The truth is legacy humans don’t travel because there’s really nowhere to go.
Our choices are basically dissenter reservations, the nomad tribes, or going it on your own… in descending order of brutality. The nearest reservation is in Oregon—you can live there if you want to call “home” a place run by religious zealots who like to publicly stone heretics and sinners. At least the reservations only regressed to the barbarism of the medieval era—the nomadic tribes went completely pre-history. Now they’re hunting in the rejuvenated forests of the Midwest and following the buffalo herds the ascenders resurrected. The tribal humans don’t seem quite as barbaric as the theocrats who run the reservations, but my personal theory on that is there’s so much ascender-restored natural habitat now, that the nomads never actually run into one another.
Seattle’s not great, but it’s the only legacy city in North America… and the only civilized place for humans. Legacies only travel because they’ve been banished from the one place worth living. And it’s a home I’m about to leave—all so I can join a tiny enclave of legacies competing for the right to ascend and stay in the gleaming all-ascender city of Los Angeles.
The rail station is spotless, filled with tarnish-free reflective surfaces. It’s smaller than I expect, just a check-in kiosk and a sheltering room, until I realize the train is actually below ground. We take a lift that drops us down one level at a stomach-clenching speed.
The train itself makes my stomach knot even tighter. Its narrow nose points like a supersonic needle toward a darkened tunnel. Faint accelerator rings glow within the darkness, waiting to hurl the sleek maglev train to human-unfriendly speeds.
Cyrus looks like he’s going to lose his lunch, and we haven’t even boarded yet.
Marcus must be more perceptive than I thought, because he takes one look at us and says, “There are special accommodations for humans. You will not experience much discomfort.”
Much.
I swallow, but there’s nothing to wet my suddenly-dry throat.
Marcus moves too fast again, reaching the train in an instant. He sighs his impatience as Cyrus and I drag our dirty human sneakers across the stainless steel platform. I clap a hand on Cyrus’s shoulder, and we pick up the pace.
The train door slides open upon our approach, and inside are a dozen liquid-metal-looking seats. They’re spaced widely apart. Marcus sits in one, and it ripples to conform to his body. Cyrus and I hesitate.
Marcus holds up a hand to stop us from sitting. “Your seats will be here in a moment.”
Just as the words leave his mouth, a low-sentience humanoid bot arrives carrying what looks like a coffin: human-sized, sleek metal, it’s a pod that could contain even Cyrus’s broad shoulders. When the bot reaches two nearby seats, it taps the backsides. They relax their shape, like they’re made of mercury, shuddering liquid metal until they settle into the form of an angled bed. The bot hoists the pod onto the now-solid surface of one, and the coffin pops open. It has two identical halves, each filled with blue, shimmering jelly and a couple of restraining straps. The bot separates the two halves and places one on each angled bed. They’re like little baths of gel waiting for us.
I almost gag at the sight of it.
Cyrus voices my thoughts. “I don’t know what you have in mind here, Marcus, but there’s no way I’m getting in the goo.”
“That’s fine,” Marcus says dryly. “Your human tissues are certainly capable of withstanding the three-g forces, but I doubt you’ll enjoy the aftereffects. The trip is eight minutes. The choice is yours.” He straps himself into his seat, and it shifts with him as he settles in.
I know ascenders can dial back their senses when they choose. I know they have bodies that can withstand all kinds of forces, shocks, and temperature swings. The net says they’re even hardened against mid-level EMP attacks. Maybe someday I’ll join them… but today, my weak, human body is all I have.
I climb in.
Cyrus still looks like he might throw up.
I’m surprised when the blue gel doesn’t squish between my fingers or cling to my shirt. It’s more like an infinitely soft cushion that moves with me, helping me ease into the half-coffin that is apparently going to be my seat for the ride down to Los Angeles.
The assistant bot stands by. My legs are encased in goo, but I’m loathe to lay back into the rest of the gel.
“You must secure the harness in order to activate the gravity seat,” it tells me, with a tinny voice. I’m pretty sure its level of sentience doesn’t come with emotional expression, but it still manages to sound impatient.
I don’t want it deciding I need assistance, so I clench my teeth and lay back. The slight chill seeps through my clothes and makes me shudder, visibly.
“I don’t know about this.” Cyrus’s expression is the one he reserves for ocular implants and people who try to cheat Riley out of his chits.
“It’s not so bad.” I wrestle with the harness, looping one strap over each shoulder, then securing them to another between my legs. When I click them together, the straps tighten and yank me back into the gel lining the seat. Cyrus’s eyes get big.
“Train departure in two minutes.” The soft, feminine voice of the train echoes in our empty train car.
“You can still punch out, Cyrus,” I say. “No hard feelings, man.”
Cyrus grunts and gingerly puts one foot in his gravity seat. He makes several more noises of disgust, such that I nearly choke on held-in laughter by the time he gets the harness on and is locked down, just as I am.
“Shut up.” He leans his head back and looks at the ceiling. There’s nothing to see. He’s just avoiding me.
Marcus has that fluttered look, the one I’ve seen on Lenora. He’s consulting Orion about something. Or possibly communicating with Lenora. For a moment, my heart lurches, and I think that maybe she’s forgiven both of us. I also realize I’m leaving without saying goodbye to her as well.
“Is she coming with us?” I ask Marcus, before I think it through or rein in the hope in my voice. I don’t want him to have any idea how I feel about her. But he knows exactly who I mean.
“Lenora offered to join us,” he says coolly. He comes out of communication with the Orion and looks sideways at me. “I told her not to.”
Like that, my face is hot. I shouldn’t say it, but I do anyway. “She doesn’t have to listen to you.”
He turns forward again, adjusting in his seat. “She doesn’t have to. But she knows as well as I do that she would just be a distraction.”
A chill washes through my body. She knows. She knows that I hang on her every word, that I count the minutes until I see her, that… she distracts me more than anything on the planet. My mind is a torment, trying to decide if this is a good thing—maybe I distract her as well—or a horribly, disastrously bad thing. She knows, but it doesn’t matter to her. I’m just her pet.
My lack of response makes Marcus turn and pierce me with his gaze. “You’ll need all your focus to win, legacy. You do want to win, don’t you?”
“Yes.” I stare my conviction into his eyes.
He gives me a short nod of approval and turns forward.
If Marcus’s reason for helping me is a puzzle, his relationship with Lenora is a complete mystery. If Lenora knows I have feelings for her, he has to know as well. Or does that even register in the millions of thoughts that run through his electronic brain? He’s a god, and I’m a hairy monkey. Lenora’s little anthropological project. Her pet. And if I ascend… I’ll be the newest ascender on the block. Probably no threat at all to those who ascended a hundred years ago.
Maybe.
I have no idea how they really think. All I know is that, for now, he’s my ticket to getting everything I want and need.
Including his second.
The assistant bot has disappeared. Cyrus gives me a nod then settles his head into the cool embrace of the gel. A small tone signals the train is about to pull away from the station. It doesn’t s
huffle forward. It doesn’t rock softly on the magnetic fields that levitate it before easing into the tunnel.
It screams forward like a rocket.
My head slams back into the gel, and the harness is the only thing keeping me from cracking my skull on the top of the metallic casing. The gel squeezes me, starting in rhythmic waves at my toes and working up my body. It’s like I’m inside a giant boa constrictor, traveling the length of its digestive system.
It goes on.
And on.
And on.
I keep waiting for it to stop, but the lights of the tunnel just flash by in pulses faster and faster until I shut my eyes against the onslaught. I forget to breathe, and when I remember, I can’t. The gel is pressing on all sides, giving my lungs nowhere to go. I quickly learn to time my breathing to when the squeeze has passed my midsection, squishing the blood in my body up to my head. I don’t think I’m going to pass out… but I want to. It seems like an eternity, but it’s probably only three or four minutes when the acceleration starts to ease. It’s barely noticeable at first, and then more and more, until I’m free enough to move. I chance a look at Cyrus.
He’s pale as death. One blink. Two. That’s all that lets me know he’s alive.
Marcus is still sitting casually in his seat, apparently no more discomfited by the g-forces than a gentle ride on the tram.
Suddenly our seats tilt up to nearly vertical and pivot, rotating so we’re facing the opposite direction then lowering again. After a blessedly pressure-free moment, the train starts to decelerate, pressing us once again into the seat. It builds until it’s as strong as before and stretches for endless body-crushing minutes. Finally, we break out of the tunnel. Blinding sunlight stabs through the train windows. A standing guard of palm trees whizzes by as we decelerate into a sleek glass-and-chrome station.
We’ve arrived.
“Welcome to Agon.”
Marcus stands at the entranceway to an enormous complex. He’s waiting for me and Cyrus to emerge from the taxi bot. I stumble, my legs still shaky from the maglev ride. Cyrus’s awkward amble says he’s about the same. The hot summer air is so dry it instantly parches my lips. Cyrus and I both gape and shade our eyes against the sun-burnished steel of the building. Five enormous, swooping domes rise and fall, glaring white hot against the faded blue sky of California.
I’ve seen the Olympic Village before, of course, but only on the net. The games are held here, in the same location, every year. The original Olympics died after the Singularity, like so many other things. With nations eliminated by Orion, there wasn’t much to represent, and the faster, higher, stronger motto of the original Olympics was hopelessly outdated by ascender tech. But once the choice for ascendance was taken away, there arose a need for exceptions to the rule. The legacy net isn’t clear on whether it was to keep legacies happy or some other reason—parsing ascender motivation is a constant guessing game—but soon after, the creative Olympics were born. Legacies have been competing for those few slots every year since.
From above, the domes form five rings, a holdover from the ancient symbol of the five regions of the world. Now the rings represent the four creative performance areas—drama, language, visual, and aural—plus a fifth ring for the intersection of the arts. There’s no fifth competitive category, so the fifth building of Agon connects all the others, serving as a common area for the agonites.
Agonite. An official competitor who’s taken up residence in the Olympic Village. Something every legacy artist dreams of being, and which, to my still wide-eyed astonishment, I am about to become.
I’ve never seen the inside of Agon. Documentaries of the competitors’ lives fill the legacy net for weeks leading up to each competition, but what goes on inside the Village is strictly off limits. Only when the agonites take the stage does the legacy world get to see what they have planned for their performances. I have no idea what information makes it to Orion. But this is their show—I’m sure they see far more than we’re allowed.
Marcus leads Cyrus and me through the frosted glass doors of the entrance to Agon. A sweep of artificially cool air bathes us. Cyrus’s eyes shine with anticipation. My heart pumps excitement through my body.
We don’t get far.
Past a small receiving area, two security bots stand guard by a set of tall metal doors. The bots are six feet of hardened steel and conspicuous armaments. They’re humanoid, and supposedly have low-level sentience, but mostly they’re walking guns. One arm sports an entire armory of shock and beam weapons as well as the more lethal kind with bullets, while the other arm is left barehanded for physically constraining anyone foolish enough to confront it.
Above the doors they’re guarding, the four arts are inscribed in Latin: musica, artem, storia, drama. A tall ascender and a legacy boy who has to be an agonite are being scanned by a blue light emanating from just above the door. It traverses them quickly head-to-toe. The security bots merely watch, but I’m sure if something’s wrong with the scan, they’ll spring into action before the agonite has a chance to blink. The boy bends under a hushed but bitter chastisement from his apparent sponsor. Whispers of “focus” and “time” float across the room before the doors open, and the two of them slip inside.
I figure that’s where we’re headed, too, but instead, Marcus leads us to a smaller door on the opposite side of the room. There are no security bots, and he simply swipes us through. Inside, it looks like a med bay, only without the beds. In their place is a shimmering steel pod that reminds me of the coffin-like gravity seats, only this one is twice as big and floats upright. It’s six inches off the floor held up by some kind of maglev field.
My stomach clenches just looking at it.
“I am sick of ascender tech already,” Cyrus grumbles under his breath.
I nod but keep quiet as a door on the far wall slides open, and another ascender strides in.
His male bodyform is sleek, less bulky than Marcus’s overly-masculine form, and he’s dressed in a blue one-piece uniform. It drapes lightly on his body, but it’s not sheer, leaving only his hands, feet, and face to reveal the colors shifting across his skin. The medium brown color has subtle waves of deep purple rippling underneath, like he’s been infused with lavender. I have no idea what that means, but the holo rings of the Olympics floating on his uniform make him look very official next to Marcus’s casual ascender shorts.
The new ascender ignores me and Cyrus. “Good to see you, Marcus. Stirring up trouble again, are you?”
My eyebrows arch. I flash a look to Cyrus then watch the two ascenders carefully. First, they’re talking out loud, which means they want us to overhear. Why? I have no clue. Maybe that’s the rule here at Agon. Second, I wonder if Marcus is some kind of ascender bad boy… and if that’s why Lenora might be attracted to him.
I don’t like it.
Marcus simply holds up his palm. “Leopold. I trust you’ll treat my agonite well.”
“Of course,” Leopold says. “I wouldn’t keep my position if I was anything less than completely impartial.”
Then they touch palms. It’s obviously not the same kind of touching Marcus shared with Lenora at her front door, but they’re sharing some kind of information. Maybe something secure, like an access code, so they can’t just transmit it? Maybe transmission isn’t allowed inside Agon, and that’s why they’re talking out loud? Whatever it is, it’s over fast. Just a brief blink of eyelids, a touch that lasts a half second, and they’re done.
Marcus nods as if their touch verified something for him.
Leopold looks at me for the first time since entering the room. “Elijah Brighton, you’ll need to remove your clothing and step this way.”
“Remove my… wait, what?” I look to Marcus for confirmation.
Leopold looks on with amusement then flits with ascender speed over to the pod.
Marcus lowers his voice. “Just do what the intake officer says.”
I’m embarrassing him. Which I shouldn’t
enjoy quite so much, given I need Marcus’s sponsorship. I manage to keep in the smirk.
“I’m just… verifying that I heard him correctly,” I say, louder for Leopold. I drop my voice again. “Take off my clothes. Like, all of them?”
“I told you before that you wouldn’t be able to bring anything with you,” Marcus says tightly. “That includes clothing, any internal devices—which I sincerely hope you do not have—and any biological agents that may be destructive to the other competitors.”
“Biological agents? Like a virus? I’m not sick—”
His eyes dilate and grow darker blue. “Viral weaponry is easily hidden, given the alarming number of biological entities your human forms harbor. And not everyone enters the games to win, Eli.”
My eyes widen. Cyrus gives me a nod, which only trickles unease through my stomach. I shuffle over to the pod where Leopold waits for me. He’s pulled up a virtual control panel that hovers in the air just outside the pod.
While he manipulates the controls, he says to me, “Leave your clothes on the floor. I’ll have a bot take them away and fabricate a uniform in the correct size before we’re done.”
I start to unbutton my shirt, decide that’s too slow, then pull it over my head and drop it on the floor. As I’m working off my shoes and pants, Leopold keeps swiping through the screens. The pod suddenly hisses, which makes me jump, then it cracks open like two halves of an egg. A blue mist oozes from it, coating the floor around my now bare feet.
He’s still talking. “Once you step into the decontamination chamber, make sure all parts of your body are inside. It will close and cycle through a series of tests and scans, as well as flush you with scrubbing agents.”
The blue mist licks at my toes, and my stomach feels like a pile of snakes. I drop the last of my clothes and stand naked and shivering in front of him.
“You can enter now,” Leopold says with impatience, like I should have jumped into his pod of scrubbing agents with joy the nanosecond I had my clothes off.
The Legacy Human (Singularity #1) (Singularity Series) Page 7