by George Tome
He quickly entered the code, stopping the explosion.
“Gill! I’m so happy to see you again,” she exclaimed, smiling from all her hearts. “Are you all right?”
“I’m… fine,” he babbled, surprised by her question, realizing from her looks that she had no idea she was dead. The feeling of guilt overwhelmed him again, forcing him to avoid the effusive wave in her eyes.
“You don’t look so well,” she noticed in a worried voice. “What happened?” Then she looked around, confounded. “What is this place? Why aren’t you connected to Uralia?”
“Connected? But—”
“Gill, I had an awful dream,” she interrupted him. “I dreamed I was dead. That Uralia was destroyed!”
“Errr, I’ve… I have some bad news,” he stuttered. “You know, your dream—”
“It wasn’t a dream,” she realized, horrified, looking at her hands as if they weren’t hers.
“What happened to me?”
“I’m so sorry!”
“Forbat,” she remembered. “I’m… dead.”
There was an icy silence; Gill didn’t know what to say. He wanted to encourage her, to find some comforting words to make her situation easier, but what can you honestly say to someone who just realized she’s dead—and moreover, because of you?
“You woke up my avatar!” she exclaimed. Sandara not only wasn’t smiling anymore, but she was throwing murderous glares.
“I… I ‘asked’ Ugo to wake you up,” he said in one breath.
“Noo!” she wailed. “How could you do this to me? You allied with the monster to wake me to a hideous life?”
“Please let me explain,” he begged her.
“What’s left to be explained? You’re… you’re no better than Ugo,” she said, and she turned around to avoid looking in his eyes. Sandara started to walk to a patch of trees at the edge of the meadow, her temples wet with tears.
“Sandara! I need your help!”
“Leave me alone!” she burst angrily. “I’m going to erase myself!”
“Sandara!” he shouted madly after her. “You have to stop Ugo! Otherwise, he’s going to expand!”
The female stopped on her feet, shaking, and Gill guessed more than he saw the huge effort she had to make to turn back, if only to throw him another murderous glare.
“Don’t you understand that I’ve become a monster, just like him? I don’t want to live this way! I don’t want you to see me… like this.”
“You know something? You’re not changed like Ugo!” he said, finally meeting her eyes.
“How do you know that?” she asked with an icy inflection.
“I know because… because I know it! I know you better than you think! Do you believe that a poor death could break all the good things in you? Anyone else would have gladly accepted Kaura’s compromise, but look how mad you are! You’re the same Sandara I’ve dreamed again and again since I first met you, when you ordered your guards to torture me, remember?”
He thought he saw a shadow of a smile passing like a cloud on her face, quickly replaced by a grimace of suffering.
“Gill, there’s no point in stopping me. If I don’t delete myself now, it will be harder later.”
“Sandara, you can’t abandon me now. You’re the fighter! Without you, the Sigian world is lost!”
“So this is the world for which you were about to abandon Uralia in the claws of the monster! I guess I’m finally about to hear the tragic story that made Baila spy how you scratch your tail?”
Ignoring her sarcasm, Gill started to tell his incredible adventures, from the discovery of the Sigian skeletons buried in a sandy bank on Sigarion up to how he blackmailed the abomination to wake her from the dead. And slowly, as he was speaking, he saw her anger giving way to astonishment. Playful sparkles reignited the flame in her beautiful eyes.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the bracelet until now?” she asked him, with a trace of reproach, as soon as he finished his story.
“I told you already—it wasn’t my secret.”
“And now that I’m dead, you have more trust in me?” she teased him shamelessly.
“No,” Gill said, returning her irony. “But now you have to stop Ugo,” he told her gently.
“You’re kidding, right?” She started to panic, realizing that Gill had no shadow of intent to joke. “He’s an architect, and I can barely design a stone. It will take me years to do what he can create in the twitch of a tail.”
“You mean I’m an architect?”
“No, but—”
“And I defeated him. Sandara, do you have any idea why Ugo always won the virtual fights?”
“He’s the best strategist!”
“Wrong! He won because he was motivated to beat everybody. Your folk took the championships as a fun game, while he saw the perfect chance to become a god!”
Gill realized from her looks that Sandara wasn’t too convinced by his arguments. He sighed, painfully aware of how little time he had to prepare her for battle. Even the most intuitive Guk routine-aroma harmonics couldn’t be mastered without rigorous training.
In a few words, he tried to explain the basic philosophy, without hoping, however, that the grah female understood anything.
“Sandara, you have to focus on your weapons.”
“What weapons do I have against Ugo?” she asked incredulously.
“Well, first, we both know what he plans to do: prevent me from meeting the aliens. Then, you’re dead, like him. I know that at first glance it doesn’t look like much, but you—”
“Have no limitations,” she finished. “I don’t have chains of genetic algorithms like him.”
“See? Very good—you’re starting to think Guk.”
“I wonder how’s that going to help.”
“I’m afraid you have to find out yourself,” he told her, sorrowful. “I can’t enter your world.”
“I got it,” she sighed, lowering her eyes.
Sandara didn’t say anything because there was nothing more to say. She didn’t implore him to stay and help her, even though she wished more than anything that he could. She realized that the reasons that gave him the strength to fight and reach this far became hers also. And then she understood her secret weapon: not that she was dead and thus free from the limitations of a physical body, but that she loved him and was ready to do anything for him. Love and logic never walked tail-to-tail—and they won’t this time, either, she thought, and she decided not to anguish in vain about Ugo’s perceived superiority. She looked Gill in his eyes to make him understand that she was aware of his expectations and had no intention of proving anything less to him.
“You’re right,” she said, smiling. “You’re right, as usual—it’s my fight.”
Gill read the determination in her eyes and knew that Ugo would finally meet his match.
“Listen, I don’t think it’s a bright idea to count on Ugo to drive you to the aliens in this ship,” she said. “Better take the Grammian ship, and I’ll make sure he won’t attack you.”
“I’ll do it.”
“But before you leave, promise me one thing.”
“Anything!” he said, smiling broadly.
“Promise that after the end of the madness, you’ll let me delete myself.”
“You really have to do this?”
“Gill! I’m surprised to hear such a question from you,” she reproached him, pretending she didn’t get the reason for his unhappiness.
“All right, I promise,” he sighed.
“I’m afraid of the change,” she whispered. “I… I don’t want to live like that. I don’t want to live without a kyi,” she tried to justify her decision.
“I understand and respect your decision,” he said, feeling a lump in his throat at the thought that soon, he’d lose her again.
He hurried to exit the destroyer when he remembered something.
“Before I leave, I have to talk to Ugo.”
Sandara turned bac
k and entered the forest, calling the jure. After a few moments, he appeared in the meadow, and shortly after, she came out, too.
“I couldn’t find—” she began; then her eyes stopped on his silhouette, and she couldn’t restrain a shiver of disgust.
“My dear niece, what a pleasure to see you again,” Ugo said with a grimace, loading his words with all the aversion and ridicule he was capable of.
“Niece?” exclaimed Gill, surprised.
“Eh, old story… Forbat and I once were half brothers of the same mother. We got along fine, until the fool turned against me.”
“Mind your tongue, monster, when you talk about my father,” exclaimed Sandara, throwing flaming rikanes from her eyes.
“Well? How do you like your new life after life? Isn’t it amazing how you just have to die a little bit to change your perspective?” The abomination grinned without a trace of compassion, delighted to have the opportunity to annoy her again. “I hope you’re grateful I made you immortal!”
“You call this immortality?” she exclaimed, disgusted.
“Why—”
“I called you to give Sandara the codes,” Gill interrupted him, tired of listening to his sarcasm.
“What codes?” Ugo said, feigning surprise.
“Uralia’s codes. Forbat said he gave you the codes of the world.”
“Oh yes, the codes… He always wants something,” he muttered to himself. “You’re very hard to please—did you know that?” Ugo forced himself to smile, but his eyes were throwing deadly glances. He looked around as if he could find something to save him from the impasse. He became almost comical in his pathetic attempt to stall. “Uh, you know what? Wouldn’t it be better to—”
“No! Give her the codes, or I will start all over again,” Gill hissed menacingly, his left hand on the bracelet.
“All right, all right, I’ll give her the codes!” the jure exploded, disfigured by rage. “I wonder what she is going to do with them. We all know she’s hopeless at programming!”
Grimacing with disgust, he threw a tablet at Sandara’s feet. Seemingly unaffected by his manners, the female took it from the ground and pushed some buttons on the small display embedded in the fabric of her sleeve. She folded the tablet on her forearm and told Gill, “I got them!”
“Now that we did that, I’ll be delighted if I never see your sorry mugs again,” the jure told them. “I’m done with you, and if you don’t like it, you might as well blow yourself into pieces. Preferably far away from here,” he said, gnashing his teeth. “Whatever you want from me, I don’t want to hear it. And no, you can’t use this ship, which I don’t know how to drive!” He was such a terrible liar. “Take the Grammian ship!”
He turned back, swollen by rage, and vanished into the forest. Shortly after, a small hill grew in the background while the red light of a star dawned over the meadow—a sign that the jure was working hard to restore Uralia. For now, it seemed he was building only one island, but Gill had no doubt that soon, others would follow.
“All right, I’m leaving, then,” Gill said warmly.
“Promise… promise you’ll come back soon!”
“I will. Can you handle Ugo?”
“You bet I can! Good luck.” She smiled encouragingly.
“Listen, if anything happens—”
“Go now! I’ll take care of everything,” she said, forcing herself to smile.
Without wasting more time, he rushed to leave the ship.
“Gill!” she called to him just as he was about to step out.
“Yes?” he said, turning back from the door.
“Thank you.”
“For what?” he asked, surprised.
“For your trust,” she said, and she smiled again.
She was trying to be brave like a true grah, to lift from his shoulders the weight of the thought that he was leaving her alone to handle the monster, although she suspected she wouldn’t be too successful with that. They were both painfully aware that the huge stakes were about to play out there, not on Antyra’s outskirts. With this thought, the news that she had died seemed a mere trifle.
***
After reaching the cave at the base of the Mayan temple, Gill piled the stone blocks over the floor gap to cover the hole. There was plenty of light outside—it was most likely past noon—when he finally emerged from the gallery. Even though he risked being seen, he started to run around the ancient platforms to reach the Grammian ship.
To his complete surprise, as soon as he turned the corner to the main temple, he landed right in front of an alien couple. Due to his speed, he almost knocked them over.
They were tall and thin, with a yellowish mane—strikingly different from the aliens of the overturned chariot, even though their faces had somewhat similar morphological features. probably belonging to a closely related species. At his sight, they froze, more frightened of him than he was of them. The female dropped a black device with a big lens on it. Judging by how she had held it in front of her eyes, it could have been some sort of primitive recording tool. Without waiting for them to come back to their senses, he pulled the space and dashed forward, feeling pinched again that he couldn’t take the aliens to Antyra to study them in greater detail.
He then came to the spot right in the middle of Xochicalco’s main square, which, to his great misfortune, was full of tourists. He stopped for a brief moment to find his way, and that was the precise moment when the mayhem began. As soon as the people noticed him, cries of terror erupted all around him. The creatures jumped like mad off the terraces, running all over the place to get out of his way. Soon, he was alone in the square, which didn’t bother him at all.
***
Ugo wasn’t anywhere to be found. Sandara felt torn between the need to keep an eye on him and the desire to secretly find some way to ruin his plans. She whistled loudly, and her portal sphere materialized on the discoidal grass of the meadow. So far, nothing had changed, although she wasn’t hoping to be that lucky in the long run. After all, the island had been created by Ugo, thus obeying the rules designed by him. Her only consolation—if one could call it that—was that Ugo had no conceivable way to disconnect or destroy her, since she was dead. However, he could do other things to ensure she wouldn’t ruin his plans, and even though he hadn’t had much time to plot some wickedness against her, that could change quickly…
She stormed inside her portal—a large building resembling a grah fortress, full of armor suits aligned along stone columns draped in blue fabric.
“Load the virtual architects!” she ordered aloud.
In an instant, a bunch of translucent floating displays surrounded her, turning the hall into a sort of command room. Most screens only displayed statics, a sign that Uralia wasn’t yet restored to all its previous greatness.
Excited, she removed the plate from her forearm. Of course, every Ropolitan had the right to build things, customize the portal, or invent new patches of land—the parhontes could even create their own little islands, although few had done it—and depending on the fragments of the keys they got, they had access to a more or less consistent jumble of the virtual world’s resources. But until Uralia’s fall, no one had mastered the five complete codes.
She quickly accessed the vertical display floating at her right side. Her fingers ran with dexterity along the screen’s surface.
“What’s the status of the AI families?”
“Level III, eighty-nine percent available. Levels I, II, IV, and V, one hundred available,” replied a suave voice.
“Activate the access codes!”
Right away, five fields of different colors appeared on the screen. She touched the plate to the surface of the display, and the codes flowed into their proper fields. The yellow code, for the habited islands, activated successfully. The same happened with the blue one belonging to the games. Those were the two codes known by three architects in the council, but they were changed when they woke up Ugo because he also knew them before he
died. Then came the fire-red level III, the security level granting access to the prison islands and Firalia 9; the green level of the Parhontes Council; and the brown one, the world of shadows—the keeper of the kaura dead, she thought, shivering. Brown was the most guarded secret. Thousands and thousands of monsters like Ugo and herself were guarded by the brown string of symbols. Some abstract symbols represented the only protection of the physical universe, and now Ugo had them, too. What were the parhontes thinking when they gave him the keys? She didn’t have the slightest intention of waking them up to find out. If things went her way, Uralia’s world—the only world she ever knew, wonderful and frighteningly cruel at the same time—would end up deleted. Deleted forever. Now that all its virtual inhabitants were dead or disconnected, there was no point in its existence.
Suddenly driven by inspiration, she told the interface, “I want to change the codes!”
“Only the council of the parhontes may vote a password change,” the screen replied.
“The council is dead. I am the new council, and I want to change them now!” she yelled with her characteristic impetuosity.
“Sorry, but that is impossible,” replied the virtual architect, in the same even-toned voice. “Only the council may approve the change.”
There was no point in insisting. She wouldn’t be able to block Ugo from changing the world as he pleased, but on the other tail, he wouldn’t be able to stop her, either. The artificial intelligences guarded Uralia better than she imagined. That, of course, would only last until the monster found a way to control or corrupt them. Or wake up the Parhontes Council. Somehow, however, she doubted that Ugo would make such a stupid mistake.
Sandara was painfully aware that time was running out. The prospect of Ugo roaming around and building some patch of grass didn’t seem exceedingly plausible. Most likely, he was cooking up a nasty plan to prevent Gill from reaching the aliens.
She ran out of the portal, followed by a yellow architect display. A quick glance confirmed her worst fears—no landscape improvement, no new hill, no forest… not a single sign that Ugo was building the world. She turned to the translucent display floating nearby.