The episode of Bytech Anon ended. Oddly, she didn't feel like watching more. Something didn't feel right, and it was getting under her skin, so she motioned for the screen to go dark.
Her stomach made a strange noise. In shows she'd seen, there had been mention of growling stomachs. Could this be that? It wasn't a growl. If this was supposed to happen when she was hungry, she hoped she wouldn't be hungry a second time.
In an effort to draw Keti to her, the Empress sat up rigidly and, in a dull voice, announced, “Keti, I call to you.”
As before, there was no reaction.
Abandoning formality, she stormed over to the elevator doors and pounded on them once.
*ding*
*ding*
*ding*
The noise continued for just under a minute, followed by the doors opening before her.
The elevator was empty.
She stood in place, stunned, then backed away cautiously.
The doors shut again.
The Empress looked around her suite in panic. Would she have been punished if she had gotten in? Keti's had never punished her in the traditional sense, so she was hesitant to provoke her.
Tiptoeing to the window, she looked below her. People still knelt on the sidewalks. They wore black, she saw.
But I'm not dead. The thought made her look down again. She'd only seen crowds wear black in old movies, when they mourned at a funeral.
Her eyes were drawn unwillingly to the screen. Something compelled her to turn it on.
When she did, nothing looked any different. Nonetheless she felt a nameless terror.
She used an extended palm to swipe through channels and shows:
Bytech Anon, Fincher Tower, Shatter, Day High, but then she fleetingly noticed she'd passed a new channel.
A man, dressed immaculately, stood superimposed over a background of swirling shapes. At first glance it was clear to her that he was an AI of some sort.
“...persist that the goddess Keti murdered the Empress during the second Assembly.”
His voice was believably human, but monotonous enough to confirm her appraisal.
“All public services remain operational, but Citizens wonder for how long.”
The show cut to snippets of interviews from concerned Citizens.
“We're afraid to knock on the door,” a woman said with a jittery laugh. The Needle loomed behind her.
“All I know,” a man said, looking over his shoulder repeatedly as he spoke, “is that something happened to the Empress, and Keti let it happen. What does that say about our safety?”
Finally, a stout woman in white head-wrap stared directly into the camera, as if to look the Empress directly in the eyes.
“Where can we go to feel safer? There's nothing left beyond the outlands.”
The blood drained from the Empress's face. She switched the screen off in shock.
Had they seen something happen to Keti, and assumed it was her?
“Keti,” she demanded. “Keti, come to me.”
For the briefest of moments, she faintly sensed Keti. Then, the feeling dissipated.
Chapter Fourteen
The bot pinned Dugan's wrists to the sheer white surface of the wall. He didn't bother to struggle.
There was no point in demanding an explanation; it had orders, and would carry them out without discussion.
The bot, a faceless all-white one, had by all appearances simply materialized in the doorway of an outlands bar where Dugan had been sipping from a glass of warm rum.
Somehow, word of the bot's presence in the outlands hadn't spread fast enough to warn anyone in the area.
He had looked up from his glass to see the bot scurrying (in a bot's unnatural way) in his direction. It had locked one of its “hands,” a metallic loop, around his wrist before unceremoniously dragging him out to the street.
No one had interfered. Dugan was tolerated in the outlands, but just barely. He couldn't be trusted, the outlanders said. He wasn't loyal to either them or the City.
Once they were out of sight of anyone, the bot had knelt on Dugan to secure a blindfold. It had picked him up like he weighed nothing to it.
After about ten minutes of what felt like aimless walking by the bot, there had been an ominous hiss, the kind of hiss that you only heard in the City.
Suddenly the air smelled sterile. There was another hiss, but this one sounded contained.
When the blindfold came off, he was in a cramped circular hallway. The bot wasted no time in pinning both his wrists to the rounded surface of the wall.
A thin tube slid out of the bot's back and snaked over its shoulder. Dugan watched in fascination as the tube seemed to sniff its way along his pinky finger until it found the top joint.
Without warning, droplets of blood formed along a line there. The bot shook Dugan’s wrist once, sharply, and the end of the finger fell to the floor. There was no pain.
A man's voice addressed him from a speaker somewhere on the bot.
“Dugan. Your life is in no danger. You'll have the remainder of today to work through your anger.” This last part was said with pleasant warmth.
“Unfortunately, we needed to show you how serious the situation is. I’m assured that you will not experience any loss of functionality. A room has been prepared for your use, and I trust you'll be civil when we have a conversation tomorrow.”
With that, the bot walked away, disappearing around a corner.
Dugan looked down at his finger, finding it tightly bandaged with a glossy material.
His instincts kept him calm as he walked in the direction the bot had gone.
As he rounded the corner, he found himself facing an open doorway. The bot was nowhere to be seen.
The room, as he entered, was furnished to the tastes of a Citizen, not him. Expensive couches, oversized geometric art, and absurdly-shaped vases.
He strode to a nearby end table and slapped a warped ceramic tube off of it, shattering it in fat pieces on the floor.
Dugan paused and put a hand to his face. His instincts had let him down.
The door would be locked shut when he turned around.
A steady whirring brought him out of sleep the next day. Upon opening his eyes, he saw a bot closing the distance between them with unnerving speed.
Dugan leapt up. In a flash, he was standing on the bed with his back to a wall.
The bot halted at the foot of the bed in eerie silence.
The voice from the previous day came out of the bot's speaker.
“You only broke one vase? Please...break as many as you desire. You'll need to get your aggression out before our conversation.”
Getting no response, the voice resumed with a hint of pleading. “Ours is a conversation which must happen. I would urge you to accept a small cocktail to allow you to take a, shall we say, vacation from your understandable anger.”
“Shove it up your ass.”
“I could, of course, ensure that you took it. But I have not. However...we can't move forward until you are in a more reasonable state of mind.”
Dugan said nothing. He began noticing a peculiar smell like medicine and flowers.
The words As you wish stretched across the valleys of his mind as the room flooded with light. He didn't notice his eyelids drawing closed.
When his eyes opened, it was to the sight of thin restraints holding his wrists to the arms of an expensive chair. Surprisingly, it was comfortable.
Lorenz sat on the other side of a wide desk. The wall behind him was lined with screens.
“Ah,” Lorenz began pensively. “Awoken, have you?”
Dugan remained silent. He felt relaxed, even a little friendly.
“We know of each other by reputation,” Lorenz said, “so let's skip the formalities. You were the last person to leave the Grand Hall following the second Assembly. It is my hope that we can pool our knowledge to learn more about Keti.”
Without thinking, Dugan replied, “Okay.”
“Drugged?” Dugan asked, confused.
“Don't worry about it now. Simply listen. Soon it will be time for you to talk. The boy who tried to disrupt the Assembly was ours. We employed him to test various theories about Keti. She may not be as powerful as humanity believes. In fact, she may be an advanced artificial intelligence.”
“Is she?” Dugan pondered aloud.
Lorenz paused. “Well. What we do know is that Keti had no reaction to our plans, and attempt, to kill the Empress. That's why I brought you here today. If Keti is a goddess, as originally supposed, she should have foreseen our plan to kill the one human who we were sure she would protect.
“And, it would seem, she did. You were contacted not only by the Empress, but Keti herself. This is inconceivable. You were at the Assembly and prevented an explosive device from being triggered in the Grand Hall.
“Yet,” he added thoughtfully, “something happened in there, didn't it?”
“Something, yeah,” Dugan answered. “But I missed the good part.”
“Tell me what you saw. You attacked the boy rather successfully. We doubted whether you could overpower him in the heightened state he arrived in. You rendered him unconscious, and then...”
Dugan closed his eyes, picturing the events of that day.
“He got away from me. I couldn't see where he ran to in the darkness. I heard him shoot, and the Empress fell back. I ran at the area he shot from. He was insane. Almost bit me, so I dropped him with an elbow.
“When I got to the stage, she was laying on her throne with blood running out of her...but disappearing. There was no blood anywhere. Then she was on the throne but she was standing behind it at the same time, I think, and it wasn't really her. It was Keti. The eyes were black. I passed out.”
Lorenz listened intently. “You're sure,” he asked gravely, “that you saw the Empress and Keti at the same time?”
“Keti was behind the throne. The Empress was almost falling off it. What does it mean?”
From behind Dugan, a man cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said. “What does it mean?”
Lorenz's words came out in a rush of thoughts. “Keti could have stopped it, but she let our boy shoot the Empress. The Empress was wounded, yet it sounds like she only appeared to be. Our boy, as you know, could not be located. The only way to make an educated guess about the strange events of late would be to find out if the Empress is in the Needle. If not, she is dead and it's unknown how Keti would act if that was true.”
Dugan sat up. “What strange events?”
The voice from behind Dugan spoke sharply. “Don't waste our time. The outlanders are talking about it just as much as the Citizens. Keti is gone. We can all feel it. Somehow,” he added.
“Or,” Lorenz replied, “the Empress is gone. There seems to be consensus on the idea that some...force is no longer present. And yet our world continues unabated. We're unsure if an A.I. could be dependent on a human for existence. If so, the Empress' death would be the end of Keti. If not...”
From behind Dugan, the unseen man interrupted. “There is also the matter of the third Assembly, unlikely though it may be.”
Lorenz looked down at his desk. “All we can do at this point is wait. We had hoped you could provide us more to analyze, Dugan.”
“Yeah,” was all Dugan could think to say.
“In any case,” the man behind him said, “your usefulness is not exhausted.”
“What does that mean?” Dugan asked Lorenz sharply.
“It means that Keti chose you, for reasons we don't know. If anyone can get in the Needle to locate the Empress, it's you.”
“Are you joking?”
“Of course not. We shouldn't need to force you to do anything. On the contrary, we believe that you'll begrudgingly realize that our interests and yours dovetail nicely.”
With that, Dugan felt something scratch his neck.
When he regained consciousness, he was sprawled over the counter of the bar he'd been abducted from.
Chapter Fifteen
She stood at the elevator doors. Cautiously, she slapped her open palm against the wall next to them. She backed away.
Fuck fuck fuck. Her hands were shaking. It felt like her whole body was shaking. Another thing that she didn't know actually happened to people.
She had never gone this long without eating. Between hunger and a growing fear of what would happen if she left her floor of the Needle (that is, discovered that she could leave), the Empress found she could barely keep herself from curling up in a ball on the floor and crying.
Whimpering slightly, she rushed the elevator doors and swung a fist into them before stumbling back again.
*ding*
She let out a weak sob.
*ding*
I am the Empress, she told herself forcefully. I will not...
*ding*
She flinched, losing her train of thought. How did other people cope with fear?!
The elevator doors opened, revealing an immaculate interior. She ducked her head and rushed in shoulder-first as if breaking down an invisible door.
There were no buttons to push; only a slanted rectangle at chest level. Intuitively, she slid her hand across it.
Nothing happened.
Losing her nerve, she retreated to the safety of her suite.
The doors glided shut.
*ding*
*ding*
*ding*
*ding*
*ding*
*ding*
The Empress realized that she'd never heard the elevator go down more than three floors.
It continued dinging ominously for what felt like a full minute.
Dugan watched them from afar. They knelt before, or bowed to, the Needle. He doubted that their concern for the Empress would change her fate.
Did he believe in fate? Not really, he thought. But he still felt that their concern had no effect on the Empress's fate.
In this era, humans still found themselves bowing to buildings and hoping it had an effect.
If not for this small assembly of them, he could theoretically walk in the front door of the Needle (or whatever served as one). They wouldn't stop him from entering, but they would make it hard to get the Empress to safety without drawing any attention.
That was if Lorenz was right. Which he wasn't. The Needle wouldn't let anyone in. Even Dugan thought of it as an entity.
He wondered how long he needed to stand in front of the Needle in order to establish that he wasn't allowed to enter.
Resenting the Citizens' presence, he muttered Just go the fuck away.
At that moment, each of them rose to their feet and formed a line. They began walking along the sidewalk, away from Dugan.
His heartrate involuntarily elevated as he found himself alone in the streets, with the Needle towering over him.
There was no choice but to go to it.
Without being aware that he had begun walking, Dugan was shocked to find himself standing in an all-black room.
His legs moved him forward against his will. What was controlling him? Whatever it was, this was all happening too fast for his mind to process.
Dugan fought to regain control, to no avail. He fought back fear as he was drawn further into the room, the walls of which he couldn't see.
A sliver of light opened in front of him as he walked. An elevator.
Some sort of sound grew louder as he entered the elevator. Not music, but a multifaceted wave of sound that he somehow felt growing distant then close to him.
The elevator doors materialized like a mist had formed and become solid. The interior had no apparent light source, yet he could see in the darkness.
He felt it rising upward. Every few seconds a distorted tone rang out from all around him. At each intonation, he felt the tone push his clothes against his body.
His ascen
t stopped. The door opened with a whisper.
In front of him, two men's masked bodies lay on the ground in a spacious, decadent room. The sound of off-key music notes ran along the floor like spiders. Dugan fought desperately to make his body retreat into a corner of the elevator.
He could feel the music approaching him, rippling along the floor in ugly motions. With desperate panic he felt his sanity slipping away.
Unable to understand what was happening to him, he listened helplessly to an ocean of thoughts that came from somewhere inside of him but separate from him.
This is what we seek to see beyond the veil beyond it all with no limits and be destroyed never return never left never never never never
One long tone filled his ears. It pushed his body against the rear wall of the elevator.
The door formed in front of him. He was rising again.
The door faded to reveal the same room. In slow motion, the room's furnishings spun toward the far wall. Rotating gracefully among glasses and statues and ephemera, the two bodies threatened to hit the full-length windows and fly out of the Needle.
For what felt like an eternity, the bodies rotated mere feet from the windows without reaching them.
Dugan's eyes blinked. Instinctively his legs kicked out to catch against either side of the elevator's opening as he fell forward. He could move again.
Was he looking down? He could feel blood rushing to the front of his body but it couldn't be. The air in front of him was littered with debris.
If he let go....
But the door materialized and Dugan fell to the floor.
The wall of the elevator evaporated. Dugan's eyes met those of the Empress; for a brief moment, the same look of shock registered on both faces.
Dugan's mind raced to assess the situation. How could he know whether this was the Empress, or a continuation of whatever psychosis he'd suffered since entering the Needle?
“I hope you want out,” he ventured, “because I'm getting you out.”
She recoiled from him, dumbfounded.
“Why?” she asked him.
“You're the only one who can give us answers.”
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