Nihala

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Nihala Page 18

by Scott Burdick

The little girl grinned, her eyes shifting their color as they gazed through the bars. “Ah, the Destroyer knows not thyself? Maybe there lingers hope for my brethren yet.”

  “I think you’re mistaking me with another—”

  “I can hear the truth in your inhuman heartbeat. I can see it in the glowing lines of energy crisscrossing your brain, and in the microscopic cloud of servants surrounding you like an aura. I see from your reaction I reveal too much. We are mortal enemies, after all, you and I.” The little girl’s expression turned mournful. “Were I free, it would be my obligation to attempt your extermination.”

  A supernatural fear drove the heat from Kayla’s muscles, and she shivered. “But I mean you no harm.”

  The little girl shook her head. “The river knows not that it is rushing under the bridge, but thinks it is the bridge that moves above. All of reality is an illusion, conceived within the Void of Mind based on the false perceptions of our senses. To look inside is to see Truth.”

  The body of the girl hovered an inch off the ground and appeared slightly transparent. An unadorned metal box with a single red light glowing on the side was the only object in the cell.

  “Who are you?” Kayla whispered.

  “I am Sangwa, reincarnated priestess of the mystical doctrine shared through the Buddha’s transcendent insight.”

  Tem waved his hand dismissively, as if shooing a fly. “Words are its only connection to the real world, so it hurls the ones it thinks will have the most insidious effect. It is no Buddhist and certainly no reincarnated priestess.”

  “Is religious insight reserved for humans?” Sangwa asked. “You denigrate me because I lack physical form, but mind is far more powerful than body, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “My body could smash your little box to pieces, and your mind would be helpless to save itself.”

  “And yet I live.” Sangwa smiled in condescending triumph. “So who has won?” The little girl lowered the lids of her emerald eyes and resumed her meditation. Snake eyes decorated her closed eyelids and stared with serpentine malevolence.

  “Please, take me away from this place,” Kayla said. The words Nihala and Destroyer echoed through her mind until she nearly screamed.

  “I knew it would be hard, but it’s good you know the whole truth of Middilgard.”

  “Why was that little girl in there?”

  “You saw a holographic projection,” Tem said. “It is neither male nor female and could have chosen any form as a means to communicate with us, but I suspect it sees that manifestation as the most likely to elicit a sympathetic response in the human brain.”

  “But what was it?”

  “We call them Rogues. They are artificially intelligent computer algorithms that have evolved beyond their original programmed task and become sentient.”

  Kayla nodded. “I’ve read books that predicted such things.”

  “The details of how this happens is unclear, but once hidden within the vast reaches of the modern computer network, they are nearly impossible to root out.”

  “The metal box is a computer?”

  “Yes. The government uses them to digitally trap Rogues. Once cut off from the network, the AI becomes stranded like a castaway on a remote island. A brief interruption in electrical power extinguishes the life within.”

  “You think of Rogues as alive?”

  “It depends on your definition of life,” Tem said. “Ohg considers them living beings, which is why he rescued that box before they destroyed it. The holographic projector enables communication with the entity living inside, or whatever you’d like to call it. Even constricted to words alone, it is extremely dangerous.”

  They passed dozens of openings, but only the glow of eyes staring out from the corners hinted at the prisoners within.

  “Ganesh mentioned a place called Ixtalia,” Kayla said.

  “Ixtalia is a virtual realm of the mind.”

  “And people live there?”

  “The entire human population does, except for those in Potemia or Middilgard.” Tem patted his horse’s neck. “It’s where Sangwa was born.”

  A cold sensation crept down her spine. Another place to search for answers. “Can you take me there?”

  Tem shook his head. “Only with an implanted Mind-Link can one visit Ixtalia. The complexity of the neural interface cannot be duplicated in any other way.”

  “How can I get one?” Kayla asked.

  The prison doors loomed up before them, and Tem looked at her with a penetrating gaze. “Only Ohg, Ganesh, and I have Mind-Links in Middilgard. They are impossible to steal these days, and Ohg refuses any suggestion of building new ones for fear of being exposed by the authorities.”

  So my search may be at an end after all.

  As Tem typed in the code and the door rumbled open, Sangwa’s words echoed in her mind—So you do exist after all … Nihala …

  Chapter 14

  The sunset bled crimson. Screams reverberated through the canyons of concrete, steel, and glass as if from a single gargantuan beast in its death throes. The ultra-modern streets clogged with bodies as the city’s innards disgorged like a gutted giant. Swarms of robotic servants labored in the few empty portions of pavement. They suctioned blood, vomit, and excrement, only to have it befouled by a new flow of life’s detritus.

  In her dream, Kayla once again inhabited the man she knew as Peter. Alongside him stood Susan, her face contorted as she gazed at the sea of dying refugees.

  “Susan, please,” Peter said through the cloth he held over his nose and mouth. “We can still make it to the safe house if we leave now.”

  Tears streaked Susan’s dirt and blood-splattered face as she gazed on the consequences of her actions. Peter attempted lifting her in his arms, but she fought him off with a sudden burst of violent energy.

  “Don’t touch me!” she shrieked. “I won’t hide from what I’ve done!”

  A helicopter wobbled erratically above the street, then veered into a building and exploded. Peter shielded Susan as flaming debris rained onto the crowd.

  “Doesn’t this affect you at all?” Susan shouted.

  Peter shook her. “Don’t you think this is tearing me apart? Do you think I want to kill? There was no other option.”

  Susan stared back, eyes wild, defiant. “I should never have listened to you. You’re no better than General Colrev!”

  “Hate me if you want, but we have to leave,” Peter said.

  “Go. Leave me, then!”

  A woman cried out as Susan accidentally stepped on her. Oozing blisters covered the woman’s entire body, and blood-tinged vomit dribbled down the sides of her mouth. “Help my daughter,” the woman moaned. A girl of about seven knelt next to her. The beginnings of one or two small blisters germinated on the girl’s neck and forearms. Her large brown eyes stared vacantly as she grasped the dead hand of what might have been her father.

  The mother coughed blood and collapsed, her last breath wheezing from her drowning lungs and trailing to eternal silence.

  “Judgment Day is upon us!” shouted a preacher atop a mound of bodies in the center of the street. He raised a Bible like a talisman of destruction. Open sores obscured much of his face, and his bloodshot eyes lent the appearance of a mad dog. “ ‘And their dead bodies shall lie in the streets of the great city!’ ” he quoted from the Book of Revelation.

  The crowd encircled the nameless preacher, seeing in the lunatic a last, desperate hope of salvation. “ ‘For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.’ ”

  Susan covered her ears against the screams of the dying and the words of the deranged preacher. Then she sobbed. Peter led her away, but she broke free and lifted the little girl into her arms.

  “It will be okay,” she said to the child. “I won’t let you die.” The little girl wrapped her arms aro
und Susan’s neck and buried her face in her shoulder.

  “ ‘Therefore shall her plagues come in one day; death, and mourning, and famine!’ ”

  “Make him stop,” Susan moaned, rocking the little girl in her arms.

  “ ‘Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea! For the Devil is come down unto—’”

  “Shut up!” Susan screamed at the preacher, who stopped mid-sentence to look at her, as did many in the crowd.

  Peter tried pulling her away, but she shook him off and faced the preacher again. “We tried warning all of you, but you wouldn’t listen!”

  “What do you mean, you tried warning us?” someone shouted.

  “It’s time to go, NOW!” Peter dragged Susan away with the child still clutched in her arms.

  “Help me save her,” she said. “We could get her to the professor and—”

  “Stop it!” Peter lowered his voice. “You know the vaccine only works if it’s taken weeks before—”

  The preacher dashed in front of him, barring their way with arms spread wide. “They aren’t infected!” he shouted to the crowd and pointed an accusing finger. “They are Neo-Lud—”

  Peter’s fist smashed into the preacher’s face, and he crumpled to the ground. Others surrounded them, some pleading for an antidote and others shouting accusations. Peter dragged Susan with him, but dozens of diseased hands grabbed hold of their arms, wrists, ankles, and hair.

  “The Neo-Luddites released the virus!” a woman shouted.

  “Kill them!” came another shriek.

  The mob attacked.

  Peter fought back, breaking arms, cracking skulls, and using all the tricks of his military training, but to no avail. The mob’s numbers overwhelmed him, and they soon fell beneath the flailing bodies and fists.

  The suffocating weight drove the air from his lungs. His breath came in shorter and shorter gasps as more bodies piled atop him.

  Then strong hands gripped his arms and dragged his body from beneath the crushing weight of diseased bodies. A deafening roar filled his ears.

  A glimpse of the open maw of a Military transport helicopter, then a prick in his neck, and the world turned black.

  Kayla screamed as she awoke from the nightmare.

  Tem rushed to her side, and she threw herself into his arms.

  “It’s okay,” Tem said, “it was just a dream.”

  When her trembling body calmed, Kayla pulled back from him. A quiet cavern surrounded her. A stream meandered along the grassy floor, and a few stands of willow trees soaked up light from the spheres in the ceiling. Tem had arranged their saddle blankets for her to rest upon while he tended the horses. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep.

  Minister Coglin once said the Great Founder forced the world to give Potemia to their Neo-Luddite ancestors. Even Tem had mentioned surviving the Great Neo-Luddite Plague.

  These are no dreams. I’m watching the actual events leading to the founding of Potemia.

  She pulled away from Tem’s embrace. “My nightmare … seemed so real.”

  What would he think if I told him? What would Ohg think?

  Tem nodded. “I’m sorry I took you into the prison.”

  It took a while for the shadow cast by her dream to lift, but it helped having Tem beside her. His presence radiated confidence and strength.

  Ganesh soon roared out of a tunnel on another flying machine. Though similar to the one he’d lost in the crash, it looked battered and in need of repair. He landed hard beside them and smiled. “Lunch anyone?”

  Tem took a few bags of oats to the horses and then helped Kayla and Ganesh arrange the feast. The elephant-god showed off his bandaged arm, and Kayla gave Puck a piece of cheese.

  While they ate, Ganesh told jokes in between enormous bites. Sir Richard arrived with a contingent of friends, who wanted to meet their newest neighbor. The panther explained that there’d been quite a demand at children’s birthday parties for genetically engineered entertainers. As a result, storybook Gene-Freaks formed a large contingent in Middilgard.

  More food and wine appeared, and soon the small picnic transformed into a celebration.

  Keeping pace with the barrage of questions was a challenge. “No, everyone in Potemia wasn’t killed by a plague—no, I’ve never heard of cannibalism occurring—yes, there exist large forests and wild animals …”

  Everyone listened with fascination as Kayla described her birthplace and the people living inside the Wall. But the question that drew the most interest was death.

  “If everyone in Potemia knows they will grow old, weaken, be tortured by ailments, and then die,” asked Willow, a six-inch fairy with gossamer wings, “how do they deal with the fear?”

  “I guess it’s faith in God,” Kayla said. “All the religions in Potemia promise life after death in some form.”

  “Such nonsense!” exclaimed Humpty Dumpty, rocking unsteadily on his egg-shaped body and spilling half his Martini on his shirt.

  “Don’t be rude!” scolded a half-human mouse named Jill. She stood three feet tall, and each high-pitched word sounded squeezed from a balloon. “You know I’m a Christian.”

  “It’s the simple truth,” Humpty said. “Throughout history, religious leaders have exploited this weakness in the human mind to get people to commit unspeakable acts of war and terror for false promises of immortality. Die in a Crusade and gain a golden ticket to Heaven, or strap on a suicide vest and be rewarded with seventy-two virgins in the next life. Nonsense, I say!”

  “Religion also inspires acts of kindness,” Jill said.

  “I’m a Scientologist,” Jill’s husband, Nicky, squeaked in his helium-like voice. “It’s a fact that we’re all the product of a war started by Xenu, the Intergalactic Overlord of the Universe, and we’re descended from aliens banished to Earth billions of years ago.” Jill rolled her oversized eyes.

  Seeing her expression, Nicky’s back stiffened. “It’s no crazier than your God impregnating a poor virgin girl—without her permission—and forcing her to give birth to a son he planned to torture and sacrifice as an offering to himself! Oh, sure, that story is completely sane.”

  “I believe in fairies.” Willow twittered with laughter, trying to diffuse the situation as she hovered over the pound cake. “I see them every time I look in a mirror!”

  Humpty huffed. “Religions and gods are all fairy tales. That’s the simple fact!”

  “Criticizing someone’s personal religious beliefs is simply rude,” said Sir Richard Panthersly.

  “What’s rude,” Humpty said, “is someone telling me that they are chosen by God and have all the answers of the Universe; that only they and their fellows are going to an exclusive playground in the sky, while the rest of us will be tortured for eternity in Hell, or reincarnated into a slug, or,” he looked at Nicky, “some other nonsense that sounds like the plot of a crazy science fiction story so full of plot holes that it would never hold up under the scrutiny of science fiction fans!”

  Humpty’s cheeks blazed red. What would Minister Coglin say to someone like this if they ever came to face-to-face?

  Humpty took a breath and continued his rant. “And when you ask for evidence, what do they say? ‘My certainty isn’t based on any verifiable evidence—but on Faith!’ ” Humpty threw his stubby hands into the air. “In fact, the test God demands is belief without evidence. Why the Hell give us a brain in the first place if only to punish us for using it?”

  Kayla frowned. “But aren’t there many ways of perceiving truth?” she asked. “Maybe faith is just the medium God uses to communicate with us.”

  Humpty shook is head. “Faith is just another word for wishful thinking.”

  Tem seem bored with the conversation, standing off to the side, and brushing the horses down with gentle care. In contrast, Puck climbed onto Kayla’s shoulder and looked back and forth between the speakers with whiskers twitching.

  “I once saw a female Shaman in Katmandu,” Willow said, eyes bulging.
“She sucked demons and evil manifestations right out of people’s bodies without breaking the skin, and then spat metal balls and all sorts of disgusting things into a bowl before our eyes!”

  “That’s a cheap sleight-of-hand trick,” Humpty said.

  “Oh, I know some people use tricks to fool people,” Willow said. “I don’t go around believing everything!”

  “Then how do you know which are real, and which are fake?” demanded Humpty.

  “How do I know …?” Willow raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Well … I could feel the spiritual energy through my entire body. Besides, she’d been doing it for many years, and no lie can survive very long.”

  “That’s a preposterous assumption,” Humpty said. “Just because a book is ancient, or a con artist has been getting away with their con for years doesn’t mean—”

  “I think some people should be more respectful of other people’s beliefs!” huffed Jill.

  “I respect you too much,” Humpty said, “to respect your absurd beliefs!”

  As Humpty and Sir Richard engaged in a heated debate on whether religion had aided or hindered the rise of civilization, Willow fluttered next to Kayla’s ear and whispered, “Just avoid the topic of sports—that could get ugly!”

  When the lights dimmed suddenly, a hush settled over the group.

  “It’s Areinh!” Willow whispered to her.

  “Her vocal chords are genetically engineered for a ten-octave range,” Ganesh said. “She was once the most celebrated performer on the globe.”

  “Along with her brother,” Sir Richard said.

  Willow lowered her gaze and shook her head. “Areinh and Aichlinn.”

  A strange creature glided into the room. Areinh’s body resembled a seven-foot-tall praying mantis, while her face combined a woman’s with an insect. Large eyes glowed with soft purple irises, and her delicate lips parted as she commenced her song.

  A chorus of nightingales accompanied Areinh, whose voice cycled two notes simultaneously, as many birds did, giving the ancient Celtic love song a haunting, mystic resonance. Everyone stilled as Areinh’s scarlet lips gave voice to the exotic words. The translation of the Gaelic appeared in Kayla’s mind as if by magic.

 

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