Creation Machine (28 page)

They had the place to themselves, but it was obviously meant to house thousands of people. ‘Moderator? Where are we?’

You are in a representation of one of the greatest transport hubs ever built.

‘Wow.’ She looked round again. The illusion was perfect; she knew her body was in a recliner in a sim suite, but she
felt
herself here. ‘Where is it?’

It is nowhere, now. It was demolished more than a million years ago.

‘Oh.’ She was surprised to feel a pang of sadness. ‘Well, I’m glad you – remember it, if that’s what you do.’

The voice didn’t respond. Fleare turned to Muz. ‘Where now?’

‘Well, in, really.’ He nudged gently against her finger so that he clicked against the ring. ‘This thing contains a time-line within one of the sims. Let’s go walk alongside it and see what we find.’

She looked around. ‘How do we do that?’

She had expected Muz to reply, but instead it was the Moderator which answered.
Go to the wall of tunnels. One will be illuminated. Enter it, and you will be in place.

‘Okay.’ She paused and, feeling slightly self-conscious, added, ‘Thank you.’

You are welcome. A version of me will be with you.

‘Really? Why?’

I believe you may wish to extract a personality from a simulation. That is not straightforward, especially as you may be doing so against the will of another agency.

‘What other agency?’

Whichever agency placed the personality here in the first place. I cannot guarantee that you will be unimpeded. Besides, the personality itself may have a view.

She nodded. Then, unsure whether whatever it was could see her, she said: ‘Thank you. Again.’

You are welcome. Again. Please enter the tunnel.

She fought off the urge to say ‘Yes, sir’, and walked towards the far wall. The illusion of reality broke down for a moment: her steps seemed normal, but she realized the wall was coming closer at much faster than walking pace. Then she was at the tunnel entrance, and the illusion fell away completely.

It only looked like a tunnel from a distance. Up close, it had no depth; it was just a flat half-circle of grey-black graininess. It reminded her of something but for a second she struggled to think what. Then she realized.

It looked just like the surface of Kelk’s ring. Perhaps the Moderator was more subtle than she’d suspected.

She shrugged and walked forwards, half expecting to bounce off. Her senses swam once more, and then she was – on a beach.

Soft, slightly shelly sand rustled beneath her feet. Twenty paces away, a grey-green sea hissed and crunched slowly against the shore. There was a mineral breeze in her face, and she knew without looking that the stirring behind her would be trees, marking the edge of the sand.

She looked round for Muz, but couldn’t see him. Then she became conscious of a weight against her breastbone. She felt for it, and lifted it towards her eyes. It was the necklace he had become once before.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘So, let’s get busy.’

Fragment recovered from Archive

Waking hurts. Fair enough; I’ve been doing some hard manoeuvring. A few bruises but nothing broken. Good enough outcome, considering.

Meanwhile I’m deep in the nasty unknown. I take stock. Lying on something softish but slightly lumpy. Naked and clean-feeling, air temperature neutral with a slight current, more than a sigh but less than a breeze. Other than the air current, no noises.

It’s time for visuals. I let my eyes open a crack, and then all the way.

On a bed, in some kind of cabin that smells woody, with salty overtones. There’s a woman looking down at me. She is young, maybe standard early twenties, and she looks wiry. Her face is brown, the sort that comes from tan not genes. She is wearing mil fatigues, although I don’t recognize the uniform, and she is grinning.

‘Hi,’ she says. ‘Which of you’s listening? The body or the passenger?’

For a moment I consider staying dumb, but only for a moment. Whoever she is, this woman hauled me and Rudi’s body out of somewhere as a unit, when I couldn’t even get myself out solo. First and last rule: when someone holds all the cards, the only game to play is theirs. ‘The passenger,’ I say. ‘Who are you?’

Her grin widens. ‘In a minute. Excuse me.’ She is wearing a necklace of wooden beads. She thumbs one of them. ‘Did you get a fix?’

A crackly voice answers. ‘Nice and clear. Ready?’

‘Yup.’ She thumbs the bead again and looks at me. ‘Relax. This won’t take a second.’

I get ready to ask what won’t take a second, but then everything blurs for a moment and I shut my eyes and shake my head to clear them.

Then I realize. My eyes, my head. A discontinuity I was barely aware of has gone. The remnants of Rudi aren’t around any more.

I look up at the woman. ‘What . . .?’

‘I hate dealing with two entities at once,’ she says. ‘I never know which I’m talking to.’

I sit up and look at her. ‘So?’

‘So, we isolated Rudi’s personality traces. Hauled them out and put them into storage.’ She looks at me for a moment and crosses her eyes theatrically. ‘Oh come on, you could look impressed? We managed to pinpoint a simulated personality that had been inserted into a grey-area sim to take over
another
simulated personality, haul them both out safely, isolate the
original
personality and put it somewhere safe without leaving any traces. It took whole fucking
seconds
of processing.
And
you were stuck. You were about to be in all sorts of trouble. Isn’t this better?’

I nod slowly. Then I look round, as much to give myself time to think as for any other reason. Apart from the bed I woke up on, there is no furniture. The walls are made of tawny wood, laid in vertical planks. There are nail heads trickling dark lines of rust towards the wooden floor. Wide windows along two walls are covered by off-white curtains. They stir, and I can feel a faint breeze. There is no door.

I finish the eyeball tour and look back at the woman, who is now sitting cross-legged on the bed next to me. She is watching me with raised eyebrows.

‘Well?’ I say.

‘Well,’ she says, nodding as if she is agreeing with me. Then she pushes her palms down against the mattress and springs herself up and off it, unfurling her legs forwards so that she lands softly. ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ she says, and points vaguely towards the wall next to the windows.

A door appears. She waves a hand towards it. ‘After you,’ she says.

I hesitate, looking down at Rudi’s still naked body, of which I am now the sole inhabitant. I suppose that makes it my body now. She shakes her head a little. ‘Sorry,’ she says. She does the vague hand wave again and something soft and sort of heavy wraps itself round me. I look at it for a moment, then raise my eyes to meet hers. ‘A toga?’ I say.

‘Why not?’ She waves towards the door again. ‘Go on,’ she says. ‘Before I change my mind about the whole clothes thing.’

We walk along a shingle shore. There is green restless sea to our right. To our left, a forest of tall straight trees with purply-blue needles marches down to the edge of the beach.

For a while neither of us speaks. Then I say: ‘Who are you?’

She does the grin again. ‘In here, I am just a figment of my imagination.’ She waves backwards over her shoulder to the beach house we have left behind. It disappears. ‘So are you,’ she adds.

I am getting impatient. I reach down and pick up a stone. It feels cold, and slightly sticky with salt. I push the folds of the toga out of the way, wind back my arm and throw it out to sea as hard as I can. It arcs out over the water and lands with a tiny white splash.

‘Good imagination,’ I say.

She shrugs. ‘Good simulation,’ she says, and reaches down for a stone of her own. She throws, her arm moving so fast it blurs. The stone goes much, much further than mine. She looks at me. ‘Sorry, showing off. So, you’ve got questions, yes?’

I nod. ‘Have I been rescued or kidnapped?’

She tilts a hand from side to side. ‘Kind of both. Maybe with some head-hunting as well.’

I consider this. It doesn’t sound too bad. ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Next question. Where am I?’

‘I thought that was going to be question one.’ She sits down on the shingle and wriggles her hips to make a hole for herself. ‘You are – we both are – in a Covert Conjoined Simulation. Think mixed chill-out zone and observation room. It sits next to the virtual reality you came from, but screened from it, and running faster. A
lot
faster: fifty thousand times base clock speed. We’re on a
very
fast substrate. Bit geeky there. Sorry.’

I sit down facing her. ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘So how do I get out of here?’

‘Ah.’ The smile has gone now. ‘That depends what you mean. If you mean out of this sim and into another one, that depends on what you’re willing to do when you get there. As far as we can see, you didn’t have a purpose before; you were just bumming along with Rudi’s plans, right?’

I nod.

‘Okay. You need to know that was probably just a creative way of keeping you quiet. I’ll explain in a minute. The main thing is, in principle we’d like you in there batting for our side.’

‘Hm.’ I look out to sea for a moment while that sinks in. ‘Okay, maybe. But what if I mean out of here altogether?’

‘As in, back to your physical body?’

‘Yes.’

‘That won’t be easy. Neither will this.’ She reaches out and takes my hand. ‘The thing is, we don’t think you’ve got one any more.’

I stare at her. ‘That’s crazy!’

‘Is it? Then tell me something. What’s your name?’

I take a breath, open my mouth, and then close it again.

I realize that I have no idea.

I’m not sure what time means in here, but it looks and feels later. The woman left me alone a while ago. The light is fading and the shadows of the trees touch the waterline. It’s colder, too. I shrug myself deeper into the toga.

I’ve been trying to remember things. Not just my name. Anything. There’s nothing before the moment I uploaded into Rudi in the restaurant. I know that can’t be right; there’s got to be loads of stuff that makes me
me
, but every time I try to think about any of it the thought just sort of slides off. It’s like trying to catch fog. That’s why I didn’t notice. I wasn’t meant to. Apparently that might have been for my own protection.

The theory is that I – that is, my mind – might have been rescued from my body for some reason. They – the woman and whatever it is that lives in her necklace – won’t tell me any more. I have to take the next steps myself.

It’s like being told you are a ghost.

I’m scared and a little angry. I’m also not feeling very protected.

I’d like to find who did this, but first I’ve got to find me. They’ve told me what to do next and it sounds simple. I don’t know how much I trust what they say, but I’m not sure how many choices I have. This helps, in a way. It means that there is a little core of anger in me: anger I’ll use, when I find a place for it.

I’m not theirs yet, even if they think I am.

There’s a sort of comfort in that. I stand up, shrug off the toga and crunch over the shingle, along the shadows of the trees, to the edge of the water.

Which isn’t supposed to be water, apparently, even if it looks like it. I dip in a foot, and it feels warm and sort of grainy. Not grainy like sand; grainy like pixels. My foot disappears as it goes under the surface, as if I had pushed it through an image of the water into something hidden. I take it out, and there is a tiny pause before my skin is suddenly cold and wet, with drops running off it and pat-patting on to the shingle.

I square my shoulders and walk into the sea. The beach shelves gently at first and then more steeply as I get further from the shore. Soon it’s deep enough to swim and I sink forwards, my body disappearing beneath the surface until only my head and shoulders are out. The warm green graininess closes around me, busy and inquisitive. It is as buoyant as a salt lake and I swim for a while, thinking that I must have learned to swim but not remembering when. Then I look back over my shoulder to see how far I am from land.

The shore is gone. Not even out of sight, and anyway I couldn’t have swum that far yet. Just gone. When I look up, so is the sky. There’s only me, in the middle of an endless flat green make-believe sea underneath a lid of white nothing. The woman said that would happen so it’s okay. Probably.

For a moment I let myself wonder what would happen if I turned round and swam back to where I think the shore used to be. But only for a moment. There’s no way back. I’ve been on a one-way trip since I left the shingle. Since this woman and whoever else snatched me from the sim. Since . . . well, since all the things I can’t find.

Well, time to go looking. I fill my lungs, shut my eyes and dive.

There is a micro-moment of silence, almost as if I have caught something by surprise. I open my eyes and that seems to act as a trigger because I am suddenly surrounded by a hissing, fluttering cloud of colour. I close my fist then half open it, and my curled palm is full of them, shiny polygons a few millimetres across but so thin they are almost two-dimensional. At first I think that each one is a different colour, but then I realize that each one is all colours, flickering from one to another too quickly for my eye to follow.

They are beautiful, and I laugh. There is no sound apart from the hissing of the flakes, but the laugh sounds in my head and the colours around me pulse in time with it as though they are laughing back.

Except that when I stop laughing, they don’t. I close my eyes and shake my head, but the pulsing is still there, printed on the red inside of my eyelids. It is getting stronger, too, and brighter; so bright I would close my eyes if they were still open. The light lances into me, and the hissing of the flakes becomes a greedy roar, and I am . . .

I am . . .

Further along the beach, the simulation of the woman called Fleare sat on the simulated shingle, throwing stones into the green thing that looked like the sea. She studied the splashes carefully. They looked real.