Amazing Stories 88th Anniversary Issue: Amazing Stories April 2014

by Unknown

  BOOM!

  The room shook, and a good-sized chunk of rock punched out of the rear wall. The spray of water became a torrent.

  “Time’s up,” Royce said as the water began to rise at an alarming speed.

  “Open the chest!” Myra shouted.

  “For the love of Maribor, open the door or we’ll all die!” Wilmer cried.

  Royce turned to Hadrian and, in a low voice, asked, “What would you do?”

  Hadrian looked at the chest, which supported one of the few remaining undisturbed candles; most of the rest had been snuffed out by the rising water. Then he glanced at the giant steel door and finally at the lever and the chain leading to the ceiling where the keystone held everything in place. “I think Wilmer is right.”

  “The door it is,” Royce said.

  “No, that’s not what I meant.” Hadrian shook his head. “I mean he was right about not opening the chest. Only a greedy person would do that, and I’m starting to think the jester set this whole thing up to make a deliberate point. So, the answer won’t be greed.”

  “Right—so we open the door.” Royce waded a step through waist-deep water, reaching for his tools.

  “No, not the door. Only a coward would choose that door.”

  “What then? You’re not planning to fight that thing out there, are you? Because I don’t think you’re up to it.”

  “No, that’s not what I’m suggesting.”

  “Well, what are you suggesting? We’re running out of time,” Royce said.

  Wilmer and Myra nodded their agreement as they waded closer to hear Hadrian over the frothy roar.

  “Think a minute. The dwarf stole the treasure, tore the map into eight parts, and had the pieces delivered to the nobles he’d been forced to entertain. I suspect dwarves know a bit about revenge…and greed. I’ll bet most of those nobles and their descendants collected the pieces by hunting down and killing one another, just like Myra. But think about what it would take to build this place. Consider what kind of mastermind created it. Do you think the jester was just some clown? Wouldn’t he need a legion of dwarves to do all this?”

  “No time for questions, just tell us, okay?” Wilmer’s pitch was rising again.

  “I think Myra was right. The dwarf was special—a noble or king perhaps. Maybe he’d been hauled to the imperial court to be humiliated by a bunch of greedy cowards—and this—all this is his revenge. The right choice isn’t the chest or the door.” His eyes shifted.

  Royce followed Hadrian’s gaze to the chain that led to the lever, already below the water’s surface.

  Royce smiled. “Only a fool would pull the lever.”

  “Exactly.”

  Royce moved to where the chain disappeared. Hadrian joined his friend, which was easy now that he was floating.

  “Wait!” Myra shouted. She was looking up and waded deeper into the shadows of the room. Hadrian lost sight of her. “There’s a key hanging from the ceiling right above the chest now! Look! The banging must have made it slip down.”

  “There’s one above the door too!” Wilmer shouted, swimming away and disappearing into the growing darkness as another candle hissed out.

  Royce ignored them and reached down.

  “Wait,” Hadrian told him. Then he shouted, “Come back! We’re pulling the lever!”

  They waited as the water level rose, inching up the chain links. Hadrian peered into the darkness. He couldn’t see either of them through the murk.

  “Can you hear me? Come back. We’re pulling the lever!”

  “They aren’t coming,” Royce said, looking impatient as the two bobbed closer to the ceiling.

  “Do it!” Hadrian shouted.

  “You sure?”

  “No, but do it anyway.”

  “Good enough for me.”

  Royce disappeared below the surface. A moment later the chain stretched taut. The keystone yanked free and fell into the froth. Hadrian braced himself for the collapse, but none of the other stones moved.

  “It’s an exit!” Royce shouted the moment his head broke the surface. “Take a breath and swim!”

  “Broken leg, bad arm, and I can’t see in the dark the way you can. Maybe you should just—”

  “Oh, shut up and take a deep breath.”

  The water rose and snuffed out the last candle. In the darkness, Hadrian struggled to find the hole left by the fallen keystone, his fingers fumbling over chiseled stone. Two hands grabbed him from behind as Royce shoved him through the opening, where their heads broke the surface. With the room below topped off, the water had nowhere else to go and surged up the narrow shaft, lifting them.

  “Did you see them?” Hadrian asked. “Did you see Myra or Wilmer?”

  From somewhere above, a white light shone bright enough for Hadrian to see Royce’s face. He was grimacing.

  “Well? Did they get out?”

  “In a way, I suppose. Wilmer’s head was smiling at least.”

  “What about Myra?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  They spilled into another chamber, where the water filled a basin that formed a small pool. When the water rose high enough to reach the chiseled edge of the basin, it stopped.

  Light came from the full moon overhead. They were in a beautiful domed chamber with a crystal roof that allowed moonlight to illuminate its interior. In the center was the unmistakable shape of a stone coffin. On the far side stood a door, which lacked any sort of latch, lever, or knob. In the center was a tiny keyhole.

  The chamber—vast, flat, and spartanly adorned—evoked an unexpected sense of tranquility. Unlike any room they’d visited since descending into the jester’s cave, this space felt safe, even hallowed.

  The pair made their way to the basin’s edge and climbed out. Despite Royce’s comments, Hadrian couldn’t help looking back at the center of the pool they’d emerged from. He waited. The surface remained undisturbed except for a single floating candle listing to one side. Beyond that, not even a bubble. It could have been a mirror.

  “If either of them had been at the lever while we were at the door or chest, they wouldn’t have hesitated,” Royce said. “Myra would’ve jumped at the chance to rid herself of us, ensuring she got all the treasure, and Wilmer didn’t have the courage to wait.”

  As much as Hadrian wanted to deny it, Royce was right. They’d made their choices.

  With his partner’s help, they moved to the coffin.

  “Look.” Royce pointed out magnificent carvings in the stone walls surrounding the chamber. Similar etchings adorned the side of the coffin. Some of the markings appeared to be writing, but not in a language Hadrian could read.

  “Yeah, it’s amazing. I don’t suppose you can read dwarfish, can you?”

  Royce shook his head. “You?”

  “Not a word.”

  Royce ran his hands over and around the chest before lifting the dust-laden lid.

  Inside lay a small body, wrapped and decayed. At his head was a multicolored hat with bells, at his feet a silver box. Royce carefully removed the container, took a step away, and set it down beneath a shaft of moonlight. The box had no lock, just a simple clasp and hinge. Tilting the lid back revealed a lining of fine blue velvet, a small stone tablet, and a key. Royce picked up the key and Hadrian the tablet. Carved into the stone were four sentences he was able to read.

  Cowardice and greed will drown one’s soul.

  The greatest treasure a person can possess is freedom.

  I stole mine by playing the fool.

  Now, so have you.

  With Hadrian in tow, Royce made his way to the door and placed the key in the lock. A single click echoed, and the door swung open, revealing a mountain trail and a starry night.

  Hadrian looked behind them, then at the stone tablet in his hand.

  “What?” Royce asked, annoyed.

  “We should put it back and reseal the coffin.”

  “Why?”

  Hadrian shrugged. “Just seem
s right. After all we went through with the jester, I feel we owe it to him.”

  Royce shook his head. “The little monster tormented us for days—tried to kill us—came damn close.”

  “He just wanted justice, or to put it in your language…revenge.”

  “I can respect that. Only we never did anything to him. We weren’t even after the treasure. It was just a job.”

  “Maybe that’s why we got out.”

  Royce sighed. “Give me the damn thing.”

  He replaced the items and the box, closed the coffin, and rejoined Hadrian, who had waited at the door. Outside, the night air was sweet with the scent of pine. Hadrian gave Royce a surprised look.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t expect you’d put it back,” Hadrian admitted as he wrapped an arm around his friend. The two stepped out, letting the door close behind them.

  Royce shrugged. “I owed you.”

  “Owed me? For what?”

  Royce pulled his hood up, covering his features as the two made their way into a lovely summer’s night. “I would have picked the chest.”

  Text and Artwork Copyright 2014 © Michael J. Sullivan. All Rights Reserved.

  The Jester was previously published in the Unfettered anthology edited by Shawn Speakman.

  Author’s Afterword

  Thank you for reading The Jester. This is one of several Riyria Shorts that are designed to introduce readers to the characters of my Riyria stories. If you like what you read, then please check out my full length novels (The Riyria Revelations & The Riyria Chronicles) available at bookstores and libraries worldwide. If you would like to read more shorts, I’ll send free copies just by emailing me at michael.sulivan.dc@gmail.com. You can request either (or both) of:

  • The Viscount — where Royce and Hadrian meet the Viscount Albert Winslow. (NOTE: this short story was later incorporated into the full length novel The Rose and the Thorn.)

  • The Thieves — where Royce and Hadrian are set upon by highwaymen intent on robbing them. (NOTE: this short story was later incorporated into the full length novel Theft of Swords.)

  The Geno Virus

  by R. K. Troughton

  I wouldn’t call this a confession, as I feel a confession requires first the intent to do wrong and secondly the willful execution of that intent. Believe me when I say I had no premeditation of breaking the law or causing any type of catastrophe when I set out. It just turned out that way. Consider this merely an explanation of the events leading up to my arrest.

  I am Dr. Albert Van de Graaf. Of course you already knew that when you picked me up. Your techs in the next room are wondering why their RF sensors are unable to receive a signal from my NanoTag. Quite simply, I don’t have one. I know the law requires all citizens to have the NanoTag inserted into their cerebral cortex. It happens I was born on an airplane between Hong Kong and Honolulu one month premature. When I at last got to a hospital, the NanoTag was but one of many oversights. Incidentally, I reviewed a paper some years ago by a few of my colleagues that would indicate a trend towards learning disabilities in children that received the NanoTag in their frontal lobe. I think the incident result approached 0.345% of the population, but I digress. We don’t have much time; I’ll endeavor to stay on subject.

  You’re waiting for me to discuss what’s brought me here today. I know, I know, you already have all the facts, and I appreciate your providing me the opportunity to explain myself. The facts can sometimes be misleading, and I want you to understand I in no way anticipated the results of my actions escalating as they have.

  Do you have anything to eat besides these bagels? My body is a bit sensitive to imbalances. I maintain my diet based on Klaringer’s healthy living formula. You should try it. It can help you with that pot belly. How many grams of carbs are in that protein gel over there? Great, I’ll take it. It should hold me over, thank you.

  Where should I start? Yes, yes, the beginning. About a year ago I worked for Star Industries. It was a blue sky research facility, specializing in an array of scientific development outside the realm of current engineering. Even though the company lost its funding, I’m still bound by non-disclosure agreements I signed while I worked for them. Suffice it to say that I worked in the field of Artificial Intelligence. We used 3D nanocomputers with reversible logic arrayed in reconfigurable computing clusters to evolve neural networks at ever increasing rates. My team continued to work on our brain building project until the lights went out.

  You see blue sky research is hard to fund. We thrive on selling patents, but when no one in the company sells a patent in more than three years, the blue sky becomes a little too blue and the venture capital begins to shrink. I insisted that we were getting close to a real breakthrough, but they pulled the plug anyway. They kept the CBM-3N-6 that we were using to evolve the modules, and sold it to Wuhan University for their own brain building project.

  My personal system is capable of evolving neural network modules, but only on the order of one ten thousandth as fast as the CBM. Even the CBM, with all its throughput, was still far behind what I needed to truly evolve the neural network into something groundbreaking. I had offers from universities and a few research institutes, but none of them were appealing. Universities don’t pay much and none of the ones that were interested in me had the processing power I needed. Besides, I hate dealing with students. They annoy me. All the institutes offered me work on projects completely unrelated to my field. So, I lived off my savings for three months before the headhunter turned up an interesting proposition.

  It seemed that a startup computer game company, Geno Entertainment, had run into some difficulties developing the AI for their MMOG, that’s Massively Multiplayer Online Game. I hadn’t exactly planned for the future, and after three months I had experienced a considerable reduction in my portfolio. The contract proffered to me was quite sizeable, and the fact that I would get an opportunity to implement some of the theoretical models I had been considering created a situation that I could not refuse. I hadn’t played a computer game since I was a teen, but I was willing to learn.

  Their marketing research estimated they could attract nearly forty-three million of the more than three hundred million existing players around the world. Only a fourteen percent market share, but still a sizeable number of people to support. My contract required me to develop an intelligent system that would be able to create user available content in an ever expanding cycle that insured each user would have a unique interactive experience tailored to his or her personal gaming preferences. That is the game would learn each player’s use styles and develop new game content that would increasingly adapt and provide an infinite world.

  You see most virtual worlds have a beginning and an end. Every player experiences the same world. Additional content is provided, but the additional content is slow in arriving and is completely identical for everyone. Again the goal here was to make each experience unique; a living world that would react to each user and adapt as needed to continually challenge them. Of course a staff of thousands of programmers could attempt to keep up with the demands, but they would fall short and create a cumbersome financial overhead. Interaction between the users provides a sense of the virtual living world, but Geno Entertainment wanted to take it to the next level. They wanted to make the game as real as possible.

  The six previous years I had been toying with an algorithm that would create a self-evolving neural network. It was able to assign weights and determine fitness values in order to evolve neural modules based on specified input. I decided to adapt this to the game. You see, I’ve stood my entire life on the shoulders of those that have come before me. They pioneered the field of AI. I simply continued what they had started. The evolution of neural networks grew from the desire to create a brain-like thinking machine that had the potential to exceed human intelligence. My work in creating a self-evolving neural network was simply a cog in the machine, albeit a non-trivial cog.

  A fundamental
explanation of my work. A neural network is made up of thousands and ideally millions of cellular modules. Each module has at its core one behavior or goal, which it produces at the appropriate time. Individually each module is not very useful. Taken together, they form a neural network not unlike the human brain. Input comes in and is directed to the proper channels where it can flow through a decision tree and a reaction is produced. Thousands of collected modules can react to thousands of inputs, millions can react to millions of inputs. The more modules you create, the more situations, stimuli, and inputs you can react to.

  Consider a module that receives the taste of sour milk as input and produces the action to spit as output. By itself, the module does not allow you to function as a human, but taken together with a nearly infinite number of other modules, it forms a single consciousness. Fortunately I didn’t have to recreate the human brain, just something that behaved like it. We had our work cut out for us.

  I remember my first day in the office of Geno Entertainment. An overly thin intern named Mark led me through the maze of cubicles towards my desk. He walked slightly hunched over, and it looked like he hadn’t washed his hair in a week. Very oily. He made a slight swooshing sound as he walked.

  “Are they on the development team?” I asked.

  “Not anymore,” said Mark as he swooshed along. “This is tech support. They’re logged into the system twenty-four seven making sure the servers are running smoothly.”

  “Do they monitor the in-game activity or simply glitches in the system?” I asked, as I glanced around at my new coworkers. They seemed like timid rabbits popping their heads out of holes to get a look at the new guy.

  Mark mumbled something, but I couldn’t quite make out what he said. He always mumbled.

  I was expecting to get stuffed into another one of the long line of cubicles, but when Mark led me to an office with a glass door and a view, I began to understand the significance of my role.