by George Tome
“We have no chance,” said Forbat with pain in his voice. “The nukes—”
“What is going to happen to the elders, the intubated?” Gill avoided the name kaura to hide his knowledge about their nature. As long as the safety of the Sigian artifact wasn’t at stake, it made no sense to betray Sandara.
“A message is relayed as we speak. The Antyrans able to disconnect without dying will do it right now. The others… we are going to activate the immortality chips.”
***
In the darkness of a dusty cave on level 7, several warriors coiled comfortably in a group nest to feast on a sizable pile of bixan seeds after the bloody clash in the catacombs. They were all taking part in the great hunt on Hidardo, reserved for Firalia 9’s soldiers.
The hunted creatures were invented by the architects for this game. They were giant pseudo-armored creatures called malasses, which could fly with dizzying speed. The landscape was the huge desert streaked by the mountain ranges and canyons of Antyra II, faithfully reproduced on the game island.
At the given signal, the hunters, armed to the tail with explosive disk launchers and riding some futuristic air-jets, took off to hunt the malasses through Belamia’s whirls and on the plateaus burned by the merciless heat of the star.
Petoballin, one of the aces, threw himself enthusiastically in the wild race for the lead places. Maybe today would be the big day when he’d see his name reaching the top spot, engraved in symbols of ibral!
Peto quickly managed to hunt seven malasses and was just chasing the eighth, very agile and stubborn—as stubborn to stay alive as he was to shoot it—through a giant canyon leading to the foamy Orizabia Ocean. Since all his senses were trained on the poisonous thorn of the malassa, he overlooked the first signs of the end, but at some point, he realized that something wasn’t right. Time started to twist, to flow in slow motion, changing the reality under his very eyes, hitting it with waves of distortions, each stronger than the previous one.
He jerked the stick madly to fend off the imperfections of the virtual continuum splashed in his direction.
“What’s happening?” he shouted to his escort in the virtual holophone. Peto had a group of friends who entered the contest to “support” him by chasing the creatures in his path so that he could kill them easily. It was a common practice in the “buffing” contests, especially for the top players, and the hunt surveyors momentarily closed their nostrils to such transgressions.
“Emergency call from Uralia’s council!” he heard the metallic voice of the parhontes’ messenger say directly in his head. “We agreed to an armistice with the temples and will shut down Uralia! Disconnect immediately! The ones who don’t do it will have the immortality chip activated in five minutes!”
Confused thoughts hampered his kyi from accepting the reality of what he had heard. Five minutes—he had five more minutes—it was the only thing reverberating in the depths of his skull. Like a licant captive in a tekal seed, hanging on the last crumble of life, he ignored the meaning of the news and accelerated to full throttle to kill the malassa that had defied him for too long.
“Peto, pull off your interface!” he heard the worried voice of Donnada say.
“I can’t,” he cried desperately. “I’ve killed seven! I can’t give up right now!”
“Don’t be a fool! Disconnect, or I’ll burn your tail! You want to die in this desert?”
Dragged back to reality by Donnada’s threats, he pulled the interface off. In the next instant, he woke up on the floor next to the common nest, writhing in pain from the violence of his exit. Everywhere around, Antyrans were crouching on the ground, holding their spikes in their hands.
His overheated kyi needed some time to realize that he wasn’t the greatest malassa hunter in the vast Hidardo desert. The two scoreboard holograms on the cave’s hallway were trembling, filled with parasites, as if they too were hit by the waves of the altered reality that ruined his game. After a few seconds, all the holophones in the city disconnected with a loud bang.
He stepped out of the hallway wobbling on his feet, only to find that the same problems were everywhere. In all the corners of the city, the bixanids were exiting the galleries, violently awakened to reality.
Some addicts who had passed the stage where they could wake up safely also tried to return to reality, their bodies riddled by violent spasms. Even with all the efforts of the Antyrans around them, they ended up scanned by the immortality chips, dying quickly.
Of course, the oldest kaura didn’t even bother to disconnect. Their shells were resting, deeply asleep, in their nests, machines pumping life in them, awaiting the activation of the death chips. The scene didn’t resemble the gentle passing away of the senescent shells when their time had come, for death was now imposed by the order of the parhontes. Despite the silence of the abandoned bodies, it became a mass execution where the victims had no way of shouting their desire to live—even though they lived far beyond what Zhan meant them to live.
In Uralia, kaura clumped together on the islands of the seas—especially Dolema, a wild jungle paradise watered by beautiful rivers sprinkled with foamy waterfalls. Group after group, they stepped on the hot sand of the shores, looking, astonished, at the fire dome on Landolin, from where the terrible decision to erase their little universe had come from.
***
“Gill, I hope you won’t hold a grudge against us,” said Forbat, avoiding his eyes.
“Hold a grudge?”
“The temples want you.”
So it came to this. There could only be one explanation: Baila knew! Somehow, he found out that Gill ran to Ropolis, along with the much-too-lusted-after Sigian bracelet, and hid at the bosom of the architects’ heresy. After the failed assault, the prophet called the parhontes, and they were looking for him… What a relief it must have been when Ugo admitted he was holding Gillabrian hostage!
“Gill, you’re the condition for the armistice. If we hand you over, the temples will allow the evacuation of the city’s populace. I have to say we already accepted.”
“And you don’t want to know why are they chasing me?”
“Ugo already told us. You have an alien bracelet they want.”
“How did Ugo find out about the bracelet?” he exclaimed, astonished.
“He could see some things in your memory.”
The abomination! The contact with his kyi only lasted a little, but that was enough for the jure to smell his most hidden secret! No wonder Ugo wanted so badly to possess him again, to finish the theft.
He was again defeated by the jure… He couldn’t allow that to happen without using his last weapon, even though he had to betray Sandara.
“You can’t turn me over!” Trying to overcome his kyi’s revolt, he pointed at the hideous whirls of the cyclone underneath. “I know everything about Kaura. I know how your dead end up there!”
Forbat looked at him, surprised by his words.
“I’d like to know how you learned such things…”
“And I like to keep that a secret,” Gill replied, decided not to say Sandara’s name.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter now,” the old Antyran concluded, his eyes telling him he had guessed the truth—after all, he knew all too well the seed out of which his daughter was born.
“What do you mean ‘it doesn’t matter’? If Baila tortures me and discovers the magnitude of your heresy, he’ll stop the evacuation. Do you think you can move the whole population to Antyra I before he finds out about the living dead?” he asked, convinced that Forbat wouldn’t miss the subtle threat in his voice.
“He won’t find anything,” Forbat replied coldly between his teeth.
“What—”
“Now silence. There’s no use to fight; you will only increase your suffering.”
Sensing the imminent danger behind Forbat’s words, he jumped to pull off his interface, but both his arms fell inert beside his body. At the same time, the shock wave of the icy invasion hit him
like a wall. The impact threw him into the fluff, unable to move.
“What are you doing?” he screamed.
“Sorry, Gill, but we can’t let you disconnect. We… we gave Ugo the access codes, so now he controls your interface. By the council’s vote, he controls what’s left of Uralia,” he sighed.
“Have you lost your kyi? Stop the expansion!” he cried, throwing Forbat an accusing gaze while trying in vain to get up from the fluff.
“There will be no expansion. Stay quiet!” he ordered him again. “Let Ugo inside your kyi!”
“You don’t understand! Ugo didn’t see all,” he mumbled on his last drops of energy. “There’s a bigger stake than Uralia!”
“Nothing’s more important than Uralia,” replied another councilor. “Forbat, we’re out of time. Whoever wanted to disconnect had enough time by now.”
Without a word, the few younger councilors pulled off their cups while the older ones walked toward the base of the holotheater.
“Ugo removed the floor?” asked one of them. Then, without waiting for an answer, he stepped into the void.
“Good-bye, Balis,” said Forbat.
Recognizing the voice, Gill raised his eyes with difficulty over the edge of the nest, just in time to surprise the silhouette of Urdun falling into the realm of the dead. The Antyran was Ugo’s ally in the council! One by one, the other councilors jumped after him.
“Sandara! Sandara, help me!” he tried to shout, but only a hoarse rattle came out of his mouth. The claws of the abomination stuck deep inside his throat to kill his voice.
Boiling in rage, he struggled to reach the interface, in a futile attempt to defeat Ugo’s control. Perhaps he could roll over the edge and fall in the world of shadows… Since he had no chip, he hoped he would only get disconnected, like what had happened during his last escape. Unfortunately, this time Ugo’s grip was too strong to overcome.
He heard the sounds of a melee, and the dome’s door slammed violently into the wall. Sandara appeared in the doorstep, followed by two of the four artificial intelligences in the yellow tunics of the Games Registry. The other two were busy fighting the guards of the parhontes.
“What happened here?” she exclaimed while her eyes searched for Forbat, who didn’t see her enter—too busy contemplating the abyss his friends had jumped into. “Father! What are you doing?” she shouted with burning eyes, rushing toward them. “I told him everything about Kaura! You can’t send him to the enemy!”
“Wait! The fl—”
Before he could finish, Sandara made a fateful step and fell into the abyss, screaming, quickly followed by the two artificial intelligences.
“Nooo!” Forbat cried. “What have you done?” He gazed at her until she disappeared in the brown clouds. “My daughter is lost,” he whispered, barely moving his lips. “Why didn’t you disconnect? Why do you never listen to me?”
Brown spots gushed out of his temples. Petrified by pain, he stepped forward, falling after her.
The cold reappeared—the sinister presence, ready to seep inside his kyi and steal his memory. This time, Gill was determined to fight for his secrets. However, to his great surprise, instead of feeling the jure’s ice claws squeezing his ganglions, a heavy drowsiness oozed into his bones—a sleepiness he couldn’t oppose, considering how little he had slept in the last several days. I’m so tired, he thought, but I have to resist!
Hey, someone pinched my tail! How do utrils scratch when their tails itch? Gill felt suddenly confused about his species. Hmm, am I an utril dreaming I’m an Antyran, or am I an Antyran dreaming I’m an utril? Hard dilemma, he asked himself, utterly baffled.
In the end, he reached the just conclusion that he was an utril flying in the sky.
The beast’s instinct to navigate through the endless streams of air drafts became entangled with the inhibited dreams of flying of his childhood kyi, pleasantly conquering his every thought. Yet, even though he was just a dumb beast, he knew that there, somewhere under his thick skull, a serious problem lay hidden. His kyi, however, was too numbed to understand it. He couldn’t think; he couldn’t clarify what he was doing there, what his purpose in life was. Therefore, he did what any decent utril would have done in similar circumstances: he ignored it.
He was flying slowly toward the Ricopa Glacier, lazily fluttering his membranous wings, convinced that he’d find a way to defeat Voran and save Acanthia from the plague that engulfed it like a wildfire. When the first rays of the star pierced the mist of the cloud through which he was climbing in his path to the glacier castle, the problems started… without warning, as the worst of them usually like to come…
He had only a short distance left to fly before he’d reach the glacial trough when something whispered to him to look down. He knew he shouldn’t have listened—his intuition was telling him to keep flying: Look forward, utril, look forward! The foreboding couldn’t have been the fruit of his mind because until then, he was happy and relaxed, the gliding was gentle, the flight gave him a great sense of security, and he even felt a bit of exuberance at the thought that he was going to meet Sandara. The feeling of anxiety had to be induced from the outside, although Gill had no way of knowing that Ugo was playing with his ganglions.
And the order was an order. He had to do it, for the need to look down increased with every passing moment. In the end, he gave up and looked in the direction indicated by the jure… where a giant vortex was waiting patiently, ready to swallow him!
Gill had no clue for how long it had been shadowing him, but the twister seemed animated by a hideous life of its own. When he hadn’t looked down, the storm had followed him in the deepest silence… But now that it was discovered, it started to scream with the voice of a thousand guvals—the sinister fog covering the realm of the dead becoming visible through its lower end.
He was promptly sucked inside, screaming in terror, his head spikes congested painfully in anticipation of the impact. His yelling ended abruptly when he reached the black walls of the twister. The shock emptied his air sacks, and he began a desperate fight for his life. He had no air at all… His hearts were struggling to the point of breaking while the last traces of light disappeared as he sank into the storm.
The suffering had no end. Each time he hit the walls of the vortex, the pain became worse. He had the feeling that the storm was trying to break his skull to get inside. It took some time to realize that the source of the storm was in fact his kyi because the more he remembered who he was and what he was doing there, the more the fury of the tornado increased. When he figured out that Ugo was behind all this and that he was falling into the realm of the dead, he couldn’t resist the relentless torture anymore, and he passed out…
Gill woke up from the nightmare, amazed that he was still alive. He opened his eyes slowly, prepared to face the full horrors of Kaura. Instead of that, he saw the ceiling of the cave where he was held prisoner in Ropolis!
He had no idea how much time had passed since he had connected to the virtual world. It seemed weird that Ugo left his head without killing him or delivering him to the temples as Forbat had promised—and even weirder that he allowed him to recall every single detail of the terrible adventure.
The bracelet! Gasping for air, he tried to touch it through the fabric; to his huge relief, he found it on his arm. A moment later, he remembered that he had no reason to feel relieved, considering that Ugo had seen his secrets. All his secrets.
Of all the unhappy experiences he had lived lately, this was the hardest to swallow. The Antyrans seeded and cherished the memory of their most secret thoughts, hidden in the depths of their kyis—memories in whose absence the rites of the aromary art had no meaning. They were often compared with the platinum and iridium treasures of the ancient baitars thrown into the marshes at their deaths, seeding the filthy Gondarran swamps and turning them into the stuff of legends. And he had no secrets from the jure. For the first time, he felt naked, truly naked, exposed and at the mercy of the jure’s pe
rverse curiosity…
He swallowed his bitterness, trying to come up with a plan. No idea came into his kyi, no Guk aromas, nothing. The escape through the skylight wouldn’t be a surprise for Ugo. In fact, nothing he could do would be a surprise for the abomination. He got to his feet to leave the nest, noting in passing Urdun’s stiff body in the other nest, no doubt dead for some time. His legs were trembling, and he could barely walk, so he had to sit on the nest’s edge. How long did I stay connected?
He badly needed a breath of air less stinky than that in the room. Gill decided to check the door to see whether it was unlocked. With a final dash, he reached the hidden door and opened it.
It took him less than one tailbeat to understand the cruel reality waiting for him outside and to accept it fully, as it came. He wasn’t in his room in Ropolis. Or rather, he was, but the familiar view of the mining city didn’t greet him anymore… The door led to an almost vertical slope studded with jagged rocks resembling the ruins of huge, ancient temples. Further down, the detritus gave way to an abyss lost in the gray mist. Everywhere around, hideous slabs of rock raised their fangs among the fleshless funnels of the brown clouds. The world of darkness, Kaura!
The room was on a mountainside carved by an apocalyptic deluge that spread its grotesque debris through the cracks and valleys around; seen from above, the rubble looked like parasitic dolmec eggs ready to multiply the stench of decomposition. I’m dead, he thought. Then he remembered what Sandara told him about the dead. Their metabolism was frozen, unable to make new connections. Am I another shadow in the realm of death, or did I reach here alive? He was pondering which possibility was more appealing when his gaze was drawn to something. He could see his reflection in a long, brown icicle hanging from a crack near the door—perhaps not exactly ice, as the surrounding temperature wouldn’t allow it. At first glance, he looked normal, save for his spine, which had a translucent creature stuck on it—a giant parasite. The parasite…sucks my kyi’s essence? An invisible creature… I think I saw it somewhere else…