Seb felt an almost overwhelming rush of loneliness. He tried to picture Mee’s face, but it kept losing focus. He tried to remember her smile, her voice, how it had felt to touch her. It was as if he was remembering something that had never really happened. Like remembering a movie. An awful emptiness opened up inside him as he recognized his inability to simply feel the love he had always felt for Mee. Maybe Fypp was right. Maybe he was more T’hn’uuth than human now. Something deep railed against the thought, and he shook his head. He took a few quick deep breaths, allowing the feeling of panic to subside. Even the air was different, tasted different.
On the slopes below him, the sounds of the skimtails became less agitated as they gave up their search. Soon, they’d be heading back to the cave. Seb forced his attention back to what was in front of him here and now. He took a couple of paces back into the cave. He had one last check to make before joining the rest of his new species.
Chapter 21
Back in the cabin, Fypp had left it to Bok to explain—slowly and patiently—the necessity for creating a symbolic link to the reality Seb had left behind.
“Remember, you will be entering a world which is complete in itself,” Bok explained, his huge hands cradling the Egg. “It’s an evolved world with eons of real history. If you go in there thinking you will know it to be a simulation, you will underestimate it and may be lost.”
“Lost?”
“It has happened before. Your memories of the real world can seem dreamlike when everything around you points to a different reality. To cling on to what you know to be real, you must keep the connection alive. Otherwise, you will accept what your senses are telling you, and—over time—you will accept the simulation and forget reality.”
“And what happens then?” Fypp had told Seb that Bok would fill in the “boring details” of his task. Once again, she had proved to be adept at the art of understatement.
“You will be completely immersed in the simulation. You should wake up here if you die there, but not every mind is robust enough to accept such a shock. Participating in, rather than merely observing, a Gyeuk Egg is rarely attempted for precisely this reason. Insanity is the usual result.”
“Wonderful. This just gets better and better. How many people have actually done what I’m about to do?”
“I am personally aware of thirty-seven cases.”
“Any of them T’hn’uuth?”
“None.”
“Oh. Great. Uncharted territory. Of those thirty-seven, how many of them—how did you put it?—get lost?”
Bok fell silent for a while. After sufficient time passed without him answering, Seb realized it was down to reluctance rather than his customary unhurried approach to dialog.
“How many, Bok?”
“Ah. Thirty-five, I think. No, er, thirty-six.”
“Thirty-six?!”
“Correct.”
“Right. Thirty-six. Out of thirty-seven. And the thirty-seventh?”
Bok sighed miserably before answering.
“She died,” he said.
As Seb stood in the dark cave, he made a conscious effort to disregard the odds against his succeeding and—instead—take practical steps to help make sure he would get through this where everyone else had failed. The big difference in his case was that he was T’hn’uuth, a World Walker. His relationship with reality was already far more fluid than a purely biological being. His consciousness of self was not limited to a lump of brain tissue attempting to make sense of a constant avalanche of sensory input. As far as Seb understood it, every cell in his body now carried an imprint of the whole. When he Walked, when he traveled unimaginable distances, he was unsure of precisely how much of himself actually came along for the ride. He knew it wasn’t much. When he’d left Earth, his physical body had, for the most part, dissipated. Only the essential part of him, enough to reconstruct his physicality on arrival, had made the journey. Now, something similar had happened to allow him to enter the Egg. Seb wondered how much of this he would ever fully understand. He guessed a few thousand—or million—years of life might make the task easier, but the thought gave him vertigo.
Bok strapped him into a chair that looked very much like it had been borrowed from a high-tech dental practice. When he sat down, the warm, pliant white surface molded itself to his contours and the whole chair tilted backward. Wires snaked out from hidden orifices and insinuated themselves into his skin at thousands of points across his body. He felt his skin resist, then yield as tiny needles made their way to precise locations. Through clear tubing, Seb could see fluids being drained from his body. Other needles introduced some kind of dark liquid into his system.
“Sometimes it’s pretty hard to remember this is all just a metaphor I’m constructing in real time,” he said as Bok placed a huge hand on a panel which rose up in front of him. There was a brief hum and a series of small flashes of blue and orange light, then the panel sank back out of sight. Seb kept talking, in part to distract himself from a growing feeling of panic - a feeling which had now become so unfamiliar to him that it took a few seconds to identify it.
“I mean, I’m constructing some kind of futuristic scene for myself, right? It’s the closest I can get to interpreting exactly what it is that you’re really doing to me. I remember seeing a movie when I was a kid. They shrank this guy and injected him into someone else’s body. This feels a bit like that. I know I don’t literally have to shrink to get into the Egg, that it’s all something to do with chained wormholes and quantum linguine, but, for some reason, that’s not making me feel any better about things.”
Seb listened to his own voice babbling with an increasing sense of detachment. Was that of his own doing, or the intravenous fluids taking effect? He stopped talking and allowed the chaos of his mind to begin to settle.
Bok had said he could use any words he liked to mark a place where the Gyeuk Egg and the outside world met. Seb’s occasional video game binges had provided the perfect inspiration.
“Pause,” he said.
For a moment it seemed that nothing had changed, then Seb realized all sound had stopped - even the steady background chirp and whirr of thousands of nocturnal insects had faded to nothing. Even though he had initiated it, he was shocked by the sudden change. He had chosen to use familiar commands from gaming, but watching a scene pause on a monitor was a totally different experience to witnessing a whole world doing the same thing. There was something unnerving about it. Bok had told him the world wouldn’t actually pause, it was his own perception of time shifting.
A doorway ascended from the sand and rock floor like an elevator. As it came to a stop, it was revealed as an empty frame. Where the door itself would normally be found, it had a liquid appearance. Despite the fact that it stood in front of him, the sensation Seb felt was as if he was looking down into a pool of water.
He looked at his face for a few moments in the reflection before realizing what was strange about it. It was him. A human being. With a start, he looked down at his actual body for a moment and saw tough, dark skin. His hand was long, the palm muscular. Three fingers and a thumb. The pads of the fingers and thumb were like those of a dog - they had tough nails which extended and retracted as Seb flexed his fingers. He brought them up to his face and looked closer. The nails were strong and very sharp. Certainly an evolutionary weapon, possibly for hunting, he speculated. Then he looked at the blade hanging from a belt around his waist. His new species obviously didn’t rely completely on their claws.
He glanced away from his unfamiliar new body and back at the reflection in the doorway. A human figure looked back, the hand in the reflection quite definitely belonging to the Seb Varden who was now waving at his new body in the cave.
“Show Home.”
His reflection disappeared and a scene appeared on the far side of the door, as if the door now led to a new place. Seb felt his stomach lurch a little when he saw it. He knew it was just his subconscious picking the place he had the most
powerful associations with, but it shook him, nonetheless.
It was Richmond Park. London.
He was looking through the doorway as if it was at the top of the path leading down to Penn Ponds and the bench where he and Meera had had their first, drunken date. Also, of course, the virtual landscape where he had spent “time” with Seb2, when his personality had split to cope with the change from human to World Walker. He still thought of himself as a World Walker, rather than a T’hn’uuth, partly because it sounded cooler, but mostly because he couldn’t pronounce T’hn’uuth.
Seb knew why he was seeing this. It was a way of remembering. Bok had advised him to summon Home at least once a month, to remember who he really was, why he was there. If he could remind himself of his true identity, he could protect himself from being lost in the new reality of the Gyeuk Egg. In theory.
He stepped through the door.
The weather was warm, a light breeze causing the leaves in the dense clumps of trees on either side of the path to rustle like subtle, arrhythmic percussion. He walked far enough along the path to see the bench. Two people sat there, their backs toward him. They were passing a bottle between them and laughing.
With a distant, muted pang of recognition, Seb recognized himself and Mee. This wasn’t a construct in the same was the Richmond Park where he met Seb2 had been. This version of the London park was a memory, the strongest one he had. The day when he realized Mee felt something for him too. The day he felt life open up to possibilities he had never really considered before. As they had gotten drunk together, he had found his senses sharpening instead of softening, every word they had spoken hooking into his memory, every glance remembered, the smell of every flower, leaf, blade of grass, or Mee’s skin and breath, filed away. Every kiss experienced with every sense available.
Halfway down the path, he stopped short, unable to go any closer. Experiencing his own memory this way had done the job it was designed to do. He knew who he was, he knew the Gyeuk Egg was—however real it seemed—just a simulation. But being here was oddly uncomfortable, too. It was the contrast between the intensity of the afternoon that was being replayed in front of him—plus the lingering intensity of the memories associated with it—compared to his current emotional state. He knew he wasn’t feeling what he had once felt. He knew he wasn’t engaging with this memory in the way he used to. The changes in his body and brain had distanced him from his own emotions. It wasn’t just that he had changed. It was that he couldn’t quite remember what he once was. Who the boy on that bench was, kissing the laughing girl.
He turned and said, “Resume.” The doorway appeared, a shadowed scene beyond it.
As he re-entered the cave, the door slid out of sight behind him.
Seb turned and walked out of the cave. He sat on the narrow ledge, dangling his legs over the precipice. Feeling as alone as he’d ever felt in his life, Seb followed an instinct born of years of habit. He allowed his mind to enter his heart as he turned to his lifelong practice of contemplation. Father O had always warned him that there was no destination in contemplation, no goal, no waypoints, no possibility of success. And yet he had claimed it was worth dedicating his whole life to it. In his mid-teens at the time, Seb had felt let-down by such seemingly vague statements from his normally precise and thoughtful teacher. Years later, he had begun to understand that there was nothing vague about what Father O had said. Just the opposite, in fact. The priest had shown him a hard path and been ruthlessly honest about the difficulties and darkness ahead. Seb still couldn’t articulate what it was that drew a resolute non-churchgoer like him back to this seemingly fruitless practice day after day.
Seb wondered what Father O would make of him right now - a short, strong, three-toed, four-fingered bald creature watching its breath in silence. Seb guessed the old priest would probably be delighted.
About twenty minutes passed. Seb watched his thoughts. They crowded into the mental space and denied him peace. All these years of sitting and still his thoughts vied for attention like a roomful of demanding toddlers. No wonder the Desert Fathers and Mothers had referred to their thoughts as demons. Seb stood up, stretched and looked across the land toward the distant firelight of the settlement.
He turned his gaze inward briefly and looked at the jumble of images and memories inside Cley’s mind. Nothing added up, it was still confusing and incomplete. But one face stood out, along with a name. Sopharndi. And a label: mother. He would start with her.
Before entering the simulation, Seb, his mind now clouded and slow, looked up to see Bok holding a big, glowing, red button, his massive palm poised about an inch above it. Bok raised his slab-like head and looked at the new World Walker lying on the chair. The first new T’hn’uuth for millennia.
“I voted against Baiyaan,” he said, “but such a binary choice does not accurately reflect my thoughts on the issue. I regret we have been forced to convene in this way. I also regret that the onus of putting forward Baiyaan’s case has fallen on you. I wish you good luck, Sebastian Varden. Are you ready?”
Seb swallowed. Was he ready? He was about to become part of a different species on a planet that only existed as some kind of simulation. Once there, he had to start a new religion or tweak an existing one to steer an entire civilization in a direction it might never follow, whatever he did. If he failed, Baiyaan was exiled, and the Rozzers would continue directing the course of sentient life. How could he ever be ready for that?
“I’m ready,” he said.
Bok pushed the button. Seb felt himself freed from the constraints of his body, floating like a wisp. He felt himself being drawn in a definite direction and he allowed himself to follow. It was time to become someone new.
Seb half-ran, half-leaped down the side of the Last Mountain. He estimated the edge of the desert to be about an eighteen-hour hike. Cley’s species—the word in Cley’s mind for them was, simply, the People—were shorter in stature than humans, but had greater stamina. Seb started jogging, slowly at first, experimenting with re-routing oxygen intake and adding muscle mass to his legs, lengthening them as he did so. He picked up speed. Soon a small dust cloud followed him, and he smiled, thinking of the Roadrunner cartoons he used to watch.
At this pace, he estimated he would reach the settlement in ninety-eight minutes.
Chapter 22
Sopharndi stood naked in the clearing, a cold fury churning in her stomach. The old scar on her chin began to itch, as it always did when she was angry.
The fire had been lit, the People were assembled. They sat in a rough horseshoe surrounding the fire pit and the hard-packed earth around it. The Elder’s meeting circle bisected the bloodspace and Sopharndi stood just a few yards from where her appeal to the Elders had been dismissed. Now her son was dead and her challenger would soon know the force of the anger she felt.
She knew the timing of this challenge was designed to catch her at her weakest, but the fighter now walking from the other edge of the horseshoe into the bloodspace had misjudged Sopharndi. Or—more likely—she had been misinformed. Sopharndi looked over at the group of women who had prepared the challenger. She found Cochta’s tall, wiry form and kept looking until the other female’s eyes met hers. Then Sopharndi spat deliberately on the hard earth.
Cochta was slippery, unreliable, self-centered. But clever. Very clever. Sending in her strongest lieutenant as challenger was a smart play. Cochta would be able to observe Sopharndi carefully, look for her weaknesses, gage her strength and stamina. Never mind that her comrade would die supplying the information she wanted so badly. Any other challenge was fought with talons sheathed, but a challenge to be First was always fought to the death. Cochta had her eye on the long game and was willing to make sacrifices. No doubt, Sku’ord even believed it was her own idea to take on Sopharndi. Cochta had probably convinced her she would win, told her she would make an excellent First.
Sku’ord was thickset, heavily muscled and almost certainly barren. Firsts often emerged from
among those unable to bear children. They channeled their disappointment into training, took the tragedy of a severed bloodline and turned it into focused aggression. By missing the seven months of gestation and subsequent weeks of recovery, they also had additional time to develop their skills as fighters.
Sopharndi had thought herself barren, and it had been as much a shock to her as to everyone else when, a few months after she had become First, she had fattened with child. It was an unprecedented situation, and the Elders ruled that Sopharndi could choose another to take on her duties until she was ready to return as First. Sopharndi had chosen Keku, a young, level-headed, generous-spirited warrior who showed real aptitude for the role. Sopharndi would have considered it an honor to have fallen to the challenge of Keku. Not to tonight’s lumbering, ignorant oaf, though. If Keku had lived, she would have been embarrassed to witness this sorry display.
Sku’ord sank to her knees, then prostrated herself, listening to the Singer. Such demonstrative piety was rare among the People. You could hear the song just as easily standing up. Sopharndi imagined it was a deliberate ploy to impress the Elders. She doubted they’d be so easily appeased. They had already made it known they were dismayed by the timing of the challenge, just one night after Cley had taken his Journey. Everyone knew the boy must be dead by now, but by challenging tonight, Sku’ord—or, more accurately, Cochta—hoped to catch Sopharndi at her most vulnerable, her mind undoubtedly circling constantly around the fate of her son.
Getting slowly to her feet, Sku’ord allowed herself a little smirk back at Cochta and her cronies before turning to face her opponent. Her eyes were open wide and bright, her body language exuding absolute confidence. There were those among the People who thought she would win. Everyone knew no one trained harder than Sku’ord, no one punished her body more relentlessly in the pursuit of strength, speed, and stamina.
The Unnamed Way (The World Walker Series Book 4) Page 12