“But if the Out There isn’t there anymore, why is the sim still running?” Johnny said.
“Why’s the Skidsphere still up?” Betty’s stripe tilted. “Because the program kept running. Now the mems just vape each other.”
“Then how come everybody ain’t dead?” Torg asked, ducking under a broad green leaf dripping with moisture.
“The sim resets once everyone dies. Then they do it all over again. Some things move around, the terrain changes, but basically the same sim runs every time.” She shuddered. “Imagine doing the same Slope, with the same skids, over and over, forgetting after each race is run.”
“Betty Crisp . . .” Johnny whispered.
“Yeah,” Betty said. “Me.” Her stripe twitched. “Anyway, the sim usually takes a week or so to run. We’re here towards the end of a cycle, after most of the big action. Some mems left, but there shouldn’t be any packs. Plus, the warehouse might be unguarded.”
“What ware—”
The jungle went silent.
That can’t be a good thing, Johnny thought, as Betty held a finger to her lips. Rising off the jungle floor, Wobble tilted on his axis, absorbed his probes, then disappeared into the green.
All in dead silence.
Albert immediately took off after the machine, pushing past Johnny. “Albert!” Betty hissed, then rolled her eyes and moved to follow. The others fell in behind, trying to stay silent.
Somewhere off to their left, there was a low wet thud. Johnny broke through the dense undergrowth behind Betty and Albert.
Wobble hovered over a body lying face-down in the mud. As the machine rotated back into his upright shape, his motors quietly whirred. “All dead-dead now. At least until next time. Wobble.”
The body looked nothing like a skid—in fact, it more resembled Wobble in his neutral position. Four Hasty-Arms: one on each side and two extending from the trunk. A mottled glam patterned like the jungle covered its entire body, including the top of the tiny head. A black rifle lay by one of the arms.
“You know,” Torg drawled, “I don’t know who the Out There were . . . but they had themselves some messed up fantasies.”
“Not as messed up as you think,” Betty said softly, examining the body. “Or at least, not in the way you’re thinking. What you’re looking at isn’t some stretch of the imagination. Most likely, it’s them. The Out There. That’s probably what they looked like.”
“You’re kidding,” Johnny breathed. He wondered what the face looked like.
“That city of hollas you came through. How many times you see a skid?”
“A few times.”
“Right. And only on Skidsphere highlights. We’re the fantasy. But that, right there,”—she stabbed a finger at the body—“shows up everywhere. One head, long body, legs instead of treads. In just about every type of mem, that body structure appears. Sometimes the details change: the shade of the skin, the shape of the ears or eyes—but in the end, this guy is what you see.”
“Weird,” Torres said, trying to peer closer.
Betty’s stripe tilted. “Who knows what weird is? I’m a fifty-five year old skid. You’re a panzer who’s been vaped at least once and is still here.” Torres beamed. “We know the Out There had more than one type of creature, but we’re pretty sure this one played a major role—if not the major role. More sure of that than understanding why they did what they did.”
“Let me get this straight,” Albert said, staring at the body. There was a strange, flat quality to his gaze. “Everything in here vapes pretty much everything else, forgets about it, gets brought back to life, and then it happens all over again?” He looked at Betty. “That about right?”
“That’s about right,” Betty said, watching him.
Albert’s flat expression didn’t change. His stripes twitched. “Fine,” he said softly. He turned and rolled away. Betty and the others followed, leaving the dead mem behind.
Johnny could understand Albert’s disgust. The whole idea revolted him. Sure, skids vaped each other every day, but something about this . . . maybe it was the way everything seemed brighter, smelled stronger . . . somehow Johnny doubted there was anything clean about getting vaped in this place.
“Ah,” Betty whispered, as the foliage began to thin.
They peered through the growth into a small, sunken clearing. In the centre, a long, rectangular building made from the same ceramic-metal that they’d seen in the ghostyard. Like the ghostyard, the building was weathered, although the wear and tear seemed deliberate—it fit the surrounding jungle.
This whole place is designed. Johnny stared at the light angling down from the sky, flashing off the rusted roof. Amazing. The Skidsphere was beautiful, but the details here . . .
Another four-limbed mem stood by the door, facing the jungle on the far side. It had a glam like shaded thinlids over its eyes and another of those long, black rifles cradled in one arm. In the opposite hand, a drift of smoke rose from a small device. The creature lifted the device, inhaled—causing the device to flare—and blew smoke from its mouth.
Crazy.
It just looked so weird. Nothing at all like a skid. “It makes no sense,” Johnny murmured.
“What doesn’t?” Betty asked.
“Skids.” When Betty’s stripe tilted, Johnny pointed at the guard. “If that was the standard, then why skids? I mean, we’re popular—were popular—right? The Out There created GameCorps, the Skidsphere, this whole complicated system: one of the most sophisticated in the entire Thread, you said. Then they ran three or four games a day, all day, every day, for . . . centuries. Maybe more. And we were popular.” He heard Albert snort and he snarled, “Stow it, Albert. I’m not stroking my ego, I’m trying to understand something.”
Betty had a peculiar look on her face. “Yes, Johnny. We were popular.”
“Why?”
“Because they liked watching things die,” Albert said softly.
Johnny’s eyes swung. “Uhh . . . that’s a bit harsh.”
“Is it? What’s the main thing about the games, Johnny? It ain’t you, jackhole. It’s the squids. And the panzers. And the dying. How many Ones and Twos die every game? Seventy or eighty in games like the Road or the Slope. More in Tilt or Tag Box, less in the Skates or on the Pipe. Seventy or eighty, three or four times a day. All day. Every day. That’s what, sixty or seventy thousand a year. More? Seventy thousand panzers and squids that never see Three.” Albert’s eyes were stark white against his silver skin. “How many Level Three-to-Nines at any given time? Four hundred? Maybe five? That’s less than one percent. The lucky freaks who get to live represent less than one percent of the skids that play the game every year.”
“And we die at five,” Torg whispered.
“And we die at five,” Albert finished, his voice like judgement. “That’s why we look so different from them. So they can watch us die and not feel bad about it.”
Johnny stared at the silver skid. That was the longest speech he’d heard from Albert in years. Maybe ever. “Then why not make all the sim-mems different?” he said, trying to make sense of a universe that seemed to get deeper and uglier with every second. Betty was watching them like she knew every word Albert was going to say. “This place is about death, even more than our world. But here they look like them.”
Albert’s stripes rocked like he couldn’t care less. “Here, they used to play too. With us, they just watched. Maybe just watching their own kill each other made them uncomfortable.”
“But none of this is real!” Bian protested. She stabbed a finger at Betty. “You said that. It’s all just information.”
“Not real?” Albert hissed. “That how you feel about Brolin? Aaliyah?” His eyes narrowed with rage as he jabbed a finger of his own at Johnny. “That how you’d feel if he died?”
Bian’s stripes flinched as she cranked back
a tread in the face of Albert’s anger. A moment passed where all they could hear was the jungle.
“Uhh . . .” Shabaz said nervously. “I don’t want to interrupt anything, but that guard’s still there . . . she’s got a gun . . . and I don’t.”
“All right,” Betty said calmly. “Shabaz is right: let’s get what we came for.” She swung an eye towards Albert. “Once we’re out of here, if you want to talk about it, we’ll talk.”
Albert blinked several times, as if suddenly realizing where he was. “Forget it. Doesn’t matter.”
“Actually it does. But first things first. Wobble, take care of the guard.”
“Wait!” Albert hissed.
Wobble, who’d begun to transform, stopped. “Inquiry?”
Albert turned on Betty. “He’s just going to kill her?”
Johnny had yet to see Betty confused. “Albert,” she said, frowning, “that’s the nature of this place. Everything in here is going to die. Then it’s all going to happen again.”
“Yeah, but we don’t have to do it. Do we? Wobble, you can take that guard out without vaping her, right?”
Wobble’s lenses slowly opened and closed with a single mechanical clink. “Affirmative.”
“Then why the hole aren’t we doing that?” Albert snarled, swinging towards Betty.
“Albert . . .”
“No. Nothing else in here dies by our hand. That never should have happened in the first place. They might look like the Out There, but they aren’t them. They’re us. They’re skids.” The glare he sent at Betty could have cut her in half. “And you shouldn’t have to be told that.”
Betty stared back, and then her eyes bobbed in acceptance. “Wobble, put her out until we’re gone. She’s going to die . . . but we’re not going to kill her. Make it enough simtime that we’ll be long gone.”
“Affirmative,” Wobble said, and a thin tube emerged from under one of his Hasty-Arms. A soft wuft of sound and the guard’s hand snapped up to her neck. Before it got there, her knees collapsed and she crumpled to the ground.
“Let’s go,” Betty said.
They paused by the unconscious guard. Crisp Betty, they look odd, Johnny thought. A curl of smoke still drifted from the cylinder in the guard’s hand.
“For most of the sim, there’d be dozens of guards for a store this size,” Betty said. “This late, she was probably just here for effect.”
“Effect?” Bian said, looking at the body like it was going to jump up and bite her.
“Like dust on the Slope,” Betty said. “Doesn’t serve much use, but it looks good. Let’s go.”
As the others rounded the building, Albert lingered over the body.
“Doesn’t look very fast,” Johnny said.
“No,” Albert said slowly. “Though I bet it goes side-to-side better than us.” He continued to stare at the creature, his eyes demanding answers that they were unlikely to get. The light around them softened as the sun descended towards the horizon.
More effect, Johnny thought absently, watching Albert. Then he asked a question that a few days before he wouldn’t have asked in a billion years.
“What are you thinking?”
A heartbeat passed, then one of Albert’s eyes came up. He started to say something, stopped, smirked a familiar smirk, started to say something else . . . then the smirk dropped away like it was being abandoned. Finally, he said, “Don’t worry about it.” His last eye came up from the body. “Let’s go find out why we’re here.”
The inside of the warehouse was dappled with light shining through dirty windows that topped the walls. Stacks and stacks of containers were piled in what had once been long tidy rows. Half the building’s stockpiles had already been raided.
Still plenty left for a few skids, though.
Albert and Johnny caught Betty pulling a set of needles out from a locker. “Most of the tracking weapons won’t work on the Antis and Vies. But there are a few that seek out anything in the area that isn’t to code.” She handed out the needles. “Everyone take one of these. Jab it anywhere, with us it won’t matter. We’ll sync the weapons to the code. That should let you do some real damage.”
“What should we take?” Torres whispered, looking at all the crates with a mix of wonder and fear.
“Simple,” Betty grinned, ripping open a box of rifles. “More than we think we need.”
“How’re we going to carry it?” Bian asked, tentatively peeking under a lid.
“A lot easier than the other mems do,” Betty laughed. “Wobble?” The machine’s gears whirred and a compartment opened along one entire side of his body. “I don’t have time to teach you how to carry it yourself, but we could stuff this entire storehouse in Wobble if we wanted. If it fits through that door, we’ll take it.”
“How does that work?” Torres asked.
“It’s all data,” Johnny murmured, staring down the long row of stacks.
Betty stopped loading Wobble, a slow smile gracing her face. “Now you’re getting it.”
“Well, if that’s true, then I want one of these babies,” Torg said appreciatively, yanking a gun nearly the size of Wobble out from a crate. He hefted it once in his arms, then winked at Betty. “Feels like she’s got heart.”
Betty laughed and pointed down the row. “Grab some time-proximity rounds and you’ll have your own battle-fleet. Last stack of crates on the left.”
For the next ten minutes, the skids grabbed every weapon they could. “When the boys and I leave you,” Betty explained, “we’ll dump everything and try to fortify where you are. Try and find at least one weapon you feel comfortable carrying. No, Torg, not the cannon.” She rolled her eyes. “I think you can take care of yourself with something half the size.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Torg drawled, settling for a piece that still looked like it could take out a sugarbar.
“All right,” Betty said finally. “That should do it. I’ll show you how each thing works once we’re out—”
The voice came from behind them, low and harsh.
“Now what the hell are you?”
The mem stood in a semi-crouch at the end of the row. Larger than the guard outside—quite a bit larger. The rifle in its hands descended slightly from one of its eyes, though it remained centred on the skids.
Then the mem’s gaze settled on Betty and filled with wonder. “Do I . . . do I know you?”
“Well, I’ll be,” Betty whispered, staring at the mem.
The gun slid back up to the mem’s eye: a crisp, clean movement with nothing wasted. “Whatever you are, everyone drop every—”
He got no further. A soft wuft of sound from Wobble and the mem collapsed.
“He recognized you,” Johnny said, as they tread over to the body. It really was much larger than the other two mems they’d seen. A vicious scar ran along its jawline. “I thought you said they had their memory wiped every time the game reset.”
“They do,” Betty said slowly.
“Then how could he remember you?”
“He shouldn’t. Except . . .” Betty’s lips pursed as she studied the unconscious body. “He’s the main mem in this sim. Even has a name: Kruger. Not many mems have them. And in some ways, he’s deeper than a skid. He’s got a history seven times longer than a skid’s lifetime, despite the fact that he never lives more than a few weeks at a time.” She chuckled. “Wrap your eye-stalks around that.”
“So he’s . . . evolving?” Johnny said. “Like you did?”
“Our last encounter was pretty memorable, for both of us. He nearly vaped me—you saw it, he just snuck up on seven skids and Wobble. And remember: in here, we’re Vies. Every time I show up, I break the system a little.” One of her eyes swept the stacks. “We’re changing things.”
“Huh,” Johnny grunted, looking at Kruger. “Pity we can’t bring him with u
s.”
Betty’s eye swung. “Now that is a really interesting idea.” She paused, an eye on Kruger, one on Johnny. Then she sighed. “Not now. We don’t need to make this more complicated. Keep that one for the future.”
“As long as we have one,” Torg drawled.
“As long as we have one,” Betty agreed. “Okay, let’s go.”
“Uh . . . where’s Albert?” Torres said. Her eyes swept the group.
“Anybody?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
They all stared at her.
“Seriously,” Torres said, her voice starting to rise. “He was right here.” She sped down the row, her gaze darting left and right.
“Albert!” Shabaz called, treading onto a crate. “You all right?”
“Think Kruger got him?” Torg said, glancing at the rifle in the mem’s hands.
“I thought Albert was behind us,” Johnny said. “Like always.”
“Albert?” Torres came down another row. “Dude, where are you?”
“He isn’t here,” Betty said. Her eyes slowly closed then opened once more. “He left.”
“He what?” Torres screeched.
“He what?” Johnny said, with a little more surprise than panic.
“There’s a door in the back of the warehouse. He probably used that. He isn’t inside or in the near vicinity.” She sighed. “He’s gone into the jungle.”
“He’s gone . . .” Torres started to say. “You can find him, right?”
“I don’t think he wants to be found, Torres,” Betty said softly.
“What? Why?”
Betty’s stripe tilted. “For the same reason he still wears that scar.”
“What does that mean?”
“Bian was right,” Betty said. “Albert sports that scar because he wants to. Same reason he sports that damaged eye. He got that in a fight with you, didn’t he, Johnny?”
“Yeah,” Johnny said. Nine-Nine, he thought, and shuddered.
“So . . . how many skids do you know who have a scar?”
The Skids Page 18