by Anthology
That was not all.
Kay’s laughter was silent. Everything was silent, except for a faint drumming. Kay’s face went blank, and the drumming became louder. It seemed to be coming from all sides. Kay’s eyes darted around to find the source. She looked worried. Tia’s chest tightened. She squeezed her hand, yet Kay’s slipped away. Kay spun to her side, searching, and then to the other. Tia could not move. She could only watch as Kay stepped back. Kay was scanning the night, the darkness. Tia reached for her, to grab her, to keep her from wandering. She swiped, yet her lover was out of reach. Kay froze, and then slowly hunched forward, ready to pounce, as if she sensed something in the darkness that Tia could not see. Tia tried to call out. Nothing. Her jaw was loose, empty.
And then Kay launched herself into the blackness and was gone.
The light of the fires faded, disappeared. Darkness enveloped the flames, enveloped her, held her, pulled her down onto her side. Tia rolled her head to one side, and then to the other, searching for Kay. And then she saw a series of faint blue pulses. She reached out again and this time she felt something, something in the darkness. Warmth. A soft warmth, a surface, the warmth of a sheet, and then as her hand slid up, the edge of a pillow.
She let her eyelids slip open.
A strobe of electric blue filled the suite. Kay, no longer in the bed next to her, was at the window.
The flashes of lightning appeared constant, and the thunder, silent earlier in the evening, was no longer muffled, the glass of the wall in their suite different from that of the dining room.
Tia ran her tongue across her lips in a failed attempt to moisten them, and then with a rasp said, “You’re awake.”
Kay’s stare, the one she wore when writing, was fixed out the glass wall. “I couldn’t sleep. It’s as if the storm found us and is hovering here.”
Tia pushed herself up to her elbow and stretched her right arm toward the bottle of water on the nightstand. She looked for Kay’s tablet, curious if she was writing, but it was too dark for her to see. After wetting her mouth, she said, “It just seems like it. This is an island, high ground. We’ll be fine.”
“Still,” Kay said. “It’s like one of his books.”
“It’s too late for that. C’mon back to bed.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“You’re still thinking about that library.”
“Can you believe how many books they have? Two stories, floor to ceiling, and hardcover, not vending machine printed paperback, hardcover. I’ve never seen so many. Tell me you’ve never seen so many.”
Tia sighed. Apparently, it wasn’t too late for this conversation. Of course, Kay was right.
“I’ve never seen so many either,” Tia said. “They’re doing publishing research, they have a lot of books.”
“But what does that mean, publishing research?”
“I would bet that they are studying algorithms.”
“Remember how Bill called it the Calypso Project?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Do you remember the story of Calypso?”
“No. Not really.”
“Calypso was a nymph who lived on the island of Ogygia.”
Tia replied through a yawn, “Okay.”
“Calypso kept Odysseus on that island to make him her immortal husband.”
“That’s creepy. Come back to bed.”
“Did you see how they all froze up when you mentioned his name?”
“Sure.” Tia sat up and let her feet drop to the floor. The bamboo flooring was warm, and though she was only in panties and a light shirt, the room was comfortable. “They were probably surprised that you were so quick to see through them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, experts like to believe they are fooling everybody. They were obviously shocked to discover a reader was able to track them down. I have to admit I thought you were seeing things, but it all makes sense.”
Kay turned her head to Tia. “You mean you believe me now? You finally believe that Hugh stopped sailing and set up here?”
“I believe that the Archive starts with seed stories, and that they can only work with the data that’s input, rearranging it to create thousands of stories. You said yourself, the longitude, latitude, the island, even the manor has all been reused. You noticed. That’s all I’m saying. I’m sure it freaks them out that amount of detail has slipped into the books and if someone reads enough they’re able to see the flaw. That’s why I like the puzzle books. At least they’re straightforward.”
Kay shifted her gaze back out to the rain. “I think he’s here.”
Tia stood up, pressed her body to Kay’s back, and then wrapped her arms around her. “I know you do.”
She moved Kay’s ponytail to the side, kissed her neck, and then rested her chin on her shoulder.
“You’re watching the lightning?”
“I’m looking at that glass dome across the courtyard. Somebody is moving around down there.”
Tia stretched to peer out. A number of glass buildings that were hidden earlier by the rain were lit in the night, and one of them, a rising bubble across the courtyard, was a large glass dome. It couldn’t be missed, a glass-paned structure as high as their room. “I see a couple figures,” Tia said. “I’m sure it’s the syns. They don’t need to sleep, you know.”
“I know,” Kay said. “I thought that too. But I was also thinking they don’t need the light.”
“Hmm. You’re right. That is odd.”
“I want to go see what’s going on.”
“You want to go snooping around? I’m serious, you need to come back to bed.”
Kay spun around, nose to nose with Tia. “C’mon. Let’s get dressed.” The pitch in Kay’s voice was unmistakable. She’d already made up her mind.
Kay gave Tia a quick smooch and then moved toward their clothes.
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Tia said. “We’re guests, remember? Uninvited guests. Uninvited guests with nowhere to go in this storm.”
Kay grabbed her capris from the other bed and began to wriggle them on. “Well, I’m going.”
Tia was certain of that, certain that if Kay were drawn to something, she would have to go. She would go. She was courageous enough to go.
“You’re going to get us into trouble,” Tia said.
“You know you want to come with me.”
There was truth in what Kay said. Tia’s upbringing was privileged, but it was also regimented. Her childhood memories were made up of a series of nannies veering her course into the ‘correct direction’. Except for Sara, the one caregiver who let her try new things. Kay reminded her of Sara. From the first day they met. Neither of the two came from any such structure. Kay, like Sara, was her own woman. Against odds, she made it out of the outskirts of New Miami and all the way to the university. And she wanted to, no, was going to be, a writer, a vocation no parents, no structured upbringing, would allow.
Tia took her capris from the bed. If Kay was going to go, she wasn’t going alone.
SIX
The tiny crystal LEDs that lined the ceiling of the hall glowed the same low amber hue as the small mountaintop fires Tia saw in her dream. The subtle gleam of the lights teased her waking eyes, adding distance to the already long corridor. Her body was still half asleep, and if Kay would’ve come back to bed, Tia would have drifted off without another thought. Instead, she was pushing herself to keep up, swinging her arms front to back as she walked, pumping them, to keep her stride even with Kay’s.
“What’s your hurry?” Tia asked in a hushed voice.
“No hurry,” Kay said. She slid a sly grin toward Tia, but her eyes beamed forward, locked on her purpose.
“We don’t even know where we’re going,” Tia said. “We haven’t gone down this way before.”
“This place is decorated like a mansion, but it’s really set up like an institution. Right?”
“I guess. I hadn’t thought about it.” Tia
wouldn’t have. Kay always let her imagination paint an odd picture. Tia adored that most times.
“I mean it’s like a hotel or a university building,” Kay said.
“Okay. So?”
“So—there should be another staircase near the end of the hall. All we need to do is look for the door.”
“There are a lot of doors.”
“But there will be a door at the end, and when we go down, we should be at the side of the courtyard.”
Tia’s mind was a bit fogged, but that made sense, and at the end of the hall, there were four doors. Without hesitation, Kay went for the closest handle. Tia sucked in a breath and held it as Kay gave it a gentle turn. Tia let the breath out. The door was locked. Kay went to the next. That door opened to stairs.
“See—I told you,” Kay said. “C’mon.”
“You’re lucky we didn’t wake anybody…” Kay was already heading down the stairwell. “And you’re insane,” Tia said, trailing behind.
Two flights down they found a glass door, the entrance to a dark, glass-paned corridor.
“Look,” Kay said, gesturing to the right. “The dome is over there.”
And the dome was to the right, and far more significant at ground level than from their view in the Lassiter Suite.
“I really don’t think this is a good idea.”
Kay spun her head back. “Enough.”
Tia wasn’t used to being scolded, certainly not by Kay. But this was Kay’s thing.
The panes in the corridor were made of the same transparent material as those in the dining room, muffling the thunder. The bright bubble of the dome, and the dim light in the main entry hall on the opposite side of the courtyard, were the only beacons in the darkness, except for when the silent arcs of lightning webbed the sky and strobed the high walls of the Manor in white. Tia peered through the torrents of rain in search of the dark balcony they had left but she couldn’t find it. The Lassiter Suite was somewhere in the middle of the large wall, but all of the rooms were dark, indistinguishable. The silhouette of the mountaintop that rose up around them also came into view in the flashes, as well as the other buildings of the compound scattered beyond the corridor. Squinting, she could make out darkened doors, windows, and trees, but nothing else. As they grew closer to the dome, she saw the figures moving around inside. From the bald peach-colored heads, she decided they were syns, as they thought, four of them. They appeared to be pushing tall metal carts into a large white cube in the center of the dome.
The corridor continued beyond the corner of the courtyard on into the night. Tia could not see the end, only darkness. When the flashes came, she could see the huge shadow of another structure through the glass. Kay wasn’t interested in where the corridor led. She veered to the right to the adjacent glass hall, and then boldly pushed through a set of double doors to the connected greenhouse that bordered the courtyard. Tia caught the doors as they slapped back. Kay didn’t wait for her to catch up. The dome was through another set of double doors on the far side of the room, and they were almost there. Tia was glad that they were walking along the courtyard wall. The greenhouse was dark and full of tall, wide plants that appeared to move under the rapid flashes of lightning. Kay seemed not to notice. She didn’t stop until she was outside of the double glass doors of the dome.
Tia grabbed her by her upper arm.
“All right,” she said. “Now that you can see what’s in there, let’s go back.”
“What do you suppose they’re doing?”
“I dunno. Pushing stuff into that storage room.”
“Don’t you think that’s strange? A storage room under a dome?”
“I guess.” Tia let loose of Kay’s arm. She wasn’t sure what she thought was in the cube. Up close, the cube looked huge, at least twenty-feet on all sides, maybe more. She imagined maybe a storeroom with tall shelves full of electronics and stuff, perhaps an elevator bay, which would have made sense.
“There was something like this in Lexica,” Kay said.
“This isn’t a book. They’re liable to catch us.”
Kay leaned her face into the glass. “No way. Syns don’t care about people. They’re old Model Sevens, probably won’t even notice us walking in. Look, those two are leaving out the side. I bet the other two follow in a second.”
Tia guessed Kay’s next words before she said them.
“We’re going in.”
Kay waited for the two syns to leave the cube. This time she grabbed Tia by the arm and leaned her weight on the door. As soon as the two syns left, Kay pushed the doors open and pulled Tia through.
Tia tried to resist but then shuffled her legs to keep up.
The inside of the dome was illuminated bright white. Her eyes followed the curve of the glass-paned wall up to where it disappeared at the top of the cube. She expected to see bedroom lights flicker on across the courtyard as their hosts rallied to round them up, but instead saw only rivers of rain streaming across the panes.
A motion sensor triggered the sliding doors of the huge cube to open.
Kay tugged her inside.
And then they both froze.
She felt Kay’s hand let loose go of her arm and fall away.
For a moment everything fell away.
Tia wasn’t sure what she was seeing.
The room was square, a cube on the inside as it was on the outside.
Silent movies ran across the high sidewalls.
And there, in the center of the room, suspended in a circle of chromed steel, was a man.
His arms reached outward, his legs spread wide, a living depiction of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. A low-hung loincloth draped his waist, and a myriad of tubes pushed and pulled fluids in and out of veins and into the tall metal carts the syns wheeled around. From the base of the man’s skull a cascade of wires and cables flowed down through holes in the floor. His eyes were closed, but in a restful way. In fact, he did not appear to be stressed at all from his suspension.
Tia recognized the man. Not at first, but then she did. He had aged, of course he would have. His body was gaunt, his hairline far receded, and what hair was left was white and thin, except that of his beard, which billowed from his chin and cheeks unfettered. Still she recognized him. Age had not changed him much from the image on the back cover of Kay’s printed books.
Tia began to speak and then realized she was breathless. She gulped in some air and in one release said, “It’s him.”
“I know,” Kay said softly. “It’s Hugh Howey.”
SEVEN
A huge floor-to-ceiling wave washed the left wall, bathing it in aquamarine. Another followed, and then another, and then the image of a ship’s bow, ornate with an intricately carved angel figurehead, filled the wall. Kneeling on the foredeck of the old wooden sailboat, fastening hooks to the jibstay, was a svelte young woman in full body wet gear.
Kay elbowed Tia’s arm. “That’s Cassandra,” she whispered.
“Who?” Tia asked.
“Cassandra at sea. She’s one of Hugh’s characters. She sails around the world in search of adventure.” She turned her head toward the wall to the right. “That’s Lesley. She lives alone on a space station.”
“They’re characters?”
“I think so. So is he, on the back wall, the boy flying in the jetpack, that’s Billy. He’s one of my favorites.”
“Are these movies from the books?”
“I dunno. I don’t remember Billy ever flying with a jetpack, and I’m sure I’ve read all of the Thorne stories.”
“I assure you,” said a man from behind. “You haven’t read that one.”
Startled by the voice, Tia and Kay spun around.
The voice belonged to one of the doctors, the round-faced man who had been seated at the end of the dinner table, far down from Tia. He was wearing a white lab coat and held his hands clasped together in front of him. He rocked slowly on his heels, sizing the girls up.
“Oh,” Tia said. “We’re so so
rry, um, Doctor…” Her mind raced through the faces at the table. “I’m sorry, I forgot your name.”
The man smiled. “Doctor Mills. Quentin is fine.”
“We were…we just, well, we got lost.”
“You got lost?”
Tia nodded.
Quentin looked the two over with a playful eye. “At two in the morning?” He grinned. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t?” Kay asked.
“It’s all right. We were going to bring you down here tomorrow anyway. He wanted to meet you.”
Tia and Kay slowly glanced back at the body in the middle of the room.
“Is he sleeping?” Kay asked.
“No, he is always awake.” Quentin strolled up beside them and freed a clasped hand to gesture toward the screens. “He’s writing.”
“But,” Tia said, “he’s, just, I mean…”
“The mind is an incredible thing. Below this room is a bioinformatic system, you know what that is?”
“We have them at the botanical garden.”
“So you’re familiar?”
“The university has an entire greenhouse wired up to our bioinformatic system. Vats of algae producing local Archive memory.”
“Yes, a similar concept. He is linked to a series of greenhouses above and below ground. Except this bioinformatic system is quite unique.”
“The cables,” Kay said. “That’s where they go. He’s hooked up to this? This bioinformatic system?”
“We like to say he’s interfaced.”
“What does that mean?” Kay asked. “Interfaced? He’s accessing the system?”
“It means he is the bioinformatic system.”
“That’s impossible,” Kay said.
“No,” Tia said, “it’s not. You’ve created a hybrid organic computational system.”
“He’s not a hybrid in the sense you’re describing. Hugh is a true bioinformatic system.”