The Shoreless Sea

by J. Scott Coatsworth

  “Good. Smart boy.” Andy looked back at Shandra, who nodded. “We need to commandeer your ride.”

  “Commandeer…?”

  “We need you to take us to the North Pole. We have to protect the world mind.”

  “Of course. Are you ready to go?” He opened the gate to the basket, and Shandra climbed inside.

  “The sooner the better.” She set down her carry sack inside the basket. Andy had a bad flash of déjà vu from the last time they’d faced a crisis and had to jump into a balloon. Of course, back then they’d been running away from danger, not toward it.

  Such was life.

  Fate was laughing at her for thinking she had any kind of control over events in this life.

  Colin untied the balloon and fired up the burner, and soon it was lifting them up and away from the Estate they called home.

  Andy cast a wistful glance back down at it as the orchard and red berry vines shrank to toy size, sure, despite Shandra’s reassurances, that this was the last time she would ever see it.

  THEY STOOD together around the inthworld mind. In the brighter light of the luthiel lantern, Destiny could see that it was sick.

  Its surface fluttered and collapsed at different points, giving it an uneven appearance. The flesh of it was gray, and it looked malnourished. No wonder the ints want to escape.

  “What do you want me to do?” Destiny signed as se looked from one to another of ser companions, still amazed they had chosen ser for this.

  Maybe se was the only one who could do this. Whatever this was.

  Belynn frowned. “From what we understand, there are four virtual worlds that make up the inthworld. All of them are based on our great-grandfather Jackson’s time on Earth. They are imperfect copies of those places he lived and knew, and they’ve taken on a life of their own inside this mind.”

  Destiny nodded, taking that in. “But they’re not real.”

  Belynn shrugged. “We’re made of bits of code embedded in flesh. Are we real?”

  Destiny laughed. “Oooh. Mind blown.”

  Belynn grinned weakly. “Gordy here came from there. He seems pretty real to me.”

  Destiny looked up at the tall man with new respect. “Spin me down.”

  “Well said.” Kiryn glanced at the sickly mind. “We think you can imprint on each of us, and then on the world mind, and guide us to where we need to go.”

  “Each of you, sure. But that thing?” Se frowned. “It looks really sick.”

  “That’s why we don’t have much time.” Belynn touched the surface of the biomind and then withdrew her hand with a look of distaste. “We think that Jackson left pieces of himself in each world. If we can find them and unite them, we might be able to bring the four worlds together and heal whatever has gone wrong.”

  Destiny whistled. “Sounds like a long shot.”

  “Yeah. It kinda is.” Kiryn held out his hand. “Will you try it?”

  Se looked at him, at the biomind, and at the others, who were all staring at ser expectantly. “What happens if I don’t?”

  “We still give it a try.” Kiryn looked at the others, who all nodded. “But we have a better chance if you help us.”

  Destiny closed ser eyes. They needed ser. Nobody had ever really needed ser before. “Okay. I’ll do it.” Privately, se wasn’t sure se’d be able to imprint on a biomind. Se wasn’t sure what it would feel like either, when it was clearly sick.

  But se looked into Kiryn’s beautiful hazel eyes and knew se had to try.

  “What do we do?” Belynn looked scared.

  “It doesn’t hurt.” Destiny took her hand. “Here, sit across from me.”

  They sat facing each other, and Destiny pulled off ser gloves. Destiny held up ser hand. “Ready?”

  Belynn nodded.

  Destiny reached up to touch her cheeks. She was beautiful. Se hesitated just a second, staring at her smooth cheeks, her closed eyes. With a sigh, se touched Belynn’s cheek.

  Belynn stiffened, and then her imprint flowed into ser head.

  Destiny didn’t take much. Just enough to know who Belynn was and what made her that way.

  There was commotion there, and fear and pain. But there was also a hidden beauty, zealously guarded like a private oasis behind a barbed wire fence. Beauty inside and out.

  Se let go.

  “Is that it?” Belynn’s eyes were wide.

  “Yup. You gave me everything I need.”

  Belynn frowned but said nothing more.

  Dax sat across from ser next. He grinned. “I should be nervous, but what you can do… it’s amazing.”

  Destiny blushed. “I can’t take credit. I was born like this.”

  “Nevertheless. You could have done terrible things with your abilities. It’s to your credit that you didn’t.”

  “You don’t know me.” Ser father rattled at the bars of the cage where she kept him, deep inside ser, and se thrust him down mercilessly. Not now.

  Taking a deep breath, se laid ser hands on Dax’s face and started to imprint him.

  He shuddered at the force of it.

  Se took a deep breath, calming serself down, and breathed more easily. Dax didn’t deserve ser anger. He was a good man, a good match for Kiryn.

  Se slowed serself, easing up on the mind se held between ser hands.

  Soon se knew him too.

  When se let him go, he hugged ser tightly. “You’re going to be okay.” Then he got up and went to talk with Kiryn.

  Gordy stood before ser next, shuffling his feet.

  “Ready?”

  He sat in front of her on the cool stone. “I’m not sure.”

  “It won’t hurt.”

  “It’s not that.” He took a deep breath. “I’m not sure what you’re going to find. This wasn’t always my body.”

  “I know.”

  He stared at ser for a long moment. “What if I’m not real?”

  “Ah.” Destiny took his hand. “You seem real to me. But don’t be afraid. I won’t judge you.” Se was the last person to judge anyone. “Ready?” se asked again.

  He nodded. “I guess so.”

  “Close your eyes.” Se laid ser hands on his cheeks.

  The world swam away in an explosion of life.

  Images flooded ser head, bursting forth like a river of different smells and tastes and colors and sounds, a cacophony that filled ser brain.

  Destiny fought back against the flow, unlike anything se had ever encountered before. Not that ser experience imprinting others was that broad. The gift—or curse—hadn’t come to ser until puberty, and se’d been careful with it ever since.

  Se managed to get the flood of sensory information under control and started to sort it out.

  Gordy’s mind was indeed a jumble, but not in the way he thought.

  Destiny detected no sign of another there, though there were some residual memories that were clearly not Gordy’s.

  Astin.

  Instead, he was well and truly Gordy, one personality that belonged in this body.

  But his personality was nothing like the others’.

  Destiny had to think about what that meant.

  Se let go of him and opened ser eyes.

  He stared nervously at ser. “So?”

  “You’re just you.”

  He sighed heavily and threw his arms around ser, just like Dax. “You… you don’t know what that means to me. I feel like such a fraud sometimes. An imposter. Like people stare at me, and everyone knows.”

  “Nope, nothing to worry about on that count.”

  Destiny shoved it to the back of ser mind. “One more to go,” se announced to the crowd.

  Destiny stood and approached the sickly biomind. Se stared at it for a long moment, a shiver of fear racing up ser spine.

  What if se couldn’t imprint on it?

  What if I can? What will it do to me? Was se strong enough to withstand it? Se sighed. One way to find out.

  Kiryn touched ser shoulder. “You’
ll be okay.” He nodded, emphatic about that fact.

  “I hope so.” Destiny took a deep breath and reached out to touch the surface of the mind. It was soft and yielding under ser hands.

  If Gordy had been a river, this was a mighty sea, sloshing around under ser hands and threatening to pull ser in. Great waves of bilious green water formed peaks and valleys around ser, the stench almost enough to overpower ser.

  Destiny steeled serself, setting ser feet against the hard stone floor and opening serself up to the inthworld.

  It washed over ser, splitting and surging, burning as it went. Se fought it, cursing as it tried to twist away from ser, to surround ser.

  Se could see each of the four worlds that comprised it—locked in a dance together, looping around on themselves like the green leaves of a clover. A sick and dying clover.

  There was so much information there, too much for ser to accept all at once. So se took only what se needed, an imprint of the worlds and their relationship to one another, trying to keep the rest at bay.

  Then in one sudden rush, it overwhelmed ser, sweeping ser up and pulling ser under the fetid swamp.

  Destiny spun crazily, bubbles shooting through the water as se struggled with which way was up and which was down and where the virtual surface lay.

  The world pulsed around ser, information surging back and forth, threatening to tear ser apart.

  Suddenly se was thrust upward and out, into a quiet moment. A memory.

  Se looked up, and there was a man standing before ser, his bearded face intent on his task. Se recognized him from both his reputation and description.

  Jayson. The man who had saved the world from the Possession.

  He was doing something. Growing something—no, creating something.

  He was creating a new biomind.

  Destiny shifted perspective and watched in awe as a piece of world wood bulged and grew, splitting and surging. It grew and grew, taking on shape and form under the guidance of his expert hands.

  Then se was pulled back under by the green tide.

  A moment later, se opened ser eyes and found Kiryn looking down at ser, his brow furrowed. “You all right?”

  Se nodded, not trusting ser voice. Se didn’t belong here. Everyone was older than se was, though Santi had always said se was an old soul. Se closed ser eyes.

  You can do this. It was Belynn’s voice inside ser head. It was kind.

  Destiny looked up and found Belynn’s green eyes looking into sers. “What if you’re wrong? What if I can’t?” Se looked away. “What if I let you all down?”

  Kiryn must have been linked to Belynn, because Destiny heard his voice in ser head too. You won’t. I trust you.

  Belynn nodded. She touched Destiny’s cheek, and a spark passed between them.

  Destiny sat up, cradling ser head, and looked around the dark cavern. The waterfall thundered behind ser.

  Se rubbed ser temples. The contact with the inthworld had left ser with a headache.

  “Can you guide us in?” Kiryn took ser hand.

  He was so sweet. Dax was a lucky guy. “I… I think so. I can try.”

  “That’s all we ask.”

  Destiny got up and stared at the biomind again. A whole world inside.

  Four, actually.

  “Okay, let’s start with Gordy.” Se signaled for him to come sit next to ser. Taking his hand, se reached up with ser other one. “Ready?”

  “I… I guess so.”

  “Find Jackson. Then I will find you.”

  Gordy nodded.

  Destiny touched the surface of the inthworld mind, finding the way into its virtual version of New York. “Here we go.”

  Se made the connection, and his mind flowed through ser into the inthworld.

  Destiny opened ser eyes to see his body fall lifelessly into Belynn’s waiting arms.

  Chapter Five: The Inthnauts

  AINE SHUDDERED.

  She didn’t like being trapped like this, afraid to connect to her own network. Her own body.

  She did still have some resources, including the gene pit. She used it rarely, only when she needed to breed a new type of animal for Forever culled from her genetic library or replace missing or deceased stock.

  It was where her seagulls had been born, and where she had mixed Andy’s and Shandra’s lines to create their two children.

  Now she contemplated growing something new. Something to defend herself if needed.

  She didn’t have much time. On one hand, she needed some kind of defense, and this was one of the few options open to her.

  On the other hand, she risked letting something dangerous loose on the world, something that could have serious ramifications down the road if it escaped.

  Still, she had little choice. She couldn’t let the intifada take her over, or all her charges—human and int—were at risk.

  She cast about her libraries of genetic code, searching for something sufficiently dangerous. She would make them male, to keep the risk of breeding to zero.

  After a moment, she found what she sought.

  It was a genetic hybrid, created by the Cino-African Syndicate during one of the long Asian land wars, when they’d sought to take over the government of Nepal by brute force.

  She set the creation of her little beasties in motion, hoping they wouldn’t be needed.

  Hoping her previous creations, Kiryn and Belynn, would find a way to end this.

  GORDY SLAMMED into the water, plunging ten meters below the surface before starting to rise again in a shower of bubbles. He surfaced with a gasp, looking around wildly.

  He was home.

  He paddled toward the closest building, which towered overhead twenty stories, broken windows gaping at him like empty eye sockets. He was wary of what might be in the water beneath him—tiger sharks had proven surprisingly adept at surviving climate change. They now prowled the drowned streets of New York, looking for schools of fish and occasionally for foolish humans.

  He reached for the grid, finding it quickly enough. Though his host body on Forever didn’t have a loop—no one there did anymore—he seemed to have one here. Maybe he was a version of himself again—the Gordy who had lived here all his life, over and over.

  The New York grid was a bootleg operation, run by the various gangs that called the drowned streets home. But it was connected to the world grid via a series of surreptitiously placed links. These were constantly being found out and removed, but new ones sprang up almost instantly, an ongoing game of cat and mouse with the NAU.

  He searched for when he was.

  The answer came back through his loop. It was 2116. He was fourteen, though his body was older than that.

  He climbed up onto the nearest window ledge, the glass long since recycled for another use. Everything in New York had value if it could be removed and carted off.

  He shook himself dry like a dog, grinning at the image. “Woof.”

  Now for the where.

  He checked the grid again. A map expanded in his head, pinpointing his location.

  He was on Park Avenue, just north of Forty-Fourth, ten blocks from his own band’s home.

  Fucking Forever. Enemy territory. He grinned again. Forever’s slang had polluted his mind.

  His own band, the Red Badge, controlled everything south of Thirty-Fourth, but up here the Hex ruled. If he was going to find Jacky—Jackson—he’d have to figure out how to get back to his old stomping grounds.

  He’d only been up this far a few times—when the two bands had been in negotiations or when Lilith had sent him as a courier to deliver drugs or black-market memories.

  He pinged the grid again, aware he might be traced. He had to be quick about it.

  Two streets over, along Third Avenue, there was a skyway—a shabbily constructed series of bridges that led south to the border.

  It was dangerous, but that was his fastest route back to his home territory.

  If only he could wish himself there. Hey, this
place isn’t real. Maybe he could. He closed his eyes and tried to transport himself to his old apartment.

  Nothing happened.

  Well, it was worth a shot. With a sigh, he set off, looking for a way to cross Park Avenue without making himself shark food.

  Half an hour later, he crouched on the wide corner balcony of an old building at Third Avenue and Thirty-Fourth Street, an old residential building now mostly abandoned. He’d startled a flock of seagulls who’d made the balcony their home, sending them skyward like a beacon that said, “Hey, anyone watching? I’m right here!”

  He sighed. He’d lost his touch.

  A few stories below, the skyway ran from the building to the next one south and then zigzagged from there to a building across Third Avenue.

  The skyways were made from simple plascrete, extruded to form an arch between the two buildings. Simple but effective, and they would last for a decade or two of regular wear, barring a category seven storm.

  The skyway was empty at the moment.

  If the Hex caught him, he’d probably be able to pass a naked-eye inspection, but if they asked to verify his ID….

  Still, he might have a trick to deal with that.

  Jacky had shared some of his own blackware with Gordy, and he had a blick that might help. He tapped his loop.

  “Yes, Gordy?”

  Gordy grinned. He’d missed Saresha’s silky voice in his head. He and she had spent many a happy hour together in his synth dreams. “Saresha, I need a new identity. Something that will get me past a Hex inspection, if needed.”

  “Understood. One moment.”

  From where he crouched, he could see the edge of the city.

  The fiery clouds seemed closer than he remembered. Each cycle, they drew in nearer to the edge of the city, threatening it with—what?—destruction? Transformation? A final ending?

  He’d seen the outside of his world for the first time when they’d discovered it behind the waterfall, and it had shaken him to the core. It really was sick, and if the biomind that held the inthworld died, all this would collapse in an instant.

  He was scared for his old friends, but even more so for himself and his new ones. What if it happened while they were here?