2xs

by Nigel Findley

  I see movement on the plains below. It is the foe. The prey. Soon we will descend this hill, fall upon them like wolves upon sheep. Soon my body will tremble with the battle rage, my ears sing with the song of warfare. Soon my axe will taste blood. Soon will victory come to me once more. Another victory added to all that have gone before. Another verse in the saga that will praise me as the greatest warrior of this or any age.

  The disk of the sun clears the horizon. A bow-shot distant behind me, I hear the sounds of my army girding themselves for battle. The smoke of the cookfires is pungent-sweet in my nostrils, the beat of sword against shield, the clarion call of the trumpets ring in my ears. My heart swells, ready to burst, with the joy of the impending fight. I wonder momentarily how it would feel to be other than I am, to feel fragile, to feel mortal. Subject to fears and to the vagaries of chance. I cannot conceive of it. And why should I even try?

  I am as I am, and I would have it no other way. I turn, to rejoin my followers.

  A sound from the trees to my right. I spin, my axe comes up. Eight of the foe burst from the thicket, swords gleaming in the morning light, howling their battlecries. They sought to ambush me, to foully slay me here. But my foes know not who they face, to have sent only eight.

  I charge to meet them. My axe keens as it swings, seemingly eager to hew, to slay. I bellow my joy to the heavens, and my voice is a terrible cry to rival the massed trumpets. The axe bites home. Hot blood showers over me...

  I was lying on the floor. Somewhere.

  Buddy's apartment, I thought. I rolled over. A figure stood above me, a dead woman wrapped in a burial shroud. I reached for my axe.

  No! No axe. Who was I? What was I?

  "Dirk?" the dead woman asked.

  Yes, Dirk. Derek Montgomery, born and raised in Seattle. Mortal, vulnerable. For a moment I wanted to kill her, peel the skin of that oh-so-concerned face from the bones of her skull. How the frag could she have taken from me what I had? What I was? Where was my axe?

  My ... my what? The vision of the axe, the armor, faded from my mind, became the memory of a dream, or the memory of a memory. It had no intensity, none of the passion that just moments ago had flooded through me.

  "Dirk?" Buddy said again. Yes, Buddy. I knew her. I knew me, I knew where I was. And then the sense of loss washed over me like an ocean wave. I could have howled. I could have wept. My eyes flicked to the cyberdeck resting on the floor. Something glittered. The chip was still in its socket. I tried to reach for the deck, but my muscles wouldn't obey.

  Buddy saw what I was trying to do. With a speed that belied her cadaverous appearance, she bent and snatched the chip from its socket. Threw it to the floor. Brought her heel down on it, and it shattered into myriad fragments.

  And then I howled, and the darkness washed over and consumed me.

  I came back to myself, and I knew who "myself" was ... is ... whatever. I was still lying on the floor. I opened my eyes.

  No more than a couple of moments could have passed. Buddy crouched beside me, her cool hand on my cheek. I looked up into her face, saw the fear and the concern. "Dirk?" she said once more. And from the tone of her voice I knew how she intended the question.

  "Yes," I told her. "Yes, Dirk." I ran a quick inventory of my feelings, a kind of mental self-test. There was still sadness and black depression in my heart, but overlaying it was a terrible fear. I forced myself to sit up, looked down at the floor. Yes, there were the fragments of the chip. It really was destroyed, she really had crushed it. I found that more reassuring than I'd have believed possible.

  "You okay?" she asked.

  I thought about it for a moment. "I am now," I replied. I ran a hand through my hair, rubbed my eyes.

  Tried to wipe away what remained of that memory. "What happened?"

  "I watched your cerebral activity," she said. "It went"-she searched for words, obviously deeply disturbed-"it changed. Abnormal. Looked like a psychotic episode. Delusions, more than delusions. I jacked you out." She pointed to the optical lead attached to the crown-of-thorns I still wore on my head. The jack lay on the floor, pulled free from the cyberdeck. She fixed me with her bright eyes. "What did you experience?"

  I tried to remember. But the memory was too painful- or, more correctly, the knowledge that that's all it would remain-so I tried instead to forget. "Another world," I told her.

  "What was that chip?" She stirred the crystalline fragments with her toe.

  "They call it 2XS."

  "More than BTL?"

  I nodded. "How long was it running?" She shrugged. "Ten, twenty seconds." Subjective time had seemed much longer than that. I'd already inventoried my emotions. Now I tried to feel my body, check out its status. -

  I was bone-fragging tired, like I'd run a marathon, played a game of Urban Brawl, and then gone best-of-three-falls with Neil the Ork Barbarian. I settled two fingers on the opposite wrist-difficult, the way both my hands were shaking-and timed ten seconds on my watch while counting my pulse. I lost count at about thirty-five beats, and it was still short of ten seconds. I recalled Bent's comments on how debilitating 2XS was to the body, and decided he'd underestimated by a few orders of magnitude.

  Then a terrible thought struck me. "Buddy," I asked, "how efficient is this thing?" I pulled the inductance rig from my head.

  She shook her head. "Not," she answered simply. "Twenty or thirty percent. Maybe."

  That seemed to make the shivering worse. "So," I said, trying in vain to keep my voice calm, "if you run something straight through a datajack it's going to seem more intense?"

  "Infinitely," she said.

  Oh, frag. Theresa . . .

  Chapter 15.

  On the drive home, the crushing sense of depression, of devastating loss, kept hitting me with an impact so fierce it made me gasp. The episodes came without warning and when least expected. Just when I thought I'd forced the 2XS experience from my mind and that I was totally back to normal, it would all come rushing back. The memory of knowing my destiny was absolutely under the control of my own indomitable will, knowing that whatever I wished to do was right and just simply because I wished it. And, worse, the realization that I would never feel that almost-godlike certainty and power again. Never again.

  Each time it struck, my hands quivered so hard that I almost lost control of the car-I would have lost control if not for Quincy's modified piloting circuits. Also fleeting, flitting around the edges of my mind was the question, So what if I lost control? Now that I'd lost forever that mighty warrior in his gem-encrusted armor, what matter if I died? Death would be the only sure way to erase the memory of that loss . . .

  Like most people, I've thought about suicide, but merely as a kind of intellectual exercise. Always in my head, never in my heart, and I'd always dismissed it out of hand as the last resort of an utter coward.

  But now, during the drive back to Purity, suicide was not a thought, but an option I considered deep in my heart. And that scared me profoundly.

  What if Buddy hadn't destroyed the 2XS chip? I wondered. What if I had it in my hand now, knowing that all I needed to recapture those awesome sensations was to slot the chip into a player and plug the connection into my datajack (presuming I had one)? The answer was as simple as it was chilling. I'd be running that chip again right now. Even knowing that it was fragging up my brain waves, giving me psychotic delusions, killing me by millimeters. Of course I'd be running it, if only to escape the depressive episodes. Bent had been oh so right that once you got a touch of 2XS you'd never want anything else. Frag, you don't even want real life.

  And it was that horror my baby sister had taken into her life-or so I assumed. She'd been a chiphead years ago so she had that tendency toward electronic escapism-and she had the datajack. Even if she'd slotted only a single 2XS chip, as an experiment, perhaps, she'd be well and truly hooked, addicted and habituated, forever. How much worse would be the depressive aftereffects for someone who'd been using the chips for days or weeks? Ho
w much greater the attraction of suicide?

  That was one possible explanation for Theresa's disappearance, and one I couldn't discount, no matter how painful the thought. I reviewed my conversation with the good Dr. Dempsey from the Brotherhood clinic, trying to remember her exact words. She'd said that nobody had been admitted last night. That meant officially. Now, would the head of the clinic be working the admitting desk? Hardly. She'd be in the wards or the operating room or whatever they had there, while the admitting desk was being run by lower-level drones.

  I was seeing another scenario. Fitz takes Theresa into the clinic's lobby, lifts the name-tag souvenir, and hits the road so as not to get officially involved. Theresa, suffering from 2XS overload and postchip depression, wanders out into the streets, maybe geeks herself or gets geeked, or just crashes in an alley.

  The drone on the admitting desk hasn't filled out any of the appropriate forms, so Theresa hasn't been officially admitted. Would the drone report such an occurrence to Dr. Dempsey? Probably not. That was one way of reconciling both Dempsey's and Pud's stories. If it had happened that way, as well it might, I'd have to broaden the parameters of my search.

  By the time I reached my doss, the frequency of the depressive episodes had decreased, and their impact had abated drastically. Thanks to whatever gods there be. Shagged to the bone, I tossed my duster onto a chair. The bed looked warm and enticing, but I had something to do before I could sleep. (Also, I had to admit, the thought of sleep-and dreams-terrified me at the moment.) I checked my watch-just past twenty-three hundred hours-sat down at the telecom and keyed Naomi's home number.

  As expected, I got her voice-mail system, please-leave-your-message-after-the-fragging-beep. So I left my message. "Naomi," I told her recorded image, "I need something else, and please make this higher priority than"-I hesitated, just in case Naomi was wrong about having a clean line-"the other issue we discussed. My sister's gone missing, Naomi. I think she did a bad chip-trip. Crashed and burned. Can you check the files to see if she's turned up? MVA records, crime victims. Hell, you know the drill. She's SINless, which won't help. First name's Theresa Mary. Call me soonest, okay? Thanks much, omae. I owe you, big time."

  I killed the phone line, programmed a wake-up alarm for nine the next morning and hit the sack.

  Though I needed sleep bad, it steadfastly refused to come as I tossed and turned. Part of me was glad, I was still scared of the dreams I might have. I decided I may as well put the time to good use, and mentally reviewed any options I might have missed, any other ways to track Theresa. Magic, maybe?

  I'm mundane, and the circles I move in are almost exclusively so. It's not that I'm a magophobe like some people I've met. It's just the way it's worked out. The main disadvantage to this is that I tend to think in mundane terms. It's not that I forget about magic-impossible to do in the Sixth World-but it's rarely in the forefront of my mind. When a problem crops up, I always approach it from a mundane mindset and come up with mundane ways to solve it, thinking of the magic option only when nothing else has worked-if then.

  So, could a mage or shaman track Theresa for me? Theoretically, yes, but from what I know of the magic involved, he or she would need something that had been part of Theresa-a lock of hair, a skin sample, some blood, or maybe something that had been important to her emotionally. Needless to say, I was fresh out of such items. If she'd been hanging with the, Night Prowlers, maybe they'd have something that might serve. But that would involve enlisting the cooperation of at least one Prowler. Considering they'd tried to geek me just hours before, that didn't seem overly likely. How about Pud? Not a chance, I thought. He'd do me no favors on top of the one he already had done by letting me live.

  Magic seemed to be a dead end, at least based on my limited knowledge. I switched my focus back to mundane lines of inquiry, and that was when sleep engulfed me like a black wave and I went bye-bye.

  I woke to the insistent beeping of the telecom. I checked the time display. Nine o'clock.

  I shook my head to clear out the cobwebs. The dreams hadn't been as bad as I'd expected, but they'd certainly been no picnic. Fortunately, they were fading fast in the gray morning light leaking through the partially polarized windows. I got up and nuked up a full pot of soykaf, drank my first cup black and as hot as I could take it to shock me into full wakefulness.

  What to do today? I had the urge to call Naomi, to ask her if she'd got a line on Theresa. Or to badger her, I suppose. That was neither reasonable nor fair, of course. Assuming she was on the same shift, she'd have started work at oh-eight-thirty, meaning she'd have risen about an hour earlier. That was probably when she'd received my message about tracking Theresa. No matter how good Naomi was, chances were she hadn't made much significant progress, particularly since she'd have to conceal her unofficial research.

  No, I had to give her more time, no matter how hard it was to wait.

  What else? Not much. I could try and get a line on Yamatetsu, but Naomi was a lot more skilled and better-equipped than I was. I could pound the pavement in and around Puyallup, looking for some kind of clue to Theresa's whereabouts. But that was a low-odds proposition at best. The odds were much better that all I'd find would be a militant Night Prowler just itching to geek me in the street.

  I debated whether to stop by the Puyallup Universal Brotherhood chapterhouse for a conversation with the clinic admitting-drone, but discarded it. The person on duty at nine in the morning wouldn't be the same one who'd manned the desk a couple of hours past midnight. Dead end there.

  But I needed to do something. No, I amended quickly, I needed to talk to someone. I retrieved the number Jocasta had given me and placed the call.

  The call was picked up almost immediately, but the screen stayed blank. "Yes?" It was Jocasta's voice. "It's me," I told the empty screen. On came the video, and Jocasta appeared. She was wearing a terry cloth robe, and her hair was a little disheveled. I had to grin. This was the first time I'd seen her when not the perfectly groomed corporate. And, to be honest, I thought she looked a lot better this way. More vulnerable and more human. I kicked in my own video.

  "Morning," I said.

  She looked down at her robe, plucked at the lapel, a little embarrassed. "Yes, it is." Then she looked back into my eyes. "Any word on your sister?" she asked.

  I was surprised-and warmed-that this was her first question. "Nothing good," I said, then gave her a brief rundown of my busy day yesterday. The only thing I left out was my run-in with the Prowlers.

  When I was finished, she looked at me in shock. "That 2XS sounds like serious drek," she said. She shook her head, and seemed to shudder. "I wouldn't have had the guts to try it." I shrugged. "I can understand why you're so worried about your sister, though," she went on. "What else are you doing to track her down?"

  I told her about Naomi, but didn't give her name, of course, implying that my contact at the Star was male. "That sounds good," she said. "What about magic?"

  "I don't know any mages personally," I said. "And I don't know if one could help anyway. You've got to have something connected to the person, don't you?"

  "That's just for ritual magic, I think," said Jocasta, after a moment's thought. "Certain spirits can track a person astrally. All it takes is for the mage to have a mental image of the person."

  "I didn't know that," I said quietly. That scared me, it meant I wasn't anywhere near as safe as I believed. "Is there anything else I should know?"

  She shrugged. "I'm not an expert. Just a dabbler at best. You should talk to Harold."

  "Hold the phone," I said. "You're a dabbler? You're telling me you're a mage?"

  She looked embarrassed again. "No," she said, "I'm on the shamanic side. But I'm not a shaman. I've .. . I've got a touch of the Power, no more, and I'm not schooled in it."

  "Why didn't you say something before?"

  "It never came up," she shrugged.

  "Tell me about it. What can you do? It might be important."

  S
he shrugged again. "I can't do much," she said slowly. "But sometimes I can feel things. It . . ." She hesitated, and I could tell she was uncomfortable discussing it.

  "Go on," I said reassuringly. "I'm interested. Really."

  She was silent, and the flickering of her eyes told me she was conducting an internal debate. Finally she nodded, and began, "You know how most kids have invisible friends? I had one, too. Lolita always had lots of friends, but..." She shook her head, stopping that train of thought. For an instant I could see Jocasta as a young girl, with the same vulnerable expression now in her eyes. "I was more comfortable by myself, I think," she said. "I was ten when I first realized that..." She hesitated again, and tried another tack. "We grew up in Arbor Heights. I was out walking-it was safer to walk then than it is now-and I was pretending that Sarah was walking with me." She blushed and lowered her gaze. "Sarah was my invisible friend." I nodded, but didn't say anything.

  "I was walking along a main street. Marine View, it was. I can remember it as clearly as yesterday. It was a Sunday morning, I think, the first really warm day of the summer, and there wasn't much traffic. I was crossing the road at the corner. Crossing with the lights," she added with a quick grin. "There was a man crossing with me. He reminded me a lot of my father. He smiled at me, and said it was a nice day to be out walking. We were halfway across the street when I heard it." Her voice trailed off. "Go on," I prompted.

  "We were halfway across," she said again, "and I heard a voice right beside me. 'Jocasta,' it said. I could hear it as clearly as, well, as anything. I thought it was the man at first, but it wasn't a man's voice. It wasn't a girl's voice, either, not really. Then it spoke again: 'Jocasta.' I looked up at the man, but he didn't seem to have heard it. He just walked on.

  "And suddenly I knew-I mean, I really knew- it was Sarah who'd said it." She shrugged. "I know it doesn't make sense, and it made even less at the time. But I was sure it was Sarah. I was scared, but I knew I had to get off the street. I turned and ran back to the curb. The man looked over his shoulder. He was puzzled, and he was going to say something ..."