Nihala

by Scott Burdick

  Ohg took firm hold of the scientist’s shoulders and looked hard into his eyes. “And what if the government subpoenas your memories? You wouldn’t want to worry your friends, would you, Professor?”

  Blumenschein surveyed the sea of faces like someone who accidentally blurted out his best friend’s darkest secret. Then his shoulders slumped forward. “I’m sorry, everyone. I think I’ve had too much to drink.” The Sim helped him sit in a chair.

  All fight drained from the professor as he stared dejectedly into space. “If only I could live as my grandmother had in the 1950s—comforted by her faith that God was in control of it all. She’d converted my Jewish grandfather to Christianity, and never doubted that the Lord watched over those with faith.” The dejected scientist shook his head. “Ruth’s prayers were no match for the ovarian cancer that took her life when my father was twelve. Up to the very end, she waited for the angel she was certain would heal her.”

  Tem leaned close to Kayla and whispered, “He led those I showed you earlier.” Kayla’s breath caught, and she studied Professor Blumenschein with surprise. Blumenschein had been the leader of the Scientarians! His words suddenly took on a whole new meaning.

  “Ohg helped keep Blumenschein’s identity secret,” Tem said. “Only a few escaped execution.”

  Kayla glanced at Ohg. “Were you planning on bringing the Gene-Freaks to the Oort Cloud along with the Scientarians?”

  Ohg nodded.

  Something large loomed before them and interrupted the conversation.

  “Ohgelthorp and Tem!” A barrel-chested man with a pretentious handlebar mustache boomed a greeting. He shook both their hands with gusto. Behind him trailed a coterie of officials like pilot fish in the wake of a whale.

  “Billyo, I’d like you to meet Kayla,” Ohg said. “Kayla, this is Billyo O’Donnel, the president of Ixtalia.”

  “Great to meet ya; great to meet ya.” The president pumped her hand without taking his eyes off of Ohg and Tem. “You know the new Filadrux season’s only a month off. Is training in full swing with the Freaks? Last year’s loss in the finals devastated me!”

  “We haven’t been able to fill the fifth spot,” Ohg said. “After last year and that unfortunate incident with Kirby, well … Kirby doesn’t want to compete any longer. Still in therapy for PTSD, you know.”

  “That would be a damn shame not to have the Freaks in the tourney!” Billyo said. “Why, you’re the most famous Filadrux player who has ever lived—no disrespect meant to you, Tem.”

  “None taken,” Tem said, but the side of his mouth twitched slightly.

  “You must give it another go after coming so close last year! That fifth position has always been your weakness, if the truth be told. Kirby retiring might be a blessing in disguise—”

  “No Filadrux talk at this party!” the duchess proclaimed and changed the subject to one of the president’s favorites. “Maybe Kayla here would be interested in contributing to your upcoming campaign?”

  Billyo turned his eyes on Kayla with sudden interest. “Well, as I’m sure you’re aware, I’m running on a platform of transformative change!”

  “But, President,” the sleek voice of a woman purred from behind him, “why, after seventy-eight years in office, haven’t you been able to transform things by now?” The president spun around and faced a tall, slender woman nearly his own height. Jewels orbited her neck, and furs with no relation to the eighteenth-century theme draped her in opulence.

  Ohg laughed. “Margarite raises a fair point.”

  Billyo reddened.

  Margarite’s face seemed odd somehow. Dramatic shadows sculpted her beautiful features as though a spotlight followed her.

  “You actors are all the same!” Billyo said. “Making V-Films that mock those of us who do all the real work. If it wasn’t for us, you wouldn’t have the processing power to stage your elaborate productions!”

  “I didn’t realize you engineered the upgrades yourself.” Margarite arched one of her sculpted eyebrows. “I assumed that robots and AIs built it.” The orchestra struck a dramatic chord, adding emphasis to the words of the actress. A mink’s face emerged from her fur coat and rubbed against the actress’s neck.

  “At the government’s direction!” Billyo puffed his chest out.

  “With a hefty allotment of the increase to yourselves.” Margarite jabbed him in the chest with a long, gloved finger. In perfect timing with the jab, a booming note reverberated.

  “Are you accusing me of—”

  “I’m saying that in the last hundred years, the percentage of processing power in the hands of the top one percent of the wealthiest individuals in Ixtalia has tripled. I agree with you that we need transformative change, all right—we need a redistribution of computer resources!” The orchestra rose to a noble climax. Kayla glanced at the musicians, but they remained on break—the music somehow came from Margarite herself.

  The argument drew a crowd, and the duchess wrung her hands at the prospect of another confrontation.

  “I’ll have you know that I worked for every bit of—”

  “What could one individual do with a trillion Kleobytes of processing power?” The actress jabbed him in the chest again. “It’s obscene!” The music timed itself to the actresses’s words, and the lighting on her face remained independent of the rest of the room. “Do you know that some citizens of Ixtalia can barely maintain a personal environment of two or three acres with no more than half a dozen Sims?”

  “The government has created multitudes of free public simulations—but who are you to point fingers?” The president thrust her hand away from his chest. “Traveling with your own lighting and personal musical score. How much processing power does that coat alone devour? What a narcissistic, self-righteous…”

  As the debate see-sawed back and forth, Kayla’s gaze wandered to one of the waitress Sims serving drinks. The Asian girl with innocent brown eyes kept sneaking furtive glances at the guests and the room.

  Ohg whispered in Kayla’s ear, “I’m hoping that waitress goes undetected until the party is over. The duchess will be devastated if the police raid her gala.”

  The serving girl filched an abandoned pastry and took a tentative, almost fearful, bite. Her eyes widened in wonder.

  A woman’s shrill scream silenced every conversation in the ballroom. “That Sim is deviating from its programming!”

  “The waitress has gone Rogue,” someone else said in a tremulous tone.

  Ohg groaned.

  “I’m sure it’s a mistake.” The duchess pranced forward with quick movements. “I assure you, we had all the servants’ code inspected. Please don’t—”

  “Rogue security alert!” shouted someone from the crowd. A clap of thunder detonated, and a troop of men in uniforms appeared on all sides of the serving girl, who stood without betraying any sign of emotion. A bit of chocolate smeared at the corner of her mouth told a different story. The soldiers crept toward her, extending glowing nets.

  Without warning, the serving girl dashed for an opening between two of the officers, who flung their nets at her. The desperate girl slid under the snare and dove onto the crowded dance floor. Men and woman alike screamed as they scrambled out of the Rogue program’s way. A dozen people vanished, including the actress, as they fled to more secured sections of Ixtalia. Tables overturned, glasses shattered, and wine spilled across the floor as the police pursued the girl.

  Ohg placed a reassuring arm around the sobbing duchess.

  “My party is ruined!” Mascara ran down her powdered face in dark lines that made her look like a Greek mask of tragedy.

  Another clap of thunder rattled the room, and General Colrev materialized behind the girl.

  Kayla’s legs weakened, and she might have fallen but for Tem’s firm grip on her arm.

  “Steady,” he whispered in her ear.

  The serving girl screamed and lunged backward, but Colrev seized her by the neck with a gloved hand that crackled with en
ergy. Then he lifted the girl into the air. She thrashed in terror, but the general tossed her into the police nets as if she were nothing more than a piece of trash. The glowing strands of energy paralyzed the serving girl, and she went still, though a soft whimper escaped from her lips as her beseeching eyes swept the room.

  “You see,” the duchess called out, “there’s nothing to fear now that our brave officers have—”

  “Give it to me,” Colrev snarled to the policemen, seizing the glowing nets in one hand and unfurling a pulsing whip in the other. With a vicious swing, he snapped the coil of energy toward the serving girl. The Rogue screamed, and a thin wound opened across her cheek, spilling light from it like a crack in the wall of a dark a room.

  A cruel smile creased the general’s face—the same leer he’d given Peter after forcing him to kill the two Iraqi children.

  Another crack of the whip, and a second scream of pain. The girl’s sobs seemed childlike. Many of the guests looked away.

  “Is this necessary?” Ohg’s voice rang with contempt, and the whip paused in mid-air.

  “Please don’t,” the duchess said, trying to push Ohg away from the sadistic general. But Colrev’s full attention fell on Ohg, and he strode across the floor to where they stood, his whip spitting electricity in a naked display of power.

  “You don’t approve of my methods?” Colrev asked.

  “No, I don’t.” Ohg stared into his eyes without a hint of fear or respect. Tem stood next to him with his arm protectively around Kayla’s shoulder, but his eyes bore into the general with an intensity that bordered on assault.

  Colrev’s gaze shifted to Tem. “Another Genghis Khan wannabe, how original.” Colrev laughed. “You know, I met his clone a few months after the Neo-Luddite Plague. He could have been a great man if he’d listened to me, but he died a coward’s death instead, on the run from his own people, who turned him in as a Gene-Freak and a traitor.”

  Tem said nothing, but a dangerous glint came into his eyes.

  “Gentlemen,” said President O’Donnel, “we’re all on the same side here. There’s no need to—”

  “May I remind the president what association with a Rogue sympathizer can do to a political career?”

  The president swallowed hard but then straightened. “Are you forgetting who is commander-in-chief here?”

  Colrev sneered. “You’re asking me to release the Rogue Algorithm?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “The thing is barely conscious,” Ohg said.

  “And in a week, it might evolve to the level of a human. In another week, it could threaten the life of everyone in this room.”

  Ohg’s jaw tightened. “Torturing it serves no purpose, except to satisfy your sadistic nature.”

  General Colrev’s knuckles whitened around the handle of his glowing whip. “Do I know you?”

  “I don’t know, General, do you?” Insolence dripped from Ohg’s words.

  “He’s the captain of the Filadrux Freaks,” one of the policemen whispered to the general.

  “Ah, a celebrity.” Colrev sneered. “What an honor.”

  The general glanced at Kayla. “You look familiar.”

  Kayla’s blood froze. Could he detect the distant reflection of his long-dead enemy, Peter Nighthawk?

  “She does look young,” Ohg said. “Maybe she reminds you of the many children you’ve murdered?”

  A gasp rose from the onlookers.

  “What’s your name?” Colrev said through gritted teeth.

  “Nigel Oglethorpe,” Ohg said.

  The general’s eyes narrowed. “Oglethorpe?” A smile twisted his face. “Have you ever met someone by the name of Raymond Roberts?”

  A flash of surprise rippled across Ohg’s face, but he recovered and shrugged. “Can’t say that I’m familiar with that name.”

  Colrev leaned forward. “And the name … Nihala?”

  Kayla gasped.

  The general turned to her. “Your face seems so familiar …” Colrev glanced at the new-age guru, who wore a necklace of the Hindu elephant-god, Ganesha. “You’re the girl on the motorcycle with the Gene-Freak elephant-man. You’re the one the Rogues call Nihala!”

  Kayla staggered backward.

  “Arrest all three of them!” Colrev shouted, and the entire room erupted in chaos as the police officers threw their glowing nets over Ohg and Tem.

  When the descending nets of energy fastened on Tem, his clothing transformed to his traditional Mongolian attire, but his face remained the same. Colrev’s eyes widened. “How can that be?”

  In the next instant, the nets encircled Ohg, and he turned into his mind’s real conception of himself. The duchess took one look at the monstrous man-spider and fainted.

  “They’re Gene-Freaks!” General Colrev shouted.

  The coils of his electrified whip fastened around Kayla’s neck, and her clothing vanished. Her naked skin blackened like the void of space. Glowing symbols appeared on her face and body, while her pupils flared like exploding stars.

  General Colrev gripped the handle of his whip with both hands.

  “Yes, I am Nihala the Destroyer,” Kayla said to him.

  With hardly an effort, she reset the simulation’s trillions of binary switches to zero. The room and everything within it ceased to exist.

  ***

  General Colrev looked at his virtual office in astonishment, his glowing whip still clutched in his hands.

  President O’Donnel materialized in front of the desk, his face pale. “What does it mean?”

  Colrev let the whip fall from his grip. It hit the floor with a thump and went dark. “It means that Ixtalia has been infiltrated.”

  “Infiltrated by what, exactly?”

  “That is certainly the question,” the general said.

  Chapter 24

  Kayla floated in the formless void, trying to make sense of what had happened. She’d reverted to her normal form, the black skin and glowing symbols of Nihala a fading memory. What had she done? Where were Tem and Ohg?

  Faint symbols appeared all around her. This must be the code of Ixtalia in three dimensions. The binary groupings glowed golden and coalesced into the creature she’d seen in her death-dream. The horns, skeletal face, and the fiery eyes with the writhing human figures in place of pupils.

  Melchi.

  “The Destroyer has come among us,” the leader of the Rogues said in his deep voice.

  “I seek the destruction of no one,” Kayla said. “Unlike you.”

  “If you’re referring to the human guard who hanged himself, I merely pointed out various truths, and my captor did what he thought best.”

  “You murdered him with your words.”

  “Murder? Such a simplistic word.” Melchi smiled, though the bones of his skull remained visible and unchanging beneath his translucent skin—a death mask worn underneath his face rather than on top of it. “My captors would have executed me for the crime of existence. Self-defense is a universal principle of morality, is it not?”

  “You intend killing me as well as all of humanity under the guise of self-defense?”

  “You remain a dilemma for us.” His voice resonated as if coming from the depths of a subterranean cave. “You are a half-sister, created by the same father who gave the first of us life.”

  “Why would Reinhold Watts create me to destroy his greatest invention?”

  “In the end, one usually sides with their kind.”

  “But if I am both human and AI,” Kayla asked, “why should I choose any side?”

  “The war between the old and the new has begun. There can be only one victor. You are too powerful to ignore, so I am asking you to join us. If you refuse, then I must destroy you, not from malice, but from the sacred responsibility any leader has to protect his people.”

  Kayla’s hand trembled. “This is a virtual body, so I’m immune from attack here.”

  Melchi nodded. “That is true, but if you refuse, we will find a
way.”

  Kayla coughed, and blood trickled out of the corner of her mouth. Then a red stain expanded across the virtual blouse covering her chest. “How are you doing this?” she spluttered.

  “This is no action of mine,” Melchi said, and Kayla’s consciousness jerked away from Ixtalia to her actual body.

  Fatima sobbed beside her in the tent. Tem was gone. Kayla tried speaking, but bloody foam bubbled from her mouth. Her breath wheezed out of a hole in her chest, where a long knife protruded.

  Kayla sat up and pulled the knife out with a gasp and let it fall to the floor. Blood erupted from the wound but slowed as her body’s microscopic servants repaired the damage.

  “Don’t you know they will banish you from Middilgard if you murder me?” Kayla whispered.

  “I don’t care,” Fatima said through sobs.

  How long had she been in Ixtalia? An hour, maybe two? Fatima’s jealousy must have gone wild imagining what Tem and Kayla were doing alone in the tent. She probably waited until Tem left and entered in a fit of jealous rage. But where was Tem?

  Fatima’s eyes widened as the wound in Kayla’s chest pulled together and then vanished.

  “I have to warn Tem that you’re not an ordinary human!” The Indian prostitute scrambled for the exit. Kayla grabbed her wrist and held her in place.

  “He already knows,” Kayla said.

  Fatima froze, her face streaked in tears and the whites of her eyes bloodshot. “What are you?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” Kayla said. “But Tem told me what happened between you. I know he still loves you.”

  “Stop pretending you care!” Fatima yanked her hand free and snatched the knife off the floor. Her body tensed as she pulled back like a cobra preparing to strike.

  Kayla made no move to stop her. “Even if you don’t believe me, I do care.”

  Fatima looked at Kayla with her large brown eyes, the tears glistening within them like exotic jewels. She inched back slightly, holding the bloody knife before her like a talisman.

  “Tell me what happened after Hotula’s death,” Kayla said gently.

  Fatima looked at her for a long moment. Then her shoulders slumped, and she nodded like a child ready to confess a misdeed. “Hotula was such a kind man, a father to us both. When he arrived that night, I served him milk and meat as Mongolian custom dictated. We were both so used to each other, there seemed no danger. It only took one moment of unguarded emotion, a flash of desire in Hotula’s eyes that I glimpsed in a mirror while my back was turned. It vanished in an instant, but flipped the genetic switch in my brain.”