The Orb

by Tara Basi

  A desperately tired Bremer had followed Zip’s lead, lost his suffocating covering and joined her at the bar. “The same, please.”

  Zip wiped down her arms and neck, dried her hair and smoothed down her poor tortured dress. Looking up, she decided she had to ask and beckoned the barkeep, “Why’s the bar always empty?”

  “Between shifts. We have to work down here. We’re not citizens. We don’t get paid to breathe.”

  It was an explanation that begged more questions. Shifts? Work? What work? Questions that were just a distraction from why she was here. Taking a deep breath, she turned to Bremer. “Stay here and don’t say anything.” Without waiting for a reply, Zip headed for the bright star. It was time.

  As she drew closer, the glow grew fiercer and jets of white smoke, smelling of cinnamon, billowed up towards the ceiling. On the makeshift table in front of the Quartermaster, a nearly full bottle of golden spirit shimmered with streaks of fire. Only the old man’s tightly bunched fists resting on his knees were visible. The rest of his body and face were hidden in the gloom.

  A strangled yelp whipped her gaze back towards the bar. Mathew had appeared and had a metal hand around Bremer’s neck, who was uselessly pawing at the monster’s immovable grip.

  “Where the hell you been? Where’s that ugly Creep? Who’s he? What’s wrong with his face?”

  “Stay calm, OK?” Zip said, as calmly as she could, spinning back and forth between the unseen Quartermaster and Mathew at the bar with his hand around Bremer’s throat. “I was delayed. Creep sold me out. I’ve got news, and none of it’s good.”

  “And him?”

  “A friend. He’s harmless.”

  “What bad news? It worked; we got your suicide note. You’re here, alive,” the Quartermaster shouted at Zip.

  He was angry and confused, and Mathew hadn’t released his grip on Bremer. She wasn’t paying attention to any of that. Her voice trembling, she had to ask, “Have you read it?”

  “No. It’s addressed to someone called Peter Morris, with a note from Zara telling me to get it to him, discreetly. The other stuff’s between us, private.”

  Zip fell into an old car seat and held her head. The old words from the old woman were waiting for her. Why was she sending her dying words to Peter? She didn’t even know Peter back then. Why wasn’t there something for Alice? Little beads of sweat formed on her brow and down her back. Cold, little parcels of ice. She was afraid. Jagged words, bloody words, maybe words that were sharp enough to make her cut her own throat again, might be waiting for her. She needed a little more time before she faced those awfully arranged letters.

  “Let him go!” Zip yelled at Mathew.

  “News first,” the machine said.

  Bremer was turning blue.

  “OK! OK! I’ll tell you everything. Don’t hurt him.”

  Mathew relaxed his grip on Bremer’s throat, and the blood started returning to the poor man’s tortured face.

  “The Church has Alice and her kids. I have to do what they want. He,” Zip said, indicating Bremer, “doesn’t know it, but he’s here to make sure I do. His gear-specs are relaying everything back to Paris.”

  “Shit!” was Q’s response.

  “Creep?” Mathew calmly asked.

  “Church Pilgrimist and a spy that was only ever after the reanimation tech. Would’ve left me for dead if the Church had intercepted the note, but they know Q has it. They only want the Record. They have the tech, stolen from Peter.”

  “Creep was very interested in the Kiki contract and then getting hold of Quattro,” Mathew said, without emotion, then released the ex-churchman. A red-faced Bremer collapsed in a coughing fit, slumped against the bar.

  The Quartermaster leaned forward into the light, revealing a face filled with contempt. “You’re going to help the Church?”

  “Even if they didn’t have Alice and my grandchildren, Industries is bringing back the Tramp. They’ll use whatever he says against the Church. After that, there can only be war. If the Church has Professor Simmons, maybe they’ll both step back. And maybe we’ll find out what the Orb is saying.”

  “Working with AIs and now the Church? It’s wrong and I don’t give a damn what the evil ball says. You know what you promised if this all goes south? I’m holding you to that.”

  Zip sighed. How could she forget? Q wouldn’t be satisfied till the Orb, the Cuboid and a third of London were blown to hell.

  “I have questions,” Mathew said, “for Professor Simmons.”

  Zip remembered their conversation about the professor and nodded. If she could, Zip would help Mathew. Right now, she had to read her death note, find Professor Simmons’ Record and then get it back to Paris. “Q, give me the note.”

  The Quartermaster chomped on his cigar and blew a thin stream of smoke from the side of his mouth. His Headgear linked with hers, and the note was returned to sender. With the transfer completed, Q sat back in his seat, disappearing into the gloom, leaving only tightly balled fists and his bleached knuckles in the dim light to speak for him. Silence fell in the bar. Bremer had stopped coughing. Mathew was frozen in a passive pose. The bartender was quietly polishing a glass, seemingly uninterested in the drama. Tick went the Church’s clock. Zip couldn’t put this off anymore.

  Zip prepared herself. The few words Zara had left behind might fly off the page like little glass splinters and stab her in the eyes. Each little word a black worm that would burrow its way into her brain and settle somewhere deep inside, so deep she’d never get them out. Zip rocked in her chair, moaning quietly, and might have stayed that way for a long while if the Church’s deadline hadn’t rung another warning in her Headgear. Alice and the girls needed her.

  She opened the note. It wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting. The note to Q was brief and poignant. She cried a little while reading it.

  Q, I’m probably dead. Get the attachment to Peter Morris, by hand. No Net. Get out of London, two years from now and before the end of March. Take Alice and the girls with you. I was a bit crazy last time, but you have to know I’ve always loved you. Still do. I’m sorry. Zara. Xfer34Xbdt256X

  P.S. Get it to Peter quickly.

  It didn’t read like a suicide note. She turned her attention to the attachment meant for Peter. It was encrypted and looked like nonsense. She had no idea what it meant. It was a devastating dead end. No answers and no information about where Professor Simmons’ Record might be hidden. Zip sent the document back to Q. “Any ideas?”

  Q was quiet for a while. His eyes were closed but flickering under his eyelids.

  “The main message, or whatever it is, it’s not in any code I recognise. Assume this Peter guy will know what it says? Who the hell is he anyway?”

  Zip’s pretty face was pinched and creased. Her tears had dried. She’d hoped against hope that Q might have been able to decode the mysterious message that was supposed to have been delivered to Peter more than two years earlier.

  “I don’t understand the connection. I only met him a few days ago. It doesn’t matter. Industries has him; he’s been disappeared. I’m screwed if I don’t find the Record.”

  “It’s not long till the end of March. What’s going to happen?”

  Zip pulled at her hair in frustration and screamed, “I don’t fucking know. Nothing makes any sense.”

  Q grunted. “At least you’re not dead. What about the co-ordinates in your note? Looks like they point around here somewhere.”

  “What are you talking about?” Zip raged, half listening while trying to work out if there was any way to get the note to Peter in the time that was left.

  Q laughed. “The sign-off on the note to me, in between those sexy Xs; that’s Special’s code.”

  Zip looked again at her note to Q. Jesus and the Tramp, it was obvious. Those were GPS co-ordinates. She punched the air and threw her arms around Q and hugged him.

  “I’m going to get the Record. Wait here, Bremer. You too, Q. This shouldn’t take long
.” Zip climbed back into her thermal gear and boots. With precise co-ordinates, even her simple, black and white, 2D Headgear map would be enough to lead her to the hiding place.

  Zip was directed to an exit at the back of the saloon. Outside, there was a narrow rubbish-strewn alleyway between towers of teetering shacks that blocked out most of the light. Zip was fiercely focused on what needed to be done to save her family. Understanding the warning about the end of March in her note and the undelivered message to Peter would have to wait.

  The path sloped down a cutting into the rock. After a while, the alleyway became a tunnel that disappeared under the Sediment Town hovels. It was well lit with permanent lamps. The minimalist Headgear map offered few clues as to what lay ahead; it merely indicated a direction of travel and the distance to the co-ordinates the note had specified, less than a kilometre ahead. The rocky burrow was roughly hewn, like those leading down to Sediment Town. Unlike those, this floor was worn smoothly flat by heavy use. Up ahead, a different kind of light suggested the tunnel would shortly be coming to an end.

  As she emerged from the burrow into the open, Zip forgot everything else and held her breath in wonder. Another huge cavern lay before her, its high ceiling riddled with tiny holes like a giant upside-down colander. Piled almost to the roof was a mountain of Records and Headgear parts glittering brightly in the shimmering air of the cave. A semi-circle of crudely built wind turbines hung from the roof and were gently turning, too slowly to generate any kind of breeze. It wasn’t immediately obvious why they were there. It wasn’t for ventilation. The arc of upside-down, metal windmills was pointlessly recycling the air in the cavern, and only in one direction. Zip ignored the puzzle and turned her attention back to the slopes of implants.

  If she didn’t know otherwise, Zip might have imagined that the cavern held the treasure trove of some ancient dragon. Each glittering Record sparkled like a jewel in a myriad of shades, from pink to burgundy and everything in-between. Each gem was scoured with the unique white threads of a life’s Record, like an ultra-fine spider’s web captured in amber. A Headgear implant, shorn of its fleshy case, could easily be mistaken for a child’s silver earring. It was a treasure trove. Not of precious stones and metal. It was a mountain of invaluable memories. Millions upon millions of instants. Little instants of mediocrity, brilliance, boredom, terror, ecstasy. The first breath, the first step, the first kiss, the first love and the very last of all of those, all strung together into the unbroken chain of a life lived. Peter and the Church could bring them all back, inside a machine. Would the returned notice? Londoners already lived most of their lives inside the Net.

  There was something else. Clambering over the sides of the mountain were dozens of raggedy people. They scrabbled among the memories, searching, picking, discarding, sometimes keeping a shiny bauble and dropping it into a basket hanging from their chest. As Zip stared, a slight figure working on the foothills of the mountain turned away from the memory detritus and began walking in her direction.

  “Who are you? You’re not from here. That’s a nice suit.”

  Zip could just about make out the face of a young girl through the heavily scratched visor of a crude, homemade thermal suit.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Yeah, thought so, you’re not from here. We make jewellery, mainly out of nice-looking Records.”

  “Jewellery? Who’d want something like that? That’s morbid.”

  “Londoners maybe think like that. Outside, they believe you inherit wisdom and stuff, wearing Records from the dead. Course, all mine look great and they’re from really successful people. Know what I mean? Got some good ones, if you’re interested.”

  Zip sucked in a deep breath. What if Professor Simmons’ Record was already gone and decorating some crazy Parisian? She stared past the girl and checked her Headgear map. It pointed to a spot only a few tens of metres away, on the south side of the memory mountain.

  The girl, realising Zip wasn’t listening anymore, made an unpleasant noise, pushed past her and headed towards the tunnel. Zip hardly noticed. She ran as fast as her suit would allow towards the Record’s location.

  “What the hell!” Zip exclaimed and jumped in fright as a loud klaxon sounded a single, long blast of alarm from somewhere high up on the walls of the cavern. Her gaze was drawn towards the summit and the source of the alarm. Scavengers near the peak were rapidly retreating lower. The blades of scrap on the crude windmills had picked up their pace. Zip jumped again as the unseen klaxon threw out three sharp blasts of sound. The scavengers at the summit had stopped retreating and were all staring up at the holes in the salt cellar ceiling. Zip didn’t have the time to waste. She was about to turn away when a new sound filled the cavern: a strange, low rumble. The roof was on fire. Thick smoke streamed out of the thousands of ceiling holes to be blown away by the giant fans towards some unseen place. And out of the vanishing smoke, jewels and silver rained down on the summit. The shiny rain abruptly stopped, the smoke cleared and the klaxon sounded a less menacing blast. At that signal, those who’d retreated raced back up the artificial mountain.

  Zip screwed up her face in disgust. She knew what she’d witnessed. London’s crematorium had emptied its furnaces. It was carbonised human ash, not smoke. Sediment Town wasn’t interested in the ash. They blew it away and let the only things that could survive the heat of a funeral pyre replenish their mountain of treasure. She felt a little sick but couldn’t blame the jewellery hunters. After all, she was here for the same thing, to find her own precious piece of quartz. Zip checked the map again and headed off.

  She smelt them before she saw them, even through the filters in her hood. A few metres more and a line of decrepit outhouses came into view as she passed around the huge base of glitter.

  “Oh shit!”

  It took her a while of searching through the roasting muck underneath the outhouses before it dawned on her. Zara wouldn’t have hidden the Record in the muck. Looking around, Zip noticed an old oil drum on its side a little way off. She rolled it over to the hut and climbed on top. It wobbled unsteadily under her feet as she began her search of the privy roofs, made out of old car doors. Despite a careful search, nothing was found. Zip wondered if the baked muck underneath the outhouse deserved another look. No, she’d hidden it; Zip had to think. Looking at the roofs again, Zip realised that only the top had been searched. Jumping down from the drum, she entered one of the stinking huts. It was cooler inside but that just made the smell worse. She climbed onto a seat of stacked tires and began searching the underside of the roof. It took a while, but in the third hut of four, she found a Record cleverly hidden inside the car door handle. It had to be the one. Zip held the shiny piece of quartz up to a rusty lightbulb hanging from the roof and wondered if Professor Simmons could really be in there. This little piece of shiny glass could save her family, prevent a war and maybe redeem Zara.

  She emerged from the outhouse with half a smile on her face. The smile disappeared. There were two brawny scavengers waiting for her.

  “You already have everything up there,” one of the figures in a patched, old thermal suit said, jerking his thumb towards the cavern roof, “so hand it over.”

  His colleague in a suit that was even more ragged said nothing. He was tapping a long metal bar against his thigh.

  “It’s someone I knew. Please, I’ll pay you.”

  “A thousand credits,” the man with the metal pole grunted.

  “What?” Zip squealed in shock.

  “Pay up or hand it over,” the other said.

  Then she thought about it. The Church would probably pay a million credits to get Professor Simmons’ Record. “OK, follow me back to the bar.”

  “You hand it over first. You’ll get it back when we’re paid,” the man with the metal bar said.

  Zip wasn’t in a position to argue, and there was no reason to think they wouldn’t hand it over when Bremer paid them. “Fine. Here. Let’s go; I’m in a hurry.”


  “Doesn’t look like anything special,” Zip heard one of the men say, as they headed back towards the tunnel leading to Sediment Town. The two continued their conversation in a low whisper that couldn’t be made out, then they were silent. Zip checked over her shoulder to make sure they were following. They were trotting along only a few metres behind her.

  The men followed her into the nearly deserted bar. By the smell of cinnamon and the burning cigar tip gleaming in the gloom, Q was where she’d left him. Mathew was nowhere to be seen, probably hiding in the shadows somewhere. Bremer was sitting in a car seat nervously sipping water. He jumped up when she entered.

  “Thank God you’re back. Have you got it? The director’s demanding an update.”

  Zip tore off her thermal suit. “Pay these gentleman a local tax, then I’ll have it.”

  The two men had removed their helmets. They were an ugly pair. Their faces were covered in gang tattoos and piercings. They reeked worse than any outhouse.

  “Director, you say? That’s different. Tax’s gone up. Ten thousand.”

  Bremer squealed in surprise. “That’s over my limit. I can’t get that much. The Net link down here’s not good enough.”

  The man with the metal rod pointed it at Bremer. “I’ll go topside with you. You get the ten thousand.”

  Zip didn’t like how this was going. “Bremer, how much have you got?”

  “Five thousand left, roughly,” Bremer answered. His voice was trembling.

  Zip stepped between Bremer and the two scavengers. “Listen, I don’t have time to wait for you to go topside and come back. Take the five thousand and everybody’s happy. Right?”

  The man smirked, smacking the bar in his open hand, and said, “Twenty thousand.”

  Zip searched the bar. Q’s cigar had gone out. The barkeep had disappeared as well. The man with the metal bar pushed his way past Zip and grabbed Bremer by the lapel of his jacket. The thug pushed the tip of the metal staff into the soft flesh under Bremer’s plump chin. “You heard the lady. She’s in a hurry. Let’s go get those credits.”