Epic (36 page)

Erik held on to to her, relief and pleasure rushing through his body with every heartbeat.

“Now what?” Sigrid interrupted them.

Injeborg broke away, catching Erik’s eye for a moment, smiling.

“Thorstein, can you still contact the other libraries?” She was all instructions once again.

“Ya. Ya. But it’s interesting. No more character menus, no more arenas. No more game at all. Just the operating level.”

“Good.” Injeborg was delighted. “Pass the word for every district to join a meeting at eight in the morning, our time. We have a lot to organize. A whole new world, in fact.”

Chapter 33

A PARTY

The great square
of Hope had been prepared for the party. A large area was left empty for the dancing that would come later, but elsewhere long rows of tables and benches were packed tightly into the available space. Colorful streamers ran from the glittering rooftop of the library to the red-tiled houses nearby; beneath them, a huge gathering of people from across the district filled the square with unaccustomed sounds of revelry. Long-held stores of mead had been distributed for the pleasure of the adults; the children were giddy enough on their newfound freedom, which allowed them to stay outside in the evenings and not have to work on their Epic characters.

The Osterfjord Players had been unable to avoid being seated in the places of honor, despite their modest attempts to sit on the benches taken by the rest of their village.

“So, Erik, you heard they named the holiday ‘Cindella Day.’ Your character will be remembered every year.” Thorstein beamed at him, waving a forkful of apple pie around as he spoke.

“Aye, that’s great, but really Cindella didn’t do that much in the battle; it should be renamed after B.E. His warrior was the real hero.”

At the mention of his name, B.E. looked up from his conversation with Judna, the girl seated beside him. “What’s that?”

“The battle—you were the real star,” Erik repeated.

B.E. smiled, recalling the day’s fighting. “What an experience! It’s a shame that Epic is finished. You could never get a blast like that from real life.”

“I know,” agreed Erik. “You should have seen the places that connected to the Ethereal Tower. They were amazing. Hey, Thorstein, don’t you regret it ending too? You know, all that knowledge the libraries have—useless now?”

“Young man.” Thorstein put on his lecturing voice, the severity of his tone undermined by the twinkle in his eyes and the red flush of his cheeks. “Epic represented less than one percent of the information held in libraries. We have immensely useful knowledge of all the arts and sciences, and you should avail yourself of them—make yourself a useful member of society. No . . .” He paused. “My only regret is that I didn’t spend my fifty thousand bezants in time. You all should have warned me you were going to end the game!” He chuckled to himself and took another mouthful of mead. “What about you? What are you going to do now that your Epic skills are not required?”

Erik sighed with a pretense at dismay. “Well, I have to start by tidying up the farm. My mum and dad will be home any day soon.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know.” The lighthearted mood of the conversation did not match the more serious thoughts that now came to him. He was not used to having a choice about his future, but reallocation had ended with Epic. Their new freedom was disorientating as well as liberating. Nor was it entirely an open choice.

“Inny and I were thinking that we should stay in Hope and work out our six months on the saltpans next year—you know, getting it done with and out of the way. Then maybe University. Inny still wants to be an explorer.”

They were holding hands under the table, and his heart leapt with pleasure as she gave his a light squeeze.

“Ya. Wise, I think. It is a job for the young. I’m glad they offered us older folk easier options. What about you, Bjorn? Any regrets about the end of Epic?” asked the librarian.

“Blood and thunder, no!” Inny’s brother shook his head with such earnestness they laughed. “I hated it. Do you know how many hours I spent before and after work, building up my warrior? It’s been wonderful to have proper time to paint.” Bjorn paused. “I did like meeting the King of the Mermen, though. If it had been more like that, I wouldn’t have minded it so much.”

“You know, I’m going to miss your bucket-headed warrior,” Erik chipped in merrily.

“Not me.” Bjorn helped himself to another large slice of cake.

“And I’m really going to miss Cindella,” Erik continued. “She made me feel that I could do anything. She was so brave, and clever, and versatile.”

“No.” Injeborg looked up at him, her blue eyes full of affection. “That was you.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Heartfelt thanks are owed to many people for helping to shape this book. They include: Aoife, Ballanon, Barbara, Barthabus, Brajakis, Compte, Conor, Creno, Glarinson, Hanna, Ishy, Jillumpy, Juno, Kalpurnia, Mindgolem, Roisina, Rubblethumper, Sarant, Semefis, Spinespike, Sliperi, and especially my editor, Susan.

Turn the page for a sneak peek at the sequel to Conor Kostick’s
Epic
. . .

 

Ghost is part of an anarcho-punk airboard gang who live to break the rules. And there’s a good reason—their world, Saga, has a strict class system enforced by high-tech electronics, armed guards, and a corrupt monarchy.

But something is changing within Saga. Strangers are appearing and disappearing on the streets, like some kind of special effect. Soon Ghost and her gang learn the complicated truth. Saga isn’t actually a place; it’s a sentinent computer game. The strangers are “playing” from their home on New Earth, and access to Saga works on them like a drug. The Dark Queen who rules Saga is trying to enslave the people of New Earth by making them Saga addicts.

And she will succeed unless Ghost and her friends—and Erik, from
Epic
, and
his
friends—figure out how to stop the game.

 

All motion ceased.
A Communication-Assassination probe gradually awoke from a dream in which it had been submerged far beneath deep arctic waters. Barely ten million kilometers away, a star was blazing with uncomfortable brightness. The probe slid filters over its sensors, the first action it had taken in a hundred and fourteen years, five months, three days, seventeen hours, and forty-four seconds. It conjectured that a human being waking up to a bright morning and reaching for sunglasses would feel exactly the same as the probe did now. Once the filters were up, the star became a more soothing green, with attractive layers of dark and light turquoise, created by ribbons of helium nuclei writhing violently through plasma to explode from the surface, giving heat and light to the nearby worlds. It was a nice star, a lot like the sun, and the probe felt a momentary pang of homesickness for the solar system. But there was work to be done.

The probe searched for the space-com line. There it was, faint but comfortingly steady. A buzzing of information, a bundle of waves that were refocused and boosted a thousand times between this distant star and Earth. The probe slotted itself into place, conscious of the honor of being the final link in the chain. A momentary burst of seemingly random information as its communications protocol adjusted to the pulsating flow, then a log-in screen. Password confirmed, secret password reconfirmed. Then a lengthy process of file updating. Much had happened during its travels. The total download was likely to take over a day, so the probe used the time to scout.

Safety first.

 

After a week, the probe was satisfied there was no threat. In fact, the surprising feature of the planet, called New Earth by its rather unimaginative human colonists, was that its sophisticated data-processing system was all but shut down. A bit like having a computer but using it only to play card games. Strange, but not threatening. In fact, the opposite. The task looked easy. Too easy.

Having received confirmation from base 7C13 on Earth, the probe prepared for the assimilation and destruction of New Earth’s central computer system. And precisely at this moment, it got the giggles. All the time—decades—and all the expense to which the Dark Queen had gone in order to locate and absorb this far-flung colony: it all came down to this moment. And the probe, despite the fact that it was being monitored, perhaps, indeed, because at some level it sensed the frightening presence of the Dark Queen, found the moment too funny. It had never been in such a position before, that so much collective effort depended on its own actions. The probe felt giddy. Like it was on the edge of a black hole a moment from annihilation.

After twenty-seven seconds spent indulging in this unusual sensation, the probe became sober again.

It took the plunge. Advance programs stormed all the major entry points so that giant files could pour down uninterrupted into New Earth’s system, reworking them, reshaping them, aligning them with the Earth’s own system. Every individual characteristic of the old system was destroyed. Layer upon layer of script was rewritten from the very bottom of its hardware. The probe was pleased. Nothing now could stop the assimilation, nothing short of the human beings physically destroying the apparatus on the planet, and they probably had no idea that inside their communications system a revolution was taking place. The computer world of Epic had been erased and replaced by Saga.

There was only one, very minor, source of irritation. One infinitesimally small packet of data had been made so integral to the planet’s system that it was impossible to destroy it without making the whole system unstable. The data contained in that packet was far too small to matter; it certainly was not a counter program or a virus of any sort. Only a perfectionist like the probe would even care that a vestige of the old system lingered on, like the appendix of the human being, an indication of an earlier stage of evolution. The label on the packet made no sense either; instead of the usual core systems symbols there were just two words, like a human name.

With a shrug, the probe continued its work, slightly disappointed that the takeover had been so unchallenging, but pleased all the same.

My first memory is very distinct: a suited man in an old raincoat leans over me, his harsh face softened by an expression of concern. Far above us, black drops of water from a recent shower gather on stone gables. They swell and reluctantly, one after the other, fall through the dark sky.

“Are you all right, little girl?”

“I’m fine.” I remember being a little embarrassed that I had been lying on the wet pavement, but even more ashamed that I hadn’t the faintest idea who I was.

“Well.” He hesitates; his gray eyes become distant. “In that case, I have to go.”

“That’s fine, fine.” I wave him on. “Thank you. For stopping to ask.”

That’s it. I suppose I was about nine years old at the time. I was in a state of total confusion, wondering if perhaps I’d just been in an accident and lost my memory; searching the emptiness in my head for clues: my name, my family, anything.

The dark girl reflected in the tinted window of a nearby aircar, that was me—I recognized the image; yet, frighteningly, I felt for a moment that she was a complete stranger. In that instant, I made at least one discovery about myself, which was that I was a thief. Without my even thinking about it, my hands had slipped inside the kind man’s jacket, stolen his wallet and checked out the contents. He had a yellow pass card, which was classier than he looked.

“Mister!” I called out to him. “Here, you dropped this.”

A thief with a conscience.

 

So, here I was, about six years later, and still no closer to knowing who I was. Still wondering why I couldn’t recall anything that had happened from when I was young, or even who my parents were.

Right now, I was riding the nose of my airboard, which might not be the most impressive stunt to look at, but for anyone who knows airboards, it’s class. You see, all the thrust comes from the back of an airboard, so most of the time your weight needs to be on your back foot. It’s very hard to steer with your feet side-by-side, toes just over the front of the board, arms outstretched, hair tugged by the wind. Hard, because shifting your weight around by a tiny amount causes you to veer wildly. But hey, if you are good, you can direct the board with the swaying of your arms. And I was good. Actually, I was the best.

Airboards work a lot like two magnets of the same polarity, the way they push each other apart. When an airboard is switched on, it is repelled by matter. So left to itself an airboard will float about half a meter off the ground, bobbing slightly. Fitted with a drive, it becomes your best way of getting around the City. We liked to ride pretty high, but you can go only so long through the air before you start to fall; then you need to find a solid object to slide over that will give you the uphit to rise again. Boarding is the greatest fun you can have in this world. There are plenty of railings, ledges, walls, and cars, moving or parked, to let you dance through the shadows of the City, riding the beat of one uphit after another, flitting erratically like a bat above the heads of the staring walkers.

I took an uphit from a parked car to come out of the nose ride, moving fast towards the factory. My next move was going to be a one-eighty off a windowsill and I needed my right foot back on the tail of the board. Somewhere down in the car park, my friends were watching and admiring.

With a screech, the window opened and a security guard thrust out his helmeted face. “Beat it, kid!”

“Watch out, Ghost!” Someone cried from below.

There was no time to pull out of my move. With a snarl, I tried to get some of the downhit from my board to smack the guard’s face as well as the ledge. He saw it coming and, at full stretch, he punched out at me with a wooden baton. My board twisted under my feet and spun away through the air. I was falling. About five meters above the tarmac.