endless.
“How much are you remembering this morning?” Dison said dreamily. Iranda was aware that he wasn’t all in his mind. He was joined to a sprite.
“A little more,” she said. “I know this room. We go here often.”
“She is remembering,” Helen said. “I wonder if she can remember how to play the game.”
“I hope not,” Eriqa said. “Otherwise you don’t stand a chance, darling.”
“What’s the game?” Iranda asked.
Morton answered, speaking in his manic stutter. An emerging memory told her he was painfully shy, and usually allowed Eriqa to do the talking for him. But the game was his passion, the one thing that mattered in his life. “The g-g-game! You c-can’t beat the g-game. The g-game of life. And d-death. And love. Y-you c-can’t beat the game.”
“Shut up, darling,” Eriqa said.
Morton looked down at his shoes.
“Put on your crown,” Kelsor said to Iranda.
They sat in a row, holding hands. The floor produced wooden pews to hold their bodies.
Now she was simultaneously a sprite in the cloud, looking down at the hole, and herself. A ripple of a new emotion gripped her. Fear?
Are we going to be dolphins today?
Darling, you have forgotten, haven’t you?
The game? What are the rules?
No rules.
So what do we do?
Play until one wins.
Leaving herself behind, she detached from the sprite cloud and flew towards the hole. The way was lit by the five sprites in front. The shaft was part of the old elevator, the elevator that used to go all the way down to the Undercity. Gravity was master of the descent; it took all of her concentration to control the flight. A kilometre zoomed by, the shaft a featureless nowhere. Then the shaft branched and branched again.
There was light coming from somewhere below, crimson light. She could feel the photons brushing against her sprite’s shields.
She saw an opening.
She entered a vast cavern of some sort. The red light came from strip lights running the length of the ceiling. The room - really too large to be considered a room; it was an open space inside the building - was filled with metallic stalactites and stalagmites. A black sea of oil surrounded islands built of junk. Rust and corrosion had eaten away at the buildings, forming a metal landscape of jagged and fluted edges.
The Undercity, she thought.
Wrecked and ruined buildings stretched for as far as her sprite could see. Here the nanotech had failed and decay set in. There were fires at street level and the blue-white lightning of electricity conduits arcing across kilometres.
And there were people.
She could see them now.
Dirty, filthy people. Thousands of them, squatting in doorways, huddled together in groups, some sitting alone ... all surrounded by rubbish.
She saw the other sprites enter five people.
As she hovered over the group, an old man waved at her. He was dressed in grey and brown rags and his teeth were missing o
r yellow. “Come on, Iranda. It’s me, Kelsor. Pick a person.”
I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it. It’s not right. It’s not right.
But she accidentally slapped into the back of a girl’s head -
- and before she could pull out she was a fourteen-year-old called Nandy G.
Nandy’s memories were instantly available. Nandy was the fourth daughter of Jem G, who was dead. Nandy had seen Gorf C, her cousin, rape and kill her mother - after the light in the sky entered him two weeks ago. She had been unable to sleep since, fearing the lights.
I am the light, Iranda thought, horrified.
The old man inhabited by Kelsor called the Six together. “Iranda, the game is to be the last survivor. I’ve sent a code so your sprite can’t pull out, until either you die, or all of us are dead.”
“It’s the ultimate challenge,” Morton said, through the body of a dark-haired man.
“I don’t want to play this game,” Iranda said weakly.
“Fine,” Helen/a fat man said, “it’s your life.”
Iranda/Nandy ran.
*
She was hiding in a damp basement when Morton found her. He’d picked up an iron pipe on his travels, and his face was smeared with another’s blood.
“N-naughty, n-naughty, little girl,” he said, “you can’t hide in the Undercity. N-not for long.”
He broke her arms, then beat Nandy until she could no longer scream. Iranda tried to fight back, but Morton’s man was too strong. He hit Nandy’s skull with three vicious cracks that dazed her. Still, Nandy was alive, but barely. Morton sneered as he raped her. Nandy’s sad life flooded into Iranda as minutes felt like hours. Morton was raping her too, albeit indirectly. For every day of Nandy’s life she had lived in terror of this day.
For Iranda, it was a relief when Morton ended Nandy’s life.
*
Iranda opened her eyes in the Game Room. She could still feel Morton’s fingers pressed into her throat, but the feeling passed as she rubbed her skin. There were no bruises on her body. She looked at the Six, terrified by her experience. Helen and Kelsor were not present, presumably they were already out of the game, but Morton, Dison and Eriqa remained entranced.
Morton was smiling.
Iranda shook off the crown and staggered towards the elevator, vomiting all of the way.
*
Iranda looked down from the balcony. The archipelago did not look so beautiful now, or so new to her eyes. As the old Iranda’s memories added to her childlike brain there were changes to her personality that she could feel. Soon, she knew, she would not care about the view. It was all the same. Every day was a repeat of the last. Maybe the weather changed, but there was nothing she had not done. Yesterday’s ride as a dolphin could never be repeated; every nuance was familiar. She needed the intensity of feelings that the sick game produced. Basic emotions, like fear and anger and pain, were the addiction of an immortal soul seeking oblivion, not life, but her mind had been too cluttered to see it before.
Perhaps she was naive to believe there was another way to live, but she wanted to act now before she became that jaded woman again, the Iranda incapable of caring. In a way, her pregnancy had created a new life. But how long could it last?
She did not hear Kelsor approach until he touched her arm. She flinched.
“About the game,” he said. “I had no idea that would upset you. You must have picked a bad character. It can happen.”
“It was horrible. Disgusting. I never want to do that again.”
“But the game was your idea.”
“That,” she said, “was not my idea.”
“It was. You’ll soon remember. You invented it, to relieve the infernal boredom.”
She could feel the phantom pregnancy again. She did not want to become the Iranda everyone knew and loved, the selfish creature lurking inside her neural implants. Not if the Nandys of the Undercity had to suffer for her entertainment.
“Why? Why do we keep those people down there?”
“They’re worse than animals. They caused the war that forced us to live in the Tower. They destroyed their own nanotechnology. We are the keepers of peace, maintaining a stable existence, but they have become ... well, you saw how they live. They have such short lives they don’t learn anything. Anyway, they can’t complain; we send down enough food and power for their needs.”
They live that way because of us, she thought. “Butler’s one of them, isn’t he?”
Kelsor nodded. “He managed to find a way up through the levels. Quite impressive, for an Undercity creature. He crawled up the shaft. The Tower informed us, so we gave the Tower sprite control over him rather than killing him.”
“We made him a slave ...”
“If he’d been allowed to roam free, he could have done untold damage. Look, this will all become clear in a few days. You’re not fully you, yet. You don’t understand what it’s like to live like this, just the six of us in the whole world, you have to make sacrifices.”
But we make them live like that, she thought. She could not share her thoughts with Kelsor, she did not entirely trust him. He believed in the status quo. We’re afraid to let them out. They have nothing. We have everything, but we abuse our powers.
“What are you thinking?”
“Nothing. I’m just remembering.”
“The others are expecting us for dinner.”
*
Iranda brooded throughout the meal. What was she going to do? If she did nothing, then the old Iranda would return. She did not want that. She could hardly talk honestly with her so-called friends. All they talked about was the game, and how their strategies had worked or not. It was depressing. Life was a game to them, something to score points on. And humans like Butler and Nandy were their playthings.
Iranda could barely taste the minuscule portions. When the final course arrived, she just had to look at it to know that she could not eat it. There was something wrong with it. She had seen it before.
“Please, tell me what is this?”
“Dolphin, of course.”
“Dolphin.” The word stung. She pushed her plate aside. “Everyone, please excuse me. I don’t feel well.”
“It must be the data transference,” Dison said. “It’ll pass.”
She stood up. The room swayed.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Kelsor asked.
“No. Enjoy the dinner.”
She left the room, but she stayed near the door, listening. She could hear Dison: “I say we reboot her neural implants. It’s obvious she isn’t the same Iranda.”
Kelsor said: “We have to give the process time. Another day - see if she’s feeling better.”
“No improvements and we reboot, agreed?”
“Agreed,” sighed Kelsor.
Iranda slipped away to her room. She was shaking.
New memories changed her perspective on her relationship with Kelsor.
She did not love him, and never had. They were not lovers out of an emotional bond, but because it was something to do. During her time in the Tower she’d had sexual relationships with each and every one of the six, often more than one at a time. Presently, they were in a century of heterosexual monogamy, but in the past the six had explored all permutations. It was merely Kelsor’s turn to be her partner.
We can’t even be true to ourselves, she realised. No wonder we take out our frustrations on other life. We behave like the gods of the Greeks and Romans. And, like those gods, our time has passed. It’s time for change.
Worse, she had not wanted a baby to love and nurture, but to provide entertainment as a new companion for the six. Another plaything.
She lay down on her bed and tore the sheets apart.
*
Later, when Kelsor came to her room to make love, she turned him away with excuses. Luckily, he did not press the matter. He did not get a chance to see the torn sheets.
Once he was gone, Iranda wandered onto the bal
cony to watch the stars pop out of the midnight blue sky. The Milky Way was a sliver of luminosity. There were people out there, doing what humans were born to do, to expand and explore. To be the best they could be. A cool breeze made her skin goosepimple. Shivering, she returned inside.
She wondered if dolphins mourned their dead.
“Tower, where is Butler?”
“Butler is in a sleep cycle, Miss Iranda. Shall I wake him?”
“No,” she said. “But I want you to take my instructions.”
“It will be my pleasure, Miss Iranda.”
“Are the others sleeping?”
“Yes.”
“Good. In six hours I want you to instruct Butler to build a ladder from equipment in the storage deck. He must put the ladder down the shaft into the Undercity. You must use him to bring people to the tower. You will then release sprite control.”
“I must state that this action could be a danger to the Six.”
“I know, but that won’t matter if things work out right.”
“Miss?”
“Just follow instructions, Tower. This is a level zero command.”
“Understood, Miss Iranda. Does this mean Butler will not be making breakfast?”
“Yes. No more breakfasts, Tower. In six hours you will answer to only the people from the Undercity. You will function as a teacher and arbitrator. You must show them how to use the library, and help them adapt to the surface world.” She paused, was that all she wanted to say? No. “One more thing. At that time you must also destroy all sprites that are not being used by the Six and erase the knowledge of how to build new ones. In the mean time, Butler has to do one more thing.”