by Isaac Hooke
But it was gone.
"A mirage." Hoodwink laughed a laugh that quickly became a dry cough.
"Not entirely," came a quaint voice beside him.
Still on the ground, Hoodwink spun his dagger on the new arrival. It was a dwarf, dressed in a leather jerkin and breeches, with openwork sandals around his hairy toes. The dwarf held a black umbrella, which he put to use shading his head. The symbol on his chest suggested he was a gol, though Hoodwink didn't recognize the occupation the symbol stood for. It was either three vertical lines, or the number one hundred eleven.
"Think of the image of Death as a test," the dwarf said. "You failed."
"Who are you?" Hoodwink said, unable to hold back another cough.
"Here." The dwarf popped the cork from a fresh water bladder, and tossed it to Hoodwink. "You sound terrible."
Hoodwink caught the bladder and eyed the lip suspiciously. He smelled it and then took a sip. Water. Sweet water. He drank voraciously, finally setting the bladder down with a sigh and wiping his lips.
"Better?" the dwarf said. "Good. Now we can talk about what we're going to do with you."
Hoodwink scrambled upright, using the glass barrier as a lever for his weary body. He kept the dagger pointed at the dwarf. "Who are you?"
"I am Seven," the dwarf said. "One of the main A.I.s of the system."
"The main what?" Hoodwink stared blankly at the dwarf.
"The Artificial Intelligences. One of the Master Golems, if you will."
"I knew you were a gol." Hoodwink glanced around uncertainly, wondering if any more approached in ambush. He saw only the empty desert.
"I'm very much alone," Seven said. "In more ways than you know."
"Well, I'm Hoodwink. Hoodwink Cooper. And I have a message for you gols out here."
"Oh?" Seven raised an eyebrow.
"John Baker," Hoodwink said. "Son of Arrold Baker, 18 Market Street."
Seven pursed his lips. "Yes?"
"You're to get in touch with him. He's your contact for the Users, he is. We want to help you, if we can."
Seven seemed genuinely puzzled now. "The closest city would be Section 9, and my backup copy of the records shows a house on 18 Market Street. But what is it exactly the Users want to help me with?"
"The sickness that's affecting the minds of you gols." When Seven stared back blankly, Hoodwink elaborated. "The slobbering faces. The mistakes made by the gols at the banks, the stores, and so forth. You gols aren't yourselves. Not that I care, of course. You could all die as far as I'm concerned. But I'm just the messenger."
Understanding seemed to dawn on the dwarf. "I see now. But unfortunately, there's a slight problem. I've lost communication with the Core. The Attack has damaged the root fiber and I can't interact with my complementary units. I'm afraid if you want to convey this message of yours, you'll have to travel through the Forever Gate and do it yourself."
Hoodwink narrowed his eyes. "What are you talking about? I just crossed the Gate."
"What you refer to as the 'Forever Gate' is just an artifice, a wall used to keep the humans from eating up all our computational resources. It would take googols more processing power if we allowed you beyond the towns. Generating fractal terrain doesn't come cheap, you know. Throw in the particle system, the billboarding, the occlusion culling, not to mention the lightmapping and pathfinding, all of which need to be duplicated for each and every city, and you have a system whose resources are quite nearly spent. It's a miracle it all comes together as smoothly as it does, really."
Hoodwink waved his dagger threateningly. "Speak Common, will you?"
Seven smiled, and there actually seemed to be irony, real irony in those gol eyes. "You've been hoodwinked."
Hoodwink stared at the dwarf, not knowing what to say. Then he had a thought. He indicated the glass barrier beside him, and rapped the surface with his knuckles. "This is the true Forever Gate, isn't it? The real world, the one you've been hiding from us, it's past here."
Seven pursed his lips, then nodded, a little reluctantly. "You could say that."
"Tell me how to cross."
"If you cross the Forever Gate, there's no coming back," Seven said.
Hoodwink felt a tingle of dread in the pit of his stomach, but he said, "I've heard that before. And I will come back."
"We'll see. You needn't have come all this way simply to pass the Forever Gate. Because you see, it can be crossed by anyone, anywhere."
Hoodwink regarded the dwarf doubtfully. "Really? Enlighten me."
Seven extended his arms and smiled mockingly. "Take your dagger, wedge it in the sand, and fall on it."
Hoodwink stared at the dwarf, feeling his anger rise.
"It's true," Seven said. "Dying is the only way to reach the Outside. It's in the programming. Those who sent you over the wall, these Users, they likely hoped you'd fall to your death during the climb."
Hoodwink considered this for a moment. Then a smile crept on his face.
"You're a malicious, conniving little gol aren't you?" Hoodwink said. "I don't think I've ever met one quite like you. Except, I'm not so gullible as you might think, I'm not. You may've tricked the others who came before me, but you won't take me so easily."
The dwarf spread his hands wider. "I have sold you the only real truth there is."
"You sell death!" Hoodwink said.
"But isn't death the final truth?" Seven turned around, and began walking in the opposite direction. He glanced over his shoulder. "The Forever Gate is death. Either cross death and deliver your message, or return to the city, change your name, and your face, and live out your life. And get yourself collared again if you want that life to be long."
"Don't you turn your back on me." Hoodwink rushed at the dwarf with the dagger, unleashing a guttural growl.
But the dwarf turned around and his fingertips glowed with forks of lightning. The brunt of the bolt swept past Hoodwink, but he was sent flying into the glass barrier by the trailing electrical tendrils. Sparks pulsed away from his body in surges that were absorbed into the glass as he slid to the ground.
"The next blow will not be so gentle," Seven said.
"Impossible," Hoodwink panted. He cringed at the pain he felt in his side. Broken ribs, or worse. "Gols don't have that power. It's why you collar us."
"Has anything you've seen today been possible?" the dwarf said. "Return to the city and live out your life. I'll see you on the Outside when you're good and ready."
Hoodwink noticed a flicker from the corner of his eye. Seven's lightning had done something to the glass barrier. Where the main bolt had struck, the glass intermittently faded in and out, going from a view of the desert beyond to a triangular gap of darkness the size of a man, and back again.
Seven followed his gaze, but said nothing.
Hoodwink stood, and lifted his dagger toward the defect in the glass. He touched the gap. The tip of the weapon vanished. Although the view alternated from darkness to dunes and back again, the weapon appeared in neither. It was like he held only a clipped hilt.
When he pulled the weapon out, the dagger was whole.
"You have found your Forever Gate after all," Seven said. "Stepping beyond the outermost boundaries of the system is the same as death."
"As I said, I'm not so gullible." The dagger had returned. He would too.
He hoped.
He glanced at Seven. "Better pray I don't find you on the other side."
Before he could change his mind—and he was very close to changing it—Hoodwink stepped through the gap.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The world deflated like a child's balloon.
Hoodwink awoke in some kind of goo. He couldn't open his eyelids, because the substance burned his eyes. He couldn't breathe, because his lungs were filled with the stuff. He kicked and writhed, and in his panic he discovered a pliant membrane. He pressed on it with his hands, and it enveloped his arms up to the elbows. Abruptly the sheath yielded, and he slid into the
open air.
He landed on a hard floor, the goo splattering all around him. He thrashed, coughing the fluid from his lungs, spitting the mucoidal substance from his mouth. He scooped the goo from his eye sockets, and he was able to open his lids for short spurts, though his eyes still burned, and he saw flashes of an iron hallway.
As his cough subsided, and the air flowed in and out of his lungs, he devoted more time to clearing the goo from his eyes. He blinked rapidly, letting the tears flow, and he was able to open the lids for longer and longer periods. His right eyelid had a bit of a painful tic, but he ignored it.
A rotating red light mounted near the pod bathed the scene alternately in shadow and light. He was lying on an iron grill. There was a siren wailing.
He forced himself to sit upright. A strange weight pressed into his gut.
He glanced down.
An umbilical cord was attached to his belly. Pulsating blue veins ran down its surface.
A sudden repugnance overcame him and he pulled frantically at the cord. Pain flashed through his insides, and he immediately let go of the thing. The opposite end was still buried somewhere inside the pod he'd emerged from, so he grabbed the cord in the middle and yanked. He had to put most of his body weight into the act, but finally the cord slurped from the pod with a loud "pop." The placental end slapped his cheek, and he tossed the gory tissue away in disgust.
He attempted to stand, but his feet refused to obey. His eyes were drawn to the scrawny limbs that made up his legs. His muscle had vanished. His legs were just skin stretched over bone, the knobby shapes of his knees the only indication that these even were legs. His arms fared little better, thin pipes of skin and bone.
What had the Gate done to him?
He tried to access the power inside him, but the spark didn't exist anymore. It was as if that part of his mind had been snipped away.
He was filled with a sudden sense of urgency. He had to get away from this place.
He dragged himself ever so slowly along the iron grill that was the floor, using the gaps for purchase, the beacon lighting the way in swathes of red and black, the siren keening. The wasted muscles in his arms and legs screamed in constant protest. It was like climbing the last leg of the Forever Gate all over again. Inch-by-inch he crawled, like the lowest of worms, the umbilical cord dragging along behind him. He kept his lower body tilted to the side, and he was careful not to put too much weight on the tender section of his belly where the cord still attached.
He paused when he realized there were more pods like the one he'd just left behind lining either side of the wall. The membranes were slightly translucent, and he could see human forms floating in each with the umbilical cords still attached. Through the floor grill below he perceived another level of pods. And above him, past the ceiling grill, still another level with more pods.
Pods upon pods upon pods.
A doorway in the rightmost wall opened onto a massive room. He crawled forward, onto a balcony of sorts, and stared through the grill at the strange activity below.
Mechanical monstrosities were at work, though at what they labored he had no idea. They moved pincers to and fro above compartments that spilled long threads of different colors. Below them, the metal floor was blackened in several places, as though the area had suffered recent fire.
The siren wailed on.
There was a flash, and he heard a loud boom. The hall shook. He glanced upward. The ceiling was a dome made of glass, or so he thought, because he could see the night sky beyond. But this was not the night sky he was used to—a large, multicolored ball floated amid the stars, about the size of his fist when held at arm's-length. Amid the chaos of colors in that ball, he noticed a pattern near the lower right that was eerily similar to a human eye. It was Jupiter, he realized. A planet he'd seen in books.
Another flash. Another boom. The floor shook, and cracks spidered across the glass dome.
"Warning," a female voice droned. "Decompression imminent. Warning. Decompression imminent."
He heard a whir behind him. One of those mechanical monstrosities had rolled onto the balcony from the hall he'd left. In place of legs it had treads. In place of arms, pincers. Its body was a barrel of steel. Its head looked similar to the hilt of a sword, with curved cross-guards and a central haft. Three glass disks stared back at him from the depths of that hilt, and a red light floated above the center disk.
The thing wrapped a set of pincers around his leg and dragged him back into the corridor. The monstrosity hauled him through that hallway of pods. The world shook, and he heard a distant boom, but the monstrosity did not cease.
The thing finally turned into another room, and lifted him dangling by the foot over a strange moving floor as if to dump him.
"Wait!" Hoodwink said.
The monstrosity paused, lifting him so that his upside-down head was at the same level as those glass eyes.
"John Baker," Hoodwink said. He slurred the words, like someone who knew how to talk, but had never used his tongue and lips. "Son of Arrold Baker, 18 Market Street." What was that the dwarf had called his city? "9th section. John Baker. The Users want to help. Meet John Baker."
He thought he saw an iris in each of those three glass disks enlarge, as if the monstrosity considered his words, then its head tilted up once, and then down. A conscious expression of agreement? Or the mechanical equivalent of a nervous tic?
The monstrosity unceremoniously hurled him onto the sliding surface, then wheeled about and left.
The moving floor was soft compared to the previous one. And slightly pliable. His stomach tightened when he saw that he had company. But it wasn't the kind of company anyone would want. Two human bodies lay not far from him, pale bodies crimped in death. Burned.
His face felt suddenly hot. With his eyes, he followed the motion of the floor to its destination—some kind of grinder. He could hear the terrible whirr from here, and see the fountain of blood as one of the dead fell inside.
He groped frantically along the rolling surface, pulling himself toward the edge.
But he had only seconds.
Not enough time.
Before the grinder took him, his last thoughts were of Ari.
He'd done it. He'd delivered the message. He'd saved her.
Yet the victory was bittersweet, because he'd broken his final promise.
Guess I won't be coming back.
The grinder swallowed him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hoodwink awoke.
He floated in water, like in the dream.
He could see in all directions at once, like in the dream.
360-degrees of horror.
Small particles passed in and out of his flesh. His hands were tentacles. His legs, suckers. His torso, a bell-shaped, glowing mass. He had a tail. Fleshy cords moored him in place.
Around him floated other forms just like him, secured in place by similar moorings to long, horizontal tubes. Their bodies glowed, a thousand forms giving light to the otherwise lightless waters.
A telepathic message voiced in his mind then, a rapid series of moans and clicks that he shouldn't have understood, but he did.
Welcome to the real world, Hoodwink.
He screamed.
PART 2
A SECOND CHANCE
CHAPTER ONE
Ari sat by the frosty window, and sipped rosemary tea with shaking hands. She stared at the snow-covered street outside, and contemplated a life that was nearing its end.
She was only twenty-nine years old, though she looked ninety-nine. Vitra had ravaged her body, sucked away her youth, leaving a shriveled shell. Like all Users, she was destined to flare blindingly bright in life, only to burn out all too soon.
Ten years had passed since Hoodwink had gone. Somehow he'd gotten his message through. Somehow he'd passed the Forever Gate and communicated with the gols. He'd become legendary among the Users for it.
But the contact had proven disastrous. The gols used the opport
unity to lay a trap, and almost every last User had died. Only Ari and Leader survived.
She was Leader now. In those ten years, she'd relaunched the group, and given everything she had to them. Body. Mind. Soul. For what? It hadn't mattered. She hadn't changed a thing. The world was still dying and there was nothing she could do about it. The snowstorms worsened, the cold became colder. More and more of the gols fell victim to the mind plague. And then there was The Drop, a relatively recent phenomenon that involved human beings dropping dead for no apparent reason. Not just one at a time, mind, but hundreds throughout the city. Men, women and children. Young and old. It didn't matter who you were, or what you were doing, you weren't immune to The Drop. If you don't watch out, The Drop's going to get you. Don't do any wrong, or The Drop'll have ya. The Drop. The Drop. The Drop.
Society was falling apart. Despite her best efforts. Despite her attempts to seize power from Jeremy, the mayor.
Jeremy.
She'd had to leave him, seven years ago, when it became too obvious she was a User, and aging at a rate far faster than normal. Jeremy hadn't seemed all that disappointed. He'd taken another wife soon thereafter, apparently glad to replace her with a young, beautiful wife.
Beauty. It'd been a curse, in her youth. Suitors had pursued her relentlessly, never granting her peace. Jeremy had protected her through it all, and only he won her heart in the end. He was—no, those were false memories. Just as most of her personality had been false, fashioned specifically for the marriage. Her knowledge of poetry, music, and painting. Her comprehension of politics, social intelligence, and manipulation. Her skills in the bedroom. She was programmed—revised—to be his perfect mate.
Only her political talents were still of some use. The remaining skills? Utter chaff. She had no piano to play. No canvas to paint. No one cared about her poetry. And no one would make love to her.
She was alone in this tiny shack of a house, which was a pittance compared to the luxury she had been used to, and her only contact with the outside world was through the furtive missives sent to the New Users. That and the human nurse who visited once a day to bathe her and prepare her meals. Sometimes she confused him for Jeremy, and even addressed him "Mayor." The nurse always humored her, saying "yes Ari" to most everything she said. Because of that, occasionally she played tricks on him, or told him terrible swear words involving her most intimate body parts to see how he'd react, but the response was always the same. "Yes Ari."