The Gilded Empire

by Ryan W. Mueller

  "Just turned off the power for the whole prison," said the other Berig. "That means we can climb the fence. Don't worry. I've got enough magic left over to protect us while we climb." He pointed at two spots on the machine. "Shoot here and here."

  Once he got out of the way, Berig and Lara let loose with their rifles. After a few shots, the rifle blasts must have penetrated the machine's defenses. Smoke came from the machine.

  "Run!" shouted the other Berig. "This whole place is about to explode."

  They sprinted through the labyrinth of machines, following the other Berig's lead. The smell of smoke filled the room. Berig's heart pounded, and sweat drenched his entire body.

  They reached the door, and just in time. A moment later, as they raced out into the courtyard, a series of massive explosions ripped through the building. The sounds were louder than anything Berig had ever heard. Smoke billowed everywhere, and fire shot high into the sky.

  Berig covered his head as bits of the building rained down upon them. Once the worst of the explosions stopped, the other Berig yanked him to his feet. Lara followed close behind as they took off toward the fence. Smoke obscured everything. Distantly, Berig heard guards shouting, but now their shouts were panicked instead of commanding.

  The three of them reached the fence at the edge of the courtyard and began climbing, and the other Berig created that swirling barrier again.

  "They probably won't be too worried about us," said the other Berig, failing to hide a grin. "By destroying that generator, I just freed every prisoner in this place."

  Berig grinned back. "Always dreamed of doing something like this."

  They climbed the fence, protected by the swirling barrier. A couple of guards decided to shoot at them, but the shots didn't even get close. When they reached the top of the fence, they swung over and made their way down. Berig was glad heights had never bothered him because the fence had to be at least fifty feet high.

  Slowly but surely, they made their way down, reaching the bottom without incident. Smoke blocked much of the prison from view. Berig took one last look at it as they sprinted into the forest nearby. Soon they were deep within the cover of the nearby trees.

  The other Berig led them to a place where the trees were especially thick. There, he rummaged in a small leather bag sitting beneath a tree. From it, he pulled out clothes that looked strange, like the clothes people wore here in the New Earth Empire.

  "You've gotta wear these clothes," he said. "They'll help you blend in."

  Even if Berig didn't care for the strangeness of the clothes, he knew exactly what the other Berig meant. Blending in was one of the most useful skills for any decent thief. Berig quickly changed his clothes while Lara did the same a few feet away. When she stood in only her underclothing, he felt a strange feeling in his gut. God, she was beautiful.

  She gave him a strange look. "You all right, Berig?"

  "Oh, yes, I'm fine." He turned to the other Berig, hoping to hide his awkwardness. "So what do we do now? And what exactly is going on?"

  "This is gonna be kind of hard to explain. You know how the Webs of Fate let you see both the past and the future. Well, there are some sorcerers up to the northeast, in a place known as the Breezelands, who don’t just read the Webs of Fate. They can help you travel through 'em. You can travel into the past or the future."

  "I still don't understand why you're here," Berig said.

  "To save you and Lara, of course," said the other Berig.

  Berig scratched his head. "But if you came here from the future, then I must have survived, right?"

  The other Berig scratched his head the exact same way. It was creepy. "Well, it don't really work like that. You can't change the past. What we just went through happened to me, too. You can change the future, obviously, but that's a different story."

  Berig felt as if his thoughts had become a foggy mess. He tried to make sense of what the other Berig had told him, but the more he thought, the more he got a headache.

  "But there had to be a starting point somewhere," he said.

  "Don't try to understand how it works," said the other Berig. "You'll only make your head hurt. Just accept that it works the way it does and take advantage of it." As he was talking, his skin seemed to grow paler.

  "Is something wrong?" Berig asked. "You look kind of pale."

  The other Berig nodded gravely. "That's an effect of meeting yourself when you travel in time. It won't be long before I die." He held up a hand to keep them from responding. "But I've gotta tell you a few things first. Once I'm gone, you need to head south to New Washington. You'll meet Nadia and Markus there, but I can't tell you anything beyond that. It would result in changing the timeline, and then really bad things would happen."

  "Like what?" Berig asked.

  "Like the world ceasing to exist. Traveling into the past is very dangerous."

  Berig felt sick to his stomach. "Does that mean I have to come back in time to save myself? That I have to die?"

  "Yeah, it does."

  "I don't think I can do that."

  The other Berig nodded. "I didn't think I could do it either. But you're a lot stronger than you think you are. You've got it within you." His skin had become a ghostly white.

  "Anything else you can tell us?" Berig asked.

  "I'm afraid not. My time's come."

  A few moments later, the other Berig's skin turned completely white. Then he blurred for a few moments before disappearing entirely, leaving no trace that he'd ever existed. Berig felt a cold knot in his chest, for he knew that was his eventual fate. Tears came to his eyes.

  Lara wrapped an arm around him. "You'll have the strength to do it. I know you will."

  He settled into her embrace. "I don't wanna think about it."

  "Then don't. Focus on the moment. Wait till the time comes."

  "I love you, Lara. You bring out the best in me. You really do."

  "And I love you too, Berig."

  He lay there in her arms, crying about his death. After all he'd survived, all the ways he'd changed, it felt cruel. His days were numbered, and that terrified him. Maybe there was something after death, but he couldn't depend on that.

  "I can't believe Aric's gone," he said.

  Lara nodded, her eyes brimming with tears. "It was so senseless. He was the kind of man who should have died doing something heroic."

  "Well, the world ain't a fairy tale," Berig said. "I've known that my whole life. The world don't care about justice or fairness. It don't care what you want from it." He shook his head, staring solemnly at the leaf-strewn ground. "At times, I wonder why we even bother. I mean, is this world really worth saving?"

  Lara wrapped him tighter in her arms. "As long as there are good people in the world, it's worth saving. We see cruelty and violence and all these terrible things, but that's just one side of the world. It is also a place of love and friendship and beauty. We can't forget that."

  "You're right," Berig said, looking into her dark eyes. "I can't forget that, not when I'm with you. You're the most beautiful woman I've ever met, and not just on the outside."

  They held each other in their arms as day turned to evening, then to night. That was all they needed: the touch of a human being. Berig couldn't stop thinking about his future.

  He was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  Chapter 9: A Comfortable Prison

  Markus was surprised at the accommodations of their prison. Their room contained two comfortable beds and had windows with a magnificent view of the glowing city.

  The furniture within the room contained clothing in the strange New Earth Empire style. It wouldn't be a perfect fit, but it was close enough. They could also order food from a device located in the corner of the room. The guard showed them how. It seemed a little strange to touch the thing the guard called a screen.

  The list of food contained all kinds of items Markus had never heard of, including pictures.

  "I wonder w
hat a pizza is," he said.

  "Let's order one and find out." She tapped the screen, and a tray below the device extended, revealing a pizza that looked just like the one on the screen. It was perfectly circular and cut into six smaller slices, much like a pie.

  Markus and Nadia grabbed plates from a nearby cabinet, then placed the pizza on their plates. When Markus took the first bite, he was in love.

  "This is the best thing I've ever tasted," he said with his mouth full.

  Nadia swallowed a bite. "I don't know about that, but it does taste good. A lot better than the kind of food we've had lately."

  "You're crazy. This is the best thing ever. You know, I'd be all right with being imprisoned here if it means I get to eat this whenever I want."

  Nadia gave him a half-serious glare. "You better watch out, or you'll get fat. I don't know if I'd like you fat."

  "Neither would I."

  "I think we should explore the palace," Nadia said. "They told us we could."

  After they finished their meal, they made their way out into the corridors. There was a screen showing some kind of map next to their door. Nadia frowned at it, then said, "I think this red dot indicates our location. We don't want to get lost."

  But getting lost was all too easy. The palace felt more like a labyrinth. They'd switched into some of their new clothing, so at least they didn't look conspicuous wandering the halls. For the most part, they remained where they could look out the windows and gaze upon the city's flashing lights. It was still hard to get used to this place.

  Many doors in the palace featured red handprints. When Markus touched one, a rude voice told him he was not authorized to enter the room beyond.

  "Where'd that voice come from?" he asked.

  "I'm not sure. It could have been a computer perhaps."

  "I didn't think computers could talk."

  Nadia gave him a tired look. "Do you have a better explanation?"

  "No. This place really confuses me."

  "I think it's wonderful," Nadia said. "If only we weren't prisoners here."

  Sometimes, it was easy to forget they were prisoners, but then Markus thought of the bots swimming around inside him. He couldn't feel them, but they still bothered him. There had to be some way to remove those bots. No matter how luxurious this place was, they couldn't stay here forever. If they stayed, they'd never rescue Rik and Kara.

  "You really think this technology will help us find Rik and Kara?" he asked.

  Nadia considered a moment as they walked through a corridor where the walls almost gleamed and computer screens were everywhere. "Maybe we should ask somebody."

  "But who would we ask? I don't think the president will help us."

  Nadia spent some time exploring the computers, but she had a lot of trouble. As intelligent as she was, it appeared she didn't understand these devices much better than Markus. That made him feel a little better. Maybe he wasn't a complete idiot.

  "Having a bit of a trouble?"

  Markus turned to see a middle-aged woman watching them with interest. She had the clean and tailored look of everyone in the city, but she was the first who'd appeared to notice them. Was she a friend, a foe, or just a curious stranger?

  The woman smiled at them. "You must be the new prisoners—I mean, new guests here in the palace. I've never seen anyone struggle so much with a computer." She held out a hand, and as they shook it in turn, she said, "I'm Karin, and I think I can help you."

  "How?" Nadia asked.

  Karin glanced at the computer screen. "What're you looking for? If you think the computer can tell you a way out of the palace, you're mistaken."

  "That isn't what we're looking for," Nadia said. She hesitated a moment. "Two friends of ours are in the Shadowed Land. We're trying to find a way to get them back home."

  Karin shook her head. "The computer won't tell you that either. As far as we know, there is no way to bring somebody back from the Shadowed Land. If the government has developed any such ability, it will be a closely guarded secret. A simple computer search won't find it, especially not a computer search from someone who barely knows how to use a computer."

  Nadia's features tightened with impatience. "All right. Then how can you help us?"

  Karin spoke in barely more than a whisper, the sound barely audible over the general noise in the corridor. "I can get you out of the palace."

  "All right," Nadia said. "We're listening."

  "We can't talk here, out in the open. Too many people. Too many cameras."

  "Cameras?" Markus asked.

  "Devices that can watch everything we do," Karin said. "They keep a record of everything they see and hear and send it to a computer to be stored forever. There's enough noise in the corridor here that I doubt they've heard anything I don't want them to hear." She started walking off to the right. "Follow me."

  Markus and Nadia exchanged a nervous glance, then followed Karin through the palace's branching corridors, past robots going about their routine duties and guards who didn't give them a second glance. Markus still felt as if all eyes were on them, however.

  Karin stopped before a door on their left and placed her hand against the handprint on the door. The handprint glowed green, and the door swung open. She stepped inside, gesturing for them to follow. The room inside looked much like their own.

  "There are no cameras in here," Karin said. "It's illegal to place cameras in living quarters. That doesn't stop the government from doing it, of course, but I think they trust me enough that they wouldn't. I'm a high-ranking government official, after all." She gestured for them to take seats on a nearby couch, and then sat down in a cushioned chair across from them.

  "How can you get us out of here?" Nadia asked. "They put tracking bots inside us. If we try to escape, they'll know."

  "I'm a scientist by training," Karin said. "Bots like those are my specialty. I know how to disable them. I'll need the right medical equipment, though, and that may prove difficult."

  Markus leaned forward on the couch. "Why're you helping us? Why do you care?"

  "Because I think you can help us. I'm a Technomage, and I've read the Webs of Fate. I've seen that you two could be very important in bringing about change here. I'm not all that skilled at reading the Webs, so I can't give you anything more specific than that."

  Markus barked a laugh. "What a surprise."

  Karin appeared to ignore his sarcasm. "I'm part of the resistance movement here in the New Earth Empire. We're the ones who see the problems in our supposedly perfect society. I'm sure you've already seen it for yourself. We have all this great technology, all these things that make our lives comfortable, but that comes at the cost of a government with too much authority."

  "We've noticed," Nadia said.

  "The government controls everything in the empire," Karin said. "They don't let anyone in. They don’t let our technology extend beyond our borders. There are also huge disparities in income and living conditions. Here in New Washington, everything looks perfect, but all you're seeing is the surface. Beneath that surface, people are struggling to survive.

  "This is especially true in the far reaches of the empire. People who live out in the less settled areas, such as the Great Desert, are subject to monster attacks. Their lives are much closer to what you probably know from outside the empire. The government doesn't care about them, but those of us in the resistance do. We seek to change things."

  Nadia frowned. "But how can you oppose such a powerful government?"

  "It ain't easy, but that's where you come in."

  Nadia gave her a stern look. "I don’t like having my actions decided for me."

  "I'm not forcing anything on you. I will help you escape this place. From that point on, you can decide whether or not you want to support us. In the end, you'll find that your goals and ours align. You'll have to make your way to the Earth Temple if you want to continue on the path you've started. The Earth Temple is deep in the heart of the Great Desert, and it's gu
arded by the empire's soldiers. You'll never get in unless you work with us to change things."

  Markus didn't trust Karin, not yet anyway. Yes, she was offering to help, but it came with conditions.

  "What about Krinir?" Nadia asked. "Where does he come into this?"

  Karin leaned forward in her chair. "I imagine the president told you all about the great things Krinir would do for us. I can see in the Webs that you present a danger to Krinir, and the president's a talented Technomage, so I imagine he saw the same thing."

  Markus and Nadia both nodded.

  "The president was lying to you. Krinir is evil. No other way to put it. He might cloak his evil in the idea that he's promoting the spread of technology that can help us. But that technology can also destroy us, and that is Krinir's ultimate goal."

  "How can we trust you?" Nadia asked.

  "Who should you trust more: the man who imprisoned you, or the woman who's helping you escape?"

  "But how do you know that's what Krinir really wants?" Nadia asked.

  "We've recovered a lot of information from the Great War. We know what Krinir really did during that time. He used his powers as a god to wipe out entire cities of people who disagreed with him. If you didn't support Krinir, you were the enemy. It was as simple as that. Do those sound like the actions of a good person, or an evil one?"

  "Does the president know all this?" Markus asked. He felt overwhelmed by all this new information, and though Karin seemed to be on their side, he couldn't be sure about anything.

  "Of course he does," Karin said, "but he doesn't care. As far as he's concerned, it's all right if we wipe out a bunch of people who are opposed to Krinir. In the end, the president thinks that will make the world a better place. Those of us in the resistance know better."

  Nadia's gaze was intent. "You still haven't told us how you know his true intentions. Maybe he truly does want to make the world a better place. Perhaps it is just his methods that are evil. How can you know his true goal?"

  "I suppose we can't. But I think his actions make everything clear enough. There's a reason Lionar exiled Krinir to the Shadowed Land. Krinir is too dangerous."