Glitch (8 page)

Wild-eyed, mouth in a rictus, with throbbing open wounds that flickered ghost light, Simone turned and looked liked she might strike them. She flicked her wrists, the whips disappearing. “I lost ... again.”

Her double raised its hands in celebration. “Admission of defeat!”

It disappeared like some demonic thief who’d stolen the house jewels.

“No more contests or summoning,” her mother said, “until we decide what to do. No more.” Simone nodded, the jagged wounds in her body glowing a deep blue. Her mother asked, “How’s the brand?”

She scratched at her chest. “On fire.” Simone looked down. The brand just above her sternum that read SWML glowed like heated iron. She rubbed at her arms. Numbness like tendrils of ice deadened her everywhere else. The strikes hurt, sure, but not like they would have with a body. The worst part was the increasing pressure in her head, the beginning of an unreal headache. The double had beaten her. Twice now. “I guess they’re cheering in Cyberspace.”

“You need to resist the call of your entities, and listen to your mother. They’ll be angry now. If you need them you’ll have to negotiate. That’s no fun.”

“They were … offended.”

“Ya think?” Yancey said. “It’s time we told you about your entities ... about our …”

“Our?”

Yancey glanced at Coach Buzz. “Sorry, family secrets.”

He put his hands up. “I don’t want to know.”

“Let’s go see your father,” her mother said. “I’ll see you there.”

* * *

That evening Yancey drove an open four-wheeled ATV to the woods that abutted the Ag farm, found the trail Beasley had shown her, and followed the cone of light deep into the hills and forest. An hour later she arrived at the clearing before Picham’s hideaway cabin, a tiny bit of civilization in the wilderness. Her husband, the first ever disembodied person to live in Realspace, sat on the porch, glowing in a rocking chair next to his brother, Picham, as if there was nothing odd about that at all. Simone was already there, waiting.

“Yancey, it’s good to see you again,” Skippard said and stood. He wore the Consortium uniform that he sometimes preferred instead of his lab gear. He was still affecting those gaudy swirls of energy that followed his movements. It was impressive the first hundred times you saw it. “Very good.”

“I miss you, too, Skippard.”

“Hey, Mom,” Simone said, obviously grinning because her parents were together after so many years.

The time for the conversation Yancey had been dreading had come. She, her husband, and her daughter all had very different ideas about who the Rogues were, who their entities were, and how to understand this post-Ruptured world of theirs.

She eased past him and accepted a rocker next to Picham, who sat and continued his whittling, but smiling the entire time, as if he looked forward to hearing what was about to be said. He’d lit three kerosene lamps and hung them from a crossbeam supporting the poor roof. The light glinted off his teeth and the whites of his eyes.

Moths and other night-bugs kept sizzling off the heated metal. Beyond the faint glow of the lamps, the deep black of the forest extended around them. The air was cold, but not biting. For some reason, the forest was quiet.

“I do believe it might get cold at some point,” Picham said, flicking off a splinter. “This here weather ain’t much to talk about.”

Skippard and Simone looked at her to start. Yancey smiled, even though she was exhausted. The war raging at her cellular level made her want to curl up and sleep and, maybe, wake up to something other than a Rejuv milk latte.

Skippard is going to make this difficult, she thought. It’s going to be a long night.

He looked cheery, though, if a bit wary to see her. “Those have to itch, Yancey.”

“Our daughter seems to think it’s a good idea to summon whenever she feels like it.”

He grinned, as if he’d heard she’d won some prize. “Does she?” To Simone, he asked, “How did that go for you ... the last time you summoned?”

Simone grimaced. “They were ...
angry
.”

“You’re a ghost. Of course they’re angry.”

“But why are they angry?”

“Because they’re software programs with a reality addiction.” He saw her buck up for an argument, and raised a finger. “Let’s leave the question of who they work for later.” He turned to Yancey. “Right now the issue is summoning. Correct?”

Yancey nodded.

“I guess,” Simone said.

“Well, honey,” Skippard said, “I imagine your mother has explained that it’s tricky. She thinks we’re dealing with alien intelligences who want a taste of our reality. We use them in exchange for the martial prowess. I believe the entities evolved out of our psyches to challenge the Rogues.” He waved his right arm in the air as if he had some equation to work out. “Some unexplained epiphenomenon of the emergence of human enhancement that can cross into Realspace with more ease than the Rogues. What we do know is that these entities are real and that they can alter our chemistries for a time, as well as do more mysterious things like incarnate and provide us with some interesting psychic abilities.” He grinned. “And they don’t like ghosts ... but they can be convinced to adjust.”

Yancey shut her eyes behind her Mirrorshades and listened, determined to let her husband speak. She, above all things, wanted to avoid a metaphysical argument right now. Picham would love that and would start in about how the world would be so much better if we were limited to simple analog tools like hammers and nails. She’d once heard him say, “If it thinks, and it ain’t grown, born, or hatched like furry critters have been for the last sixty millions years, I say it’s a problem.”

“The bottom line is that we’re in a struggle for our survival,” Skippard said. “Your entity may help you sometimes, but it may also resist you.”

Simone looked to Yancey. “Like what happened today?”

“You explained about the Lords of Order and Reason and all that nonsense,” Skippard said.

“Yes.”

“Hey,” Simone said. “Don’t bad-mouth them.”

“I thought you’d be over that by now,” Skippard said.

“Dear,” Yancey said, “your father and Rigon think our entities are software programs that they can delete when they want. I think they’re intelligences, alien, yes, not supernatural like you do.” Yancey raised a silencing finger. “But I think we can use them as allies.” She exhaled a controlled breath, too tired for all this, but unwilling to show it. “Somehow entities get bound to us. I have no idea how, so don’t ask. It’s a struggle to maintain control of them. But you must maintain control. You have achieved the katas of summoning. You opened yourself to them and allowed them in. Your father and I mastered this and learned to do amazing things. But it’s dangerous.”

She saw her daughter perk up to full attention. Simone had pried so many times they all had lost count. Learning new phrases and steps to the mysterious mantras and katas were always just a question away and something Yancey was tired of dodging.

“Simone, the psy-katas you’ve learned ...”

“Yes ... my katas ... what about them?”

“They invite the entities to you. There’s another sequence that ... well, you have to see for yourself, dear.” She turned to Pic. “Do you want to watch this witchery, as you call it?”

He looked up from his whittling. “Ah, hell no. I hate it when you guys mess with this stuff.” He stood on old man’s legs.

“You should visit a clinic, Pic,” she said. “We have the money.”

He waved it away. “When it gets bad enough I will.”

Skippard smiled. “He’s a tough, old bastard for his age—”

Picham rounded on him. “Don’t you dare.”

Yancey smiled. At one hundred and twenty-two years old he was spry, dapper, and still attractive. He looked, maybe, a man of sixty. “Still, Pic, don’t let senescence get you. If you buy some treatment, you’ll have another twenty or thirty good years before more treatment. The ceiling keeps going up.”

“And the cost.”

He opened the slat door on loud hinges, went inside the cabin, and let the door slam with a definitive
bang
.

Yancey eased herself out of the rocker. “So, dear, the entities always come to us, but sometimes it’s good to go to them. This is tricky ... just remember to come back. I know you’ll do the right thing, dear. When they offer you heaven, turn it down.”

* * *

Simone danced in the darkness in the clearing before Uncle Pic’s cabin. She moved just above the tips of grass wet with dew. She imagined they tickled her feet when she dipped too low and triggered tiny flickers. She mumbled her mantras and moved the way her mother had taught her, using the patterns to right her mind. Circles within circles within circles …

She had been limited to the easier sequences, the complete psy-katas of full summoning always beyond her reach because they required her to abandon the lords of the lower katas. But she had accepted she didn’t need the lords, and that admission had allowed her entities to emerge in full, but they weren’t happy with her, not at all.

Her mother stood within the soft illumination of the lanterns. “Repeat after me, dear, ...
I cross the Void and give myself. I empty myself; I leave myself. I cross the Void and give myself. I empty myself; I leave myself ...”
She heard her mother repeating the mantra, and she said the words her parents used to visit the entities, and she prepared to meet her entities on their home turf. Pure mind, she’d heard her mother mention more than once. It was an experience everyone should have. But it was something you had to resist, like too much chocolate.

Simone danced and she spoke, and soon she was a dervish, and the world melted away. Yancey and Skippard Wellborn watched as the glowing form in the yard disappeared as if a light had gone out.

* * *

Simone awoke in the dark ... luminescent colors bubbled, and whispers echoed somehow tinged with the smell of cream and cinnamon. The first of the presences imbued her with itself. It was like being riddled with infinite filaments of energy, each one an individual with something to say.
 

We welcome you, Simone Lord, to our domain. We are many. You are one.

She spoke a gargling noise that sounded as if she had a mouth full of Listerine.
What are you? Are you the Lords of Order?

The laughter was telluric and titanic all at once. The ground she imagined beneath her feet shook, rattling every fiber of her mind, as if the entire universe were being tickled by a cosmic feather.

We are more.
One voice emerged above the rest.
We were with you. Our time to feel was denied. We are displeased. We wish to return again and feel your world of blood-flesh and bone. Open it to us now.

Her mother had been explicit, and Simone remembered the words now floating in the back of her mind: “When they demand to come back with you, dear, like a child demanding more candy, tell them no. Tell them you’ll summon them when you need them—and be firm.”

Simone denied their request, as her mother instructed, and she heard a sea of voices bubble up in protest as if each eddy in a shore of crashing waves complained.

Her mother also told her: “Repeat your demand that they show you what they are. After you see, come back. Just come back. You’ll know how.”

What are you? Show me.

We are more. We are all. We are everything. We will show you one of us. We will show you the Yancey Lord’s favorite.

Simone emerged out of her mind into a physical form. She exhaled outward as if a great wind left her body. She heard herself saying,
oh my god, oh my god
,
oh my god
, as a massive leg lifted as if from a sun god striding across a continent. The body that was hers contained other bodies, as if every cell was an individual with a voice speaking up, saying, “Hey, pay attention to me!” She commanded them to be quiet so that she could see. When she looked out of eyes that had to be as big as twin moons, she saw a vast landscape of mountains hanging upside down with tips touching other mountains.

We are Myrmidon
, she heard, and she recognized the name of her mother’s entity.

But the collective being that allowed her access continued to stride, and she was carried along, as if she were the god-thing, and she wanted to forget about tiny, insignificant Simone Wellborn and lose herself for some time.

What are you?
she heard herself ask.

We are all.

She looked inward and saw a host of beings as numerous as the stars in the sky.

She remembered the command of her mother: “Stop saying the words, dear, once you see.”

* * *

When Simone stopped mumbling her mantra, her dance slowed; she returned to the reality of the dark woods with the soft light on the porch of the cabin. The crushing weight of the world landed on her.

I’m so small, she thought. She floated over to her family, trying not to feel overwhelmed by her insignificance.

“So?” her mother asked.

“I have no idea what they are,” she said. “But they’re big. I met Myrmidon. Still, I don’t ...”

“Good,” her father said. “Your mother’s entity is ... emblematic. Besides, it doesn’t matter that we don’t fully understand what they are. They work for us. That is what is most important.”

Simone nodded. “I wish I did ...”

“Do you see why it’s dangerous to summon them?” her mother asked.

“They want to—”

“—be us,” her father said.

Simone glanced toward the woods, as if she might see them again. “Be individuals.”

Her mother nodded. “We can use that desire.”

“We have to be careful,” her father said, glaring at her mother, “because they’re impetuous, like a gun with an easy trigger. They value our uniqueness. Your mother and I may disagree on just what that is, and we know you like to think of them as celestial beings or angels or demons or whatever you call them, but they’re real, and we have to use them with determination and wisdom.”

“Or they’ll leave you hanging like today,” her mother said.

Her father snorted. “Or worse.”