by Zoey Ivers
Barton Street Gym
Zoey Ivers
Copyright © 2013 Pamela Uphoff
All Rights Reserved
ISBN
978-1-939746-91-7 ebook
978---0615828787 print version
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional.
Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
Iron Ax Press
Houston
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
About the Author
Other titles by the Author
Excerpt from Chicago
Chapter One
Joe crawled through the low tunnel. The stone, gritty and worn, was dry in the middle, damp from the bitter mist at either end. He scanned the far side. His eyes had adjusted to the constant twilight, but the occasional thin misty drizzle could hide one of the small scouts easily. Joe spotted movement to the left. An alien shape, turning around and trotting away. Long tail to balance the big head. Some sort of small dinosaur. If they ever got out of here, he'd find out what they were called.
His heart thudded in his ears---or was it a vibration in the ground? Joe shrunk back in the low tunnel. Behind him, Tommy crawled hastily in. The tan sandstone flags they lay on jumped and quivered. A taloned foot descended to meet the pavement. Joe could have reached out and touched it. The foot was scaled, with spread toes. Almost bird-like, apart from being the size of an elephant's. The ground seemed to flex with the weight. The foot lifted and disappeared.
Joe leaned forward. A hint of crushed leaves scented the chilly mist. In the dim light he could see the Tyrannosaurus Rex pacing away from them, so large it brushed the walls, disturbing the vines that grew here and there on the stones. It turned, and ducked to pass through one of the larger arches.
Straight ahead, the light showed nothing.
Literally.
Joe glanced right, then scrambled out and crossed the old flagstones to the edge. He shrugged out of his back pack. The flash was in the side pocket. Joe dropped to his belly, shivering as the condensation soaked through his clothes. They'd been conserving the power pack, so the light shown brightly down, down, down... no sign of bottom. Worse, he could see that the stone pavement they were laying on was a ledge only a couple of meters thick. Joe turned the light outward. No sign of the other side of this canyon... assuming there was another side.
No wonder the ground flexes where the T-Rex walks.
"Looks like we've found the edge of the world." He kept his voice low.
"Cut the light." Tommy's voice was a bare breath. "Let's get away from 'ere, I don't want to get trapped against a fall like that."
Tommy's implanted brain chip was loaded with a wealth of military tactics. For verisimilitude, no doubt, but it was coming in handy, here.
Wherever "here" was.
Joe pulled out his last candy bar. He hesitated, then put it away. No telling how long it would be before they found the way out of this... place. He turned and trotted cautiously in the direction the T-Rex had gone. Maybe the T-Rex---or whatever it really was---would lead them out of this maze.
And back into the real world.
***
"You sold the house?" Alice looked from her father's face to the narrow front of the old house. Men were carrying furniture out. They didn't even tell me? What have they done?
"We've bought into the Barton Street Gym. We'll have a dimensional cubby with our living room furniture in it, so we can have family get-togethers every afternoon, after school." Her mother looked smug and satisfied.
"But... Where am I going to sleep?" She shivered and hugged herself; disbelief fading into shock.
"Oh, Honey, that's the best news of all. They just approved Alert for children ten and older. You'll never need to sleep again."
"But... " I like my dreams. I like taking an hour to wake up on Saturday morning, snuggling with my ... "What about all my models?"
"Oh, we'll put them in storage with the rest of our furniture. You're getting a little old for dolls and toy horses."
"Mom! They aren't all plastic, you know. What about the bio-models?" She could see them both bracing their shoulders. This wasn't going to be good. She could feel herself starting to hyperventilate. They can't have killed them, they can't have!
"Alice." Her father was being formal. Not. Good. "I should never have bought you that first bio-model, I can't imagine what I was thinking. But when all's said and done, they are based on rats, and the humane thing to do is to put them down. I understand there's a new process that injects acrylic and they'll look just like they do now."
"No. Absolutely no. I only have four bio-models. They will come with me alive or I won't come at all. I will report you to child services as abusers."
They drew matching breaths. "Alice Steinway Brown, how dare you... " Her father got in first. Deep voice, towering, dark.
"You've sold my home, stolen my dreams, and now you want me to smile and say, oh sure, kill my bios, I'd love to have their murdered corpses on a shelf---if I had a shelf." She cast a glance at the movers. Have they packed my room? Where are the bios?
Alice felt like she was choking, and finally had to ask. "Have you killed them already?"
Her mother scowled. "No. I thought you'd want to pet them or something, and say good bye."
Alice closed her eyes in relief, and rubbed her arms, feeling sick. She scuffed her shoes on the familiar cracked sidewalk. Not my sidewalk anymore. Not my flowerbeds. Not my maple tree in not-my-backyard. Think, Alice, why must they not harm the bios?
Her mother sounded close to tears. "All your friends live in Gyms now."
The new lifestyle. Ah, yes, that will work. "I don't have friends. The older girls I know, who are already taking Alert don't live in Gyms, they live on the street and in the mall, and in school. They cross paths with their parents every once in a while. If I need to come to our 'dimensional cubby' twice a day to check on the bio-models and play with them, you'll be able to find me. Otherwise, why should I bother ever going there?"
That got them, she could see it their eyes, hear it in Mother's faint sigh. The bios were safe. Even if they really were just dumb animals, genetically engineered to look like dolls, their personalities and inane chatter courtesy of multipurpose nanochips implanted in their little rodent brains.
She turned and walked toward the house. "I will get the bio-models now. So no unfortunate accidents occur."
"Alice!" There was a warning growl in her father's voice.
She ignored him. Sorry, Father, but you just blew all my trust in you to tiny little bits.
***
"You'll quickly get used to the feeling of crossing the dimensional threshold." The fussy little manager wiped his hands together as the last of the movers left. "There now, that looks very comfortable. All you need to remember is to always pull the d-door toward you, so you and the door are in the same dimension." He gave Alice a jaundiced look. "If you push, the dimensional shift across your arm tends to jerk you forward and off your feet. The kids laugh and call you a klutz. And anyway, we've got the doors fixed so that shouldn't happen."
Doesn't like kids, and
doesn't want us playing around with the doors.
The dimensional doors were square, about two meters in each direction, with a lip about ten cems high, like a hatch in a submarine or something. You had to step over it, and if you were tall, duck a bit. She'd noticed, walking in, a couple of doors with ramps.
This floor had a corridor following the glass outside wall all around the irregular shape of the building. The "cubbies" lined the inner side of the corridor, so they had a view, some contact with the outside world, as they came and went from "home." A second corridor ringed the inside core of plumbing, wiring, elevators, stairs and whatever. Then there were "spoke" corridors that crossed from the core elevator lobby to the outside corridor. The inner corridor and the spokes held the autodiners, mini-spas, vendomarts, hair stylists, and day care centers, about half in cubbies of their own. The spoke corridors were color coded, for orientation, not décor, although they made an effort in that direction as well, with potted plants and abstract art. All-in-all it was still a big impersonal maze. For us human rats to run through.
"So, will you all join me at the Top Hat Club on the forty-sixth floor? Good food and an amazing view!"
"Sounds wonderful." Her mother looped her arm through her husbands.
She looks happy. Alice scowled. "I think I'll stay and get my stuff arranged." Get the bios out of their box.
Her father's eyes narrowed. "I think you should come along."
Alice folded her arms and stood silently. I'm still grounded, from sneaking out to that party, so what can you do? Extend the time? Again?
Her father frowned, but turned away. "Let's go, then."
The fussy manager, Nelson Fudd or Thud or something close to that, looked relieved as he ushered her parents out.
Alice looked around. There wasn't much to explore.
Cubbies were perfect cubes. Six point something-or-other meters tall, deep and wide. A "natural" phenomenon of a different dimension. They didn't actually exist, in the real world on the outside of the d-door. But the inside could be lined with normal looking materials, the access could be framed and covered to look like a big square door. People had been happily living in them since they were first introduced, ten years ago, now.
This room was divided vertically. From the door, five steps up to the level with their old living room furniture facing the half of one wall given over to a huge vid screen. In the nook formed by the stairs there was a small "wet bar." It had a tiny refrigerator and a microwave. An itty bitty sink, with a catchment basin that the staff would drain regularly. No plumbing connections, across dimensions. Lots of bathrooms, oops, pardon the indelicacy, mini-spas, along the corridors.
Well, if she never slept, she wouldn't be waking up in the middle of the night to traipse down the public hall to the mini-spa, would she?
"Gee, I'll never have bed head again."
The lower floor had wardrobes for their clothing along one wall. A vanity table and mirror. And her father's office stuff, some shelves of antique books and a pair of recliners for reading.
She trotted down the steps and opened the bio-models' traveling box. "You guys okay?"
The box was split into four unequal sections, and the blonde bio-model looked up from her tiny rectangle. "Booooorrrrriiiiinnnnggggg! And the horses hated the swaying." Bambi grabbed the top and climbed out, surveying the cubby.
"Sorry. I still don't believe my parents sold the house. And... I felt better carrying you myself." She offered a finger, and Lily grabbed it to be lifted carefully out. Princess Lily wasn't as athletic as Bambi, and wore floor length gowns except when she was going for a ride.
Salt-and---Pepper snorted indignantly, but didn't struggle as she was lifted out. Eclipse kicked out with his hooves. Then took off for a run around the rug that defined the floor of the dimensional bump. Salty joined him, and the girls watched and laughed as the little horses bucked and kicked to celebrate their freedom.
They lived in a toy barn. It was based on some ancient TV show, but it was perfect for her four bio-models.
The barn fit snuggly under the lamp table between the recliners, taking up hardly any extra space at all. And it wasn't like they were cramped or anything, with no bedrooms or beds.
"I'm almost sixteen. If they expect me to live with them for two years, they need to at least give me a corner to be all mine."
Bambi nodded. She was the oldest, based on the doll that had been around forever. Twenty-five cems high. She was the smartest, too, despite being blonde. Those first chips had been serious overkill.
Salty, a black and white pinto mare, was smarter than a real horse, but probably not by much. And she really was based more on equine DNA than rats', no matter what her father said.
Lily the Living Princess had been a gift from Gramma Bitti. Her black hair hung all the way down to the ground, and Alice had to braid it and fasten it up with a clip to keep it from tangling horribly.
Her second horse, she'd bought just three months ago. A black stallion, well, colt. He'd be twenty cems high at the shoulder, when he was full grown, and Alice had saved up her bonus money to buy the best available chip for him. He was still maturing, so it was hard to say where his intelligence would land, when the chip was done growing into his brain, and vice versa. And thanks to the programing on the chips, they came "house broke" so to speak.
"This is going to be really strange." Alice wiggled the front of the barn out to its full extension, and placed the little fences between the barn and the wall. She got out the bio-chow and filled the barn's automatic dispenser, then screwed a bottle of water into the receptacle.
Then she braced herself and opened her closet.
Her mother had packed for her. So her old favorites were gone, all the "nice" clothes brought along, even the ones that were too short or too tight, now. Alice started pulling those out, making a stack on one of the recliners. That pared her stuff down to the bare minimum.
"Maybe if I let mother use half my space she'll stop giving me dirty looks."
Bambi put her fists on her hips and looked around. "Oh, I dunno, kid. Getting adjusted is always rough, But I think this place has some real possibilities. Just you wait and see.
***
Another Cubby had been initialized. Very useful; it contained a high-end computer that was equipped for top speed, and licensed for unlimited grid access. It was synced to the sort of computer that moved around. Also high end, and both with impressive security. It would have to delegate some time to getting into them. There were also four wireless connections through biochips. Rarely activated; they'd probably never been in an immersion environment like the Gym.
It left a clipper behind to analyze the security of the high-end computer, with an exterior firewall of its own, designed specifically to keep other AIs out. Only AI level computers could be truly assimilated, to become a part of itself. But every bit of additional processing power it could associate with itself helped, and new machines like this one often opened up new access routes. They were reliable, and trustworthy, once the association software was downloaded.
The Gym wasn't sure the smaller chips were useful for anything. A quick search of biochip data showed that they were multipurpose, with any given function using just what was needed, and switching off the rest. It traced the chip numbers, and accessed the factory for specs and codes. Interesting. It activated the interfaces in the four little chips and studied all their possible functions. Nothing of any real use. They might be interesting to observe, just because they were unusual. The Gym briefly considered the other three vermin in the Cubby. No chips, the usual implanted IDs, and limited communications devices and microcomputers, capable of doing little more than accessing the data stream. The microcomputers were just basic tools, occasionally useful, but just dropped when it didn't need them. It dismissed them from its consideration.
Right now, only the increased access through the new computer might be useful.
Even if not enough to enable it to survive, when the other
AIs settled their battles and the winner turned its attention to the newest AI in Milwaukee, the controller for the Barton Street Gym.
Chapter Two
"I'll start back to work tomorrow, but I wanted to spend some time with you, here, before we left you on your own."
Alice rolled her eyes.
Her mother frowned. "Don't do that! And don't pretend that you aren't completely capable of staying in with your little dolls all day, and never meeting anyone."
"I'll meet plenty of people in two weeks, when school starts." Alice followed her into the elevator.
"They just renovated the building, switching to cubbies. Everything but the basic structure is new. They're still working on some floors. So everyone here has moved within the last two months. This is the perfect time to meet new friends."
Alice pulled up the building map on her pocket comp.
The public lobby had an open two floor atrium filled with shops, then there were fifteen cubby floors, five floors of restaurants, shops, arcades and, of course, workout rooms, saunas and spas. Then another fifteen floors of cubbies, two floors of "specialty shops" and private gyms for the upper crust, five floors of "upscale" cubbies and the penthouse which was a word that used to mean the posh home at the top. Now, here, it was a posh restaurant and hotel with fancy honeymoon suites.
"Honeymoon suites. Good grief."
"For special occasions. Anniversaries and so forth." Her mother blushed and skated on to the next part. "And look, each cubby floor has at least four autodiners, so we can have, well, practically family dinners."
Since Mom didn't like to cook, and no longer had a kitchen, that was fine. "What are there, forty or fifty cubbies a floor?"
"One hundred, here. Some of the lower levels have more, the uppers less."
"Ah." Alice refrained from rolling her eyes. So we can dine privately with about twenty-five other families. I suppose we'll figure out good times to eat, or go to the restaurants in the middle floors, with the other seven thousand or so people who live here.