“Can I help you?” came a sudden loud voice.
Ostara looked up and saw the woman standing outside another door further along, then realised the robot had trundled away on its own mission to collect the hotel’s dirty linen. It took a while for Ostara’s brain to register that even though she was sure she had correctly identified Dana in the hotel foyer, it now appeared that the woman she had been trailing for the last half an hour was definitely not the Que Qiao agent.
“You’re not Dana,” murmured Ostara, sheepishly climbing to her feet.
“Customer experience inspectorate!” snapped the woman. “What are you doing?”
“I, err… dropped something,” Ostara stuttered, cringing inwardly at how lame that sounded. Without waiting for an answer, she hurried down the corridor as fast as she could and did not stop until the woman was far behind and out of sight. She really wished she had chosen to stay in her room and take a relaxing bath after all.
“Rats,” she murmured. “Sherlock Holmes makes it look so easy.”
*
Endymion quickly grew bored of the floating market and at his insistence they made their way back to the hotel, for earlier he had discovered that the basement games room had a number of virtual-reality titles yet to reach Newbrum. Ravana found Zotz waiting for her in the lobby, looking out of breath and strangely dishevelled as if he had just fought his way out of a wardrobe. He too was eager to sample the plethora of games offered by the hotel but had been too shy to enter a VR suite alone.
The games room boasted a wide selection of VR machines. Some were linked to keep-fit apparatus such as treadmills, exercise cycles or rowing machines, enabling the participant to run with virtual dinosaurs on Mesozoic Earth, cycle through Valles Marineris on a virtual Mars, or race the krakens across the virtual seas of Yuanshi. For those feeling not quite so energetic, submersion booths allowed players to enter any one of hundreds of fantasy worlds, which ranged from no-frills relaxation breaks to full role-playing adventures.
“Oh my gosh!” cried Philyra. “They have the Gods of Avalon game!”
Ravana smiled at the sight of Endymion staring at the row of booths in disgust. It did not surprise her that game makers had resorted to adapting tacky holovid shows for ideas. The irony was that Gods of Avalon was itself based upon a long-running teenage saga, which in turn had followed a film franchise inspired by a successful run of comic books; a series that had been adapted from a trilogy of novels loosely based upon the original Arthurian myths and legends of the British Isles. It seemed there really were no new stories to tell.
“They also have The War of the Ring,” Zotz suggested hopefully, pointing to a row of booths decorated with Tolkien-inspired imagery. “And Battlefield Earth.”
“Or even Superhero Showdown,” added Endymion, giving Zotz a sideways look.
“It all sounds rather violent,” Ravana murmured. There was a small VR suite on the Dandridge Cole, but it was an old design and the few games they had were rather sedate. “I’ve had enough conflict for one day.”
Philyra was already dragging Bellona towards the Gods of Avalon suite and excitedly explaining the game to her. Endymion gave a resigned shrug and trotted after them.
“What about it?” Zotz asked Ravana, as they followed. “It’s a fantasy game. Wizards and monsters, mysterious quests, that sort of thing.”
“Knights in shining armour,” added Bellona.
Endymion grinned. “Damsels in distress.”
The young man operating the suite gave them the merest glance as they approached. He was a tall, olive-skinned local who looked barely older than Endymion. His bleary expression suggested he had been down in the dim basement longer than was healthy.
“How much?” asked Endymion.
The man shrugged. “Are you staying at the Pampa Palace?”
Philyra nodded. “We arrived this morning.”
“Then it’s free,” he told them. “All inclusive. You off-worlders?”
“From Ascension, Barnard’s Star,” replied Endymion. “Why?”
“Different settings,” he said. “Locals use their implants for the data feed.”
He directed them to the booths. His offhand demeanour made it clear he was not there for the conversation. Ravana watched hesitantly as her four companions slipped easily into the walker frames within, then reluctantly followed suit.
Once inside, she examined the touch-screen display before her and flicked through the pages of VR avatars until one caught her eye. The holovid clip showed a fierce yet strikingly-beautiful raven-haired woman, dressed in wild flowing robes of purple and black. Ravana was no expert on Arthurian lore but judging by the strange, dance-like way the woman tended to her smoking cauldron it seemed a fair assumption she was either some sort of sorceress or a very eccentric cook.
“Morgan le Fay,” she murmured, making her selection. It was the fact that the woman seemed to share her cave-like lair with a cat that attracted her most.
Settling back into the walker frame, Ravana put on the VR headset and lowered the visor across her eyes. She was familiar with the submersion process and saw straight away that something was wrong, for the black-and-white holding image was so out of focus it made her head hurt just to look at it. She could make out four figures standing inside a grey stone hall, but the picture was indistinct and fuzzy.
“Are you all ready?” asked the operator, sounding bored.
Ravana raised her hand to ask him to check her visor, but he had not waited for a reply and had started the programme. The image before her eyes subtly twisted into three dimensions, flooded with colour and suddenly she was inside the virtual world.
She found herself in a large stone hall, standing next to four others before a circular table. A candelabra high in the vaulted ceiling dispelled the shadows with a cool flickering light. A row of brightly-painted jousting shields, many dented and scratched, hung upon the walls between narrow windows. Yet everything remained out of focus, leaving her with the impression she was seeing the same view twice, superimposed but not quite aligned. Thinking her headset was at fault, she experimented with closing one eye and then the other but it made no difference. Her companions were also blurred but she could see they were a black knight in armour, a squire in a ragged brown tunic, an African priestess in a blue smock and a chiffon-clad princess in medieval garb. Beyond the table, a fuzzy figure in regal robes entered the hall and walked towards them.
“King Arthur himself!” exclaimed the knight, in Endymion’s voice.
“Everything’s a blur,” Ravana complained. “Is anyone else having problems?”
“Not me,” said Bellona, who was the African priestess.
“I’m fine,” purred Philyra, whom Ravana had already guessed would be the princess.
“Call the operator,” suggested Zotz the squire.
Ravana gave the double hand-cross signal recognised by all VR consoles and the disembodied touch-screen display of the booth appeared, hanging in air before her. Reaching forward, she activated the communicator.
“Hello?” called Ravana. “I’m having problems. Everything’s fuzzy.”
“One moment,” came the voice of the operator. “I’ll check the system.”
On the other side of the circular table, the hazy blob that was King Arthur sat down and produced a long object from within his robes.
“Travellers!” he boomed. “The kingdom of Camelot needs your help!”
“A scroll,” whispered Zotz. “He is here to give us our mission!”
“Thanks for the commentary,” muttered Ravana. “But I’m blind, not deaf.”
Her headache was getting worse. She reached to call the operator again, then stared as Zotz’s tunic started falling to rags around his feet. Nearby, Philyra had become a grotesque caricature of a preening princess in a plastic dress, all heavy make-up and leering smile.
“You cannot escape your destiny!” roared King Arthur. “The Gods of Avalon await!”
“What’s ha
ppening?” Ravana asked, her voice wavering.
“Still checking,” replied the operator irritably.
Now Endymion’s armour dropped away to reveal the brightly-coloured costume of a court jester. Bellona’s robes turned dirty and grey as she took on the mantle of a down-trodden farmer’s wife, complete with a couple of chickens clucking at her feet. King Arthur’s words had become a metallic slur and a confused Ravana saw the king was losing his own fine attire to expose a grey, featureless avatar, then a panel on his chest fell open to reveal he was no more than an android. The screen on the disembodied booth display hanging before her showed a trembling Morgan le Fay shooting sparks from her fingertips. Ravana’s virtual countenance had taken on a definite green tint and her eyes glowed like red-hot coals.
“Are you okay?” asked Zotz. Beneath his disintegrating rags the squire wore the armour of the gallant red knight, Queen Guinevere’s secret champion. “You look scary.”
“Everything’s going wrong!” moaned Ravana.
Startled, she realised the hall was starting to shrink. The shields faded from the walls, while all around her the narrow windows were being squeezed out of existence by the relentless incoming stones. She tried to step towards Zotz but could not move.
“zz-deestiinyy-zz…!” rasped the robot king.
“It’s all a bit of fun!” laughed the jester. “Fun! Fun! Fun!”
“What the hell!” cried the operator. “A double feedback loop!”
Ravana whirled around in alarm as the walls of the hall continued to close in on her. The grey stones grew ever larger until the words Isa-Sastra were revealed upon each one, then fell open like the pages of a book.
Suddenly, cascades of black spiders poured out of the openings, down the walls and across the floor. More and more spiders followed, some as big as her hand. Her companions, the king and the table melted away and she alone was left to face the hissing arachnid flood that seethed towards her. Ravana clawed at her clothes in panic as she felt the spiders clambering up her legs, up her body and arms, over her face and into her hair. The walls continued to grind ever closer. Virtual reality or not, the horror was real. As were her screams.
“Why didn’t you say you had an implant?” cried a voice. “I’m pulling you out now!”
Ravana’s piercing shriek, a sound wrought from pure terror, continued loud and strong. Suddenly, it was all over. The virtual world disappeared from around her, leaving her hanging limply in the walker frame, exhausted and sobbing uncontrollably. She barely felt the hands that reached forward to carry her to safety.
*
Ravana peered over the edge of the sheets, her mind in turmoil. Her cat lay curled next to her on the hotel room bed, chewing upon a light bulb and doing its best to soothe her nerves with its electric purr. What she had gone through in the Gods of Avalon game had felt horrifyingly real, for her eyes had been opened to a twisted version of her own imagination. Yet terrifying though her experience in the VR suite was, a new and very real fear now gripped her. There was something in her head that was not her.
“What the hell happened?” demanded Quirinus. He stood at the end of her bed, facing a stout, middle-aged Asian man who happened to be the hotel manager. Behind the manager stood the sheepish operator, while on the bed itself was a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates, which the manager had seen fit to bring by way of an apology.
“Is she okay?” asked Zotz, concerned. He and Miss Clymene were standing by the connecting door leading to the suite next door. Behind them, Ravana saw the anxious faces of Endymion, Bellona and Philyra. Quirinus did not reply but instead motioned to Miss Clymene to take Zotz and the others into the next room.
“A most unfortunate incident,” the manager said. “But I can assure you that every one of my games room team are fully-certified operatives. We will review our procedures to make sure this sort of thing does not happen again.”
“They said they were off-worlders,” muttered the youth. “How was I supposed to know she had an implant?”
As she heard the word again, Ravana shuddered and pulled the sheets tight, increasingly frantic at the thought that there was something lodged in her brain, something that had been there hidden and waiting all these years. Quirinus glanced towards her and then quickly looked away, as if ashamed at having concealed it from her for so long.
The double vision experienced within the game had been caused by her long-dormant implant. It had tried to reconcile its direct link with the VR suite with the data stream from her headset, but this had led her mind to superimpose a nightmare-like interpretation upon the game itself. That this had never happened to her before was purely because the only other VR suite she had ever used, that on the Dandridge Cole, was so old it predated implant technology.
“She didn’t know herself,” admitted Quirinus, looking dejected. “I never told her.”
“Never seen a standard implant backfire like that before,” the youth mumbled.
“How long have I had it?” whispered Ravana.
Her father still could not bring himself to look at her.
“Since you were four,” he said. “Children on Yuanshi had to have implants by law; your mother and I were told it was as routine as getting vaccinations. Back then we lived in downtown Lanka and didn’t have access to any of the new and supposedly wonderful implant-controlled technology that was becoming popular, so I assumed it had never been activated. As I watched you growing up it became harder and harder to tell you about it.”
“I felt the pain of the Platypus,” murmured Ravana, watching as her cat slunk across the bed to cautiously sniff the bouquet and chocolates. “Was that the implant?”
“I think so. Maybe also the cause of your headaches,” Quirinus told her, then sighed. “It’s why I agreed to fly us here to Daode. I was hoping to find a doctor who could tell us if there was anything wrong.”
Ravana sat up. “You brought me here to have a doctor look inside my head?”
The hotel manager looked flustered. “If there is any way the hotel can help…”
“You’ve already been most kind,” said Quirinus, with a cursory nod. “I will let you know if we need anything else.”
The manager bowed, taking this as a cue to leave. No sooner had he and the young man left the room when Ostara suddenly appeared at the doorway, looking breathless.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” she exclaimed, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I need to tell you about Fenris!”
“Can it wait?” asked Quirinus. “Ravana has had a bit of a shock.”
“Poor Ravana!” said Ostara. She gave her a sympathetic smile. “What’s wrong?”
“I need my head examined,” Ravana replied gloomily.
“A wise precaution,” came a voice from the connecting doorway. Quirinus and Ostara turned to see Fenris stepping into the room, his expression suggesting he had been listening for a while. “It just so happens I know of an old family friend of the Maharani’s, an excellent doctor who has a practice right here in Hemakuta. I am sure he would be only too glad to help put your fears to rest.”
“Don’t trust him,” Ostara warned Quirinus. “He…”
“I don’t plan to!” Quirinus retorted, interrupting her.
“We have had our disagreements in the past,” Fenris acknowledged. “But this is about doing what is right for your daughter in her hour of need.”
“The Maharani does still have a great deal of influence in this system,” Quirinus told Ostara, as she opened her mouth to protest. He spoke as if it was himself he was trying to convince. “A friendly doctor may be just what we need. Ravana, do you want me to take you to see someone? Just to check that everything’s okay?”
“Can he get this thing out of my head?” asked Ravana, bitterly.
She threw back the sheets with a grim determination. Whoever put her to bed had removed her boots but left her still wearing her now very crumpled flight suit. After recovering her footwear, Ravana picked up he
r cat and came to her father’s side, though refused to meet his gaze. Fenris gave her electric pet a disapproving glance but said nothing.
“You can take us there now?” asked Quirinus.
“Of course,” Fenris replied. “There is really no need for you to come with us,” he added coolly when Ostara made as if to follow.
“Fine!” she snapped. “I’ll wait here.”
Leaving Ostara sulking in the hotel room, Fenris quickly led Quirinus and Ravana to the lift at the end of the corridor. Once they reached the ground floor lobby, he directed them not to the main entrance but instead past the dining hall and on towards the pleasure garden.
“Is this the right way?” asked Quirinus.
“The hotel has a rear entrance,” Fenris replied. “It will save us a few minutes.”
The garden was an oasis of green. The stone path they followed wound past immaculate lawns, bright flower beds and a mini orchard before arriving at a small fish pond. Overlooking the pond was an ornamental wooden pagoda in the Chinese style, with an open doorway leading into a darkened interior. Fenris led Ravana and her father towards the pagoda, then upon reaching the door indicated for them to step inside.
“In there?” asked Quirinus, puzzled. “Why?”
Fenris reached into his pocket, withdrew a dark object and pointed it at Quirinus’ chest. Ravana looked down at the plasma pistol in the man’s hand and stifled a scream.
“I’m afraid I must insist,” Fenris replied coldly. He waggled the gun barrel towards the doorway. “Inside, now.”
Taking Ravana’s hand, Quirinus stepped into the dimly-lit pagoda. To their surprise, waiting in the shadows was the unlikely duo of Agent Dana and Surya’s cyberclone, but any hope that the clone may be of help was quickly dashed by the pistol in its hand, which meant its usual Asimov safety protocols had been disengaged. Ravana had seen similar plasma-bolt weapons at Lan-Tlanto and knew they could easily knock someone off their feet without the risk of leaving inconvenient holes in a spacecraft’s hull.
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