“What a lovely gown.” He placed a kiss across her knuckles. “I look forward to taking you out of it later.”
She retracted her hand the moment he removed his lips. “Sorry, but I’m working tonight.”
“Oh, dear.” He feigned hurt, pushing a hand to his heart. “Does Mommy have you seducing senators again? Or perhaps a certain visiting dignitary?”
“Mr. Mancusi.” Johanna chose just that moment to arrive, her blond hair pulled and pushed in such a twist of loops and weaves, it looked like an angry ocean. She laced her arm through Kaylie’s, pulling the latter insistently to her side. “Would you mind, signore, if I borrowed Kaylie for a moment?”
Kaylie attempted an apology through a half-hearted grimace. She wasn’t at all upset to be parted from so recent a beau. It was like eating at a fine restaurant; the experience and tastes were delightful, but one needed a sufficient space of time before another visit would be as appealing.
When they were far enough from the others, Johanna rounded.
“You are not here to randomly socialize.”
“I know.”
“And you are certainly not here to have one of your fairytale fucks.”
Kaylie bit the inside of her mouth so hard that she’d have tasted blood in the real world. “I know. I’m here to seduce royalty.”
Johanna held the fury of a fire in her eyes. “Keep your eyes open. The second Francisco emerges, be on him like chips on silicon. Be certain he speaks only with those who wouldn’t cause trouble for us later. And for god’s sake, keep him from the Coeur. He might be intending to explore.”
“You mean like he was exploring Tybor two weeks ago?” the blonde snapped at her mother. “I still can’t believe you even let him in the door, almost as much as I can’t believe that you waited until yesterday to tell me who he really was.”
Johanna sneered. “The terms of a Non-Disclosure Agreement have always baffled you, haven’t they?”
Before her daughter could protest, Johanna immediately jumped back in. “As for letting him in: I didn’t have a choice. Tybor’s agreements with the GAIA Congress allow the elected monarch unfettered access to our facilities. To have denied him would have caused more problems than it solved.” Johanna turned her eyes across the dancefloor filled with swishing dresses and clicking heels, up past the grand staircase, to where a second, hidden staircase lay behind a secret door. “I can’t risk anyone finding out about Rex.”
The ire Kaylie had shown just moments ago dissipated as she focused on that covert space. “There’s no change, then?”
Johanna shook her head. “And people are beginning to notice. Even Cindira is getting suspicious. If she finds out...”
“She won’t.” Her own troubles aside, Kaylie actually took a moment to think about the situation from her mother’s perspective. “He can’t stay like that forever, Mother. Pretty soon you’ll need to...”
“If I can find no other remedy, I will,” Johanna snapped. She brought her gaze back to her daughter. “I know my place, don’t forget yours. Mind Francisco. Let’s get through this charade without any surprises, okay?”
And in a swirl of purple silk, Johanna was gone, mixing back among the guests.
22
Cindira followed Laporte, despite the quick clip and regardless of how the unyielding material of her skirt made each step labored.
“I’ve never heard of the Coeur or Yuchi,” she said as they came to a grand marble staircase and began to climb, her guide leading the way. “I thought I knew a lot about The Kingdom. Are there any other secrets I’m unaware of?”
“To know the answer to that question, Miss, I’d have to know what you know. Sadly, that is impossible.”
She didn’t think Laporte chose his words without purpose. “Sadly?”
“As I mentioned, I am not aware of the details of your mother’s death. It happened during one of the few processes during which I’m unaware of what’s going on in the real world.”
She’d have to ask later if that was still true. That, even as he was here now in the avatar of a young man, his physical mouse iteration remained conscious back at Tybor, guarding her body. Though what a mouse could do to help was questionable.
Laporte continued, “I have a feeling that, if I were able to access your memories the way I can do with an artificial system, I might be able to find clues. Ones you may even be aware of but are unable to contextualize with your inferior human cognitive abilities.”
The staircase narrowed as they reached the second floor and turned to ascend to the third. “Gee, Laporte, tell me what you really think.”
“I don’t say this to insult you, but it will not help our endeavors if you fail to remember my abilities and use them to your full advantage. I—"
Cindira harrumphed as she came crashing into Laporte’s back. Confused, she lifted her head to see what had frozen her companion’s movements.
The woman before them had black eyes. Not just pupils, but the entire orb. Like an animal’s, and yet, far deeper than any other creature she had ever seen. She didn’t conform to The Kingdom’s Eurocentric, seventeenth century norms, dressed instead in the garb of ancient Japan, right down to a katana sword which she bore before her. The implied threat didn’t go over Cindira’s head: namely, if she advanced, that sword would go through Cindira’s head.
Laporte regained his footing even as he took Cindira’s hand and pulled her to the same step on which he stood. “Yuchi, how are you?”
“That’s Yuchi?” She found herself whispering, then immediately wondered at the effort. “You said it was a guy.”
“A bot doesn’t have a consistent gender, but your language defaults to male pronouns. He, she... Yuchi can be either.”
“Or neither.” The accent vaguely matched the persona, making her somehow even more awe-inspiring. Yuchi kept her eyes trained on Laporte. “Third floor access is restricted to Tier Zero users. You know this.”
Cindira huffed. “There is no such thing as Tier Zero users.”
Only to be refuted by Laporte moments later. “She is a Tier Zero user. Check her credentials.”
Anxiety twisted her insides. Wasn’t avoiding detection by Yuchi one of the things they had said they wanted to accomplish?
Yuchi’s eyes became distant for a moment, the inky black stained by dots of colors, all popping in and out of view with great rapidity.
“She is a Tier Zero user.” Yuchi turned to Cindira, sheathing her sword. The bot bent at the waist. “You may pass, Miss Grover.”
Cindira rushed past the samurai, even as she corrected by instinct, “It’s Tieg, actually.”
She’d changed it after she’d moved in with her father. Her mother’s legacy gave a teenage girl working her way through academic circles too much baggage to tow.
“Negative.” Yuchi twisted at the hip, even while keeping her feet planted. “User’s name is Omala Grover.”
So that’s how he’d been able to get her in to The Kingdom, even though the new avatar she’d been creating for herself remained incomplete. Even as she turned, and with Yuchi between them, Cindira knew she’d just made a mistake. Laporte wore the evidence in his expression. Suddenly, a woman who didn’t care too much for how the world observed her, wanted nothing more than a mirror.
Hands pressed to her face brought understanding. “This is my mother’s avatar.”
Yuchi’s sword flew into a defensive position. “It is a breach of the user agreement to inhabit any avatar not registered to and linked with the user’s account. You have openly admitted to this violation. As prescribed in the user agreement, your avatar will be immediately destroyed. Remain still as I—”
Laporte sprung, caging Yuchi in his grasp. The pair fell backward, each tumble and tuck on the stairs announced with a clunk.
Somehow, her guide still managed to speak through it like nothing abnormal was happening. “Third door on the right. Hurry, I’ll deal with this.”
At the second-floor landing, Lapo
rte managed to knock the sword from Yuchi’s hand.
“But—”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m immortal here. You are not. Now, go.”
Cindira raced forward, hoping that if it was true Laporte could take on any form he wanted, he really should transition to one with bigger muscles.
23
Cindira pulled back the sheer curtain, revealing a stained-glass window lit from behind, the image, a knight slaying a six-legged dragon. Only, instead of white-glazed panels to comprise the knight’s face, was a void, a peephole where one could look out, the design hiding her features in plain sight.
Below, the typical scene of so many of the archaic animated films played out in faux flesh, bone, and blood. Gowns, suits, musicians donning powdered wigs and playing wooden instruments, chandeliers blazing with a hundred candles each, couples working their way through carefully rehearsed steps, servants (mostly male, and wearing dressed down styles of the wealthy and affluent users around them) with trays filled with the very food she’d seen being prepped not an hour before navigating the guests, a fountain shooting a chocolate stream into which several women were dipping bits of cake or fruit...
The fairy tale, just as marketed.
A glitch at the corner of her eye proceeded Laporte’s reappearance, as though he were some sort of wizard popping into existence at will.
“Laporte! You scared me.” Cindira leapt back, her hand flattening on her chest. “Yuchi?”
“Is rebooting. The process, combined with some road blocks I was able to throw up, will take about an hour.”
It wasn’t much time, but it would have to be enough. She turned back to the window, studying the crowd below, looking for Francisco’s face, though she found it increasingly difficult to focus. So many luxuries and baubles on which the eye could catch. Curiosity burned within her: who were these people, and why were they here?
Despite the situation, Cindira’s mouth crooked in delight. Awe was an understatement. She had coded individual artifacts, like Kaylie’s intricate dresses, but the rich tapestry of the full view before her...how was it possible this was not real?
“You are impressed.” It was a statement, not a question.
Cindira couldn’t bring herself to lie, despite a little voice inside her reminding her that her mother never wanted this. “How could I not be? GAIA is amazing, but its buildings, its landscapes... Even the virtual weapons armies use to face each other in the Arenas of War... They’re all direct reproductions of things that exist in the real world. But these things...the fashion, the style, the building...this hasn’t existed for hundreds of years, but there it all is.”
“Despite the old saying, Miss, I don’t believe you only get one chance to make a first impression.” Laporte pointed to the crowd below. “From up here, you see the big picture, the illusion of the cover story. Look closer. Look into the subtext of what really lies before you.”
She need only to relax her gaze to see through the noise and take in the nuance as Laporte narrated the scene.
“That couple dancing there?” he said, pointing. “The prime minister and president of two countries currently warring inside GAIA, laughing and smiling as though they hadn’t a care in the world. The lanky man standing at the fountain who’d just popped a strawberry in his mouth? A prime minister elected with questionable legitimacy, who just a few weeks ago had been indicted by the Gaian court of real world war crimes.”
Laporte pivoted, this time indicating the far end of the ballroom where a woman who’d retreated to a mezzanine invisible to those below remained in plain sight of their current position. She grinned as a man accompanying her and dressed to the nines pushed her to the ground, lifted her skirt, and shoved his head into the folds of muslin, disappearing from view.
“Mira Labati, the famous actress currently on trial for killing her husband, and the journalist whose been assigned by Tiempo Nuevo to cover the case.”
With eyes much sadder than any non-human’s should be, Laporte gazed at Cindira. “Tybor promises the chance to relive a romantic past, but the past was never romantic. This world never existed. It still doesn’t.” Her companion shook his head. “Your mother dreamed of a world united, where disputes and conflict could be resolved in the interest of peace and prosperity, without destroying lands or lives. And then, Tybor held up a mirror to her vision, everything reflecting here, backward. Everything that GAIA is, this is the opposite. If your mother had lived, she would have done everything in her power to keep this from prospering. And your father...”
Suddenly, Cindira’s heart raced. “What about him?”
His eyes dropped to the floor. “When you said you intended to come here, I thought I should stop you. You’ve placed yourself in tremendous harm just by logging in. But I also knew it was an opportunity for you to learn the truth.”
“Laporte.” Cindira turned from the window, forgetting the swirling plays of indulgence below. “Why are you bringing up my father?”
The mouse stepped away from the window and towards a wardrobe that sat on the edge of the room, a monstrously huge thing styled to look of mahogany and cherry wood. Inside, there were no blankets or linens or even dresses. There was an archway, and beyond that, another room.
With a hand gestured toward what lay beyond her field of vision, Laporte invited her to see past the fairy tale and discover the facts. “I’m afraid he may be a victim of it.”
Everything about The Kingdom was impractical, but none of it until now had been impossible.
“Dad?”
What Cindira saw defied her understanding of the vreal world. Whenever a user was rendered unconscious, the avatar was supposed to return to the storage files. Yet, there was her father, laid out in a four-poster bed festooned with richly-embroidered green curtains and matching bed clothes. Or at least, there was her father’s avatar.
“Dad? Dad!” Cindira shook her father’s shoulder, gently at first, then harder. Try as she might, he would not wake.
The man beside her recalled his mouse behaviors when his head twitched, examining the sight before them. “The most recent entry recording your father’s arrival to the palace grounds was two months ago, but I could find no logout record for him after that time.”
“Two months?” Rage turned to worry. Cindira sat on his bed, stroking her father’s stubble-strewn cheek. “You mean that my father’s been lying here like this since February?”
“I cannot say. As you’ll recall, I can only detect when someone passes a checkpoint into another section of the platform; I cannot tell where within that section they’ve been or are.” Laporte circled the bed and sat on the opposite side. “His avatar is in stasis, much as your mother’s was.”
A crushing weight materialized in her stomach. “Are you saying my father is dead?”
Laporte shook his head. “No, not at all. There’s still a flow of data in him between the real world and the vreal world, even if a minimal amount. Wherever it is he’s jacked in from, it’s a pirate signal, otherwise we could trace it and know where his body is. But, this I can tell you: he is alive.”
The anxiety that had smoked her soul rose into the sky and dissipated. The bounce faded when her analytical mind raced to piece together what had happened. Two months was a long time to be missing without anyone noticing, but Cindira had noticed. When she went to Johanna, her step-mother always had an excuse. “He’s still in Asia.” “There was need for him to stop in Istanbul.” “An urgent request from one of our partners in Bangalore.” It seemed unlikely that Johanna would have been unaware of the truth, that Rex Tieg was black boxed inside The Kingdom.
The glitch was exceedingly rare, but it happened once or twice a year. Something would go wrong with a login or logout and the user’s avatar and mind would end up somewhere in the abyss of code, unable to go one way or another. But that problem was one easily solved. Why hadn’t Johanna solved it, then? PR? The implications of the CEO of the company being stuck?
Or was there a
reason she didn’t want this fixed? Or, if Cindira gave her step-mother the benefit of a doubt, that Johanna couldn’t fix.
“If he isn’t dead, is it possible that he’s in a...”
Laporte, as if by magic, ceased to exist.
A different voice filled the void. “A coma?”
Cindira shot to her feet and even considered running, but it would do no good. Johanna was between her and the only door in or out of the room. Keeping her face to her father, her back to her step-mother, Cindira turned her head over her shoulder only enough to see the snake that had her cornered.
Johanna stepped with deliberate precision, the skirting of the very dress that Cindira herself had designed only the night before swaying like the head of a cobra. “You’re not a servant bot, even though you’re dressed like one. Who are you and how did you get in here?”
Cindira kept her face turned away from her step-mother, the cloth around her head shielding her face. “I’m...” His daughter. But she wasn’t. At least, not when she was using her mother’s avatar. “Someone concerned for his safety.”
“You suppose I am not?” Venom laced Johanna’s tone. “If you were so concerned for his safety, you wouldn’t keep him like this. You’d free him.”
What the hell? “You think I did this to him?”
“Do you suppose I did? Why would I put my own husband into a coma?”
“Because it gives you unchecked control of Tybor.” Cindira labored to keep her tone flat, the timber of her mother’s voice concealed. “I know who you are, Johanna Tieg. I know how you love power and influence and money—all of which you’ve been consolidating for years.”
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