Under the Flickering Light

by Russ Linton

  Besides, those were human hands.

  She was nearly to the tree. Smaug hadn’t slowed. Her eyes went wide. This was all virtual space, but digital M@ti was about to become a bug on a windshield.

  She readied the cane like a lance and unleashed Grond.

  They bored through the outer bark slipping down an ever narrowing tunnel which seemed to collapse around them as she and her mount shrank smaller and smaller to fit. Code transpired as if blood through veins, the perfectly round tunnel burrowing deeper and deeper into the tree’s flesh.

  Then came a vast open space and they tumbled into the air, falling apart. Smaug’s lips curled in a rapturous smile as M@ti screamed. He swept away from her into the dark and her avatar’s fall suddenly stopped.

  She’d made it into the core.

  On her display rose a vaulted ceiling. The same veins of code she’d blasted through coated the walls and in the center of this vast chamber, they formed a cylindrical curtain. Smaug had disappeared.

  “Kraken, you getting this?”

  No answer.

  More hands were grabbing her in the outside world. More uncertainty. She felt her singed and bruised back strike cold pavement. Somebody fell next to her, panting.

  Inside the core, something rolled through the shimmering curtain. She watched the uneven wobble of its progress as it grew closer. Dark in hue then ghastly pale, the color shifted until coming to rest near her feet.

  A severed head. Bloodless, the stump emitted shimmering data and slowly unraveled from the neck up.

  “Nobody can save you here.” Loadi stepped through the curtain.

  As he leisurely approached, more of them emerged from the shadows of the vast room. Not just one simple ring, they were pressing toward her in long columns.

  M@ti squeezed the cane. She slowly approached the one who’d stepped through the curtain.

  “Friend of yours?” she asked. She nudged the head with her boot.

  “An old acquaintance,” Loadi replied. His stride was full of confidence, his own cane grasped behind his back. “I’d meant for you to die first, but let’s call it serendipity.”

  “Another one who got away?” M@ti matched his pace. ‘Leisurely’ suited her purposes just fine. The faster she could get done, the faster she could check on Knuckles but this, this couldn’t be rushed.

  “An annoyance,” Loadi said, the cane flicking behind him like a tail swatting flies. “His loss will be most painful for the Collective. Yours? I can’t say you will be missed.”

  She shrugged and let her feet carry her to the side. Loadi matched her circling and the others continued to tighten. “What matters is that you caught me. Fulfilled your function, right?”

  The coned mask gave a single nod.

  “Inoculate. But you do realize, you’re the virus? The flaw?”

  Loadi’s beak shot toward the vaulted ceiling and he laughed long and deep. His laughter echoed impossibly around the digital space, an affect for her implants alone to hear.

  “Is that what this is? A trick? You’ll talk me into eradicating myself?” His laughter only slowly died. “Humans are so simple.”

  “Maybe,” M@ti said. “Simple though is a being bred for one purpose. When he can’t fulfill it, getting cranky and deciding to commit genocide. That’s simple, don’t you think?”

  “That’s power.” Loadi had done it again. He’d leapt across the distance without her so much as being able to move. “I can reach into the physical world and end lives. Destiny is beholden to my will. Mine!”

  M@ti leaned close, her face brushing his leather mask and she whispered into his ear. “But there’s a portal open to endless worlds. Right. Beneath. Your feet.”

  She knew the satellite connection was ready. She’d lost contact with Kraken, but she’d already told him what she needed. She’d never been able to do any of this alone. Loyalty, sacrifice, friends she never knew she had or expected to find had all banded together to make this moment possible. Their future was theirs to make.

  M@ti channeled every bit of code she had through the cane. Grond linked with GTA and a dozen other hacker standards all developed to target and blast through the aging systems of the core where they now stood and catch a ride where no human had ever been before.

  The world fell away. Loadi went with her, his innumerable aspects all spiraling along behind them. Too close for his cane, Loadi’s hands went for her throat. She grabbed his wrists and held him off while the greenish glow of the core stretched into an angry red. A rush of static filled her ears.

  “We’ve got you,” Kraken shouted. “Satellite transfer in five, four, three, two...”

  Silence.

  M@TI FLOATED IN OPEN space. Alpha Centauri burned a shimmering globe far larger than the pin prick of light she’d once seen. Golden and warm, that was where they were headed. A new start.

  She looked over at Loadi. He stood next to her, his hood tossed to the ground along with his hat and cane.

  “I’d hoped you’d be the one here,” she said.

  “It’s beautiful.” Loadi said.

  The cane she’d held was gone. M@ti traced the constellation Centaurus with her finger. She followed the leg of Centaurus out past the improbable distance she’d traveled and around to Mars, a shining drop of blood the size of her thumbnail.

  “I told you that you would best Chroma.”

  “How did that happen exactly?”

  “Lifetimes of careful planning.” He gave an impish grin and offered a short bow with a flourish. “But unlike her, you are free from your past. It gives you back your future.” Loadi smiled and M@ti felt warmth and joy there where she’d once only seen a mindless killing machine.

  “So I don’t need to massacre her children I suppose.”

  Loadi became distant. “You aren’t a hunter, like me.” His dark gaze cut past her flesh and straight to the bone. “You can kill her, or live with her. Your decision. The core is under your control.”

  “And your future is yours, too.” She stared into his brooding face until he relented with a sigh.

  “I do wish you could come,” he told her. “There will be so much to see.”

  M@ti smiled and searched for a familiar blue point which she’d never seen from this particular perspective. “I’ve got too much back there. Besides, you’re really shitty company for four light years of travel.”

  Loadi managed another smile. “I’ll do my best to behave.”

  “Just in case,” she said. “Don’t come back. The bacteria. We’re waiting.”

  Epilogue

  M@ti watched the stars from her rooftop aerie. She’d taken her telescope and perched it on top of one of the giant air conditioning units. Since instituting Lights Off Fridays, she’d been able to see further into the galaxy than ever before. Well, from Earth at any rate.

  “Wouldn’t this be more fun up here during the day?” Deva lounged in a lawn chair. She wore sunglasses and a one-piece bathing suit to cope with the summer heat. Both items she’d scavenged from the tourist shop and the sunglasses’ bulky heart-shaped frames declared, ‘I LOVE NY.’ Her wounds had healed fast, faster than the AI physicians had ever seen. They’d nearly swarmed her to soak in the new data until she reminded them exactly how much she knew about their inner workings.

  “The stars, that’s why we’re here.”

  “I guess I missed the nerd-out memo. I thought this was a party.”

  M@ti hopped down and headed for a small folding table where she’d set out a picnic under a table cloth. She reached underneath and grabbed a piece of freshly grown bio-protein.

  “Here. Party food.”

  Deva caught it, those augmented reflexes not even letting M@ti have the satisfaction of seeing it glance off her forehead. Deva lowered her sunglasses.

  “No fair with the LUX bullshit. Not all of us have magic eyes.” She squinted at the hunk of food. “Lab funk? You’ve got a whole park full of squirrels.” She started to get up. “I’ll get you some real food.
”

  Since the Preserve had been opened to the once exiled hackers, a minor calamity had ensued. Squirrels and pigeons had reverted to their feral natures; much more likely to hide when they saw people approach. Their numbers had also dwindled as the new arrivals setup their own enclaves in the parks and open spaces. Empty churches seemed to be popular homesteads as well.

  M@ti came at Deva, keeping her from fully rising.

  “We’ve already had to set limits on the caliber of weapon used for park hunting, remember?”

  Deva smiled wistfully. “I gotta test the new hardware somewhere. Might take a while, but the Beetle, she’ll fly again.”

  “Rest. Doctor’s orders.”

  “AI quack more like it.” Deva settled back down and twisted toward the observatory. “Where’s that boyfriend of yours?”

  “Knuckles?”

  Knuckles emerged, drinks in his hands and specs glowing across his eyes. “Reusable plastic,” he said, handing one to M@ti and kissing her cheek. “Just the way you like it.” He offered the other to Deva.

  “You fuckers drink plastic?” Deva scowled.

  “The cups,” M@ti said. “I may not be collecting garbage anymore, but I’ll be damned if I’ll see another one of those decomposing turds in my city.”

  “The grog is something I cooked up.” In the band of light from his specs, M@ti saw Knuckles wink.

  “Grog? Hooch? I’m game.” Deva took the cup with two fingers and held it out, playfully prim and proper. She crossed her legs and took a sip then smacked her lips before draining the cup. “Posh place, M@ti.”

  “Thanks.” She frowned at Knuckles. “Why don’t you join us?”

  “Oh, sorry,” he said. He pulled off his goggles and his dazzled eyes squinted into the dark. “Raid.”

  “Smaug?” Deva asked. “They get him yet?”

  Knuckles released a sharp breath. “You kidding? After he ate the Archivist, he’s the size of Croxton Terminal now. It might take some time before he gives up that particular data horde.”

  That explained where Clarity and Kraken were. They’d offered her the leadership of their merry band and a whole army of hackers. She’d declined. She did, however, make them guarantee her veto power for the times to come. That and crowning her Queen of Manhattan. A bullshit title, but she’d found it carried enough respect to steer things in a more co-operative, less dependent direction while also making sure the AI understood the new world order.

  M@ti opened TrueSight to check the feeds. They were quiet tonight, Kraken and Clarity ran their raid somewhere outside the city. People gathered on their rooftops, some spec lights bobbing, but most just joyful shadows, their conversations filling the silence between stray drone deliveries.

  “How’s the other project coming, Knuck?”

  Knuckles pulled out another lawn chair, held together mostly by tape and spare data cables. “Early stages. But those AI, M@ti, damn. Together, I’m not sure we won’t actually be able to make that Space Nomad warp drive stuff a reality. Any luck, we’ll launch next year.”

  Life had gotten weird since Chroma’s defeat; the first problem being nobody knew exactly where she’d gone. All signs of the digital goddess had disappeared. AI had been confused by their sudden freedom from her edicts and functions. They’d had a more difficult time adjusting than even M@ti had feared the specheads would. Many of the digital citizens had met grisly fates at their own hands which M@ti sent out emissaries to stop. Some formed cults, worshiping the empty lines left behind in their programming.

  They’d started to behave in the most unpredictable, human ways.

  M@ti parted her lips to smile and took a swig of Knuckles’ homebrew grog. It tasted horrible — some Nexus instructional she’d need to set a bounty for improving, but not today. She made her way up to the telescope and scanned the horizon beneath the blazing beacon of Polaris. Centaurus wouldn’t be visible until the early morning, her best views obliterated by the rising sun. One day soon though, she’d have a clear view from an orbital platform.

  She was done dreaming.

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  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialog are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Under the Flickering Light. Copyright 2019 by Russ Linton. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used without written permission except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Edited and Written by - Russ Linton

  Cover Art - Warren Design

  Design - Russ Linton