by Piers Platt
“There are significant risks,” Ojibwe pointed out. “Chief of which is the knowledge that Mr. Falken would bring with him, and the damage he could do with that knowledge.”
“We’d have to set strict controls in place,” Peshai agreed.
“I’d follow them, to the letter,” Falken promised. “I wouldn’t tell anyone what Oz really is, I promise you.”
“Mr. Falken, would you mind waiting outside?” Locandez asked. “I’d like to discuss this matter with just the committee.”
“Of course,” Falken said, standing up.
Peshai stood, too, and led Falken to his office.
“Have a seat,” the warden said. “I’ll come get you when they’re ready.”
Falken sat, but after a few minutes, he stood and walked over behind the warden’s desk, and stood watching the distant Earth through the viewport. The shadow of night was spreading across the planet’s closest hemisphere: he could see the lights of hundreds of cities across the African continent, glowing like a golden spider web. He watched ships come and go from the transit hub, their engines flaring as they prepared to skip to light speed. Then the hatch opened again.
“They’re ready,” Peshai said.
Falken thought he detected a note of disappointment in the warden’s tone, but the older man turned and led the way back to the conference room before Falken could ask him anything more.
“Mr. Falken,” Locandez said, nodding to him as he sat down. “I will come straight to the point. We’ve discussed your request, but I’m afraid we will not be approving it.”
“You’re not going to even let me try?” Falken asked, crestfallen.
“No,” Locandez said, shaking her head. “Your loyalty to your friend is commendable. But Oz is bigger than one man. Its importance and value cannot be overstated. And this committee has a responsibility to protect that resource, on behalf of all future convicts.”
“I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the system,” Falken protested.
Locandez held up a hand. “Perhaps not, or at least not intentionally,” she said. “But those are risks we’re not willing to take.”
“What if I’m the only one that can get through to him?” Falken asked.
“So be it,” the chairwoman told him. “I’ve spent my career ensuring that men like you are prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced for their crimes, Mr. Falken. So I’m personally not particularly eager to expend any additional efforts in setting murderers and felons free, and sending them back out into society. The system has worked for a long, long time, just the way it is. Mr. Weaver will need to earn his own way out, without your help.”
“And if he can’t?” Falken asked.
“If he can’t do so on his own, then he doesn’t deserve to be a free man again,” Locandez said, shrugging. “Once he reaches his tenth year of incarceration, he’ll no longer have the ability to earn his parole. He’ll be removed from Oz, and transferred to our permanent facility.”
“Ten years? That’s less than a year from now,” Falken said.
“So it is,” Locandez agreed. “I wish him luck. Now, if we have no other business to attend to, Warden?”
“No, ma’am,” Peshai said.
“Then this meeting is adjourned. Good day, Mr. Falken.”
The screens shut off, one by one, and Falken hung his head.
“You got your hopes up,” the warden said.
“I know,” Falken said. “You told me not to, but … I really thought I could help him.”
He felt Peshai’s hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.” Peshai stood up. “There’s a prisoner transport arriving in ten minutes, with a new group of inmates for in-processing. Gather your things, and I’ll arrange for the transport to drop you off at the transit hub on their way back to Earth.”
Chapter 8
I better call Vina, Falken thought, dragging his duffel bag out of the storage locker under his bed. And I suppose I’ll have to come clean, and tell her I can’t come down to visit her on Earth, either.
He packed his clothes, then stripped the sheets off his bed, tucking them into a laundry chute. Finally, he took the tracker bracelet off his wrist, placing it on top of the desk. Captain Peshai appeared at his door a minute later.
“Ready to go?” Peshai asked.
“Yeah,” Falken said. “Listen, thanks again for hearing me out, and trying to make this happen. I know you stuck your neck out for me, and I appreciate it … regardless of the outcome.”
“Don’t mention it,” Peshai said. He pointed down the hall. “This way to the transport.”
Falken followed him out the door, and through the ship’s maze-like corridors. They passed through several locked hatches, each of which scanned Peshai’s face and then opened as he approached. Finally, they stopped in a small vestibule with a hatch on either side, and a strangely padded floor.
“Gravity transition room,” Peshai told Falken. “Brace for it.”
The warden touched a button on the wall, and suddenly Falken felt himself floating upwards toward the ceiling.
“I’d forgotten that the prisoner areas are all in zero-g,” he said.
“Mm,” Peshai agreed. “There’s a technical reason for it, they explained it to me once. I believe it ensures that the illusion of being on Oz isn’t disrupted by a competing sense of gravity from here on the ship.”
The far hatch opened, and Peshai propelled himself through it, tugging on rungs mounted along the wall to maneuver himself. Falken followed suit. They passed a docking tube – looking down it, Falken saw an armed guard seated in what looked to be a transport ship. But Peshai kept going, taking a right down another corridor, and opening a hatch marked Authorized Personnel Only – Clearance Required. On the far side of the hatch, Falken found himself in a small room with a locker and a large, cylindrical device that looked vaguely familiar. Peshai leaned into the locker and pulled out a white prison uniform.
“Put this on,” he told Falken.
Falken frowned. “What? Why?”
“We don’t have much time,” the warden urged him, taking Falken’s duffel bag and stowing it in the locker. “They’re already loading prisoners into the bay, and then I need to go make my ‘welcome’ speech. Put it on, quickly.”
“You’re sending me in?” Falken asked, hurriedly pulling off his shirt.
Peshai nodded. “Listen carefully. Oz – the program – has rules. Strict ones. Maintaining the illusion is its number one priority, so once you’re in, you have to play along. The minute you tell an inmate it’s not real, the Corrections Committee will be notified – the program will contact them directly, per protocol, I can’t stop it.”
“What would happen?”
“Oz will end the simulation for you and Weaver, or whoever you told. You’d both wake up back here on the ship … in a lot of trouble. Weaver would probably get a special hearing in front of the committee, since his simulation was ended prematurely, through no fault of his own. They might take pity on him, if he took responsibility for his crimes. If he didn’t, they’d send him to the permanent facility for life. And I visited the permanent facility once, when I first took this job. It makes Oz look like a luxury resort.”
“What would they do with me?” Falken asked, tugging on the uniform pants.
“Given they just forbade you from going into the system, I imagine they would revoke your parole and reinstate your sentence, as well.”
“The permanent facility?” Falken asked.
Peshai nodded. “For the rest of your life. And I would probably join you, for my role in this.”
“Okay, don’t tell anyone about Oz – got it,” Falken said.
Peshai took Falken’s civilian clothes and tucked them into the locker with his duffel bag. “Remember, you’ll be in Weaver’s version of the simulator,” the warden said, steadying himself against the room’s ceiling. “It may be somewhat different from yours – Oz shapes the simulation as needed to suit the individual inmate. Everyone takes a di
fferent path on their journey. The simulator has a vote, but real inmates affect things, too, just like Weaver affected you. Some of the people you interact with will be real, some will be simulations.”
“How do I know the difference?”
“Archos, Saltari, Ngobe, Mayor Luo – they’re core characters, artificial,” Peshai replied. “Beyond that, there’s no way to tell, frankly. In general, characters generated by the program will be helping Weaver, even if subtly, even if it seems like they are challenging him. Real people will have their own agenda and may or may not be helping. Regardless, your best bet is to treat everyone else as if they are real. Certainly everything Weaver says and does is real. And everything you do will be real to him.”
“Will he remember me?”
Peshai checked the time on his wristpad. “Yes. But at some point, your version of the simulator diverged from his … he stopped experiencing the simulator you saw. So his memories of you will be the same up to that point, and then different.”
“When did things diverge?” Falken asked.
“I don’t know. You’ll have to figure that out,” Peshai told him.
“Jesus,” Falken said, shaking his head. “It’s more complicated than I realized.”
“There’s more,” Peshai said, frowning. “If you die in the simulation, you’re out – Oz will wake you up.”
“I can’t just start over again?” Falken asked.
“No,” Peshai said. “Resurrecting you would shatter the illusion for Weaver.”
“What if I’m attacked? Can I at least defend myself?” Falken asked.
“Of course,” Peshai said. “It’s a simulation – any crimes you commit inside aren’t real, so you can’t be prosecuted for them. If you kill a person in Weaver’s version of the simulator, Oz will simply remove them from his version from that point forward – they’ll be gone, as if they really died.”
“What if it’s a real person?”
“They’ll be gone from Weaver’s simulation version, but in their version of events, they’ll survive. Oz will simply have them black out and wake up recovering from their injury somewhere. You can’t really kill them, they just cease to exist to you and Weaver, if that makes sense.”
“I think so,” Falken said. He glanced down at his uniform. “I think I’m ready.”
“Let’s hope so,” Peshai said, eyeing him appraisingly. “One last thing: I can get you into Oz, but I can’t keep your presence there a secret indefinitely. The Justice Department sends an independent audit team out to the ship on a regular basis. They biometrically scan every inmate in our care as part of their inspection.”
“If they come while I’m in the system, we get nailed,” Falken said.
“Right,” Peshai agreed. “So we’re on the clock here. I’m going to have to pull you out before they come back.”
“When are they coming back?”
“It’s supposed to be random – they don’t tell me the schedule. The good news is they came last week. But to be safe, I’m only going to give you a week in the simulator, just in case.”
“One week,” Falken said. “Okay. Won’t the crew know I’m in there?”
“They’re my crew,” Peshai said. “You don’t have to worry about them. Come on.”
Chapter 9
Vina jogged past the front of the bookstore and then slowed her pace to a walk, putting her hands on her head as she cooled down from the run. She took several deep breaths as she walked along the sidewalk, and blew the sweat off the tip of her nose. Then she checked her pulse and run time on her wristpad.
My pace is way off, she thought, frowning. But I guess I barely exercised while I was on vacation. Unless you count a few terrified moments on Olympus.
She reached the next intersection in town, and turned around across from a small café, retracing her steps along the block until she was back at the family’s shop. The building’s brick façade held a pair of tall windows on either side of a large, wooden door. Above the door, a black sign with gold letters proclaimed: Rauno Korhonen, Antique Bookseller, along with a carved likeness of her grandfather. The door jingled gently as she pushed her way inside, and her mother, halfway up a ladder with a book in one gloved hand, turned to face her.
“Hi, Vina,” she said. “Good run?”
“Eh,” Vina said, waggling her hand in the air. “So-so. Where’s Grandpa?”
“At an estate sale,” Elize said. “Seeing if they have anything worth buying.”
“Need help with anything?” Vina asked.
“Not until you dry off,” Elize said, shaking her head. “I can’t have you dripping all over the books. Mind your elbow.”
“Oh, right,” Vina said, stepping away from the nearest table of books. “In that case I’m going to use the computer in the office for a bit.”
“Okay,” her mother agreed.
Vina wound her way through the tall bookshelves, toward the back of the store. Near the front door, most of the books were paperbacks and hardcovers, holdovers from the days when people preferred reading from physical books, but as she moved farther into the store, the much older, leather-bound tomes took over, many of them sitting under clear glass display cases. At the back of the store, Vina opened a door and stepped into the office, which held a chair and desk for a computer, and a number of tall metal filing cabinets.
What’s even in those cabinets? Vina wondered, tugging experimentally on one of the locked handles. We can’t actually be storing paper files in there, can we? I bet Grandpa just keeps them around for show.
She peeled her headphone cord from around her neck and laid it on the desk, then drank from one of the water bottles on her hip, before sitting down in the chair and booting up the computer. She checked her email first, but found nothing worth reading or replying to. Then her eye caught a photo on the desktop. It was a picture of her family, in a silver frame, a posed photo taken around the holidays, the year before her father had been sent away.
Vina studied her father’s smiling face.
Mom said she never would have guessed you were capable of murder, she thought. I was only a teenager, but … I never would have guessed, either.
Vina turned back to the computer and opened the newsnet application. She narrowed the search field down to local news in Lawson County, and the year she had been kidnapped. News of the kidnapping and her father’s arrest dominated the headlines for most of the year. She clicked on one of the results at random.
A video popped up, of a press conference. Vina recognized the steps of the town hall in the background. Her father stood in front of a podium festooned with microphones. In stark contrast to the smiling photo on the desk, he was unshaven, and Vina could see dark bags under his eyes.
“… so if anyone knows anything about what happened … please, call the hotline. We’re offering a reward,” Sef Weaver said, and his voice sounded thin and strained. “Please help me find my family.”
Sheriff Buckniel stepped forward then, and patted her father on the back. “Thank you, Sef. We have the hotline, and we’re also setting up a website for anonymous tips,” Buckniel said, taking his place at the podium. Vina watched as her father stepped back from the stage, standing next to her grandfather on the steps of the town hall.
“And again,” Buckniel continued, “there is a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar reward for any information that leads to their rescue. Questions? Yes – you.” The sheriff pointed toward the camera.
A female reporter spoke up. “There are reports that a large number of law enforcement personnel have begun searching McMurtry State Park, south of town,” she said. “Care to comment?”
Vina studied her father, but he seemed hardly to be paying attention to the press conference anymore, lost in his own thoughts. He certainly seems distraught, she thought. I never remember him looking like that when we were growing up.
She closed out of the video feed and ran a search query, which directed her to the website of the local sheriff’s office
. There was a crime blotter – nothing nearly as newsworthy seemed to be happening these days – and a link to contact the office. Her cursor hovered over the Contact link for a moment, and then she noticed another link near the top of the page.
“Public Record Request” …? Can you do that?
Vina clicked on the link, and then entered information into the form that popped up. A link to her father’s case appeared a moment later.
I guess you can do that. Huh.
Vina clicked on the link, and a file downloaded to her computer. She hesitated for a moment, then opened the folder. A multitude of files appeared – she saw a photo album, something labeled Timeline, an evidence inventory sheet, and several files of notes from various officials, including the sheriff and the medical examiner. She decided to steer clear of the photos. Vina opened a new text document to one side, and then started with the first file in the Notes section.
*
“Afternoon,” Rauno Korhonen rumbled, stepping into the office’s door frame.
“Hi, Grandpa,” she said. “Is it afternoon already?” Vina glanced down at her wristpad, and realized that it was nearly one o’clock. Her stomach confirmed it by growling hungrily.
Rauno carefully set two books on a side table, next to his restoration equipment.
“You found something?” Vina asked.
“Two first-run Heinleins,” her grandfather confirmed, with a hint of pride.
“Signed?” Vina asked hopefully.
“Unfortunately not,” Rauno replied. “But they’re in excellent condition, only some minor repairs needed. I’m going to the café for lunch. Do you want anything?”
“Can you get me one of those pesto paninis they have?” Vina asked.
“Pesto panini,” Rauno said, nodding. “And a root beer float?”
Vina laughed. “I just went for a run this morning – don’t tempt me, Grandpa.”
“You used to beg me for root beer floats from the café,” he pointed out. “You and your brother would compete to see who could finish theirs first.”