The Echo Chamber

by Rhett J Evans

  “Try it now,” Diana whispered into his ear.

  Darnell swiped his badge on the reader.

  Error beep again. Red glow.

  Shit.

  His face suddenly flushed with heat, and a cold sweat began to break out over his forehead.

  The receptionist smiled at him again with those shark teeth, but Darnell watched her hand start to make its way underneath her desk.

  “There was a latency,” Diana said quickly. “Try it again now.”

  “Goddamn you, Diana,” Darnell grunted in a muffled whisper, and he raised his badge a fourth time on the reader. His hands were trembling.

  It made a sound, not quite a beep, more like a chime. Then it glowed green.

  Darnell turned around to face the receptionist, and he shrugged.

  “That’s weird. I must have been holding it wrong. Thanks anyway though!” And then he opened the door and slipped through with the receptionist still staring out after him.

  The assault on Sharesquare’s HR database was the first salvo that alerted the technical security team. Diana was heavy handed in breaking that piece of infrastructure, and already a small team of brilliant kids on the company campus were huddling around their laptops trying to figure out where the attack came from, slowly honing in on a moving target over the sea.

  Darnell meanwhile found himself in a carpeted hallway with multiple rooms leafing out on either side. This was the administration area where offices for software services, the virtual guard force, maintenance staff, and the warden were situated. Guards going to and from the prisoner area walked straight on through the end of the hall to large metal double doors where both a real-life guard and virtual counterpart would check an access roster for approval before allowing anyone through. The only way Darnell was going to get on the digital access roster controlled in Sharebox was if the raiding party was able to get to the Citadel walls where Diana could hack it.

  “They just started making their way to the Citadel,” said Gabriel in his ear. “They should be there in a few minutes. Walk slowly and don’t draw anyone’s attention.”

  Darnell breathed out, trying to calm his nerves after the near catastrophe in the lobby. He meandered down the hall, prepared to tell anyone he ran into that he was looking for a bathroom.

  “Well, well,” began a voice from behind Darnell. “Funny seeing you here, Sergeant Holmes.”

  Darnell wheeled around and came face to face with the pallid face and coiffed hair of Arlo Zimmer, dressed in a fine suit.

  “What brings you here today, my failed apprentice?” Arlo asked, his tongue moistening his lower lip.

  Darnell was too shocked to be indignant or angry—words came out of his mouth in an anxious mumble.

  “Looking for the bathroom right now,” he tried to say.

  Arlo rolled his eyes. “You were never terribly cerebral, were you? I meant what brings you to the Citadel?”

  Darnell had an excuse in mind. That was part of the plan. He told Arlo that as part of his education in the PR department, he was tasked with understanding all aspects of the company and came to tour the administration center. But this answer did not quite satisfy Arlo, for his brow furrowed as Darnell rambled, and he smiled wider in his cold, malicious way.

  Arlo opened his mouth to respond but was interrupted by a group of Asian businessmen pushing their way out of the room behind him. They peppered Arlo with a series of what-sounded-like questions in Mandarin. Arlo turned to face a woman who was evidently working as an interpreter, and he told her to inform the group that they would be leaving shortly.

  A look of disappointment flitted across Arlo’s face as he turned to speak to Darnell again.

  “I’m afraid I can’t talk now. I’m showing this group around. We’re trying to franchise the technology here. Make every prison in the world a Citadel prison! These could be big in China to help them deal with their own political activist problems.”

  Darnell said nothing but smiled and nodded and then excused himself for being in a hurry. He darted a couple offices down, and finding the bathroom, he entered a toilet stall and closed the door behind him with no small sense of relief to be away from the exposure of the hallway. He could stay in here, he thought, for as long as he needed.

  But no sooner had he been in the bathroom for a minute before someone else walked in behind him and knocked on the toilet stall. There was only one bathroom, he realized with dismay, and he could not linger here forever without creating a scene.

  “It’s occupied,” Darnell called out weakly.

  I should just get the hell out of here, he thought to himself. Already the plan seemed to be hanging on a thread. Faulty badges. Thin excuses. Arlo.

  As if prompted by his doubts, Gabriel’s voice emanated quietly from his earpiece.

  “Just hang in there. They’ll be at the Citadel walls soon, and then you can move along.”

  The boat had gone two thirds across the water when they heard the first shouts of alarm. A sliver of moonlight piercing through the clouds had given their raft away.

  In the real-life Citadel, tourists were welcome to walk up and touch the tower itself, but here, in Sharebox, guards worked to ensure no one got too close. It wasn’t just about the digital protections that held Citadel prisoners in place. The master console in the virtual sub-basement was rumored to hold the company’s deepest, darkest secrets and those of its clients too.

  Guards roamed catwalks conjured onto the sides of the glass walls, and somewhere on that glittering dark building a sentry had spotted their boat. Now spotlights that had roamed in lazy circles a minute ago were being turned on to the water to expose the intruders.

  The response to the boat’s presence was alarmingly swift; the guards released a pair of warning shots into the air and shouted at the boat to turn around. Then mere seconds later, muzzle flashes erupted from all across the face of the dark tower aimed in the boat’s direction.

  The guards were too far away to hit their targets in real life. But the physics-breaking laws of their rifles ensured that all they needed to hit their marks was clear visibility on a target—any silhouette of the five members of the raiding party would suffice.

  The first few shots hit the boat and the water, however. The darkness was providing the cover they needed to ensure the guards couldn’t lock their sights clearly on a single individual. Charlotte heard the rounds whistle near her face and strike the water, and in her panic, she dropped her oar into the water.

  “Goddamnit,” snapped Blue Bird at her. “Hold it together, everyone. Paddle faster.”

  Then in a moment, the spotlights converged on them, and their avatars were flooded with white light.

  “We’re done for,” moaned Gor, his hulking frame unmissable.

  Kota stood up in the raft, her legs unsteady in the rocking water. “Shield me!” she shouted with her arms spread open. A muted purple glow outlined her figure, there was a flash, and then there were two Kotas.

  It was almost like seeing a ghost, in the exact same pose, with the exact same features of Kota, standing a step in front of her. The lifeless decoy stood unmoving on that shifting raft, with its arms stretched outwards as if in a conscious gesture of protection over the boat’s passengers. It had dull open eyes and an unchanging expression underneath its hijab. Everyone looked up in awe at the creation, and a quiet incredulous laugh escaped Kota’s mouth.

  Then a staccato of rifle fire rang out, and no less than a half dozen rounds struck the decoy almost at once. The fake Kota, the shield Kota as Charlotte thought it now, jerked backwards with a sickening lurch and then fell on its knees before collapsing like a limp doll, its head dangling off the side of the raft into the water. It didn’t disappear as a real avatar would have; it just lay there, like a bloodied corpse. The visual effect and violence of it was so staggering that Kota, the real Kota, stumbled backwards an
d tripped on her feet. Her back hit the edge of the raft just as a wave shuddered through the vessel and sent Kota over the side with a quiet splash.

  “Kota!” her brother yelled, scrambling to peer into the water and extend his hand into the black waves. But Kota sank quickly and without further sound. All Koti saw was an outline of her face, ghostly illuminated in the white lights of the Citadel, that disappeared quickly in the dark fathoms below.

  “This water is not programmed to be swimmable,” shouted Blue Bird. “Let her go.”

  Charlotte grabbed the oar that Kota had left behind, and ignoring the quickly deteriorating condition of the team, she set her mind to paddling as rapidly as possible. Blue Bird stepped to the bow of the raft, just as Kota had done with her arms extended, and yelled “Shield me!” And then a perfect replica of Blue Bird was left standing there, with the same free-flowing hair, standing there at the prow of the raft like a figurehead carved into a ship. Nary a second passed before a round from the tower found the decoy and struck it down. The Blue Bird shield fell backwards, and its dead, open-eyed face landed in Charlotte’s lap.

  “Shield me!” said Gor this time, stepping into the front and creating a new decoy.

  This replica managed to receive several rounds before it toppled over, and when it did so, it mercifully fell off the side of the raft and slid into the black water. Diana’s shield trick was undoubtedly clever and critically useful, but Charlotte could not help but wonder if it would have been better had the bodies of the destroyed decoys not been left to lie and swamp their boat with the morbid weight of so many corpses.

  “We need to turn around and get Kota back with us,” exclaimed Koti.

  Blue Bird shook her head. “No time. We’re moving forward.”

  Charlotte had to remind herself that Kota, the real version, was quite safe. She hadn’t been deleted by being touched by a guard, which would have exposed her identity. She was now, in fact, safer than any of them.

  “Shield me,” said Charlotte, almost a whisper, shrugging off a dead decoy of Blue Bird and standing up with her arms in front of her.

  She felt nothing but a gentle push, as if some invisible force politely obliged her to step back, and then there was a red-headed Charlotte decoy dressed in black standing before her. She had learned from Kota’s mistake to not let the surprise of the effect throw off her balance, so she pulled herself away from the spectacle of seeing her own lifeless clone and sat back down in the boat to paddle her oar.

  They were almost there now. Another minute and they could dismount and begin summiting the rocky shore.

  A single shot struck the Charlotte decoy in the chest, and the decoy swayed on its feet absorbing this round before two more zinged through the air and struck it, and the actress’s decoy fell backwards haphazardly slamming into Charlotte and Blue Bird.

  Kota stood up and created a decoy, which was promptly shot down. Then Gor went again. Then Blue Bird. And they took turns setting up their human shields, their digital sacrifices, until the raft was laden with bodies, a small barge of identical, repeating corpses. Gor began to grab the dead decoys and heave them over the side with grim splashes.

  As the distance across the water grew shorter, they moved out of rifle range from the high catwalks of the tower. But they knew the guards were also moving to amass on the position where they would beach, their incomprehensible shouts could be heard ringing out through the night air.

  “Climb the rocks, get to the building!” yelled Blue Bird over the crashing sound of water on rocks. She reached into a pocket and pulled out the arrowhead that contained the virtual interface of Diana. She held it high in the air so it could be seen over the clutter of arms and legs that buried them. “If I fall, get this to the wall at all costs.”

  One last great wave propelled the raft to a thin rocky beach that abruptly terminated into a jagged cliff face. Avatars couldn’t die from falling, but given the hyper-realistic nature of physics within Sharebox, climbing virtual rocks would be as slow going here as it was in the real world.

  Gor jumped out first. He landed in water up to his waist, and holding onto a line from the raft, he hauled the vessel with his great arms to the shore. Blue Bird and Koti scrambled out next while Charlotte awkwardly grasped at different holds on to the side of the boat before hauling herself onto the rocky beach.

  “Climb! Climb fast!” Charlotte heard Blue Bird’s voice faintly amidst the dull roar of the waves, though the ocean spray was clouding her vision and she could not see the source of the sound. Disoriented, she placed her hands on rocks and resolved to focus on nothing but moving upwards. She felt Gor beside her; he put a hand on her arm and then pointed a path forward where the cliffside was not too sheer.

  The going was slow, and Charlotte could only just make out the shapes of Blue Bird and Koti disappearing over the cliff’s edge far above her. The sound of gunfire had ceased entirely, but she took no comfort in that.

  Near the top of the rock face was a smooth boulder on which Charlotte could find no handholds. Sensing her trepidation, Gor wrapped his meaty fingers around her left arm and threw her entire body upwards to the cliff’s edge. The move would have dislocated her shoulder in real life, possibly ripped her arm off, but her avatar managed to reach the summit, grasping furiously for rock and tree root, and pull herself off the cliffside. Koti was already there and helped her avatar find her feet.

  Looming before the raiding party lay the foundations of the virtual Citadel. All still seemed quiet—no horde of guards yet awaited them. Blue Bird was there, running to the prison wall with the arrowhead in her outstretched hand. The interface only needed to make the briefest of contacts with the building so Diana could secure Darnell access to the prisoner living quarters in the real world. Blue Bird drew within a couple feet of the building, her real-life counterpart clearly panting for air because her avatar’s face was doing the same. A look of relief mingled with satisfaction flitted across her face as she reached the wall and leaned forward with the arrowhead in her fingers.

  Then a shot rang out, and her avatar disappeared in an abrupt wash of pixels. Her long curly hair, wet with ocean spray, her red lips, and her imposing, feminine figure faded with the air. And the arrowhead landed noiselessly in the soft dirt.

  They knocked on the door again. Darnell had been in the toilet for six minutes. He figured he could wait at least eight, but now there were two sets of feet visible under the stall waiting for him.

  Why didn’t this place have more goddamn bathrooms?

  “Just a minute,” he said, hoping neither pair of feet belonged to Arlo Zimmer, hoping he didn’t run into Arlo again at all.

  “They’re very close, Darnell,” Diana whispered into his ear. “The arrowhead is within a couple feet of the building.”

  Darnell zipped his pants, making a show of flushing the toilet and coughing and doing all the things that people who are inconsiderately slow getting off a communal toilet might do. He stepped out of the stall, offering apologies to two stern, annoyed men, and walked back into the carpeted hallway. There was a guard awaiting there at the gate leading to the prisoner quarters, and Darnell wanted to be sure to not draw his attention until he was ready to enter. So he looked down at the adjacent rooms and stepped into an area where people were busy running about and talking on phones and seemed less inclined to notice him.

  “Send all the guys from the east corridor,” he heard some-one say.

  “Why is the Bot Quick Reaction Team not in place yet?” said another.

  Darnell strolled on down the hall, trying to look nonplussed but intentional in his movements as the office became increasingly abuzz with activity. Surely if Blue Bird’s team were within a few feet of the building a couple minutes ago, they should be there by now. After a couple minutes of this, without realizing what he had done, he had strolled within a handful of yards to the prisoner living quarters access gate.
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  “Are you trying to get through?”

  Darnell looked up and saw the guard there, at the end of the hallway.

  “Hey if you’re planning on going in, I’d suggest you go now, because I bet they’re about to lock it down.”

  The guard’s suspicions did not seem roused by Darnell in the least.

  “Sure, yes,” said Darnell, stepping forward and offering his Sharesquare Industries badge. “Is there some kind of problem?”

  “Just a few avatars trying to get close to the virtual building,” the guard said nonchalantly. “Probably just some daredevils or misplaced tourists, but if they get too spooked, they’ll shut down all the gates and no one can get through.”

  “Oh wow,” replied Darnell, trying to look concerned and suddenly realizing what a poor actor he was. “That’s crazy.”

  The guard took the badge and swiped it, and Darnell braced himself for the worst.

  Koti recovered from the shock of watching Blue Bird disappear first. He dove behind some rocks. Charlotte heard him mutter on the internal comm a curse at Diana for not figuring out how to grant them guns like the guards.

  Caught in the open as the gunfire was picking up again, Charlotte did the only thing that made sense to her at the time. She sprinted forward to the spot where Blue Bird had just vanished. With every breath as she ran, she whispered, “Shield me. Shield me. Shield me. Shield me.”

  In her wake she left almost a dozen Charlotte Boone decoys, all frozen in a mimicry of her running stance. A volley of fire thundered to her right, and within seconds a trail of her own bloodied bodies was lying on the ground. She dove to the dirt at the foot of the Citadel wall, near a door that was intended as their breach point, her hands moving furiously through the grass in search of the cool, sleek shape of the arrowhead.

  Blue Bird was gone.

  Was there even any hope now? Charlotte’s mind was clouded with anxiety and dread, and she felt she could scarcely breathe. Then her fingers struck something smooth and hard, and she gripped the arrowhead in her hand.