“Chan found a way to hack out of the system,” Selberg said. “I knew he was our man. He went out and grabbed music he liked outside of his world. He probably hacked the revenants too. I told you, this guy is brilliant.”
Behind them sounded the creak of a door.
“You guys going to hang around outside all day?” a voice said behind them. “Or did you want to come in?”
Parker whirled around. The thick wooden doors were open, music blaring even more loudly from inside. A short, muscular man stood in the doorway in a gray T-shirt and jeans, his skull shaved bald, his face covered with a full black beard.
“Bobby?” Blake said.
“At your service.”
Not hesitating further, Parker, Blake, and Clayton moved quickly through the open doorway. Parker turned for a last glimpse of revenant choreography in the open space of the floor before Chan shut the door.
The man rubbed his hands together, then bowed. “Bobby Chan. Welcome to my humble abode.”
Clayton let out a long deep breath, lowered the axe, then bent over at the waist as if he were about to vomit. Parker placed both hands over his face, and held them there for a moment, enjoying the blackness. Enjoying anything that took him momentarily away from this place.
“Jesus,” Chan said. “What’s with the glum faces? You look like you’ve never been chased by a pack of crazed revenants that break out into dance.”
Parker took his hands from his face and looked around.
He stood at the edge of an incredible suite jammed with expensive pieces of furniture. The room stretched out the full floor of the hotel, filled with marble and paintings and crystal chandeliers. It was like a museum exhibit on the Palace of Versailles, gold and pink and white everywhere, shining in the light that streamed in from the wall of windows.
Chan moved to a blender on the wall. He began cutting up pieces of fruit and putting them into the machine. “So, you seem to know who I am, but I’m at a loss for who you are. But I can guess, first experience with the revenants, so that means you’re not from here. Which means you’re from out there somewhere. And since the only people who come here are prison breakers, I’m guessing that’s what you are.”
“You know this is a prison?” Parker said.
Chan laughed. “Oh wow, I’m sorry. Were you hoping to come in here and overwhelm me with your revelation that this whole island isn’t real? That I’m actually inside a virtual prison of the mind. Did I totally just steal your thunder on that one?”
“I just didn’t know anyone here knew.”
“Do you want me to pretend I don’t know, so you can do your big reveal, and I can be all surprised?”
Clayton looked angry. “Hey, asshole, we risked our lives coming here to get you.”
Chan snapped his finger and pointed first at Parker, then at Clayton. “I get it. Good cop. Bad cop.”
Parker rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to figure this out. How did you know about this?”
Chan finished cutting a banana into the blender, then opened a plastic tray of strawberries. “I’m the best hacker in the world and they imprison me inside a computer system. Did they really think I wasn’t going to be able to figure it out?”
“But you couldn’t figure a way out.”
Chan looked genuinely confused for a moment. “What makes you think I would want to?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m God in here. Why would I want to leave?”
He finished packing cut strawberries into the blender, then turned on the device. The powerful engine whirred loud enough to drown out the possibility of any conversation. After half a minute, Chan turned off the blender, disconnected the mixing cup, and held it up to Clayton and Parker. “Smoothie?”
“So you’re telling me you could leave at any time, but you choose not to.”
“Duh. I mean, listen, don’t get me wrong. The rovers suck. But I figured out how to control most of the revenants. What’d you think of my dance show? Pretty good, right?”
“How can you do that?”
“The revenants are just bodies without consciousness. I hacked into their core, changed the programming around a little. I don’t control all the revenants. But the ones I do, man, can they move.”
“But what about the ones that attack us?”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Don’t have control of all of them.”
Parker heard the unmistakable sound of a woman’s high heels. A tall blonde in a shimmering silver cocktail dress walked out from the back bedroom. Chan drank his smoothie from the blender cup and watched their reactions. “Not bad, right? She’s an AI drone. Left over from before. I reprogrammed her for all sorts of nasty things.”
Parker wasn’t sure what was happening. “Selberg, what’s going on?”
“Selberg?” Chan interrupted. “Don’t tell me you rely on that washed-up, degenerate gambler. He’s still in the business? Oh man. What a dinosaur.”
“I told you he was an asshole,” Selberg’s voice said in Parker’s ear.
Chan downed the rest of his drink, then wiped his lip with the back of his hand.
“I thought you guys didn’t have to eat in here?” Clayton said.
Chan snapped his fingers. “Yes. Yes. That is an excellent point. But do you know why I eat?”
“Why?”
“Because I like it. Because in here, I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to eat. I don’t have to drink. I don’t have to fuck. But I do, because it’s pretty goddamn fun. Everything I do is for pleasure,” Chan said. “Do you know anything about Easter eggs?”
“Probably not as much as you, so let’s skip the part where you make me feel dumb and just go ahead and tell me,” Parker said.
“Easter eggs are like hidden messages or items left inside computer programs. Like a video game where if you go into a certain room and touch a certain part of the wall, it reveals the name of an uncredited video game designer, or some political message, or whatever. Like this hidden thing that only the video game creator knows about, and everyone has to find on their own. And that’s why it’s called an Easter egg, because you have to hunt for them.”
“So?”
“So this whole place is basically one big, fucking video game,” Chan said. “And these Easter eggs are everywhere.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when I first got here, I had no idea. Like everybody else. I’m just living my life in 1970s New York City, the Big Apple. And it’s pretty fucking cool. Disco is in. The place is like dirty and dingy, but at the same time, alive. The cops are here, kicking ass. People doing drugs. I was working at a record store on Avenue A in the Village. And I’m just like this normal dude. Trying to fuck chicks. Going to school at night. Keeping up with my mandatory education like everyone else. And one day, I’m at work and the place is empty and I’m just killing time, so I go to put on a record in the store. I’m flipping through some of the old records in the back, and I find this album called Miles Larson Overdrive with, like, a photograph of this New York City street scene on the front cover.
“So I figure, something new, I’ll try it out. I put the record on to play it, and it’s just like this guy speaking. I almost turn it off thinking it’s some hippy bullshit about peace and getting out of Vietnam. But then he starts talking about these things called the AI, which he designed, that look just like people, but operate on their own, independent from human control. Then I look at the cover of the record, and I realize it’s a photograph of my record store. But from a different time. It’s not a record store anymore, it’s this place that just sells coffee. And I can tell from the cars on the street and the clothing, that it’s, like, way in the future. So, at first, of course, I think it’s a hoax, but the more I think on it, I’m not so sure.”
“And that was the Easter egg?”
“Yeah man, that record was the Easter egg. This secret that Miles Larson, some low-level designer, left in the game ju
st as a fun thing so he could get a little recognition. Sort of a fuck-you to his bosses. But turns out, these Easter eggs were everywhere. You just had to know where to look.”
“Where was that?”
“Well, I scoured my entire record collection at the store. Listened to all of them. And I found three more Easter eggs. Other designers basically just giving their names and crediting themselves for the different parts of the system that they designed. Then one of them mentions a backdoor. A way to move in and out of the system. So by now, I’m starting to really get interested. And I keep doing more research.”
Chan moved to the windows and looked out across the city. Parker had heard stories about Easter eggs being left in the system. But he had never found one himself. He knew the system could be manipulated, objects moved in and out, but he was never certain how flexible the world really was. There were rules to every system, and Parker had always been bound by them. But what if he could find a way to bend those rules? That might be the key to finding Susan. If the system could be manipulated so that people could be more easily located, then Parker might be able to find her.
“Tell me about the backdoors,” Parker said.
“They’re like portals, in and out of the system and into other systems,” Chan said. “See, when they designed these worlds, they all share one thing. What is it?”
“They’re all set in Manhattan,” Parker said.
“Yes!” Chan snapped his fingers. “Exactly. They’re all set in Manhattan. They keep reusing the same code over and over again and just changing the population. Come here, follow me, I want to show you something.”
The blonde had vanished. Chan walked alone through the penthouse, down a long, opulent hallway lined with paintings, the kind of stuff that even Parker would recognize from museums. He paused for a moment to study the canvas of the Mona Lisa. It looked amazingly real. But of course, this was all just illusion.
They reached a large, open room containing Grecian statues of naked men wrestling, a couple of vases on display pedestals, and a beautiful Steinway grand piano flanked by a view out across the city. The room was a strange mix of art and music, like the work of a collector with too much money and not much taste.
The centerpiece of the room was a twenty-foot-long conference table topped by an enormous map of Manhattan. Chan walked to the map, running his finger along the edge of the table.
“The basic grid street structure of Manhattan was designed in 1811. Then they made a few changes, but by 1850 or so, things were pretty much as they are today,” Chan said. “So if you can take this grid structure and keep reusing it over and over again . . . different time periods, different people, but it’s the same basic framework. It saves the designer time. You follow?”
“I follow.”
“So if there was a backdoor in one framework, in the original programming, you would be able to travel from one system to the next. From one time period to the next,” Chan said. “Now, you live outside the system. And you’re able to brute-force hack into the system. But once you’re inside, you can’t jump from system to system. You have to commit. Right?”
Parker nodded. He had never traveled from one system to another. It was only from the real world, then into one specific time period, and back out. Never between systems.
“But this is all just theory?” Parker said.
“It was just theory,” Chan said, tapping his fingers on the map. “Until I found my first backdoor.”
“Where?”
“Here, in the hotel,” Chan said. “There are forty-seven floors here. But we’re on the forty-eighth. The entire top floor of the Waldorf Astoria is one big Easter egg. It will never show in any plans or models. It was put here by one of the program designers. And once I found this place, that’s where I knew I had to live. Because you don’t make this big of an Easter egg as a joke. There had to be a reason. And I totally fucking found it, man. It’s awesome.”
Chan led them through a sliding glass door that opened onto a large terrace with wooden decking and several beach chairs. An open cooler was filled with ice and bottles of beer next to a sniper rifle set up on a tripod overlooking Park Avenue.
“I come out here sometimes to think,” Chan said and nodded at the sniper rifle. “And also try and pick off some of the rovers. Discourages them from hanging around. Getting killed here is always a risk. Never know who might be waiting for you when you come back.”
Farther down from the sniper rifle was a set of old-timey, coin-operated observation binoculars. The binoculars were mounted on a metal tower, with a slot to deposit coins and two eye holes. It was the kind of thing seen at tourist vantage points all over the world, but it seemed a little out of place at a hotel.
“So I found this little device up here,” Chan said. “These things are everywhere. Pay like fifty cents and get to look through the binoculars for a minute. But why is it here? Little odd, right? I mean, this isn’t a tourist destination, this is someone’s private terrace. Normally I would think it’s no big deal. But now I question everything that doesn’t seem right.” Chan handed Parker two quarters. “Try it out.”
Parker deposited the quarter into the coin slot and pressed his eyes against the lens. At first there was nothing but blackness, then came a mechanical whirring as the lens cap was lifted away and he could see a magnified view across Park Avenue. The binoculars looked down on the destroyed office building Parker had seen before. The men still played cards amid the rubble of furniture. Farther up the avenue, to the south, Parker glimpsed the Empire State Building. A large banner hung from the windows read, Revenants Here, Keep OUT!
Parker pulled his eyes away from the lens. “Same shithole as before, only closer up.”
“Yes. Same shithole,” Chan said. He fished another quarter from his pocket. “Now try this. But before you do, look at the quarter, see if you notice anything different.”
Parker took the currency and inspected it. On the face was the familiar silhouette of George Washington, but along the bottom edge of the coin was something unusual. Instead of a year of mint, the word Panopticon was inscribed.
“I think that coin was left here by some system programmer who wanted the people in the system to know the truth,” Chan said. “Try it out.”
Parker deposited the coin into the binoculars again, put his eyes against the lens, and waited as the black cap slid upward again with the same mechanical whir. Immediately, the Empire State Building came back into view. Only this time everything was different. The iconic skyscraper looked brand new, every window shining and clean, the top populated with groups of tourists.
Parker swung the lens down along Park Avenue. The first thing he saw were the cars. Their bright colors jumped into focus, like spots of light pressed against the eye. They were all early 1950s models and seemed to sparkle like new toys on Christmas.
Parker saw a bright orange and white hardtop Chevy Deluxe, a light blue Chrysler Saratoga, and a cherry red Crosley Super Roadster convertible. And there were people everywhere. Parker had already grown accustomed to the empty streets of this system. But down below, he saw hundreds of people making their way along crowded sidewalks, cutting across bumper-to-bumper street traffic. Men wore suits and houndstooth patterned shirts, almost all of them in hats, while the women wore print dresses and striped skirts and coat sweaters.
This was a different system. Something set in the early 1950s. Somewhere Parker had never been before. It was amazing, so full of detail, so vibrant with life and movement. Most of the other systems Parker had visited felt real, but there was still something faded about them. Details sort of blurred out on the edges. But this was clear and focused. He studied the hundreds of people below him, trying to tell the guards apart from the prisoners, but he found it impossible.
“Pretty wild, right?” Chan asked. “Now, turn the focus knob there.”
Parker turned the knob on the side of the machine, then pressed his eyes back against the lens. It was the same view of Park A
venue, only this time, instead of 1950s cars, there were horse-drawn carriages and a scattering of early model Cadillac V-12s. A policeman in white gloves and a full, button-down, reefer coat stood at the corner of Park and Fiftieth Street directing traffic. At the front of the office building across the street, a large sign advertised Warner Brothers’ production of The Public Enemy starring James Cagney. Fewer people were on the street.
Parker pulled back from the binoculars. Clayton took his place and looked through the lens.
“Every time you turn the dial, it’s like a different view into another time,” Chan said. “I’ve counted eight different periods.”
“Can you physically visit them?”
Chan shook his head. “Not that I’ve found. But there’s got to be a way. This is just one backdoor into these different places. The connection is there. If you can view into the world, you can physically walk into it.”
“What if I told you a way to do it?” Parker said. “Would you be interested?”
Chan looked away, out across the burned out shell of the city. “Why would I trust you? Here, I’ve got something. Some control. Some truth.”
“You have no idea what the truth is. You live here sheltered up from the outside. Too afraid to even leave your home. Totally alone.”
“That’s not true,” Chan said. The woman they had met earlier stood at the edge of the terrace. She watched them with a blank look on her face.
“Oh right, I forgot about your friend,” Parker said. Chan had reprogrammed an AI drone to come alive, but there was no intelligence there. Only following commands. A completely binary program of action. “Have a lot of good conversations with her?”
“You come here to my home to tell me this,” Chan said. “I’m on the edge of discovery here. I’m on the edge of finding things out. I know about your world too. I know about Selberg. I know about you. You’re what they call mind stalkers. You go into these places and you bring people out.”
“Do you even know what these places are? You know all about the programming, but you don’t really have any idea about what the point of all this is, do you?” Parker said. Then he turned toward Blake. “Do any of you have a fucking clue?”
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