Avalon

by Rusty Coats

  The albino statues of my parents stood by the alcove door.

  Cassady couldn't contain his laughter. The other pegs, moving closer, blurred in my eyes. And I felt the past finally catch me.

  Rita's voice was a rasp. "Oh, Jack."

  They had died in a recorded moment of Campus history. Of all places. Here.

  "Quite a show, eh, Jack?" Cassady giggled. "Yes, sir. Worth every penny."

  I stared at their brittle bodies and understood. They'd uploaded the recording of Avalon's first opera -- a show they'd missed because they'd been too busy moving the Library's treasures into safe storage, hoping to foil Wrecking Ball -- and walked through the archive file as latecomers to the performance, holding hands as the actors. They'd come here to join the other Project members a year late, as the Snap worked its narcotic magic, brewing hotter and hotter until their hearts burst. My father had finally taken my mother to the opera, as promised.

  "Your father went first," Cassady said. He spoke with the bored detachment of a documentary narrator. "I can rewind the scenario and let you watch him convulse. Your mother held his dead hand for several minutes before the narcotic killed her, too."

  My mother's eye sockets had fallen in and the grimace that cut across their faces cracked like an old creekbed. Without renewing the image in Merlin's memory, online bodies drifted, until the data blew into the sandstorm of the Flux. Husks in low-traffic areas lasted years before disintegrating. Others went in seconds.

  I sagged against a high-backed theater chair. Monk had sent a ROM to Jasper when they'd died, telling me they'd overdosed after the U.N passed Prohibition. He had been decent enough to exclude a snapshot of their death mask.

  Cassady was laughing again. And as the green pegs in the subscreen winked closer, I screamed and lunged for Cassady's throat.

  But the Neuromantic only smiled. His chrome eyes had gone red.

  And now they began to swirl.

  Rita tried to cut the tapeworm by overriding the input controls for my goggles, but she was too late. Cassady's eyes flashed a burst of neuroelectric code that sent my head careening. My knees unhinged and I fell down the aisle while the doctor grinned and his irises delivered their parcel.

  "That's more like it," Cassady said as I writhed against the balcony seats. The tapeworm's images flowed through my optic nerve like smooth liquor, breathing fire to my cerebellum.

  "Yes," Cassady said. Onstage, the opera's soprano dodged a high-E. "Much better. And quite nice for you, really. Just think of this Opera House as your family plot."

  My eyes lost focus, resting on the tactical grid flashing from the subscreen. And for the first time since the tapeworm hit me, I saw that the other bogeys were gone. They'd disappeared.

  Almost as if they'd been cloaked.

  "Jack ..." Rita began. But a burst of static drowned her out.

  In the space between Cassady and I, the atmosphere ignited and flashed a sheet of blue-white flame. An image emerged from the fire, clouding the view of Cassady's swirling irises. It was almost as if a pane of water had been poured between us, refracting the worm, breaking its connection.

  Suddenly the anomaly had arms and legs and head, but compressed, as if a man's body had been condensed. And as the features of his face emerged from the shimmering field and my equilibrium stopped mixing itself into a cocktail, I smiled, because the intruder wasn't a man.

  It was a boy.

  "Hey, Denys," Ferret said, grinning at me, his back to Cassady. He offered his hand, the dark skin free of smudges, and I wanted to laugh. Ferret had programmed his body to resemble the one next door, down to the dreads, but had given this one a bath.

  I took Ferret's hand and he pulled me to my feet. "You OK?"

  Cassady pounded his fists against the rail. The tapeworm had been broken.

  "Never better."

  Ferret grinned again. His programmed eyes weren't as crafty as the jewels on the other end of the data pipe, but still flickered with mischief. He said, "Run."

  Ferret phased out, polygon by polygon. My grip passed through his hand as his body went transparent. He chittered like a squirrel as he disappeared inside Mohican.

  Monk hadn't been mumbling and twiddling his thumbs back at the Library entrance. He'd tapped a depot-to-depot broadcast and was telling Ferret and his boys to suit up. And when I'd released Mohican to the datawebs, telling it to plant its roots in the abandoned uplink stations, the orphans of the WPA had flown to Avalon in stolen Neuromantic scubasuits, hidden from Merlin's sensors by Mohican.

  The bogeys weren't Neuromantics

  They were children.

  "This intolerable session," Cassady began as Ferret's virtual body faded into memory, "has just mined my last nugget of patience. I --"

  I didn't let him finish. My fist flew through the vapor where Ferret had been and connected with his left eye. His head swung back like a monastery bell and when it swung back, I gave it another ring, walking after him as he stumbled, chasing him across the balcony, beating him.

  He slobbered a word, propping himself up on one knee, and then slowly raised his head to stare directly into my eyes with a pair of crimson beauties. I'd seen that act too many times today, and before he could hurl another wrench into my motor functions, I keyed Mohican and let the program turn my body into mist.

  Onstage, the first-act crescendo built and the kettledrums pounded from the pit. The subscreen flashed only one peg on the grid and Cassady yelled, cursing me.

  He was too busy yelling to see that Monk had phased in behind him.

  "Hey, doc," Monk said. His featureless gray body had just turned solid, brown eyes gleaming in the high-dollar seats. Cassady wheeled around in time for Monk’s elbow to crack him across the jaw.

  Cassady went sprawling into the laps of the opera fans sitting in the first row. Monk chuckled as the doctor rolled onto the floor, walking after him, limping from where Cassady had hurt him at the Library entrance.

  Cassady wheeled around to give Monk a neural blast. But before he could pull the trigger, Monk said, "Run" and phased out.

  And another boy phased in.

  Ferret's dun-gray body stood beside me. He said that the orphan emerging from the cloak was Santos, whose father had worked in Continuity. I nodded, remembering how Don Santos had drowned in the Bay after Prohibition, then found myself grinning.

  Santos had thrown his shoulder into Cassady's knee, doubling him over. He stomped the doc's feet with bony heels and then phased out.

  And a girl phased in.

  She was an eleven-year old named Mona, whose mother worked in Recreation and Revival, programming the first electronic Olympiad. Mona's mom found oblivion at the wrong end of a transdermal patch, after Cassady diagnosed programmer's disease and turned the woman into a mumbling junkie. Mona's foot batted Cassady's nose like a soccer ball and then phased out.

  Under Mohican I watched the children moving around Cassady, surrounding him with the sport of hyenas. Cassady spun around, arms raised, a blind man fighting ghosts, and the feral children began phasing in and out, emerging from the fabric of the room to sting the doctor, then dissolving before Cassady could strike back. The orphans batted him like a piñata, giggling at their new game while Cassady's ultimate weapon festered in the breach. Surrounded by children he'd helped turn into orphans, Cassady's digital body had become a piece of meat dipped into an aquarium of invisible piranha, and the fish had been waiting eight years for the feast.

  Cassady shook with rage as Mona punched him in the groin. Somewhere, the tactile-delivery system of his datasuit surged against his skin with each impact, some hard enough to raise a bruise. I watched as the children jabbed at him, whittling away at his virtual body's reserves, killing him the way contenders won tournaments in Prohibition's bloodsport arenas -- one wound at a time.

  Only now, Merlin wouldn't let him unplug. Because that was how the Tomorrow Crusade wanted Avalon. No life-level eject button. The Neuromantics played for keeps.

  "Denys!
" he screamed. The ovation rose from the audience and the milky shell of my parents watched through crumbling sockets. "Denys!"

  The children pulsed in and out of existence like strobes. Monk moved to the opposite side of him and I keyed Mohican. I phased in and Cassady snarled, “Children, you coward? Children?”

  “Welcome to tomorrow, Doc,” I said, and delivered a roundhouse kick that hurled him into the third row. And then I phased out.

  And Monk phased in, catching Cassady's chin on the rebound, and sent it back my way before disappearing.

  We took turns, phasing in and out of Merlin's consciousness, the pixels appearing just long enough to hammer Cassady's body across the balcony as the ovation swelled in the Opera House. Ferret, Santos and Mona strobed from the corners, forming a boxing ring.

  "This won't last," Cassady spat as Monk cracked his head against the rail. "Someone will break this code. Sooner or later, someone will break this code and lock you out once and for all."

  I phased in and pushed Monk aside. I grabbed Cassady by the throat with my right hand, lifted him off the carpet and held his virtual body over the edge of the balcony and punched the angles of his programmed face until the lines began to blur. His legs kicked two stories above the stage, treading air.

  "Then I'll write another one," I said, striking him again. "And if one of your jumpsuit Nazis crack that, I'll write another. And another. And another."

  His hands tried to peel my grip away, but I squeezed tighter. The subscreen pulsed as Mohican swarmed, replicating, electrifying the forgotten beaker booths with free keys to the City of Light. Thirty thousand. Six hundred thousand. Four million.

  "I'll haunt Avalon for the rest of my life, Freud." Through the data glove, the bones in his neck had turned to gravel. "Your precious Neuromantics will never know where I am or when I'm watching. And if they crack my mother's code and upload their consciousness, I'll be the blind spot in their omnipotence."

  His voice was a wind through a broken reed. "We'll find you."

  "Maybe," I said, hearing his voice box crunch. "And if I'm killed, one of these WPA orphans will take my place. And then their children after them. The Neuromantics will never scrape us out of Avalon."

  "Damn you!" His face had gone deep purple, suffocating under my grip. "Damn you! This is not your city anymore!"

  I shook my head and squeezed harder, feeling the air stop in his throat, squeezed harder as he convulsed, seeing the faces of the dead rise up from my memory to say a prayer for the soul of Doc Cassady.

  "This will always be my city."

  When the spasms stopped and Doc Cassady hung dead in my grip, I hurled his body at the stage. His head glanced off the chandelier as his body somersaulted toward the Opera House floor. He crashed into the burgundy theater chairs, his body splayed and his eyes shiny and empty. And then his body went crystalline white, turned into a tombstone statue. Ashes, ashes, all fall down.

  "He's not alone," Rita said. The Mensa mike hissed static in my ear. "As soon as the Neuromantics find out about this, we're going to have plenty of company."

  The children phased in and out, playing a new game. Monk squeezed my shoulder and my parents stared empty sockets at the dark stage. Somewhere in the depot, Rita sat at the Mensa and my mother's precious source code hid inside my Tremayne pocket, safe from the Neuromantics. And in the subscreen of my goggles, the odometer of Mohican's replication hit ten million, growing like a cancer in the Tomorrow Crusade.

  "Then we might as well get comfortable," I said, sitting down to enjoy the rest of the opera. "It looks like we're going to be here for a long time."

  Exit (0)

  About the Author

  Rusty Coats started his career as a reporter for his hometown newspaper, The Evening News in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and has worked in media ever since. He’s worked for newspapers as an investigative reporter and columnist, covered the birth of interactive media in the early 1990s and then led digital efforts as an executive at numerous companies. “Avalon” represents a merging of his interests in virtual reality, Prohibition, noir fiction, Depression Modern architecture and even family history; his grandfather worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a public work relief program during the Great Depression. Rusty holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and English from Indiana University. He and his wife, Janet – a former executive editor and multi-year Pulitzer judge – run Coats2Coats, a consultancy that focuses on a media future that is participatory, profitable and mobile. They live in Sarasota, Florida. His first novel, Out of Touch, was published by InknBeans Press in 2011.

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