Meredith looked at Timothy. “Did you do another one?”
Timothy shook his head. “No. Just that first one. They take entirely too much out of me. I was a week recovering.”
Meredith patted his hand.
Hiroko sighed. “On Itheria Kane told me that afflictions of the brain, of the mind are the most difficult to heal.”
Meredith glanced at the date on her watch. “What’s it been now—nearly three months, right?”
Glumly Hiroko nodded. “Eleven weeks, three days.” Then she brightened. “This morning he told me that we are all brains in vats. He’s convinced of it. He asked me to help him find the evil genius who’s pulling the strings. Does that sound like progress?”
Eric turned up his hands. “I think it does. I mean, it’s much better than what he thought last week—that a hideous demon was controlling everything. At least he’s now only a century or so in the philosophical past. Too, this last couple of weeks he seems to be coming ’round faster, as if he’s accelerating his own mental recovery. They tell me he only occasionally wakes up screaming in the night. I think he’s on the road to sanity.”
“I certainly hope so,” said Meredith.
They ate in silence for a few minutes, then Hiroko turned to Timothy. “How is Doctor Greyson doing?”
Timothy pursed his lips. “Ah me, poor John . . . his beliefs, his ethics were tested up to and beyond his breaking point—he did not know whether he was saving our souls or condemning us to a needless death.” Timothy Paused a moment in thought, then looked at Hiroko and said, “But to answer your question, he seems to be recovered from his breakdown, or at least that’s what we hear from the monastery. They’re worried about his faith, though; I’m told by one of the brothers that John and the abbot have arguments long into the night concerning the nature of souls and of all creation.”
“Hm,” mused Meredith. “Regardless, I am glad he did what he did—pulled the plug on Stein. Of course, my dear Trendel here managed to get us all out before the good Doctor actually pushed the button. But who knows what would have happened had Greyson not pulled the plug? We’d’ve been hemishocked—whatever that might have done.”
Hiroko cut through another tortilla-wrapped carne secca. “Thank you, Trendel, for saving us. I for one am glad we all escaped VR before Doctor Stein tried his final solution, else we’d be dead or worse—our souls trapped in Avery while our soulless bodies would be running around doing who knows what.”
Perhaps you are right, Ky,” said Timothy, “but then again perhaps you are wrong. Stein could have been right all along—our brains deactivated for the most part, with Avery running ersatz duplicates of our minds, the AI ready to kill if it sensed interference.”
Meredith patted Timothy’s hand. “Whether or not Stein was right or wrong, love, it was you who got us out.”
“Ha,” barked Eric. “I am not certain at all that we have actually escaped Avery.” He gestured about. “I mean, look around. Don’t things seem, um, brighter, more present, just as they were in Itheria? And the magic: shadowmastery, sound mastery, seer talents—”
“Speaking of talents,” interjected Hiroko, “have you found out just what your talent is, Arik? I mean, you collapsed in Horax’s null dungeon. So what is it?”
Eric shrugged and muttered, “Beats the seven hells out of me.”
Meredith said, “I think we might have two clues.”
Timothy looked at her wide-eyed. “Oh?”
Meredith nodded. “Yes. Look, for as long as I can remember, Arik has never been seriously wounded in battle—oh, scratches, scrapes, bruises, a few broken ribs, but nothing near deadly at all. And then there’s what Horax said when we were in Atraxia’s palace.”
“He said a lot of things, Rith,” exclaimed Hiroko. “What specifically did he say about Arik?”
Meredith looked at Eric and then at her. “Do you remember what he said when he pulled back the skelga’s head and offered the creature’s neck for Arik to cut?”
Hiroko shook her head, but Eric took a deep breath and said, “His exact words were: ‘Come, Black Fox, hew his throat with your charmed blade.’”
Meredith nodded sharply in agreement. “Precisely so. Yet at the time, Arik, all you had in your hand was an ordinary steel blade—flashed with silver yet ordinary.”
“What are you driving at?” asked Hiroko.
“Well,” replied Meredith, “if Horax’s words are to be believed, then it just may be that any blade—perhaps any weapon—that Arik wields becomes charmed . . . at least for as long as he holds it.”
“Holy Moley!” exclaimed Timothy. “If that’s true, then it’s no wonder you’ve never taken a deadly hurt.”
“Perhaps we can test it sometime,” said Meredith. “Let Arik go up against, say, a champion fencer at the U of A and see what the outcome is. I have every reason to believe that Arik will prevail.”
“I think you’re right, Rith!” declared Hiroko, turning to Eric. “I mean, we all got back to reality with our talents intact, and there’s every reason to believe that you did too.”
Eric looked at her and shook his head. “You assume we got back to reality, but let me ask you this: do you think you could control shadows if we were truly in Tucson?”
Hiroko took a deep breath. “Actually, I think I must be controlling light rather than shadow. Sending it away, leaving us in the dark.”
Meredith shook her head. “Then how do you explain your darkbolt and your ability to—?”
“Light or shadow,” interjected Eric, “no matter how it’s done, my question remains: assuming that I have a hidden power, could we do these things if we were really back in Tucson? Or are we instead in just another one of Avery’s virtual realities?”
“Come on, Arik,” chided Timothy, “you are beginning to sound like Caine”—he glanced at Hiroko—”no offense, Ky.”
“None taken,” she replied.
Timothy turned back to Eric and gestured at the surroundings. “Look, old man, I’m almost positive that this is real and not virtual.”
“Oh, how so?”
Timothy took a swig of beer. “Okay. Listen. Here’s my reasoning: both magic and science consist of rites—arcane to the uninitiated, well understood by the cognoscenti. And although I didn’t know it at the time—thanks to a deep posthypnotic suggestion—I was actually logging on as a superuser when I spoke the truename ritual and commanded Avery to return us all to where we belonged.
“But by this time Avery was completely mad and he wouldn’t obey, yet he had no choice but to obey . . . it was like an irresistible force meeting an immovable object. You see, a Dark God, virtual or not, is still a god, hence subject to no man’s command; but a computer must obey the commands of a superuser—yet he wouldn’t obey, but he must obey, yet wouldn’t, but must, wouldn’t, must . . . In any event, that’s what blew up the virtual reality and expelled us. The AI couldn’t deal with the paradox.”
Erik forked in another mouthful of carne secca. He chewed a moment then said, “Good reasoning; perhaps you’re right. Speaking of Avery, what’s happening on that front?”
Timothy shook his head negatively. “We’ve tried booting every way we know how. Nothing works. He seems to be totally nonresponsive. We think the mutable logic itself is permanently flawed.”
“Well, if it’s permanently flawed, are you going to make another one?” asked Hiroko. “Another Avery?”
Timothy shook his head. “Until we examine all the data, we are disinclined to do so. Besides, there’s the financing. And with Arthur dead—”
“Financing or not,” said Meredith, “I think you ought to delay creating another Avery until you can find a way to give him a soul.”
Hiroko nodded vigorously. “I certainly agree with that.”
Timothy toyed with his food. “We have managed to access a part of Avery, but it babbles nonsense. However, there’s a part that no one has been able to crack into; it’s like a black hole. What’s in there is a comp
lete mystery—some fragment of Avery, we believe, yet we won’t know for certain until we manage to get in.”
“Get in? You mean go back into virtual reality?” asked Hiroko.
“Perhaps,” replied Timothy.
“But why?” asked Meredith.
“For the benefit of mankind.”
Meredith shivered and said, “Given what Avery has become, I never want to go back in. I don’t care what’s in that hole.”
Timothy took her hand in his. “Love, if the Coburn team can’t crack into Avery’s memory, then I believe someone has got to go in. Look, even though we’ve kept our talents a secret, someone simply has to discover just how Avery managed to bequeath these powers to us. I mean, hell, we don’t know whether they are truly magic or if instead they are psi, ESP, whatever.”
Eric said, “I think it’s psi. I mean if this is truly reality, Avery has somehow modified your mentalities or perhaps the structure of your brains so that you now can tap into these extraordinary powers. And if I have a talent, too, then perhaps so can I.”
Hiroko laid aside her fork. “Are you saying that we are mutants? Forced mutants?”
Timothy nodded. “Yes. Arik is exactly right. We’ve all been mutated.”
They ate in silence for a moment, then Eric looked at Timothy. “I think I agree with you: if Avery can do this to us, then he can grant special abilities to other humans as well. As you say, for the benefit of mankind we’ve got to find out how he does it. And perhaps that means someone has got to go back in.”
“Oh, lord,” groaned Meredith. The others looked at her questioningly. “Well,” she explained, “the only ones who might stand a chance of breaking into the black hole and then getting back out are the Black Foxes.”
Hiroko picked up her beer and took a great slug. Then she set the bottle down and said, “We’ve got four weeks before Caine will be ready, four weeks in which to plan.”
“I think we’ll need more time than that,” said Eric. “We’ve got to speak to Toni Adkins, let her in on the truth. And Drew Meyer: perhaps he can modify the hemihelms so that we don’t get sucked in, and that may take some time. We’ve got to teach Trendel our hand-signal code. And then . . .”
They talked animatedly for another hour or so, then moved to the porch of Casa Molina and ordered ice-cold margaritas. A soft breeze gently swirled across the veranda.
As the waiter moved away, Meredith said, “You know, it occurs to me that if there is a Dark God in Itheria, then Arda ought to be virtual-real too; perhaps we can enlist His aid.”
“Or Luba’s,” added Timothy.
A taxi rounded a corner and rolled into view. It pulled up and stopped. “What about—” Eric began, but broke off and quickly stood and headed for the street as Alice Maxon stepped from the cab. He met her on the far sidewalk and embraced her.
“God, but I’ve missed you, darling,” he said.
“Me, too,” she whispered, and took his face in her hands and they greeted one another for the next minute or so. They had not seen each other since the day of Arthur Coburn’s funeral, eleven weeks past.
When they finally came up for air, he grinned at her and asked, “How was your eco mission?”
“Piece of cake,” she answered, grinning. “Tracking the animals? Ha!” She snapped her fingers. “The others wanted to know how I did it. I just said it was luck. We finished the survey in five weeks instead of fifty-five.”
“Then you’re done?”
“Yes.”
He picked up her gear, then took a deep breath and said, “Come on up to the veranda, we’ve got something to tell you, Lyssa.”
At this use of her Black Fox name, she looked at him in speculation, but took his hand as they started across the street.
As Eric and Alice came hand in hand, Hiroko Kikiro gazed up at the magnificent, clear Tucson sky, a blue that went on forever. And as she took another sip of her icy margarita, she looked around at the bright and beautiful world and wondered aloud, “Is this just another cavern of Socrates?”
If anyone answered, she did not hear.
finis?
Are we really us? I ask.
Perhaps we are merely shadows on a wall, I answer.
Afterword
I believe nothing much has changed concerning the relevant metaphysical questions when I wrote this back in 1993 and 1994. However, in the scientific area, much progress has been made in the study of brains and consciousness, though not enough to change the words of this tale. Regardless, it was a fascinating and fun book to write then, and just as fascinating to recast now . . . mainly because of the enjoyment I derived in researching the fundamental questions delineated in the foreword. Just in case you are interested in reading some of these background references, the following is a list of some of the then-available material I ran across during my research:
1. Achenbach, Joel (Mister Know-it-All). “However we spend it, ‘time’ doesn’t exist.” Columbus Dispatch, Thursday, March 3, 1994.
2. Blakeslee, Sandra. “Experts finding how brain ‘sees’ things you think.” Columbus Dispatch.
3. Conners, Dianne. “Interview.” Omni, October 1993.
4. Cox, Murray. “Notes from the New Land.” Omni, October 1993
5. Freedman, David E. “Quantum Consciousness.” Discover, June 1994.
6. Harary, Keith. “Spirit Exercises.” Omni, October 1993.
7. Killheffer, Robert K. “The Consciousness Wars.” Omni, October 1993.
8. Kinoshita, June. “Dreams of a Rat.” Discover, June 1992.
9. Kinoshita, June. “Severed from Emotion.” Discover, June 1992.
10. Liversidge, Anthony. “Mind.” Omni , October 1993.
11. Montgomery, Geoffrey. “The Mind’s Eye.” Discover, May 1991
12. Plato. The Republic, translated by A. D. Lindsay. New York: Knopf, 1992
13. Porush, David. “Finding God in the Three-Pound Universe: The Neuroscience of Transcendence.” Omni, October 1993.
14. Poundstone, William. Labyrinths of Reason. New York: Doubleday, 1990
15. Sterling, Bruce. “Artificial Life.” Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1992.
16. Stites, Janet. “Bordercrossings: A Conversation in Cyberspace.” Omni, November 1993.
17. Uman, Martin. All About Lightning. New York: Dover, 1986.
18. Van, Jon. “Western thought getting fuzzy?” Columbus Dispatch, September 5, 1993.
19. van Inwagen, Peter. Metaphysics. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1993
20. Voll, Daniel. “Soul Searching with Francis Crick.” Omni, February 1994.
21. “What is Consciousness?” Discover, November 1992
There were other articles and TV shows and conversations which impinged on the subjects in this tale, especially consciousness, the mind, souls, free will, artificial intelligence, and, above all, the nature of reality. There were also several entries concerning lightning, ball lightning, storms, lightning and thunder, and so forth in various encyclopedias. I did not record the specifics concerning these additional sources of information, hence their identities are lost in the mists of time.
I do hope that Shadowtrap has been a worthwhile read for you. I know that the writing of it was a worthwhile endeavor for me. If you liked it, perhaps you’ll also enjoy Shadowprey.
Now I think I’ll step outside and look at the sky above and the world below and ask myself, “Is this just another Cavern of Socrates?”
Then I’ll go kick a rock.
Dennis L. McKiernan
March 1994, April 2014
Photo by Silhouette Studios
Dennis L McKiernan lives in Tucson, Arizona, with Martha Lee (MLee) McKiernan; they married in 1957 (you do the math).
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Flap Copy
Other books by Dennis L. McKiernan
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Note
Opening Epigrams
Chapter 1 ~ Arrival (Tucson)
Chapter 2 ~ Teams (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 3 ~ Proposal (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 4 ~ Shadowplay (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 5 ~ Illumination (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 6 ~ Calibrations (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 7 ~ Wild Child (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 8 ~ First Taste (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 9 ~ Mind, Body, and Soul (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 10 ~ Countdown (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 11 ~ Gnoman (Itheria)
Chapter 12 ~ Observers (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 13 ~ Jewel (Itheria)
Chapter 14 ~ Gods and Pawns (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 15 ~ Demons and War (Itheria)
Chapter 16 ~ Solipsism (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 17 ~ The Blue Lady (Itheria)
Chapter 18 ~ Warnings (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 19 ~ Choices (Itheria)
Chapter 20 ~ Interesting Times (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 21 ~ Silver Road (Itheria)
Chapter 22 ~ Alarm (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 23 ~ Pon Barius (Itheria)
Chapter 24 ~ Thor’s Hammer (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 25 ~ Wards (Itheria)
Chapter 26 ~ Calamity (Coburn Facility)
Chapter 27 ~ Ordeal (Itheria)
Chapter 28 ~ Evil Genius (Coburn Facility)
Shadowtrap: A Black Foxes Adventure Page 42