The Orb

by Tara Basi

  Peter cringed, but Mathew laughed too. It was a strange noise, more like a mechanical cough but obviously an amused sound. There was no physical accompaniment. The mechanical was as unmoving as a stainless-steel statue.

  “You probably do. One of the few,” Mathew answered, his voice a little softer.

  Peter was struggling with the idea that this … thing was Mathew and unhappy it knew about Kiki’s simulation.

  Quattro came closer to Mathew and ran a fingertip along the mechanical’s arm. “It’s an amazing avatar. Modelled on something real? Fictional?”

  Mathew’s head tilted down as though he was studying Quattro’s pale forefinger, tracing the metal muscles in his forearm, then up again to look directly at her. “Too real.”

  Peter found the easy familiarity between Quattro and Mathew deeply disturbing. He wanted to focus on questions about Kiki’s death.

  “So, you like killing?” Quattro asked with a smile.

  “It’s a means,” Mathew answered, and paused as though he was thinking very carefully. “I’m still looking for the ends.”

  Quattro slowly ran her hand across Mathew’s metal chest while she studied her own reflection in his body. “I think I’ll change my look, too. Zip has the right idea, and I know what Daddy likes.”

  Exasperated, Peter intervened, “What’s all this got to do with Kiki?”

  Mathew’s head smoothly spun away from Quattro and fixed on Peter. “I killed Kiki.”

  Peter recoiled as if Mathew had struck him in the face. It was him, whatever he looked like; the thing in front of him had ripped the life out of Kiki, slaughtered her as if she were an animal in an abattoir, a simple transaction. Peter wanted to fly at the shiny monster and kill it. A nagging voice reminded him that Mathew was already being punished; it was only an avatar; the real man was in hell. He needed to know the truth about Kiki’s death. Peter clasped his hands tightly together and squeezed hard until there was a steadiness in his thinking and his voice. “What can you tell us about my daughter’s death?”

  “I was caught.”

  Peter ground his teeth and supressed an urge to yell. “So what? You must have made a mistake then, left traces.”

  In a blur of movement, the mechanical closed the three-meter gap between itself and Peter, to tower over the old man. It was all too quick for Peter to react. He flinched and gasped in surprise.

  “I don’t make mistakes.”

  There was a finality to Mathew’s response and his menacing proximity deterred Peter from arguing. Even if it was just an avatar, Peter was scared.

  It was Quattro who broke the tension. “How then?”

  “Authorities alerted on contract completion. And …”

  Peter disliked Mathew and his clipped information drip feed. He gathered his courage and asked the question, “And?”

  “She wasn’t expecting me.”

  Peter punched his palm. “Yes!” At last, the proof Peter had been searching for. Kiki hadn’t hired her killer. It wasn’t suicide. She’d been murdered. A raw anger overwhelmed him. How could he have doubted himself and Kiki? Now Zip would have to listen. Where was the sleazy detective? Peter was pulled back to the basement by the pitiful sound of quiet sobbing. Tears were streaming down Quattro’s face.

  “Was it … quick?”

  In a blur, Mathew was at Quattro’s side. He took her hand more gently then Peter would have imagined a thing made of metal could. “Faster than quick. I shorted her Headgear. Instant death.”

  Quattro wiped away her tears and smiled at Mathew. “Good.”

  Peter was incensed. “Good? How can you say that? He … killed her, my Kiki.”

  Quattro’s smile flipped. “Who knows better? Me or you? I say good, and you can’t argue with that.”

  “She was my daughter,” Peter shouted, angry and appalled. At that moment, Peter knew that Quattro wasn’t Kiki, but she was all he had left.

  Quattro cupped Mathew’s face in her hands. “Mathew’s our dark Gabriel. Who hired you, Mathew?”

  Seemingly looking directly into Quattro’s eyes with his empty sockets, Mathew said, “Follow the money.”

  Peter crinkled his nose. This was all too convenient. Too much of a coincidence.

  “Your lawyer told me Zip was your commanding officer during the God War. Why is everything about her? Did she hire you to kill Kiki?”

  Mathew turned towards Peter. “Maybe. Maybe you did.”

  “How dare you!” Peter yelled.

  A disembodied voice cut across the conversation.

  “Prisoner yankee hotel foxtrot, licenced victim’s support visit is now terminated. All communication with victim’s family is privileged and not Recorded. Families can amend Recording options at any time.”

  As the disembodied voice ended its announcement, Mathew’s avatar started shimmering and then it vanished.

  “Where’s he gone?” said Quattro, staring at the space Mathew had just occupied.

  Peter was relieved the killer had left; he’d had enough of Mathew, at least for now. “His visits are time-limited within any twenty-four-hour period. If we need to, we can see him again tomorrow.”

  Quattro looked pleased. “We’re so similar. Time-limited. I like him.”

  Peter’s face screwed up in horror. “Like him? Well I don’t, and we’re no nearer to finding out who hired him. At least we know it wasn’t suicide.”

  Quattro obviously saw Mathew differently. “What about the money? Where did Kiki get his fee? Ten million, right?”

  An exasperated Peter couldn’t hide his anger. “She took it from her trust fund, that’s no mystery. And he’s no help.”

  “But Kiki didn’t, did she? You need to look deeper.”

  Before Peter could argue the point, an incoming priority alert grabbed his attention. “The dogs have Zip’s scent.”

  Chapter Five – Zip

  Things resolved themselves slowly.

  Sound first: rickety breaths, ticking heart, crackling head and a faraway drone, then a little beep, short and sharp. She waited to see if it would return, and when it seemed it wouldn’t … beep. How annoying.

  Then touch. Zip felt as if she were buried up to her neck in warm sand. And now the persistent beep was accompanied by a tiny vibration in her left eyelid, as if some little critter were trapped under there.

  When she cracked her eyes, light tumbled in like summer rain. It was all randomly coloured ripples of brightness radiating from fuzzy objects, except for a little blinking red dot at the very corner of her left eye. It blinked in time to the annoying beep and the butterfly tremor.

  None of it made any sense, but the constant background droning became increasingly familiar as it sharpened and distinct words started to emerge.

  “Duncan might be having an affair. I think it’s a real woman.”

  The dull monotone was emanating from a blurry figure sitting at her side.

  “You’re awake. I’ll get the doctor,” the blurry one said, stood up and disappeared into the mingling colours beyond her ability to focus.

  Turning to follow the blur was exhausting. Zip let her eyes rest on the wavy cream surface overhead. Beep, blink, tremor.

  Someone was nearby.

  “Mrs Hardy, just follow the light.”

  A bright point, with a halo of rainbows, moved left and right. She followed the happy little glow with her eyes. Bleep, blink, tremor.

  “The sedative is wearing off. Mrs Hardy, can you hear me?”

  It was a nice voice, not like the annoying drone or the annoying beep, blink, tremor. Warm, masculine, authoritative, but who was he talking to? Who was Mrs Hardy?

  “You’ll feel a little woozy and disorientated. Zara, please nod if you can hear me.”

  She wanted to obey the pleasant voice and nodded slowly. Then she remembered and whispered hoarsely, “Zip, not Zara.”

  “Here, take a sip. Slowly, it’s water.”

  Zip felt the cool touch of glass to her lips, then a small stream of
water passing into her mouth. It was painful at first, but after a few gulps, she was feeling better. Shapes acquired sharper edges and gradually stopped shimmering. From the fuzzy lights, a familiar face emerged. Alice? Beep, blink, tremor.

  “Mother, are you alright?”

  Zip shivered. Alice was ignored while she took in her surroundings; it was an ordinary hospital room. Alice was sitting by her bedside, and standing just behind her was an older man in a white coat. A doctor? Zip moved to sit up and was shocked to find one wrist handcuffed to the bed. Beep, blink, tremor. Ignoring the handcuff, she called up her Net interface. Jesus and the Tramp, she was offline. Not again. Zip cancelled the beep, blink and tremor alarms. At least it was only the minor Headgear warnings and not the cacophony of emergency signals she’d suffered in Peter’s basement. This was still terrible. Being offline, disconnected, was like being lobotomised.

  “Alice, what the fuck have you done?”

  Alice’s face crumpled and erupted in tears. She spun away from Zip to bury her face in the doctor’s stomach. He gently patted Alice on the head and gave Zip a disapproving look. Helping Alice up, the doctor led her out of the small room and closed the door behind him.

  Zip was disorientated. Was Alice an hallucination? Why was she in hospital and chained to the bloody bed? Zip remembered the urgent delivery to her office and the attack from the dark. Had Alice kidnapped her?

  The door to her room opened and the doctor returned to stand at the end of her bed. He gave Zip a professional smile.

  “Your daughter is only trying to help. I’m Doctor Carlisle. You’re a patient at the Richard Dawkins Psychiatric Hospital.”

  “The crazy palace? What the hell am I doing here? Get this off me,” Zip yelled, loudly rattling the chain between the cuff and the bed.

  “If you’ll remain calm, I will explain everything. Can you do that?” Carlisle asked, as though he were addressing an unruly child.

  Zip boiled with a rage as hot as anything in the Thermal Mines. She wanted to scream and shout but managed to project a façade of calm and nodded her agreement.

  “Your daughter believes you are the victim of illegal Pilgrimists’ methods of forced conversion and has had you committed for deprogramming. Do you understand, Zara?”

  Jesus and the Tramp, they thought her Headgear had been infected by Pilgrimists. Alice had always been a selfish little brat. At least her father wasn’t here to see this shit. Zip struggled to keep her composure when all she wanted to do was yell obscenities.

  “Alice can’t commit me without a professional opinion. I haven’t been examined. You just kidnapped me.”

  “It is unusual, but the professional doesn’t always have to be a doctor. A Church senior administrator, Bremer, has supported Alice’s petition. He believes your conversion is suspicious, your Pilgrim behaviour erratic; and Bella Miles, your nominal Convertor, has doubts about her role.”

  Zip sighed. It was all beginning to make horrible sense. She’d been warned. After the visit to Mathew in the Thermal Mines, the Church had probably sent an emissary to help Alice ‘do the right thing’. It was a second warning, probably the last she’d get. For the moment, this room was the safest place to be, and there was no point arguing with the doctor. She’d have to work through this and get discharged as quickly as possible.

  “My Headgear is clean; I’ve always had the best filters. You can easily check.”

  “We ran tests while you were asleep. Your Headgear has very unusual anomalies, something to do with your time in the military perhaps, but it’s clean; though, as you may know, the Revelation virus self-destructs once conversion is complete. Unless we catch it early, there are no traces to find.”

  Zip threw herself back on the bed and pulled the bedclothes over her head to muffle a scream of frustration she could no longer contain. A second later, she was sitting upright and smiling. “Fine, so how does this work?”

  “If you co-operate, and your conversion is genuine, you’ll be discharged. Or we’ll deprogramme you. That could take some time.”

  Zip’s religious feelings were too confused and confusing to be the result of a fundamentalist Headgear virus. Pilgrimists didn’t entertain doubt.

  “What happens if I don’t co-operate?”

  “Your discharge will be delayed, indefinitely.”

  Another day in bed didn’t sound that bad, but there were already terrible Net withdrawal symptoms.

  “Why am I offline?”

  “It’s all part of the diagnostic and treatment process. You’ll be reconnected when we’re finished. Shall we begin?”

  Fanatical Pilgrimists believed the only way to reveal the Orb’s ultimate purpose was universal Pilgrimisation. The Ungodly, like Peter, lived in fear of forced conversion. Even though it was very rare, just as there were relatively few Pilgrimists, compared to the billions of ordinary Pilgrims. Zip studied the doctor. He was waiting for her to reply.

  “Sure, what do I do?”

  “I’ll be administering a mild sedative and a psychotropic. Once you’re under, we’ll use your Headgear to create some VR scenarios. They’ll seem very real. We’ll assess your responses and reach a conclusion.”

  How could the doctor tell if her beliefs were genuine when she couldn’t? Zip was drawn to the Tramp’s Revelation but hated the Church, and definitely didn’t believe the Orb was a god. What the hell; if the doctor could sort all that out, it would be worth the indignity of being kidnapped and handcuffed to a hospital bed. Zip nodded in agreement. At least she’d be concealed from the Church for a while, and it delayed having to tell Peter and Quattro that her involvement in their messy business was over.

  The doctor pressed a coin-sized pad to her neck. A pleasant warmth spread through her body, as though she’d downed a whisky. It made her feel cosy and a little sleepy. He was a very nice doctor.

  “You’re going to have a structured VR dream. It’ll be a reimagination of your conversion by your subconscious, with a little help from a strong hallucinogenic, which I’m administering … now. Zara, can you please count backwards from five?”

  “It’s not Shara. It’s Ship. Five … four …”

  Zip was on the front row of a Wave. The front row. How extraordinarily lucky she was. She was standing on a metre-square metal plate holding onto a metal rail that drew the same square shape around her body at waist height. Safety restraints anchored her to the frame, embracing her naked body like a cobweb.

  Directly ahead, and holding up the sky, was the Cuboid. The blindingly white, featureless walls soared into the sky, completely encasing the Orb. It had been built at the end of the First Orb War, the Money War, to protect the city, restore property values and cement Orb Industries’ exclusive control of the Pilgrims’ God.

  A rustling attracted her attention. Behind her, an old man was settling into his own square metal metre. His naked belly happily wobbled atop bottle-brush legs as he fussed around his tiny domain. Wisps of straggly, white hair blew about his head in the cool spring breeze like wind socks. Here, new-born naked was the Pilgrims’ dress. The old man stopped his exploration when he noticed Zip and gave her a childishly happy grin. Zip smiled in response; there was no talking once you’d joined the Wave.

  Beyond the old man’s brown, spotted head was a wide river of flesh flowing back through the precious greenery of Hyde Park, all the way to the Orb Nexus. Directly ahead was the entrance to the Orb Way, a short tunnel that would take the Wave inside the Cuboid. To her left was the boarding platform, with its long lines of crowd control lanes. She’d queued there for hours, along with countless others. It was always full of Pilgrims waiting to board the next Wave. To her right was an obvious family of four: a girl and boy in their teens and their parents, a handsome couple, who were all safely housed in their individual metal squares. They were staring straight ahead into the tunnel, their faces set in joyous expectation, ready to face their God. Beyond the family was the rest of the Wave’s leading edge, two hundred individuals in all, and
behind them, another 199 rows. A Wave carried 200,000 Pilgrims; it was an ecumenical fairground ride on a gigantic scale. Constantly running Waves took a billion Pilgrims a year to see their God.

  It was said that Pilgrims unconsciously synchronised their breathing and beating hearts as the Wave prepared to depart. Zip was sure she could hear it happening. The wind of disjointed sounds arising from the masses was harmonising and becoming a wordless song of praise, a steady rhythm of pumping lungs and regular heartbeats. A hymn to the Orb was coming into auditory focus. A perfume of adulation accompanied the Wave’s refrain. It had a bouquet of ecstasy and pure anticipation.

  The Wave shuddered slightly then gently started edging forward, heading into the tunnel that led under the walls of the Cuboid. Zip felt her heart rise in her chest and tears pool in her eyes as an overwhelming bliss consumed her. She was going to meet God. The silence around her grew louder as the euphoria rippled through the lines of the Wave. Feet shuffled, arms rose, hands waved, and an excited breathless hush filled the air.

  The time in the tunnel passed quickly in fervent prayer. Passing from tunnel twilight into the brightly illuminated Cuboid interior dazzled Zip. When her eyes cleared, her gasp echoed thousands of others. A storm of astonishment. Her God was before her.

  The interior of the Cuboid mirrored its external appearance: a pure white box with smooth unadorned walls. Orb Industries’ Ungodly artefacts and the Ungodly visitors were completely hidden from the Pilgrims within the Cuboid’s walls.

  In this forty-second year of the Revelation, the Orb looked as it had always looked, exactly as the Tramp first beheld it on day zero, year zero. The Orb was a bright, sky-blue sphere, large enough to swallow Buckingham Palace. The featureless globe floated at treetop height above the matte white floor of the Cuboid.

  Zip couldn’t stop crying as the Wave slowly circled her beautiful God. Four decades of Ungodly probing had discovered nothing. The Orb’s origins, purpose and its nature were a complete mystery to the atheists. It never moved, and it couldn’t be moved. Its surface could not be penetrated. The Orb neither listened nor communicated with Orb Industries or the probing of its greatest scientist, Professor Simmons. Finally, even the professor had succumbed to the divinity of the Orb.