The Sigian Bracelet

by George Tome

  “I want a rock!”

  A strange numbness she had not experienced in a long time tickled her forehead. First slow, then faster and faster, dozens of tinglings started to chase one another inside her head. A rupture appeared in the meadow’s continuum, out of which came a matrix, slowly turning into a stone. An ugly, brown, misshapen boulder was now resting on the grass. She kicked it, angered that she had neglected the programming discipline to such an extent.

  “I didn’t imagine it like that; it’s awfully ugly! Can’t you read my thoughts properly?” she bristled at the screen. “Larger, yellow, and sparkling!”

  After several failed attempts, she finally got something acceptable. She grabbed it and ran inside her portal.

  “Table!” said Sandara, and a translucent surface appeared in the main hall, on which she threw the boulder. “Scan it!” she ordered the yellow architect.

  A blue ray burst from a lens fixed on the ceiling, and one of the nearby screens scrolled the stone’s algorithms.

  “Wait, wait, stop,” she told the screen. “I want to copy the stone. How can I do it?” Receiving no answer, she searched frantically on another screen. “Copy… copy… not good. Wait,” she exclaimed, “call the function index. How did the architects clone a forest? Come on, Sandara! Remember when Forbat took you to build an island—what’s its name? Search duplicate, right, something easier. Look, a wild acajaa patch… very good, very good! Father, why did I never listened to you?” she lamented. “Please don’t take off before I’m done,” Sandara whispered, as if Gill could hear her.

  She was working with a speed she never thought she could reach in her entire life, her hearts beating madly, convinced that only a thin strip of time stood between her and disaster.

  After several agonizing minutes, she finally found what she was looking for.

  “Right, right, this is it! Take this function and scan the stone again,” she said, pulling the code from the index screen and throwing it into the yellow architect. “I want you to change the algorithms so that I can duplicate it just like it is here,” she told the virtual architect.

  Immediately, a yellow light came from the same lens and scanned the stone. Without hesitation, Sandara took the boulder and pulled it with both hands. The stone began to stretch like a rubber band; before long, it separated into two boulders identical to the original one.

  “Excellent,” she exclaimed triumphantly.

  ***

  After having passed through the ruins of Xochicalco without further adventures, Gill reached the ship. Once he pressed the bump in the wall, the door sealed, and he ran to the navigation table on the bridge. Although he had never taken off from a planet, Gill was pretty sure he could do it; he’d spied Ugo’s driving, and the controls seemed simple enough even for an archivist.

  “Let’s see what happens…”

  He touched a random area on Mapu’s orbit, and the navigation wheel appeared around his finger. “Great!” After slightly pressing his finger like Ugo did, he used the other hand to accelerate by touching the speed circle. The ship’s shaking announced to him that he had left the planet.

  Suddenly, the table’s surface rippled, and Mapu disappeared; its place was taken by a myriad of stars. Now came the hard part, but luckily for him, the galactic map was translated into Antyran. He quickly spotted a familiar name: Antyra. Mapu was in the same sector, so he didn’t have to search very far. A few moments later, he was heading toward it at full speed.

  ***

  Overly worried, Sandara ran across the islet, looking for Ugo. Where did you hide, monster? He was clearly planning to shoot down Gill’s ship, and she couldn’t find him quickly enough if she wasted time scouring every bush. What would Ugo do? He’d use his little spies. Of course! She laughed, delighted. And I don’t have to break my tail programming them; their code already exists!

  “I want a licant spy right here,” she told the yellow architect screen floating nearby, which was following her every step.

  Right away, a licant matrix appeared in her palm, quickly becoming alive. She whistled for her portal and ran inside, followed by the display.

  “Change its code so that I can duplicate it like the stone,” she ordered. As soon as the licant lay on the table, the yellow light scanned it.

  The process had barely ended when she grabbed the creature and ran outside with it. She began to frantically pull it apart, creating more and more new licants.

  “Duplicate!” she ordered.

  Immediately, the flyers stretched and separated, doubling their number. Sandara repeated the order a few more times. Soon, a sizable pack of licants was swarming around her.

  “Search for Ugoriksom,” she ordered them. “Don’t you dare to come back until you find his tail!”

  A whirling river of licants erupted in the four corners of the forest, searching everywhere with their panoramic eyes.

  Even though she didn’t have to wait long, Sandara had the feeling that a whole eternity passed before the small forearm display came to life, streaming the images recorded through the eyes of one of her spies. The abomination was hiding inside a big hollow tree! She rushed there, following the cheerful licant that had returned to lead the way.

  The old tree was a true giant of the forest. Sandara ran around its trunk to search for a way in, and she discovered a narrow gap about two yards above ground, large enough to allow her to pass through. She grabbed its edges and jumped inside, landing on the metal floor of a strange dome. Since she was used to the quirks of the virtual world, she wasn’t at all surprised that the room turned out to be much larger on the inside than what the tree trunk would normally accommodate.

  The hall’s walls were made of bark, pierced here and there to allow the starlight to reach inside. The ceiling was a huge concave screen of the galactic map, the rest of the room being the bridge of the Sigian destroyer! The cockpits, the distortion sphere, everything was there! Ugo and his virtual architects were busy stretching strange, luminescent threads between Uralia’s floating screens and the displays of the Sigian fighter cockpits—no doubt to drive the destroyer from that place.

  Ugo’s screens were all red—AI architects from Firalia 9, Sandara noticed, worried. The color gave away another of his betrayals: Ugo had abused his position when he was the city’s jure to hide his secrets on Firalia 9, far from the prying eyes of Forbat and the other Ropolitans. Who knew what horrors he concealed there!

  Ugo turned as soon as he heard the grah’s landing.

  “How did you find me?” he exclaimed, surprised.

  He looked around, spotting the shadow of a licant sneaking along a crack. Others were flying outside around the trees, playfully chasing one another through the star rays.

  “You sent spies! I’m finally impressed,” he said mockingly. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have something to finish.”

  “What are you doing here?” she snapped.

  “That’s none of your concern! And I don’t remember inviting you in!” he replied with a sardonic grin.

  He made a large hand sign, and the main hollow opened its rims wide. At the same time, the floor under Sandara’s feet extended outside the tree trunk, carrying her along. The floor swiftly retracted, and she fell to the ground, hitting another tree before reaching the grass.

  Without looking the least affected by her uncle’s lack of manners, Sandara scrambled to her feet so quickly that she barely touched the ground. She ran back to the hollow, but the gap had narrowed its edges so much that it was now impossible to slip inside. Sandara dropped an exclamation of annoyance, accompanied by the monster’s derisive laughter.

  She grabbed the tree and climbed nimbly on its trunk, hoping to find a crack large enough to sneak in. But all were too small for that. However, she had no intention of giving up that easily; back on the ground, she whistled for her sphere.

  “Wow, my little niece called her portal?” she heard Ugo say with a chuckle. “Let’s see what she can do better than a five-year-old kid.
”

  Without bothering to answer, Sandara stepped inside the portal. Soon, she came out again, carrying a bulky tubular container in her arms.

  She hesitated for a split second before pulling out her slender tail from its back pocket. She coiled it around the silvery tube and started to climb the trunk, with difficulty, until she reached a small crack on the top of the trunk.

  Ugo was working frantically at his displays while glancing at her from time to time, apparently amused by her childish efforts to sabotage him. His amusement ended rather abruptly when she opened the tube and spilled its contents through the crack. The abomination’s scream of disgust showed her that she reached the target.

  “Dolmecs!”

  Thousands of parasitic scavengers, stinking worse than a mountain of putrid carcasses, fell inside the dome—some of them landing right on the avatar’s head. The aggressive critters didn’t waste time, jumping around and sticking their disgusting suckers on all available surfaces—especially on Ugo’s exposed head and hands—in search of a nice meal to lick.

  “I made them hungry, as you like them. I didn’t forget your phobia, Uncle, ” Sandara said, laughing loudly. “Enjoy your meal!” she added to the dolmecs sarcastically.

  As expected, it was less than a second before Ugo stormed out of his dome, madly wiping at the parasites stuck on his head and clothes, his face twisted in anger. When he spoke, his voice intonation didn’t promise anything good.

  “Crazy female, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “I thought it was obvious—I’m having a little fun,” Sandara said with a giggle as she climbed down the tree.

  “The fun is over! Look, for the sake of old times, I’m willing to forgive your follies if you get out of my way—right now!”

  “You really lost your smell,” Sandara exclaimed. “I’ll never let you harm Gill! I suppose that’s what you were about to do, right?”

  “Don’t you understand that he’s going to the aliens? They’ll do anything to stop their future gods, you and me!” he said, emphasizing the last words. “I know you care about him—I saw it in your eyes on Acanthia—but I can’t spare his life. We have to do it if we want to live!”

  “Speak for yourself,” she replied coldly. “I want Gill to reach the aliens and come back with them, and you won’t fly anywhere in this ship!”

  “You don’t leave me any other choice. You force me to do something I didn’t want to do… to my own niece. Well, it’s your choice,” he said, gnashing his teeth menacingly.

  “Unbelievable, you’re having scruples,” she said quizzically. “Now you’ve really made me curious!”

  “I don’t have time for this nonsense! Your friend has reached the orbit, and I have to prepare a little surprise for him,” he exclaimed, exasperated, while glancing at the trajectory of Gill’s ship on a red display that had followed him outside the hollow.

  “If you dare—”

  “Enough! You’ll have the honor of being the first one to try my new creations. I present you… my little soldiers!”

  At his sign, a patch of discoidal grass crumbled in all directions, and a large matrix materialized in the rupture. Another identical one appeared nearby. They filled with shivering flesh, which quickly awoke to life. The lumps became two guvals, maybe even fiercer than in the games—their tiny eyes bloodshot with rage and fangs dripping foul-smelling saliva. Their fur was brown, not gray as usual.

  “And you think these two will stop me?” she replied. “Somehow you forgot I’m dead? This isn’t a game to disconnect me!”

  “Ahh, but here’s where you’re wrong about that! Will you please observe their nice little teeth? At least now, if you never paid attention to programming.” the monster said, grinning.

  Indeed, the air around the yellowed teeth was hazy, as if its molecules were in constant turmoil.

  “The most efficient delete functions ever written! They’re able to destroy Uralia’s fabric—and your avatar, too—if I give the order. Of course, you might hope that the island’s regeneration routines will repair the damage, but the wonderful news is that my deletion is eighty percent more efficient than the recovery. At some point, the stem algorithms lose the race, and poof, the avatar disappears.” He grinned with the happy face of a father proudly presenting his exceptionally gifted offspring.

  “Traitor! How long did you work on this? There’s no way you programmed them just now!”

  “Ha-ha, I’m afraid you’re right on that one.”

  Sandara realized, stunned, that if such an attack had happened to a bixanid on a habitable island, the immortality chip would have been tricked that it detected cerebral death… while in fact, it was only the death of the avatar. The chip would have triggered the neural scanning, causing the physical death of the bixanid. Ugo knew it all too well because he had programmed the chips…

  “You intended to kill all of us if we blocked your expansion! The immortality chips you invented were a trap! You took our shells hostage so that you could kill us along with the avatars!”

  “You’re unbelievably keen today,” he said, giving her a mocking bow. “I admit, it crossed my tail, but what did you expect of me? I was attacked from all sides! My best friends became my enemies; I was threatened daily to be exiled back to Kaura. You have no idea what it’s like to live in such conditions! I had to take some precautions!” he whined.

  “How blind we were to ignore your madness!” she exclaimed, horrified.

  Ugo’s mug froze in a grotesque grin.

  “I’ll forget what you just said,” he said, gnashing his teeth. “I’m telling you for the last time: if you leave me alone, I’m not going to kill you… right now. My guvals guard the dome. Just try to approach…”

  “Then you have to kill me!”

  “So be it! Kill her!” he ordered scornfully.

  He returned to his hollow tree while the guvals jumped on her, each biting one arm.

  Yes, he thought, it is better this way. Even though Sandara often annoyed him, he respected his niece—with all due respect for a formidable foe—and wanted to offer her a proper death for a grah (at least the second one, if the first wasn’t much of one). Sandara had no idea that he could have killed her with his bare hands by jumping on her ganglions, like he parasitized Gill, and manually deleting her synapses with his miraculous function built for his beasts’ fangs. But why mess his tail instead of leaving the dirty job for the guvals when he had bothered so much to program them?

  He felt obliged to use them… especially now that he had the entire red code. Ugo could have never imagined that there, in the grove of a virtual forest stored in the belly of an alien destroyer, he would finally have the chance to test the secret plan on which he had worked for so many expanded years…

  The discovery of the way to control one’s neurons wasn’t a trivial thing. On the contrary! Surely it could be considered his greatest creation. And nobody knew about it…

  True, some parhontes suspected something. Especially that scoundrel, Forbat. I read it in his eyes, he remembered. But he knew I defeated him. He knew they were at my tail’s mercy after the other fools believed my lies about the bracelet and voted for me in the council. He smiled happily, remembering his little victory on the last day of Uralia’s existence.

  Death only brought him benefits after they had woken him up from the amnesic smog. After all, the genetic chains didn’t really matter when he had Firalia’s expanded time at his disposal, along with the war algorithms he and the other architects created for the city’s defense. It took him many years—much more than an Antyran life-span—to change the programs intended to control the fighters on Firalia 9—algorithms that allowed him to see what they saw, to transmit orders and information directly to their ganglions. That’s how he could read Gill’s memory and find out about the Sigians; that’s how he programmed the guvals and analyzed the bracelet to copy Uralia into its memory.

  And of course, there was his secret island, which he mockingly nam
ed ‘Forbatina’. The council never discovered how much he “borrowed” from Firalia’s resources because he learned how to make things invisible. His structures hidden throughout the swamps of the black forest couldn’t be found as the whole island was invisible, except for those who knew how to reach it. Yes, Ugo was the best architect, and he deserved to become a god.

  The fangs pierced Sandara’s arms, and yet not a single muscle flinched on her face. The stem algorithms were trying to patch the damage but obviously were unable to keep up with the task.

  Following Ugo’s order, the bloodthirsty monsters pulled each arm in a different direction to dismember her… But then, a strange thing happened: Sandara started to stretch.

  It wasn’t the normal behavior of an avatar about to be pulled out of its matrix functions. She was dividing!

  Her head widened, and then it split down the middle, followed by the other organs. Soon, the separation was almost over, except for a common foot.

  Ugo was about to step inside the hollow when he deigned to glance over his shoulder to make sure he had gotten rid of the meddlesome niece. The view filled him with horror, seeing the two Sandaras—each grabbed by a guval—pulling their common leg to separate it. His problem with Sandara, instead of being solved, had just doubled! And something whispered in his gills that the grah female wasn’t going to stop there…

  It took a few moments until his voice came back, during which the females fully separated. Ugo wasn’t dumb—he didn’t become the jure of Uralia/Ropolis for nothing—he knew all too well to appreciate a disaster when he saw one. And what he saw in front of his eyes was nothing short of a monumental catastrophe.

  “Curse your tail! What have you done, crazy female?” he exclaimed, horrified, an ugly grimace twisting his face.

  “I did what a five-year-old could have done,” one of them mocked him. “Before I came here, I took the small precaution of changing my algorithms so that I can duplicate. Something you can’t do,” she said with a smile, happy to finally see him scared to death.

  “Stop pulling!” he ordered the guvals, terrified. I totally forgot she can copy herself, he thought, cursing his bad luck. “Rip them to pieces!” he shouted hysterically. “Rip their flesh without pulling them apart!”