City of Cinders

by Kendrai Meeks

  “Where did the design for this outfit come from?”

  Still no body, only Laporte’s voice. “It is the design worn by the NPC servants in the Palace.”

  “The Non-Player Characters?” Cindira asked, performing a little QA of her own. “We call those VAPORs now.” She pressed an index finger to the patch of skin between her eyes, finding that Laporte had given her a fake bhindi so she’d match the other bots. “I’m not a bot. Surely someone will realize that when they look at me.”

  “That’s the key to it, Miss. In the Palace, very few users ever even notice an NPC—a VAPOR, if you prefer. That includes your step-mother and siblings.”

  “I guess that makes sense. Thanks, Laporte. Good thinking. Now, what’s the best way to get to the Palace itself?”

  “By coach, Miss. One is on its way now; it will meet us out in the main street in a few minutes. The credential Scotia transferred to you will get you onto the palace grounds. However, as Scotia herself mentioned, the midnight protocols will sweep you out when it sees you and has no record of your entry.”

  “I know. Only, if that’s true, how does my family get away with it?” She broadened her search around the first floor, looking to see in which corner the little mouse had stuffed himself. “Why are you hiding?”

  “I’m not hiding, miss. I’m just... Well...” His hesitance suggested contemplation, an internal debate. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? Sure, Laporte’s programming might encourage him to give emotional indicators, but it was just that... programming.

  Finally, he continued. “In the real world, your mother decided to make me look like a mouse because rodents are both innocuous and a pest. No one would hesitate to swat me away, as Asla is so keen on doing. It also made my physical iteration very transportable. In the vreal world, however, there is no need for such considerations. Just remember that I can look like anything you want except a registered avatar, so if my current appearance doesn’t suit, I can alter it.”

  “You mean you look different here?”

  But why shouldn’t he? After all, the vast majority of the players inside The Kingdom had avatars carefully tailored to be their ideal selves, whether that was getting rid of a bump on the nose, or by appearing slender and tone when the reality was anything but. Her step-sister had uncharacteristically gone against the trend. Kaylie’s mods were skin deep. Literally. All her alterations had been performed in the real world; why change in the vreal one was had so perfectly been rendered in flesh? Not the mention, Kaylie had been a public figure not long after The Kingdom launched, her step-sister must have felt her face was already part of her brand, and thus her appeal.

  Laporte didn’t speak. Instead, the doorknob of a nearby closet turned and the door creaked open.

  As a human, Laporte was utterly unremarkable, and even retained some of his mousier qualities. Although he appeared as a boy in his late teens or early twenties, he was of a diminutive stature, the top of his head on par with her chin. Black hair, black eyes, an unassuming boyish smile. In every way plain and by that virtue, non-threatening.

  And somehow, familiar.

  “Is this iteration to your satisfaction?” The voice was the same, however.

  Cindira smiled and nodded. “Why wouldn’t it be? Is this avatar modeled on someone from the real world?”

  Someone my mother knew?

  “I’m afraid I don’t know.” He approached, his hands laced behind his back. “My knowledge inside your mother’s platforms is fairly comprehensive, but outside of that, I’m afraid highly lacking. I’d like to think she modeled me on a student she might have known once. Maybe even a teacher.”

  Laporte, the academic. Suiting, somehow.

  “But we mustn’t waste time speculating.” He reached out and took her hand, pulling her toward the door. “The ball has already begun, and Yuchi will be suspicious if you arrive too late.”

  She let out a yelp as the mouse-turned-pageboy yanked on her arm a little too hard. Not that he could injure her, of course. One could experience pain inside the vreal world; it was neural feedback deemed necessary to render the experience authentic, but death, when it rarely occurred, was merely symbolic.

  Laporte pasted on an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Miss Cindira.”

  “No harm done.” They made it out the front door. “Who is Yuchi?”

  “The security bot that guards the Palace.”

  In her mind, she visualized a sweet little Japanese woman well matched to the name, and the horrific yet funny prospect of watching such a woman dispense of trespassers.

  “Only a certain level of paid clientele is permitted to enter,” Laporte continued, “and tonight, those restrictions are even tighter. Yuchi makes sure that only those who are meant to be there, are there.”

  “Scotia’s clearance is that high?”

  Even from the side, she caught the young man’s smile. “To be honest, I’m not certain if Miss MacAvoy is aware she’s at such a high tier. The change to her profile was only recently requested by your brother, Cade.”

  “My step-brother, you mean. That explains it.”

  Had Cade extended the invitation to what was turning out to be the social event of the season, hoping to stroke Scotia’s ego and woo her?

  Whatever. She couldn’t focus on that now. She needed to keep her mind on the obstacles to her goals. “Is it Yuchi that runs the midnight protocols?”

  “Indeed, and I’m not too eager to get on his bad side.”

  Well, perhaps she should have imagined a little Japanese man.

  20

  Cindira had seen slips of The Kingdom before, even recognized passing elements of it as her own creation. But now, she could appreciate it in full. Here a flower in front of one of the luxurious mansions along the river, a combination of a red rose and a black tulip that held the petals of both. There a store front selling linens and dinnerware. (After all, if you were going to allow users to buy luxurious properties, they’d need to furnish and decorate them.) But to see it with her own eyes! Or at least, eyes that belonged to her. It was as though someone had hooked a 3D printer into her dreams and manufactured her visions in real time. Depth, texture... even the scent of roasting hazelnuts in the air had all her senses buzzing. The streets weren’t empty, either. They bustled, full of women and men strolling, dressed in varying levels of baroque finery. There were even a few dogs and one man walking a monkey on a leash. Bots, of course. One couldn’t jack a real animal into the vreal world; they didn’t have the cerebral capacity for it.

  Cindira wanted to order the coach to stop so she could get out and explore each inch in excruciating detail. Beside her on the bench sat Laporte, diminutive in stature and miniscule in concern.

  He fished a piece of gold-leafed card stock from his pocket and handed it to her. “Here. This is the invitation Scotia transferred to you. I’ve rewritten the code to timestamp it as verified yesterday.”

  Her fingers indexed the bumps and crevices of the fine parchment, marveling in the experience. “It feels so real. How will this get me through? Yuchi will take one look at me dressed as a servant and know that something is wrong.”

  “The invitation itself is the key. You perceive it as paper, but all this really represents is a package of code, credentials.”

  She dipped her chin. “How did you get ahold of it?”

  Laporte’s face looked like a dam holding back a great weight of water. “Best if we not speak of it.”

  “Fair enough.” She tucked the card into a pocket in her skirt. “How deep does your knowledge go? Do you know where everyone is?”

  The boy clicked his tongue. “I know who is signed in; when they pass into a new section of the program, I know that they are in that area. I don’t know specifics beyond that. For example, I can tell you the prince, as well as your family, are currently in the Palace. But where in the Palace precisely? I don’t know. To me, that information all looks the same.”

  A glimmer of an idea crept into the back of he
r brain. Maybe she wouldn’t have to track down Batista at all. Maybe Laporte could simply tell her what she needed to know. “When someone’s logged in, can you read their mind?”

  Wide-eyed, the mouse-turned-man looked aghast. “Of course not. Your mother was adamant in my design and in the design of her platform that the user’s mind would remain free of intrusion any more than was necessary to control its avatar. A wise human once said, ‘knowledge is power.’ Omala understood that and knew the first temptation of a creation such as hers would be to use it as a mechanism of intelligence. How would GAIA have saved the world, if it was simultaneously building the chains that would enslave it?”

  For reasons she couldn’t quite vocalize, Cindira felt ashamed of even asking. Before she could continue the topic, however, the road under the wheels of the coach turned from dirt to cobblestone, making their smooth ride into a bumpy, jostling nightmare.

  “We’ve entered the palace grounds,” Laporte said to her unasked question.

  The piece of paper that she’d been holding blipped out of existence. “The invitation...it disappeared!”

  “But you did not.” He smiled as the coach began to slow and the discomfort abated. “That means it—and you—have been given a pass by Yuchi. The first hurdle is crossed.”

  Cindira pulled herself to the edge of the bench, peaking her head past the heavy curtained window just in time to see the backside of the palace gates. The archway was truly a marvel to behold. She’d read articles about it in VR architectural reviews, and knew it was modeled after the Habsburg Gate in the real world with one significant difference: the massive clock face set in the top or the arch. One of the early challenges in a VR environment had been deciding how time would work, and if there should be time at all. Cindira’s mother had argued it was a constant in the real world, and the virtual one, and human mind, would falter without it. Unlike GAIA, The Kingdom moved in time with +0 GMT. The Baum Clock at the Palace measured time with computer precision, running eight hours ahead of San Francisco.

  Cindira eased back into her seat. “What’s the next hurdle?”

  “You must find your prince.”

  The coach pulled to a stop at the back of the grounds. Laporte presented a hand, helping Cindira to step down safely, before ushering her into a room where a staff of several dozen worked a kitchen that looked like something from a period piece movie. All around, women dressed in identical wear went about their business. For a moment, Cindira worried they’d see her classifiers – her servant’s garb—and assume she was one of them. To her surprise, however, none of them paid her the slightest mind.

  “Are they all bots?”

  Laporte surveyed the servants, then pointed to one man working at a distant table, folding pieces of pastry into edible origami. “The sous chef is from the real world. Bots can mix consistent, delicious recipes, but only a true chef can give them a human touch. In essence, he’s here to make the meal perfect, by making it slightly imperfect.”

  “That’s a contradiction.”

  “That’s humanity,” Laporte shot back.

  No one took notice of them as they passed, a fact that both relieved and confused her. How far would she be able to make it into the Palace without the security bots realizing she wasn’t who the invitation said she was? After a few minutes weaving through halls, the level of opulence rising with each turn like a set of river locks slowly filling and carrying the boat within higher, they came to circular vestibule where three intimating oak doors stretched from floorboards to crown molding.

  “This is one of the pipelines,” Laporte said, and as he continued he held up a hand to indicate each in turn from left to right. “The backroom, only accessible by décor bots and a limited number of Tybor avatars. When The Kingdom was being constructed without Omala’s knowledge, it was from this point forward. The center door leads to the residential part of the Palace, though no one really lives here. It’s called the Coeur. High-end users can rent out that portion for exorbitant fees, but only on a nightly basis. Think of it as a luxurious bordello. They do.”

  Her stomach curdled as she thought of the difference between all the good GAIA did, and all the malicious, indulgent activities that kept The Kingdom ticking.

  Finally, Laporte extended a pointed finger to the last door. “That way eventually leads to the ballroom, and also the library, the dining rooms, the throne room, and eventually, the terraces and drives that connect the Palace with the rest of the kingdom. If you’re looking for the prince, that is likely where you’ll find him.”

  “But it’s also where my family will be. I don’t want Kaylie or Johanna to know I’m here. I hope you’re right, that I blend in as a servant, but if they look straight at me, they’re going to realize who I am.”

  “That’s highly unlikely.”

  “Yeah, well, I wish I had your confidence.” Cindira looked at each of the doors in turn. “If only there were a way for me to look for the prince without being in the room. God, I wish this world had electronics. I’d march a drone bug in there without thinking.”

  Laporte took in her side profile. “Miss Cindira, may I ask what it is you’re hoping to accomplish here tonight?”

  He asked the question like an AI entity would: simply, and as though the answer should be equally as simple. But like Laporte himself had said, humans were perfectly imperfect.

  “I need to talk to the prince.”

  “To what end?”

  Wasn’t that the question? “I don’t know if I can put it into words yet. Explosions in the Gaian capital being covered up? The prince sniffing around at Tybor? I need to know what’s going on, if my mother’s legacy is truly in danger. I know you don’t understand what instinct is...”

  “Instinct: noun. An innate, typically fixed pattern of behavior in animals in response to certain stimuli.”

  “Yes, but do you understand it? The prince feels like the way to fight whatever is going on in GAIA is by having access to the source code.” She shook her head, as though she could shake away the fuzziness of what she was thinking. “Maybe it’s as simple as the code breaking down after years of use without proper updates. If that’s the case, fixing it may be simple enough. But I need to understand not only what’s going on, but also what he’s intending to do about it. I’m the only one who...”

  The mouse looked at her with his human eyes full of hope. “You’re the only one who can help.” As suddenly as his pride had come over him, he masked it with reproach. “A fact that makes you the most dangerous person in The Kingdom.”

  “How?”

  “Miss Tieg, you seem to be under the impression that GAIA is the platform which serves as the world’s place for diplomacy and warcraft. It is the public face, I’ll grant you that. But what you—and based on what you’re saying, perhaps Prince Francisco—need to realize is that this world is where the money and power truly are. And they are growing weary of competition.”

  He pulled her towards the center door, which opened as though by magic upon their approach. “Come, there is one room in the residence from which you can see the ballroom below. Don’t worry, it doesn’t work the other way. You’ll be safely hidden, and from there, you can get the full picture of what’s really going on.”

  21

  Kaylie Fife was in her natural habitat: the center of attention. Not for much longer, though. The Gaian prince had yet to show his face at the ball, but the moment Francisco Batista de la Reina did, all eyes would swing to him.

  Like so many other elements of The Kingdom, the Palace’s ballroom had been modeled on the height of classical European style, though at a scale that the architects of that era could never have imagined. Four stories high, no less than six glittering crystal chandeliers, each the size of a minibus, hung on golden chains from a ceiling covered in rich murals. Ivory-colored columns framed the walls, each topped by the gold-leafed bust of the human form in divine perfection. Under their feet: floors made with slabs of golden tile, interrupted at regular inte
rvals with exquisite mosaics. The only things that outshone such exquisite design was the compliment of its company: titans of industry, masters of the arts, creators of culture (for whom the exuberant access fees were paid by “patrons,” but whom most people called “sugars”), and the dirty, filthy, stinking rich. By requirement, the costumes matched the motif: ballgowns and fine suits cost a pretty penny to code, and it showed.

  When the invitations had first gone out to the highest tier of kingdom society, many weren’t sure what to make of it. GAIA generally kept to itself, and that’s the way they preferred it. A prince had never revealed himself to the public prior to the end of his five-year term of office, his identity concealed to avoid approach by interested parties. The de facto world government created a convenient mask, and its actions and wars, a distraction on the wires each evening. Meanwhile, the true global power brokers came to The Kingdom, a dalliance of a platform that provided the backdrop for all they wanted to be done.

  Francisco Batista hadn’t revealed himself publicly, per se, but the fact that he’d created this event in order to, as the invitation had said, “make acquaintance with the patrons of our sister city,” had everyone on edge. Everyone, that was, except Kaylie. As the daughter of Johanna Tieg, and a high-leveled manager at Tybor, she scoffed at the idea that GAIA could interfere with this land in which she ruled, socially if not actually.

  And, if she played her cards right, even that would change.

  “Good evening, Pet.”

  Pietro Mancusi slid her direction, his fine hips carrying a muscular frame she’d had the pleasure of inspecting at length only a week before. Dressed in a modern interpretation of baroque couture befitting the platform, he still managed to stand apart from the crowd with his good looks alone. She wasn’t certain how much of his avatar was based on his real-world self; she’d been too scared of disappointment to make an occasion to see him there, despite several overtures. Not to mention, he lived in Italy, or what remained of it, and Rome simply was not in fashion these days.