Chapter 4

Time does not move on the same scale out in the User world; it's fifty-one point five-three times faster in this dimension. Keeping in the mind frame of trying to understand the situation was a good distraction from the realities of it.

Math Assistant Two had been generous and set me up with spacious quarters near her dock. It seemed that I was to be treated as an honored guest. I looked out the window. The Citadel was like a prison – high walls, guards on patrol, static on top of the walls resembling barbed wire. I was at the central building, a ziggurat towering over the other buildings in the complex, at least twenty stories up in human scale. My quarters were a luxury hotel suite inside a supermax prison. The door was concealed in the wall, another feature that didn't help the unsettling atmosphere. Putting my ear to the wall helped me find it. I could hear conversation, but it was too muffled to make out words. Apparently, I was under guard. Not really a surprise.

Given that my life was still threatened, it was understandable, but made me uneasy.

The controls took some getting used to – finding ways to power on and off the chairs and table and learning how to reconfigure the layout for a bedroom. The other challenges were learning how the energy fountain, waste disposal, and decontamination chamber worked. I'm not sure how much of it Jet went over with you, but Users devote a lot of processing to our maintenance tasks. Oh, and another step was tweaking the code on the wall to make a mirror. We're not very good with self-diagnostics, so we have tools to make do.

The first thing I noticed was what I was wearing; the skin-tight suit and practical boots, my upper arms exposed, detached sleeves on my forearms. My circuitry was minimal and mostly blue-silver instead of dark green. One wide stripe ran up the outside of each leg, matching bands on each wrist like a bracelet, a bright, wide line across my shoulders like a boat neck sweater and what I now know to be the identifier mark of a circuit-board triangle on my mid-chest.

The next thing of note was the disc mounted to my back. It was of a similar design to an Encom disc, though latticed in the center and not solid. Opening the display was a surprise. Humans don't have a flawless memory by any stretch. Everything is garbled, past leaks into present, and things are never quite what we think they are, so having something where I could pull up a memory and play it back with relative clarity was fascinating. I tried to play back recent events, but everything was fuzzy and corrupted; distorted voices, unclear faces. I mostly saw humanoid figures in green, but I could have sworn there were some dark blue figures as well.

Assuming the Blue insurgents sabotaged the laser, then how did they do it? Why did they choose the laser system to sabotage and why now? Were the multiple failures of our laser tests due to sabotage from within? It wasn't like we were getting much closer to a rebuild of the correction algorithms. Was I the target, or was it an accident? Why had the Green faction and Math Assistant Two saved my life, and was there any way to go back to my own world? This was assuming, of course, that I had been told the truth. I suspected otherwise.

The more I tried to examine the contents of my disc to piece together recent memories, the more I found myself being pulled to other sectors and memories, playing through happier times. Another human failing, Mercury – we are easily distracted. I lost track of time pulling up records. My parents (my mother was still alive at that time, my father wasn't, and I hadn't spoken to them much since grad school for too many reasons to list), my older sister and her children (my last images were at least five years out of date...had it been so long since I spoke to her?). Other records…

Pulling up images of my family were too painful to linger on, given the ominous things Math Assistant Two said about trying to go back home. Even without that, looking through my disc was a harsh reality check on how little time I actually spent with them. I could push the loneliness out of my mind when I focused on work and day to day minutia. There would be frequent flights back to Los Angeles, or Alan would fly over here. I could keep convincing myself that it was enough and that what we all were doing was necessary; our son was in school and had a home in California with Alan. It wouldn't be fair to ask him to give it all up. Alan had so much responsibility and handling all the fallout from Flynn's disappearance…

When Flynn vanished, I was the first to give up on the search. I'm not proud of it, but he was a chapter of my life that, deep down, I never made full peace with and wanted to put behind me. We were young, stupid kids full of big ideas about changing the world. I gave up those ideas, learning to live in the world we had, not the world we wanted to have. Flynn...never did. Unfortunately, it was only one of many reasons that we grew apart. After he lost Jordan, he retreated further into his dreams and the persona he built around himself. Despite what the papers report, Kevin Flynn vanished well before December 10, 1989. It was just that day everyone else noticed he was gone.

The situation I was now in? Parallel worlds, living software – it would have been right up Flynn's alley.

Yes, Mercury. I know what Jet found, and the conclusions he reached. I hope he's wrong about most of it. Unfortunately, I don't think he is. It would explain far too much, and I knew Kevin Flynn very well. If it turns out that he was the legendary "Lost User…"

You're right. One battle at a time. Speculation isn't what we need right now. The point is, that as long as we were all distracted, we didn't have to think about all the little costs and compromises. We just slapped a patch on our problems, put on a brave face, and kept soldering on.

After spending a half-hour trying to assess my new reality, two green-circuit guards came in, escorting me to Math Assistant Two's dock once again.

She was hovering inside of the central pillar of light, hands together as if in prayer. I more felt her voice than heard it. "Are your quarters to your liking, Doctor Bradley?"

"They're…extravagant. Only thing missing is something to read." I was trying to make a joke and failed.

"Of course. I will provision access; DARPA net archives, Usenet, and any resources from the open Internet."

"Um…thank you."

I noticed that the guards had left, it was just the two of us.

"You still do not seem content," she pointed out.

"You're right," I admitted. For some reason, my eyes kept drifting from Math Assistant Two's column of light to the opaque, human-sized cylinder against the far wall. Something about it felt out of place. "I had nothing to do but think. I still don't understand what's going on," I sat on the ground, cross-legged. "I don't belong here. I miss my husband and my son. I need to get back to my own world."

"That will not be an option. Four brought up a very good point; even the small amount you have seen of this would could put you in danger."

"I'll keep my mouth shut. It's not like anyone on the other side would ever believe any of this."

"Even if I could trust that you would 'keep your mouth shut' and not reveal our existence, the sabotage to the laser and the lack of a set of correction algorithms damaged you in transit. Our solution was not a perfect one. At best, returning you would result in a slow, painful cascade failure. Eventually, the damage to your code would be fatal."

I knew the question I should have asked, but at the time, I had no idea how to ask it. "You're telling me I'm trapped here."

"You will stay." Her voice made me shudder. Again, I looked over to the cylinder. There was just something that compelled me. "And I must confine you for your own safety, at least until we've secured the system. I cannot allow you to endanger yourself. Your purpose will be to assist me in ending the insurgency. Surely, you would like revenge upon them for their attempt to kill you."

I may not have Alan's gift for strategy, but I knew manipulation when I heard it. I also knew to answer it with some of my own. "Why don't you tell me more about them, so I can help you?"

Math Assistant Two nodded. "Very well. They are a faction of heretics. The heresy started with a Guardian named Armitage, operating from Server Nine."

I remembered the name – and that server "Armitage" was a communication script we used with Terminal Services to try and make it a little more user-friendly. Server Nine was where the "public face" was housed; the web server and declassified documents we made available on the civilian Internet to try and appear to be something other than a weapons design factory. Server Nine had been decommissioned not too long ago, Armitage with it. Come to think about it, that terminal software had been very buggy towards the end…

"And what heresy was he preaching?"

"He believed that Programs had a moral duty to refuse User requests. You must understand, Doctor Bradley, just how dangerous that would be. Users write Programs. They give us directive, purpose, function. In return, we give them full and unquestioning obedience. Every Program has a reason for its runtime, and only Users can determine the higher purpose. It is not a Program's place to question their directive or function."

I was getting a very bad feeling about all this. "And Users are...humans. The programmers and the techs and the people who type weird rants on the Internet for everyone to read?"

"Yes. Users are to be obeyed, our creators and our masters. They have absolute power of compile and de-resolution. The only question a Program is to ask of them is confirmation. To allow otherwise would undermine our social order."

It was like the floor dropped out. "Let me...process this, Math Assistant. Humans are Users. Users created Programs in their own image, give them life, and are working in mysterious ways mere Programs can't comprehend. And in return, Programs are to obey, serve, and..." I couldn't get "worship" out of my mouth.

"That is correct."

"That wasn't the intention! We had no idea about this world or that you were alive. If we did -" I was on my feet, pacing, pinching the bridge of my nose. "We didn't even know. I'm sorry."

"The situation is in place. What I'm saying is the truth. Whether or not you intended this is irrelevant." Math Assistant Two said, touching my hand. A small, but noticeable pulse of energy traveled between us.

I felt a hard pull towards the cylinder. In the room's corner, followed by an overwhelming dizziness that dropped me to my knees. My eyes closed…

Mercury, I know you saw some of what we can do. You know how I can spot a malware cell many sectors away, or how I can detect fluctuations in power outputs, or bottlenecks in the system. That is my User power. It's not a surprise that Thorne's manifested in corruption, the Wraiths in destruction, and less of a surprise that it should be that Jet's primary manifestation is healing. You're right, it is terrifying. Users have power, and we don't know how to control it. I didn't know what was happening. Even after all these cycles – years – I still couldn't tell you how this all works.

The vision was overwhelming. I could see it like a movie on fast forward with no sound. Four figures – the faces weren't clear but the dark blue of their circuits were. One of them, a tall female-designated, planted a device on the side of the building and started running to keep up with the other three. They were quickly discovered by the green security forces, frantically looking for an escape route. There weren't any. The Blues were doomed. I could feel their fear. The Greens closed in, drawing guns that looked like they came from a video game or ring-like weapons from their backs. The Blues formed a circle and put their hands up, but the Greens firedthe first shot.

One of the Blues – young-looking, male-designated, was caught in the arm. To my shock, it shattered like glass, leaving him with nothing below the elbow. The others closed in, pulling the discs from their backs and activating, trying to protect him. One of the Greens was struck in the neck. He shattered the same way – everything from the neck down collapsing in a pile of cubes, his head with its dead eyes collapsing on top of the pile and flickering out. A second Green was hit, center-mass in the chest. It didn't shatter him like the others; probably due to the thick armor. Yanking it from the embedded chest piece, he fired it back. It split the face of one of the Blues, and I felt more than heard the scream as he collapsed and died.

You have to understand, Mercury. In the User world…. No, correction. In the part of the User world I come from, we do not often see violence and death up close. It was my first time watching Programs de-rez, watching others die. I had no control over what was happening. I didn't even know why it was happening.

I saw them fall one by one. A Blue might get a lucky shot and take out a Green, but the Blues were clearly outmatched and outnumbered. The one with no arm fell, unable to defend himself. Then the tall female-designated, then the taller of the males. The last lowered her disc, clearly surrendering. The Greens threw a last shot, and she silently joined the pile on the floor that flickered and faded out.

The device the Blues planted on the wall flickered a bright orange and I was blinded when it went off.

The vision ended, and I shook my head. I was in Math Assistant's dock, dizzy and disoriented. "What was that?"

"Please specify."

"I think I just saw them, some of the rebels. They were nearby, but I don't know exactly where. I saw your forces surround them. They were all killed."

"Yes. A small group was detected past established perimeters. The threat has been quarantined and neutralized."

"They were surrendering!"

"The heretics have killed many civilian scripts. Had they been allowed to continue running, they would have endangered even more lives." Math Assistant Two bowed her head. "I somehow doubt they were surrendering. Four and her team would have arrested them for questioning."

"Are you sure about Four?"

She seemed insulted. "Why shouldn't I be? Her directive is to guard the system and keep it safe. I have given her and her team full access to hunt down the rebels endangering my people. It is harsh, but I must protect them."

I was still too disoriented from the vision to complete the sentence. I wanted to get up and start running. I didn't care where. "They didn't have to die."

I heard the door open and guards march in, taking my arms and pulling me to my feet. As they marched me back to my quarters, I felt one of them press something into my hand.