Manifestations (33 page)

Yes, I’d like that,
she thought and activated the link. She was a good and kind person and deserved bliss. She would do anything ...

~ * ~

Zach watched Inez disconnect. She didn’t look anything like the girl she had just shown Shanniya. She had dark hair braided into a bowl atop her head and picto-graphic irises of red and white that pinched her pupils in the middle like an octopus’s.

‘Did you get that?’ she asked him in her thick licking accent.

‘I saw. Why do we have to do this?’ he asked.

‘Ours is not to ask,’ Inez quoted.

‘But what am I trying to do?’

‘Each customer is different. For this one we just have to make the connection and let the ARA do the rest.’ She tipped her head to re-immerse. ‘Go bug someone else for a while.’

He was meant to be watching what the protégés worked on and learn how to build automated response avatars — or ARAs, they called them. Small programs that had conversational reflexes to lure unsuspecting streams to give out their information, influence and even credits.

They were essentially just a branching dialogue program that was broad enough to encompass all the answers a user could give.

Are you afraid of dying?

Would you like to live forever?

The vocal generator used for each one would match to the pre-profiling done on any given stream, so for men it was usually a soft feminine voice or the authoritative baritone of a man living a life of jovial excess.

And the goobs always fell for it. That was what disappointed him most. People always wanted the same things. Driven by desire, fear and greed. ‘It’s all about getting attention,’ Delora said, the third of the proteges. Alicia, Inez, Delora and now Zach. ‘People jump around. Sometimes we only have a few seconds before they move away, we have to treat them like fish. Make something attractive.’

‘With a hook in it.’

‘Precisely.’

Dungeon would review each ARA personally before they were seeded to the Weave, where they waited like baited hooks for streams to find. Conversational constructs that enticed people to open their streams to them.

‘We have a new client and I need hooks in the water within the hour,’ she would order.

‘Yes, mistress.’ The protégés went to their couches and absorbed the new brief and launched new codes.

Dungeon never let them know who they were working for. All they had to do was find ways to get people to open up their streams and let them in. They asked for just a moment of the mark’s time and then took whatever they wanted.

A command entered his queue from Dungeon and he demersed. It was time for another bath and he got up to fetch the towels.

Zach’s new home consisted of two underground rooms — two that he knew of. The dorm room where he and the other protégés slept and worked on immersion couches, and the chamber where Dungeon kept to herself. They were only allowed entry when she had a use for them.

Dungeon’s room was spacious and softened by thick springy rugs arranged between her cupboards and the tiled corner where a large bath rested. The ceiling was hung with stalaclights in their hundreds, and on the walls large screens showed scenery from around the world. Today it was an icy vista of a mountain range, a blue sky pierced with black crags and peaks.

Zach stood in the corner while she sank into her bath. He wore his visor and watched while she drew crude faces and graffiti on the recordings of the Prime’s statements and sent them back out onto the Weave.

Dungeon chuckled at her mischief. Her nipples bobbed up and down in the water. She would sit in the bath for hours, immersed and immersed, the way she liked it. Zach was trained to drain and refill the water to keep it fresh and warm.

‘Why do you do that?’ he asked her.

‘Why not?’

‘Is it to support the psis?’

‘I don’t support anyone.’ She shrugged. He tried not to look through the water.

She let him watch — she made him watch. His stream trailed hers on the Weave and he learnt quickly how she split her stream across the Weave, deleted her trail and piggybacked other streams like a stowaway on a train.

Dungeon made him watch everything, but he was never to touch. When she called for oils, standing up from the bath, water rolling off her skin and her symbiot cloak, another of her protégés would come to the room to rub the soaked skin with moisturising creams.

‘Robe,’ she ordered.

Zach opened a large, soft towel gown and was careful not to let his fingers brush against her. He’d learnt that lesson. He was never to touch her or it would be another night sleeping with the prickles.

Then he had to sit quietly by the bed during her full-cycle debaucheries. When he was aroused, she teased him.

Zach told himself that once he had acquired a symbiot of his own, he would leave. He was the only one of the four protégés without.

‘Someday, I will give you one as a reward,’ Dungeon had told him in the beginning.

After his first night in the prickle he stood in the dormitory unable to move. He felt like Swiss cheese. He thought his clothes should have been soaked with his blood, rather than just cold sweat.

Alicia was kind to him. She lifted her quilt and said, ‘Get in.’ It
seemed
like an act of kindness. When his shaking subsided she took him to the showers. She washed him and satisfied him, then held him until he slept.

Zach sometimes checked on his old stream. He used a bluff-stream that auto-generated a false history compiled from samples of other local streams. It wasn’t the best way to hide, but he was safe so long as no one was looking for him.

He tried visiting Mister Lizney, but found his home empty and powered down. He had been gone for two weeks, leaving shortly after Zach had run away.

Perhaps he went looking for me,
Zach wondered.

Then he found a message waiting for him. It was from yesterday.

Zach, if you are reading this, it means something has happened to me. I have set this message to be sent if my stream changes its normal behaviour patterns.

When you left I continued to investigate Sector 261. My reports to Services have been ignored so I have travelled to look further into the mysterious situation.

I am sorry for how we parted. I fear I wasn’t the best teacher to you and I hope you can accept my humblest apologies.

I hope we meet again.

Miles Lizney

~ * ~

He had a number of chores to do while the others worked. Planting syphons, like the one he had first encountered. Reviewing success rates of the ARA traps. If any weren’t performing, he should either delete them or find the problem.

‘How happy are you?’ the ARA asked.

This was the first one he had constructed for himself, and it hadn’t caught anyone yet. But he wouldn’t give up on it.

He watched as a trap lured a stream to it and waited to see if the bait was taken. The stranger was a squat Asiatic man who had a fat symbiot growing from the collar of his dressing gown.

An encouraging female avatar appeared in response — trimmed mousy-brown hair, a delicate patch of freckles under her eyes — and spoke to the stream. Zach had selected her to deliver the questionnaire; he liked listening to her voice, he had made it sound like Bronwyn.

‘Hey, you. Are you happy?’ the ARA asked.

‘It is my default state of being,’ the stranger answered jovially.

‘Do you live alone?’

‘With friends.’

‘Do you like being alone?’ the ARA asked.

‘Nobody likes being alone.’

‘First we must ask ourselves: what is happiness? Then we can set ourselves free.’

The stranger picked up the ARA window and began turning it over in his hands — at least that was what it looked like in the visual plane. In code mode it was being analysed and dissected.

‘There you are. I thought there was someone watching.’

Zach found himself looking at the man, although he hadn’t chosen to come into the visual layer.

‘What are you doing? Where is your profile?’

‘Umm, I lost it?’ Zach grinned and then tweaked through the stranger’s fingers. He scoffed and went to check the next trap. Scouts were useless. He couldn’t believe he ever wanted to become one. ‘Try to hold onto me, will ya?’

‘I’ll just have to use both hands this time,’ the stranger said, appearing once more. Something grabbed hold of his avatar and pulled it into the load space.

Zach felt himself being probed. His body was just a facade and the weaver tore it apart like paper, revealing all the connections and history of his stream. All that was left between him and the scout was the link to his proxy portal. Zach cut the connection and demersed.

He woke gasping for air and tore off his helmet. He could already feel the prickles that Dungeon would inflict for his failure. Around him the other protégés were still under and the room was quiet.

Then all the screens in the dorm lit up and the scout’s face appeared.

‘Zachary Frost?’ asked the stranger’s voice.

‘Yes?’

‘Are you working alone?’

‘No.’

‘Why are you aiding Kronos?’

‘Kronos? I’m not —’

‘Don’t say another word, Musashi.’ Dungeon came into the room, fresh from her bath, her gown made translucent and clingy. ‘What is your business here, weaver?’

‘Dungeon?’ The scout raised his eyebrows. ‘I am surprised, I am surprised.’

‘You know him?’ Zach asked her.

‘Of course. Takashi and I are old friends. Aren’t we, Taka?’ Dungeon smiled and stroked her thigh.

‘I have alerted Services to your whereabouts,’ Takashi answered.

‘Why don’t we talk about this in private? Shall we?’ she suggested and turned back to her room.

‘There is nothing to say,’ the weaver said.

‘We’ll see about that,’ Dungeon said, donning her visor.

~ * ~

Zach sat down on his couch and put his own helmet on, chasing after Dungeon’s stream like she’d taught him.

She jumped between the layers, from the visual to code, through the geographic, into the fabula. Here Zach caught up with them, flying through a model nebula, clouds of blue and pink and purple, with stars leering through the thinnest patches.

Dungeon had arrayed herself around the stranger, dividing into multiple nasties, like the syphon that had once attacked him and planted crypto worms in his code.

The weaver didn’t flinch at either of the attacks. He protected himself from the worms with emitters that generated false code for them to work through and floating in the nebula he made a motion with his hands and the syphons stopped growling at him. At another gesture they turned around and slithered back towards their master, teeth bared.

Dungeon’s eyes flared. ‘This can’t be.’

‘Why have you been helping Kronos?’ Takashi asked.

‘Kronos will give us eternity. You are a weaver, you should understand.’

‘You think Kronos is digitalis?’

‘Our saviour has come, Taka, just as Shen Li intended.’ Her eyes saw Zach hovering behind them. ‘Musashi, help me!’ she shrieked.

The stranger looked around at him and Zach immediately changed into his samurai state, Musashi, raising his glowing sword to chop at the weaver.

Zach felt himself yanked away, his visual stimuli cut out, and he was in the load space again. The stranger held him in his fist and shook him until he dropped his sword and his armour was flung off. ‘Don’t let appearances distract you from the true nature of reality,’ the man said.

‘Ortega?’ he asked.

‘You’ve read it?’

Zach nodded. The stranger seemed to soften.

‘How did you get mixed up in this, kid?’

‘I don’t know, it just seemed to happen ... what am I going to do?’ he asked.

‘Go home.’

‘I have no home.’

‘Then come to me.’

Zach felt himself demersing. In his hands his visor flared and then powered down. He couldn’t turn it back on. The other protégés experienced the same thing, and looked about at each other.

~ * ~

In another studio, far away, the convocation continued as Citizens waged their opinions against each other. Right against wrong. Sanctioned statements against fictitious claims. Fear against hope.

‘No. No,’ one panellist said sharply. ‘With such a sudden and immense introduction of streams to the WU, it will be like a gigantic wave hitting a coastal town. Who knows how far the ripple effect will reach? That’s why I’m proposing a motion to slowly introduce the Cape and its votes to a five per cent increase, year on year.’

‘Well, I’d be worried how your sentiments may sway the Cape from joining us at all. If your motion makes it to precedence, then they would be relegated to sub-Citizen status. This very discussion is jeopardising what the Primacy is trying to do.’

‘Sure, sure. But Ryu Shima didn’t become Prime for his peacemaking. He’s meant to be stopping this situation, not encouraging it.’