by Adam Thielen
The soldiers below started pulling up one leg, then the other. Their actions became slower as their feet sunk further into the mud now below them. The wheels of their vehicles had submerged into the ground as well. The men started shouting at each other.
Tamra couldn’t make out what they were saying, but she knew she had only moments to take a few shots without being easily located. She picked out the one who had nodded toward the grenadier and fired three rounds. Expecting them to bounce off, Tamra was surprised when the man fell backward with his feet still submerged in mud. He lay motionless while the others continued shouting and pointing at various locations and each other.
“Good work,” she said. “I need to get in touch with security HQ.” Tamra pulled out her com and looked at Taq. He had fallen on his back, his chest heaving. For a moment the pity she felt for him overcame the adrenaline rush of the moment. He’s not simply talented, she thought. He’s a masochist.
Matthias drifted past the streetlamps in his new corporate vehicle. It was a ‘72 Orget. Large tires capable of changing tread depth. Large interior. Lightly armored. Its black exterior gleamed under the street lights.
Matthias’s mind drifted as well. Doing some sloppy math in his head, even accounting for the gap in his memory, Matthias estimated he was just over 92 years old. Relatively young for his kind. He thought of his early family; his mother and father and sister. They had all died several decades ago. Losing all living connections to his origins had taken its toll on his psyche. He felt somewhat hollow. One facet of vampirism was a kind of artificial mental stability. What might make a normal person manic, depressed, or suicidal simply didn’t have the same effect on a nocturnal. Matthias had a desire to feel these emotions. He knew that somewhere in their feeling was a kind of truth that couldn’t be found in analytical thought, and he was tired of being so cold and calculating.
Matthias’s meditation was interrupted by buzzing coming from his com unit. Matthias slipped the thin rectangle out of his belt holster. The device vibrated softly in his hand. It was the council.
“This is Matthias.”
“Greets, Matthias,” hailed Mr. Green. “We have a situation at the mage academy, and we need you to check it out.”
Matthias started swiping around his car’s screen and directed it toward the school. “What is going on, sir?”
“Our monitors are telling me they intercepted an SOS from the academy, claiming it was being attacked by armed men,” said Green.
“So we are monitoring the academy? What’s our interest here, if I may ask?” questioned Matthias.
“We want to know what’s going on. In my opinion we need to know. All the corps have a stake in the academies, but with recent events and a certain resident at those dorms, our stake is greater.”
“Taq, of course,” Matthias sighed. “I’m on my way.”
“I’ll put you through to our lead monitor for any details on the situation,” Green stated.
Matthias decided to utilize his new pull with the corp by calling in two guns that had decent reputations.
“I’ve put a marker where we can meet. I don’t know what kind of resistance we will meet. Here is Taq’s profile. He is the VIP. Our job is to protect and extract,” he found himself at ease with giving commands. He pushed down the accelerator. The police patrolling the city would be Noxcorp employees, and they wouldn’t be stopping his new ride. The cronyism was absolute under corporate governance, but it was also efficient.
* * *
The metal slab had inclined, allowing Kate to see one side of the room. It was barren, made of painted cinder blocks, with a large opaque window. One light shone in her direction like the headlight of a passing car in the night. New straps had wrapped themselves around her thighs and chest. Her arms hung loosely. For what seemed like an eternity, thin metal probes brushed against her skin, sending powerful shocks across her nervous system. A madness had started to set in. Kate needed it all to end.
“Confirm Cyanide Release” she commanded. Instantly her back arched and the room went black. She heard an alarm sound and felt pinches against her skin before losing consciousness.
Kate opened her eyes and looked around. She was no longer bound to a metal slab, and the walls around her were now covered in repeating patterns of flowers and vines. She looked down at a floor composed of wooden planks. A large oval rug lay under her feet. She was sitting on a couch. An old woman rocked in a rocking chair across the room, holding a book to her face. “I’m in someone’s house,” Kate said.
She slowly stood up. “This isn’t real,” she said aloud. The old woman looked at her, then back to her book. Kate looked around for any other people. Her vision assist interface was missing. She could faintly smell food, as if someone had eaten and left before she arrived. The only sound she heard was the breeze from outside. She walked around the house, looking for anyone else who might be living there. She found a mirror in one of the bedrooms. She expected to look like someone else, but her body and face were the same. Her black hair was much longer, no longer patterned but instead fell down around her head. She was wearing a white and blue plaid dress that reached her lower calf.
Kate decided it was time to leave. As she walked toward the front door she realized that she felt no loneliness and could not feel any signal through her implants. And that wasn’t all. Kate could no longer feel or access her neurOS at all. No programs, no storage, no hardware.
The old woman spoke. “Dearie, if you are goin’ ta town, don’t forget your handbag. There’s a grocery list on the table too.” Kate took the handbag off the couch and grabbed the list off the table and shoved it inside the bag.
Kate looked at the door and smiled. She loved old mechanical devices. Very gingerly she turned the doorknob and, to her surprise, was greeted with yet another door. It had no interface and was made mostly of a wire mesh. She instinctively pushed on it. The air outside was cool. Kate shuddered as goosebumps bloomed across her forearms. The sun was brighter than she had ever seen it, just like her grandfather told her it had been before stratospheric filtering.
Looking around she expected to see other houses or cars or just about anything. Instead she saw only a short walkway surrounded by gravel and patches of grass leading to a dirt path that disappeared behind hills in the distance. Some makeshift fencing surrounded the yard. Outside of that border she saw nothing but plants and dirt. Her eyes spotted movement. “Real live cows!” she said in amazement. She felt like running toward them but her feet wouldn’t move. Kate lifted a foot up and then the other. She spun around in a circle, focusing again on the distant livestock. She could move just fine, but she couldn’t decide to move toward them, like a procrastinator who knows they are falling behind on work. Stuck in some nebulous place between can’t and won’t, Kate realized she simply wasn’t going to investigate the cows any further.
She sighed. It was the first crack in what was an otherwise perfect simulation. Or perhaps it’s really just a dream, she thought. Or… I’m dead.
Kate thought of following the dusty road and it felt natural. Too obvious, she thought, but it was the only path that seemed to lead anywhere. She took a moment to take in the breeze and admire the obscenely flat wilderness around her, then put one foot in front of the other.
Episode 6: Escape
Tamra hoisted Taq over her shoulder. It was much harder to do than she thought and took two tries to keep her balance. She heard him mumble incomprehensibly, but showed no sign of regaining full consciousness. Tamra could feel the heat radiating off his body from the exertion of his earlier casting.
Somewhere down an adjacent hall, voices of the paramilitary could be heard. “Sweeping the north hall. Rooms are locked down.”
The floor was covered with a fine layer of plaster particles that had shaken off the ceiling and walls. The building was mostly formed of foamcrete. It was light, sturdy, and most importantly, cheap. Its presence had become ubiquitous in modern construction. The smaller the constructi
on budget, the more builders would rely on it. The material carried sound, but was a decent insulator. Cheap plaster was slapped over the top of it and sanded down to appear smooth. Without regular attention the plaster turns dingy with dust and mold. University campuses were maintained as well as intercorp policy required. In other words, not well.
The role of the university was to contain those who were ethereally awakened. It did so with ruthless efficiency and without attention to personal freedoms or due process. If a corporation wanted one neutralized it was a matter of paperwork. An armed incursion against a university in order to kill a mage was simply unnecessary and inefficient. But such an attack had the advantages of preventing any depositions and bypassing the wait times inherent in a bureaucracy.
Tamra knew she had to escape or buy time, and she saw only one unlikely path to the former. She trudged up the stairs joining the south and west hall of the C-shaped dorms, but after one flight she was wheezing. While her job was to be in peak physical condition, the truth was she was getting old.
The polonium in her body was incompatible any of the typical performance enhancing implants. There were growth hormones and steroids, but both could only do so much. Longevity had increased by decades in the last century, but athletic decline still started in the early thirties, and now Tamra was feeling it.
Tamra was thirty-three and had been over the age limit by two years when she formally requested warden training. The MESS council granted her a rare exception due to her exemplary record, and she couldn't start failing now.
At the top of the second flight, her thighs burned and muscles in her lower back had seized up on her. She carried the mage halfway down the hall with half her body in revolt, then leaned Taq’s ass against the wall to catch her breath. She had reached the janitorial closet. Somehow she had to get him up a service ladder located inside. She pressed her thumb to the reader. The door slid open a few inches then stopped. Tamra pulled it open and dragged Taq inside. The service ladder led to a hatch. She knew she could take Taq up the ladder, most likely, but she didn’t see how she could manage to open the hatch while holding him.
Tamra propped Taq against the wall and climbed up the ladder. She twisted the latch handle and pushed— it was stuck. She started banging against it with her palm, and she felt it give on the third try. Pushing it open, she felt wind bear down on her, almost forcing the latch closed. She looked up and saw a large saucer in the sky with a large hole in its center blasting air downwards. Dim light from streetlamps and a partially obscured moon gleamed off its black glossy surface.
The saucer was angular around the edges, with three small rotors positioned vertically around its border. Tamra saw three guns mounted on the bottom, making small erratic motions. Floodlights shone down on her position and she heard the guns whir to life,their barrels homing in on the hatch. She instinctively pulled it closed, grabbed the outer rails of the ladder with her feet and slid back into the janitor closet.
Tamra dove onto Taq as bullets rained down around her. They penetrated the hatch, streaking down around the warden, and continued moving unimpeded through the floor of the closet. The noise blistered her eardrums, leaving a high pitched ring in its absence. The barrage was short lived, and on a quick inspection of her body Tamra appeared unharmed. She pulled her pistol and cocked it.
“Taq,” she pleaded, shaking his shoulder. Taq slumped over, then to Tamra’s surprise started to roll onto all fours. “C’mon Taq, there’s a big copter of some sort out there, you’ve got to do something about it. Any second that hatch is going to open,” she said, now mostly talking to herself. “They are going to flush us out.”
Tamra opened the closet door and stuck her head out, looking to the left, and pulled back in before she could process what she saw, and before anyone who saw her would be able to react. Her eyes caught up to her brain, “No one that way.”
She lowered to one knee, looked to the right and jerked her head out and back in again. BANG. The shot was high. She had caught a glimpse of two men approaching the closet from the right. “About twenty-five meters,” she noted. Tamra reached out with her gun and fired blindly in their direction. They returned fire, this time with an enthusiastic automatic volley.
Tamra looked at Taq, who had managed to get on his hands and knees, but had stopped. The hatch lifted open a few inches. A small object glinted in the dim light of the closet as it fell from the opening. Tamra put her hand out. She had no enhanced vision and could barely make out its trajectory. Adrenaline surged through her veins as she felt it land in her palm. Without skipping a beat she swung her arm in a half circle, tossing the cylinder out of the door toward the right.
The grenade bounced off the far wall of the hallway and skipped along the floor. It had almost reached the two men, who dove to the ground in response, when it engulfed a fifteen meter radius in a pool of fire. The men screamed in agony for a few seconds, then they quieted, leaving only the sound of the copter and a crackling fire. The blaze tripped the fire alarms causing sprinkler heads to extend from the ceiling and begin spraying water indiscriminately.
Tamra climbed the ladder again. As she reached the top, the hatch started to open. She fired twice at it. It fell closed again. She hurriedly barred it shut and descended back down. Taq was on his knees, upright, with a hand against the wall. Tamra closed and locked the closet door. She knelt beside Taq. “You with me Taq?” He had been staring at the floor. He lifted his head and his gaze met hers. His mouth hung open like someone perpetually awestruck.
* * *
After what seemed like hours of walking, Kate passed a sign that said “Welcome to Tulsa.” The dirt path she followed widened and became flatter and more uniform. Almost like a road, she thought.
Looking at the old buildings, she remembered Taq’s story from the safehouse. Kate had started a meta-search on the net to read posts about other people’s dreams. She found several recent entries that bore striking similarities to Taq’s. The neuro had been tipped off to these interesting dreams from a node on the groupnet; a peer to peer network that shared the hosting of the majority of personal blogs and sites. There were dozens of hoaxes and fictions posted to such nodes every week, but the similarities regarding old west dreams were too eerie to ignore. She researched the details given in the accounts and found that they often matched names of real people who had actually lived in places that existed or had in the past. Kate had wanted to experience it herself, she just hadn’t known she would have to kill herself to gain entrance.
Two people walked in Kate’s direction on the opposite side of the road. Their clothes looked worn and plain. They stopped at a flower shop and went inside, leaving Kate by herself again. On her side of the road was a small bakery followed by a building labeled simply “Inn”.
Kate looked through the glass door and saw a man attending a counter. She stepped back from the door and felt dizzy. She spotted a bench just a few feet away and sat down. Then the world went black and a bright light shone into her eyes. This is it, she thought.
Kate felt wind whip across her face. A loud rumbling filled her eardrums, and as she resigned herself to the light, the sound slowed, the wind ceased, and the light dimmed. It changed from a bright spot to a beam as it revealed itself as a spotlight. Behind it a shadowy figure of a machine began to emerge and her thoughts began to clear. Where they were fluid and churning before, they became calm and methodical. Kate knew what she was looking at. She could feel it, as if it were now a part of her.
Kate thought of Taq. He was somehow close to this flying weapon. She saw the mounted guns turn and fire. She no longer felt alone, because she knew she wasn’t. Kate reached out with her mind, expecting to decipher code and return false signal, but none of those faculties had returned. Instead her mind flowed like a river, engulfing the copter. She saw in her mind the will of it. The machine had its own tendrils of connections that reached over the horizon; it was vulnerable.
Kate exerted her will and the guns turned. Not
the direction she wanted at first, but after a few moments she got used to the feeling, as if she were learning to ride a bike. The guns did not have clearance to point upwards enough to fire upon the copter’s own exterior. Her second attempt was to simply wreck it. The machine bucked and dove downward, hitting against something, rebounding, then hitting it again. It was a resilient craft, with a thick magnelith guard rail around its curvature and a second one surrounding the rotor shaft.
Each move she made she felt its automated system counter. Kate’s mind relaxed as she gave into the feeling of impotence. In her tranquility she sensed not just Taq, but Tamra and Matthias too. “Thank you,” she thought, for anyone who might be listening. Up she sent the craft and once it hit a hundred meters, she played on its own reaction like that of a judo combatant. She first tilted it one direction, then when it tried to correct, she pushed it the other way, flipping it upside-down. Before it could react, she sent it back toward the ground, throttling the engine as high as it would go.
The crash was jarring. Kate closed her eyes, then opened them again and saw a plain white room with men in surgical masks. Pain flooded her body. Her eyes clenched shut and she screamed. When she opened them she was laying on some grass in front of the bench in the dream world. Taq, with his blond hair much longer in this world and falling down around his face, stood over her.
He knelt down. “Kate. Kate!”
Her body felt strangely sore. She grunted as she sat up.
“Is it really you?” he asked.
“I’m not sure what anything really is,” she replied. “I’m not even sure I’m alive.”
Taq helped her to her feet. A few people had been staring at them and, deciding the excitement was over, went about their business.
He held her arm and stared at her for a moment. She met his gaze.