The Disk Mirror Solution (Galaxia Mortem Book 1)

by Danielle Ste. Just

  “Well,” Twomanrie said with slow thoughtfulness, “doesn’t that sound unrealistic? I have no idea how one could get over something like what you went through.”

  A long silence fell, in which Armintor could only hear her own breathing. Twomanrie’s compassion was temporarily erasing all her frustrations, all her resentments.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Twomanrie asked finally.

  Armintor shook her head, and in doing so her cheeks touched her pillow. It was soaked and cold. She’d been crying in her sleep.

  “What do you think of our case so far?” asked Twomanrie.

  Armintor cleared her throat, to rid it of the sandy grit of sorrow. When Twomanrie asked questions about a case, she expected all other considerations to disappear. “From what that chemist said, the catalyst was almost as crucial as the yeast itself.”

  Twomanrie nodded. “I concur.”

  “But the constabulary tested everything in that house including the air, and they couldn’t find any traces of either the yeast or the catalyst.”

  Twomanrie leaned back against her chair. “Of course, those of a more minatory nature among us invent apparatuses to keep stray molecules from escaping into the air. Our criminal may have easily employed such a device.”

  Armintor nodded. “But not in the last month, because they watched Ted Tamobi’s and Roxanya Sixer’s and the servants’ and everyone else’s optical hook recordings.”

  “Still,” said Twomanrie, “my mind keeps going back to the maid. To her not looking outside the morning of his death.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m thinking that Roxanya Sixer could have been made to give him that dose. Against her will. Or even against her knowledge.”

  Armintor had no idea how Twomanrie leapt from the maid’s not looking out the window to Roxanya’s unintentional poisoning of her husband, but she didn’t ask. Twomanrie would just tell her to figure it out for herself.

  Chapter 19

  Underworld

  Date: 2422

  Redcholate dodged dreadly sea spaghetti. “How much longer?” she shouted.

  “Right through here. Follow me quick!” Tanto darted through two spaghettis—they had a circle of teeth on their tube ends, looking like a round mouth of death—and disappeared.

  Redcholate thrashed her peduncle to come to a halt. The gap was too narrow. She’d never make it.

  The spaghettis turned to her. She shuddered. All around her, round mouths opened and closed, teeth flashing. They reached for her. Were they… were they moving? Yes. They were moving across the ocean floor. Slowly. They were closing in on her. She’d be so morted that she’d look worse than Sylvey’s thumb.

  “Come on, Redcholate,” she whispered. “You’re a real forger now. You can’t be scared by spaghetti. Even if it can scour your cranial embed.”

  If she waited any longer, she truly wouldn’t be able to make it through the gap… no, it was too late already. They’d moved too close together. And the spaghettis behind her had already closed off her escape route.

  Tanto’d be so disappointed that he’d fire her as his apprentice. And he’d refuse to help her get Watson’s intel. Then she’d yack her gibs out, literal-style. She had to join him. But she’d waited too long.

  Wait. Her dolphin avatar was customizable. What if she could move like a… like a chain? Link by link? She reprogged her spinal column to disconnect, and reconnect into links. Then she darted forward. Her body moved in an absolutely un-dolphin-like way. Kinda like if dolphin spines were made of letter Z’s. The spaghettis snapped onto empty water. She was through. She’d made it into… a cold blue bubble of nothingness.

  “Tanto?” she whispered.

  “Here.”

  Redcholate spun around. There he was, surrounded by a teensy layer of light. The only light in the bubble of nothingness.

  “Good job, Red.”

  She grinned and waggled her peduncle with happiness. And her peduncle kept on waggling. Things back there seemed less… structurally sound than before.

  “You should reprog your spine back. Unless you want to become a sea slug.”

  She murmured a few licks, and felt her spine restructure itself to her orders. “Where are we?”

  “The blue expiry. Where all forgers go to die. All around us is the intel I need, but it’s hidden by the expiry.”

  “Noooo,” she groaned. “Why did we come here? And how do we get out?”

  “Don’t you know? You can’t escape the expiry, or pierce it, or anything.”

  Dreadly shivered her dolphin spine. “Then—” She stopped herself. He was kinda grinning. “What do I do?”

  “Well, I know what to do. What would you do?”

  She huffed and waggled around. Nothing. She ran her inspection prog. Nothing. “Tanto, I can’t see any licks.”

  “Exactly.”

  OS, she said, run my hidden threats prog.

  There are no hidden threats.

  I’m trapped in a blue bubble of death!

  I should have stated that there are no hidden threats unmasked by your hidden threats program.

  “Can you give me a hint?” she asked.

  Tanto seemed to consider this, then spoke. “Think about what water does. Traveler Planetary Financials chose to situate its headquarters in this watery world. So it has to play by the watery rules, even with its defenses. It can take liberties, like we do with our dolphin avatars—like we don’t need to breathe—but we couldn’t set our avatars on fire. Traveler Planetary Financials has to play by the same rules.”

  “Water, flows. And it… drips. And has currents.” She studied Tanto. He didn’t respond. So that wasn’t it. “Water… um… wait, it separates. Like when I swim through it. Just like air. And this expiry had to part to let us in.”

  He nodded. “Excellent. Even when I first met you, I knew you were smart. So, what do we need to do?”

  “Part it more?” She probs should’ve told him instead of asking, to seem more serious and forger-like. But he nodded his melon and seemed pleased.

  “Do you have any progs for that?” he asked.

  “No. I could write one.”

  “No time for that. Hold out your right fin. And authorize a data transfer.”

  They waggled together so their right fins were touching. OS, data transfer authorized.

  Incoming packet, said her OS. An executable program. Scanning for viruses.

  Just run it.

  Her OS ran the prog. And a teensy layer of light appeared around her. “It’s a pipz!” she said.

  Correct, said her OS. This is a personal protection zone program. But it has been altered. It is vast in scope. And intricate.

  “Try expanding it,” said Tanto.

  She searched the prog, found the requisite licks, and expanded their scope. Her pipz expanded. And within the pipz, her already-running inspection prog showed code filling every square millimeter.

  “Now, Red,” said Tanto, talking quickly, “Expand it to cover me. And protect it. Traveler’s forgers’ll attack our pipz licks as soon as I start forging. You can’t let the pipz fail. I was fooling about the purple fish, but this time I’m serious. You’re all that’s between us and being scoured.”

  “Me?” she squeaked.

  He nodded. “This was just supposed to be a reconnoiter-and-unjack mission, but since I got double the forger-power, I’ll forge out the intel right now.”

  She nodded her melon. Tanto waggled around and got as close to her side as possible, then she expanded the prog’s scope to cover him. He started spouting licks faster than she’d ever heard anyone. A kinda hazy bubble of indigo surrounded his melon. Pure, sweet intel.

  Something long, swift and dark shot past in the blue nothingness outside their pipz. Another went by. And then doubled back. Three. Then four.

  Flashes of giant mouths, of teeth, of side gills. Sharks.

  They started bumping the pipz with their bodies. Immediately, the pipz began to
glitch, as if it were shorting out. The pipz’s code started corrupting. The first lick already had a missing semicolon. She added it back.

  Run a syntax highlighter! she shouted at her OS. Fix the syntax. I’ll fix the other stuff.

  Her OS began a continuous sweep-and-fix on the syntax, while she started scrolling from the beginning.

  The largest shark slammed its body against the pipz. An asm declaration appeared before her eyecubes. Telling the pipz’s prog to run as if it were all written in assembly language. A strange language of the ancients. She sniped it, but it reappeared immediately. She sniped it again.

  Three sharks slammed into the pipz at once. Dozens of other probs appeared all over the prog. Their pipz glitched more.

  “Tanto, I can’t keep up,” she shouted.

  “Ten more seconds,” Tanto murmured. He swam in place, back and forth just like the sharks. Obscured by the indigo bubble of intel, his eyecubes were closed.

  She sniped fifteen more bugs, but a hundred more appeared.

  Nine seconds.

  A shark reared up out of the blue expiry and tore a chunk out of their pipz. Redcholate screamed and flailed backward.

  Tanto’s fluke started disappearing. Tanto, her only chance to find Watson’s intel. And her only way out of this blue expiry.

  She had to save him.

  What can I do? she shouted. I can’t maintain the pipz and protect Tanto at the same time.

  Her OS said, I will attempt to maintain the pipz. You protect Tanto.

  Seven seconds.

  She abdicated the pipz to her OS. Tanto’d already disappeared up to his waist. Dolphins didn’t have waists, but there was no time for that. His avatar’s licks twisted and merged before her eyes. She shouted a lick to freeze the prog. It held for a half-second, then the twisting got worse.

  A shark emerged from the blue expiry and tore another chunk of their pipz away, right near Tanto’s head. His melon started to flicker inside the intel bubble.

  Five seconds. Five seconds too long.

  Redcholate wracked her melon. She had to save him.

  She could enter kernel mode and fix everything. If Tanto trusted her enough. It’d give her access to the most basic functions of the pipz, his avatar, his cranial embed. His life.

  Three seconds.

  Inside the indigo intel bubble, Tanto’s rostrum disappeared. If the forgers got to his melon, he’d be morted.

  She shouted the lick to enter kernel mode. For a terrible milli, Tanto’s OS resisted.

  You are an unauthorized user, it said.

  Le me in! she shouted. Or he’ll mort. You both will.

  His OS let her in. She jeroed in on the essence of Tanto’s avatar and restored it.

  One second. A shark loomed up ahead. Its mouth was open wide. Its teeth were yellow and black and long. It would chomp on Tanto, and Redcholate, and mort them both. All her defensive licks jumbled up in her cranium and died in her dolphin mouth.

  The indigo intel bubble surrounding Tanto’s melon disappeared. “I’ve got it!” he shouted. “Unjack!” He disappeared.

  Her OS didn’t wait for her to confirm. It disconnected her. She came up to the overworld in Tanto’s apartment, lying on the floor with a spoon touching her tie-in socket.

  “Yeehaw!” she shouted.

  “Outstanding,” said Tanto.

  Everything, or almost everything, had worked. She’d become an apprentice forger. She’d experienced her first real forger mission. She’d even succeeded in saving Tanto from loops forger sharks.

  But she still had the most important task, which was finding Watson’s intel. At that realization, the now-familiar agony split her braincase. Her lumen lurched. She rolled over and yacked all over Tanto’s floor.

  A cleaning mecha emerged from its berth, siren flashing. “Biohazard alert! Biohazard alert!”

  They’d both showered, and changed, and were sitting on either end of Tanto’s couch. The reflexive cushioning on his couch was almost as daebak as the proprietary view.

  “Let’s go back under so I can fix your tie-in socket,” said Tanto.

  They did the whole spoon-in-the-tie-in-cord thing. Redcholate followed Tanto, ones and jeros style, to his lair. Which was surprisingly mundane. A lakeshore kinda thing. Little waves lapped at the shoreline. A red chair sat at the edge of the water.

  “Oops,” said Tanto. “I only got one chair. Lemme just…” He spoke a few licks, and another chair appeared. Blue and pink striped.

  “Daebak colors,” said Redcholate.

  He grinned. His avatar was as small and compact as real-flesh Tanto, but having just seen his meatsack, she appreciated the differences once again. No yellowy-pale skin on his avatar, no wrinkles, no pouchy pouches under his eyecubes. Just clear skin, and dark eyecubes, and the limitless energy of an avatar.

  They sat. A large white bird with a neck like a tie-in jack waded out of some green plants to their left.

  “I never had someone in my lair before,” Tanto said.

  She leaned back against the blue and pink chair. The air smelled minerally of water, sun on hot skin, photosynthesis. Every sight, sound, sensation, a complex lick.

  He reached out, plucked a little yellow flower, handed it to her. The scent arising from the flower was the manifestation of another series of licks he’d spouted some time in the past.

  “If you wanna be a forger,” he said, “every detail needs to matter to you.”

  She nodded vigorously. “It does. I do.”

  “If you wanna be an intel forger, you got to constantly upgee your defensive licks. If you wanna be a secuforger, it’s your offensive licks you gotta construct. If you wanna be a tainment forger, you gotta make every flower smell sweet.”

  She sniffed the flower, then tossed it into the lapping water. It floated. He’d constructed his lair to be realer than real. And until now, no one had seen it but Tanto himself. He was a true forger.

  “I understand,” she said. “I leveled up. Now I got to put in the noodle power.”

  He nodded once. “Now, let’s look at your tie-in socket.”

  She turned so he could see behind her left ear, and pulled her avatar-hair out of the way. Her own avatar obvs looked just like her real-flesh body. Or as much as she could make it. Holohair—still all sky blue and pink puffball, ladybirds of Timmon 5-style. Golden skin. And brown eyes.

  “Whoa. You got a total corker on your socket. Keeping you from getting a connection to the Underworld.” Tanto leaned closer. “Odd. This looks a lot like your code, Red.”

  “I didn’t do it,” she said.

  “Yeah. It looks a little juvenile. You’ve moved past this kinda work. If you’da been able to get to the Underworld, you’da fixed it yourself. But you couldn’t.” He was silent a few millis. “There. You’re good to go under.”

  “Thank you.” She turned back to him. “So, what do we do now?”

  He cocked his head. “We? If you didn’t notice, forgers’re a solitary breed. You got a client when you were an intel broker. Now you’re a forger. You got to get the intel yourself now.”

  Redcholate gaped. “Me?”

  He nodded. “It’s a big askii. I know. This is the job no forger’ll touch. But, well, you took the job. Now you gotta get the intel. Or tell your client you can’t.”

  “I’ll try.” Redcholate felt like lacrying. “It seemed easier when someone else was going to do the dangerous part.”

  He nodded, long and slow. “Truth, Red. You’re a forger now. We’re always the end of the line. Everyone brings us their biggest and dirtiest probs.” A breeze ruffled his short black hair. A breeze that he himself had forged into existence.

  “K.” She stood. An effortless, wondrous motion as an avatar. “I’ll look for the intel myself. And… and I’ll try to extract the bifile from Sylvey’s thumb myself, too.”

  He looked up at her, squinting against the sunlight. “Zero shame in saying you can’t. But if you’re committed, I won’t stop you. You go
tta promise you’ll come see me when you need advice. I’m your mentor now.”

  “I promise. Thanks, Tanto.” She couldn’t find more words, but he seemed to understand.

  She wanted to return to her own tie-in cord. For her first job as a forger. The job no other forger would touch. If she didn’t get Watson’s intel, maybe her stupo magical power would mort her. And then do something even worse.

  She took one final look out over the blue lake, then said, OS, disconnect.

  Chapter 20

  Gallawaygg

  Date: 2419

  The next morning, Twomanrie asked Roxanya to send her maid on a long errand. As soon as she’d departed, they went to her room to search it.

  Armintor had no idea what she should be looking for. She ran idle fingers along the wall, along the windowsill, along the slats of window shades. “Why do they use window shades? We had self-darkening glass on Terry’s New Earth, and this planet is much wealthier.”

  Twomanrie snorted. “This couple could afford to build their entire mansion out of self-darkening glass without another thought. But they’re enamored with the old ways so they use shades and curtains, and have the maid open the curtains in their bedrooms each morning and draw them at night. Another way to pretend they’re in the past.”

  Which Armintor thought was kind of like choosing a mentor from the ancient times. Using Mr. Sherlock Holmes’s work as a detection manual was a way for Twomanrie to hang onto a past that wasn’t even hers. A way to say, Look, universe. I am unique and special.

  She kept her chin tucked and faced away from Twomanrie—she was convinced her mentor could read uncharitable thoughts in her expressions—and ran her hand over the heavy bottommost slat of the window shade. It was provided for ballast, she saw, so the shades would operate smoothly. It was an interesting lotek solution. A slight roughness made her hand pause. She inspected the edge. It felt as if someone had pried open this part of the slat. Glancing at Twomanrie, who seemed preoccupied with the ornate bedframe, Armintor wedged her right thumbnail into the roughness and pried at the slat.