Realms Unreel (2011)

by Audrey Auden

  Ty leaned toward her across his desk.

  “I want to offer you the job of Creative Director. You were the obvious choice from the beginning, but you’ve really shown us through the last few months that there’s no one better equipped to take over the team leadership than you are.”

  Emmie felt a surge of anger toward Ty. Putting together Atlantis had been a struggle enough on its own without Ty playing these games for the shareholders’ benefit. Tomo never would have put her through that. At the thought of Tomo, she felt her eyes grow hot with tears.

  “I was hoping that would be good news,” said Ty, taking in her look of distress.

  Emmie cleared her throat. She was certainly not going to cry in front of Ty. Still, her voice broke a little as she said,

  “It just seems so final, doesn’t it? That he’s really not coming back.”

  Ty nodded and said,

  “He was a good man. A good friend. I miss him, too.”

  They sat in silence for a while.

  “Well,” Ty said, straightening up, “That means you’re the lucky winner of the corner office.” He tapped out a quick sequence on the top of his desk. “There’s the access code. It’s all yours.”

  ∞

  When Emmie stepped out of the elevators, a small cheer went up from her team on the third floor. She accepted congratulatory shout-outs on the public channel and high-fives from the tired-looking designers and engineers milling about the floor until she at last reached her desk and collapsed into her chair.

  A minute later, Owen’s hands settled on her shoulders.

  “You should see the look on Zeke’s face,” he said.

  “Ugh,” said Emmie, shuddering at the memory of his expression as he stormed out of the conference room, “What Ty did to him was just the worst. Raising his hopes like that, and then just shelving everything he’s been working on.” She shook her head in distaste.

  “Are you actually feeling sorry for Zeke?” asked Owen, surprised.

  Emmie didn’t answer. Up until today, she would never have expected to feel sympathy for Zeke ever again, but, with Ty’s words still ringing in her ears, she could not help but think that Zeke had been wronged.

  “Well,” said Owen, “It’s not like his work just goes down the tubes. Everything ends up in the content library. Some of it might live to see another day.”

  Emmie nodded, rocking back in her chair. She should have been savoring this moment with Owen. Looking up, she saw in his face the same mixture of exhaustion and elation that she felt.

  “I didn’t get a chance to thank you,” she said.

  Owen crossed his arms and leaned against her desk.

  “I’m all ears, boss.”

  “Thank you,” she said, with all the solemnity she could muster.

  “You’re welcome,” said Owen, his eyes twinkling.

  They looked out over the workstations to watch the celebratory Nerf war that had just broken out in the lounge. Several people were packing up sleeping mats and pillows from under their desks and trudging toward the elevators to go home early.

  “Take a cab!” Owen shouted at a few of their most exhausted-looking teammates.

  “What a day. What a month!” he said, shaking his head. After a minute, he looked down at Emmie again and said tentatively, “So … want to come over to my place for a beer?”

  Emmie smiled up at him. The dark clouds of the last few months seemed to be lifting. She could think of nowhere else she would rather be.

  “I’d love to.”

  Owen nodded slowly and said,

  “So … does that mean things are back to normal?”

  A small bell chimed on the public channel, and Emmie and Owen looked up. Shiva’s voice, ill-disguised by a voice modulator, said,

  “The creative team would like to welcome our new Madame Director: may your reign be long and prosperous. We would also like to extend our sincere condolences to your first runner-up, Z —”

  Owen cut in on the channel with his override privileges.

  “Shiva! Please come and see me. Now.”

  Emmie patted Owen’s knee.

  “Go get ’im, cowboy.”

  ∞

  It was nearing midnight as Owen drove Emmie the last winding quarter mile along Skyline Boulevard toward her house. Through her window, she looked down at the city spread out below the hills, a field of white and gold light surrounding the darkness of the San Francisco Bay.

  The moon had not yet risen, and the road was dark. As the trunks of the great redwoods flashed by, she saw patches of night sky studded with stars — beautiful, but nowhere close to the memory of that glittering vault beneath which she and Owen had shared their first kiss.

  Her eyes turned to Owen, who was guiding the car smoothly around treacherous curves. He had insisted on driving her home. He could be overprotective sometimes, Emmie thought. Her vision seemed to sway a little as they rounded another bend. She really had meant just to have one beer, but perhaps she had gotten a bit carried away. Tonight, all she had wanted was to forget the sadness and frustration of the past several months.

  Owen pulled into her driveway and parked. They sat in a comfortable silence for a while. Emmie took Owen’s hand, and he smiled at her.

  “Ready for bed?” he asked.

  “Almost,” she said.

  He stepped out of the car and came around to open her door. Emmie stood up and stumbled a little.

  “Easy there,” Owen laughed. Emmie giggled, leaning against him.

  Owen led her up the dimly-lit path to her house. At the door, Emmie dug around in her bag for her keys. Her fingers closed around them, and she looked up.

  “Do you want to come in?”

  Owen closed his eyes, moistening his lips.

  “I do,” he said, letting out a sigh. He took her in his arms and kissed her forehead lightly, “But,” his voice sounded pained, “I think you need some sleep. We can talk more tomorrow.”

  Emmie frowned and drew back a little. The stars seemed perhaps a little less bright as she looked up and searched his eyes. She felt her head spinning. He was probably right, she thought reluctantly.

  Emmie stood on her toes and gave Owen a quick kiss, then fumbled with the door until she managed to unlock it.

  “See you tomorrow,” she said. She turned back for a parting look at him. Owen was squinting up into the trees beside the house.

  “What’s wrong?” she said, stepping out again and following his gaze.

  “Did you get a security camera installed?” he said, pointing.

  Emmie thought she could just make out a black box high up in the branches, but she found it hard to focus her eyes. She couldn’t imagine how Owen had noticed something so small in the darkness.

  “Ummm —” Emmie struggled to remember, “I don’t think so. Maybe my mom did something?”

  Owen cocked his head at the box suspiciously before saying slowly,

  “Maybe. I guess that sounds like her. We’ll have to ask her tomorrow.” He looked back at Emmie. “Hey, drink some water before you go to bed, okay?”

  “Now who sounds like her?”

  Owen smirked.

  “Good night, Emmie.”

  Emmie closed the door and flipped on the lights, dropping her bag and kicking off her shoes. She made her way to her bedroom, hand trailing along the wall, and sat down heavily on the bed. She flopped back onto the pillows, closing her eyes for a moment before rolling over and reaching for the immergers in the top drawer of her nightstand. She thought she would send Owen an email, maybe browse a few of her news feeds, before she called it a night. She had barely settled her glasses on her nose when Dom stepped out of the shadows at the corner of her room.

  “Augh!” Emmie cried, leaping up from the bed.

  “Calm down,” he said, “We have to talk.”

  “OMG, Dom!” she said, pressing her hand to her chest, realizing with relief that he was just a projection, “How the hell did you open an unauthorized con
nection?”

  “The same way I always have,” said Dom, nonchalant.

  She huffed. Dom was always so mysterious about everything. She knew she should have been alarmed by the fact that he could project into her room unauthorized, but ever since she had met him, her mind had always stopped just short of being frightened of him.

  “What do you want?” she asked warily.

  “Perhaps we could start with a small thank-you for the part I played in your success today?”

  Emmie frowned. She supposed she did owe Dom something for all his help.

  “Thank you,” she said, as graciously as she could manage.

  Dom nodded.

  “And I wonder if I could ask for your help on a problem I have in my own domain.”

  She pressed a hand to her temple, which had suddenly started to throb. She rolled her head to the side as she regarded him.

  “I’m sorry, Dom,” she said, “I have a contract with my employer. I can’t do outside consulting. Especially for competitors.”

  “My problem is personal in nature and presents no competitive threat to Augur,” said Dom, “No one will find out that you have been helping me unless you choose to tell them yourself.”

  She chewed her lip. She supposed there was nothing wrong with that.

  “What do you need?”

  Dom was silent a long time before he said,

  “I need you to show me what is on the tablet that Tomo left for you.”

  Dom pointed behind her, and Emmie turned. There, just under the edge of her bed, in the place it had fallen weeks ago as she fumbled to silence her buzzing smartcom, she could see the small wooden box containing Tomo’s tablet. Emmie shook her head in confusion.

  “That? But why?”

  “I believe it will help me complete the task the Oracle assigned to me.”

  “You mean in Dulai?” she found herself unable to suppress a giggle at the absurdity, “For some — some alternet game quest?”

  “This is what I need from you,” said Dom, looking deadly serious.

  “Well, I don’t know what you heard about this tablet,” Emmie said frankly, sitting back down on her bed. The mattress felt extremely comfortable. “But as far as I know, it’s just a bunch of ancient religious stuff. I don’t think it could have anything to do with your alternet quest.”

  “I can only find out if you show me,” said Dom, his projection stepping closer.

  “But —” she yawned, “But I’m only supposed to show it to someone I trust.”

  “Have I done anything to violate your trust?”

  Emmie thought hard, but it seemed difficult to remember if he had.

  “Oh, fine,” she said, waving her hand, wishing he would just go away and let her sleep. She reached under her bed and picked up the tablet. “Let’s take a look.”

  She was about to plug the tablet into her smartcom when Dom said hurriedly,

  “No. Not here. You should view the contents somewhere secure. Someone could tap into your local network here.”

  Something in Dom’s voice did frighten her this time, and Emmie’s head felt momentarily clear.

  “You mean someone besides you,” she said slowly.

  Dom nodded. Emmie felt any icy prickle run down her spine.

  “You’re freaking me out.”

  “Please humor me.”

  Emmie swallowed and closed her eyes.

  “Okay. I’m going to bed now, but I’ll take a look at this with you tomorrow. At work. That’s the most secure place I know.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “And right after that, I’m going to hire a security consultant. I don’t want any more hacking on my smartcom,” she said sternly, “From you or anyone else.”

  “That is probably wise,” Dom said, then vanished.

  ∞

  Emmie rolled in to the office late the next morning. She stepped out onto the third floor, where the mood today was celebratory. The sudden drop in the office-wide sleep deficit was fueling a lot of good-natured mischief. She overheard Owen interject a few half-hearted, “Get back to work, people,” directives over the public audio channel, but he was universally ignored.

  Emmie made her way over to Owen’s desk and waved hello. In her pocket, the wooden box containing Tomo’s tablet was warm and smooth. She had been turning it over and over in her fingers for the entire drive down from the hills.

  “Hey, you,” he said, “That was fun last night.”

  “Yeah,” she said, a bit sheepishly, “Maybe a little too much fun.”

  Owen chuckled.

  “Any chance of getting some work done today?” Emmie said, looking doubtfully at the groups of chattering designers gathered around desks and solo engineers not bothering to disguise that they were playing games at their workstations.

  “Nope,” Owen said definitely.

  “I saw on the schedule that the spliner’s miraculously unoccupied starting fifteen minutes from now. I booked it. I thought I would slip in for some non-Atlantis time.”

  “Sounds like fun. Want some company?”

  “Sure,” said Emmie.

  There was a chill breeze blowing across the grounds outside, and they hurried along the path to the spliner. Halfway there, they passed Zeke. His nostrils flared, and he brushed by without making eye contact.

  “Ugh. That guy,” said Owen, looking back at Zeke over his shoulder, “Has he always looked that shady?”

  Emmie shrugged. She didn’t feel like making fun of Zeke today.

  As they approached the enormous, windowless spliner building, Emmie’s fingers closed once more around the wooden box in her pocket.

  “I didn’t tell you, but Tomo left me something in his will.”

  “Really?” Owen said, impressed, “A story to tell the grandkids.”

  Emmie blushed slightly. They walked in awkward silence until Owen said,

  “So? What did he leave you?”

  “It’s kind of a long story,” she said slowly, “The short version is that it’s a manuscript for a book that Tomo’s childhood sweetheart — a woman named Midori — was writing. She died before she finished it, and then he tried to finish it, but — well, he died, too.”

  “And what are you supposed to do with it?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe he wanted me to try to finish it.”

  “Are you’re going to?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t actually had a chance to take a look at it yet. That’s what I want to do in the spliner.”

  “How will the spliner help? It’s a book manuscript, not immersive, right?”

  “Well,” she didn’t know how to tell Owen that she wanted to view the tablet in a secure facility, “It sounds like there are a lot of illustrations that go along with the book, and it’s in all sorts of ancient languages, so I thought … some physical space to spread it all out, walk through it, you know, literally.”

  “What ancient languages are we talking about?”

  “Actually,” Emmie laughed, “I don’t even know.”

  Owen made a doubtful face.

  “It sounds like you might be in a bit over your head.”

  Emmie palmed the door of the spliner.

  “I guess we’re about to find out.”

  ∞

  Inside the spliner control room, Emmie activated the mechanical subsystems and configured her smartcom as the master controller. She and Owen would now be able to utilize far more sophisticated multi-sensory immersion, and far more physical space, than they could in a projection cylinder or greyroom.

  They pulled on their immergers in the dressing room before entering the cavernous extrusion chamber of the spliner.

  “So,” said Owen, “Where is this manuscript?”

  Emmie drew out the small wooden box and slid open the lid. She snapped the coin-sized storage tablet into a port on her belt and skimmed the contents on her visual overlay. She hoped Dom was watching, from wherever he was. This was his big moment, after all.

&nb
sp; “Most of the files are two-dimensional scanned images, it looks like,” she said, taking in the filesystem interface hovering before her, “Those must be Tomo’s illustrations. Oh, and the source texts, too. And here’s some stuff in document formats …”

  She opened a secure private channel and shared her visual overlay with Owen.

  “Ugh. Zero organization,” he grimaced, “How are you supposed to tell what’s what?”

  “Dunno,” said Emmie. She tried to view the files in a relational format, then shook her head. “Wow — really outdated filesystem … No surprise, I guess, if Midori started working on the manuscript fifty years ago — Oh, hey, look at this.”

  Emmie pointed out several files with an ACML file extension. Alternet Content Markup Language had emerged alongside the alternet, so these files couldn’t be more than fifteen years old.

  “Someone was working on this relatively recently,” said Owen, “Who do you think added these files? Tomo?”

  “No idea. There’s not much metadata on the new files. When Tomo’s sister gave me the tablet, though, she told me it had been in the possession of a Buddhist priestess in Japan. Maybe the priestess was working on it.”

  “A Buddhist priestess? You glossed over this bit.”

  “It’s seriously a long story,” she laughed.

  She launched her browser and opened one of the ACML files, which rendered a network visualization of seven documents in Japanese linked to a number of the scanned images on the tablet.

  “Well, that’s helpful, at least,” said Owen, approaching the network visualization and trying a few different display options until the open files arranged themselves in a ten-foot-high panorama hovering in the open space of the spliner. Emmie walked by his side as they tweaked the sizes and display formats of the different files until they could see everything clearly from the center of the room.

  Emmie tapped a long command against her hip with her gloved hand, and beside each of the seven Japanese documents materialized a rapidly-rendered English translation. She read a few sentences aloud to Owen.