City of Cinders

by Kendrai Meeks

  Left hanging in the air between them: the destruction of GAIA, and all that implied. Francisco’s hand absently went to his father’s watch.

  “Then give me your user records like I asked the first time.”

  “Absolutely not,” Johanna snapped. “Our clients expect us to honor their privacy. Our product is one where they can act without judgement or reprimand. They do things inside they’d never commit in the real world, but that they wouldn’t want getting out. You used to know that, or have you forgotten?”

  It had been the years when Francisco was younger, more foolish. Not saddled with the legacy of a father slain before his eyes.

  “Yes, we got up to all kinds of debauchery, but overthrowing the world government? I don’t remember anything that extreme.” It took a moment for the comment Johanna made to snap in his nets, but when it did, the fish was too big to throw back. “How open are the users with each other about who they really are these days?”

  The change in subject and tone was so fluid, Johanna found herself thrown for a loop. “It varies, of course. Very few avatars are fully modeled on the client’s true self.”

  The subtext of her passive aggressive comment, namely, they’re all not as foolish as you, hit him, but Francisco let it go. He’d litigated that decision with far too many, most with more convincing arguments than anything Johanna would throw at him, and it still hadn’t changed his mind.

  “Kaylie knows the ones who frequent the Palace,” she continued. “I have complete access to all user profiles and make it a point to know everyone worth knowing.”

  “Which is why you’re the Queen.” Francisco grinned as the image of a chess board overlaid the space between them in his mind’s eye. Then, more to himself, he said aloud, “I wonder if that’s knowledge you would ever share.”

  Johanna smirked right back, leaning into her coo. “Under the right circumstances. We are both royalty in our own way, after all, and royals have been... coming to understandings for eons.”

  Francisco leaned forward, running the middle finger of his right hand in a slow, laborious arc on Johanna’s desk. “If the Gaian prince were to enter The Kingdom, would some be forthcoming? Letting me know who they truly are?”

  “Particularly the young women, I’d imagine.” Johanna suddenly came up to speed with where Francisco was heading, and the seduction play turned into fury. “Absolutely not! You think you can go into The Kingdom and lure the anarchists into the open? Do you want explosions going off in my palace, too? You can’t squash those kinds of events there like you’ve been able to do with GAIA. Do you have any idea what that would do to our reputation?”

  “Don’t be silly, I don’t want explosions,” Francisco retorted. “The whole point of this is to end the violence going on in my capital. But to do that, I’m going to have to find the person hiding in yours.”

  “No one hides in my kingdom,” Johanna said. “The consequences are too great.”

  “That’s what I’m planning on.” Francisco clapped as he rose to his feet. “Put out the word to your most prominent users, Tieg. The prince will be hosting a ball in three days at the Palace, and he wants to party. It’s time I reacquaint myself with who these ‘Kingdom people’ are. And it’s time for them to understand the kind of man I’ve become.”

  15

  When she’d woken up to a talking mouse, Cindira considered that she might still be dreaming. Now, as she looked at the pair of transparent shoes in her hands and tried to believe they represented a nearly mythical high-tech device, the dream theory gained considerable traction.

  “I don’t understand.” She held the right shoe to the light, seeing a clear, if slightly bent vision of the wall on the other side. “How could these possibly be jumpers? There’s nothing in them.”

  “Your mother preferred to call them slippers, miss.” The mouse scurried up Cindira’s sleeve, perching itself on her shoulder. “I think because she could use them to slip inside GAIA from anywhere. And, although you can’t see it, there’s circuitry a plenty in there. She managed to use...”

  “Nanites.” Cindira completed the mouse’s sentence as the thought occurred to her in parallel. “But I thought research into them was abandoned years ago.”

  “Outlawed, actually.”

  She turned her eyes on the mouse, a difficult thing to do with him so close to her face. “These are illegal?”

  “Only if anyone finds out about them.”

  Guilt gnawed at her, pushing her to admit that, in fact, someone did know about them. But Kaylie had more or less dismissed the shoes, hadn’t she? And if she’d known they contained illegal technology, she certainly would have no hesitation in using it to her advantage.

  Or taking them for herself.

  “You must make sure to keep that from happening,” Laporte continued. “Even your father was not aware of your mother’s work in this area. It was privately funded outside of Tybor. Their development was carried out in a restricted lab off the grid.”

  “You’re telling me my mom had a secret life.”

  “A private life, actually, though I know the concept of that seems an anathema in these times. Omala didn’t believe anyone was entitled to anything in her head or her heart. You and I are the only ones she truly opened up with, and in both cases, with restrictions due to our particular shortcomings.”

  When Cindira’s face fell, Laporte developed a humanlike ability to correct himself.

  “That was a poor choice of words, Madame. What I mean is, you were still a child when she died. In time, I’m certain she would have shared all her secrets with you, but of course you weren’t ready back then. Likewise, while I’ve been programmed with a certain ability to understand and react to human emotions, at the end of the day, I am still a machine. My ability to be a confidante has its limits.”

  Like the shoes, this revelation bent the shape of her memories. Even though her mother had died while Cindira was in middle school, she still felt a kinship with the woman — uncommon for one of her age. It was almost as if the two were sisters rather than parent and child — though Omala could and did shift into an authoritarian roll at will. Rarely. No, they had a comradery. Nevertheless, she’d always known there were things her mother kept hidden. Or perhaps better to say, reserved. Cindira had had no doubts that as she grew older, she too would be let into the fantastical worlds her mother walked, both in reality and vreality.

  They’d simply never gotten the chance.

  Cindira resumed her study of the glass slippers. “I’m not even sure I need these. I was able to hack into GAIA simply enough.”

  “Technically, you didn’t hack into anything. You logged into a parallel holding room for which you had anachronistic privileges and a waiting host profile.”

  Her heart quickened when she remembered that her mother’s avatar still lay on that bed. “It’s not gone, is it? Our apartment in GAIA?”

  “No, Madame, though I just stated, that apartment is not in GAIA.” The mouse blinked a few times. “You used to be so much more able to follow these discussions. Your understanding of code and structure has diminished without my tutelage.”

  “You’re very conceited for an AI entity.” But to stay on task... “I get what you’re saying, but what I’m getting at is, if these were designed for GAIA, what makes you think I’ll be able to use them for The Kingdom?”

  “Because it’s GAIA’s source code laced over with far too many cosmetic layers. Your father and Johanna could never break into the source code themselves, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t make a clone of it. Probably they thought by putting it on servers that Omala didn’t have access to, and instituting a new lattice of security measures, they could keep her out. They didn’t realize that your mother had foreseen the possibility that someone might build another world without her authorization. She built doors into the source code. That same door your mother walked through to get into GAIA can just as easily walk into The Kingdom, or any other platform Tybor creates using h
er work.”

  “A door that can open into both platforms?” She remembered watching the prince meander through her step-sisters vreal world bedroom. “And are these shoes – the slippers – the only way to open that door?”

  As much as the mouse could, he nodded. “The only way.”

  Well, there went that bubble of a theory.

  But she wasn’t going to think about it right now. No doubt the prince had resources aplenty, hackers and crackers, ways of getting around security measures. Right now, she needed to focus on the topic at hand. Or, Cindira thought as she looked at the slippers, at feet.

  “How do they work?”

  The mouse blinked twice. “You put them on.”

  “That’s it?”

  “No, but if you’ll forgive the pun, that’s the first step. And they must be worn without any interface. No socks, I’m afraid.”

  Just like the Indian-styled footwear her mother had preferred. Cindira laid the slippers on the floor and took a seat in preparation, pulling off her own everyday shoes. “And after I put them on, do they turn on somehow? Do I have to voice-command them?”

  “They wouldn’t be a covert device if you had to noticeably interact with them.”

  “But you have to, you know...” With fingers spread wide, her hands mixed the air. “I mean, a jackpod is designed to be laid down in, in part for safety. Even though the neural interface reads and writes to the brain, the physical body occasionally moves in response to mental stimuli. I don’t exactly remember my mother taking lots of naps.”

  “No, but she did daydream quite a bit, didn’t she?”

  No sooner had Cindira opened her mouth to argue the statement than a cascade of memories came down over her. That distant look her mother would often have, her quiet moments of passivity which Cindira wrote off as “deep thinking.” Omala had been a genius, after all, and an innovative mind was given to wander. She knew this from personal experience.

  “She was inside of GAIA?”

  “Your mother had a few secure points of entry in various locations around the platform,” Laporte acknowledged. “Ones that were hidden from view and let her peak in for a few moments at a time when she wanted—or needed—to.”

  “But what about her avatar?” Cindira asked. “How did she show up at a specific location if her avatar is in our apartment even now?”

  “An avatar is nothing but code, and even a world as complex as GAIA, nothing more than a vast array of programming and algorithms. For most users, the avatars are put away in a VR equivalent of a file. But your mother’s avatar was stored at the root directory. It meant she could drill down anywhere she wanted. In time, you may learn to do the same.” Laporte’s head tilted to the side. “While the topic has been breached, Madame, can we discuss the destruction of your childhood avatar in the explosion?”

  “Not really sure there’s much to discuss. It was there, now it’s not. Probably just as well, since I’m twenty-six, and it was still eleven.”

  “Be that as it may, it leaves you without a place to land when you try to jack in. We’ll need to design you a new avatar, and soon. There are things going on inside that I’m having a hard time accounting for. Things which may make better sense to human eyes.”

  She put the shoes down and stood. “If it’s an avatar I need, I’m going to have to go to Tybor. I don’t have resources to create that here.”

  Which begged the question, where had her mother done all this stuff? Laporte had mentioned an off grid lab? When she’d turned twenty-one, all of Omala’s papers and belongings, held in trust by her father, reverted to her. There wasn’t much to it all—especially not after fifteen years in the proxy possession of Johanna Tieg. Most of the money was gone. Had probably been the first thing to go. A few dozen boxes of household and personal affects still sat in a storage locker in Oakland. She’d gone through it once but didn’t recall coming across anything suggesting a clandestine life her mother her led under everyone’s nose.

  All things she’d need to bring up and discuss with Laporte, once she knew that she could trust him.

  And that she wasn’t, in fact, dreaming all this.

  “I’d suggest waiting until you’d normally attend to your duties there; with your recent actions, if a spotlight catches a toe, they’ll want to illuminate the whole body of your activities. Don’t do anything outside your normal routine. As your friend Scotia would say, ‘act cool.’”

  Her eyebrow shot up. “You know Scotia?”

  “I know of Scotia, attended several of her lectures on vreal world addiction and treatment. She truly is a gifted researcher.”

  “Fine,” Cindira huffed. “I’ll wait until my shift tomorrow to do anything. And what about you? Are you, like, my little sidekick now?”

  “I’d prefer to think that I am assuming the place in your life I once held for your mother. I am your spy, as well as your assistant. Unless you’d prefer otherwise, I’d like to accompany you. But if I may ask one accommodation?”

  Cindira dipped her chin. “Sure, what?”

  “That you hide Asla’s broom. She’s nearly smashed me twice.”

  16

  Cindira blacked out the screen at her workstation as Kaylie unexpectantly entered the Kitchens.

  Damn, she wished there was a place other than under the nose of her step-sister that she could handle this kind of work. Any kind of work. Humility was for the forgotten; Cindira knew she was the best coder the company had. One of the best in the world, frankly. But her talents were useless without the tools to practice them, and Tybor held control over them all. It was like being a master sculptor, but without access to clay and marble.

  Hiding her new project, a brand-new avatar for herself, from her coworkers had been simple enough. It wasn’t the first time she’d undertaken building a profile from scratch; her superior coding skills meant Johanna often assigned Cindira the task for the clients who agreed to pay the hefty fees (not that Cindira herself ever saw an additional cent for her labor.) The others were busy with assignments of their own and didn’t notice the meek woman on Cindira’s screen had begun to look more like a reflection than a rendition.

  Generally, only celebrities whose brand was heavily tied up in their image designed avatars to look like their real-world selves, and Cindira was hardly a celebrity. A fleeting thought dashed across her mind: Her real-world self was her avatar. This couldn’t possibly be her true self.

  “Oh, good, you’re here.” Her stepsister lingered at the corner of her desk.

  Act cool. “I do work here, Kaylie.” Frustration made her snippy, it seemed. She’d had so little experience with it, and Kaylie even less with being on the receiving end, that it made both women pause and take on awkward expressions.

  “Yeah, well, anyway...” Kaylie blinked. “Stop whatever it is you’re doing. I need a new dress.”

  Cindira pointed back over her shoulder. “I saw a sale at McCarran’s on my way in.”

  “What? No, not a dress! I mean a dress dress, for The Kingdom!”

  “Another one?” Was the previous week set on replay? “I just made you one, then tweaked it even more.”

  “Right, and now I need another one.”

  Even for Kaylie, two custom-made dresses in as many weeks seemed excessive. “Why so soon? I’m sure there’s still plenty of men who haven’t seen you out of the other one.”

  Kaylie ate the insult with a great deal of effort. “There’s a ball, and I need a new gown.”

  “There’s a ball every night in The Kingdom.”

  “Yes, but not ones attended by the prince.”

  “The prince?” That got her attention. “The Gaian prince?”

  Kaylie rolled her eyes. “What other prince do you know?”

  “There’s one in Sweden, Catalonia, Japan... I think that Bahrain still has a...”

  “Yes, the Gaian prince!” Kaylie snapped. When her outburst drew the gazes of the other workers in the room, she brought herself back under control, though h
er words picked up speed and gruffness as she continued. “Prince Francisco has decided to reach out to the members of The Kingdom community to increase awareness of opportunities available to the wealthy to help the poor and destitute nations of the world, the ones who count on GAIA to mediate their problems. He’s going to host a ball at the Palace tomorrow night and everyone important is invited.”

  A throbbing tick started to increase in both tempo and volume. After a few moments, Cindira realized it was her own pulse pounding in her ears. So, the prince was holding a ball. But why would such a high-profile personality jump into a platform known as a scandalous playground of the rich and famous? And how had he gotten into Kaylie’s room? If she was going to figure out what he was up to, she needed to be where he was.

  “I want to go.”

  “You want to...” Kaylie threw back her head and laughed. “You, at the prince’s ball? Don’t be silly. You don’t even have an avatar. What are you going to do, craft a whole new profile overnight? Please, Cindira, the process takes days!”

  Not if you know Purasha and you’re really, really good at coding. “It wouldn’t take too long if I just used a digital scan of myself as a template. It wouldn’t have to be anything fancy.”

  “Yes, it would,” Kaylie insisted. “Eloquence – or fancy, as you call it – is part of our branding for that platform. It’s all about the luxe, the fairytale, the overly-romanticized idea of a world of wonder and magic. You can’t go into The Kingdom with some half-baked avatar, glitching all over the place and disgusting users who pay through the nose for exclusive access! It’s an idealized landscape, Cindira, not a horror flick simulation! Besides, if you spend all your time scrapping together a new avatar from scratch before tomorrow night, then who would make my dress?”

  “Any number of etailors.” She didn’t mean for the answer to sound snippy, but it was hard to fold it into any other shape. Like it or not, she’d never be able to make herself an avatar without Tybor’s resources, and Kaylie was now her boss. When Kaylie shot daggers at her, Cindira found herself crumbling. “Fine, you’re right. I just...I dreamed for a moment.”