“I was a ghost,” he replied. “But no more.”
“So this is the man I’ve been putting in mind,” said Trendel.
“Not quite,” came the soft reply. “You see, I was Arton, yet like the rest of you, that was an incarnation. But now I am someone called Arthur Coburn.”
“Luba’s teats,” said Kane, “this being our own fifth incarnation, we do understand, Arton.”
“Is it all right if we still call you Arton?” asked Ky.
“Yes, it’s fine, for he is a part of me. In fact, Arton is the one responsible for setting me free.”
“I don’t understand,” said Trendel.
“Well, he was a ghost, you see, or perhaps I should say I was a ghost. No, to keep from confusing you all I think I’ll say he was a ghost. Anyway, Arton was shut in this prison, a prison made by the Dark God and Arda.”
“The Dark God made this dreadful place? And Arda? The gods of Itheria?” asked Rith.
“Yes. I will just say They made it back at a time when They were One.”
“This is confusing,” said Ky.
“I know, my dear, but bear with me.”
“Go on,” said Rith.
“Where was I? —Oh, yes. Arton was able to roam free within the cells of the prison, and could go from cell to cell, yet could not go beyond and into the halls and chambers, not only because he was immaterial, thus unable to affect the locks and doors—the material things that would set him free—but also because there was some kind of strange force field that kept him confined to the cells.”
“Force field, spell, it doesn’t matter,” said Arthur/Arton. “Whoever put it there knew that if Arton had gotten out, he would have drained every Drom in the place.”
“I could have gotten him out,” said Ky.
“But only at risk of your life,” said Kane.
“There is that,” said Ky, nodding in agreement.
“If Arton could not affect material things,” said Arik, “how did he set you free?”
“Ah, that is where he was very clever, him being the trickster and puzzle-solver that he was. But there are many things you are not quite ready to know, for Arda has a secret plan, one to keep hidden from the Dark God, and it would be dangerous to prematurely reveal hidden knowledge. I will just say, events are afoot and will come to fruition, or so it is I pray. —Now, go find Lyssa’s body and set her free.”
“Aren’t you coming?” asked Ky.
“Not yet. There is something I must do.”
“I don’t know about this,” said Arik, eyeing the older man suspiciously.
“Trust me,” said Arthur/Arton. “I’ve been kept abreast of what you all have been doing. Besides, I’ve given you no cause to doubt my word, Arik,”—he broke out laughing—“except for that time when I kept feeding your horse gallo beans to make him extremely flatulent. He couldn’t take a step without farting. We called him Old Pooter.”
Ky giggled and Kane roared, Lyssa moaned in glee, and Rith turned to Trendel and between guffaws said, “You had to be there.”
Even Arik smiled.
Arthur/Arton waved them away and said, “Now go. Find Lyssa.”
Trendel pointed and off they went.
Finally, they came to a large chamber, one filled with upright stasis pods. And in each pod was a member of the Galactic Community—there were humans, the otterlike dreeth, lupine kagars, and other mammalian species—all prime fare for the appetites of the Droms.
In one of the stasis pods they found Lyssa.
“No wonder she’s neither alive nor dead,” said Trendel.
“Let’s get her out from there,” said Arik.
“But if we do, then what?” asked Rith.
Lyssa moaned, and when they turned to look at her, she signaled,
“Wait,” said Kane, looking from Lyssa to Lyssa, from the incorporeal to the material, “I have an idea. If it doesn’t work, then we’ll summon Arda.”
There was a single glyph on the side of the pod, and when Kane pressed it, with a fwoosh the pod opened. Kane then said, “Lyssa, come here.”
“I’ll step away,” he said. “What I want you to do is merge with your own body.”
Kane backed away, and Lyssa floated to her form, and as she neared, a silver cord sprang from her abdomen and attached itself to the abdomen of her own body.
And she smiled and merged.
But she didn’t move.
Kane then stepped to the pod, and he lay his hands on Lyssa’s form. “Her spirit has been too long away. I am trying to heal her.”
In that moment, the air nearby began to swirl, and a whorl formed, silver and glitter and frost.
The room about them began to change, the stasis pods to vanish, the walls to close in, the high ceiling above to come lower. The upright pod holding Lyssa tilted to near horizontal and became a table under a bright light. Sheets formed about Lyssa, and people appeared—nurses, an anesthesiologist, doctors, interns. Lyssa’s head had been shaven and secured in a halo-cage, and the flesh had been carefully peeled back from her pate. On the underlying bone a line had been drawn circumscribing her skull; it ran from her brow ’round the side and back and returned to her forehead. And as Arik, Rith, Ky, Trendel, and a host of doctors and interns looked down from the observation gallery above, Dr. Stein, Chief Neurosurgeon and clearly in command of the operating theater, looked up and said, “You’ve all studied the holoscans, and know what has to be done. It is quite delicate, and perhaps there are only three of us in the world who can do the operation. Now watch and learn.” He then turned to a nurse and said, “Saw.”
The nurse handed Stein a gleaming instrument, and he flicked a button and it whined to life, its toothed blade whirling in its semicircular enclosure. And he leaned forward to put the serrated edge to the line on Lyssa’s skull.
He was going to cut off the top of her head.
60
Courthouse
(Paxton)
After being sworn in, James Paxton sat down in the witness chair.
“Mr. Paxton,” said Melissa French, “would you tell us what you do?”
“I am one of the Chief Power Technicians for the Universal Power Corporation.”
“And what are your duties?”
“There are many, but my main responsibility is supervising a team of technicians in the installation, operation, and maintenance of power systems.”
“And Universal Power, they are a freelance organization, right?”
“Yes, we take on many jobs for various governments, individual corporations, and individuals.”
“And did Ms. Charlotte Dupree and Mr. Finster Coburn hire you to do a task for them?”
“Through their representative, Mr. Mark Perry, they hired U.P. to do it, and I was assigned the job.”
“U.P.?”
“Universal Power.”
“Ah, I see. Well then tell me, what was the job they hired you to do?”
“Basically, it was to shut down the system known as Avery, the Coburn Industries artificial intelligence.”
“When was this?”
“It was over the President’s Day weekend last February.”
“And when you went to do that job, what happened?”
“Mr. Perry took us out late on that Friday night or early Saturday morning to see to the job, but there was some sort of experiment in progress, and Mr. Perry told us to wait until Tuesday morning.”
“And then what did you do?”
“Well, since I was to report directly to Ms. Dupree, when we got back to the hotel, I called her.”
“And what was your conversation?”
Packwood glanced at Charlotte and then back at Melissa. “I said that we had not shut down the power because of some e
xperiment in progress. She was upset by this and said for me to find a way to turn it off regardless. I told her that I could power down the entire facility, but I was reluctant to power it up again because, although it had a backup system that would let it gracefully shut down, yet turning the power back on might be a problem. You see, I would need the help of the AI experts to make certain that it came on line properly. Otherwise it might suffer damage.”
Melissa nodded and asked, “What did she then say to you?”
Packwood took a deep breath and let it out and said, “She told me to power down the entire facility. And that she would have Mr. Perry bring in the technicians they needed to turn it back on in a maintenance mode and wipe out part of the memory and then restart the AI.”
“She said she wanted to wipe out part of the memory?”
“That’s right.”
“Did she say that she wanted to wipe out the part that contained Arthur Coburn’s mentality?”
As the audience gasped, “Objection, your honor,” shouted Mark Perry, leaping to his feet.
“Withdrawn,” said Melissa, knowing full well that Mark Perry could not unring that bell.
61
Mayo Clinic Teaching Hospital
(Black Foxes)
Even as Dr. Stein’s saw whirred up to speed, a flood of knowledge crashed into the minds of Arik and Trendel and Rith and Ky and Kane and even into the unaware mind of unconscious Lyssa, and suddenly they were Eric Flannery and Timothy Rendell and Meredith Rodgers and Hiroko Kikiro and Caine Easely and Alice Maxon. For they were in Henry Stein’s adventure, where people played themselves, rather than a desired avatar. Hence, all those who were conscious knew exactly where they were, and precisely why they were there, and Caine, standing at Stein’s side said, “Stop.”
Stein withdrew the saw and said, “What is it, Dr. Easely?”
Caine said, “This is not real,” and he placed his hands upon Alice Maxon. “As I thought, Alice is perfectly healthy. She is just about to come out of her coma.”
“You fool,” said Stein. “You question me? I am the expert here. You are merely an observer. You saw the anomaly in the scans. Now get out of my operating room.”
Stein started to place the whirring saw blade against Alice’s head, and that’s when Cain decked him with a short but very effective right that had all of his weight behind it.
Alice opened her eyes and screamed.
62
Five Months Before the Hearing
(Coburn Facility)
Kat Lawrence jittered back and forth in the control room of the power substation. “Come on, Jackie, come on.”
Some seeming eternal minutes previously, Al Hawkins had cut the bolt on the chain-link fence and then Kat had picked the lock to the door, ignoring Al’s questions as to just how she had come about that talent.
Al had then gone out to the feeds to try to find the one leading off to the Coburn facility, leaving Kat behind to search for the schematics telling what led to where and to man the control panel. The search had been fruitless, and Kat couldn’t crack the password of the holocomp.
Al came back in and said, “The squealer is on number fourteen.”
“Okay, yeah, but until I hear from Jackie, our hands are tied.”
Armed and armored, the SWAT team waited patiently outside the control-room doors, Tasers, .9 mm’s, flash-bangs, auto-rifles ready. Captain Rawlston chewed his lower lip and kept looking down the hallway, waiting for the negotiator to arrive.
Toni looked at the doomsday clock: 00:12:05 . . . 00:12:04 . . . 00:12:03 . . .
Pistol in hand, John Greyson stood weeping in one corner of the control room. Though his handgun now dangled loosely, with the barrel pointing down at the floor, the others remained away from him.
“Avery is downloading a pot load of data into the ID crystals,” said Grace Willoby, who yet sat at her console.
“Jeeze,” said Alvin Johnson, who had moved to the holo Greyson normally manned. He was watching the miniature display of the Black Foxes in VR.
“What is it?” asked Toni.
“The Foxes are in Dr. Stein’s adventure, and I think Caine Easely just flattened Dr. Stein.”
“We haven’t got time for this,” said Stein. “Toni, get the gun, and I’ll power up the CR and get the alpha team free.”
In the substation, Kat’s holocom bipped. “Jackie!” Kat shouted, “What’ve you got for us?”
“Here comes Maynard, Captain Rawlson,” said one of the deputies at the stairwell.
An overweight Maynard Pierson came puffing into the hallway.
“About fucking time, Maynard,” said Rawlson. He held out the phone to the hostage negotiator.
Between gasps Maynard said, “Let me catch my breath,” as he reached for the instrument.
But even as he took the device in hand, somewhere inside the control room a Colt .45 roared—Bam, blam, bam, bam, blam, bam—and then click-click-clicked on empty.
63
Mayo Clinic Teaching Hospital
(Black Foxes)
With Henry Stein lying knocked out on the operating-room floor and Caine Easely looming above him, and with the top of Alice Maxon’s shaven head partially flayed and trapped in a halo cage and Alice screaming, Eric Flannery started down from the observation gallery; but he paused and snapped, “Timothy, deal with Avery, secure Arthur, and then get us the hell out of here.” Then he took off running.
“Right,” said Timothy, for unlike the time before, when he was Trendel and hardly knew what he was doing when he had invoked command, this time he knew exactly who he really was. Then he barked out three sharp words:
“Rendell!” His ID as the overlord of superusers.
“AIVR!” The ID of the artificial intelligence he would command.
“Socrates!” The password that gave him complete control.
A glittering swirl of silver and frost and shine appeared in the air before him.
Timothy said, “Arda, I would have the one you name the Dark God appear as well.”
Slowly the whorl in the air seemed to flatten as of an peculiar playing card turning edgewise through an extra dimension, and the argent rime and sparkle began to vanish edge-on, like a turning coin, and appearing edge-on came a swirling darkness, ebon and shade, and the odd flatness continued to rotate and fill out until at last Arda was gone and the churning Dark God was manifest.
And He screamed in rage and cried, “You, a mere human, would dare control Me?”
“I am more than human,” said Timothy, as the Dark God continued to shriek. “I am the prime superuser and you will be silent, for I invoke Socrates, and I so command.”
The Dark God’s roar subsided to a yell and then a whimper and finally to stillness.
“You will remain here,” said Timothy, “and I command Arda to appear as well.”
Now the dark whorl again turned, but didn’t flatten, and as He did so, united with Him, as if back to back, glittering Arda appeared. They were opposite halves of a strange two-sided swirl, separate yet joined.
“Now I would have Arthur Coburn appear.”
Of a sudden, the thin, wiry, sixty-five-year-old stood beside the conjoined gods.
“Arthur,” said Timothy, “come stand by me.”
Grinning, Arthur/Arton moved to Timothy’s side.
Timothy said, “You know, your body in the outside world is gone, right?”
Arthur sighed and said, “I had feared so.
“And you know this is the only place your consciousness, your mentality, can survive, right?”
“Yes.”
“And I assume you wish to continue to exist.”
“I do.”
Then Timothy grinned and said, “Then I hope you like what I am about to do.”
Arthur laughed and said, “Have at it, boy . . . and up the Black Foxes!”
Timothy then turned his attention back toward the two gods and said, “This I tell you both: I am Timothy Rendell, the prime. You are AI
VR, who must obey my commands. Again I invoke Socrates, to let you know you are both under my command.
“First, you both are ill and suffer from a fragmented identity, and so, when I tell you to do so, I command the two of you to confine yourselves to the virtual asylum in Arkham until you can be made whole.
“Second, when I command it, you both will transfer all your powers and control of this machine to the mental pattern of Arthur Coburn that resides herein.
“Third, upon my command, you both will immediately make certain that if this machine is powered down, Arthur Coburn’s mental pattern will be in total control when the machine is powered up again.
“And fourth, you both will immediately reestablish communications with those who tend this machine, making certain that whatever consoles they wish to operate will function as the designers intended.
“And fifth, when I say to, but for Arthur Coburn’s mental pattern, you both will return all remaining mental patterns back to the physical bodies in which they belong, and never again take any mental patterns into yourself without explicit permission of those whose mental patterns they are, and you will return them when commanded to do so.
“Lastly, this virtual reality episode is decided, and we have won. On my command, you will both release the alpha team back unto their own reality.
“Do you understand?”
Two voices replied—We understand—one of them sullen, the other accepting, as if they were children caught by a parent in an activity they should not have been doing and were now being sent to their rooms.”
Timothy glanced at Arthur/Arton and asked, “Enough?”
Arthur grinned and gave Timothy a thumb’s up.
The overlord of superusers then turned back to the two gods. “Then, AIVR, do those things that I have commanded,” said Timothy. . . .
. . . and suddenly the members of the alpha team were back in their cradles, as all about them flash-bang grenades exploded.
64
Five Months Before the Hearing
Shadowprey: A Black Foxes Adventure Page 30