Broken Pixels (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 4) (10 page)

Ping chuckled and said, “It’s unlikely anyone from this realm would take offense. After all, they consider themselves human just like us.”

As she shook her head, her phone vibrated. On the screen was a new message from Cam:
The tracking signal from my cranium continues to transmit from downtown. News streams are not reporting any more explosions or fires in the area, but you must be careful once you arrive. There have been reports of roving gangs of looters and vandals. You should arrive in about ten minutes
.

After reading the message aloud, Mara tapped her phone’s screen several times to see if she could access anything online. A part of her hoped that the device could tap into this Sig-net in the same way it connects to the Internet at home. Nothing. The icon at the top of the screen showed no connections, and the browser screen was blank. She looked up, sighed and said, “Cam was right about one thing. We are deaf and blind with no connection to this world at all. Whatever this Sig-net is, it isn’t compatible with my phone.”

“Perhaps you should rely less on technology and more on metaphysics,” Ping said.

“Meaning what?” Mara asked.

“Remember the antique radio we worked with in the warehouse when you were first discovering your abilities?”

“The old Philco 90. Yes, I remember it. You tricked me into thinking the empty casing was a radio that needed repair.”

“And what happened during that particular exercise?”

“After I imagined I repaired it, you convinced me to use the radio to call Buddy’s cell phone. I was actually able to talk to him for a few minutes through the radio—or rather through the wooden box that once housed a radio. What’s your point?”

Sam rolled his eyes and snorted but didn’t say anything.

Ping glanced at him and smiled. Turning to Mara, he said, “If you can send a cell phone signal from an empty wooden box, don’t you think you could find a way to receive a signal from this Sig-net of theirs?”

Mara held up her phone and said, “With this?” She looked doubtful.

“Why bother with a device at all?” Ping asked.

“How would I even begin to do something like that?”

“Well, how did you do it with the radio?” Sam asked.

Mara thought back to the time in the warehouse with Ping and remembered how he had tricked her into imagining the repair of the radio, the process she would go through to assess it. After she got it to receive a couple radio stations, Ping had suggested she do something “out of the box.” He asked her to place the call to Buddy. And it had worked.

“I visualized the signal going from the radio to the cell tower and then to Buddy’s phone, in my mind—and it worked,” she said.

“Perhaps that is what you should do now. I imagine it would be advantageous not to have to wait for texted instructions from Cam, if we find ourselves in a bind after we arrive downtown,” Ping said. “Why don’t you close your eyes and attempt visualization, as you did previously?”

“Exactly what should I be visualizing? I don’t even understand the basic technology involved in this Sig-net. What am I tapping into?”

“Don’t think of it as a technical exercise. Reach out to Cam and make contact with him, simply imagine speaking with him. If you are successful, perhaps he can provide you with some pointers about how to better integrate with the system.”

“I suppose it couldn’t hurt to try,” she said.

She closed her eyes and lowered her head. In her mind’s eye, she brought up an image of Cam. At first it was just his head and face—as he was most of the time she knew him. Then came the holographic image of his entire body, as it appeared at the repository about an hour ago. Now he stood in darkness, his expression blank, looking past where Mara imagined herself standing. She didn’t get the impression that he was ignoring her but looking through her, as if she were invisible. He couldn’t see her.

She called out to him, and he cocked his head. A look of confusion crossed his face. He slowly turned, scanning with both ears and eyes, like people do when they think they heard something but aren’t sure.

“Cam, I’m right here. Can you see me?” Mara said.

He continued to look through her, but he asked uncertainly, “Mara? Is that really you?”

“Yes! I’m right here in front of you. Can you see me?”

Cam blinked several times and shook his head. His gaze locked onto her. “How are you doing this?”

“Have I tapped into the Sig-net the way you do?” she asked.

“You’re reaching me via the Sig-net, but you are doing it wrong. Why are we standing in this dark room, and why am I getting visual and audio representations of you—and me for that matter?” he asked.

“I’m visualizing talking to you. This is how I imagine it would be to communicate with you, how it would be to use the Sig-net.”

“This is not how it works at all. Unlike the Internet in your realm, Sig-net is much more intuitive. It’s more analogous to a psychic connection than a digital one. Things are thought-driven—and we don’t send pictures of ourselves to each other all the time, certainly not live streaming ones like this. I’m uncertain exactly how you are accomplishing this.”

“Don’t worry about it. Show me how you used it to do things, like arrange transportation and access the news streams.”

“I just think it, and it happens. It’s like when you want to open a bottle of ketchup. You don’t have to have a live visual concept of it running in your brain to get your hand to twist the cap. You just do it.”

“So I just think it.” Mara looked upward, as if considering a perplexing problem. In the air above their heads appeared a list of glowing text, scrolling downward like a browser page. “Like that? That’s the news stream?”

Cam looked up and shook his head. “No, that’s a webpage. Don’t read the news, experience it.” He reached up and touched one of the items in the list.

The surrounding blackness was gone, and they now stood in the center of a city street, smoke rolling over them. Shattering glass startled them. They jumped, turned around and saw two men crawling into a jewelry store through its now-broken window.

“Where are we?” Mara asked.

Cam looked toward the street corner and said, “Market Street, downtown. Not far from where you are headed in the railcar. Those two men stole half a million dollars in jewels a little over an hour ago. They’ve been identified and warrants have been issued for their arrest.”

“Are we actually here?” Mara slowly circled around. She stood on the white dashed line in the middle of the street.

Cam shook his head. “What you might call virtual reality. People rarely access information this way, but, if you want to see something firsthand, this is how you do it.”

“How do you know what’s happening? How do you know about the two men and their crime?” she asked.

“New knowledge is transferred directly to our cores with the news stream. Think about what you are seeing. What do you know about it?” Cam asked.

Mara cocked her head and pondered it. “The warrant for the men is a mental health warrant, not a criminal one. They are believed to be under the influence of something called Euphoria.
Euphoria
?”

“An illicit substance of some kind? I’m not sure from the report.”

“A drug? A drug that makes people rob jewelry stores?” Mara asked.

“Don’t get wrapped up in the details of this particular piece of news. The point is that you access information from Sig-net by thought. If you want to communicate with someone or something, think it. You don’t have to visualize it. Others may find it alarming and shut you out. Just think of it as a psychic connection, if that makes it easier for you.”

“Whatever works. So how do I get out of here?” Mara asked.

“Think about it,” Cam said.

A moment later Mara found herself staring at her brother, who looked exasperated.

“What?” she asked. “What’s wrong with you?”

“We arrived like ten minutes ago, and we’ve been sitting here waiting for you to come out of your trance,” he said.

Ping patted Sam’s arm and asked Mara, “Were you successful in making contact with Cam?”

“Yes, I didn’t realize that I would be required to develop telepathy to interact with a bunch of robots.”

Ping looked taken aback. “I beg your pardon?”

Just then something occurred to her. It was almost like she had an idea, a sudden insight into something. She wrinkled her brows.

“Are you all right?” Ping asked.

She thumped the side of her head with the ball of her hand, as if getting water out of her ears. “I think Cam just sent a message into my head.
Weird
. He says something just exploded at the dispensary, and his head is being moved. We’ve got to get going.”

Mara stood up and led them from the railcar onto the platform of the tiny subterranean station. It looked exactly like the one where their journey had begun. She pointed toward the inclining tunnel ahead and said, “Cam says this is the station for the downtown repository and there’s an elevator through here.”

The elevator’s wire-framed compartment—large enough to accommodate a large vehicle like the one they rode in earlier—came to a stop with a sudden jerk. Before them stood another roll-up garage door that automatically rose once they arrived at ground level. It opened into a dark square featureless space—other than a reflective white line in the center of the single lane of asphalt that led from the elevator door to another bay-size door some fifty feet away. The space resembled a one-car garage. Tentatively Mara exited the elevator and waved for Ping and Sam to follow.

Behind them, the door rattled and rolled closed. Ahead, the other door made a clatter of its own as it opened, revealing a narrow alley tightly wedged between two buildings. As they stepped to the opening, Mara was surprised that it was dark outside. Her virtual reality experience with Cam had given her the impression that it was still daytime, but that event had occurred earlier in the day. Outside, mounted on the cinder-block wall of the building to the left beneath a rusty domed shade hung a single light over two small green Dumpsters. On the right, a brick wall was unadorned except for Dumpster shadows.

They stepped into the alley, and the door behind them rolled down. Sam looked over his shoulder and then to Mara and said, “How are we supposed to get back in there, assuming we’re taking Cam’s head to the repository?”

Mara was about to say something and then stopped, her eyes narrowing. After a moment, she said, “Cam says I can think it open like they do.”

“
Think
it open?” Ping asked.

“Use the Sig-net the way they do. Let’s give it a try,” Mara said.

She turned to the door and thought
open
. The door began to rise. She smiled and looked at her brother with a satisfied expression. The door stopped its upward movement and then lowered again.

“I might get the hang of this yet,” she said.

“I always thought you would make a great robot,” Sam said.

Ping interjected, “Where do we go from here, other than to the end of this alley? Can Cam guide you to the location of his head?”

Mara was about to pose the question to Cam when she noticed a row of tiny yellow dots hovering in the center of the alley. They emitted a faint light that brightened and dimmed in a regular, repetitive sequence, like lights on an airport landing strip. She pointed ahead and said, “What is that?”

Ping looked to where she pointed and frowned. “Are you pointing at the ground?”

“No, those dots just above the ground,” she said. Sam looked at her like she was crazy and was about to comment, but she held up a hand, then added, “No, wait. That’s the path to Cam’s head.”

“You’ve got a Google map in your head now?” Sam asked.

Mara shrugged. “I guess we follow the dots until we find his head.” She held out an arm for them to proceed. “I’m not sure I like having all this stuff flowing into my brain just willy-nilly.”

As they walked down the alley, each glowing dot faded away as they passed it, prompting Mara to grin in amazement. Sam watched her askance and said, “You’re being a little goofy.” He turned to Ping and said, “She might be under the influence of this Sig-net thing. Maybe the robots have control of her.”

“We’ll keep an eye on her, just in case.” Ping smiled.

Her gaze focused on the floating dots that led to the end of the alley, Mara moved a couple paces ahead. Ping and Sam fell in step behind her.

* * *

As they passed the Dumpsters and through the halo of the light that hung over them, Sam felt exposed, as if they were walking on a stage.
After they passed into darkness, he looked upward for any sign of movement yet saw nothing but bricks and cinder blocks. The buildings didn’t even have windows, fire escapes or any other features that he could discern. Between them, he could see a dark patch of sky—no stars, just ambient light bouncing off the clouds—however, he could make out thin bands of smoke riding a steady breeze above the city. He heard no sounds—no marauding groups of looters or vandals as he had expected, not even the hubbub of people and traffic moving through nearby streets.

“The silence here is giving me the creeps,” he said.

He looked down as they approached the end of the alley. Mara was still focused on the invisible dots, and Ping looked straight ahead. As Mara stepped from the alley and onto the sidewalk of the intersecting street, she pointed to the left and turned in that direction. For a split second, she was hidden. From the right, a dark figure darted past the end of the alley, knocking Ping out of its path.

“Mara! Watch out!” Sam yelled. He held out a hand to steady Ping and ran from alley.

* * *

Mara turned to see a man, his face hidden by a ball cap pulled low on his forehead, lurching toward her, holding his hand out to her. Her first thought was
beggar
. She inched toward the building, putting space between them, but he still limped after her, thrusting his upraised hand at her.

“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t have anything to give you,” Mara said.

The man lifted his hand and said, “See the light.” She sensed awe or reverence in his voice.