by Isaac Hooke
Tanner patted her on the shoulder distractedly. He was trying to figure out how to word what he wanted to say without offending or discouraging her and the others. "Great work Caylin. Really great. But I don't want you going Inside anymore. The same goes for all of you. It's not safe. Plus, I really need everyone focused on the Direwalker problem first. As soon as we've dealt with the Direwalkers, you can tweak the simulation's weather all day if you want." He turned to Stanson. "Are we clear?"
Stanson's eyes glinted defiantly, but once again the youth lowered his gaze. "Pellucid."
"Good." There was something else Tanner needed to address, something he'd suspected Hoodwink had done all along, involving only a select few of the children.
Tanner looked from face to face. "Hoodwink is a trip. And I know you all miss him, and can't wait for him to return. But he did some things he shouldn't have. Some bad things. I need to know which of you helped him create the Direwalkers, specifically, a certain invulnerable Direwalker with four arms."
CHAPTER FIVE
Tanner watched the children exchange shocked, confused glances. He was looking for signs of complicity, but either those involved were good at faking surprise, or Tanner had been wrong.
"None of us helped create the Direwalkers!" Caylin said. "We wouldn't!"
Tanner glanced at Stanson. His friend's brows had drawn down tight. "You know, don't you Stanson?" Why had Hoodwink confided in Stanson and not him? Ah, of course. Stanson was firmly in Hoodwink's pocket. But Tanner, he dared to disagree with Hoodwink now and then.
One child, a frail boy named Andes whose hair had never grown in, stepped forward. He was one of the smartest among the children, frighteningly so—he worked the source like a machine. His eyes were always slightly distant, as if he were looking at something beyond you. With his bald head and white gown, he always reminded Tanner of a boy monk.
"I helped Hoodwink create the Direwalkers," Andes said.
Caylin's eyes widened. "Andes, you what?"
Andes slumped, and he couldn't look at her. Probably had a bit of a crush on Caylin. "It's true. I didn't want to. But Hoodwink said it was for the good of the world. Said we'd use the Direwalkers to help everyone. We worked with the gols in Jeremy's Control Room, and experimented until we got it right. When One stole the changes, Hoodwink said it wasn't my fault. He said there was nothing I could've done to stop the A.I. from taking it."
Tanner doubted that One stole the changes. He had a feeling Hoodwink willingly gave the changes to One, for whatever reason. Maybe Hoodwink was obeying that shadowy Council he'd spoken of.
"I need you to tell me how to kill the four-armed Direwalker," Tanner said. Brute always seemed to show up eventually whenever Tanner went Inside, and he was sick of always having to run from the thing.
"You can't kill it," Andes said. "Brute's invincible. That's how we designed it."
"There has to be something." Tanner rubbed the back of his neck. "Can you review the source? Maybe there's something you overlooked."
"I don't have to review the source," Andes said. "I know it by heart. Brute's skin has the stone flag set. Nothing can harm it. Not fire. Not steel. Not lightning. Although..." Andes trailed off, his eyes becoming even more distant, if that was possible. "Only its skin has the stone flag set. I guess, well, if you jammed something in its mouth, or its eyes, you could harm Brute."
Of course. The eyes. He remembered Brute had a bloody eye after Ari had fought it. That was the only wound he'd ever seen the gol take. If Tanner could gouge both eyes, that might be good enough to disable the otherwise invincible Direwalker, at least temporarily.
"Good enough," Tanner said. "What about One? Is there a way to kill its avatar and cut off its access to the simulation?"
It was Stanson who answered. "One's avatar is even more invulnerable than Brute's." His deep voice seemed so wrong coming from that pixie face.
"There has to be a way." Tanner tapped his lips with one finger. "I don't know how much you've been able to learn out here, or how much the New Users have told you, but Jeremy's linked his avatar to both One and the Dwarf—Seven—and that's how One's getting full access to the simulation. It's a permanent link, and One has completely replaced Jeremy's avatar."
Stanson's eyes widened. So he didn't know that part, then.
After a moment, Stanson spoke. "If we could kill Jeremy or disconnect him from the Inside, that should cut his link to One, and the main A.I. would lose its direct access to the simulation."
And when that was done, the checks and balances of the sub-A.I.s would come back into play, and One would be shoehorned into the role of observer again.
But Tanner had to be sure of something. "With One out of the simulation, more Direwalkers can't be created, right?"
"That's our guess." Stanson glanced at the children for confirmation. Some of them nodded, Andes among them. "Once that's done, we can work on removing the germ from One's source. That's still going to take months."
Months. Well at least the simulation would be safe during that time. "How are A.I.s Two through Seven?"
"Seven's gone of course," Stanson said. "Its source just vanished from the system. Which makes sense, now that you've told us Seven merged with One. Two through Six are up and running, and still uninfected by the germ. We're seeing messages in the system from One instructing the other A.I.s to either cut off the food supply to the pods, or to open them all up. Thankfully the sub-A.I.s have ignored the instructions so far."
"Which is why the germ-infected One is waking us up by killing everyone on the Inside instead." Tanner rubbed his eyes. "Is there a way we can turn off the automated clean-up going on out here? Stop the machines from hunting down humans ejected from the pods?"
"Why would you want to?" Stanson said. "Already the food supply is stretched to the limit, and that's just for a bunch of sleepers. Imagine how much food it'd take to feed thousands of active people. We can't feed and care for them all, and there's no room for them. Most people who come out of the pods are too far gone anyway. We'd only drag out their suffering."
It was cold reasoning, but unfortunately Stanson was right. But that didn't mean Tanner had to like it.
He exhaled for a long moment. "Fine. So we focus on the Inside. Jeremy. He's the key to all this. You said disconnecting Jeremy from the Inside would break his link to One... how easy is that? I remember Hoodwink asked you to track down Jeremy's body on the Outside a few weeks ago. Any luck?"
Stanson shook his head. "We tried using Jeremy's DNA and Output Signal to find him, like we did for Ari, but there's no entry for him in the records. We did a system-wide search for people not in the records, and found thirty-eight living matches. Wildly enough, the DNA of every single one of those people is exactly the same."
Tanner felt his brows knit together. "Clones?"
"Yeah."
"What in the hell are clones doing in the system? And outside the birth records at that."
None of the children had an answer.
Tanner shrugged. "Fine. So we track down and open all thirty-eight pods? One of them has to be Jeremy."
Stanson shook his head. "The Output Signals of the clones are being masked somehow, so we have no idea where the thirty-eight actually are."
Damn. Of course that would've been too easy.
"All right." Tanner rubbed his chin. "Options for killing Jeremy on the Inside then, to break his link to One?"
Stanson crossed his arms. "Well, if One has overwritten and replaced Jeremy's avatar like you say, then to kill Jeremy we basically have to kill One's avatar. Which is impossible, like we talked. One probably gave its avatar every add-on out there. It's the main A.I. for freak's sake. Lightning. Master swordsmanship. Invulnerability. Shit, it can probably fly."
Tanner pondered the problem. "I don't suppose we could take out One's eyes?"
Stanson smiled ironically. "One doesn't have eyes, Tanner. Its avatar is just an empty robe covering darkness, with two hands poking out its sleeves. No, y
ou can't take out its eyes. And you can't kill One."
"There has to be a way. Come on Stanson, think! Powerful as it is, One's avatar has to obey the laws of the simulation."
Stanson and the children remained silent.
The laws of the simulation.
Tanner felt the inkling of an idea forming. "What if we could force One's avatar beyond the limits of the simulation? The same way Hoodwink first passed from Inside to Outside?"
"You mean out past the Forever Gate? And past the system boundaries in the desert?"
Tanner nodded. "Exactly."
Stanson thrummed his fingers against the desk. "That would work." Any avatar that passed the outermost boundaries of the simulation instantly died, because when you crossed the boundaries you didn't exist as far as the simulation was concerned. "But first you'd have to get One out there."
"We could slap a trackable bronze bitch on its avatar. I'll show you how to make them. Then once we collar One, we'll send its avatar beyond the limits directly."
"No," Stanson said. "We could only move the avatar up against the glass boundary. It'd be up to you to force One through it."
Tanner clapped his hands together. "Then we have a plan!"
He was going to bitch One and send it across the Forever Gate.
The tricky part was getting close enough to collar its avatar in the first place.
Tanner would have to get some help on the Inside.
CHAPTER SIX
The Control Room of the Inside was a place of iron desks and paneled terminals similar to those found in Omega Station on the Outside, but instead of a wide viewport to the moon at the front, the Control Room had three display screens. The leftmost screen danced with numbers, the middle showed a map of all the cities on the Inside, and the rightmost graphed an exponential curve that represented the spread of the gol mind disease.
Ordinarily there should have been twenty-five terminals in total on those iron desks, but because the Control Room wasn't big enough to fit the confines of the sewage tunnel, Tanner counted only twelve. The desks ran right up against the walls, where they ended abruptly, seeming to pass through the mudbrick.
Two grizzled old men—New Users—and three younger men—refugees?—manned five of the available terminals. One of the old men looked up, and Tanner recognized him as one of Cora's former guards. He was an ancient man, his face so ravaged from the years of vitra use that Tanner thought his tight skin might crack open from the slightest movement. He wore a gray cloak.
"You're expected." Gray-cloak nodded toward the exit.
"Thank you." Tanner made his way to the front of the room. He glanced back. "By the way, what happened to Cora?" He never had a chance to ask Hoodwink in the confusion that followed the fighting at the Black Den.
Gray-cloak blinked rapidly a few times. "Didn't make it."
Tanner stared numbly at the man, then turned away. He wasn't sure how he felt about Cora's death. He'd worn the woman's face when he and Ari had stolen the Control Room. He hadn't really known Ari's mother, but she seemed decent enough, a little crabby maybe. Ari would probably take the news hard when she came back.
If she came back.
Tanner tried not to think about Ari or Cora as he left the Control Room and entered the connecting tunnels. It proved easy enough because there were a lot of things to distract a troubled mind out here.
Refugees from the fighting rested against the walls, seated on the icy floor formed by the frozen sewage. That floor was a bit slushy from the traffic, and the place smelled terrible. Tall iron candelabras set at intervals provided light.
As he passed the seated men and women, he realized that they weren't refugees per se, but recruits. Every last one of them was uncollared. He'd seen that drained look they all wore before, that look of men and women who'd expended their vitra and were waiting to recharge. A few of them stared at their fingers wistfully, trying to summon vitra, managing to spark only bare wisps of electricity from hand to hand. Some nursed wounds that dripped blue blood, more evidence that their charge had run out.
He passed a sort of training ground where a New User in a green-cloak—he recognized the man as another of Cora's former guards—addressed a score of uncollared students of all ages. Green-cloak was standing before a target dummy, and saying something about being careful to conserve your charge when you threw vitra.
"Here, let me show you what I mean." Green-cloaked turned toward the target dummy and loosed a quick bolt of lightning. The target's head disintegrated. "You'll see that I let fly only a small amount of electricity, for the merest fraction of a second, but it was enough to take out my target's head. Because of my restraint, I still have the charge for twenty more such blows."
Tanner moved on.
He passed a queue of collared people lined up beside an executioner. At least, Tanner thought the man was an executioner because he oversaw a guillotine. The man wasn't wearing a hood though, or any clothing typical to executioners. He looked more like a blacksmith with those big, scarred arms.
A collared man was sealed away inside the headblock of the guillotine, and he trembled uncontrollably. Tanner watched in morbid fascination as the blade descended. When it struck, the steel only penetrated a quarter of the way through the top edge of the bronze bitch around his neck. The blacksmith raised the blade with the pulley system and tied it off.
"See, nothing to worry about!" The blacksmith told the pale man as he opened the headblock, though his words seemed more for the waiting queue behind. "The blade is dulled just enough so that it won't pass through." The blacksmith set his palm on the relieved man's bronze bitch, and sent a tiny burst of electricity into the newly-formed cracks. The collar broke away entirely. "Quick and painless, and completely safe."
Tanner noticed a red stain in the slush beneath the headblock, and he suspected the method wasn't always as painless and safe as the blacksmith let on.
Tanner soon came upon a series of partitions that divided the sewers into offices of sorts. It seemed to be the command center of the New Users, judging from the bustle of activity. Scouts relayed reports to older men and women. Messengers were dispatched. Others distributed swords and rations. The rations weren't really needed, since this was a simulation and everyone got their actual nutrients from the umbilicals on the Outside, but no one present knew that of course.
There were a few ordinary gols among the supply workers, Tanner noted with surprise. He wasn't quite sure what to make of that. They seemed amiable enough as they distributed items to the humans, though many of the recipients treated the gols with obvious contempt. Interesting.
A cloth map of the city caught Tanner's attention. Covered in red and green pegs, it was pinned to the mudbrick wall beside him.
Tanner flagged down a passing New User, and indicated the map. "What do the pegs mean?"
The elderly man shrugged. "Red represents intense fighting. Green the Safe Houses."
There were far more red pegs on the map than green, and most of those reds were congregated around the greens.
Tanner wondered why the New Users didn't just use the Control Room to handle their administrative activities, but he supposed the technology was still new to them. People in power were often distrustful of new technology. Though it was probably a good idea not to become too reliant on the Control Room anyway—who could say how far One's reach had become?
He found Jacob and Helen huddled around a table with Cap, Al and Briar. Jacob and Helen were the defacto leaders of the New Users in Ari's absence, and made a grizzled pair. Cap was the former leader of the Black Faction, the band that had ruled the Black Den before it fell to the Direwalkers, and Al was his second. Al also had the dubious distinction of being a former User, though he'd recollared himself ten years ago to escape the gols. Al was the one who had first introduced Hoodwink to the Users, and his daughter.
Then there was Briar. Ari's uncle. How the former merchant had inveigled his way into this group's confidence was anyone's guess. H
e was good at fawning and flattery, like most merchants, and that probably played a large part in it. Tanner hadn't liked him at first, but the sly little bastard had grown on him.
Cap and Al were no longer collared. Nor was Briar.
"Tanner," Jacob said. The old man was grim. "About time you returned."
Tanner leaned over the table. There was a map spread across the tabletop, this one of the rich neighborhood known as Highbrow District. Jeremy's mansion was circled. He realized why Briar was here. Other than Tanner, Briar was the only one with intimate knowledge of Jeremy's mansion.
"Planning an assault?" Tanner said.
"You know we are." Jacob seemed to be the one in charge now. In the Black Den, Jacob had always deferred to Cap. Well, Tanner supposed that with the Den gone, and most of the Denizens killed, Cap didn't really exert as much sway as he used to.
Tanner dropped his gaze to the map. "How many men do you have?"
"Not enough," Jacob said. "Though more come to us with each passing hour. The Resistance started with the trickle of refugees we found in the sewers. We uncollared them and sent them to the streets with instructions to round up those they could find—not the easiest task with Direwalkers rampaging everywhere, though it helps that our side has lightning. Only problem we're having is the time it takes to recharge. Anyway, we've setup Safe Houses all over the city, some underground, like this one." Jacob always was good at dancing around questions he didn't want to answer.
"So how many?" Tanner pressed.
The old man sighed. "Including the men in the tunnels here, I'd say we have around three hundred scattered across the city. There were more, but two of the Safe Houses fell, and I lost at least a hundred in a failed attack on the portal hops."
Tanner nodded. Three hundred. That should be more than enough for what he planned. Though if things went wrong, he'd need a lot more than that.