Overclocked (6 page)

As an ex­per­i­ment, she opened her tether again. Ac­cord­ing to the in­stru­ment, she had been in­ser­ted nine minutes and four­teen seconds ago. She con­tin­ued star­ing at the tether’s small dis­play, but the seconds’ in­dic­ator didn’t click over to fif­teen. She stood and watched for what she es­tim­ated to be a good minute. The num­ber of seconds didn’t change.

As she snapped the lid shut again, Tania real­ised that she was now truly a part of the Blue, op­er­at­ing at the speed of cy­ber­space. She had been clocked up.

She found Carl a day later, ma­chine time. She was skim­ming levels, float­ing up­wards and down­wards, try­ing to fo­cus on build­ings that looked dif­fer­ent, us­ing the level where she had been in­ser­ted as her home loc­a­tion. She figured that Carl would need a patch of real es­tate some­where to es­tab­lish as a base, and that he would make it as dis­tinct­ive as pos­sible in the hopes of at­tract­ing pos­sible res­cue parties.

This begged the ques­tion of how, with so much in­form­a­tion to sift through, she would be able to find the right place in an ac­cept­able period of time. The only tac­tic that seemed to make sense was typ­ing “Carl Orin” into the little screen on her tether. When she ex­ecuted the com­mand, the uni­verse around her star­ted to re­arrange it­self. The change wasn’t massive. The high­ways, build­ings and vehicles looked much as they did be­fore. But there was a subtle dif­fer­ence in the kinds of build­ings she now saw. Fewer banks, for ex­ample, and more com­munity groups and cor­por­ate fire­walls. These loc­a­tions were where Carl Orin had been in the re­cent past, leav­ing traces of his pas­sage, like sticky fin­ger­prints on a stain­less steel wall. Be­ing di­gital, how­ever, the traces were either there, or they weren’t. It was im­possible to tell ex­actly how long ago Carl had vis­ited a par­tic­u­lar site, al­though Tania was hop­ing that a greater con­cen­tra­tion of vis­its within a par­tic­u­lar loc­al­ity meant that Carl had fre­quen­ted the area more re­cently. With de­term­in­a­tion, she fol­lowed her in­tu­ition and began look­ing dir­ectly for Carl’s di­gital hand­prints.

When she fi­nally found his refuge, Tania had to ad­mit to her­self that the build­ing was cer­tainly dis­tinct­ive. Built as a single-storey cube, its ex­ter­ior looked ex­actly like the cor­ridor lead­ing to her apart­ment, right down to the flecked brown car­pet that covered it. Even the num­ber on the door was her apart­ment num­ber.

212.

She raised her fist, hes­it­ated for a second, then knocked.

Si­lence.

She was won­der­ing whether she should knock again when the door was flung open and Tania found her­self star­ing down the large black bar­rel of a weapon.

“Wha—”

“Who the—? Tania, is that really you?”

The bar­rel dropped and her up­per arm was grabbed. She was yanked in­side and the door slammed shut be­hind her with a solid thud.

Tania saw an in­terior that only su­per­fi­cially re­sembled her apart­ment and a man who only su­per­fi­cially re­sembled Carl be­fore she was slammed against the wall. The gi­ant gun bar­rel ap­peared again, aimed between her eyes. Tania’s at­ten­tion was riv­eted to it.

“What’s your name?”

“Tania Flowers,” she said. “Carl, what—”

“What was the name of our lab?”

“It didn’t have a name.” She felt her ir­rit­a­tion rise. “We called it Base­ment Five as a nick­name.”

“Where was the last con­fer­ence we at­ten­ded to­gether?”

“To­gether?” she frowned. “We
never
at­ten­ded a con­fer­ence to­gether.”

It fi­nally dawned on her that, rather than be­ing am­ne­siac, Carl was test­ing her. The im­age of the rab­bit sprang to mind. If someone could cre­ate an avatar based on a fic­tional char­ac­ter, she real­ised, it was en­tirely pos­sible that someone else could cre­ate one based on
her
.

“Carl, it’s me,” she said, think­ing quickly. “Your body is in the in­ner core of Base­ment Five, in one of the in­ser­tion rooms, over­looked by the ob­ser­va­tion sec­tion. There’s an­other, identical room next to it. That’s where my body is.”

The bar­rel wavered and Tania had time to see the per­son be­hind it. Her eyes widened.

Carl! But...not Carl.

“You reach the in­ner core through an­other layer of se­cur­ity,” she con­tin­ued. “The walls are made of brushed metal that al­ways made me think I was in­side a caterer’s re­fri­ger­ator.”

She had made that same com­ment to him over din­ner one night – their first din­ner to­gether. Would he re­mem­ber? Her state­ment was as much a test for him as it was for her.

He lowered the weapon and slid it into a hol­ster at his hip.

“A res­taur­ant re­fri­ger­ator,” he said.

She let out a long slow breath of re­lief.

“You sure as hell took your time get­ting here.” His voice was bit­ter. “Why did Base­ment Five shut down its serv­ers for so long? Is that a tether on your belt? Is it work­ing?”

Tania had been ex­pect­ing sev­eral re­ac­tions but not the hos­til­ity that was beat­ing at her. She blinked in con­fu­sion.

“I came as fast as I could,” she said. “Yes, that’s a tether. And yes, it’s work­ing. It’s our way home.”

“Home?” He snorted. “There’s no way I’m go­ing home, darlin’, not while the Thing is out there.”

This was worse than be­ing in the Blue. What was Carl talk­ing about? What was the “thing” he re­ferred to? Was he de­lu­sional? And why did he look so...old?

Her eyes nar­rowed, Tania took in Carl’s ap­pear­ance as he paced away from her, mut­ter­ing un­der his breath.

Yes, this was Carl Orin, but not the man she re­cog­nised from their time to­gether. His hair, once a rich blond, was now much lighter, the pale gold strands over­whelmed with pure sil­ver. The col­our dus­ted the short side­burns next to his ears. There were wrinkles fan­ning out from his corn­flower-blue eyes, etched be­side his firm lips. His cheeks were more sunken than she re­membered, throw­ing his cheekbones into sharper re­lief. Be­neath the one-piece suit that he still wore, his body looked firm but thicker. In short, he looked like he’d aged twenty years.

“Did Don send you?” he asked, from the other side of the room. Between them was a lab set-up that re­sembled the ob­ser­va­tion room of Base­ment Five’s in­ner core.

Tania looked at the equip­ment then over to the man who had been her lover.

“Yes.”

Hums, from the rows of mon­it­ors run­ning vari­ous ap­plic­a­tions, filled the air.

He shook his head. “Why?”

She frowned. “Why send me? To find you, of course.”

“After all this time?” He shrugged. “Not that it mat­ters. I’ve got work to do here. I can’t leave. Not yet.”

Tania’s next ques­tion was drowned out by a large thump that shook the build­ing. It soun­ded like a bomb had det­on­ated nearby. She opened her mouth to ask a ques­tion, make a state­ment, but Carl beat her to it.

“Shit!”

He yanked at a drawer of the desk closest to him and with­drew an­other weapon that looked sus­pi­ciously like the one he’d shoved in her face. He threw it to Tania and she caught it with both hands. It felt lighter than it looked. To one side, above the trig­ger, a small light blinked green.

“If any­thing comes through the door, walls, floor or ceil­ing, you blast it,” he said. “I bet it’s your god­damn tether. Gave us away.”

The feel­ing that she was caught in the middle of a video ar­cade game was in­es­cap­able. An­other vi­bra­tion and dull thud shook the build­ing. Sta­bil­ising her­self, Tania stood with her feet slightly apart and scanned the room, won­der­ing what the hell she was sup­posed to shoot at.

She was about to ask Carl what the in­truders looked like when the first blood-red sphere came through the wall to her left. There was no doubt about its in­tent. Be­fore it had even cleared the wall, it ori­ented it­self to­wards her and a rifle sprouted from its smooth shell. As the skin of the house ripped to let it through, Tania sighted down her weapon and pulled the trig­ger. She was ex­pect­ing noise and a sense of re­coil but there was neither. All she saw was a dot­ted line of blue shoot­ing from the bar­rel of her gun. The lead­ing bolt hit the sphere and the ob­ject ex­ploded. Tania closed her eyes and turned away but no fal­lout hit her. Open­ing her eyes again, she saw the wall re­pair it­self un­til it was once more a seam­less white sur­face.

A quick glance over to Carl showed her that he was bat­tling four of the spheres. He seemed to be hold­ing his own, so Tania con­cen­trated on her own half of the apart­ment.

Two spheres were try­ing to bur­row in from the ceil­ing and an­other was bul­ging up through the floor. Tania waited un­til the walls cracked be­fore let­ting off a bar­rage of shots. The small light on the bar­rel blinked am­ber and Tania took a few deep breaths while wait­ing for her strange weapon to re­charge.

As the spheres around her ex­ploded, it seemed to her that a fifth seemed to hes­it­ate. Was it go­ing to re­treat? Tania didn’t give it a second chance. Coolly, she sighted down the bar­rel and blew the in­vad­ing globe into multi-col­oured shards.

The battle las­ted little more than a minute after that.

“Nice shoot­ing,” Carl said.

Tania turned to say some­thing, ask some­thing, but he was already busy, his at­ten­tion no longer on her. In­stead, he was con­cen­trat­ing on one par­tic­u­lar screen lit up on the wall.

“Let’s hope we got them all.”

Tania put her weapon down on a nearby desk sur­face and ap­proached him.

“Got what all? What
were
those things, Carl? What’s go­ing on here?”

“They’re bots, sent to sniff out par­tic­u­lar in­form­a­tion sig­na­tures. Once they find what they’re look­ing for, they’re pro­grammed to either des­troy the tar­get or head back to their base and re­port their find­ings.”

Des­troy? Base? Re­port find­ings? This was start­ing to sound less like a re­trieval as­sign­ment and more like a war.

Ir­rit­ated, Tania grabbed Carl’s arm. He looked down at her fin­gers in sur­prise for a mo­ment then let him­self be turned around.

“I don’t un­der­stand any of this,” she said, search­ing his weathered face. “I don’t un­der­stand why the spheres at­tacked us or where they came from. I don’t un­der­stand why they should be after my tether. I don’t know how yours got severed or why you say you won’t come back.”

She paused, then con­tin­ued in a more broken voice. “I don’t un­der­stand why you look so old. Carl, what happened to you?”

Carl tried cov­er­ing his face with one hand, then let it drop. He looked de­jec­ted, his one­time ex­pres­sion of smug self-sat­is­fac­tion pulled down by age and worry.

“I was about to ask you why you still look so young, but then I real­ised that it doesn’t mat­ter how you look out there.” He jerked his head and Tania knew he was re­fer­ring to the real world. “In here, you can look how­ever you want. How­ever you feel.”

“I don’t un­der­stand.”

They stared at each other.

“Come with me,” he said. He sighed heav­ily. “You need to un­der­stand some­thing. And then you’ll have a de­cision to make.”

She mo­tioned to the front door. “What about those bots? Are there any more of them wait­ing out­side for us?”

“We got them all.” He smiled grimly. “Sen­tience isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

Tania didn’t un­der­stand that last state­ment, but she let it slide. Her ex-rival, ex-lover was look­ing tense and hag­gard and she was will­ing to cut him some slack if he was will­ing to ex­plain ex­actly what the
hell
was go­ing on.

They left the apart­ment and im­mersed them­selves in the multi-di­men­sional world of wild cy­ber­space.

“Can we talk here?” Tania asked. “Or will there be more of those bots out there, listen­ing for us?”

Carl looked at her, an eye­brow lif­ted. “The bots were after you. And no, they’re not sens­it­ive to sound.” He looked around. “Not that sound, as we know it, ex­ists here. This is all made up any­way.”

He took her hand and watched her face as they both lif­ted into the air, a slight smile play­ing around his lips.

Tania knew what to ex­pect. She had done it her­self at the start of her in­ser­tion while search­ing for him. But that still couldn’t stop the feel­ing of ma­gic that en­gulfed her.

Fly­ing. That nor­mally happened in her dreams but here, in the Blue, she was con­scious and ra­tional and could dir­ect wherever she wanted to go. The only thing miss­ing was a breeze blow­ing against her face and she wondered if she could pro­gram that in for a fu­ture visit.

She looked down at where the fin­gers of her hand were en­meshed with Carl’s and snuck him a quick look.

He had changed.

The man she had known for the past half a year was brash and cocky. He had given her the best or­gasms of her life then, after the last one, left her, blind­folded and ob­li­vi­ous, in her bed. And he had done all of that, just so he could get the coveted po­s­i­tion of first Base­ment Five op­er­at­ive in­ser­ted into cy­ber­space. She knew all about
that
Carl and could ima­gine him pulling her along im­pa­tiently in or­der to get to his des­tin­a­tion. She could ima­gine him mak­ing fun of her for her tardi­ness, or at­tempt­ing to get her into bed at the first avail­able op­por­tun­ity, killer bots or not. She could
not
ima­gine him trav­el­ling at a steady pace, happy to have her hand in his. Their cur­rent speed was too do­mestic a pace for the Carl she’d known.