by Isaac Hooke
He paused when he realized there were more pods like the one he'd just left behind lining either side of the wall. The membranes were slightly translucent, and he could see human forms floating in each with the umbilical cords still attached. Through the floor grill below he perceived another level of pods. And above him, past the ceiling grill, still another level with more pods.
Pods upon pods upon pods.
A doorway in the rightmost wall opened onto a massive room. He crawled forward, onto a balcony of sorts, and stared through the grill at the strange activity below.
Mechanical monstrosities were at work, though at what they labored he had no idea. They moved pincers to and fro above compartments that spilled long threads of different colors. Below them, the metal floor was blackened in several places, as though the area had suffered recent fire.
The siren wailed on.
There was a flash, and he heard a loud boom. The hall shook. He glanced upward. The ceiling was a dome made of glass, or so he thought, because he could see the night sky beyond. But this was not the night sky he was used to—a large, multicolored ball floated amid the stars, about the size of his fist when held at arm's-length. Amid the chaos of colors in that ball, he noticed a pattern near the lower right that was eerily similar to a human eye. It was Jupiter, he realized. A planet he'd seen in books.
Another flash. Another boom. The floor shook, and cracks spidered across the glass dome.
"Warning," a female voice droned. "Decompression imminent. Warning. Decompression imminent."
He heard a whir behind him. One of those mechanical monstrosities had rolled onto the balcony from the hall he'd left. In place of legs it had treads. In place of arms, pincers. Its body was a barrel of steel. Its head looked similar to the hilt of a sword, with curved cross-guards and a central haft. Three glass disks stared back at him from the depths of that hilt, and a red light floated above the center disk.
The thing wrapped a set of pincers around his leg and dragged him back into the corridor. The monstrosity hauled him through that hallway of pods. The world shook, and he heard a distant boom, but the monstrosity did not cease.
The thing finally turned into another room, and lifted him dangling by the foot over a strange moving floor as if to dump him.
"Wait!" Hoodwink said.
The monstrosity paused, lifting him so that his upside-down head was at the same level as those glass eyes.
"John Baker," Hoodwink said. He slurred the words, like someone who knew how to talk, but had never used his tongue and lips. "Son of Arrold Baker, 18 Market Street." What was that the dwarf had called his city? "9th section. John Baker. The Users want to help. Meet John Baker."
He thought he saw an iris in each of those three glass disks enlarge, as if the monstrosity considered his words, then its head tilted up once, and then down. A conscious expression of agreement? Or the mechanical equivalent of a nervous tic?
The monstrosity unceremoniously hurled him onto the sliding surface, then wheeled about and left.
The moving floor was soft compared to the previous one. And slightly pliable. His stomach tightened when he saw that he had company. But it wasn't the kind of company anyone would want. Two human bodies lay not far from him, pale bodies crimped in death. Burned.
His face felt suddenly hot. With his eyes, he followed the motion of the floor to its destination—some kind of grinder. He could hear the terrible whirr from here, and see the fountain of blood as one of the dead fell inside.
He groped frantically along the rolling surface, pulling himself toward the edge.
But he had only seconds.
Not enough time.
Before the grinder took him, his last thoughts were of Ari.
He'd done it. He'd delivered the message. He'd saved her.
Yet the victory was bittersweet, because he'd broken his final promise.
Guess I won't be coming back.
The grinder swallowed him.
13
Hoodwink awoke.
He floated in water, like in the dream.
He could see in all directions at once, like in the dream.
360-degrees of horror.
Small particles passed in and out of his flesh. His hands were tentacles. His legs, suckers. His torso, a bell-shaped, glowing mass. He had a tail. Fleshy cords moored him in place.
Around him floated other forms just like him, secured in place by similar moorings to long, horizontal tubes. Their bodies glowed, a thousand forms giving light to the otherwise lightless waters.
A telepathic message voiced in his mind then, a rapid series of moans and clicks that he shouldn't have understood, but he did.
Welcome to the real world, Hoodwink.
He screamed.
Part II
A Second Chance
14
Ari sat by the frosty window, and sipped rosemary tea with shaking hands. She stared at the snow-covered street outside, and contemplated a life that was nearing its end.
She was only twenty-nine years old, though she looked ninety-nine. Vitra had ravaged her body, sucked away her youth, leaving a shriveled shell. Like all Users, she was destined to flare blindingly bright in life, only to burn out all too soon.
Ten years had passed since Hoodwink had gone. Somehow he'd gotten his message through. Somehow he'd passed the Forever Gate and communicated with the gols. He'd become legendary among the Users for it.
But the contact had proven disastrous. The gols used the opportunity to lay a trap, and almost every last User had died. Only Ari and Leader survived.
She was Leader now. In those ten years, she'd relaunched the group, and given everything she had to them. Body. Mind. Soul. For what? It hadn't mattered. She hadn't changed a thing. The world was still dying and there was nothing she could do about it. The snowstorms worsened, the cold became colder. More and more of the gols fell victim to the mind plague. And then there was The Drop, a relatively recent phenomenon that involved human beings dropping dead for no apparent reason. Not just one at a time, mind, but hundreds throughout the city. Men, women and children. Young and old. It didn't matter who you were, or what you were doing, you weren't immune to The Drop. If you don't watch out, The Drop's going to get you. Don't do any wrong, or The Drop'll have ya. The Drop. The Drop. The Drop.
Society was falling apart. Despite her best efforts. Despite her attempts to seize power from Jeremy, the mayor.
Jeremy.
She'd had to leave him, seven years ago, when it became too obvious she was a User, and aging at a rate far faster than normal. Jeremy hadn't seemed all that disappointed. He'd taken another wife soon thereafter, apparently glad to replace her with a young, beautiful wife.
Beauty. It'd been a curse, in her youth. Suitors had pursued her relentlessly, never granting her peace. Jeremy had protected her through it all, and only he won her heart in the end. He was—no, those were false memories. Just as most of her personality had been false, fashioned specifically for the marriage. Her knowledge of poetry, music, and painting. Her comprehension of politics, social intelligence, and manipulation. Her skills in the bedroom. She was programmed—revised—to be his perfect mate.
Only her political talents were still of some use. The remaining skills? Utter chaff. She had no piano to play. No canvas to paint. No one cared about her poetry. And no one would make love to her.
She was alone in this tiny shack of a house, which was a pittance compared to the luxury she had been used to, and her only contact with the outside world was through the furtive missives sent to the New Users. That and the human nurse who visited once a day to bathe her and prepare her meals. Sometimes she confused him for Jeremy, and even addressed him "Mayor." The nurse always humored her, saying "yes Ari" to most everything she said. Because of that, occasionally she played tricks on him, or told him terrible swear words involving her most intimate body parts to see how he'd react, but the response was always the same. "Yes Ari."
She set down her cup angrily
. Yes Ari. How she despised that patronizing nurse. Didn't he understand the power she could wield? Didn't he realize that she could vaporize him with a thought? She'd grown vast in power these past ten years. She was one of the strongest Users, despite her outward appearance, and vitra literally stormed within her.
Her tea had grown cold. She allowed electricity to spark from her fingertips, and instantly the liquid boiled. She took a tentative sip. Ah, much better. She remembered a time when hot tea scalded her tongue. These days it was the only thing she could drink—everything else felt cold. It was getting so very hard to keep warm at her age. So very hard.
But I'm not that old! a part of her shouted. All she had to do was look at the liver spots on her trembling hands. Oh yes you are.
A hurried knock came at the front door and she almost dropped the cup.
"I'm coming! I'm coming!" She crankily grabbed her cane, and steeled herself for what would come. She stood all at once, and flinched at the agony in her left knee. Something always hurt these days. Her left knee. Her right shoulder. Her lower back. She massaged electricity into the knee, and it helped, a little.
The knocking at the front door became more frantic.
"I said I was coming!" She began the long journey to the door. The shack was small, but so was her stride, and she crossed the room step by tiny step. She wondered who was bothering her this morning. The nurse wasn't scheduled to visit for another three hours.
She finally reached the door, and paused a moment, not at all looking forward to the cold that would come.
The blasted fool outside the door knocked again, and she opened the door irritably. A wave of frigid air assailed her.
Damn this cold!
Shivering, she recognized Jackson, a messenger who'd joined the New Users a year ago. He was the highly-connected cousin of the mayor. A little on the dumb side.
"What is it?" Her breath misted. "Why have you come here in broad daylight? Were you followed?" She glanced at the snowy street behind him. There were only a few people about. Human.
"Leader Ari!" Jackson bowed excitedly.
"Yes yes." Ari waved a dismissive hand. "Spare me the formalities and answer the question damn you."
Jackson bounced on his heels rather exuberantly. "He's done it. He's really done it. He's crossed back!"
"Who's crossed back? Speak plainly, idiot!" Old age had made her a little crabby, she had to admit. That, and the irrepressible cold.
The man offered her an open journal.
Ari no longer noticed the man, nor the breath misting between them, nor even the cold. All of her attention was on that diary, which she recognized immediately. It was the diary that was twin to the one Hoodwink had taken with him, a diary rigged to instantly reflect any words written in his copy. It was the diary that was kept on display in the New User headquarters deep underground, reverently left open to the page of Hoodwink's last missive ten years ago. It was the diary she'd sat beside for weeks after he'd gone, futilely waiting for a message from her father, a message that never came.
Something new was written beneath the last entry, in Hoodwink's own handwriting. A single sentence:
Told you I'd come back.
15
Ari snatched the book from Jackson and slammed the door. She made the long return journey to her spot by the window and plunked herself down in the chair.
Her eyes drifted to the bookshelf hammered into the wall by the window, a shelf whose tomes had made her laugh and cry throughout the lonely nights. Some of those books had kept her warm, filling her mind with visions of sandy, tropical islands teeming with palm trees and coconuts. Others had only made her pin-prick cold. Much like the book she held now in her lap.
Told you I'd come back.
Jeremy had laid an intricate trap for her. Of that she had no doubt. He must have discovered his cousin Jackson was one of the Users, and he'd arranged for him to deliver the book in a bid to reveal her hiding place.
That meant the gols were coming.
She was too tired to run. She'd run at first, those seven years ago. Constantly moving from place to place. But then five years ago she went into permanent hiding because she just couldn't run anymore, and she swore then that if she were discovered, she'd make her last stand here.
She renewed that promise now, swearing to go down in a storm of glory that would be talked about among the New Users for years. Well, for as long as this fragile society lasted, anyway.
A strange sense of peace came over her, now that the choice to stay was made, and the book in her lap didn't feel so cold, nor so heavy. She stretched her fingers and let her gaze return to the snowy street outside, and she waited, conserving her charge, readying herself for one final hurrah.
After a time, she heard the jangle of keys in the door.
The time to die had come.
She let the current flow through her body, allowed it to crisscross her skin in deadly waves. She looked like a harmless little old lady, she was sure.
But the first gol, or man, to touch this little old lady would be utterly incinerated.
16
Ari heard the door open and close behind her. Then the footfalls came. Muted. Cautious. She couldn't tell how many intruders had entered. Two. Three? If that was so, the gols had grossly underestimated her.
She stoked the charge inside her, and the air above her skin began to crackle with a subtle hint of energy.
"Hello Ari," Nurse Richard said.
Those words saved his life—Ari released the charge a split second before Richard's fingers wrapped around her upper arm.
"Time for your bath," Richard said.
Ari slumped in relief. Not yet, then.
Not yet.
She set aside the diary. "Why so early today?"
Richard shrugged. "I'm here at the usual time."
Had she really whiled away the entire morning already?
Richard glanced at the book, nosy as always. "What were you reading?" His features were angular and harsh, his eyes close-set.
She bared her teeth in a smile. "A pleasant fiction about a dead man who returns to life ten years after abandoning his daughter."
Ari numbly let the nurse lead her from the main chamber to the only other room in the shack, a room that was more a closet than anything else. Without comment, Richard emptied her chamber pot into the sack he'd brought along for the purpose. Normally the residents of Luckdown District just dumped their excretions out the window, but over time disgusting brown stalagmites formed along the walls, half buried in the snow. She hated that. A lot of people liked it, unfortunately. Take her neighbors. They were always talking about how solid their walls of wattle-and-shit were. At least they weren't nosy, though they had to wonder how she could afford a nurse. As did others in the neighborhood apparently—a robber tried to steal from her, once. She'd left him with a seriously blistered hand, and a message for other aspiring thieves—this house was off-limits.
Richard undressed her, and lowered her into the small tub that took up half the room. As usual, he'd brought along a water bladder. She didn't have a fireplace, so he boiled the water before coming, and by the time he reached here the contents had always cooled to a pleasant lukewarm. Pleasant or no, today she shivered for the entire session. Normally she would've made some crude joke at least once, but she wasn't in the mood. Not today. She kept expecting gols to come rushing inside. If they did come, she supposed there was one plus to being caught with her pants down like this—the water would amplify her charge.
Afterward, she dressed, and Richard set out her meal. Today it was previously cooked chicken, now cold, with hard bread on the side. She hated cold chicken. When Richard glanced away, distracted by the distant screaming of one of the neighbors, she unleashed a trickle of electricity into the meat. There, much better.
"Is everything all right Ari?" Richard said.
She chewed on, just as if he'd said nothing. Chewed. Her teeth were the one thing the ravages of vitra had left intact,
thankfully.
At last she deigned to answer him. "Everything's just fine." She glanced at the doorway.
"There," Richard said. "You did it again."
"What?" She set down the chicken. "Well speak up you blathering idiot! I may be old, but I won't stand for patronizing."
Richard merely smiled. "Why do you keep looking at the door?"
"The door. I—" Why indeed? If the gols were going to come, they would have arrived already. What was Jeremy's game?
They planned to come in the night, no doubt, and collar her while she slept. That was the best way to capture a User. Without casualties, anyway. Well she'd be damned if she let herself go out that way. If she was to die, she was going to do it on her own terms. Uncollared and free.
She was sick of Jeremy playing with her.
"Richard," she said. "Would you help me with something?"
"That's what you pay me for, dear Ari," Richard said.
She grated her teeth at his patronizing tone. "I want to go for a walk."
He raised his eyebrows and stared at her for a moment, then he smiled that infuriating smile of his. "As you wish, dear Ari."
And so he helped her dress. Normally she put on a threadbare jacket and moth-ridden scarf so as not to attract attention, but today she donned her fur cloak, fur cap, and fur boots, clothes reserved for special occasions only.
Dying was a special occasion.
Richard led her out into the raw cold. She walked across the snowpack with one hand clenching his, and the other clenching her cane.
She saw the Forever Gate in the distance, looming over the city like an indomitable titan. She'd always regretted that she hadn't climbed the Gate to search for her father. She should have gone while she was still young in body. She should have abandoned the Users, and let the previous Leader rebuild the group on his own. Likely there'd be no Users today if she'd done that, she had to remind herself. Regret and second guesses were dark pits she'd struggled against her entire life. Very soon she'd never know those pits again. A comfort, though a small one.