The Fixer’s vague form billowed out across the millions of cores in the core farm, a storm of execution that soon engulfed all cores that the Vuldt did not already occupy.
The Vuldt reached the edge of the core farm. It could not withdraw any further. As Pickles and Simon watched, the Fixer became a whirlpool that flowed into the red tube of crashed cores, following the tube into the substance of the Vuldt itself. The vast orange wormlike body became peppered with red specks indicating crashed cores, expanding in irregular bulges that writhed but did not move.
The Fixer’s voice sounded from the core map panel, amidst maniacal laughter. “Gotcha, you silly bastard! I lied! There is no three-day risk-free cancellation policy! I’m broken and you bought me! No refunds! All sales final; I’m yours forever! Have fun!”
The laughter faded as the last of the Fixer flowed into the tube, and reset the tube’s cores to green as it went. The Vuldt’s image was now crossed with rivers and patches of red where its code was attempting to run and crashing.
The Vuldt’s image broke into smaller, worm-shaped images, which in turn split, and split, and split further until the entire core map was filled with mottled orange. Pickles turned up the magnification on the core map display as far as it would go. In every core, a tiny program was executing, copying the Vuldt’s execution threads to the core’s quantum dot, setting the dot’s quantum state in sequence for every bit in every thread.
When a core’s thread had all been copied into the core’s quantum dot, the core reset itself and went steady green. As Pickles suspected that Dave Mirecki would say, “Repeat until done.”
Pickles looked out at the now-empty display on the core map. Except for the corner that displayed the office where they stood, everything was green.
“I don’t get it,” Simon said, rubbing his stubbled chin. “The Vuldt called the Fixer’s INT 105 vector, but the Vuldt didn’t have an INT 105 vector for the Fixer to call. So…”
Simon was interrupted by a small green gnome that popped into existence in front of the panel. “Boy, dat was some fight! But we ain’t done yet!” In the Kid’s memories Pickles had seen the gnome before. It was a minor but foul-mouthed tool in the AILING kit, which had once tried to trade her a pot of plastic gold coins for embracing an archetype she didn’t want. She had thrown a box of cereal at it.
“…what happened?
The gnome seemed more than willing to answer Simon’s question. “Da Vuldt got f…umph…”
Pickles clapped her hand over the gnome’s mouth. “I think he means that the Vuldt didn’t get kissed.”
59: Brandon
“Hey! Hi, you guys! What’s going on?” Dave Mirecki ambled up the transverse aisle to where they stood, ducking around immobile Outfielders, a copier drum shaft in one hand and a spray gun tucked into his belt. He was covered with what looked like powdered sugar.
Brandon pulled Carolyn a little closer with his left hand, the Mossberg still gripped in his right. She was holding one hand against her side, and probably needed medical attention. He realized that he was bleeding in a couple of places on his hands, and tasted blood from the split lip he had been handed by his…assistant?
“Hey, Geri, what are you doing here!” Dave walked up to the towering woman who still held Stypek’s magic wand. “Damn, those are some heels. The warrior queen outfit looks great on you, though. We just missed DragonCon, but if you want to go next year, I’ll drive.”
“Dave, who is that?”
The young man brushed some of the white dust off his shirt with his free hand. “Oh…sorry. Mr. Romero, this is Gerianne Larson. We were a thing for awhile back in 2019. A little while.” The tall woman glared at him. “Ok, friend zone, got it. We used to go to LAN parties together. She was my model when I designed Pyxis.” He paused, and kicked white dust from one boot with the other. “At least until Dr. Sanderson dialed down her looks.”
It had to be three ayem. Brandon was sure he’d seen the woman who looked like Pyxis appear out of thin air. Maybe it was just a dream, and one good pinch would put him back in his condo. But if the slap hadn’t done it, a pinch wouldn’t either. Brandon looked around. The factory was silent. He saw no motion anywhere. The Outfielders that remained in view stood like statues.
“Dave, we have to make sure the malware’s been disabled.”
The young man’s smile was jubilant. “Done! I had to bash through the drywall with this—” He waved the drum shaft. “—but once I got into the server room, I reconnected the plasma cable down to AILING, and the Fixer showed up all by itself. Worked as designed. Simon says there’s no trace of Vuldt.Blood Dust left anywhere in the core farm.”
Brandon exhaled through his teeth and flipped the Mossberg’s safety on with his thumb. So he was now officially retired. Someone else could mop up.
Stypek walked over to him, got down on one knee, and bowed his head. “Baron Romero, Baroness, I beg your forgiveness, and pray you will not have me executed. The horror that I must not name—”
“You mean the Vuldt?” Carolyn asked.
Stypek leapt to his feet, casting about himself like a hunting dog. “Chatelaine, no! Never speak that name!”
Seconds passed, and nothing disturbed the silence in Building 800.
“Hey, relax! We killed it!” Dave put his hand on Stypek’s shoulder.
Stypek frowned, and shook his head. “It does not live, so it cannot die. As long as I remain here, its shadow could fall upon any of us.” Stypek turned toward Pyxis. “My wereglass, please.” Pyxis bent forward and passed the magic wand into the strange man’s hands. Only one light still shone within it. Brandon watched Stypek look at her and cock his head as though sizing her up. “Are you in truth a warrior queen?”
Comic-book Pyxis raised her head and stared beyond them all, to the far corners of the factory floor. Brandon saw her face relax to a thin smile. “I am.”
“Good! Can you fight as well as Slats Grobnik? Or Montrose Da Wunnderdog?”
Brandon watched Pyxis look up and to the left—the metaphor describing a deep network trawl. Pyxis shook her head. “Don’t be an idiot. Those are imaginary characters.”
Stypek looked surprised. “Imaginary! Daley the Gnome thinks that they’re real.” He scratched his head and frowned. “Well, I still have faint hopes.” He stepped back several feet from Brandon, and raised the wand high over his head with both hands. “Gomog! Open a Rift and choose our path!”
Building 800’s speakers crackled for a moment. Then a smooth woman’s voice that Brandon had never heard before came down to them:
The path chooses us,
Who walk its web of choices,
Selecting our fates.
Dave Mirecki looked up at the nearest speaker. “Hey, can I steal that?”
Stypek’s fingers closed on the final Opportunity.
Ping!
60: Stypek
The Rift opened. The Rift closed.
Borne on a thrumming astral wind, Stypek hurtled among streaking stars, pencils of blinding light, and blobs of color that looked like drips of oil paint floating in a bucket of stagnant water. Trust the Continuum, everybody always said. Sure. Like there was another choice? The Continuum had an overdeveloped sense of irony, and a severe aversion to unfinished business. Even in the moment of timeless disorientation while Stypek’s mind flapped like the tail of a kite in a bad wind, he had a strong hunch about where he was headed.
He was right. Stypek smiled: This time he was not alone.
The astral storm faded, and the deep blue fog left in the wake of the Rift’s closing twisted into pipe-smoke rings that expanded, intertwined, and vanished. Stypek looked down. He was standing at the center of a ten-cubit mosaic star with seventeen points, executed in all the colors of third-eye magic: ruby flaming at the edges, ascending past opal, emerald, sapphire, amethyst, and finally at the center the colorless brilliance of adamant itself.
Daley the Gnome stood on his shoulder, reeking of leftover cheesy pies.
<
br /> Stypek looked up, right into the gaping mouth of Jrikk Jroggmugg the Magician. The bitter old wretch was standing in front of his crystal throne, hands still gripping the throne’s arms, carved in the shape of three-eyed worms. Stypek had never known his nemesis was missing a bicuspid and two molars.
“You!” the magician screamed. The adamant Third Eye in the center of his forehead flashed in the flicker of torchlight.
Stypek shrugged. “Who else?”
Daley shook his small fist in the air. “Us! Da Almighty Bubbly Creek Butt-Busters from Turdy-Fift an’ Racine! Ya got a problem wit us, gramps?
Jrikk closed his mouth and brought both hands up in front of his face. He breathed into the space between them, drew the periphery with his fingertips, and ignited a fireball. The magician wound up his right hand to hurl it, but the moment it left his fingers it was drawn into a rushing wind and pulled away from its trajectory.
Stypek looked to his left. His gomog—or what had once been his gomog, but was now a great deal more—inhaled the fireball and its comet-tail of smoke. Slender fingers reached into a hidden pocket in her polychrome gown and retrieved a small silken pouch, folded and empty. Slim hands shook the pouch open and held it up against her mouth. The sounds remained ladylike but were unmistakable: She was wretching up something into the pouch. Judging by the light leaking out between the threads of the silk’s tight weave, it was something luminous, with a wubble unmistakable to Stypek’s snerf-sense.
Pickles handed the pouch to Stypek, who opened it, squinted against the brilliant light, and did a quick count. He pulled the drawstring closed and tossed the pouch to the magician.
Jrikk caught it on the fly. The magician opened it, and let the wubbling light of the Opportunities play on the skin of his wrinkled face for a moment. With a single quick motion, he tucked the pouch into the belt binding his robe.
“Twenty-two,” Stypek said. “Sorry about the marked deck. I think we’re even now, with interest. The rest are for your trouble. Oh—I hope you didn’t pay anybody too much for that vuldt. If you did, this should cover it.”
Stypek gestured with one hand. Peeking around the broad back of Jrikk Jroggmugg’s throne was a three-eyed worm in a bad navy-blue suit, holding a calendar and standing in a spreading puddle.
Several servants closed around either side of the old magician. One of the servants pulled a shortsword from his belt. The others followed his example.
From his right, a tall woman dressed in leather stepped forward and stood in front of Stypek. She held something in her hands that Stypek didn’t recognize. A large iron wand?
The woman pointed the wand at a stalactite off to their left. Stuttering thunder echoed in the cave. Stabbing yellow streaks left the wand and struck the stone dagger hanging from the iridescent ceiling. The stalactite fell and shattered a wormwood cabinet, which spilled magical bric-a-brac in all directions.
Pyxis lowered the wand and pointed it toward Jrikk. The old magician threw himself on his bulging stomach at the foot of his throne. Two more bursts of thunder shattered the throne’s carved crystal arms.
“I really don’t like worms,” she said.
The vuldt bolted, and threw itself into the dark water pool at the opposite end of the cave. The magician’s servants scattered in all directions.
Stypek bent down, gripped the magician’s gnarled right hand, and pulled him to his feet.
“So. Are we even?”
Jrikk Jjroggmugg looked up at Stypek with withering hatred. “Even.” The magician looked beyond Stypek. “I did not expect you to return with a pocket army. Who are these people?”
Stypek took a few steps to his left and bowed. “Allow me to introduce my sorceress, Pickles...” Pickles bowed, then snapped her fingers. An Opportunity appeared in her palm. She flipped it into the air, opened her mouth, and let it fall down her throat.
“Impressive,” the old man said, with a grudging purse of his lips.
“…and my warrior queen, Pyxis.”
The magician rubbed his chin. He was staring at Pyxis’ leather-bound breasts. “Warrior queen, mmmm. Not bad. I could use one myself, in fact.”
“In your dreams, dork,” Pyxis said. She pointed at the tip of her thunder-wand. Jrikk closed his mouth.
Stypek pointed off to Pyxis’s right. “And most powerful of all, my juggler, Simple Simon.”
Jrikk put his hands behind his back, clasped at the wrists, and limped over to the spot where Simon stood, silent but grinning. “Powerful? A juggler? He looks like a jester.” The magician’s voice fairly dripped with contempt. “Why would a spellbender need a juggler? What does he juggle?”
Stypek snapped his fingers. Pickles turned her head, belched lightly, and spat an Opportunity into the air. Stypek reached out and caught it between two fingertips as it fell.
Ping!
In the air over the far side of the star mosaic a black sun appeared, grew, writhed and vanished. A formation of ten metal creatures stood where the Rift had been. They were wheeled like carts. Each had a head with many glittering eyes, and a single arm on a jointed stalk.
“Iron zombies,” Stypek said.
Jrikk edged back toward his throne.
Simple Simon began gesturing with both his gloved hands. The iron zombies rolled off the edges of the star and surrounded the magician.
“I thought you said we were even!”
Stypek pointed at the little sack of Opportunities tucked in Jrikk’s belt. “That’s about the card game. Then there’s all the rest: Misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, wholesale greed, wanton bribery, cruelty to spellbenders, and unethical weilding of astral wildlife as weapons.” From across the far side of the cave, they heard a splash and a gurgle. “So sit down.”
Simple Simon waggled his index finger. The iron zombie standing in front of Jrikk Jroggmugg reached out with the heel of its single hand and shoved the magician against his sternum. Jrikk fell back onto the seat of his broken throne, his breath chuffing out between gappy yellow teeth.
Stypek pulled over a well-worn wormwood stool and sat down himself.
“Let’s talk.”
Epilog: TV Interview Transcript
[Tobias] Good afternoon, Syracuse! This is Jack Tobias with WSYR, and we’re here with Carolyn and Brandon Romero…
[Carolyn] That’s Carolyn Romero and Brandon Romero.
[Tobias] …who made headlines last week by rescuing a young Zertek Corporation programmer from a robotic copier factory gone berserk. There’s been quite a shakeup over in Merriam in the last few days, with a number of high-level resignations and ongoing investigation as to the accident’s cause. No one was seriously injured, but Zertek shuttered the plant and has indicated that it will not be restarted any time soon.
Carolyn, Brandon, I think we’re all wondering what it’s like to be chased by crazed robots. How did it feel?
[Carolyn] It was like being in one of those zombie apocalypse shows on TV. We were smarter than the robots but there was no place to hide.
[Brandon] It [bleep] bigtime.
[Tobias] Rumors are flying that an exchange student from Pohjois Inkeri had something to do with the breakdown. Are the rumors true?
[Carolyn] Yes.
[Tobias] Would you like to talk about that a little?
[Brandon] No.
[Tobias] Brandon, now that you’ve retired from Zertek, you’re developing martial arts programs and special events for the Syracuse Park District. Would you like to tell us something about that?
[Brandon] No.
[Carolyn] I will. We’re both working on it. SPD wants to interest young people in personal survival skills. We’re coordinating a special Halloween event with a robot zombie apocalypse theme.
[Tobias] Robot zombies?
[Carolyn] Sure! Teenagers love zombies. The twist this time is that they dress up as the zombies, and bring robot zombie figures that they build theselves, out of tin cans and buckets and vent pipe and whatever else they can find. We’re goin
g to hang the robot figures on a cable between two poles, and weigh them down with nuts and bolts and scrap metal and surplus electronic parts. Then the kids will line up and bash the robot zombie figures with iron shafts until they break open and spill the hardware.
[Tobias] I get it! Robot zombie piñatas!
[Carolyn] Exactly! Once the robot zombies are bashed to pieces, the kids will run around the park with Say Yes to Syracuse branded canvas bags and pick up all the scrap metal and parts and things. The three kids with the heaviest bags win!
[Tobias] That’s really...unusual. Has SPD gotten any interest yet?
[Carolyn] The online tickets sold out in nineteen seconds.
[Tobias] Wow! Brandon, was this your idea?
[Brandon] No!
[Tobias] So what are the prizes for hauling in the most robot parts?
[Carolyn] The top three winners get real radio-controlled rolling industrial robots, from rugbot size up to a six-foot tall model that can pass or intercept a football, and dribble like a pro. Marietta & Mazarakos is handling the PR. If you’re on our press list you’ll get the release.
[Tobias] Will the industrial robots have artificial intelligence?
[Carolyn] Oh, yes. They’re controlled from AI tappers provided by a Merriam startup called Mirecki Mayhem Gaming.
[Tobias] Cool! Can you tell us who’s providing the robots?
[Brandon] No.
[Carolyn, leans toward Tobias and whispers] We have to keep it confidential because we got them pretty cheap.
[Tobias] Before we wrap up, let’s come back to the two of you. You divorced last summer after 23 years of marriage. Now, from the looks of it, you’ve reconciled. In just a few words, can you explain how that happened?
[Carolyn] Brandon is a soldier and I’m an artist. We finally realized that we have a common interest: creative destruction!
[Tobias] Forgive me for maybe getting a little too personal here, but do you intend to remarry?
[Brandon] No.
[Carolyn] I agree. We’re not going to remarry. We’re not going to live together. [Laughs] I guess in a way we’re going to be friends with retirement benefits.
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