whither: chapter six

Six

The Law’s Delay

The world seemed to spin around me, and my ears, mouth and throat felt as if they had been packed with cotton. “Vladimir Drake?” I asked, although I didn’t really expect an answer.

Jack nodded and stood up on their tiptoes to point towards the newspaper image and name. “Founder and CEO of Perceptions,” Jill read aloud.

Gen stepped closer to me.

I wiped sudden sweat from my eyes and began to read.

Vladimir Drake, founder and CEO of Perceptions, Incorporated, announced a plan today to further solidify the company’s near monopoly on the existence and experience market. Details of the plan were not immediately released, but insiders claim that it could drive Drake’s competitors out of business. Madeleine St. Laurent, president of rival corporate giant Virtuosity, expressed disdain for the rumor when reached for a comment. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” said St. Laurent.

Jack tugged on my sleeve and I looked up. “In case you didn’t know it,” he said, “you’re the most important man in the world.”

“Richest, too,” Jill said with a nod of their head. Her pigtail swung back and forth.

I know who I am…

“This is,” I said, my voice cracking. I licked my dry lips. “This is wrong.” I looked up from the paper to Jack and Jill. Gen’s hand touched my arm. “I don’t believe it,” I said. “I don’t believe you.”

Beside the story was a small picture of St. Laurent. Gen leaned in and looked at it. “That’s not a good picture,” she said. “She’s prettier than that.”

I dropped the newspaper and stalked down the street. My wooden legs felt in danger of snapping beneath my weight. Although nearly flat, the cobblestones threatened to trip me at any moment. My body trembled. People buffeted me as I pushed forward with my head in my hands. The whirling world reversed its spin, and I held on to a wrought iron lamppost for a moment before pushing on again.

I know who I am…

“It’s the truth,” Jack and Jill called after me.

I turned. “I know who I am!”

“So do I,” Gen said, and took a step forward.

Jack grabbed a passing man in a gray suit by the sleeve. “Excuse me,” he said. “Do you know who this is?”

The man looked at me. After a moment, his face broke into a wide smile. “It’s really an honor to meet you,” he said, and took a step towards me with his hand extended.

I ignored his offered hand. “What’s my name?”

The man gave me a quizzical look. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

The man lowered his hand and swallowed. His smile disappeared. “Why you’re Mr. Drake,” he said. “Vladimir Drake.”

I turned away from him. “And who is that?” I asked in a small voice.

There was a pause, then, from behind me, Gen said, “Tell him.”

“You own Perceptions, Incorporated,” he said, and quickly added, “Please don’t do anything to my life, Mr. Drake. I finally got it just the way I like it.”

“I won’t,” I said, and heard the man scurry away. How could I?

Jack and Jill entered my field of vision and stood directly under me, looking up. “Now—“

“—do you believe us?”

I raised my head and looked at the city around me. The multicolored buildings leaned over the street as if tipsy. Beyond them, skyscrapers towered, gargantuan globes balancing atop hair-thin pinnacles. Cars and buses and trucks drove by on the roads and flew over our heads. Advertising seemed everywhere. Foremost amongst the signs were ones that read, PERCEPTIONS IS REALITY.

“You created all of this,” Gen said.

I wrapped my arms around me, as if I were cold on the hot day. “I wonder if it took me longer than six days,” I whispered.

The statues that dotted the architecture of the city, strong stone arms holding up entryways and roofs, caught my eye. In the sun, I could easily make out their features. Grim and strangely familiar granite visages stared down at me. Their faces were mine.

I felt like someone had punched me in the solar plexus.

I turned towards a storefront and stepped to the plate glass window. The paint on the glass proclaimed it a delicatessen. Richard’s face peered back at me between advertisements for kosher pizza and kosher sushi. Outwardly, I didn’t even look like the guy on the magazines, but with my mind spinning a million kilometers a minute, I could no longer be sure of what face I was looking at.

I could no longer be sure of anything.

“If I’m Vladimir Drake,” I said, “then how come I don’t look like him?”

Jack laughed.

“What does what you look like have to do with who you are?” Jill asked.

I looked from my—that is to say, Richard’s—reflection back at the pair. “But if I don’t look like Drake, then how do you know that I am?”

“Did you get hit on the head or something?” Jack asked.

I touched the back of my head. “Maybe.”

“DIP,” Jill said.

I looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

“DNA Identification Protocol,” Jack said.

“Everybody has it,” Jill added.

“Even the Broken People.”

“What does—DIP—do?”

“It lets you know who someone is—” Jack said.

“—because no one looks like who they are,” Jill finished.

People continued to pass us on the busy sidewalk. “See, I told you it was him,” someone said.

“Watch,” Jack said while looking at me. “Singularity, visual DIP scan.”

A moment later a translucent glowing pane hung in midair between them and me. A picture covered the greenish glass. My picture. The face was the one I had known all of my life, except that, like the newspaper photo, it was older and well groomed. Below the picture, written backwards from my perspective: VLADIMIR DRAKE. Beneath that, a litany of personal information, including, CEO, PERCEPTIONS, INC.

“This is the only way to really know who someone is,” Jill said.

“But lots of people turn it off,” Jill said, and my translucent biography disappeared.

“It can be more fun to not know who someone really is,” Gen said.

I took a deep breath. “Singularity,” I said while looking at Jack and Jill, “visual DIP scan.”

Nothing.

I turned and focused on Gen. “Singularity, visual DIP scan.”

Still nothing.

“How odd,” Jack said.

Gen shook her head. “Maybe my patch isn’t holding.”

I bit my lower lip. “I guess my world is broken.”

A murmur rushed through the crowded street along the river and I looked up to see what the commotion was. I swallowed. Hard. Now, in addition to the magazines and newspapers, every surface of every building bore my face like a second skin. Cars drove by with my face on their hoods, doors, windows and fenders. My head rotated in the images and a word flashed above my head: WANTED. Below my face, another pair of words: FOR MURDER.

“What in the hell,” I said.

A woman stopped in the street and pointed. “There he is!”

Somewhere, in the distance, a siren droned.

“He’s over here,” someone else yelled.

I lowered my head and bulled forward. Everywhere I looked my face looked back at me. The faces of the general populace writhed in disgust as I passed.

“I know who I am,” I cried as I ran, but I wondered who I was trying to convince.

Feet pounded. People buffeted. Angry screams echoed.

I hadn’t gotten half a block before a shrieking siren rent the air and flashing lights rushed at me. A BEA cruiser left the road and bounced onto the sidewalk, its sleek chrome shape reflecting my face from a hundred different angles. Jumping backwards, I barely escaped the cruiser as it came to a stop.

“Stay where you are,” boomed from the cruiser.

Behavioural agents clad in body armor poured out. As in the bar, my own face was emblazoned on their golden face shield.

“Come on,” Gen yelled. Grabbing my hand, she yanked me down the sidewalk.

“Run, Mr. Drake,” Jack yelled behind me.

“Halt and be judged,” a BEA agent yelled.

“Run,” Jill cried.

I ran.

A moment later there was a green flash of light and an innocent bystander near me went down in a heap. I wondered briefly what he did to deserve the officious blast.

Gen pulled me around a corner and I stopped in my tracks. Three more BEA cars, stuffed to overflowing with agents, blocked the way.

I felt a hot gust of wind, and looked up to find a BEA vehicle lowering above us. A red strobe light circled at its nose and a blue one at its tail. This larger BEA vehicle was shaped like a giant beetle. Articulated landing legs spread from the craft.

“Halt and be judged,” came down from above.

Gen tried to pull me forward again but I pulled my hand away. She looked at me with questioning eyes.

“It’s over,” I said.

“Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head,” the voice from the lowering vehicle ordered, and I did.

“I guess I don’t know who I am,” I said, lacing my fingers behind my neck, “but I know what I did.”

Gen looked at me with questioning eyes and I had to look away.

Strong hands pulled me to my feet. I stood and a BEA agent snapped restraints onto my wrists. The larger BEA vehicle landed nearby, its legs bending and settling to accept the weight of the craft.

“Don’t you know who he is?” Gen yelled at the closest agent.

“We know, lady,” he said. “Why do you think he’s still alive?”

The BEA agents formed a protective ring around me as the back of the giant flying beetle split. Giant chrome doors slid to either side and a ramp extended from between them. The crowd pushed in on the BEA perimeter, astonished faces staring at me. The BEA pushed back and forced Gen into the bystanders. I watched Jack grab her hand.

“I’ll get your lawyers,” Gen yelled as I was ushered into the back of the flying paddy wagon.

“Don’t bother.”

Six BEA agents in full body armor entered the back of the vehicle behind me and the ramp rose. The twin beetle wing-doors swung closed with the clang of a falling guillotine to shut out the sunlight. Two benches, attached to the sidewalls, stretched the length of either side of the compartment. Small portholes, one behind the driver’s seat and one behind the passenger seat, were set into the front wall. The agents pushed me down onto the bench behind the driver’s seat and one of them gestured with his Pulse rifle.

“Don’t try anything,” another agent said, and unlocked my manacles. My partial freedom was curtailed, though, when the agent slid the handcuff chain through a ring mounted on the wall above me, and then clicked the bracelets shut on my wrists once more.

I felt the craft lift off and my stomach dropped. The six agents settled down around me and my face times six stared at me from the reflective face shields. One by one, the actual reflection of me seated on the bench replaced my face imprints. After rising to an unknown height, I felt the BEA vehicle pirouette and surge forward. With my arms extended overhead, I grabbed at the wall-mounted ring to keep from tipping.

The reflective faceplate of the BEA agent seated across from me turned my direction. I could not see his accusatory eyes behind his golden mask but I could feel them burn on my skin.

“You know what you did, don’t you,” the agent said in a hollow metallic voice. It was a statement, not a question.

“Murder,” I said in a croaking whisper.

Another BEA agent snorted. “The world’s better off without him,” he said.

I looked up. “Who was he? Who I—who I killed—I mean.”

Another snort. “Two-bit drug dealer.”

“A drug dealer?”

The agent across from me turned to his fellow officer. “It was still murder.”

“What,” I began, and had to stop and lick my lips to get enough moisture on them to finish my question. My arms were starting to ache over my head. “What kind of drugs did he sell?”

The agent across from me turned back. The blank gold face stared at me. “The worst kind of all,” he said. “Reality.”

“Amen to that, my brother,” the BEA agent to my other side said.

I turned and the BEA agent raised his face shield. Pitch black eyes bored into me and he smiled an unbroken smile.

Ice.

I opened my mouth but Ice moved before I could yell. His BEA-issued Pulse rifle transformed; it was as if the gun had merged with the man, and from the elbow down Ice was all firepower. An agent seated across from me looked up and Ice fired.

The back of the van exploded in sound and black lightning. A hole ruptured in the side of the vehicle and the man disappeared in a smoky flash; it happened so fast I couldn’t be sure if he flew out of the van or was simply vaporized. Something dripped from the ceiling, though, and I knew that it was all that was left of the former law enforcement officer.

The remaining four agents raised their weapons. One by one, their golden face shields took on the visage of Ice’s angular face.

It was already too late.

In one impossibly quick motion, Ice jammed his elbow into the head of the agent seated next to him, and there were two horrible crunching noises: the first was the agent’s face shield being shattered, and the second was the crunching of the flesh and bone beyond. Motionless, the agent fell to the van floor. His buckled face shield showed Ice’s face no more. Watery blood pooled beneath his broken head.

I turned to the porthole behind the driver. “Help them,” I yelled.

A green flash hit the front wall of the van, followed by another handheld thunderclap. I ducked my head behind my raised arms as best I could, but I was as exposed as a turtle without a shell.

When I looked up, I noticed two things: there was another smoking hole in the van wall, and one less agent. The wind whipped in through the hole and clouds streamed by.

I turned to the porthole and saw the frightened face of the driver. I pulled up on the ring on the wall and kicked the porthole once, hard.

“Help them,” I yelled again.

Diving, the BEA vehicle pitched and yawed and I had to grab onto a wall-mounted handle to keep in my seat.

One of the three remaining agents jumped at Ice, but the towering black man kicked before the agent could reach him. The agent’s chest collapsed and he flew out into nothingness to disappear into the swirling clouds. The remaining pair of agents lurched forward, but Ice raised his arm-gun and fired. The back door flew off the back of the craft and the two agents shot out like bloody shrapnel.

Now it was only Ice and me. I turned back to the driver porthole and kicked it harder. “Help me!”

The driver turned his harried face forward and the BEA car went into a steeper descent. I looked into the passenger-side porthole and saw the other remaining agent yelling into a handheld radio.

Eyes wide, heart pounding, mouth dry, I watched Ice turn towards the front of the van. He strode forward quickly, purposefully, powerfully. The smoking cannon morphed and disappeared back into his strong black arm once more. I watched, frozen, as my death neared.

But instead of ripping me in half with his bare hands, Ice stopped behind the front wall and looked at both portholes, first the one on the left, and then the one on the right. A heartbeat later, each hand smashed through thick glass. I turned my head from the glass shards but they still tore at my ear, throat, and cheek.

The surprised screams of two agents filled the van. I turned back, horrified, repulsed, and mesmerized all at once. In one swift motion, Ice somehow pulled the two fully grown men through the two holes that were barely bigger than his fist. What was left of the agents on the van floor was no longer recognizable as human, but they were most assuredly recognizable as dead.

Ice turned to me and his inhuman grin returned. “Now,” he said, “it’s just you and me.”

He reached a bloody hand towards me and I recoiled.

And then the plummeting BEA car struck the ground.

The world flipped over and over and the sound of metal rending drowned out my scream. My body rebounded against the hard wall once, twice, thrice as it alternately became the ceiling, floor, and wall again. Glimpses of Neo-Paris, upside down and blurred, filtered into my brain as we tumbled along cobblestone streets. Somehow in the crash, my right hand ripped free of the handcuffs and I lost my grip on the wall-mounted ring. What was left of the BEA van bounced one more time on the ground, hard, and slid.

Hot sparks and smoke filled the cabin and I could no longer tell if Ice was still with me or not. The world seemed to simultaneously speed up and slow down; I could make out every nuance of flying metal and glass around me, but I had no hope of telling what was going on beyond arm’s reach. I tried to push myself up on what was once the roof of the van but was now the floor, but we hit something solid and all forward motion came to a sudden halt.

All forward motion of the van ceased, at least.

My body continued to hurtle forward for one timeless second afterwards, and my head rammed into the front bulkhead. Black pinpricks ensconced my vision and stinging smoke filled my nostrils.

My brain—or something within my head that seemed like my brain, or perhaps that of another—screamed at me: Get up! Get up now!

I tried with all my might, but I failed to push myself even a centimeter off the slippery blood-covered metal beneath me. I fell face first into the crimson puddle.

It’s just as well this way, I heard within my head, and this time, I knew the voice was mine.

A moment before the blackness took me completely, hands grabbed my arms.

whither: chapter five

Five

The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune

“Mister.”

The voice seemed a million kilometers away.

Where am I?

“Mister,” I heard again, the voice of a small boy. “Are you ok?”

“He’s dead,” a little girl said.

“He’s not dead, stupid.”

“How do you know?”

The little boy didn’t answer. Instead he just said, “Mister, wake up.”

Something nudged my ribs.

As I clawed my way towards consciousness, the aching pressure within my noggin was so great that I feared that my head might explode. I gasped, sucking in some air, and rolled over onto my back.

“See, I told you he wasn’t dead,” the little boy said, “stupid.”

I opened my eyes.

The little girl stuck her tongue out, but the little boy had no way to see it.

I closed my eyes again.

“Wake up, mister,” the little girl’s voice said.

I forced my eyes open again. “Who are you?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“I’m Jill,” the little girl said with the left side of the mouth.

With the right, the boy said, “I’m Jack.”

“And I’m dreaming,” I whispered, and let my eyes close once more.

*****

I opened my eyes.

Whiteness pierced my brain and I screwed them shut again. After a moment I forced them back open to slits and took in my surroundings. It wasn’t so much that the room was bright; rather it was that the room was so white, and the single light bulb encased in a metal safety frame way up at the ceiling reflected off every surface.

The floor I laid on was soft. Padded. Blinking my eyes, I leaned up on one elbow. With my other hand I massaged the back of my neck, hoping to get rid of some of the black ache that started in my brain and worked its way down my back and shoulders to fester in my gut. I slowly wrenched my head back and then it dawned on me that the walls were padded too.

“I told you he wasn’t dead,” the little boy said.

I sucked in a surprised breath and rolled over.

“I knew he wasn’t dead, stupid,” the little girl said.

“You’re stupid.”

“No, you are.”

As they argued, I pushed myself away on the padded floor. The middle and ring fingers on my left hand, still wrapped in the flowered cloth, hurt more than ever. It was only then that I realized, since my butt was rubbing naked on the soft floor, that the smock I wore had an embarrassing opening in the back. My ribs hurt with each breath. I got to the corner of the room and tried to push even farther away, but the hardness of the walls beneath the padding kept me from retreating any further.

They took a step towards me.

I held my damaged left hand up, as if to ward them off. The floral print dripped down in rags. They stopped.

“Who,” I forced between arid lips, “are you?”

“We told you,” she said.

They took a step. They listed a bit as they walked.

“I’m Jack.”

Another tilting step.

“I’m Jill.”

I buried my head between my knees and let out a little whimper. My brain hurt.

This isn’t real, brother, someone had told me once, but I couldn’t remember who.

I shut my eyes and tried to wish Jack and Jill away, but when I opened them again, they were still there.

“Don’t hurt me,” I said.

Jack laughed and Jill joined him.

She had no other choice.

They shared but one mouth.

There were only two eyes, one nose, two arms, and two legs standing before me, but there were definitely two children. Not conjoined twins, they were, rather, split right down the middle, the left side male and the right side female. It was as if someone had cut two children in half and glued them together. The female half was slightly taller than the male half, so they walked with a limp.

Jack had black hair cut short while Jill’s hair was long and blond and braided into a pigtail that reached nearly to her waist. His side of the nose turned down and hers turned up. Their eyes were shaped differently; Jill’s was almond shaped and brown, while Jack’s was round and blue.

Jack’s half wore a button down shirt and tan shorts while Jill’s half wore a frilly pink dress with white lace around the hem that went to her mid-thigh. A short sock with a tattered pink bob clung to her foot while a black sock clad his. Both wore the same shoes, sneakers, and they shared a belt. I found myself wondering if there was another person out there, somewhere, that was a girl on the left side and a boy on the right.

“Let us—” Jack said.

“—help you up,” Jill finished, and he extended his hand.

I tentatively took it and the pair leaned back in their single body while I climbed to my feet. Once standing, I held up my damaged left hand to shield my eyes against the harsh glare of the bulb behind its metal grate and clasped the open back of my gown closed against the cool rush of air.

“How did I get here?”

“You needed help—“ said Jack.

“—so we took you here,” finished the mouth in Jill’s voice.

“You were on the bus?” I asked.

The pair nodded their head.

I looked back at the padded walls. “Where’s here?”

Jack took a step forward and Jill whispered, “This is where they take the Broken People.”

I pushed against the wall and felt the padding condense. “Is there any way out of here?”

Jack turned and pointed towards the wall behind me.

I turned, and saw that a floor to ceiling piece of Plexiglas had replaced the padded white wall. What’s more, people were standing behind it, looking in at me. They slid continuously from left to right. They came alone and in groups, wearing white coats and holding clipboards. I took a few hesitating steps forward and saw that the people were standing on a moving sidewalk. I laid my floral-bandaged hand on the Plexiglas. The single light bulb reflected into my eyes.

Turning, I found Jack and Jill at my side.

“Can I leave?”

“All you have to do—“

“—is ask.”

I reached back to where the Plexiglas had been and my hand found only air. I shifted my eyes from side to side and wondered if the plastic wall had ever really been there at all.

This isn’t real, brother…

There was a gap in the groups of people on the moving sidewalk, so I took a step onto it and the sidewalk whisked me to the right. Jack and Jill jumped on behind me, her blond pigtail trailing behind. I straightened and looked past the people ahead of me on the moving sidewalk to see where we were going. The long black conveyor belt extended towards infinity. To my right an endless series of rooms with three padded walls and a clear plastic one passed by. Everything else was impenetrable whiteness.

Each of the rooms had a person inside them, and each person wore a gown like my own. They were of every physical description: old and young, male and female, fat and thin. Every color of the skintone rainbow was represented. A few of them moved slowly around in their rooms, but the majority just sat in the middle of their rooms, unmoving.

Each of the rooms also had a video screen above them that hung in the whiteness. Three meters wide and half as high, they were angled downwards to make them easy to watch from the sidewalk.

“What are those?” I asked.

“Windows into their minds,” Jack said.

“Their hallucinations?”

“No,” Jill said.

“It’s real to them,” Jack said.

I looked back down and they shrugged, Jack’s shoulder leading Jill’s just a bit.

“After all—“

“—what else matters?”

I looked back to the passing video screens and saw every conceivable existence. Illusions of sex and wealth were rampant, and many of the screens showed the room’s inhabitants in worlds that physics denied but the Singularity, apparently, allowed.

“They only get to live in these fantasies for short periods,” Jack said.

“Otherwise they would get too used to them.”

They leaned forward and Jack opened their mouth. “Most of the Broken People rather live in fantasy than in reality.”

I looked back down from a screen in which a broken person wore glowing silver armor while charging on a white steed towards a twisted black castle.

“But,” I asked, “why can’t they live in fantasy all the time? After all, if this is all a computer program, then why can’t everyone just live like a king?”

“Because, silly,” Jill said.

“If there weren’t any Have-nots—“

“—then how would the Haves know that they were Haves?”

“Besides,” Jack said, “there are only so many programmers in the world.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. It was too much to soak in.

“Can I go back to my room?” I asked.

“Of course,” Jack said.

I looked down the infinite sidewalk and wondered how far back my own padded cubicle was. “How do I get back to it?”

Jack nodded forward and Jill’s pigtail swayed. “Here it comes.”

The room two rooms ahead stood empty; I had no way to tell if it was the room I started in or not, but I stepped off the conveyor belt into it nonetheless. I turned and opened my mouth to ask, ‘How?’ but they answered before I could ask.

“Within the Singularity—” Jack said.

“—no matter where you go—“

“—there you are.”

“I need a nap,” I said to myself and settled down on the padded floor.

“Remember—” I heard Jack’s voice call as they continued down the moving sidewalk.

“—which side of the wall you’re on—“

“—is largely a matter of perspective,” Jack finished.

His soft voice droned into the distance and sleep took me once more. I dreamt of my best friend and the girl that he had become.

*****

A table.

Hard.

A light.

Bright.

*****

I opened my eyes and found that I was still in the padded room.

The single light bulb still glared down from behind its metal lattice like the angry eye of God. I slowly wrenched my head and the vertebrae in my neck crackle. Thankfully, my mind-deadening headache was subsiding, but the ache of my fingers remained.

I stood up and turned to where the Plexiglas wall had been but only found more padding. I whirled in place, looking from wall to wall, but if there had ever been a clear plastic wall, it was gone. I fell to a sitting position on the padded floor and held my head in my hands.

“But of course,” I said in a soft voice.

I pushed my hands against my skull to equalize the pressure, unsure if I was trying to hold my brains in or keep the world out.

I heard an animalistic noise that was somewhere between a squeak and a growl and looked up. The small black cat that I had first seen in Richard’s apartment sat in a corner of the padded room on her rear haunches, looking at me.

“Onyx?”

The cat meowed again.

I got up on my hands and knees, and the cat shifted. Her eyes searched for a place to escape to in the small room. Slowly, I crawled across the floor until I was within arm’s reach. Onyx paced back and forth, back and forth, growing more agitated as I neared.

“It’s ok, Onyx,” I said, and extended my arm.

With whiskers twitching, she leaned her head forward while trying to keep the rest of her body as far away from me as possible. At first her ears were pinned back, but as she sniffed my hand, her ears descended. She opened her mouth to gather more of my scent.

“It’s me, Onyx.” I leaned further forward and scratched beneath her chin. Onyx leaned forward as well, rubbing her cheeks on my fingers.

Happy that Onyx had recognized me, I pushed back across the floor on hands and knees, and sat cross-legged with my back against the wall. Onyx took a hesitant step or two forward, her whiskers feeling the air, her head extended.

“Come here, girl,” I said, and patted my lap. “Come here, pretty girl.”

All fear gone, Onyx leapt to me in three bounds and settled on my lap. As soon as she touched down she was purring. I scratched between her ears. Onyx looked up and opened her mouth again, and the noise of obvious pleasure that came out of it was a vibrating squeak.

“That’s a good girl, Onyx.”

I scooped her up in one hand and moved closer to the wall. Laying down, I stretched my legs towards the center of the room and leaned my head against the wall. Purring, Onyx moved up and down the length of my chest, her front claws kneading, but she was very careful not to extend them so deep that they would hurt. As she neared my head, I rubbed her furry cheeks in both hands and we looked into each other’s eyes.

“Is this real, Onyx?” I asked. “Are you?”

Onyx only purred and rubbed her head against my hand. She circled before settling on my chest, her claws still gently prodding my skin.

I petted her in long strokes while her purring sang to me a wordless lullaby. “You’re real to me,” I said and closed my eyes.

After all, I thought, what else matters?

*****

I felt a damp coolness on my forehead as I returned from sleep. As I got closer to the waking world, a soft and sweet song began to tickle my ears. The song felt as warm and safe as the cloth on my forehead.

I opened my eyes to see Gennifer stooping over me, her golden hair pulled back in a ponytail. Up close, in the light, I noticed a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. As she saw my eyes open, her mouth broke into an inviting smile.

“How do you feel?” she asked in a lilting drawl. Her delicate fingers massaged the compress above my eyes.

I smacked my lips for moisture but found none. “I’ve—felt better.”

She stroked my hair. “You’re going to be fine,” she said.

“Why,” I started, and had to swallow and start again. “Why are you here?”

“You’re dreaming,” she said, and her smile softened further. “Sleep now. Questions later.”

She began to sing again and I drifted off once more.

*****

A table.

Hard.

A light.

Bright.

A man.

Big.

*****

“Wake up.”

I opened my eyes. “Gennifer?”

Gennifer was gone. So was Onyx, and I was unsure if either of them had ever really been there at all. I leaned up on my elbows and took in the padded room. There was a door and it was open, but there was no Plexiglas wall. I had almost convinced myself that the Singularity didn’t exist outside my own head when I craned my neck and saw Jack and Jill hovering over me; they were still two inhabiting one in a way that no natural twins could. I sat up and chased the cobwebs from my brain.

“Did either of you see a girl in here?” I asked.

They shook their common head.

“Oh,” I said in a small voice. I didn’t know what Gennifer had done while I was asleep, but my head felt better, and the fingers on my left hand were straight again. I flexed my hand and found only a little stiffness.

“Get up,” Jack said, and I did.

“Do you want some food?” Jill asked.

I found that I did, so I nodded.

“Come on, then.”

Jill grabbed my hand and dragged me towards the open door. They tilted back and forth as they walked, Jill’s leg longer than Jack’s. Beyond my room were neither the halls of a mental hospital or the infinite conveyor belt of the Broken People. It was, instead, a banquet hall. Hundreds of round tables, topped by all manner of food, spanned the length of the great hall. Crystal chandeliers hung from massive wooden beams, flickering candles providing an even light.

Hundreds of people—most of them wearing white gowns with open backs—sat at the tables. An army of waiters and waitresses attended to them. I looked down at my own clothes to find that I had the same clothes on that I had worn to the nightclub, although they appeared cleaned and pressed. My right hand drifted down to my pocket and I felt the last Reality Pill in my trousers.

I watched battalions of servers flit around the room from table to table. “What is this place?” I asked.

“This is still where they keep the Broken People,” Jill said.

“Most of them can’t afford food programs, so they like to eat when they come in.”

“Not that they—“

“—have to eat,” Jack finished.

“Come on,” Jill said, and pulled me to an open table.

As soon as I sat on the cushioned chair, a waiter appeared. “It is indeed a great pleasure to have you with us today,” he said. “Would you like to start with an appetizer?”

I looked up. “A what?”

Jack pulled up a chair. “He’s new here,” he said to the waiter.

“First time,” Jill added as they sat.

“Ah,” the waiter said, but still hesitated before continuing, as if he was confused. “An appetizer is a small portion of food that’s designed to increase your appetite for more food to follow.”

I crinkled my forehead. “Food to make you hungrier?”

The waiter’s smile widened. “Yes.”

“That doesn’t make much sense.”

The waiter shrugged and spread his hands. “I’ll bring you something you’ll like, don’t worry,” he said, and scurried off.

I had a thousand questions for Jack and Jill, but after a lifetime of eating foul-tasting things that slithered under rocks, I found I could not ignore the feast that the waiter brought back. I feared that I might bite my fingers off as I jammed sweet and sour and hot and tender into my mouth as fast as I could. After nearly an hour of gorging on all manner of foodstuffs, I pushed my chair away from the table.

The waiter approached with another heaping plate of food. “Would you like to try the coq au vin, sir?”

“No more,” I said with one hand on my distended belly.

“But the coq au vin is very good today.”

“Enough,” I said. “I’m full.”

“Of course, sir,” he said, and turned around, taking the platter and its tantalizing aromas away.

I looked across the table at Jack and Jill sitting and kicking their feet, their legs not long enough to reach the floor. I put one hand on my stomach and leaned back in my chair.

“Where’s the bathroom?” I asked.

“Bathroom?”

“You mean you want to excrete for pleasure?”

“No,” I said, and half-stood, “but when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go.”

Jack laughed. “No, you don’t,” he said, and I found that he was right. I sat back down.

“So why are all these—Broken People—here?” I asked.

“Eating makes them happy,” Jack said, “and food programs are cheap.”

I nodded like I understood.

“The real question,” Jill said, “is why are you here?”

I leaned forward and began to fill them in on my adventures, how I had lost my best friend Wiz within the Singularity and was trying to get him back, but Jack held up a small hand and I stopped mid-sentence.

“No, why are you here?” he asked and pointed a finger at me.

I slunk back in my chair.

“You, of all people,” Jill said.

“What do you mean?”

Jack and Jill sat silently for a few moments, their lips moving without sound. I realized that they were having a conversation that I was not privy to.

“He doesn’t know,” Jack said aloud at last.

“Yes, he does.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Does.”

“Doesn’t”

“Does.”

It was my turn to hold up an interrupting hand. “He,” I began, “I mean, I, don’t know what?”

They leaned closer across the table. “Who you are,” Jack said.

I would have laughed if their small half-faces had not been so stern. “Of course I do.”

Jack and Jill leaned back in their chair. “Told you,” Jack said.

“Look,” I said, my voice raising, “I know who I am.”

“Don’t,” Jack said.

“Do,” I replied.

“Don’t.”

“Do.”

“Don’t,” Jack said again, and added a little laugh.

“D—“

“Then what’s your name?” Jill asked.

“My name?”

“Yes,” they said at once, both voices somehow coming from one mouth. “Your name.”

I settled in my chair. “My name is @.”

“At?”

“A-T?”

“No,” I said, and pulled a plate closer to me. “@,” I said, and made the symbol in what remained of the mashed potatoes.

“What kind of a name is that?”

I sucked the potatoes off my index finger and shrugged. “It’s all I got.”

“Told you he didn’t know,” Jack said.

I was about to ask them another question when I saw a girl across the crowded room. I blurted out, “Gennifer,” and stuck my hand over my head.

Gennifer looked up, and when she saw me, quickly looked back down. She looked like she was trying very hard to meld into the background scenery.

“Gen,” I yelled again and stood, still waving my hand.

Since it was plain that she had been spotted, Gen set down her serving tray and excused herself from the table she was working at, smoothing her apron as she approached. She gathered a few blonde hairs and pulled them back from her face.

“How are you feeling, sir?” she asked, glancing up for just a moment before darting her eyes back to the floor.

“Much better,” I said, “thanks to you.”

She kept her eyes down and gathered her stray hairs again. “I didn’t do anything,” she said. The stray golden strands fell before her face once more.

“Didn’t you help me?” I asked. “You were singing.”

Gen opened her mouth to reply, but Jack and Jill spoke before she could.

“Hi, Gen,” Jack and Jill said in unison.

I looked at the twins. “You know her?”

They nodded. “Gen volunteers down here all the time,” Jack said.

“She’s a programmer,” Jill added.

I looked at Gen and saw her cheeks flush. “You did help me,” I said. “I remember.”

“Maybe a little,” she said, “but I couldn’t do much. The BEA has overridden your Singularity commands,” she whispered. “I used a patch to get you temporary controls, but who knows how long it will hold.”

Jack and Jill leaned in. “The BEA has the bestest programs,” Jack said.

“They should,” Gen said. She raised her eyes at me for just a moment. “After all,” she said, “you designed them.”

I straightened my neck and pulled my head back. “I did?”

“Of course, sir.” She smiled and her face flushed further. “Although I like to think I helped—just a little.”

Jill held a small hand up to her mouth as if to shield her comment from me. “He doesn’t know who he is,” she said.

It was Gen’s turn to look confused. “He doesn’t?”

Jill kept her hand up. “No.”

“Come on now,” I said. “This is ridic—“

Jack and Jill jumped up from the table and Jill grabbed my hand.

“Come on,” Jack said.

As I stood, they stepped towards Gen’s side of the table.

“You too,” Jill said, and Jack took her hand.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To show you—“

“—who you are.”

I tried to laugh but found myself unable to push any sound out of my mouth.

We passed through the tables towards the walls of the great hall until we got to the door. Jack and Jill skipped-limped between us with their head bobbing. The double doors opened of their own accord when we reached them. Holding Jill’s hand, I followed them into blinding sunlight. After a few steps, my eyes adjusted to the midday glare.

When I could see again, I turned back to witness the gargantuan dining hall from the outside. I stopped in my tracks. It was nothing more than a concrete block building some five meters square. A red cross blinked above the door. I took a step back, wanting to stick my head back in to see if the dining hall was still there, but Jill yanked me forward.

“Come—“

“—on.”

We walked along the cobblestone road beside a wide and slow moving river. Lower than us, a sidewalk that could only be reached by going down stairs bordered the river itself. The tinkles of music, faint and archaic, danced in the air. Across the street I saw a man, naked, walking unnoticed amongst the clothed.

“Look at that,” I said, pointing.

“What?” Gen asked.

“That man must be crazy,” I said.

“Which one?”

“The naked guy.”

Gen followed my finger. “Why do you think he’s crazy?”

“Why else would he be naked?”

“Maybe he just doesn’t like clothes,” Gen said with a shrug. “In any event, you don’t have to see him if you don’t want to.”

I looked at her stupidly, and she waved her fingers in the air.

“What was that?” I asked.

“I wrote you a quick nudity filter. He’s gone to you now, yes?”

I looked back across the street. The man had either disappeared into the crowd or just simply disappeared. “Yes,” I said.

Not that I never want to see naked people, I thought.

“Where are we going, anyway?” I asked.

Jack pointed up to the corner where a kiosk stood.

“There,” Jill said.

“What’s that?”

“A newsstand,” Jack said. “They sell—“

“—magazines and newspapers.”

Beside the newsstand stood a tall, thin woman. In stark contrast to the whiteness of her face, her bright red hair hung down to her boney shoulders. Her near-skeletal hands turned the crank of what my brain labeled a barrel organ. A long strip of paper, riddled with parallel holes of varying length, issued through the cart as she turned. The music grew louder as we approached.

Gen looked over the children at me. “You really don’t know who you are?”

I shrugged. “I thought I did.”

As we walked down the crowded city street towards the newsstand, I found myself looking into the dark corners, expecting the BEA or Ice to ambush me at any moment. With my head swiveling around, I bumped into a passerby.

“Hey, watch it,” the man said.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean—“

The man’s face blanched. “Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “What are you—I mean, I wouldn’t expect to see you here.”

“It’s ok,” Gen said.

The man continued past, head down, scurrying back into the crowd, all the while muttering, “sorry, sorry, sorry.”

I took a couple of long steps to catch up to Jack and Jill at the corner newsstand. “What was that?” I asked.

“He knows—“ Jack began.

“—who you are.” Jill finished.

Standing before a building with dull patched concrete, the singer with the barrel organ ended “Lili Marlene” and started up another song. Her reedy voice warbled.

In the town, where I was born, there lived a man, who sailed the seas.

And he told me of his life, in the land of Submarines.

“All right,” I said, and stepped under the awning of the newsstand. “So who am I?”

Jack and Jill waved their small hands outwards. “Look.”

I looked, and I cringed.

Half of the magazines and newspapers bore my face. Not that of Richard’s, but the face I wore in the real world. Well, almost the same. The faces that looked back at me from the magazines were blemish free, with hair carefully combed, and had straight and white teeth. And the face appeared at least two decades older than my own; lines transversed the forehead and crows feet clawed at the eyes.

“What in the—?” I picked up a newspaper and looked at the picture.

We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine…

Gen laid a tentative hand on my shoulder. Her voice seemed to come from a thousand kilometers away. “Do you remember, sir?”

“Now he knows,” Jill said.

Indeed I did. I read the name beneath the newspaper picture.

Vladimir Drake.

whither: chapter four

Author's note: to read previous chapters, please scroll down or click the links to the right.

Four

To Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles

My eyes blinked, and where I had been standing in Richard’s apartment wearing sweaty gym clothes a moment before, I now found myself, freshly showered and wearing a silver-gray silk suit with a black turtleneck. I sat inside what my borrowed brain called a “limousine” with a glass tumbler in my hand. I tipped the glass to my lips. My mind told me it was called a “gin and tonic.” I held it in my mouth for a second before spitting it back into the glass.

As I set the tumbler down and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, the wide limousine door opened. I tentatively stuck my head out, and a cheer went up from the gathered people outside. I jerked my head back inside and took a deep breath. When I looked up at the black glass at the front of the limousine’s passenger compartment, I realized that I had never seen Richard’s—which is to say, my—eyes as wide before.

I pushed further back into the comfortable protection of the thick seat as the black glass slid down. I leaned forward as I saw the small boy that served as my Singularity interface sitting behind the wheel.

“Can I help you with something else, sir?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

Ducking my head, I exited the limousine into the pouring rain and found myself standing on a crowded curb in front of an upscale nightclub. I jumped a bit as the limo door slammed shut on its own behind me.

A neon sign on the wall above me proclaimed the building as the 4/4 club. The second neon number flickered, the gas inside the tubing sputtering. Beautiful people cheered me from beside the door and my eyes drank in a long line to get into the club. A bouncer held the lot at bay using only his bulk and a velvet rope.

To the other side of the door stood a clump of people clothed in hooded cloaks. Their pure white robes glowed in the darkness. The Biological Fundamentalists, I recalled. They held protest signs that read, amongst other things, SAVE YOUR SOULS and THIS ISN’T REAL. The white-clad figures jostled their signs while swinging perfumed censers that left fragrant smoke wafting into the air. I looked briefly for the blind acolyte that had accosted me, but didn’t see him. Looking away from the religious fanatics, I started to move to my rightful place at the end of the queue.

“Rick,” a voice called, and I turned. The bouncer pulled the velvet rope to one side. “Where are you going? We were expecting you.”

“But of course.” I turned and smiled with Richard’s perfect teeth, only then realizing that all of the people waiting in line must be just scenery.

A stunning girl at the head of the line grabbed my arm as I walked by. “Take me in with you,” she said, “and I’ll make sure you have a good time.” She punctuated her offer by tracing the outline of my ear with the tip of her tongue.

Breathing deep, I forced my feet forward. “I’m meeting someone,” I said.

“I’ll do anything,” the girl cried as I moved past.

“You got anything for me, Rick?” the bouncer asked in a low voice.

I paused at the door. “What do you mean?”

He looked both ways to make sure no one could hear, and then leaned in and said, “You know.”

Instinctively, I reached in to my left coat pocket to feel a number of marble-sized objects. I pulled one of the blue and white spheres out and held it up.

The bouncer’s gargantuan hand swallowed mine. “Hey, man, don’t let anyone see that,” he said. Palming the small ball, he waved me inside. “Thanks.”

“This isn’t real, brother,” one of the hooded acolytes yelled at me from the threshold of the dance club. “Release yourself and save your soul.”

I looked down and passed through the door.

“Resist the temptation of unreality,” echoed behind me.

Sound and light assaulted me inside the club. The very air pulsed with colors in time with the music. Bodies eternally young ground together. Arms flung. Legs churned. Hips swayed. I followed the long legs of one female dancer up with my eyes to find the head of a jungle cat perched atop feminine human shoulders.

I looked further around. Not everything dancing was quite human. In one darkened corner, I saw a man having his way with a bent-over girl. The girl’s tail, with delicate black circlets stenciled on orange fur, wrapped around the man’s neck. I turned away.

“Damn Furries,” my mouth said.

My borrowed brain told me that the music was techno-pop and I found that it wasn’t much to my liking. My brain also told me that I could change it, but I hadn’t heard enough music to know what I liked, so I let it stay. I looked around the crowded dance floor and wondered how many songs were being listened to.

I slid through the trans-gendered and trans-specied and made my way to the bar. The barkeep turned to me just as I bellied up, ignoring all of the other patrons. He wiped the bar down with a wet rag.

“Your regular?” he asked.

“Regular?”

“Gin and tonic?”

“No!”

The barkeep looked up with an arched eyebrow.

“Give me something sweeter,” I said.

The barkeep, still wiping down the bar, thought for a moment. “How about a Long Island Ice Tea?”

“Sure,” I said, and turned away for a moment. When I turned back, a frosted highball glass sat on a napkin, waiting.

“No charge,” the bartender said.

I pulled a small sphere out of my pocket. It looked like a miniature model of the earth, blue and green and brown with delicate whispers of white. I looked closer at the iridescent globe and noticed that the clouds were moving.

“This is for you,” I said, and slid the sphere into the barman’s hand.

He looked at it and then back up to me. “Are you sure?”

I picked up my drink and nodded.

“Wow, thanks.” The bartender pocketed the world and turned away.

I wondered what in the hell I was giving people and why they liked it so much—and why it was so goddamned secret. Swiveling on the stool and leaning my back against the bar, I took a long swig of the mixed drink.

That’s more like it, I thought.

Alcohol was not the only drug evident in the club. Patrons all around me were busy shoving narcotics of one kind or another into various orifices. I watched furry snouts snort platters of multicolored powder.

A pretty waif with dark-rimmed eyes looked at me from across the room and headed over. I turned to see if there was someone behind me that she was looking at, but there was only me. I took another long swig of the Long Island Ice Tea and the girl stopped in front of me. She looked up. Pale blue eyes rimmed by dark circles pierced through a veil of bleached blonde hair.

“How’s it hangin,’ Rick?” she asked.

I opened my mouth but could think of no appropriate reply, so I clamped it shut again.

She pressed her thin body up against mine. “You packing?”

I took a deep breath. “Packing?”

“Don’t make me beg,” she said, and her small hand brushed my thigh. “You know I’ll make it worth your while.”

Before I could reply, her other hand slipped into my left coat pocket. She looked up at me with expectant eyes, and when I did not respond, she left her hand in my pocket without taking her treat. After a moment, I nodded, and she withdrew her balled fist. I grabbed her wrist and she looked up with scared eyes.

“You can have it,” I said, “if you tell me what it is.”

“What?”

“Tell me what it is and you can keep it.”

“Are you serious?”

I forced my borrowed lips to smile. “Humor me.”

She grabbed my hand and dragged me to a dark corner of the club. Once we were seated in a leather-upholstered booth, she said, “Singularity: Privacy.”

The dance club disappeared but the booth remained; we sat instead in the middle of a large round room with floor to ceiling windows. Outside the windows a cityscape from a towering height circled, although it was impossible to tell if we were turning or if the world was revolving around us.

She whispered in my ear. “It’s a Reality Pill.”

“Reality Pill?”

She hushed me and looked out the tall windows, as if to see if anyone was watching. The view had changed. Creatures at the bottom of the sea peered in on us, but if they were interested in our conversation, their inhuman eyes did not reflect it.

“What does it do?”

She looked up at me with dull eyes crossed in confusion.

“Tell me,” I said as the sea disappeared and a mountain range with snow-capped peaks appeared, “or I’ll take it back.”

Her hand closed tighter on her treasure. “It lets you be anything you want to be,” she said in hushed tones. With the mountains gone, lions lounged in the tall grass beyond the glass. “At least for a little while.”

I mugged my mouth. “Any side effects?”

The girl laughed, but the sound was not mirthful; it was, rather, closer to a hiccup than a chuckle. “Only that you see the world as it really is when you’re done.”

The pride of lions became a herd of horses running free.

“That’s it?” I asked.

Her laughter died. “That’s enough,” she said. Before I could say anything else, her hands fidgeted with my fly. “Now let me give you a down payment.”

I pulled her hands away by the wrists. “Maybe later.”

She looked up with questioning eyes.

“I’m looking for someone else.”

“No one is as good as me,” she said. “No one real anyway.”

“You can owe me.”

With a smile, she held up the Reality Pill. “Your loss,” she said, and her pointed tongue tickled the globe. “Singularity: cancel privacy,” she said, and we were in the middle of the club once more. She gave me a wink and slid out of the booth to disappear in the dancing masses.

My eyes left her and I began to scan the dancers immersed in flashing lights and throbbing music, looking for Gennifer 1010568.

This is hopeless, I thought. “Singularity: Information,” I said.

The small boy appeared at the end of the booth. “Yes, sir?”

“Where’s the girl?”

The boy’s eyelids fluttered for a moment and then he frowned. “Searching,” he said and his eyes rolled back once more. He looked up. “Gennifer 1010568 was just here but now her avatar isn’t registering.” He rolled his eyes up a third time and I thought I saw frustration touch the implacable face. “Wait,” he said, and pointed a finger across the dance floor. “Over there.”

I followed the finger and saw that partiers had stopped their gyrations to gather on the dance floor. I got out of the booth and moved towards the knot of people.

“What happened?” someone asked, and as soon as I saw a glimpse of golden hair, I knew that I had found her. Gennifer 1010568 lay unmoving amongst the dancers on the polished wood floor.

On the other side of the club, a tall man clad in a duster was moving the other way. Shadows hid his face but he held something that sparkled with pinpricks of light. I looked closer to see a fey universe dancing within a crystal globe before it disappeared into his pocket. The man lifted his chin and my mouth dropped.

“Ice.”

While keeping one eye on Ice, I pushed the standing observers back and scooped the inert girl into my arms. Her head laid limply back but I could see that she was still breathing. “Are you okay?” I asked.

Out of the corners of my eyes, farther back from the concerned onlookers, people continued to dance.

“What happened to her?” someone asked.

“Don’t know,” somebody answered.

I brushed the blonde hair away from Gennifer’s eyes. They fluttered open and focused on me. Primal emotions that I was not entirely comfortable with floated to the surface of my mind, and I had to keep reminding myself that no matter how pretty the wrapper was, it was still my best friend inside.

“Is it her Time?” a voice asked behind me.

“Can’t be,” came the reply. “There are no Assistors.”

The girl licked her lips. Her words came slowly. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to get you, Wiz.”

“Wiz?” The faint freckles on her nose crinkled.

“Gennifer?”

She nodded. “I didn’t even know you knew my name.” Her drawling voice was somehow innocent and sultry at once.

“It was him,” a person said and pointed a finger past me.

I looked up to see Ice pushing away through the bouncing dancers.

“Hey, you,” the person with the accusatory finger yelled. “Stop!”

Ice turned, his oat swirling. The blood froze in my veins as the coal black eyes focused on me.

“Damn it,” I said, and struggled to help Gennifer back to her feet.

With long legs devouring the dance floor and dancers bouncing off his towering form, the big black man reached under his duster and drew out the Neural Disruptor. .

“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said, and tugged Gennifer towards the door.

“What?” she asked. The slit in her long skirt parted around her lithe thighs as I pushed her in front of me. “Why are you here, sir?” She looked past me to Ice, who was closing on us. “And why are you running from him?”

Screams pealed over the music and I felt both barrels of Ice’s gun pointing at my head. “Duck,” I yelled, and pulled Gennifer down.

We hit the floor and twin blasts meant for me hit an innocent bystander instead. The youth writhed in horrible agony as pulsing red and blue light enveloped him and his body disappeared with a flash. I knew that somewhere within a pod a torso had just ceased to be.

“Move!” I yelled, and yanked Gennifer back up to her feet.

“Whatever you say, sir,” she said and lunged forward.

I looked down to see her high heels turn into running shoes, and the squeak of rubber replaced the clickety-click of her stilettos. The hair raised once more on the back of my neck and I knew that Ice would not miss again.

“Gun!” an officious voice yelled.

I looked up to see uniformed officers standing near the door. They held what Richard’s mind told me were Pulse rifles. I tugged the girl towards them.

“BEA,” the officer in the lead yelled. “Put your weapon down.”

Behind us, Ice opened fire.

The cops pulled their triggers and the 4/4 club erupted in blinding flashes. Blue and red from the Neural Disruptor, green from the Pulse rifles. I pulled Gennifer down and saw Ice dive behind a club patron. The cop’s green pulse froze the dancer’s form in place. Ice fired back, twin barrels blazing. Blue and red bolts hit a cop near us and the officer dissolved into the air.

“Body Armor,” the lead agent yelled.

The officers hit their badges and full suits of articulated armor grew around them. Their helmets had reflective face shields and twin searchlights on either side that scanned the patrons in blinding arcs. Holding my hand up to shield my eyes against the glare, I jumped back up and tugged Gennifer after me.

“What’s going on?” she yelled.

“I wish I knew.”

Disruptor blasts and rifle pulses drowned out the club lights.

“Singularity,” the lead agent yelled, “BEA override. Mute music and freeze background scenery.”

The club went silent and about a third of the patrons froze in space. Some hovered where they had been in mid-air, the immutable laws of physics apparently not applicable. An alarming number of Furries continued to move. I led Gennifer around an unmoving couple that only moments ago I had assumed was real.

I looked back and saw Ice hit another agent with a Disruptor blast. The cop fell to the floor with his body armor smoking. The cops retaliated in kind. They pumped their rifles and hit Ice with numerous luminescent green pulses and the big black man fell.

“He’s down,” one of the agents yelled.

I raised my head and watched the rest of the cops move up with Pulse rifles raised. There was an image on their face shields but I couldn’t quite make it out in the confusion. I felt Gennifer clutch my arm for a moment before she released it and took a quick step backwards. My nostrils drank in something that smelled like spent gunpowder mixed with burning wire.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said to the girl and began to back up towards the door.

A blow hit the back of my head. Blood flew and I fell to one knee. My head felt like a sore brick.

“Not so fast,” I heard through ringing ears.

“Stop it,” Gennifer said above me. “Don’t you know who he is?”

Gunfire erupted in the club again and energy pulses left streaks across my vision.

“The big guy’s A.I.,” an agent yelled, followed by a truncated scream.

Another: “He’s a bot!”

I looked up to see the cop standing over me with Pulse rifle in hand, butt end extended, turn his attention to the fight. My mouth dropped when I recognized what was on his face shield: my own face. Forcing a dozen questions from my mind—primarily, why in the heck are the cops wearing my picture—I drove a pointed elbow into his solar plexus and then swept my leg into the back of his knees. When he fell, I drove a fist into his neck for good measure.

Gennifer looked at me with wonder mixed with fear. “That was amazing.”

“Thanks,” I said with a shrug. I wish I knew how I did it.

Jumping up, I grabbed Gennifer’s hand and pulled to her feet. As soon as she was up, she led me towards the door. Past her, BEA cars, replete with flashing lights, sat outside on the wet pavement. Their lights reflected sporadically in the puddles. Stooping, I picked up the downed BEA agent’s Pulse rifle and followed the girl with the golden hair.

The bouncer nodded towards me and put his wide frame into the doorway. “I’ll hold them off as long as I can.”

“Thanks,” I said, and ran out of the door.

My head was on a swivel. The limousine was gone. As I looked back and forth, the BEA rifle scanned left and right at my hip. When its barrel pointed in the general direction of the Biological Fundamentalists, the white-clad figures dropped their placards and retreated up the block. Their thin leather sandals splashed in standing puddles. Only one remained where he was, standing still, staring at me.

I looked back to the left and as the Pulse rifle scanned across the waiting patrons, screams once again punched my eardrums. Girls fell to the sidewalk and guys trampled each other to get out of my line of fire. People that were neither and both did either and both. All the while, the gunfire neared and the rain increased.

“This way,” Gennifer said, and pulled me by the hand past the people in line.

I ran after her. My feet pounded the pavement. Rain blurred my vision. When we got to the corner, Gennifer pulled me down an alleyway.

I wiped my eyes and looked to the skies. “Singularity,” I said, “Sunny day. Twenty-two degrees Celsius.”

The rain ceased above me, but the sunbeam that surrounded me like a pillar of fire blinded me to the rest of the dark world. I held up one hand to shield my eyes. If not for Gennifer’s guiding hand I might’ve ran straight into a wall.

“Singularity: nighttime illumination,” I said, and the world grew dark again. I blinked my eyes to get them to readjust and the end of my Pulse rifle came into focus; water beaded on the tip of the barrel but no precipitation intruded into my dry cylinder.

“This way,” Gennifer said, and her soft hand pulled me down another alley.

I ran up the narrow alley holding Gennifer’s hand in one hand and the Pulse rifle in the other. My dry feet found arid asphalt, and I looked briefly down to see that the alley floor was as dry wherever I passed over it; invisible walls held the water back in truncated puddles.

I followed Gennifer around another blind corner with the downtown tenements soaring up to either side. She pulled me down behind a dumpster and held a single finger up to her lips. I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful her big eyes were. We stayed still for long moments, tasting each other’s heaving breath and listening.

I silently told the Singularity to void my column of calm and the rain returned. With my clothes soaking through, I looked to the end of the alley and back down to Gennifer.

Finally, she lowered her finger and looked up at me. “I think they’re gone,” she whispered with her eyes darting back and forth.

I swallowed a deep breath. “That’s not you in there playing a joke on me, is it Wiz?”

Gennifer looked back up at me. “Why do you keep calling me that, sir?”

“Why do you keep calling me ‘sir?’

“Sir?”

I frowned. “Do you know who I am?”

“Of course,” Gennifer said. “Don’t you?”

I opened my mouth to reply but motion caught my eyes and I clamped it shut. “Damn it,” I said.

Light beams tilted across the walls and floor of the intersecting alley. Figures ran into view. Targeting lasers and flashlight beams blinded me in alternating flashes of red and white.

“There he is!”

Shadowy hulks rumbled through the darkness with dancing light beams leading the way.

I leapt up and pulled Gennifer to her feet. I left the Pulse rifle in the puddle where it laid. Even though it might be the difference between life and death, I had already taken one life today, and I was in no hurry to take another. Our feet splashed. Rifle pulses flashed along brick walls. Apparently the BEA agents weren’t as shy about using their weapons.

We raced down another alley and my heart dropped. It was an urban dead-end canyon. The only way out was the way we had come.

Gennifer looked up at me with her big eyes asking, “What now?”

“Come on,” I yelled, and ran forward.

Hoping that my instincts were right, I held Gennifer’s hand and ran headlong towards the blank alley wall. Water splashed my ankles. Cold water leeched through my socks. I heard the bodyarmored feet of the BEA agents behind us hammer out in pursuit, and my heart joined in the rhythm. All the while the wall neared. Closing my eyes, I gulped and leapt, leading with my right foot.

My left foot followed the right, and when I opened my eyes I found myself running straight up the wall just like I had run along the alley floor. The rain was now horizontal to my perspective, and I had to blink repeatedly to clear my eyes. Gennifer stood at the base of the wall, looking up.

“Come on,” I said.

“I don’t have time to write an anti-gravity app,” she yelled.

There was a bright flash and the wall beside me lit up.

“Run, sir,” Gennifer yelled, her big eyes full of concern. “Run!”

I hesitated for half a moment, but when another Pulse rifle shot hit closer than the last, I sped up the wall. Craning my neck to look down, I saw the BEA agents, their face shields bearing my likeness, run past Gennifer to follow me up the side of the building without slowing.

But of course, I thought.

Passing intermittent windows, I glanced in on people and wondered if they really existed.

I took one last glance at Gennifer and leapt over the top edge of the building. With arms flailing and legs kicking, I reoriented my own personal gravity and landed on the tenement roof with an oof. I squatted on toes and fingertips, my lungs huffing. White plumes of frozen breath streamed from my lips. Before I could plan my next move, I looked up and saw BEA agents already on the roofs next to my own. One of them leapt over, clearing a twenty meter jump like I might have jumped over a puddle in my old body.

The officer landed like a cat and raised his Pulse rifle. “You are in violation of Singularity Protocol 11B,” he said. “Halt and be judged.”

“Judge not lest ye be judged,” I said under my breath, and ran forward towards the far edge of the roof.

I leapt into nothingness as the BEA agents behind me reached the roof. I flew long into the darkness. Blinding pulses erupted around me. Ozone stung my nostrils. I blinked my eyes to try to rid them of the Pulse rifle blast echoes, but splotches clouded my vision.

When I hit the top of the next building, my legs buckled under me and I slid across the wet rooftop. As I heard feet hit behind me, though, I rolled into a crouch and my feet once more found their proper place beneath me. A towering translucent billboard waited at the far edge of the building. Bright blue neon bathed me in the dark night. Against a flurry of three-dimensional graphics, it read: PLAY IN YOUR WORLD, LIVE IN OURS.

I closed my eyes and leapt and passed through the billboard like it wasn’t there. Turning my head back as I soared over sparse flying traffic, I saw that, although the billboard was see-through, it read correctly from this side as well.

A taxi flew past me with no visible means of propulsion. I skidded across its roof and it blared its horn. Getting my feet beneath me, I leapfrogged from the cab onto the next building.

I turned with chest heaving, sure that my pursuit had surely ended, but behind me twenty or so cops jumped from one car to another to cross the wide urban crevasse. Taking a deep breath, I turned and leapt again. I jumped from vehicle to vehicle to vehicle, the frigid wind in my face, bouncing across the city like I was leaping over rocks in a river.

Finally, though, I came to a sudden stop at a vast chasm that held a multilane and multilevel highway in the sky. Gritting my teeth, I jumped from car to car, first going up to the next lane overhead before plummeting down to lanes far below. The wind and rain stung my face and my heart raced; even though I knew it wasn’t real, I remembered what being hit by the bus felt like, and the ground far below looked very hard. When I neared the far edge of the highway, I lost my balance and fell atop a long black car.

My fingers caught hold of the roof’s edges, but before I could get back to my feet, a pair of feet landed, sticking atop the roof like they were magnetically attached. I looked up, following the long legs up past the longcoat that swirled behind him.

Ice’s twin blank banks of ivory teeth spread wide in the darkness. “Gotcha.”

But before he could grab me, I leapt from the car’s roof without looking; I figured the fear of the unknown was less than the fear of the known, and who knows, maybe the ground would prove softer than it looked.

I hit a vehicle going the other way. I tried to land on it, but I only managed to carom off. Soaring through the air, a steel and glass apartment building rushed at me. Covering my head with my hands and trying to think happy thoughts, I hurtled headlong into a window.

Glistening shards flew into the room beyond, but the glass parted easily in front of me, not cutting my fragile skin. Landing on my hands and knees on a thick blue and green shag carpet, I found myself looking at a pair of knees. I panned up tanned thighs to a micro-mini, daring to hope that I had found the girl I had seen on the sidewalk, but when I got past the broad shoulders to the face I saw that the owner of the micro-mini wore a goatee.

“Well, hello there, handsome,” the mouth in the goatee said.

The music in the room began to drown out the beating of my heart in my own ears and I realized that I was in a party.

“Excuse me,” I said, and got to my feet amongst the partygoers.

The owner of the micro-mini put his manicured hand on my chest. “What’s your hurry, baby doll?”

I looked over my shoulder through the shattered window and saw the silhouettes of BEA agents jumping across vehicles, closing fast.

“Sorry, I must be going,” I said, and pressed deeper into the room of broad-shouldered dancers.

“Pity,” he said behind me.

I grabbed a glass of wine off a tray from a passing waiter and smoothed my hair atop my head. Sipping the wine, I moved ever further away from the window while maintaining one eye on the shattered window frame. Traffic outside streamed by, horns blaring and lights flashing. The torn curtains swirled around the jagged window opening but the chatting drag queens didn’t seem to mind.

Backlit by the flashing neon outside, a figure in body armor landed and balanced on the window ledge. I put my head down and pressed further away through the crowd. As several more BEA agents dove into the room, I pushed my way through the milling males as best I could, mumbling apologies.

“Excuse me. Pardon me.”

Then, above the dance beat, “Singularity: BEA override. Cancel background scenery.”

Like the flipping of a switch, the people pressed up against me disappeared and I stumbled. The only other person in the room was a bespectacled man wearing only boxer shorts, sipping from a large frosted glass that had an umbrella leaning from one side.

He turned to the BEA agents with a smile. “Well, hello there.”

“Halt and be judged,” the lead agent yelled.

“If you insist, sugar,” the man in the boxer shorts said.

Ignoring the cop’s missive, I turned and bolted across the room. My shin struck an ottoman, and to my infinite surprise, it hurt. Still, without hesitation, I dove through the window at the far end of the apartment. When the glass broke around me, a hundred pieces sliced me, and a jagged edge still attached to the frame tore across the length of my ribs and down my hip.

I screamed out in pain and flew into the stormy night. Another yellow taxi drove by beneath me, and I tried to land on it, but it was moving too fast. I doubted that I was going to make it, and, sure enough, my feet slipped when I hit the roof. The ON DUTY light clipped my toe and I tumbled end over end into the great nothingness, flesh flipping amongst whipping steel.

I tumbled downwards between the cars. The wind drove the traffic sounds away. I tried to right myself, but I had no more control of my flight than a thrown rock. The only question was whether I would die when I hit the ground or if one of the flying hunks of metal would put me out of my misery before I got that far.

A large rectangle of steel and glass surged towards me and I hit the top of the bus with a horrendous thump. The air left my lungs in a woosh and I felt my ribs snap. A vacuum formed within my torso.

Gasping, my fingers grasped at the slippery bus top. A fingernail on my right hand tore off on a rivet and I would have yelled if only I had the breath to power my pain. Vehicles streamed by in all directions as my fingers fought to find a handhold.

The bus turned at a major intersection and my body slid to the edge. With legs kicking, my eyes flew open wide as I saw the ground fifty meters below me. My mind wondered just how many vehicles I would bounce off of before I reached the unyielding asphalt.

My feet slipped over the edge and my body raced after them. With eyes wide and lungs hollow, I grasped at the rain gutter atop the bus and managed to stop my fall, but not without cost: I heard a snap above the din of the traffic and felt the bones in a pair of fingers on my left hand give way.

My eyes screwed shut in pain and I held onto the bus like it was the last thing in the world. Forcing my face forward, I opened my eyes to slits against the stinging wind. As the bus continued headlong into thick traffic with me hanging on it, I managed to take a breath. The glass skin of the bus felt cold against my left cheek.

With feet dangling, I turned my head and looked into the bus. A dozen people sat inside. Although I was hanging in plain view they didn’t seem to notice. I watched for long minutes as they went about their business: a man in a suit read a newspaper, a mother chastised her son, pulling him into the seat beside her.

“Hey,” I yelled, but no one turned towards me. “Hey!” I yelled, louder, only to be ignored once more.

With my shoulders and forearms burning, I shimmied down the bus. My toes pushed feebly against an animated corporate advertisement as I inched up to the window beside the young mother with her child.

“Hey!” I yelled again, but the mother ignored me—as did her son, I might add—he only looked straight to the front of the bus.

I pulled myself up and drove a knee into the window—too hard, for my body twisted on the rebound, and my good hand lost its grip and I swung like a gate away from the bus. Ignoring the pain in my shattered left hand, I waved my right arm to get enough momentum against the wind to grab a handhold. Taking a deep and painful breath, I raised my head and looked back at the mother and child inside the bus.

“Can you hear me?” I screamed at the top of my lungs, but if they could, they gave no outward sign.

Gritting my teeth, I again inched forward on the bus. Then the bus turned and I pirouetted again out into the traffic. Luckily it was my right hand still attached this time, since if it was my left, I doubted my shattered fingers would’ve had the strength to hold me a second time.

Eventually I made it to the rear exit door on the side of the bus, and although the painful trip took quite a while, no one in the bus paid me any mind. A few seemed to look my way, but it was almost as if they were looking through me, if you get my drift.

When I finally reached the doors, I reared back and drove my feet into the middle of the bifold doors. They gave a bit, but so did my grip.

I wonder which one will break first. I looked down, and with my shoulders screaming for relief, the ground called to me. It would be so easy to let go, I thought, and that would be that…

But Wiz’s face appeared in my mind and I shook away the damning temptation of suicidal relief. With no other options, I pushed my feet off the bus to get a good swing and drove back into the doors with all the might I could muster. My grip gave way, but luckily so did the doors, and my legs flew inside the door well. My upper torso still hung outside, though, and my hands flailed for holds outside while my feet blindly sought support inside.

Another bus roared towards me, its headlights bright and blinding. I managed to grasp the edge of the door and pull myself inside moments before I would’ve felt what it was like to be hit by a bus for the second time. Its whining power system droned as the passing bus disappeared once more into the night.

With my chest heaving, I stood in the shallow well of the door steps, holding onto a chrome pole for dear life. I looked around me. No one looked back.

“Hello?” I asked.

No one turned my way.

Pushing the doors shut, I walked down the middle aisle, looking from passenger to passenger. The businessman kept his nose down, his eyes scanning back and forth across a crystalline pane covered with text and graphics. I stopped beside him with my head cocked. He just continued to read. I put my hand between his eyes and the pane, waving it back and forth, but he never looked up. Even when I put my hand flat on top of his crystal slate so there was no way he could see it, his eyes never stopped their left to right, left to right, left to right motion.

Stooping, I stuck my forefinger out and neared his eye. The man did not flinch. Swallowing dryly, I pushed my finger onto his eyeball. His eyeball, squishy and wet, moved back and forth across my fingertip. I shivered. I turned to many other bus riders, prodding each of them, but no one paid me any mind.

Holding my ribs with my right hand, I looked down at the fingers of my left hand to find that the middle and ring finger were twisted. I had broken bones numerous times Topside and had the gnarled appendages to prove it—in the real world anyway. If the Singularity was supposed to have pain filters, they obviously weren’t functioning.

I knelt beside the young mother and grasped the edge of her dress. Her daughter only stared straight ahead. “Excuse me,” I said, and yanked. The silky fabric with small purple flowers on a sea of yellow tore easily. I bent my teeth to the cloth and ripped the strip free. “Thank you,” I said, and straightened.

Gritting my teeth, I wrapped the cloth around the fingers of my left hand. Stumbling to the back of the bus, I fell on my ass between two teenagers and used my teeth to tie my makeshift bandage. I cried out as the knot tightened.

Enough of this happy crappy, the sensible part of my brain said. “Singularity: fix my fingers.”

Nothing happened.

“Singularity: mend the broken bones in the fingers of my left hand,” I said, but my fingers just stayed twisted.

The teens to either side continued to chat across me, and it was only then that I noticed that their lips were moving but no sound was coming out. I leaned back and wiped a hand across my face. Each breath was more painful than the one before.

You have to try, I thought. You have to. I was afraid of the result, but I knew that the voice—whether it was truly mine or not—was right.

“Singularity: home.”

Nothing.

“Singularity: take me back to the home of Richard 1521437.”

My borrowed ass stayed on the back of the bus.

“But of course,” I said. Damn it, I thought.

The bus began to descend, and soon we were at street level. I heard the sound of ports opening and felt a gentle jar as the extended tires met the roadway surface. My eyes flew open in alarm when I saw Behavioural Enforcement Agents scattered on the sidewalks. I froze in place but my mind raced—not that it came up with any suggestions. An agent turned my way.

My nostrils flared. So this is it, I thought.

But as he peered into the bus, I twisted my head to one of the teens sitting beside me and joined the conversation, moving my mouth but saying nothing. The two teens laughed at some unheard joke, and I laughed too, holding my ribs against the pain. I gritted my teeth and hoped that my face held more mirth than terror.

The cop took a step closer and raised an arm. “It’s—“

“The bot!” another cop yelled from behind the bus.

The first cop jerked his head towards the other cop. In one quick motion, he raised his rifle and fired. Some of the people on the street screamed and ducked out of the way, hugging the sides of the buildings and diving behind cars, but the bulk of them just continued walking down the street, oblivious. No one on the bus looked back, either, but I took a chance and craned my neck even as I hunkered down.

Ice leapt from car to car behind me, his big black frame crushing roofs and blowing out tires. A dozen Behavioural Enforcement Agents gave chase, their pulse rifles blasting green. I ducked further down in the seat, but I dared not take both eyes off Ice, so I left one side of my head exposed.

Another dozen cops swarmed at Ice from the front and for a moment I thought they would take him down, but he threw off the first two and raised his Neural Disruptor. The cops around him raised their Pulse rifles.

I jerked my head down, but it was too late. The bus around me disappeared in a neon green flash.

My body spasmed and the world went black.

whither: chapter three

Author's note: to read pervious chapters, please scroll down or click on one of the links to the right.

Three

The Undiscovered Country

A table.

Hard.

*****

I heard a noise and my eyes shot open. Both arms flew out, as if to defend myself. With my heart thumping out a timpani in my chest, I sucked in breath after hyperactive breath. But as the sleep wore away from my brain and my surroundings filtered into my sluggish mind, I relaxed and slumped back against the rough concrete wall.

Water dripped down, precipitation ringing gently on the metal around me. I lifted my face and let the rain freshen my face. Opening my mouth, I sucked some into my mouth and found it, as expected, laced with sulfur and iron.

The rain inside the Singularity definitely tastes better, I thought, but swallowed nonetheless.

With my ass pinned against the open metal grating, I looked up and blinked my eyes against the water. Although I was at the top of the hole, the light was dim and gray. Topside, I thought, and my legs forced me up. I laid my hand on the rusty metal railing and stood.

I stuck my head out of the hole and looked out upon my world. A featureless plain, unbroken by plant and unmarred by animal, spread for as far as I could see. The rain formed small rivulets of gray-brown muck that spilled into edges of the hole in intermittent waterfalls. I looked to the small hills in the south. Beyond them lay, I knew, stunted vegetation and slithering animals. The plants didn’t offer much in the way of shade and I knew from experience that the slithering things didn’t taste very good.

In other words, home.

Standing upon twisted metal with only my head above the plain’s surface, I looked back into the hole. Wiz and I had ventured many times into the shafts that dotted the desert landscape, foraging for food and whatever remnants of the before time that we could find. I had found my footwear on two separate trips into two separate holes. We had eaten glop from the pod people many times, but we had never entered their world before—although Wiz had been working on his Joyriding rig for as long as I could remember. Now, looking back into the bottomless hole, I wished that we had never sampled an existence we could never truly have.

For all I knew, the shaft I stood at the top of might extend all the way to the other side of the earth. Twenty meters across, stairs and metal lattice decks encircled the shaft. Where I had left my only friend was the deepest that Wiz and I had ever gone.

Wondering how deep it was, I leaned over the rail into nothingness.

I stood there with my arms spread wide. The rain soaked into my hair and down my neck to run in clammy streams down my back. My toes crept closer to the edge. The railing met my thighs at groin level, and I leaned farther out, daring the darkness to take me. The ancient metal groaned. I ground down on my teeth and thought that if the railing just would give way, that my dental pain, amongst other things, would finally be at an end. But the damned bar was stronger than it looked, and after about a minute I pulled myself back from the edge. Taking a deep breath, I released it as a heaving sigh.

Standing back up, I looked out on what waited for me on the surface. More precisely, what didn’t wait. A fetid pancake, the desolation that I had known for every day of my life mocked me in its indifference. With nothing awaiting me Topside, I forced myself back down the metal stairs.

*****

My shoulders slumped as I went back to where Wiz and I had entered the tubular corridors. I wasn’t very proud of myself. But, for better or worse, I was alive, and it seemed like I should go find out whether Wiz was too.

Lifting my head, my eyes still stinging, I wiped the back of my jacket across my runny nose. My feet squished on the concrete that ran down the center of the round hallway. I looked down the long corrugated steel corridor in either direction. The coast looked clear; the nearest overhead lights flickered nearly a hundred meters away in either direction. Forcing my feet forward, I put out one hand against the curved wall to steady myself and began walking back to where I had left my only friend.

The corridor twisted and turned and many side passages led into the darkness. I could only hope that I could find my way back since, in my panicked retreat, I hadn’t exactly left a trail of breadcrumbs. Droppings, maybe. I turned a corner and looked down towards where I thought the room was. There was a door, but it was complete, and the security bot had blown the one that I had left behind into the room. I ran over my retreat in my mind.

I’m certain this is the right way, I thought.

Looking back up the corridor, my wet skin shivering with the subterranean chill, I tiptoed up to the door. I reached to the wheel and gave it a tentative tug. It spun easily, so I pulled the heavy metal door open. I kept one foot behind me, pointed down the corridor, ready to run.

My heart soared when I stuck my head into the room and saw that our packs laid in the middle of the room. My heart crashed and burned to the crap-covered ground a moment later, though, when I realized that Wiz was gone.

There were also no signs of the battle between Ice and the Bot. The nefarious little nanites with their nefarious little regimens had apparently already scrubbed the room clean. Maybe the two digital monsters had killed each other and the microscopic little buggers had devoured their remains. Heck, for all I knew, they had eaten Wiz as well.

I forced that thought from my brain.

With one eye glued to the door and both ears tuned down the corridor, I crept up to the egg-pods and found the one that Wiz had entered. Her eyes closed, Gennifer 1010568’s bluish face was peaceful behind the small window.

“Are you in there, Wiz?” I asked, but if either he or Gennifer heard, neither answered. I felt a stirring in my groin as I looked at the girl, and I quickly looked away, reminding myself that my best friend hid somewhere inside that pretty flesh wrapper.

I went to the middle of the room and sat cross-legged amidst our gear. With my chin in my hand, I looked at Gennifer’s pod for a very long time, all the while wishing that Wiz was there to tell me how to get him back. But the truth was I knew how to get him back. Or, rather, I knew a way that I could try. I bit my bottom lip as I looked at the egg-pods.

“This sucks,” I said, and my voice echoed in the empty room.

Leaning back on my hands, I stretched out my legs and accidentally kicked one of our sacks. It was Wiz’s, and the heaviest of the three. I always carried it for him, since he lacked the strength to heft it. I nudged the sack with my toe and one of the heavy objects within it shifted. I knew what it was, of course, but still I leaned forward and pulled down the rusty zipper to look within. As soon as I pulled the canvas to the side, I instantly missed Wiz more.

Inside the shadows of the sack rested a number of books. Scavenged from amongst the ruins Topside, some were whole, but most were not. In the bottom of the sack rested loose papers, mere scraps of pages, a fleeting glimpse into the world that had once been. I knew how to read—Wiz had taught me, just like everything else I knew—but I had never taken to the words on paper like my friend had. Still, on a few nights while sitting beside a fire, I had leafed through the flimsy pages. Each time Wiz had good-naturedly teased me about being careful that no knowledge wear off on me.

I pulled the books out, one by one, and set them in an arc on the floor. Theme et Variations, was the title of one cream colored book, An Introduction to French Language and Culture. Another: Conveyances of the Late 20^th and Early 21^st Centuries, complete with a picture of a bus like the one that had struck me on its cover. Man, Nature, and Society, a book on biology—I had looked at this book more often than any other; especially at the pages that diagramed the female form. A handful of novels: The Stand, Balance, and A Scanner Darkly. Another dozen books filled out the rest of the bag, but the last one brought a smile to my lips and tears to my eyes.

I touched the torn cover of Roget’s Thesaurus with a reverential hand; Wiz had read this book most, memorizing its contents until it seemed that he must know every word that ever existed. “What’s another word for thesaurus?” he often asked me. Although I didn’t get the joke the first time I heard it, that hadn’t kept Wiz from giggling like a schoolgirl. I held the thesaurus in both hands and looked at the tall pods that surrounded me.

I knew what I had to do, but I didn’t like it.

“Murder,” I said, and the damning word echoed in the round room back to my ears from a dozen directions. I tried to swallow but had no spittle. Flipping through the thesaurus, I quickly found a synonym. “Assassination,” I said in a cracking voice.

I sat there for a long time before I could convince my quivering legs to raise my body. When I was upright, I set the book down and took hesitant steps until I was standing in front of Gennifer 1010568’s receptacle.

“Damn it all, Wiz.” I turned to the pod to the left and looked into the small window. Another feminine face stared back with closed eyes.

I swallowed and moved to the next pod. Judging by the face underneath the chrome skullcap, the man within was a little older than me. I looked at his face for a long time with a heavy heart. Finally, I read the man’s name: Richard 1521437.

I forced my hand up to the small door latch on the front of the pod, and, before I could talk myself out of it, turned the knob.

“I’m so sorry, Richard,” I said, and opened the pod door.

Oblivious to his pending demise, Richard 1521437 hung within his pod. When I looked at him, I fell to my knees and vomited on the concrete floor. What little contents my stomach held spewed into a viscous puddle. As my vomiting became dry heaves, I realized that the nanites were already devouring my vomit, and I found that I had a little left to purge from my stomach after all.

Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I stood in front of the open pod door. All that remained of Richard’s physical form was his head and shoulders and a bit of his torso that extended down to just below his ribs. His spine hung down, exposed, intertwined with electronic cables. His remaining skin was mottled and his veins showed clearly through. The head that the silver skullcap sat atop was completely bald; in fact, there wasn’t a hair on what remained of his entire pasty body. Tubing brought glop and water up into the chest cavity from below, and more tubing brought poor Richard’s waste byproducts away. Miniature circuitry lined the interior of the pod, but it was otherwise empty save for its truncated inhabitant.

I wondered if, somewhere out there within the Singularity, Richard thought he was living the good life.

Biting my lip and forcing down my bile, I reached under Richard’s armpits to dislodge him from the hooks that secured him. His skin felt waxen. My wet form shivered. I pulled down on Richard’s torso but he remained affixed. I suppose it wouldn’t do to have the entire human race falling to their pod floor, I thought. Getting my legs under me for leverage, I pushed up under Richard’s armpits and the torso came free.

I held it in place for long moments. It wasn’t very heavy. I held this man’s very life in my hands, and my inner voice knew that what I was about to do was wrong, but somehow Richard’s fantasy life within the Singularity didn’t match up to Wiz’s real existence in the physical world. So, closing my eyes and swallowing hard, I yanked Richard out of his pod.

The chrome skullcap left the torso’s head and, to my everlasting horror, Richard’s eyes flew open. His mouth contorted like it was trying to say something, but he no longer had lungs to power a voice. Richard’s face was terror personified and I knew that the man that I was killing had a sudden certainty about the absolute nature of reality. I tugged the torso closer to my own and pulled again; tubes came free and glop and water and waste sprayed the inside of the pod and my pants. Severed wires erupted in small sparks.

Feeling a sharp pain, I cried out and tried to yank Richard’s torso away from my own but Richard’s bald head held tight to my shoulder.

He’s biting me, my mind screamed.

With one great tug I disengaged Richard’s mouth, but the head continued to snap at me, fighting for his life with all the physical presence it had left. I tossed the tussling torso onto the concrete floor and vomited a bit more into my mouth.

Richard 1521437 landed with a hollow thump, his exposed spine twisting below him as he skidded to a stop. He stared up at me from the floor with round eyes that said that he unsure of anything except that he was about to die. I pulled my ripped clothes away from my shoulder and saw I was bleeding in a circular pattern that undoubtedly matched Richard’s teeth. Looking back down, I saw his mouth move without sound, silently saying, “Help me.”

Shaking, I stepped into Richard’s receptacle. When I closed the door, I could still see Richard’s twitching torso through the small window. I tried to look away but could not. Finally, mercifully, Richard’s motions slowed and the torso lay still, staring at me with eyes and mouth wide.

I looked into the skullcap to see that it had tiny gold contacts in the same places as Wiz’s helmet. Looking back out the window, I watched the invisible nanites begin to devour Richard’s remains. Shortly, all that remained of Richard 1521437 would be a handful of wire and a few screws, and I imagined that a maintenance bot would sweep those up in short order.

I shivered and pulled the chrome skullcap down on my head.

*****

“Are you okay, buddy?”

I opened Richard’s eyes. Scantily clad and sweaty people stood over me, looking down with concerned eyes.

“Is he hurt?” one of them asked.

“How could he be hurt?”

Again: “Are you okay?”

I licked my new lips. “What happened?”

Several hands pulled me to a sitting position. “You took a tumble.”

“Fell off the treadmill,” another said.

Blinking my eyes to reboot my brain, I saw what must have been a treadmill a meter away, its surface circulating at a formidable pace. “Oh,” I said, and stood with the assistance of fellow exercisers.

“What happened?” an Asian girl asked.

“Must’ve lost my concentration for a second,” I said, and took hesitant steps back towards the treadmill. “I’m fine now, really.”

They left me with questioning looks.

I stood at the end of the moving treadmill and took in my surroundings. Lean bodies exercised all around me and the air was thick with the smell of male sweat and female perfume. I thought I better get back on the treadmill as quickly as possible, but the tread was moving much faster than my real body could ever hope to run.

Here goes nothing, I thought, and jumped on with legs churning.

I had to grab the handles on either side of the treadmill to keep from falling again, but my new legs were long and strong, and soon I was running at a comfortable pace. My heart thumped within my chest while my new lungs drew in massive amounts of oxygen.

It’s called a health club, whatever was left of Richard’s psyche said in my head, and my lips repeated the words. “Health club.”

Most of the health club patrons had dark hair and eyes. White skin like the kind I wore was in the distinct minority. And they were all at the peak of physical fitness. I wondered why those without physical bodies would bother to exercise, but as I ran on the treadmill it seemed that something pleasant grew within my brain.

Several minutes later, thinking I had stayed on the treadmill long enough to assuage any suspicion, I stepped off, took the towel that was draped on the arm rail, and wiped the beading sweat from my face. I looked over the towel and saw that no one was looking my way.

I continued to wipe the perspiration off my shoulders and arms. A pang of guilt stabbed at me about what I had done to Richard—the vivid vision of his partial torso writhing on the ground brought tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. I thought I better get out of the public eye to compose myself—and plan my next move.

Hoping that Richard was a single man, I said, “Singularity: take me home.”

The world changed around me.

A moment later and feeling like a grave robber, I stood in the middle of Richard’s apartment. “Hello?” I called out and waited long seconds, but there was no answer. “Hello?” I called again, louder.

Artwork dotted the red walls. I didn’t know anything about art, but I liked these paintings since, to a one, they depicted nude females. Overstuffed black leather furniture sat uneasily amidst glass and chrome tables. After waiting a bit longer, I stepped deeper into the apartment. As soon as my foot hit the living room floor, the lights dimmed and the marble fireplace lit. Soft music filled the room. Something in my brain told me that the melodious tones were known as “make out music.”

“Can you turn the lights back up?” I asked, but nothing happened. I scratched my head. “Singularity: turn the lights up,” I said, and the room returned to its original luminance. I let the music stay.

Something brushed my shins and I looked down to see a smallish black cat rubbing its furry cheeks on my legs. I didn’t know if it was real or not—I hoped that there weren’t banks of miniature pet-pods secreted deep within the earth—but I reached down and scratched the kitty between its ears nonetheless.

“How are you today, Onyx?” I asked, her name falling from my lips without thought. The cat answered with a squeaking meow. “That’s a good girl.”

I stood back up while the cat continued winding around my legs. Towards one end of the living room stood a massive series of glass blocks stacked like the side of a pyramid to form the wall; a calming waterfall of precipitation tumbled constantly over them.

Walking to the vast windows, I peered out upon the metropolis. Rain pelted the glass while lightning flashed a safe distance away. Soft thunder rumbled. It was the kind of rain that made you want to take a nap. I questioned why there was weather within the Singularity, but I supposed that people had to have something to talk about. Buildings clawed into the heavens in the city beyond for as far as I could see. Richard 1521437 had quite a view.

“I wonder how much I can change the apartment?” I asked myself, and put a finger to my pursed lips. Standing next to the apartment windows, I said, “Singularity: Covered balcony.”

With my next eye blink a covered balcony about four meters wide replaced the windows, running the length of Richard’s apartment. The digital rain drummed on the metal roof. I prodded the balcony floor with a toe to make sure it was there—after all, there had been nothing but air there a second ago—but it seemed solid enough. The plunge had been no less an illusion, I realized—or at least hoped.

Walking out onto the balcony, I leaned over the railing and looked down. Apparent humanity clogged the streets thick. I wondered how many of the people I saw were real. Onyx jumped up and walked along the thin rail with her head and tail held high.

“Singularity, I have a question,” I said, but nothing happened. I bit my lip and huffed. “Singularity,” I said, “information.”

A voice came from behind me. “How can I be of service?”

I turned and saw a tall redhead wearing crisscrossed leather straps that could only in the broadest sense of the word be considered clothing. She stood in the balcony doorway, waiting.

I took a step back and asked, “Who are you?”

She ran a hand slowly up the inside of her thigh. “The Singularity Personified, of course.”

“Why do you look like that?”

“This is your most recent selection. Would you prefer a different manifestation?”

I found it hard to concentrate with her nakedness so close. “Yes,” I said with a swallow.

“As you wish.” The tall redhead took a step forward and I couldn’t help but notice how enticingly she jiggled. “What form would you like me to take?”

“Something more—innocent.”

“As you wish,” the redhead said.

A moment later a well-dressed lad of about twelve stood where the girl had been.

“Is this form acceptable?” the boy asked.

“It’s fine,” I said. “What city is this?”

“Why, Neo-Paris,” the boy said with a slight accent. He stood with his hands clasped behind him, awaiting further questions or dismissal. It seemed all the same to him.

“Neo-Paris.” I pointed over the balcony to an edifice that was alive with lights a few blocks over. “What’s that?”

“The Eiffel Tower, sir.”

“Eiffel Tower, huh. Pretty.”

“Yes, sir.”

In contrast to the ruins I had seen Topside, the view of a city unblemished was breathtaking. Throughout the city, giant statues lent support to the buildings, up-stretched arms holding up floors and balconies. The inclement weather hid their stony features.

“Would you like to live in another city today, sir?”

The boy took a few steps onto the balcony. The cat hissed at him but the boy didn’t react.

“No, Neo-Paris is fine.”

Lightning flashed and lit the statues’ faces in stuttering shadows.

“Will there be anything else, sir?” the lad asked, teetering back and forth on the balls of his feet. His perfectly coifed hair was a hirsute helmet atop his head.

I thought for a moment while Onyx licked its paws atop the railing.

“Can you help me find someone?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Great,” I said, walking around the boy. The pie-faced lad rotated to follow. “The name is Gennifer,” I said. “Gennifer 10105— 10105— Damn.”

“Searching,” the boy said. His eyes rolled up into his head to expose the whites beneath fluttering lids. In less than a second, his eyes rolled back down. “There is no record of a Gennifer 10105Damn, sir.”

“No, no,” I said. “It’s either Gennifer 1010568 or Gennifer 1010586. I get numbers mixed up sometimes,” I added, wondering why I was bothering to explain. “Can you search for both of them?”

“Certainly,” the boy said, and his eyes fluttered back once more. “Positive search results.”

“Which one?”

“Both, sir.”

“Can I see a picture?”

“Of which, sir?”

“Both.”

The boy waved his small hand like the world’s smallest magician and two fully formed and life-sized digital mannequins appeared on my purloined balcony. A translucent pane of light beside each of them held their public information. Onyx jumped down from the railing and pawed at the illusions of light. Her claws sliced effortlessly through. I walked around the first girl, and then to the second. As soon as I saw her, I recognized the angelic face of the girl inside the pod, even without the skullcap. Instead, a thick mane of blonde hair cascaded down to her slight shoulders.

I cleared my throat. “This one,” I said, pointing.

“Very good, sir. Shall I do away with the other one?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

Another hand wave and the second Gennifer disappeared. “Shall I simulate the remaining one for you, sir?”

I looked down at the supposed boy. “Excuse me?”

“Shall I simulate her?” the boy asked. “For discourse, sexual interaction, general companionship—“

“You can do that?” I looked at the girl and carnal thoughts came unbidden to my mind.

“Of course, sir.”

“But it wouldn’t be her. It’d be a—“

“Simulation, yes sir. Quite lifelike, though, as you will recall from your previous interactions with simulacrums.”

I shook my head to clear it. “No, that won’t be necessary.” I scooped the black cat up and scratched its belly. “I just want to know where to find her. You know, the real her.”

“Of course, sir.” The image of Gennifer disappeared. “Shall I ring her?”

“No, not yet. An address will do fine.”

“If I might be so bold, sir,” the boy said, “real humans can be much less cooperative than their simulacrums. Are you sure I cannot simulate her for you?”

“No.” Onyx jumped down from my arms and went inside.

“As you wish.” His eyes rolled back into his head for half a moment before adding, “She is not in her domicile but I have located her. Would you like to go to her?”

I nodded. “Please.”

“You will, of course, need to be properly attired.”

I looked down. “Of course.”

whither: chapter two

Author's note: due to the sequential process of posting indvidual chapters, you'll need to scroll down to read the first chapter before reading this one.

To send me a comment without joining, please email me at LSM1010@Bellsouth.net


Two
The Pale Cast of Thought

Gasping, I laid on the open metal grating, clutching at my throat although Ice’s hand had never touched it. The tall white pods towered above me.

Wiz laid a hand on my shoulder. “Are you damaged, mon ami?”

I blinked my eyes while my hands took a quick inventory of my body parts. “I don’t think so,” I said.

“What happened?”

“Nothing much.” I said, and stood. “Just almost got killed, is all.”

“Killed?”

I nodded.

“By who?”

“By some black giant with no eyes that almost blasted me with a Neural Disruptor.”

“What?”

“This huge black guy, with all black eyes and teeth that—“

“No, I meant what type of weapon.”

“A Neural Disrupter.”

“I’ve never heard of that particular device.”

“If it kills you in the Singularity, you die here, too.”

“How do you know that?”

I shrugged. “I just do.”

Wiz’s eyes opened wide. “If that weapon sets up a neural force feedback, it would sauté your brain no matter where it happened to be stored physically.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, massaging my throat, “if you say so.”

I pulled the helmet off and handed it to Wiz. Dusting myself off although I was sure the nanites had already done it for me, I turned to the gleaming white construct that housed the man that had housed me.

“They were talking about a plan.”

“What sort of plan?” Wiz asked as he shoved the Joyriding gear into his knapsack.

“Something about ‘downsizing.’”

Wiz pushed a forefinger against his pursed lips. “Did you hear anything else?”

“No.”

“Think, mon ami. It could prove important.”

I looked into the pod. Vladimir’s face, his eyes and mouth closed, had a slight blue twinge to it. Somewhere behind his frozen façade I was sure that Ice was filling him in about his possession.
“No, that’s all I heard,” I said.

While I looked at the body that I had just inhabited, Wiz pulled out the joyriding plug from Vladimir’s receptacle.

“We need to get out of here before the security bots materialize,” Wiz said, looking around. “Make with the celerity.”

I took one last look at Vladimir’s face before following Wiz past the interconnected receptacles and down the stairs. The gleaming white pods remained stolid and silent behind us as we left the room.

Many kilometers of subterranean passages later, Wiz led me to another door and gestured towards it. “Ouvre le porte, s’il vous plait.”

My brow furrowed. “What?”

“Open the door.”

Frowning, I wrapped my calloused fingers around the rusted steel of the wheel. I pulled, but the valve did not give. “It’s stuck.”

“Harder.”

I bent my back, wrapped my fingers once more around the steel and set my legs. This time, when I yanked, the wheel came free and spun in my hand. Losing my balance, I fell to the floor and focused on the spinning wheel.

Wiz’s laughter assaulted my ears. “Bravo,” he said. “You broke it.”

Standing and grabbing the wheel until it came to a halt, I looked up with wide eyes. “Now the people are stuck inside.”

Wiz shrugged. “It’s not like they have anywhere to go,” he said, and retreated back down the corridor. “Let’s find another room.”

As always, I followed him. Not too much later we stood before another door.

“Try not to destroy this one.”

I shot him a dark look and grabbed the wheel. It turned easily. Opening the door for him, I motioned my hand towards the interior of the room while doing a little bow.

“After you, milady.”

Wiz entered without making eye contact. “Leave the door open,” he said, like I was too dumb to figure that out for myself.

The pod room we entered looked exactly like the previous one. Wiz went to one of the pods of the lower level, reached behind it and gave a yank. Twin plastic tubes came free with two distinct pops. One gushed a stream of water while the other oozed a semi-solid paste.

“The glop is kind of thick today,” I said.

“Just cut it with some water,” Wiz said like he had a hundred times before.

Kneeling beside the pod, I squeezed the tube that Wiz had disconnected and a green-gray substance extruded in a more or less solid stream. It plopped intermittently into my steel cup.

“Don’t monopolize it,” Wiz said, and I gave him the tube.

The glop continued to ooze from the tube after Wiz had gotten his fill. Circling back on itself, it collected on the floor, looking like a slender green-gray turd.

I grabbed the other tube and poured some water into my cup before handing it to Wiz, who stuck the tube into his mouth and swallowed several times before letting it drop. The pooling water puddled behind the container. The person within the container did not object to their sustenance being severed, although a small red light now flashed above the pod’s window.
I made a chunky soup out of my glop and water and swallowed a mouthful with a grimace. “I hate this stuff,” I said, but took another mouthful.

“It’s not so horrid,” Wiz said, spooning it into his mouth with his fingers.

“Says you.”

“At least it keeps us animate.”

“I’ve eaten better.”

“You’re delusional, mon ami. This is all you’ve ever ingested. This, and a few scurrilous rodents.”

“Yeah, well.” I paused. “On my next turn I’m going to find some food.”

“What’s on the inside doesn’t count in the taste bud tally,” Wiz said. He took the extruding glop tube and sucked some more into his mouth.

I shrugged. “I bet it still tastes better than this.” I choked down some more glop before adding, “I had an orange once.”

“An honest to God Citrus sinensis?”

I gave Wiz another dark look. “If you say so.”

“Prevaricator.”

“What?”

“It means ‘liar.’”

“Why can’t you talk like a normal person, Wiz?”

“It’s not my fault you have the vocabulary of a gibbon.”

“Yeah, well, I know what ‘asshole’ means.”

Wiz laughed. “Where did you get a real orange?”

“Topside.”

“There aren’t any oranges up there.” Before I could respond, Wiz added, “There isn’t anything up there.”

I shoveled some more glop into my mouth. “It’s not so bad.”

“Deliver to me instead the bright lights and big cities of the Singularity. A pox on the austere indifference of the bleak world above.”

I could only shrug.

I kept peeking out the door for security bots. A small spider-like maintenance bot patrolled in front of the egg-pods, but the coast was clear as far as I could see down the hallway. Unlike the indifferent maintenance bots, security bots were notorious for their dislike of non-pod humans.

Wiz licked the rim of his steel cup clean. “Who do you think that corporate provocateur was?”

“Who?”

“The big black guy.”

“Dunno,” I said.

“Aren’t you curious about what they were planning?”

“Don’t care. Never going to see them again.”

Wiz stood and picked up the water tube. “My turn to trip the light fantastic.” He took a mouthful of water and swirled it around before spitting it out.

“We should get back Topside.”

“Oh, to be sure, since you have already had your out of body entertainment.”

“Hey,” I said, and stood. “It only lasted a few seconds, and it almost got me killed.”

“The Singularity waits for no man,” Wiz said, and pulled the Joyriding apparatus from his backpack. He began to walk down the line of gleaming white pods, pausing to read each name and look at the face within.

“Are you going to be a girl again?”

“Why, I think I will.”

“Big shock.”

Wiz stood on his tiptoes to get a closer look at a potential host’s face. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t like to sample life without a Y chromosome.”

“It’s just too weird.”

“You have a tenuous grasp on your sexuality, mon ami.”

I bit my tongue to keep from commenting further.

Overhead on a rail that encircled the round room, maintenance bots skittered to the slender egg-pod with the disconnected feeding tubes. The sound of their metal legs clicking against the metal rail made the hair on my neck stand on end.

“Ignore them,” Wiz said with glop dripping from his thin lips.

Wiz didn’t look up, but I did. Once directly over the pod, the maintenance bot attached a viscous cord to the rail and descended. When it neared the floor its spider-like arms reattached the tubes to the back of the pod.

While the twin feeding tubes were being reconnected, I accidentally stepped in the puddled glop. I looked down and saw that the puddle of glop on the ground was receding. I watched, fascinated and repulsed at once.

Cleanliness is a long way from Godliness here, I thought.

Frowning, I watched the glop disappear from atop my shoe. “I hate those things.”

“What things?” Wiz asked, standing in front of a likely host for his next Joyriding adventure.

“Nanites.”

“Ludicrous. You might as well hate the oxygen in the air.”

With the glop on the floor nearly gone, I put my steel cup face down atop the waning puddle. After a few seconds I picked the cup up and found it completely clean. I shook the cup with the open end down.

Wiz had already pulled the helmet onto his head. “They’re still in there, you know.”

“Thanks,” I said, and blew into the cup.

“Congratulations,” he said, sitting crossed-legged on the floor. “Now they’re in your lungs.”

I shot him a pointed look and put the cup into my bag.

“I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s digital tail, mon ami.”

“Look out for Neural Disruptors,” I said, but he was already gone, inside some girl in a way God never intended. I glanced at the face within the window and thought that she looked somehow familiar.

I could almost hear Wiz’s voice, rife with sarcasm, inside my head. That possibility is remote in the extreme, mon ami…

“Yeah,” I said aloud. “Remote.” Still, it took me a long time to look away from the delicate features of her face.

Stepping back from the pod and pacing back and forth, I watched down the long round corridor for security bots and whatever else might be lurking out there in the dark. I looked at Wiz and wondered what he was doing, but didn’t want to know. Not really.

“You’re a freak, Wiz,” I said, and nudged his thigh with my toe. I sat and leaned on the pod beside him. I tried to remain vigilant, but at length my eyelids drooped.

I don’t know how long I had been asleep. All I know is that an ear-piercing siren keened and I bolted upright. Red and yellow lights flashing in time with the twin-toned alarm bathed both the room and the corridor beyond. The klaxon hurt my head.

“Wiz,” I yelled, and shook his body. “Wiz, come back.”

Wiz just sat leaning against the pod, inert. Only the whites of his eyes showed. A thin line of drool dripped from his mouth. He looked like he was dead.

“Wiz!”

Nothing.

I leapt to the door and, hiding behind it, peered down the long corridor. Flashing blue lights, out of synch with the alarm lights, reflected in the distance.

“Damn, damn, damn.”

I ran back to the Joyriding rig and mashed the big red button. I looked at Wiz. Nothing. I pushed the panic button again and again, but either Wiz couldn’t hear me or he wasn’t interested in coming back.

“Damn it,” I said under my breath.

The blue lights crept closer.

“What do I do, Wiz?” I yelled over the klaxon.

Wiz did not reply.

Hoping that it would only jar him back to his body instead of making him a vegetable, I pulled the helmet off Wiz’s head. Detached, Wiz’s body fell forward. His head bounced off his thighs and he fell onto his side.

Stooping beside my friend, I put my ear to his nose and found that he was still breathing. At least his subsystems still functioned even though there was nobody within Wiz’s head to issue orders.

Jumping up, I read the nameplate tag on the pod that Wiz had jacked in to and repeated it aloud three times. Closing my eyes, I tried to make sure that I had committed the name to memory correctly.

“Gennifer 1010586,” I said, and then looked at the tag. “Six-eight.” I smacked myself on the forehead. “One-o-one-o-five-six-eight.” I looked into the pod’s window at the beautiful face beneath the chrome skullcap. “God damn it, Wiz.”

The flashing blue lights beyond the door drew closer.

Rushing to the door, I slammed it shut. Just before it closed completely, though, a gleaming javelin forced its way in. The diameter of a small tree at its base and impossibly narrow at its tip, it struck blindly as something chattered mechanically on the other side of the door. With eyes wide and chest heaving, I thrust my back against the door and, when the javelin temporarily withdrew, managed to slam it shut. I spun the large round wheel to secure the door and something inside it snapped. At that moment I didn’t care.

The security bots slammed into the other side of the door and the whole room shook. Although I would not have thought it possible, with the door closed the klaxon seemed even louder. Heart pounding, breathing ragged, mind racing, I leaned against the door.

I looked back to Wiz. “What do I do?” I screamed.

Wiz just laid there, his open mouth spewing spittle onto the floor. No puddle formed, though, since the nanites were cleaning away the spit as quickly as Wiz could produce it.

“God damn it, Wiz! Wake up.”

Something pounded on the door and a sound like ringing anvils surged over the klaxon—and then the big wheel in the door started to move.

I grabbed the handle and the metal bit into my hands. Chunks of flesh tore away. I dug in with my back and my thighs, squatting for leverage, but the wheel continued to turn.

“Wiz,” I screamed, “wake up.”

Wiz didn’t move. But the wheel in the door did.

There was a loud crack and the wheel wrenched from my hands. I fell backwards and crawled away on my palms and heels, crab-like. As my wide eyes watched the wheel spin, I prepared to meet the security bots and my maker in rapid succession.

The spinning wheel slowed to a stop. The door did not open. I regained my feet and inched forward. Reaching a tentative hand to the wheel, I found that it spun in either direction without resistance.

I leaned my back against the door and exhaled. I wasn’t sure how long I had been holding my breath, but it seemed like I couldn’t suck in enough oxygen. My shoulders slumped.

Something hit the other side of the door and the force threw me halfway across the room. With eyes wide, I clambered to my feet. Something hit the door again. Bits of concrete flaked away from the edges; they struck the floor only to disappear a few moments later. Another blow. The flaking concrete accelerated. The dust and chips remained on the floor a bit longer this time.

“Wiz, what do I do?”

I could almost hear his voice, calm in my head: Find another way out, mon ami.

“Easy for you to say,” I said, but my eyes began to search.

Something hit the door again and the metal buckled inward.

Looking up, I saw a metal grating set into the ceiling.

With the alarm driving me to deafness, I snatched up my backpack and climbed the stairs three at a time to the topmost level. Searching inside my bag as I ran, my fingers closed on my single screwdriver.

I climbed up the egg-pod beneath the ventilation grill with my screwdriver clenched in my mouth. Much softer than the steel, the rotting enamel of my teeth screamed. Setting one foot on the pod next to it to balance myself, I found that the screws that held the grill in place had hexagonal slots and I only had a regular screwdriver.

“But of course,” I said to myself.

Something struck the door again and I looked down. Pointed cones, small at first, were forming on the inside of the door. The hammering increased and the cones grew. The dull metal of the door became shiny as it neared the breaking point.

I jammed the screwdriver between the grill and the ceiling and pulled down with the entirety of my weight. Concrete dust fell. I gritted my rotten teeth together. One corner of the grill yanked free and I nearly fell; it had not come loose but the concrete that held the screw had given way. I glanced down to see Wiz still lying on his side, ignorant of his pending demise.

“Wish I was asleep and dreaming,” I said under my breath. “Lucky bastard.”

Resetting my stance, I jammed the screwdriver under another corner of the grill and jerked down. The handle slipped from my sweaty hands and I tried to catch it, but the tool tumbled between the open metal grating. The screwdriver bounced to the floor four stories below.

I chewed the insides of my mouth. But of course.

I would have given up right then and let the security bots have their soulless way with me if not for Wiz. Instead, I ran down the stairs, my footfalls silent under the shrieking alarm. Once on the ground, I stuck my head between pods and searched the tangle of wires and tubes that connected to the back of the gleaming white receptacles. I could not find the screwdriver.

Something hit the door again, harder, and I jerked my head up to see a sharp appendage burst through one of the growing metal cones. When it withdrew, flashing blue lights streamed through the resultant hole.

“Wiz,” I screamed, my head feeling like it would explode, “wake up.”

A calm voice came from behind me. “I think you dropped something,” it said.

I slowly turned and my eyes tried to jump from their sockets.

He stood there, two and a half meters tall, and holding my screwdriver. Most of him stood there, at least; I watched in horror as his body continued to solidify, from his oversized boots to the top of his follicle-deprived dome, his skin as dark as midnight. In but moments his body completely coalesced, a solid spirit in the material world. With his grimace revealing twin banks of unbroken ivory, he raised the Neural Disruptor and pointed both barrels at me.

“Ice,” I said in a very small voice.

The security bot rammed the door again and a chrome javelin thrust into the room. I hung my head. I had fought the inevitable for far too long.

The room shook and the metal door exploded inwards, careening off standing pods. A moment later, the security bot chattered inside on multiple pointed legs in all its mechanical glory. Flashing blue lights revolved on what could only be referred to as shoulders. The security bot raised the metal javelins that composed its front legs and waved them menacingly.

“HALT,” the security bot ordered in multiple languages at once.

Ice jerked the Neural Disruptor up.

The security bot and Ice both opened fire and I hit the ground. Blinding bolts of blue and red surged over me in one direction and a crackling yellow discharge shot over me in the other. Ice flew backwards and his weapon tumbled from his grip. My mind sped up and time stood still. I looked past the security bot to my only friend, lying inert on the floor, drool spilling from his slack lips but evaporating before it stained the floor.

What was left of Ice was scattered around the room in chunks. As the security bot moved farther into the room, the larger pieces began to leech onto each other. His reanimation accelerated until Ice stood, reformed. Jagged holes riddled his towering form, but whatever was making up his body outside the Singularity was coalescing again, taking their proper place in the body that should not be there.

Adrenaline surged through me. My limbs began to shake. In reality’s deepest bargain basement there is only fight or flight, and there was no way I could resist either of these monsters physically.

So I ran.

Ice grabbed his Neural Disruptor but the security bot fired again. I think it may have yelled “Halt” another time, but between the ringing alarm and the thumping of my heart, I couldn’t be sure. I dove past the menacing mechanical arms and through the ravaged doorway. With my sneaker and my boot devouring the corridor beyond, I flew headlong into the darkness. Explosive surges echoed up the long corridor behind me. I wasn’t waiting around to find out who was going to win the impromptu battle.

When the hallway offered up a side passage, I took it with surprisingly little thought of the friend that I had left behind.

whither: chapter one

Lee Shaw Morrison


Author's note: this is the first chapter of my latest sci-fi novel, which I am presently marketing. The plan is to occasionally post a new chapter. All comments are welcome, thanks.

To send me a comment without joining, please email me at LSM1010@Bellsouth.net



whither

a novel


This Life is a fleeting breath,and whither and how shall I go,when I wander away with Deathby a path that I do not know?

—Louise Chandler Moulton

Row, row, row your boat,gently down the stream,merrily, merrily, merrily, merrilylife is but a dream.

—Unattributed



One
Perchance to dream


I wasn’t suicidal, exactly. More like I just didn’t care anymore.

I looked at my best friend. In his late twenties like me, he had lost most of his teeth long ago. My own suspect teeth ached just looking at him. Still, he hadn’t lost his smile with his lack of proper dentistry, and he grinned a brown gum line in my direction.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” I asked and tugged my tattered jacket closed against the subterranean chill.

Wiz’s smile widened within his gaunt face to reveal even more gamy gum. “Negative, mon ami.”

“Great,” I said, and took the offered helmet.

Individually lit receptacles surrounded us in the cylindrical room. Shaped like slender eggs and standing two and a half meters tall, lights illuminated the tops of the receptacles but shadows hid the bottoms. In addition to the egg-pods at floor level, six more tiers of the gleaming white pods extended all the way to the concrete ceiling.

I walked the perimeter of the lowest level, past the reinforced metal door that was the only way into or out of the room, and looked into the small windows in each pod. The faces behind the windows did not look back. I leaned in to get a closer look at one of the cold blank faces and my breath steamed the pod window.

“Are they dead?” I asked.

“No, but whether they are alive or not is an entirely different issue for conjecture.”

I didn’t understand, but I didn’t want to look stupid, so I just nodded. I found myself doing that a lot with Wiz. But where I was strong and swift, Wiz was weak and slow, and he walked behind me in a kind of shuffling gate while carrying a lumpy knapsack.

“Have you selected one?” he asked.

“Not yet.” I looked at the blank faces and wondered whose life I would rather have than my own.

Anybody’s, my brain said. Just pick one.

Wiz looked into a window. “You could sample the feminine wiles from within.”

“Be a girl?” I looked away from Wiz’s smirk. “No,” I said, and moved on to the next pod. “You can try that when it’s your turn.”

Wiz’s smirk deepened into a leer. “Mayhap I will.”

I snorted. “You would.”

Seeing no one particularly interesting, I climbed to the next level. My footfalls echoed on the open steel stairs. We left the rest of our worldly belongings, which is to say, our other three lumpy bags, in the middle of the floor.

“Could you possibly hurry your selection?” Wiz asked, leaning on the railing of the topmost step. With a huff, he shifted his bag to his other hip.

“Ok,” I said, and stopped at the next pod.

The male face housed within was roughly my age. A chrome skullcap covered his forehead in a reflective widow’s peak. A hundred fine wires attached to the skullcap formed a single bundle that ran behind his head.

“This one,” I said, pointing.

“Splendid,” Wiz said and set the knapsack down beside the pod. Looking in the window, his narrow face crinkled. “Are you certain? His face is marred by a Port Wine birthmark.”

“That’s what makes him interesting.”

Wiz’s mouth widened to reveal a picket fence. “And you have the audacity to question my predilections?”

I looked around the room as he prepared the Joyriding rig. Hanging above the pods, a round steel framework encircled the room at each level. A bundle of wiring and tubing hung down from the framework to connect to the back of each slender egg-pod. Arachnoid maintenance robots clung from the circular steel rigs at various intervals, checking one pod before chittering on their multiple legs to the next one. One turned its head towards me and its eyes, so utterly alien, chilled me to my very marrow. I wondered briefly if it could see me—or if it cared if I was there.
A metal tag on the front of each egg-pod held the name of the person inside. This one was named Michael. There was also a number beside each metal nametag.

I put my hand on top of the receptacle and leaned closer to the window. “Hello, Michael,” I said.

Michael didn’t answer.

I tapped my finger on the tag. “What’s this number?”

Wiz glanced up from his work. “That’s their Pod Identification Number.”

“Oh.”

Like I said, Wiz knew pretty much everything.

When I pulled my hand from atop Michael’s egg, I went to brush it clear of dust, but it was clean. I looked closer at egg and found it spotless. Dumbfounded, I realized there wasn’t any dirt to be found in the entire room. I looked down at my shoes—one sneaker (too small), and one boot (too big)—and watched as the thick dirt caked on through years of continuous use melted away.

“Wiz,” I said, my voice tremulous.

Wiz followed my gaze to my feet. “Don’t be fearful, mon ami,” he said. “They’re simply nanites.”

“What’s a nanite?”

“Molecular machines.”

“Molecular?”

“Affirmative. They are approximately a hundred million times smaller than a mosquito.”

I thought I heard a buzzing in my ear and looked up, but if there was a coincidental mosquito outside my head, it was nowhere to be seen.

“They’re harmless,” Wiz said.

“Are you sure?”

Wiz nodded. “Perhaps it’s best if you think of them as the ultimate dry-cleaning.”

I hitched my pants leg up my calf and watched my black ankle become pink once more. My auto-cleansing continued past my pants cuffs, and I could only hope that these nanites were able to tell where dirt ended and flesh began. I surreptitiously cupped my crotch.

Meanwhile, Wiz pried open the waist-level cap on Michael’s pod to expose a connecting conduit. I watched him fish another bundle of wires from the knapsack and set about attaching the two.
He nodded towards the knapsack. “Don the helmet,” he said.

Stooping, I took the helmet from the bag. Dull red and white vertical stripes, along with a faded white star in a field of dingy blue, covered its surface. Wiz said it had come from a ‘motorcycle,’ some conveyance from the before time.

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” I asked.

Wiz grinned his decayed grin. “Negative.”

Tilting the helmet upside-down, I looked inside to see gold-tipped electrodes at locations where they would contact my temples, forehead, and base of my skull. A bundle of duct-taped wires ran from the back of the helmet to Wiz’s knapsack.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Wiz.”

“Cease your infantilism and slip on the key to a brand new world.”

“What?” I asked.

Wiz huffed. “Put on the helmet.”

I shrugged and did as he said. What the hell? Maybe I’d get lucky and the damn thing would put me out of my misery.

“I’d suggest sitting down,” Wiz said.

I leaned my back against the pod and crossed my legs. Wiz adjusted how the helmet sat on my head and then cinched up the chinstrap tight—too tight, I thought, but said nothing.

“Are you prepared, mon ami?” Wiz asked with a grin so wide that I thought what few teeth that remained in his head would fall out.

“No,” I said, “but go ahead.”

Wiz reached into the knapsack. “Who do you want to be today?” he asked, and flipped a switch.

Anybody but me, I thought and closed my eyes.

*****

When I opened my eyes again, sound and motion swallowed me whole.

I slammed my eyes shut to see if I was hallucinating, but when I reopened them it was all still there. They were all still there. I had only seen seven people in my entire life and now they were everywhere. Young and old. Light and dark. Tall and short. Male and female. More than anything else, female. I reached out to my side and steadied myself on the wall of a building to keep from falling.

I had never seen a woman before, and yet, when I laid my eyes on one, I felt a primal attraction like I had never known. I watched one drop the stub of a cigarette to the sidewalk and grind it out under a pointed heel. My eyes traveled up the long legs that extended from her white dress. When my eyes locked onto the gentle swell of her calf, the rest of the world faded away. I suppose I should’ve wanted to drag her into a back alley and do my damnedest to propagate my species, but it seemed like it would be enough to just touch her skin.

She looked up and, for one brief moment, I felt like I was falling into her eyes. As she focused on me, though, I looked down and my face flushed. When I looked back up she was gone, swallowed by the sea of humanity. The pang of my first crush being crushed passed quickly, though. There was so very much to see.

I stood on the corner of a busy intersection in a metropolis such that I had never known. I had stood in many weathered city ruins Topside, of course, amongst the wilted metal skeletons of a forgotten culture, but I had never experienced anything so alive before.

All manner of conveyances filled the streets and the skies above, filtering between spires on innumerable levels into the slate blue sky. Flashing and moving signs covered walls and windows. A wonderful roar of rumbles and honks and conversations filled my ears. I wanted to hear all of them at once, but it was enough that they were there. Topside the wind passed through the ruins like the far away howls of a million ghosts. But here the city was alive and vibrant and all the sounds combined to form the single noise of life.

A great shadow loomed over me and I instinctively moved to dodge it. Looking up, I saw a giant dirigible that seemed almost too big to fly. Flashing lights and animations covered its leathern hull.

Carefully sculpted bushes dotted the immaculate sidewalks. Plants that looked like elephants and giraffes and animals that I did not recognize stood amongst the disinterested citizens. Raindrops fell and their tiny leaves bounced. As I watched, several of the animals shifted positions and assumed new poses, as if their leafy limbs were tired. So unmoving did they become again that I had to wonder if I had really seen them move at all.

Blinking the rain from my eyes, I looked up. Sleek chrome and glass skyscrapers angled in above me, cylindrical tapers of alabaster and chrome disappearing into infinity. Sticking out my tongue, I caught a raindrop and found it to be the freshest water that I had ever tasted.

Swallowing, just up the sidewalk, I saw a group of white-clad monks holding signs. They chanted, alternately, “This isn’t real,” and “Save your soul.”

The hippo-bush beside them opened its mouth to yawn.

“They have a point,” a man beside me said.

I turned. “Who?”

“The God freaks.”

I furrowed my brow. “The who?”

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “The Biological Fundamentalists,” he added while crimping both forefingers and middle fingers twice in rapid succession.

I looked back towards the figures in dingy white. “What do you mean?” I asked while mimicking his finger movements.

“Funny,” he said, “but they’re right. I mean, what good is the rain?”

“They’re protesting the rain?” I pushed the damp hair back from my forehead.

“They protest everything.”

I had no reply. I had seen rain before when Wiz and I scavenged amongst the rubble Topside, but in the real world sulfur tainted the rain. Here, the water from the sky was glorious.

The man grunted. “Singularity,” he said to no one in particular, “sunny day. Twenty-two degrees Celsius.”

And with that, the rain stopped. Not for everyone else, but just for the man. A column of sunshine surrounded him in his own personal weather system. He straightened his suit coat and pulled a hand across his dry hair. His clothes looked like they had never been damp.

He shrugged again. “It’s just stupid, that’s all,” he said, and disappeared into the milling people on the sidewalk.

I caught the rain on my fingertips and rubbed them together. If the dampness wasn’t real, it still sure felt wet. I blinked the water from my eyes.

“Singularity,” I said, “sunny day. Twenty-two degrees Celsius.”

A warm light shone down on me and the rain stopped. I touched my clothes and found them dry. I ran to a storefront and looked into the plate glass. Michael’s face looked back at me, but this face was alive and full of expression and capped by a shock of sandy blonde hair instead of a reflective skullcap. I tilted my borrowed face back and forth and found it blemish free.

“This isn’t real,” the Biological Fundamentalists chanted. “Save your soul.”

Opening my mouth, I exposed twin rows of perfectly sculpted teeth. I ran my fingers along them just to make sure they were really there. Laying my hand on the left side of my jaw, I realized that I was without dental pain for the first time in—heck, in the first time in forever. Leaning closer to the glass I saw that, although my eyes had always been blue, they were now green.

“Singularity: give me purple eyes,” I said, and watched them change color. “With golden flakes,” I added, and reflective sparkles appeared.

I looked at the rest of the huddled masses pressing through the rain and laughed. I grabbed a young man by the shoulders and the precipitation that soaked his ill-fitting clothes squished through my fingers. The water that fell on my dry patch of sidewalk disappeared.

“Why don’t you make the rain stop?” I asked.

The young man just looked down and hurried past.

As I laughed, one of the Biological Fundamentalists broke from his protesting brethren and headed my way. I could not see the face that came straight towards me within the shadow of his hood. His robe was dirty at the edges, as if it had been dragged through the mud.

“I have the power of creation,” I shouted at him.

“This isn’t real,” he replied with a low voice, “and you don’t belong here.”

“But I am a God,” I yelled at the man.

No one else seemed to particularly notice my euphoria. Glancing around, it appeared that the only dirt in sight was on his robe—and his skin.

The man stopped mere centimeters away from me and pulled his hood back. The dark sockets of his eyes were sealed shut with twisted silver wires. Stringy blonde hair framed a sallow face. I took a stuttering step back.

The man stretched a filthy hand towards me. “Blind yourself so you might see, brother.”

I took another step backwards to escape his grasp, and something rushed at me from the side. I turned with a jerk to see a flying sign rush at my face. The image on the placard was alive, or so it seemed, and a man’s head and shoulders leapt at me from the two-dimensional flying rectangle.

“Tired of your life?” the 3-D man in the 2-D picture yelled. “Try one of ours!”

As the sign raced past, my feet slipped from the curb. With arms flailing, I fell backwards. As soon as my ass hit the asphalt, the blind cleric smiled.

“Look out for the bus, God,” he called.

I looked up and the horn’s blare swallowed my scream.

I imagine my purloined body must’ve flown quite a distance before it came to a crumpled stop.

*****

My scream continued until I opened my eyes to see Wiz leaning close over me.

“Well?” he asked, his fetid breath filling my nostrils.

“It was,” I said, short of breath, “incredible.”

“Then why were you screaming?”

“I think they call it a bus.”

“Oh,” Wiz said. “As I recall from my research, those were quite large.”

“You recall correctly.”

“My turn, mon ami,” he said, and, undoing the chinstrap, pulled the helmet off my head.

My brain tried hard to reject that where I was now was more real than where I had just been. It took me several moments to believe that I was back in the real world. Wiz’s breath stunk worse and my teeth hurt more, but the floor under my feet was no more solid, the clothes rubbing my body no more tangible, the air I pulled in no more life-sustaining.

I turned and looked at Michael. My eyes burst open. “Is he okay?”

Wiz did a quick check of Michael’s vital readings and said, “He’s undamaged.”

“I thought I got him killed.”

Climbing the open metal stairs up to higher levels, Wiz said, “I suspect there must be safeguards within the Singularity to prevent actual injury.”

“Oh.” Laying my hand on the left side of my jaw, I tried to massage away the pain of rotten teeth growing sideways in the back of my mouth.

Wiz stopped in front of a pod. “I believe that I will cohabitate within this vessel,” he said.

“No fair,” I called and jogged up the stairs after him. “I barely got any time at all.”

Wiz ignored me and pulled the red, white, and blue helmet onto his head. Walking on the metal grating to where he stood, I read the name on the pod’s faceplate.

“A girl?” I asked.

Wiz cinched his chinstrap and answered with a leer. Little lines crinkled around his eyes.
I sighed. “So what do I need to know?”

Wiz filled me in on the Joyriding rig’s basic operation while finishing the connections to the girl’s egg-pod. “The most important thing,” he said, “is this button.” He pointed at a very large, very shiny red button. “This is the panic button.”

How imaginative, I thought, but kept the comment to myself.

“If I begin to fidget,” Wiz said, “hit this button and I’ll return to my corporeal body posthaste.” He looked at me like I was a dimwitted child or the family dog. “Comprendez-vous?”

“I got it,” I said. “Go on, freak, be a girl.”

Wiz’s gap-tooth grin widened and he sat with his back leaning against his surrogate host. “Once more into the electronic breach.”

Flipping a switch, he slackened against the pod and slid down to the open metal floor. His eyes rolled back into his head. Drool dripped from his slack lips.

“Wiz?” I asked.

I snapped my fingers in front of his face. Nothing. I leaned down and put my ear to his lips just to make sure he was still breathing. Not that I could do much about it if he wasn’t. I looked at the feminine face within the pod and then back to her nameplate.

“Take good care of him, Natalie,” I said, and squatted beside my friend.

I’m not sure what he was doing while he was inside Natalie, but he sure took his sweet time about it. His body jerked upright hours later and his face broke into a smile. He didn’t tell me what went on and I didn’t ask.

I tried to take my turn with another person in the same room, but Wiz insisted that we keep moving to keep ahead of the security bots. I didn’t question him.

Wiz shut the door and turned to me. “Secure it tightly,” he said.

I did as he suggested, turning the round handle and closing off the room behind us. I put my back into it and tugged the wheel another quarter turn.

“That’s enough, mon ami,” he said, and started down the corridor.

I followed.

The round corridor extended as far as we could see, corrugated steel walls painted alternately red and white. I knew that hundreds of meters of earth hovered above us, but I put that less than comforting thought out of my head. Harsh overhead lights set intermittently into the ceiling defied the darkness, but most of them had burned out and the corridor was black for long stretches.

“How far do we have to go?” I asked.

“I believe it would be prudent to travel at least a bit farther,” he said, and turned down another corridor.

Carrying the Joyriding rig and two of our three knapsacks, I followed.

Numerous tunnel changes later, Wiz had me open another metal door. The cylindrical room beyond it was identical to the one that we had left. Since the pods inside them also looked the same, I just had to trust Wiz that he hadn’t led me in a circle.

“My turn,” I said, and set our gear down.

“Bien sur.”

Looking at all of the potential hosts in the room, I rotated slowly until I once again faced my friend. “Hey, Wiz.”

“Oui?”

“You’re amazing.”

“You are too kind,” Wiz said and his face reddened. “All I did was change the very fabric of your entire existence.”

“Not bad for a guy with no teeth.”

Wiz exposed said lack of dentistry. “Not bad at all.”

On a whim, I climbed all the way to the top level. The slender egg-pods were as perfectly clean as those in the other room, the invisible nanites doing their nefarious little microscopic job. I went from pod to pod, looking from face to face, reading nameplates.

“Why don’t you try life as a girl?” Wiz shouted up from the floor. “It’s extremely gratifying.”

“Number one, no,” I said, “and number two, shut up.”

Wiz laughed. “Would you like to hear a discourse on my experience?”

An involuntary shiver ran up my spine. “Not if I live to be forty.”

Wiz kept laughing as I continued window-shopping, but then his laughter came to an abrupt stop.

“What is it?” I called.

“This person has an inordinately low number.”

“What is it?”

“Forty-three.”

“Really?” I climbed back down the stairs. “Most of them are in the billions.”

“Perhaps he’s someone important.” Standing in front of a pod, Wiz looked at me with an expectant face.

I pulled on the helmet. “Hook me up.”

*****

I opened my eyes to see the entirety of the universe. The grandeur of the cosmos seemed an arm’s reach away, massive galaxies no larger than a grain of sand speeding away at a million kilometers an hour. I tried and failed to close my slack mouth.

“Vlad?” came from behind me.

I turned.

I stood at one end of a long room. In the long room sat a long wooden table, flanked on both sides by black leather chairs. Each chair held what appeared to be a perfect human. It was hard to pay them much mind, though, since the long room had no walls, and everywhere I looked held another glimpse at creation. Racing comets scorched the blackness. The floor of the room was a thin oval of granite floating in the vacuum of space, but my borrowed lungs found plenty of air. A wooden ceiling hovered overhead, and a long gold chandelier with flickering candles provided an even light.

“Vladimir?”

At the close end of the table sat a very large man with a shaved head. The sharp angles of his black cheekbones looked like they could cut glass. I couldn’t see the eyes that hid behind his sleek sunglasses, but I felt them bore into me.

“Are you all right?” the black man asked.

“Yes,” I said with Vladimir’s mouth. It took me a moment to adjust to the fact that the voice wasn’t my own. Uncomfortable being the center of attention, I sat down in the one empty chair.

All of the seated people arranged the papers in front of them. None of them had a hair out of place. Looking down, I saw that I had paperwork, too, so I picked it up. The name at the top read: VLADIMIR DRAKE. In the lower left hand corner there was a small image of a muscular man supporting a globe on his shoulders.

One of the suits cleared his throat. “So what do you think?” he asked.

I kept my head down and continued to leaf through the papers. Each one had Perceptions, Incorporated—Confidential printed at the top.

“Vlad?”

The immensity of the surrounding universe around me faded away as the large man to my immediate left began to demand more of my attention. I looked out the corner of my eye at him.

“Vlad?” a voice asked.

No one answered.

“Vladimir?” the voice asked again, and I jerked my head up.

“Yes?” I said with a stammer.

“What do you think of the plan?”

“Plan?” I forced over borrowed lips.

A woman with fluorescent blue hair spoke. “About the downsizing—“

The tall black man held up a hand and the woman abruptly close her mouth. Stars shot across the sky in the thick silence.

“Yes,” the black man said. He pulled his sunglasses off and put them into the front pocket of his leather longcoat. “The plan.”

I looked at the man and found that his eyes, unbroken by white or color, were even darker than his skin. Perhaps they were all pupil, or perhaps they were simply black.

In any event, I suddenly found myself acutely uncomfortable with his stare and looked back down. I licked my dry lips.

“The plan,” I said, and took a deep breath. “It’s,” I said, and the people in suits leaned forward. I turned the cover page right side up. “It’s a very good plan.”

Sighs and smiles broke out and the people around the table relaxed in their seats. I leaned back too—until a huge hand grabbed my wrist. The suits stopped and stared. The bald man beside me pulled me forward.

“What part of the plan do you like best?”

I cleared my throat. “Excuse me?”

His hand tightened on my wrist. The black eyes bored into me. The other participants in the room pushed their chairs away from the table. He carefully enunciated each word as if it were a child’s nursery rhyme.

“Which—part—do—you—like—best?”

I looked from face to face for help, but the rest of them were inching ever further back while gathering their papers. I took a deep breath.

“Well, I, uh, I liked all of the plan equally well.”

“Really,” the bald man said.

I grimaced against the tightening grip on my wrist. “Really.”

The other people in the room started to stand.

The man looked at me for long moments with a solemn face. His smooth cranium was beautifully, if dangerously, shaped. I began to wonder what kind of pain awaited me, but then the black man broke into a laugh. He exposed two banks of perfect white teeth—perfect save the for fact that they were not teeth at all, but twin ivory arcs of unbroken enamel. His amused gales echoed into the universe.

“It is a good plan, isn’t it?”

I opened Vladimir’s mouth and forced a laugh through. “Yes,” I said. “A great plan.”

The others at the table joined the mirth and slid back under the table. “You really had us going, V,” one of the suit-clad men said and pointed an index finger at me.

I returned the index finger salute. “Gotcha,” I said.

A gloved hand shot out and crushed my windpipe. Gasping for air, I looked to my left to see the black man stand without releasing my neck or my wrist. His fingers bit into my flesh like steel cables.

“Who are you?” the man yelled. Inhumanly hot spittle splashed my face.

My eyes rolled up in my borrowed face. “You tell me.”

The next thing I knew I was hurtling heels over head down the length of the boardroom. I skidded atop the polished table and papers scattered. Ceramic cups rebounded off my head. The others still seated at the table jumped up and gathered their papers as quickly as they could.

Once at the far end of the table, I tried to make my borrowed body stand, but there seemed to be a disconnect between my brain and Vladimir’s muscles. I floundered—for just an instant—but that was all the big man needed. My attacker leapt onto the top of the table from the floor. With his gunslinger’s coat flapping behind him, he made it to me in two powerful strides.

“I asked you a question,” the man said.

I tried to squirm out of the way. “I told you, I really do like the plan,” I said.

He grabbed me with one hand and jerked me over his head. The wind left my lungs once more and I sputtered. Drool dribbled down my chin. I clawed at the iron grip that held Vladimir’s neck in a vise, but couldn’t get the fingers to budge. I found I knew that the man’s name was Ice, and that Vladimir considered him the most dangerous man that he had ever met.

I would have gulped if I could’ve made Vladimir’s throat swallow.

In my peripheral vision I saw stainless steel doors appear out of the ether at one end of the granite oval. The men and women ran to them and the portal slid open. As soon as the last suit ran into the well-lit hallway beyond, the double doors shut and vanished, leaving me alone in the universe with my attacker. Black stars dotted my oxygen-deprived vision in surreal juxtaposition with the actual stars beyond the boardroom.

Ice reached to his waist and pulled a weapon from beneath his coat. I had never seen one before, but something within Vladimir’s consciousness told me it was called a Neural Disruptor. Something else told me that a Neural Disruptor was the only thing within the Singularity that could truly kill you.

I wished whatever was left of Vladimir hadn’t told me that.

Still holding me above his head with his left arm, Ice jammed the weapon to my head, and the twin barrels, one above the man’s fist and one beneath it, pushed into my temple and under my chin. I tasted Vladimir’s blood as it trickled down my forehead.

“Wiz, help,” I tried to make Vladimir’s mouth say, but my lips only managed a gasping wheeze.

Ice’s blank black eyes bored into mine as he held me high above his head. Vertigo clawed at me, and I felt like if Ice let me suddenly go I would fall straight into the fathomless depths of his eyes. If the eyes really are the gateway to the soul, I didn’t want to guess where his led.

“Last chance,” Ice said. His hand tightened on the Neural Disruptor’s handgrip and the twin barrel tips illuminated. The red and blue glare refracted in my eyes. “Who are you?”

I fought the grip but was held fast. My arms and legs flailed and my eyes rolled up.

“Wiz,” I whispered, “get me out of here.”