Thanks for your patience. The economy is coming back. And so is work. So much work. And then I had to reread the whole thing to remember what I'd covered. -sigh- Anyway, next chapter should be faster. :-)
Alive
Book 2
Pt13
1
The tray snicked closed. The desktop hummed as Cybertronics in-house spybots soured the disk for bugs, rootkits or 'crawlers' the seemingly innocuous pieces of code that inserted themselves in programs and reassembled when the system was on standby, to open a backdoor. The scan only took moments, but to David it seemed longer. He was seated on his windowsill, wringing his hands, trying to ignore the sight of the shiny extraction rig that was visible in the distance. The thought of what might be occurring out there was a persistent annoyance that he could do nothing about.
Breathe.
He heard the digital whoosh that indicated his computer had finished a task. He rose, certain that it had kicked the disk out and was quickly summing security to his room. But instead he saw that his wallpaper had disappeared and a dark and familiar figure was now filling the monitor. It was the cloaked man with the single red eye, his face obscured by the over-sized lapels of his coat. The strange medallion hung from his neck; the "Y" symbol that David now knew represented the strange conspiracy cult of the Trinary Directive.
And on the figures arm he saw the bloody scar: JA
Johnson's Army.
David shuddered at the thought. The idea would be comical if these people weren't taking themselves so damned serious. Dangerously serious.
The cloaked figure's malevolent eye beamed crimson, gazing from the monitor as if it could see all beyond. It looked to and fro a few times. Then paused. Then looked to and fro again. Then paused. It took a moment for David to realize it was just repeating the same movements over and over. He almost laughed aloud. It was a simple looping gif!
'Old school stuff,' he thought. The graphics were antiquated, amateurish even. But the effect was still disconcerting. Something about the shifting gaze of that eye was spooky. He sat at his console and studied the simple options presented at the foot of the screen.
Play or Go Away.
'How old is this thing?' he wondered. It was so retro. Was that intentional? There was faint pixel distortion at the edges of the graphics, as if the intended resolution was originally much smaller. It even had a flashing cursor in the shape of an arrow. Grade school kids with a basic game editor could write better stuff than this.
Alfred had been given instruction that he was not to be disturbed until further notice. The butler would stop any intrusion and field all calls until the game was finished.
"Well, here we go," David said aloud. Then he scrolled the cursor to Play, and clicked.
Nothing happened.
He tapped the word again. Still nothing. Then he noticed an icon spinning in the upper corner of the screen. It was the image of gaming goggles. Somebody didn't want anyone else watching him play. David opened a lower drawer on his desk and rummaged through his old gaming gear until he found his virtual helmet. He hadn't used it for some time; years by now. He put it on his head and turned it on. The console monitor faded to black and the dark man now appeared before his eyes. The blurred pixelation of the game was even more obvious.
David looked up and down, left and right, letting the game configure his movements. Then he tapped on Play again. The password prompt suddenly appeared. Once again, a simple old style format that looked slightly blurred in his Hi-Def helmet. Carefully, he tapped on his keyboard and entered the words he had deciphered from Shadowman's post. Myron had said he would not be given another pass, so he did not want to make any mistakes.
timetodecide
The dark figure suddenly burst into action, flinging his black cloak in a large arc and vanishing, as the image of a large containment facility appeared. David was looking down on the criss-crossing corridors of the place as if he was standing guard on a high outer wall. A metallic barrel with a scope and site protruded from the bottom of the screen. A first person shooter. Again, basic stuff. David flipped through his weapon options. Laser Blaster. Buzz saw. Flame Cannon. Numerous grenades, flak jackets and helmets. Night vision goggles. The usual array.
He scrolled the volume up to hear commands being issued as if from a distant loudspeaker. A robotic female voice was raised in alarm, telling all players to take their positions; that there had bee a security breach. This was getting awfully familiar, he thought.
Suddenly an explosion rang out, and an alarm started hooting as a horde wild Mecha began pouring into the corridors beneath. They looked vicious and crazed, a paranoid's vision of what rogue bots might be. They were spilling from the exploded walls of their cells, assaulting guards and escaping into the corridors of the compromised prison. David suddenly realized what this was and couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"Rogue Patrol?" he said aloud, incredulous. It was just a knock off of another game! It was comical. For a moment he even thought that Animal and Myron had just been playing a joke on him. But why go to such lengths for a stupid prank?
If stealing other people's work was the best Johnson's Army could do, they weren't going to have much of a revolution against the computers.
He sighed, slipped on his control gloves and started pursuing the escaping robots, blasting and hacking and flaming his way through the onslaught. He wasn't a fan of shooters. He actually wasn't much of a gamer at all. Not even the clever strategy games that one of Cybertronics subsidiaries produced. It seemed like such a waste of time. But this was a pretty typical routine and he figured he could get through it quick enough.
Indeed, the game proved to be easy, so much so that it was getting boring after a short time. After another short time he had pretty much wiped out all the escapees on the first level, and was chasing what was left of them, a particularly nasty group of mad eyed, snarling Mecha, down an abandoned tunnel. He managed to trap the rogues in a dark corridor and had to stop them before they could get out of a giant hole that had been caused by a blast. It was tempting to use a grenade, but David knew the explosion would max his hit points and knock his player out. So he began using his buzz saw to slice into the throng of rogues. It was a slow and gruesome task. Even as cheap as the graphics were, the sizzling and electric fire brought back dark memories.
As David was finishing off the last few bots on the first level, he noticed an unusual figure run by. The cloaked man! What was he doing in the game?
Much to his surprise the cloaked man stopped and took a shot at him. The laser blast missed wildly, and took out a chuck of the wall a few virtual meters away. But he had made his intentions clear. He was a player.
David abandoned the battle and chased the figure down a different tunnel. He had to take out a few crazed looking robots that jumped into his path, and the cloaked man stopped a few times to shoot and laugh, taunting his pursuer. David flipped to his laser blaster and tried to take him out, but could never get a good aim. The mysterious character disappeared into a cell and escaped through a window with the bars missing.
David flipped to his night vision and buzz saw. Then he followed carefully through the break in the bars, expecting the shape to suddenly reappear and kill off his player. But what he encountered on the other side of the wall was vast dark landscape. A full moon was hovering over a large field filled with rouge Mecha, fleeing in all directions.
The cloaked man was nowhere in sight.
David sighed and went after the rogues, wondering how long this was going to go on before it led him to any answers.
Then, with a start he realized that it was not really a 'moon' floating above. Moons don't have baskets. As this dawned on him, a familiar voice came from the virtual sky.
"Any old iron!"
The words echoed though the darkness.
"Expel your Mecha!"
David froze in his tracks, a chill running thought his heart. This was definitely not in the original game.
"Come along now!" said the long dead voice from the basket of the Moon Balloon. "Let 'em run!"
David tried to compose himself. There had to be a logical explanation for this. The Mecha roundup was not so uncommon an occurrence. And it wouldn't have been so difficult to get a sample of Johnson's voice. If the point of the game was to recruit members for their cause, and the creators of the game had been familiar with the Flesh Fair, it would not be so strange that they'd include this. It could be just a coincidence.
He relaxed, flipped back to his laser blaster and continued. The ground was littered with the refuse of fallen and discarded Mecha. Metallic shards and decapitated heads glinted in the light of the Moon Balloon, which was moving slowly through the virtual night, stopping now and then to shoot a net over fleeing Mecha in the forest.
Something howled. David changed his point of view to see strange creatures dashing through the trees. They had eyes that burned with flames, and the fangs in their gaping mouths glowed with a feral luminescence. Their engines growled savage through the deep woodland.
The Hounds!
David shook off his déjà vu. Once again he decided it was a logical coincidence. But this was getting weird.
He joined the chase and watched as the riders shot nets over running Mecha, pinning them to the ground. He was tempted to shoot the Hounds off their bikes, just for the hell of it. A little make-believe payback. But he knew that was not part of the game. So he shot the captured Mecha instead. He felt like a traitor, but he had to get the points if he expected to get to the next level and learn what more the strange conspiracy cult knew… if anything.
But he found that he could not run fast enough to keep up with the bikers. They raced into the darkness ahead and soon he found himself alone in the forest. The chase had moved on without him. He scanned the virtual night for a vehicle that he could use to catch them. But there was nothing.
What now?
As if in answer, a sound caught his attention. He changed his pov again and froze. What he saw would prove much harder to dismiss as coincidence. A figure had come into view, standing in a clearing of forest. The graphics were weak and pixelated, but it looked amazingly like…
"Joe?"
David uttered the words aloud. But his VUI, the vocal user interface that allowed him to communicate with game characters, was turned off. So the game did not hear him. The bot would not respond. He tried to tell himself it could have been any random loverbot. But the forest. The Moon Balloon. Johnson's voice. The Hounds. And now a fleeing loverbot? What were the odds?
He knew he was supposed to destroy this escaped Mecha. It was how the game was played. But after taking aim he found he could not fire. The loverbot stood patiently in the clearing, watching him with expectant eyes, as if it was waiting for death. But when David didn't shoot, it walked slowly towards him and stopped, its eyes making a silent inquiry as to why he had not delivered the killing blow.
From this close, even with the crappy graphics, David could clearly see it was supposed to be Joe. Then the game character spoke and removed all doubt.
"I'm in bad trouble."
The words made David flinch. Who had made this game? Why? He forced himself to relax and considered how to continue. The loverbot waited, glancing back and forth occasionally as the distant beckoning voice above called for the old iron to be surrendered.
David finally opened his VUI.
"Gigolo Joe," he said. "What do you know?"
Something changed then. It was subtle, but there. The quality of the graphics shifted slightly, as if the game had suddenly changed to another level. David had a feeling that, had he just shot the loverbot, the chase would have continued to some other end. But he put those thoughts aside, for now he saw another figure approaching from the dark of the forest. It was a smaller shape and seemed to be carrying something on its back.
David knew he could not dismiss this as coincidence any longer. He watched in fascinated horror as the little Mecha bot once known as David Swinton walked into the glow from above. A Teddy clung to its back.
David yanked the goggles off, not wanting to see anymore. Who wrote this game? How could they have known all this? He felt the sudden urge to yank the disk out of his console and throw it in the ocean; to forget all about the spiders and the crazy Trinary Directive conspiracy, to forget about Myron and Animal and the strange twins, and just go back to the quiet uneventful life to which he had grown accustomed. His lute. His studies. His little Mecha brothers. Amanda.
But he knew the simplicity of that life had grown to a close. Somebody knew way too much. He had to find out who… and how.
He slipped the virtual helmet back on to see the bots making their way into the woods. He had missed part of their conversation. But then again, he really didn't need to hear it. He'd heard it all before. He caught up with the avatars of he and his departed friend.
"Where are we going?" he heard the Joe thing say.
"We're going this way now," the David replied, without looking back.
Joe suddenly stepped into a log and executed a little shuffle of its feet.
"Why do you do that?" said the David.
"It's just what I do." replied the Joe.
The words ran cold over David's spine. But there were things missing. Whoever had reproduced this night, it was obvious they didn't know everything. He had to find out who they were.
As the wandering Mecha headed into the virtual forest, David followed, feeling naked and exposed. The irrational feeling that he was being watched grew stronger with each virtual step.
2
The sounds of the chase had diminished to distant background noise as David followed the game characters to the crest of a hill. He noticed the light had began to grow around him, and changed his pov upward to see the Moon Balloon descending slowly from high in the virtual sky. But Johnson's voice had grown quiet and he could not see who was at the controls.
With a start he realized that his weapon array was gone. This was no longer a single shooter. But what it had become, he was not sure. He felt a growing certainty that Myron and Animal had never seen this part of the game, if indeed anyone had. He was sure that everyone else would have probably shot the loverbot and would have been led on to some other conclusion; that he had been the only one to encounter little David and his Supertoy. And that was a very scary thought. For if it was true, it meant that this game had been constructed specifically for someone who had memories of that night…. constructed specifically for him!
The David bot suddenly stopped at the top of the hill. Joe waited obediently beside it. The two game characters started to speak softly to one another as they waited for the Moon Balloon, which was slowly approaching with a load of struggling Mecha in the net. David moved close to hear the two game characters speak, but their conversation didn't make any sense.
"My Mommy doesn't hate me!" said the David.
"They'll stop at nothing. The humans!" Joe replied.
"Are you her?"
"I'm in bad trouble."
"And that's why we must go there."
David remembered these words! But this was no conversation, just nonsense background chatter. There had to be an explanation! He put his growing alarm aside and analyzed the situation. The virtual bots were saying things that both he and Joe had actually said, as well as he could remember. But the sentences were fragments of their conversations, like disorganized edits haphazardly spliced together. Joe's voice and odd accent was correct. But then again, in life Joe was a standard issue loverbot. That could explain that.
The David however, did not sound like him. And that was intriguing. Encouraging. It meant there were things they didn't know… whoever 'they' were.
Was it possible someone had somehow got hold of isolated fragments of the real Joe's memory, and stuck them into the game? That had to be what was going on. But how? And why? What were they looking for?
The Moon Balloon finally set down, a silent glowing behemoth, lighting up the virtual night. The door to the carriage opened but David could still not see who lay beyond. The game characters had stopped their nonsense chatter and were looking in his direction, as if waiting for him to board. David moved his character forward and climbed into the carriage. 'Joe' and 'David' watched silently, but did not follow. As the carriage gate closed behind him David realized there were no steering controls.
He was no longer a player. This was no longer a game.
Slowly, as the craft ascended, leaving the other bots behind with the net of captured Mecha, the amateurish façade of the program vanished and the graphics took on sharp detail. He moved to the edge of the carriage and looked down on the forest that scrolled by beneath. The cheap pixelation must have been just a ruse, designed to fool… who? He had no idea. But whoever wrote this game knew exactly what they were doing. This was no amateur work.
This ground he now saw had been written in Hyper-Def. His virtual helmet switched automatically to 3-D and details of the forest stood out in stark clarity. Soon he was floating out over field surrounding a loud arena. Explosions and flashes of electric fire erupted from within a raucous chanting crowd.
The Flesh Fair!
David stepped away from the edge. He reminded himself it was just a game; that he could take off the headset at any time. But even that thought did not stop his breath from racing. His memories of that fateful night were still vivid. He did not want to see it.
In the end it turned out he had nothing to worry about. The balloon raced past the orgy of destruction and moved out over open waters. But the Delaware was much farther in real life. The geography was wrong. The designers had taken short cuts. The balloon raced through the sky. There was no sound. Only darkness and the fake waters beneath. And it was moving much faster than a real balloon was capable. In moment he was sure where it was headed.
As if to confirm his thoughts, the gaping statue heads of Rouge City appeared on the horizon and grew close amazingly fast.
3
Rouge City had been precisely duplicated. The creators of the game had left few details untouched. Except the people. There were none. The Moon Balloon slowed to a stop and descended over a familiar cul de sac, at the center of which stood a building David knew all too well. Doctor Know's neon face glowed from the entrance. As the craft set down, David moved his character onto the street, through the glass doors and into the lobby. But this was not the newly refurbished Doctor Know he had visited after his escape from Sy. No. This was the lobby as he had seen it on his first visit. A simple, metallic façade. And only one chamber door was open. It was the same one he and Joe had entered.
David paused a moment, scared to see what lay beyond. But it was too late to turn back now. He entered.
Again, he was not prepared for what he saw, but had somehow expected it all along. The graphics had changed again. The low rez imagery had returned… but it was different now. It was no longer the distorted pixels of a cheaply constructed game. This was a security cam recording. David realized he was looking at a capture from the video NanoFighter had stolen from the encrypted archives of Global Telecom; the company who had purchased the Dr Know franchise, and who now owned all rights to its databases.
This was the video that had started the whole Trinary Directive conspiracy!
It had been poorly decrypted. The contrast was faded, it warbled and skipped a frame now and then. And it was much too dark for David to make out faces. But when two shady images entered the room, he knew exactly who they were. There was no audio on the recoding, so he could not hear the words the two said to one another. But he remembered well what had been spoken that night, so long ago.
The smaller of the pair had a toy clinging to his back. He set it down and the two took their seats. The image was missing frames and skipped ahead. Suddenly Dr. Know was on the stage. Still no sound, but the images told everything. This was the place where David had been jostling with the brainy computer; trying to extract the information he'd needed from the vast databanks of this all knowing system. He saw his younger self… his Mecha self, jump up and try to catch the cartoonish image of a little fairy. He saw the Doctors disapproving glare and then Joe jump up and pull him back into his seat.
More frames were missing. The image warbled as it jumped ahead. When it stabilized, the Doctor was gone and words were scrolling over the darkness. David knew these words.
"Come away o human child, to the water and the wild
with a fairy hand in hand, for the world.."
The video skipped over more missing frames.
In his book
HOW CAN A ROBOT BECOME HUMAN
Professor Allan Hobby writes
Of the power that can transform Mecha into Orga
The frame skipped one more time. And then froze.
Our Blue Fairy does exist in one place and in one place only …
The words hung in the darkness of the virtual room, a silent blue provocation. David waited to see what would happen next. Then he noticed the prompt that had opened at the bottom of the screen. A cursor began flashing.
It was waiting for him to finish the line.
This was a test! Of course it was. The entire game had been a test. And what would happen when he wrote those words; the words that only he could know; the words that would signify the identity of the person viewing this recording?
There was only one way to find out. David set his hands on the keyboard..
"At the end of the world, Where The Lions Weep."
The words vanished and suddenly he was back: the cloaked man. He dashed from the side of the room and hopped onto the stage, where the holographic doctor had once been. His beaming eye burnt a crimson hole in the darkness.
"Welcome, player!" The man said. His voice was deep and oddly joyous. David had not expected the man to sound like that. He strode back and forth across the stage as he spoke, his single eye fixed on David.
"Please, do not fear us. We wish you no ill will. We've been searching so long. So very, very long."
David felt himself standing, as if he might flee. But he kept the helmet on. This was just a recording, he kept telling himself. If a port had been opened the security system would block any transmissions until their source was cleared. The creators of the game would have anticipated that and done nothing to compromise themselves. So all of this must still be part of the local program.
And if it was still just part of a program it meant that, even after all he'd seen, the cult would still not know if he had completed the game. They would not know where he was.
He opened his VUI.
"Searching?" David said, his mouth dry and voice cracking. "Searching for who?"
The cloaked man crouched and emitted a chuckle full of dark portent. He raised his arm and pointed a black-gloved finger.
"Why, for you, David Swinton."
"You know me?" David asked, his voice heavy and breath racing.
"Why, of course!" the cloaked man laughed. "You are the link. You are the one who has crossed the boundaries."
David suddenly felt himself falling; felt the pain of impact as his backside hit the floor. He realized that he had been unconsciously stepping backward and had tripped over something. But the pain was dwarfed by the words that the taunting cloaked figure was saying.
"Come to us, David" the cloaked man said. "We have long been waiting to meet The Boy From Between."
4
The night was cool on David's face. He had calmed. Listening to the great rumbling of the weeping lions always tamed his temper. His fear had been replaced by a new sense of purpose. Danger. Adventure. Yes, he was ready for another adventure. He had become complacent. Comfortable. He could no longer pretend to lead a normal life.
He stood quietly for a time, at the edge of the building, preparing himself for what he was about to do; watching the distant hauler on whatever mysterious work his father had put it up to. But, amazingly, this was secondary in his thoughts. There was no time for that now. Only an hour ago it would have been impossible to conceive that there was something more important than protecting Her sacred home beneath the waves.
But things had changed. Perhaps forever.
David turned and crawled into his Strato-Cruiser. The cockpit hissed shut and he strapped himself in. As his thrusters warmed, he programmed the coordinates he had received from the mysterious cloaked figure in the game… the game that had irrevocably changed his life. They wanted to meet him… whoever they were. The information he had received would tell his cruiser exactly where it needed to go. But he still had an override option, just in case he needed it.
And he'd brought something else along. Just in case.
Manhattan's Security would notice his departure. They'd notify his father. But he was still inland on whatever secret business he had there. So then they'd notify Ariel. And the Mecha would certainly give chase. But it would be too late. So Ariel was sure to alert the inland authorities to be on the lookout for a certain 'David Holt'. His Father's social standing would surely protect David from the sandal of arrest, if he should be caught. But he had no intention of getting caught.
He'd be in bad trouble when he returned. And he didn't mind that at all. Because he really hoped he would be returning.
As he lifted his craft slowly off the roof and into the night sky over a sleeping Manhattan, David thought of Amanda; of Frill. He thought of his sacred statue; of his friends and the easy life he had led for the past five years. Of Grace and Hiro and Chiyoko.
And he thought of Mommy. His beloved. Would he ever see her again? Would he see any of them again?
He throttled his thrusters and his cruiser shot out over the ocean like a silver bullet aimed at the heart of a mystery. In moments he was whooshing past the Sunken Lady. As he climbed into the starry night he knew alarms had been triggered. They'd be looking for him.
But 'The Boy From Between' was already racing toward the next unexpected twist in the strange tale of his life.
(cont...)