Cyberdrome (23 page)

FIRE

ELEVEN

A
lek
felt a slight
electrical jolt as he passed through the outer wall of the beam and a field of
thin blue fog enveloped him. Through the fog, he saw the tunnels and inner
workings of the Core disintegrate right before his eyes. He realized that it
must be Cyberdrome’s rendering engines reformatting what he saw—his personal
reality. Within moments, the Core had disappeared altogether and he found
himself immersed in a blue void.

The fact that he
felt something solid beneath his feet meant that he was probably inside a formatting
cell—sort of a bridge between one reality and the next. He felt a tingling on
his abdomen and looked down to see his bodysuit moving like black water across
his body. He turned to Maya and saw that she now wore a dark blue jumpsuit with
a sort of loose webbing connecting her arms and legs. He looked back down and
saw that his Omnisuit had changed into something similar.

Just then, a
line appeared in the fog in front of him and circled around to the back,
forming a type of horizon. Above this line, a deep-blue sky with thin stratus
clouds appeared; below the line, a hazy brown planet began to form. He watched
as mountains rose up out of the bedrock and rivers and valleys formed. It was
like watching creation itself—in fast motion.

“What we’re
wearing are called Omnisuits,” Maya said. Her voice sounded distant even though
she stood right next to him. “For some reason they are transforming
themselves.”

“Klaxon already
told me about the suits,” he said, more interested in the spectacle forming all
around him. “She said they can automatically create clothing to protect us.”

“That’s right,”
she said, then looked down at her arms and made a face. “But I can’t imagine
what environment this particular outfit’s going to protect us from.”

“I wondered that
too,” he said. “What the hell are these extra folds of material between our
arms and legs for?”

She reached out
and touched his arm. “They almost look like—”

Before she could
finish her sentence, a blast of ice-cold air hit his face. “Shit,” he tried to
scream as he began to fall, but the air rushing into his lungs prevented his
voice from making a sound.

Instead of
entering a Survey Vessel, they had exited the Watchport beam in open air, at
least several kilometers above the planet’s surface, and were now in free-fall.
He instinctively spread his arms and legs out which seemed to stabilize him.

He looked around
and saw Maya in the distance, falling in the same spread-eagle position. Her
suit seemed to be expanding out between her arms and legs and apparently, his
suit was doing the same thing. The icy wind in his face slowed a bit as the
suit became a makeshift air brake.

When he caught
his breath, he saw Maya coasting over toward him. She looked just like a flying
squirrel. When she came within 20 meters, she pointed down and off to the left.
A Survey Vessel lay half-buried in the sand. It had obviously crash-landed and,
based on the damage, looked like no one could’ve survived the impact. Less than
a kilometer away, he saw a series of low buildings inside a circular wall—some
sort of desert fortress he guessed.

He followed
Maya’s lead and leaned in the direction of the ship, maneuvering himself toward
a flat spot between two large sand dunes near the crash site.

Maya landed
first, and Alek saw her tuck at the last second and roll when she hit the sand.
He tried to do the same but still hit the ground with a jolt. He sat up
spitting out sand and cursing.

“Are you all
right?” she asked, reaching a hand down to him.

He waved her off
and spit again. “You know what? I’ve never had any interest in skydiving.” He
looked up at her. “So what the hell happened?”

She looked up at
the blue sky. “My guess is that our exit point up there’s probably where the
Survey Vessel was hovering just before it lost power and crashed. The Watchport
beam must have been stuck in that position ever since.” She looked back down at
him. “We’re lucky to be alive.”

He glanced down
at his hands and realized that he looked real again—the crude Core-rendering
was gone. When he looked back at her, he noticed that the cut below her eye had
disappeared. “Maya, your face!”

She gently
touched her cheek. “It’s gone,” she said. “Our Avatars must’ve been reformatted
by the Watchport beam.”

“Why would it do
that?” he asked.

She shook her
head. “Not my area of expertise, but I would guess that the Watchers needed it
for some reason. They were human-based programs just like the Sentinels—maybe
they used the beam to repair themselves if they got hurt in the simulations.”

He stood and
then winced at the pain in his lower back. “I wish I could go back through it
right now,” he said. “I landed pretty hard and my back is killing me.”

She looked at
him, but then something over his shoulder caught her attention and her eyes
widened. “What the hell?”

He turned and
saw a dozen or more Mantis bodies lying broken and half buried in the sand a
hundred meters away. He scanned the horizon for movement before answering.
“They must have tried taking the same route in we did,” he said. “Luckily for
us they didn’t survive the fall.”

She walked up to
stand beside him. “Why would they leave the Core? What could they possibly want
inside our simulations?”

“I have no
idea,” he admitted. He looked over at the broken hull of the Survey Vessel
looming a short distance away and changed the subject. “So, what do you think
happened to the ship?”

“I don’t know,
but it looks like it crashed a long time ago. If it happened right when Ceejer
took over, that would’ve been well over a year ago—local time that is.”

“Do you think
anyone survived?” he asked.

“I don’t know
that either,” she said looking at him gravely. “What I do know is that Roy and
the others couldn’t have survived that fall without their Omnisuits. Hopefully
they didn’t try.”

He nodded, but
then realized that something didn’t make sense. “Hey, wait a minute. I thought
that everything in the simulations had to obey the laws of physics. There’s no
type of nanotech fabric that can move and change shape as fast as our suits
just did.”

“It’s a flaw in
the simulations,” she said. “As accurate as they appear to be, they can’t model
things at the quantum level very well. Nanotech works much better here than in
the real world because the Fluidal computer simply fills in the gaps where it
can’t model reality. It is a limitation your father had difficulty accepting.”

“Then why work
here at all?”

“No real
choice,” she said. “The Government banned all use of self-replicating nanotechnology
after the Plague. They currently don’t even allow any form of controlled
testing, which is why he spent so much time in here.”

“They’re just
worried about the ‘Gray Goo’ scenario,” he said, dusting off his suit.

“What’s that?”

“Nanotech out of
control. Someone creates a bunch of carbon-based nanobugs that do nothing but
replicate themselves as fast as possible, and releases them into the world.
Some people have estimated that such a swarm would replicate so fast that it
would consume every atom of carbon in the Earth’s biosphere in less than five
years. All that would be left of the Earth would be a dead planet covered by
thick gray film of nanobugs. That’s the gray goo.”

“I’ve never
heard of that. Your father made the objectors to nanotechnology seem like a
bunch of Neanderthals.”

“Well, since
this suit is silicon-based instead of carbon, there’s no chance of that happening.
Besides, if things go bad in a simulation, you can always just make a new one.”
He shaded his eyes from the bright desert sun and stared at the sky. “So, do
you have any idea how we get back up there?”

“No idea,” she
admitted. “But, as long as we’re here, we might as well look around. These survey
ships had a number of aircraft, so some of the crew might’ve escaped before the
ship went down.”

“If we find a
working aircraft, maybe we can fly back into that opening,” he said as he
looked around at the desert. “All right, where do we start looking?”

She started to
walk toward a large crack in the side of the saucer, but then stopped and
looked back at him. “It would probably be faster if we split up. I’ll look
inside the ship.”

“So, what should
I do?”

“You check out
that fort. If any of the crew made it out alive, they might be in there. If
not, someone there must’ve witnessed what happened.”

She started to
walk away but he called after her. “People are bound to ask me what I’m doing
here, and how I got here. What do I tell them?”

She smiled back
at him. “You’re a clever boy—you’ll think of something.” When he didn’t smile
back, she added, “Don’t worry. I’ve spent a lot of time in these simulations
and the people are quite harmless.” With that, she turned and entered the ship.

He wondered if
he should follow her. Would she think him a coward; too afraid to venture out
on his own?

“Put your hands
in the air and turn around slowly,” a deep voice said from behind him.

Alek turned
around and saw a dozen large men dressed in tattered desert clothing. They each
had a rifle pointed at his chest.
Oh yes
, he thought as he carefully
raised his hands,
quite harmless
.

o     o     o

As soon as Maya
entered the Survey Vessel, she realized that what she told Alek wasn’t quite
true.
Maybe I should’ve said “mostly harmless,”
she thought to herself,
remembering her last harrowing time in one of Cyberdrome’s simulations.

 She considered
going back for Alek, but then realized that this wasn’t the same world, and he
could take care of himself. Instead, she headed straight for the computer
center. If it was still intact, she could download the sensor records of the
last few minutes before the ship lost power. That might tell her who was
onboard before the crash and where they had gone.

With all the
internal damage, it took her twenty minutes to reach the computer center. She
found the huge vault-like door open, which baffled her, since it was the most
secure room in the ship. She slipped inside the opening and quietly surveyed the
room. The power was still on, which meant that at least one of the ship’s half
dozen reactors was still operational.

The room
appeared to be empty but she didn’t want to take any chances. She took the
small floor-lift up to the second level and checked all of the back rooms,
looking behind doors and under tables, before going back down to the main
level.

The glowing
green tower of the Fluidal Computer loomed over her. The Survey Vessels were,
for the most part, exact copies of the Cyberdrome facility, but not everything
was identical; there were no simulations inside this computer.

What if there
were?
She imagined going back down to the neural interface room and interfacing with
a simulated environment. That would be a simulation within a simulation. What
if that simulation also had a Survey Vessel containing another working
interface room? How deep could the nested levels go? At what point would you
simply go mad wondering if you were really out or not?