City of Cinders

by Kendrai Meeks

  At last she had her answer.

  The room was the same. Modest, with two twin beds and a night stand. A closet held a collection of clothing and shoes, the fashions just dated enough to be noticeable. The wallpaper: pale yellow and with white primroses. The mirror in the corner faced the door, but even as Cindira sat up, she saw its angle was just enough to reflect not her own bare feet, but those of the woman lying on the other bed.

  Omala’s avatar remained right where she’d left it, stretched out on one of two twin beds, as though she may pop into it at any moment. Cindira sat up and waited, half-expecting her mother’s eyes to crack open, for her to turn her head her way and say, “Good morning, pyaari beti. What new thing shall we learn today?”

  The City had been her playground then. The Congress, the Hall of Records, the Archives... even the Palace where the elected Prince held court. Oh, she’d never been permitted to attend court, but she could imagine what that had been like. All of her mother’s stories helped, of course.

  Outside the city, beyond its fortified walls, war raged on in the Arenas, but she’d been too young to understand what that meant, and too innocent to perceive its discussion in conversation. It was incomprehensible now, that this world her mother created, in which the City and its people shone, was merely a pearl trapped in the mire of the oyster’s gullet.

  The Grover GAIA residence stood apart from the City, while seemingly embedded into its very heart. It was a “magic pumpkin,” her mother had called it, a parallel reality built with the same source code and paradigms, but not technically embedded in it. Most of the time, when a person with a vreal world account died, any avatar created for them was permanently archived. Omala’s would have been too, if not contained in the safety of this bubble.

  Before she knew what she was doing, Cindira was on her knees at her mother’s bedside, Omala’s hand wrapped in her own.

  “Mom.” Her heart fluttered in her chest. “Um... Hi. I... I know this isn’t really you. I get that. But, well... It’s been awhile and... I’ve said this at your grave too, but just to say it again: You were... You are my hero. I look back on the things you’ve done and the worlds you created and I... They’re just so wonderful. You gave the world such a gift, and the only thing you asked for in return was me. It didn’t seem like a fair exchange, but I did my best to make it seem like it was. I’m still trying, but Johanna...”

  She bit back the bitterness, refusing to let that poison seep into this moment.

  “I want you to know: I’m still watching out. For Tybor, for GAIA, for The Kingdom. For Dad, when he lets me, but you know how he is.”

  She imagined her mother laughing, even though the empty avatar remained unchanged.

  “Mom, where ever you are, can you watch out for me? If you do that, then you’re helping to look out for them too. I miss you, and I love you.”

  She pushed a kiss to Omala’s hand, before gently setting it beside her mother’s body.

  Sunbeams spun of gold and crimson pierced Cindra’s eyes as she stepped out of what, looking behind her for a moment, appeared to be a red brick wall. Funny, but she remembered the outside of the ‘magic pumpkin’ as a wood-framed door with a single pane of stained glass. In fact, she’d seen that door and opened it from the inside just moments before. When she reached for where she thought the doorknob should be, the image waivered. Cindira picked up a piece of stone from a nearby flowerbed and used it to etch a mark. On her return, she’d be certain to know the way out. She could exit the program from anywhere, but if GAIA still had the same security protocols as it’d had when she was younger – as the copied world of The Kingdom still had – the AI embedded into the source code would scan the environment each night at midnight. Any unregistered entity would be wiped clean. If she left her avatar behind, even hidden, she’d never be able to return to it again.

  The avenue led to the main square, beyond which another promenade would carry her to Congressional Hall. Few souls roamed the streets this early in the day. The Gaian time zone aligned with the city that had inspired the design of this part of the vreal world, The Hague, as it had existed about two hundred or so years before, also meaning it was hours ahead of the local time in San Francisco. Cindira had always admired this choice made by her mother, not only to design a vreal world so intense in its reality as to deceive the human mind, but styled after a period of history in which rich fabric, marbled motifs, and gold-gilded mosaics were all the rage. Every design rang true, from the grand clock tower ticking out the minutes on the Palace gate, to the intricately-fitted tiles on the floors within it.

  She’d never been taken outside the safety zone of the City, so she couldn’t know if the war arena had changed or not. From the nightly shows, where captures of national ‘battles’ taking place within GAIA doubled as entertainment, she knew that they’d endured, however. Cindira shuddered to think what life was like before her mother’s creation, when you lived under the threat of war, anything could hide a bomb, and anyone could be a terrorist. She’d often wondered if living through the fall of London was what had inspired her mother’s concept of GAIA in the first place.

  Just imagine it: a city that could never fall, and war that could never destroy.

  Enough reminiscing, Cindira thought. To work.

  While his name may have been made up, Cindira suspected Batista’s claim to have been part of GAIA’s Security Force wasn’t. After seeing him in Kaylie’s room, she assumed he specialized in cybersecurity. It would take one hell of a crack hacker to infiltrate Alsace, and that kind of talent didn’t work blue. Was he a criminal, and his whole charade full of evil intentions? Still a possibility, but she’d investigate this part of it first.

  The Hall of Records occupied a long road of townhouses, three stories high and running on for two blocks near the Palace. If she could get inside, Cindira could wire into their records and search through profile photos for one that looked like Batista. She was a few steps from the stoop leading to the entry when a hand wrapped around her arm and delicately pulled her back.

  She wouldn’t have to look for Batista’s picture. The man stood right before her. Curious, he was dressed the same way he’d been in real life, down to the antiquated watch on his wrist.

  He blinked twice, three times. When he spoke, it was both with amusement, and an undertone of rebuke. “Children aren’t allowed into this building.”

  “What children?” But I’m not a...

  But she was. At least, her avatar was, and unless the rules had changed, that meant, from Frank Batista’s perspective, she must be a child. Gaian protocol didn’t allow for minor avatars except in the case of actual children. It didn’t matter. In fact, it couldn’t hurt that she appeared to be her younger self. If Batista recognized her from Tybor, who knew what trouble that could cause. Tensions between GAIA and her father’s company were tense enough. If he thought she were here as a spy...

  But she was, wasn’t she? Only, not for Tybor. And it’s not like he wasn’t at Tybor snooping around either.

  “Are you lost?”

  Cindira snapped back to the moment. “Not exactly.”

  He let go of her arm when he seemed certain she wouldn’t bolt and looked around. “You here with a school group or a parent? You know you’re not supposed to wander around on your own. Even if it is a virtual environment, security is very tight. Someone might think you were up to something.”

  “I...” What could she say? “I’m here with my mom, but she’s... I lost her.”

  In the worst of ways.

  “Okay, then...” His face broke into a smile, and she felt something melt deep within her. “Let’s get you unlost and back to your mother. What’s your name?”

  “Cin... Cindy,” she lied, the quiver of guilt within turning electric when she realized the opportunity it had presented her. “What’s yours?”

  His head tilted. “Been a while since anyone here had to ask. Feels a little funny. You sure you don’t know?”

  He�
��d said it with such lightness, she wasn’t sure if he was being coy or arrogant.

  “No, I’m sorry. Should I?”

  “So the secrecy protocols are working,” he said, seemingly more to himself then her. “That should make Carlos happy. You can call me Francisco.”

  Francisco, not Frank. She made a mental note to rerun her searches using the amended knowledge. For the moment, she had to be careful not to blow her cover. “That’s the same name as the prince, isn’t it?”

  “It is.” Francisco’s mouth dropped open in mock surprise. When he wasn’t acting like an indifferent authoritarian, he was quite charming. “It’s a very common name, though. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. He’s not as handsome as I am.”

  No doubt of that. No one knew what the real Prince Francisco looked like. His real-world identity was a state secret, a way of protecting his physical body from harm while he was jacked into GAIA. Cindira was willing to bet, however, that some stuffy old politician couldn’t claim such deep brown eyes or have the defined, perfected cheek bones that this Francisco had. Whoever had sculpted his avatar should be given a major award.

  Reminding herself that she’d seen Francisco in the real world, however, she realized that the artist responsible for this work was one of divine origins.

  Or, at least, really good genetics.

  “Now, where should you be?” He surveyed the street. “Don’t suppose you know which direction you came from?”

  “I was with my class. We’re touring the City.” She bit her tongue too late. Lying wasn’t an art in which she was well-practiced, but she had better get good, and fast. One of Francisco’s eyebrows took on a precarious angle. Already his reaction was telling her she’d messed up somehow. “The last place I recognized was Ferreira Square.”

  “I thought you said your mom brought you here?”

  “She did. She’s one of the chaperones.”

  “Right...” With balled fists on hips, Francisco stared at a patch of ground. “Ferreira Square? You sure about that?”

  “Pretty sure. It’s where they swore in the first congress, right? I recognized it from my... lesson docs?”

  “Is that so?”

  An invisible hand reached into her stomach and squeezed. She’d said something wrong, but what? “I could be wrong. Maybe I—ahh!”

  The experience of pain inside of GAIA? That was new. It was not, however, welcome. As Francisco gripped Cindira by the wrist, squeezing away her confidence, storm clouds gathered in his eyes.

  “What’s the name of your school?”

  “My...” Whimper. “Musk Preparatory!”

  Not her actual high school, but the one her mother had wanted her to go to before she died. Johanna had had other plans, ones that took her far away from San Francisco and her father. Still, she shouldn’t have said it.

  “There is no group here today from Musk Preparatory!” His teeth clenched, and with it, his grip. “And you couldn’t have been in Ferreira Square. Your people destroyed it two weeks ago!”

  “Destroyed it?” She fell to her knees, gasping. “My people?”

  With a twist, her hands flattened to the street. Francisco pulled his comque to his mouth. “Security, triangulate my location and identify the user nearest me. Seems one of the hackers has crawled out of the shadows.”

  “I’m not a hacker!” A lie. And her pride in those very abilities made its taste the most bitter on her tongue. “I’m here with my school group. I—”

  “There are no school groups here today from anywhere. Now, maybe if you tell me who you really are and what your people are trying to accomplish by destroying GAIA piece by piece, we can—”

  Cindira was too stunned to respond. Someone’s destroying my mother’s work? But how? The City is safe, the code is unbreakable—

  “Warning: explosion imminent. Vacate area.”

  The matter-of-fact tone of the system notification brought them both to a standstill. Francisco, because of the implication, she reckoned. Cindira, because the voice was her mother’s.

  Francisco pulled Cindira’s arm, jerking her away. “Hurry, run! Get out of—"

  Wait. He was helping her now? Just after accusing her of being an anarchist, he was trying to save her?

  She’d have listened to him, if it had been within her power. But she couldn’t run. She couldn’t move. Cindira couldn’t do... anything.

  Intense, utter pain wracked her body from the inside out. Before her, Francisco called out for the briefest of moments. And then he was gone.

  Only when Cindira hit her head against the glass of the jackpod and felt the real-world sweat dripping from her forehead did she realize she was out. Not by choice, but by force. And she could never go back to GAIA again.

  There’d be nothing to go back to. Her avatar died in the explosion.

  10

  Scotia MacAvoy grabbed the bat she kept next to her bed. The Inner Mission wasn’t a hotbed of criminal activity, but common sense dictated certain precautions. Her pulse slowed as she realized the person pounding on her door at 3 AM wasn’t trying to get in by force, but by desperation. Nonetheless, she remained vigilant as she tiptoed to the door and flicked on the preview screen. A hologram a mere few inches tall displayed at eye level, represented the woman on the other side.

  “Cindira?” Scotia flung the door open, catching her breathless friend as she collapsed into her arms. “Oh, my god, what happened?”

  Cindira struggled to get the words out. “I ran... here... once I got to... shore.”

  “Shore? What do you mean shore? Were you out on the bay?”

  Cindira recovered her feet and drove forward. But not for the couch, as Scotia had supposed, but for the TV. The wall flickered to life as Cindira scrolled through the stations, past late-night advertisements and reruns of the ancient programs people called flat flickers.

  “No, the Ferries.” Wide-eyed, Cindira turned on her. “Local channels?”

  Scotia closed the door and called on her in-home artificial intelligence assistant. “Tyra, tune to channel six, please.”

  Tyra quickly obeyed her master, even though her master had no idea why the hell she was asking.

  Cindira’s breathing normalized as she and Scotia took a seat on the couch. On the wall, the local channel appeared to be showing a rerun of a daytime soap, only with the mostly Caucasian and Latino actors modulated to Chinese.

  “Impossible.”

  “Oh, wait, that’s my fault. I was practicing my Mandarin earlier. Tyra, please switch the spoken language to American.”

  “I don’t mean the language.” Cindira was on her feet again, pacing. “Tyra, bring up a preview screen of all news channels, local, national, and international.”

  Two beeps proceeded Tyra’s serene twill. “Guest access authorized?”

  Scotia acknowledged it. The wall segmented into dozens of tiny boxes, each displaying a thumbnail version of the channel it represented. Cindira pecked at the wall, wiping away options with her gestures, growing more restless when each image increasing in size proved to be as unsatisfactory as the last.

  “No, no! It’s not possible! Someone has to know. Someone has to be covering it!”

  Scotia studied her friend’s reaction, reading the confusion through a furrowed brow that soon turned into a huff of frustration.

  “Tyra, TV off. Cindira—” Scotia pivoted. “—it’s three-thirty in the morning. What’s this about?”

  Her friend ran a hand through her silken black hair. “There was an explosion. Inside GAIA. Thirty... No! Forty minutes ago.”

  “There are always explosions in GAIA. It’s a war zone.”

  Cindira shook her head. “Not in the city. I was just there, I was—”

  “Wait, you were in GAIA?” Confusion wasn’t quite the right term for what Scotia was feeling. Bewilderment? That might do.

  “Yes! I saw it. I was there. I...” She swallowed, all color draining from her olive complexion. “I was where it happened. I... ble
w up.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It couldn’t have...” But the look in her friend’s face told her she wasn’t lying. Or at least, as far as Cindira was concerned, she was speaking God’s honest truth. But that didn’t make any sense. “You’d need an exceptionally high security clearance to be able to get into GAIA without some sort of official invite or sponsorship.”

  “I hacked in.”

  “Oh, well then.” What other holes could Scotia poke in this to get her friend to come back to reality? “But even then, you’d need an avatar, and you don’t have one.”

  “I said I don’t currently have one. I did have one before my mother died.”

  “So, let me get this straight...” Scotia pushed the thumb and index finger of her left hand into her temple. “You’ve had an avatar inside of GAIA, hidden somewhere and no one found it? Where?”

  “Inside a magic pumpkin.” When Scotia stared at her, slack-jawed, Cindira continued. “That’s what my mom always called them anyway. Rooms that run parallel to the vreal world but aren’t technically part of it.”

  “Right.” Scotia pushed an index finger into her chin. “And to stay off grid, last night you went to the Ferries to hang out with a bunch of chipheads and hack your way into GAIA.”

  “Not technically into GAIA. I’m not sure if even I’m capable of that. I went into the magic pumpkin. It, in turn, bridged to GAIA.”

  “And inside GAIA, the very guy you were looking for just... happened to find you. And then everything exploded.”

  “I know it sounds crazy but...”

  Cindira’s voice trailed off as her eyes went unfocused. Scotia knew that look, the one that said her friend wasn’t thinking in words at the moment, but in code. After a few moments, she snapped her fingers in time with the lightning striking her brain. “That must be it! It didn’t happen. What I perceived as an explosion was just a security measure. The system recognized my avatar as an unregistered entity and blasted me out. Yes. Yes, that must be it. It couldn’t have been a real explosion, right? How would that even happen in the city?”