Labyrinth of reflections lor-1

by Sergei Lukyanenko

  What’s going on anyway? Have this mad world formed around me or is it just a trick of my own subconsciousness?

  I follow the band, any direction can be correct – if directions exist here at all. The rain thickens, the crystals become thinner turning into needles. I lower my head to protect the eyes and keep walking. I like what’s going on for some reason: somebody fights with somebody.

  It means I have a chance.

  Neither distance nor time here, all measures are merged. Maybe one hour have passed, maybe three kilometers.

  Maybe the madness have come.

  The band soars ahead but its movements are slower and less sure. It’s just an orange rag now, tattered by the rain. The last leap – and it falls down raising the geyser of white dust.

  Is it over?

  I stand over remains of my strange guide. What now? No more guiding line. I close my eyes – and hear a weak distant sound. Deep program doesn’t work with sounds! They say, or maybe these are just rumors, that Dima Dibenko’s computer didn’t have a sound card.

  I keep walking.

  The sound becomes louder but not clearer. The forest stream can babble like this, or the distant surf, or the candle flame. Whatever, even if it’s an echo of the Big Bang! I need this sound, this lack of silence!

  One step, another.

  Even through the closed eyelids I can feel that something have changed.

  I open my eyes. The world’s colors seem to be faded. The emerald rain have lost its brightness, became pale: not gems but dirty bottle glass is pouring down from the sky. The white dust under my feet is barely seen.

  And the blue star is shining ahead. A splinter of the blue sky.

  Either it became bigger or I grew smaller, but the sparkling blue sphere is right above me now. I stretch my hands touching warm rays, and fall into the star.

  The wind.

  The cold wind blows into my face.

  I rose from the snow-covered ground. Wherever I look – the plain, flat as a table, no horizon can be seen. The sky is covered with orange tangling threads, a blue light streams through them. And also – foggy jets flowing above the ground, changing brightness and density, flying against the wind and soaring up to the orange mesh of the sky.

  I shook the snow from my knees and looked at my hand. A strange snow – crystals are too big, friable and not sticking together. They hiss on my hand and fly away in a light smoke.

  – I’m glad you came Lenia, – says Unfortunate from behind.

  I didn’t have time to turn around, he almost shouted:

  – No… don’t!

  The plain enveloped in fog, the cold wind, the crumbly snow… I swallowed the lump that stuck in my throat:

  – Unfortunate… thank you.

  – I had to help, – he replied very seriously, – At least to try. You rescued me after all.

  – Not very successfully…

  – But you’ve led me out. I felt bad there…

  – I can guess that. But you could pass “Labyrinth” in an hour… in 10 minutes.

  – Lenia…

  – You could just exit, or could beat all the records.

  – No, I couldn’t.

  – But why?

  – Haven’t you understood yet? – surprise showed in his voice.

  – You didn’t want to kill?

  – Yes.

  – But all that wasn’t for real!

  – For you.

  – I won’t ever be able to be like you.

  – But this isn’t necessary at all, Gunslinger.

  – You know, – I said fighting the temptation to turn around, – Once, for just a second it seemed to me… only for a second… that you’re Messiah. Do you understand?

  Unfortunate is very serious.

  – No Leonid. I wouldn’t like to be your God. Neither of those that you created. They are too cruel.

  – Just as we are.

  – Just as you are, – echoed Unfortunate with sadness in his voice.

  – Is it a dream? – I asked after a while, – Everything I see around?

  He was silent for very long, the one behind my back who asked me not to turn around.

  – No Lenia. Even if it is, it’s not yours.

  I understood.

  – Thank you.

  I wasn’t cold, maybe because he wanted so. The gray grained snow didn’t burn me, and neither did foggy jets. Maybe it was easy for him, maybe required an enormous effort? I don’t know.

  – Did you have time to escape? – I asked.

  – Yes. We’re driving through the city now. Vika gives one address after another to the driver… Looks like she doesn’t know what to do.

  Unfortunate paused for a moment, then added:

  – And she’s crying also.

  Orange bands whirl in the sky, an eternal dance below the hot blue sun. Maybe it’s beautiful after all…

  – Tell her I’m alright.

  – Is it true?

  – I don’t know. Will you help me to get out of here?

  Unfortunate didn’t answer.

  – Will I be able to get out?

  – Yes. Probably.

  – Tell Vika that everything is alright.

  – She won’t believe me.

  – She will. She have almost understood too. Tell her that there’s a “Polyana” company in the Russian district of Deeptown. It owns just a single house, a kind of dull concrete 12– story building. Wait for me there, by the second doorway, in exactly one hour.

  – Anything else, Leonid?

  – No. That’s all.

  – It’ll be very hard, Gunslinger. – Unfortunate stammers, – You’re accustomed to fight the Deep. The force and the push. You’re a good swimmer, you always managed to surface from the whirlpool. But now it won’t work.

  – Aren’t you accustomed to rely on the force?

  – Depending on what force, Gunslinger…

  Something touched my shoulder lightly, either in parting or to reassure.

  And then the orange threaded sky fell on the snow covered ground…

  I rise – in droplets of colors, in kaleidoscope of sparks. The deep program works. I still can’t see my body.

  Only a faint memory of the touch lives in me.

  I still remember that world, I’m still living there, in an alien distant dream…

  – What the hell are you doing, Dibenko? – I whisper into the crazy silence. – We can’t… we can’t treat him our way.

  He can’t hear me, the accidental creator of the virtual world, he continues his pursuit after Unfortunate, a hunt for the miracle but I must find him to explain how wrong he is…

  I close my eyes and stretch my hands to the sides. Colorful flashes behind closed eyelids – the deep program continues to envelope my brains.

  First of all – be calm. There’s nothing demonic in it, it’s a sparkling trinket, the one that hypnotizers rotated before their patients’ eyes – that’s what the deep program is. A trinket of the electronic age. There’s no border between the dream and the dream within the dream. It’s me who builds these barriers, who convinces himself that he’s drowning.

  But now – it’s time to surface.

  – Abyss… – I whisper almost tenderly, – Abyss-abyss…

  We were building it, placing bricks of computers on the cement of phone lines. We raised a huge city. The city that has neither good nor bad in it – not until we come.

  It was hard for us in the present. There, where the passion of many days of somebody’s program cracking and of many months of writing our own is not understood. There, where they talk not about falling prices for a Meg of RAM, but about rising prices for bread. In the world where the killings are real. In the world where it’s so hard for the sinners and the saints and the common people alike.

  We built our own city that doesn’t know borders, we believed in it’s being real.

  Time to surface.

  We wanted miracles and we inhabited Deeptown with them. T
he Elvish glades and Martian deserts, labyrinths and cathedrals, far-away stars and sea depths, a place was found for everything.

  But now – it’s time to surface.

  We got tired to believe in kindness and love, we wrote the word ‘freedom’ on our banner believing in our naivety that the freedom is superior to love.

  Time to grow up.

  – Let me go, abyss, – I ask, – Abyss-abyss… I’m yours.

  Part 5. Unfortunate

  0

  In the beginning – it is dark.

  All the colors of the world have gone in an instant.

  I didn’t notice when and how it happened. The deep program just was here, but now there’s nothing at all.

  Maybe this is how divers die, falling to the very bottom of the virtual space, burning down their brains and not perceiving anything anymore?

  But the darkness fractions into the mesh of tiny squares, changes brightness and colors return.

  I’m standing with my forehead pressed against the wall, the drawn wall of the drawn house.

  Weird. Looks like I’ve entered the virtual space without turning the deep program on at all, but I’m not just looking on the helmet’s screens, I’m kinda really here! It’s just the world isn’t real anymore, it became drawn and cartoon-like.

  I step back from the wall, squares merge turning into brown rectangles: bricks. I look at the sky – dark bluishness with sparse stars. Houses and palaces are lined along the street, looking like kids’ drawings: sharp contours filled with colors. This little house is the brick one, this fence is wooden, fur trees in the garden… Steel tubes with yellow patches on their spikes are stuck along the street – lampposts… Fake, just a fake. More decent parts of the city are drawn better but I’m somewhere in the suburbs now, the world around was created with simple programs and is maintained by weak servers.

  But the funniest thing is that I’m quite real myself! The shirt sleeve torn in the fight, scratched hands… I raise my hand closer to the eyes and can see every hair, a dirt under nails and the skin bruised against fingerbones.

  A real human in the cartoon.

  I start to shiver. This is something new, it never happened before. What did the deep program do to me, been run a thousand times? What did I do to it when surfaced from insanity?

  The sound flows closer from behind. I turn around and see the bus moving along the street: a huge two storey rattletrap, made of glass almost completely. The bus is drawn pretty thoroughly, even its wheels are rotating. Caricature faces are glued to the windows: kids, adults, elders. The Deep-Transit’s emblem is on the bus’ side.

  I just stand, gasping for air, looking at the motionless faces. Well, why would they be different – mimicry can be expressed only by very good, tuned programs, aimed for the single user. These are just tourists.

  The bus stops, the people exit it awkwardly, an elegant gentleman dressed in bright– red overalls is in front: the guide. All men are dressed absolutely the same in suits with ties, just a single black guy in the group is in jeans and t-shirt. All faces are indifferently well– shaped, like a second line villains’ in kids’ cartoon series. The women are all in luxurious dresses, much better worked out than their faces, wearing jewelry. Also a flock of kids with cartoony big eyes and a group of elder men and women dressed in blinkers and with cameras. The guy in the wheelchair is the last to exit the bus with the help of others.

  – Hi! – shouts the guide to me and waves his hand. His mouth opens but no mimicry can be seen either.

  – Hello… – I force out a smile and the satisfied Deep-Transit employee turns to his wards:

  – What attracts you most… { In English in the original } I hear a slight hissing and the guide’s voice becomes barely heard. A dry, vaguely familiar voice drowns it:

  – What you interests most in this district Deeptown? We can see good known… – a pause, – famous, renowned center of book selling, where they will offer to your attention any literature… – a pause, – any books, magazines, newspapers, paper media published since…

  I blink as a kid who ripped open his beloved teddy bear to find soiled rags, crumpled paper and somebody’s dirty sock inside. Gee, and I valued Windows-Home’s interpreter program so high! I was amazed how fast and correctly does it translate from any of the five official Deeptown’s languages!

  Yeah, fast is true, but all correctness is ensured by our own brains only, as it picks adequate words from the mess.

  – Also there are, located, known, popular restaurants “Arthur’s Sword” and “Four– Ten”. If we walk on forty-three street hundred meters or bit more, then we will come to place of entertainment for grown-ups, adults.

  A slight noise in the tourists’ crowd, one should assume that they smiled.

  – You have two hours of free time, – declares the guide.

  I think I know where am I. That faceless gray dome nearby is “famous, renowned” book center named after some American president. If I’m on the 43rd street, then I’m on the opposite side of the city. What a walk! I look at the watch, scared, and the panic fades, we left the Elvish realm only 20 minutes ago!

  The tourists wander away: the couples to restaurants, singles – to adults’ entertainment places mostly. The guy in the wheelchair together with the grey-haired lady and the black guy rolls away towards the book center. The guide gets the cigar of a considerable size, definitely not the cheapest one, drawn better than his face, bites off its end and lights it, then moves towards me.

  Will it be always like this now?

  Is this a kind of victory over the Deep that I wanted?

  No.

  I’d rather be deceived further, seeing the city and the people instead of the mixture of kid’s drawing and the primitive cartoon. I’m not a judge for this world, and neither am I an indifferent watcher from aside. I’m a part of the Deep, flesh of Deeptown’s flesh…

  I hide my face in my hands, looking into the darkness, I don’t know whom I should ask, the Deep or myself, but I ask anyway.

  Be myself, Abyss…

  – Have a cigar, fellow, – says the guide friendly. He smiles, opening a cigar case for me. The collar of the red overalls is unbuttoned, the pen cap and the notebook stick out from the pocket. I can bet they weren’t there before. His face is open, kind and attractive, just as it must be for a guy who shows the Deep to inexperienced newbies.

  – Thanks, I don’t smoke…

  Everything is normal, just as before. Even better.

  I’m yours, Abyss, I can be the real human in the real Deeptown or the real one in cartoony city. Maybe I even can be the drawing walking among real inhabitants.

  Thanks, dear Dima Dibenko. You wanted to throw me out of the game or maybe even to kill me, but something have gone wrong. I even can guess what exactly. Unfortunate have helped me after all, he gave me part of the strength that he has. So my sincere thanks go to him.

  – Ah well, as you wish, – the guide doesn’t feel hurt by my rejection and hides the cigar case into his pocket. – You’re an old timer here, right?

  – Right, – I confess.

  – I’m Kirk, – the man introduces himself, – Don’t I really look like him?

  He probably means some play’s or folklore character? I never was inquisitive about the simple American mass-culture.

  – Not really, – I answer randomly.

  – And this is right! – Kirk supports me, – The resemblance must be in your heart!

  He releases a jet of smoke into the sky and skillfully rolls the cigar from one corner of his mouth to another.

  – I’m from Seattle, – he decides to go on with the talk even if I didn’t introduce myself in return.

  – And I’m from St. Petersburg.

  Kirk taps my shoulder cheerfully:

  – Yeah! I know, been there!

  I’m pleasantly surprised but his next words disappoint me:

  – Nice town, – shares Kirk his impressions, – I had a girlfriend once… such a
severe girl! And you know, it so happened, the carburetor went down right when we were passing St. Petersburg one evening. So we had to stop for a night.

  He winks to me slyly.

  It’d be great to visit Tom Sawyer’s native town, but now this self-importance pisses me off.

  – I’m from the different St. Petersburg, the one in Russia.

  – Russia! – Kirk is pleasantly surprised, – There’s St. Petersburg too?

  – Yup. And Seattle – where is it? In Canada or Mexico? – I inquire.

  Kirk chews his cigar unable to understand whether I’m kidding or really don’t know such an outstanding city.

  – It’s in America!

  – Which one, South or Latin?

  No, even if he’s a typical and real American, he’s a nice guy nevertheless, he laughs and slightly pushes me on the stomach.

  – Great! Cool! I’ll visit you, later. I’m planning to visit Europe when I’m 45, will go see your city too!

  – Sure. You’re welcome to.

  I’m so exhausted by the deep program that stand here and eagerly support this ridiculous talk.

  – I’m giving a ride around to the tourists, – Kirk goes on, – father’s business. It’s great! Today we were going through the city, one girl kept asking to show her the diver. I pointed at one guy outside, said, “Diver!”. They almost overturned the bus when all of them rushed to that side to look.

  We laugh together.

  – We seldom come here, – Kirk smooches his cigar, – But Sam kept asking to show him the book center, se we decided to stop here… not too far for him to go, and also restaurants are close… and stuff… Sam is the one in jeans and t-shirt…

  – Huh? That black one?

  Kirk chokes on his cigar from such an outrageous racism. How dare one to call the black one – black!

  – Well, I have to go, business… – he mumbles and quickly moves to the bus without saying goodbye. I just shrug. Oh citizens of the mighty country, if you just could realize how ridiculous and stupid your complexes are!

  But it’s time for me to go too. I raise my hand and the cab readily appears from around the corner.

  – Deep-Transit welcomes you! – says the driver. As if purposefully he’s black and I laugh quietly, getting into the car.