Realms Unreel (2011)

by Audrey Auden

  “Since last night. I fleshed out the rest of the island terrain model yesterday, and Lydia cranked out the detailed modeling assignments for most of the team,” he said. Outside of email, they had both been studiously restricting their conversation to business. “A lot of people saw their assignments and came in late last night or early this morning to get started before the rendering farm got swamped. Didn’t help much. Almost everyone else had the same idea.”

  “So you’ve got everyone tasked with something?” said Emmie, “We can finally get to work storyboarding quests for the Temple City?”

  “That’s what I’m working on right now.”

  She stepped out on the sixth floor and palmed room 601. The door slid open to reveal a greyroom littered with empty takeout containers and large pieces of storyboarding paper. Owen stood amidst the detritus waving his hands thoughtfully and staring into empty space. She switched to the room channel and found him fast-forwarding and rewinding a crowd simulation through the streets of the white city that looked down on the harbor lagoon.

  Owen turned around, pushing back his immerger glasses. They looked at each other for a long moment, Owen opening his mouth and closing it again, Emmie chewing her lip.

  “Did you even go home this weekend?” she asked at last, taking in the mess on the floor. It was rare to see Owen in such a scattered state.

  “Nah. I’m on a roll.”

  “Well, thanks for the overtime. I feel guilty for taking the weekend.”

  “You’ve put in your share of weekends. Let someone else carry the load for a while.”

  Emmie stood next to Owen, and they watched the crowd simulation, Emmie’s eyes tracing the city footprint again and again.

  “I don’t know what to do about this,” said Owen, pausing the simulation and pointing to the plaza before the temple at the top tier of the city. He un-pinched his fingers to zoom in closer. “There’s an incredible view from up here, and the visitor traffic will be huge for that reason alone, never mind the quest-goers, even with branched servers. I can’t see any way to avoid complete gridlock without making avatars permeable, and cheap tricks like that really don’t belong in Temenos. Our users expect strict Earth adherence.”

  Emmie smirked, and the palpable tension in the room eased a bit as she said,

  “At least as long as we still let them teleport.”

  They watched the simulation replay again. Owen shook his head, saying,

  “We’ve never designed such a small city environment before. Maybe we could have gotten away with this at first launch. Athenai was almost this small at the beginning, but the user base was tiny back then, too, and anyway, Athenai had room to scale out.”

  “Mmm,” Emmie agreed distantly.

  “You know …” she began. After a minute, Owen prompted,

  “Know what?”

  She settled her hands on her hips and stared at the terrain rendering. She felt like there was something right there in front of her that she wasn’t seeing. She looked up at Owen.

  “Would you mind handing off this traffic problem to me for a bit?”

  Owen shrugged.

  “You don’t usually go in for logistics. Are you sure you want to?”

  Emmie nodded, her eyes locked on the projection.

  “All right,” Owen shrugged. He unconsciously bobbed toward her for a kiss, then stopped himself sheepishly and waved before leaving the room.

  ∞

  Dom felt the tingle of the threads beneath his skin as Emmie’s awareness flowed into the model of the Temple City hovering before her. She was determined to understand it, to perfect it. Dom knew it was useless to struggle against her, so he let his voice slip into her ear.

  “I can show it to you,” he murmured.

  Alone in the greyroom, Emmie straightened up, pressing a finger to her earbud.

  “Dom?” she whispered, her eyes scanning the empty room.

  “Yes,” he said, standing unseen beside her, “I can show you the Temple City. Is that what you wish?”

  Emmie hesitated only a moment, her fingers twitching toward the emergency call button on her belt, before she said,

  “Yes. Show me.”

  Dom did not give her a chance to second-guess herself.

  “I am taking you in now,” he said.

  When he felt her awareness drifting from her body in anticipation of immersion, he reached for Dulai and pulled her after him.

  His awareness returned to his body, sitting in his sleeping quarters in the lowest tier of the Temple City. He looked up at Emmie, who was already reoriented and pacing the room, considering the view through the windows, touching the wool blankets on his bed and the cool stone walls, listening to the voices of women calling to each other on the street outside, just as she would have done upon first entry into any unfamiliar domain. Dom marveled that she could accept the shift between two physical worlds as easily as any other immersion.

  “Come,” he said, striding quickly from his room. Now that Emmie was here, he wanted to plant whatever seeds of understanding he could in her mind. Soon, everything would depend on her understanding his plight.

  Emmie followed closely behind him until they stepped out onto the city street, where she began to trail behind, stopping to look at the dark blue waters of the lagoon below, the colorfully robed figures of women and girls passing by, the white facades of the temple outbuildings above.

  A current of salty sea air ruffled Emmie’s hair.

  “Really compelling,” she said, impressed, “What framework are you using to code tactile effects like that?“

  “Later,” Dom said under his breath, “Follow me.”

  Dom made his way to the steep stairs that climbed up to Musaion, cutting across the boulevards that traversed each tier of the city. They passed several more women, walking singly and in small groups, chatting and laughing. He took long strides, and Emmie, trying to take in all the sights and sounds, struggled to keep up. The stairs grew ever steeper, and Emmie began to pant.

  “Doesn’t this place have a nav client or something?” she complained, “Can’t we just teleport to wherever you’re taking me?” He did not answer, as they were walking in the midst of another group of priestesses. He could not afford to draw attention to himself during this dangerous excursion.

  “Slow down! I’m going to trip on the treadwheel!” Emmie said at last.

  Dom slackened his pace but still did not answer.

  “Hey,” Emmie said crossly, “Did I do something to offend you?”

  Dom glanced at her and stepped off the stairs onto one of the boulevards, ducking into a narrow alleyway between two buildings. A black cat with yellow eyes stared at them from the stoop of a doorway that let out onto the alley.

  “I am sorry,” Dom said in a whisper, “You are a ghost here. I cannot let anyone see me speaking to you.”

  “Wait,” Emmie said slowly, “Why not? I thought all of this was your IP.”

  “Be patient. Let me show you what you need to see.”

  They resumed their hike up the stairs and at last reached the white plaza before the domed figure of Musaion. From this height, they could see over the dark volcanic ridge enclosing the smooth lagoon, to the churning waters of the sea beyond. Emmie faced Dom, leaning back against the balustrade that was the sole barrier between her and a precipitous drop to the next tier of the city.

  “So,” Emmie said when she had regained her breath, “What’s the deal with all the women? Why is yours the only male avatar?”

  “I work for the women,” he said simply, “There are other men here, too, but not many.”

  “And what exactly do you do for these women?”

  “I build. I built this city.”

  “Wow,” said Emmie, impressed, “All by yourself?”

  “Others quarried the stone.”

  Emmie laughed.

  “But seriously, you must have a lot of time on your hands to build something this detailed.”

  “I do.” />
  “And some pretty incredible content development tools, for immersion this good,” she said, turning around to lean out over the balustrade and look down at the city. She glanced at Dom pointedly. “No decent domain navigation interface, though.”

  “The city is best experienced at walking speed.”

  “You sound like Tomo,” she said, resting her chin on her hand, “He was never a fan of all the hyperactive teleportation that the navigation clients enabled. He wanted people to use his alternet domains to explore, to relax, to discover. He felt that his generation and all the ones coming up behind it were born in a world where there was nowhere left to explore, nothing left to discover.”

  Dom remembered Ava expressing the same sentiment. Had she not felt this way, she never would have left him.

  “Of course,” Emmie added wryly, “He lost that argument with Ty. Commercial users have places to go, people to see, yada yada yada.”

  She looked down at all the walking boulevards criss-crossing the city and the colorful figures moving slowly along them.

  “So, what are we doing? I’m assuming we didn’t walk all the way up here just for the view.”

  “No, we did not. But we have to wait a little while longer for the Oracle.”

  “The Oracle,” Emmie nodded approvingly, “Nice touch.”

  As they waited, Emmie watched the midday light sparkling on the lagoon.

  “It is beautiful, but I can already hear the complaints from the users, even if I can figure out a way to solve the traffic problem in these narrow city streets. Our users are such sticklers for realism, as ironic as that sounds. So many alternet experiences contain inconsistencies that ruin users’ ability to suspend disbelief. People love Tomo’s work because it feels self-consistent, alive, organic, even when it’s fantastical. This place is beautiful, but it’s unrealistic.”

  “What makes you say that?” Dom asked, amused that his own world should seem less real than one of Emmie’s alternet domains.

  “I couldn’t put my finger on it when we were walking through, but now that I think back on it, I can see what it is. Everything is too uniform. The proportions of things. The heights of every story of every building. The widths of streets and alleys. The dimensions of the blocks of stone in the walls. The sizes of windows. It’s all well-proportioned, don’t get me wrong. But it’s like those housing developments that are plopped down all at once by the same developer — there are variations, but even the variations look the same.

  “And there are little details that seem unique at first, but then they’re repeated everywhere. Like the features of the statues in the plazas — the women all have the same face, the same hair.”

  Dom had never realized this before. But looking out toward the nearest statue, a water-bearer carved into the central fountain of the plaza, he saw that Emmie was right. Ava’s face was everywhere.

  Emmie swept her hand over the city below them, tracing the line of the main boulevard that climbed up toward the temple.

  “The tiers of the city are all the same height, the angles of the streets ascending the mountain exactly the same at each intersection. And, weirdest of all, the grain of the stone aligns everywhere. It looks like every building, every street, every fountain, was extracted whole from a quarry and reassembled in exactly the same position. Like the entire city was carved from a single piece of stone.”

  Emmie’s tone implied the impossibility of such a feat. Given unlimited time, however, the task had seemed not so difficult to Dom. He had done all this in pursuit of perfection, to placate the Oracle.

  “What’s so funny?” said Emmie.

  “Nothing,” said Dom, “It does look that way.”

  “It’s also sort of sad,” Emmie said thoughtfully, “You’ve built this beautiful city, but it can never grow.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  She pointed out the city perimeter,

  “You’re hemmed in on all sides by this ridge. You’ve got this city — a small city, sure, but still a city — and there are no roads to connect it with anything else on the island. If you’re going to prevent people from teleporting, they’re all going to need some other way to get here — how? By boat? And then hike around the city? No one’s going to want to do that. The whole subdomain will just remain completely isolated. Remoteness is interesting once or twice, but in the end, it’s so impractical. People are in a hurry. Time and attention are the scarcest resources of all.”

  Dom smiled sadly.

  “Sorry for being so critical,” said Emmie, “It’s still really impressive. The sensory work is spectacular. Even if the city is unrealistic, the sounds and the smells and the visual detail are all amazing. I could win over the users with that alone, if their immersion tech were good enough to transmit it. But I don’t know if I can replicate the sensory immersion you’ve got going on here. So if I’m going to use this city as is, I’m going to need a killer backstory to explain all the weird bits.”

  A bell clanged behind them, and Emmie turned with Dom to look up at the temple. A small procession of barefoot Mohirai in saffron robes, their shoulders draped in crimson mantles, emerged from the front of the temple and descended along the paved and winding way toward the terrace where Dom and Emmie stood.

  The priestesses at the front of the procession appeared to be barely out of girlhood. Next came a line of older adolescents, followed by young women. Among these, Dom recognized the dark-haired initiate he had met in the temple twenty years ago, dressed like all the rest but carrying an empty chalice in one hand. She looked not a day older.

  “Is she the Oracle?” Emmie asked in a hushed voice. Unable to communicate the somewhat complicated answer to this question without drawing attention to himself, Dom chose not to respond.

  The ranks of Mohirai grew apparently older as the procession passed. The last were strong, straight-backed, and proud, but white-haired and withered by time.

  When the last woman had passed, Dom turned and followed at a respectful distance, Emmie trotting behind him to keep up.

  They did not have far to walk this time. The procession slowed before an unwalled circle of eight white columns supporting a delicate domed cupola of translucent blue and green stone. The structure stood atop an enormous round dais. A single flight of broad white stairs gave access to the top of the dais, and the procession stopped there.

  A small group of men, the only men other than Dom that Emmie had seen thus far, approached the dais from a boulevard that led up from the lower tiers of the city. These men were dressed like Dom, in leather-belted tunics and traveling cloaks, heavy leather boots conspicuously loud on the paving stones after the barefoot procession of women. The men stopped at the bottom of the narrow path that led to the dais. Dom went down to meet them and stopped at the front of the line before turning to face the dais. Emmie stood unseen beside him, while the rest of the men stood behind.

  The dark-haired Mohira with the chalice stood at the bottom of the dais stairs and turned to face the men. She raised the chalice for a moment, and the men, led by Dom, bowed slightly toward her. The other women ascended the stairs behind her in a double line, the oldest women now leading the rest, and stopped just before the two columns on either side of the staircase. The line parted, and the women turned to face each other, forming an aisle between them. As they turned, each woman pushed her mantle behind her left shoulder to reveal a sheathed dagger hanging from her belt.

  The dark-haired Mohira now ascended the dais, walking through the aisle of women. At the top of the steps, she turned and looked down at the men. She called out in a voice that echoed on stone,

  “Dom Artifex.”

  Without waiting for a response, she turned and walked toward the center of the dais, disappearing from sight behind the broad columns.

  Dom made his way to the bottom of the stairs, Emmie hurrying along at his side. He removed his belt and his cloak and handed them to the two youngest girls standing at the bottom of the stairs. The two a
bove them came down and ran their hands over his arms and down his sides. Each girl withdrew a small flask from her belt. One poured water that smelled of herbs over his hands, and the other poured a small amount of oil onto her fingertips and reached up to anoint his brow. They stepped back, and Dom proceeded up the stairs.

  Halfway through the aisle of Mohirai, there was a gap of a single stair that separated the young women from the older women. All the older women standing above the gap wore belts from which one or more ornaments hung. Some were simple ornaments of carved wood or stone. Others were finely worked in metal, glittering with gems.

  Dom passed the end of the aisle and stood atop the dais. A narrow trough of white stone circumscribed the eight pillars, and through it flowed a rill of clear water from an unseen source. Straight ahead, a small stone bridge led to the center of the structure. Dom crossed over the water into the cool aquamarine light that streamed through the translucent stone of the domed roof.

  Inside, a mosaic of small hexagonal glass tiles in all shades of blue, green, violet, and black covered the floor. In the center of the floor was a wide circular pool of clear water bubbling up from a crack in the volcanic rock beneath the dais. The cool susurrus of the flowing water emanated from the floor.

  Behind the pool, the Mohira sat on a high wooden stool. She acknowledged Dom with a nod and gestured for him to approach. Dom stood facing her from across the pool.

  “Long years have passed since last you made a request of the Oracle, Artifex,” said the Mohira.

  “Yes, Mohira,” said Dom, “So long, in fact, that I wonder whether the Oracle has forgotten me.”

  “The Oracle never forgets, Dom Artifex.” The priestess said this as if to comfort him, little suspecting that all Dom now desired of the Oracle was to be forgotten, to be released.

  “Please,” he said, kneeling before the Mohira, “Tell me then what the Oracle would have me do. I have nothing left to give to the Oracle. Give me my answer, or else let me be free of this task.”