Would they just awaken in their bodies, out there? Or would they be destroyed along with it?
He had no way to know.
“New identity complete.”
“Show me.”
A list of stats appeared in his head. Gormin Johanssen, recently arrived from a band down south in Atlanta.
Nice. Close enough to his real first name that if he slipped, it shouldn’t arouse suspicion. Jacky, where are you? He looked southward, but he didn’t dare try to contact his old friend across the grid from here in enemy territory.
With a sigh, he slipped back inside the building, intent on making his way to the skyway below.
BELYNN SLAMMED into the hard ground with a force that should have broken her to pieces, or at least broken all her bones. She checked herself over—miraculously, she seemed unharmed.
She stood and immediately fell back to the ground as something massive whooshed past just overhead.
“Warning. Please move out of the street. Warning.” A red light flashed, and Belynn scrambled to get her bearings.
She was in a deep canyon—no, a city street, with superscrapers rising hundreds, no, probably thousands of meters above.
Another vehicle rushed by, and then three more, candy-colored harbingers of death all.
“Warning. Please move out of the street. Warning. Police are on the way.”
She knew this place. Della had sent her here, or maybe had shown it to her once, five years before. She didn’t want to get caught by police, whatever that was.
She crawled to the edge of the street, hauling herself up onto the sidewalk. Not that it was much better.
An endless crowd of people rushed by, intent on their destination, eyes glazed over as though they were staring at something inside their heads. Mixed among them, some sort of personal transport platforms carried others at higher speeds.
Loops. Andy had told her about them. They were tuned into something inside their own heads via loops. These people were all here but all somewhere else too.
Destiny had said se was sending Belynn to Fargo, but somehow Belynn had expected the place to be smaller.
Belynn chastised herself. I’m an idiot. Fargo was the capital of one of the biggest Nations on Old Earth. Not that they called it Old Earth here.
She could feel Destiny, somewhere in her head. They were still linked if Belynn needed help.
You can do this. She stood and pushed her way through the crowd—“Excuse me, sorry, excuse me!”—ignoring the dirty looks she got from the passersby. At last, she made it to the relative safety of a doorway, up a couple of steps from the sidewalk.
She leaned against the door, staring at the passing crowds, trying to figure out how in the hell she was going to find Jackson Hammond in all this madness, without being connected to whatever all those people were using. The grind? Grid? Her mother had told her about that once too. Now she wished she’d paid more attention.
The door irised open, and she fell backward onto the gray floor with a yelp.
“I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” A handsome young man stared down at her, blond hair framing his curiously pale blue face.
“I’m… I think so.”
He helped her up, and she brushed off her pants.
He held out his hand.
She shook it. “I’m Belynn. Nice to meet you.”
He frowned. “Castillian Drake. Cast for short. You… what happened to your loop?”
“What? Oh, I… I don’t know….”
“Holy shit, you’re one of those girls, aren’t you?” His suspicion turned to concern.
“Those girls?”
“I zipped the news yesterday—they say it’s happening more and more downtown. Someone must have stolen your loop and wiped you.” He touched her temple. “They did a nice job. You can hardly even tell it was there.”
He could help me. “Yes. That must be it. I—I hardly remember anything about this place.” Well, it wasn’t a lie. Not really.
“I can take you to the police station. They can help—”
“Police?”
“The authorities.”
“No, please—I don’t want to go there.”
A tall woman who looked almost impossibly thin came out of an irising doorway in the back of the room, casting a disdainful glance at the two of them before heading outside.
“Hmmm. Well, come on. I’ll take you up to my place, and we can see about getting you a new loop.”
Belynn glanced back at the doorway. Did she trust him? Maybe his skin was blue because he was sick. On the other hand, she knew next to nothing about this place or its people. “Thank you. That would be great.”
“Come on. I’m on the seventieth floor.” He took her hand and led her back to the irising doors she’d seen in action just a moment before.
Seventy floors.
She’d seen how tall these buildings were, but she was still having a hard time wrapping her head around it.
As he approached, the doors opened by themselves.
Magic.
“Welcome, Mr. Drake. Your floor?”
Belynn looked around, searching for where the disembodied voice came from.
“Yes, please. Thanks, Iris.” He winked at Belynn. “She has a thing for me.” He ushered her inside the small room. The doors closed behind her, and the room began to rise.
She flattened against the wall.
“Never been in an elevator before?”
His voice was cheerful, but there was an undercurrent. Suspicion?
“I… um….”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Of course. There’s bound to have been some memory loss when they removed your loop….”
She didn’t even hear the rest.
One wall of the elevator was clear, and she was looking out on a wonderland. Belynn’s mouth dropped open. This place was spin-fucking insane.
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. A few “people” on a nearly empty stage? An obvious simulation with a few preprogrammed responses and paths? But this…?
Superscrapers rose all around her, beautiful spires glinting in the afternoon sun. There were hundreds of them of varying sizes and shapes, mostly packed into the central city around her.
She pressed her face to the clear surface—plas, if she remembered her lessons correctly—and took in the view. Below, a river snaked its way through the middle of the city, with a large green park filled with trees and walking paths, and in the distance, a bank of clouds glowed a ruddy red in the sky, like a fire that had almost burned down to nothing.
The sky. It was massive. She closed her eyes, shutting it out. She hadn’t appreciated how big it was, how wide open, from down on the streets below.
This place really was a whole little world of its own. There was no way her great-grandfather had known all these people, had been able to populate this virtual world himself.
Where had all these ints come from? If they were all as detailed as Cast, her host….
It boggled her mind. Though she shouldn’t have been surprised. Not really. Gordy was a whole person, after all, real in every respect that mattered.
“You—live here?”
He laughed, a warm sound. “Yeah, been here for a year now, since I got the job with Optex Dreamagineering….” His eyes went blank.
She stared at him, alarmed. “You okay?”
His eyes refocused on her. “Sorry. Important call. I told them I’d be late today.”
“Oh, I hope I haven’t gotten you in any trouble.”
He grinned. “I don’t mind. Not for someone as beautiful as you. Oh, sorry—you probably aren’t in the mood to be slit on.” The elevator slowed. “Here we are.”
With one last glance at the city outside, much of which was now far below her, she turned to see his apartment. “Fuck and Forever.”
Cast laughed. “That’s a new one. Come in.”
She stepped hesitantly into his… palace was the only word that came to mind.
His “apartment�
�� was an entire floor of the building, with plas windows all around looking out over the city. It was all one space, with low dividers indicating the different rooms.
A bedroom area featured a wide round bed made with shimmering silver sheets that seemed to flow like water across the mattress.
She gulped. She had come up here all alone, with a man she didn’t know. “Maybe… I should just go. I’ve already taken too much of your time….”
He looked in the direction of her gaze. “Oh… you didn’t think… you’re scared I brought you up here for sex.”
“Um… maybe. Yeah.” She was shaking. She tried to reach for him, to see if she could sense anything. Nothing. She hadn’t heard the voices since she’d been here, either. Did her abilities not work in this virtual world?
“I’m so sorry. Look, I can see how you’d think that. You can check my Zither profile… oh crap. You don’t have grid access.”
What the hell was a zither? She backed toward the elevator. “I’ll… I’ll just go find some help. The police, right?”
“I’m gay. Look.” He waved his hand and the windows darkened, and suddenly she was surrounded by a series of paintings, all of men.
They were beautiful. Stylized images of men in pairs, clearly all by the same artist.
Some holding hands. Some couples kissing. Others staring at each other, love in their eyes.
Kiryn and Dax were gay. It didn’t bother her at all—why should it?
“These are amazing, Cast.” She walked from one to the next, taking in the beautiful details. The cloth of one’s shirt looked so real, she reached out to touch it and was startled to feel the soft weave of the blue fabric.
She touched the cheek of the man in another. It was warm and soft.
He blinked at her.
She jumped back. “What the spin fuck was that?”
Cast laughed. “Sorry. Should have warned you. Never seen sensory art before?”
“Sure. Sure I have. I just wasn’t expecting it. Where did you get these?”
“I painted them.”
Belynn looked at her host with a new appreciation. “They’re amazing.”
Cast blushed. “Thanks.” He waved his hand and the images vanished, leaving the blue sky beyond. “So see? You’re safe with me.”
She nodded, backing away from the open sky. “Okay.” Truth be told, she would have liked to explore the paintings just a little longer, but she had work to do. “So… you said you could get me a new loop?”
He nodded. “Right this way.”
She followed him across the apartment, appreciating the view. Now that the fear had passed, she almost wished he was straight.
No. She was here for an important reason, and it wasn’t to get distracted by any handsome, exotic, rich man who crossed her path. None of it was real, anyhow.
But it sure felt real.
Chapter Six: A Sky Full of Stars
DAX HID behind a fern, watching his quarry.
He’d landed here in this strange garden, in this place that felt as real as his own world back home.
Still, it was too fantastic to be believed.
Behind him, a panoramic window showed a huge blue, green, and white orb, surrounded by a wreath of flame.
Old Earth. Of that there could be no doubt.
He’d seen the beautiful wooden sculpture in Darlith many times, and though he still harbored a healthy doubt about the purported origin of humanity, it was hard to argue that the globe that hung in the inky blackness of space wasn’t at least supposed to be Earth.
And why was there a ring of fire? He’d never heard of that in the stories.
The planet was indescribably beautiful, and he’d spent ten or fifteen minutes just staring at it when he’d first arrived, watching it rotate in space.
It was also undeniably vast, on a scale he had a hard time even comprehending. Many, many times larger than Forever.
At last he’d managed to tear himself away from the view.
He’d crouched there for a while, watching the comings and goings of people through the garden.
Frontier Station was built on a more human scale, something he could relate to. He was more comfortable with that.
He wondered what Destiny would make of this place. Se was so young, but he sensed se was older than ser actual years. Se had an old soul.
From here, he could feel ser, could sense the connection.
He took in the traffic that passed through the garden. Many of the people wore crisp white uniforms, but others wore more casual clothing of various types. He judged his own home-sewn clothes wouldn’t be too out of place among such variety.
Some people strolled through the gardens, enjoying them and taking a few moments to sit on one of the well-placed benches to take in the greenery and the view. From what Kiryn had told him, most of the station was sterile, metal and plas…. This place had to be a welcome relief.
Still others passed through like they were on a mission, sparing a glance for neither the garden nor the views. How jaded did you have to be to ignore a view like that?
He’d tried to act casual, wandering around the garden while looking for his mark. Young, red hair, named Jackson Hammond. That was all he had.
The garden was beautiful, taking up a quarter of the station. Besides the runway that bisected it and ran around the entire “wheel” of the station, it was full of little paths, hidden grottos, and ponds and fountains.
And those amazing views.
After a couple hours of bemused wandering and casual lingering, Dax had finally found his quarry. At least, the man fit the profile—young, redheaded. He wore a green jumpsuit, probably to identify him as one of the garden workers.
All the official station personnel had their names stitched into their uniforms—at least, all the ones Dax had seen so far. He was just trying to get a good look at the man’s tag without being too obvious about it.
The man’s eyes met his. “Can I help you?”
“Um, no, sorry, I was just—”
“Sorry. I don’t flip that way.”
“What?” Dax was confused.
“You’ve been watching me for fifteen minutes.” The man came around the ferns to confront him directly. His name tag said Hammond.
Bingo.
“Look, I’m flattered and all. Really. But you should try the Maverick Captain over on restaurant row—”
“Jackson?” Dax blurted it out, not sure what else to say.
The man took a step backward, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes. “And you are?”
“It’s hard to explain. I came from a long way away to find you. I’m Dax. Dax Weston.”
Jackson stared at him. “Who sent you? Someone with the Red Band?”
“No… what? The Red Band? I don’t even know what that is.”
Jackson tapped his temple. “I need assistance in the garden.”
“No, look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Just stay right here. Someone is coming to talk to you.” Jackson backed away slowly.
Spin me down. He’d made a mess of things. “Sorry, I can’t.” He couldn’t let himself be caught and taken away from Jackson. “Sorry!”
He turned and ran back into the garden, his hours spent wandering them coming in handy.
Jackson didn’t follow, and soon he was out the other side before “someone” could find him.
There had to be another way to get to him.
Kiryn had mentioned his wife. Glory. She worked at a diner somewhere on the station.
He’d make for the Maverick Captain… maybe he could lie low there while he figured out his next move.
If Glory and Jackson were already together in this place, at this time… he might just be able to convince her to help him get to Jackson.
KIRYN FLAILED about, trying to get his bearings as the air roared past him. He was surrounded by fog. He shouted, but no one responded.
I heard my own voice. Barely, over the sound of
the wind. The noises assaulted his ears, so many sounds at once. The whistling of the wind. The fluttering of his clothing. His own scream as he fell.
The fog suddenly disappeared as he approached the ground. He glanced around wildly, trying to block out all the noise.
The inthnauts had known, going in, what three of the four parts of the inthworld were. But the fourth one remained a mystery. Now he was falling toward it at an alarming rate, even if his body was virtual.
Spread out below him was a wide valley, forested at the southern end—and the trees, strangely, didn’t glow. In the distance, beyond the woods, ocean waves crashed against black rocks, adding to the tumult in his ears.
Below him a sea of green grass flowed like water under the wind, and a great stone tower stood on a hill in the midst of the valley.
The whole place looked deserted.
Kiryn slammed into the grass, knocking the wind out of his lungs. He struggled to breathe, curling up in a fetal position, the smell of crushed grass in his nostrils. Slowly, ever so slowly, his guts relaxed, and at last the air rushed back into his lungs.
He pushed himself up carefully to a sitting position and stayed there for a few minutes, his head between his legs, just breathing. The pain in his stomach subsided, and when he felt better, he stood unsteadily to look around the valley.
The breeze smelled like alifir, heavy with moisture from the sea. It was a heady scent, not quite like anything Kiryn was familiar with on Forever. It was full of the promise of life, and it touched something primal deep within him.
Without the wind, the sounds were more manageable—a quiet breeze through the grasses and the crunch of his own feet on the ground.
He looked up, and his head swam again.
The sky. The impossible, glorious sky that stretched from one end of the world to the other. It was a deep, lovely blue, spotted with white clouds.
He laughed, hearing the sound with his own ears for the first time. It was strange how he could connect with a place that wasn’t real on such a purely physical level.
The tower called to him. It was the only thing that stood out in the valley, a commanding presence that was manifestly not natural.
Kiryn climbed the hill toward the stone edifice, feeling a little wobbly on his legs. The sounds around him threw him off—though he’d been in vee, this felt absolutely real.
The Shoreless Sea Page 21