Etherworld (22 page)

“You're right, we should. But it's going to be tough to get Bryce to tell us anything,” Patrick says. “He takes corporate confidentiality pretty seriously.”

“We'll need some pretty good leverage, then,” Josh replies.

“Do you think Cathryn might be paying him for his silence?” I ask.

“Maybe,” Josh says. “We could check his bank statements. See if there's anything suspicious.”

“Do you think Avery might be able to hack into his quantum? Get his financials that way?” Patrick asks Josh.

“Let's hope,” Josh says, getting out his tab to text her.

“Will she get the message? She didn't have a signal at the hospital before,” I say.

“She told me she'd find a place outside to check her tab,” he says.

“Tell her to look at everything,” Patrick instructs. “Bank statements, paper trails, and any deposits that look suspicious. If Regan's right, and my mother's giving him hush money, we need to have some kind of proof that will make him sweat.”

“Got it,” Josh says, typing away.

“So what do we do in the meantime?” I ask Patrick.

“There's still one more characteristic of life we need to prove. And to figure that out—”

“We have to go back into Elusion,” I say, reading his mind.

“And not just to a domain,” he replies. “We need to get into the master program.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

WHEN I OPEN MY EYES ABOUT AN HOUR later, I'm flat on my back, lying on the cold, hard ground. A gigantic arch looms over me, its fluorescent yellow tendrils pulsating with the regularity of a heartbeat. I prop myself up. We're inside a room with sleek, curved walls that are embedded with thousands of glowing blue letters and numbers.

“Patrick? Are you okay?” I ask, my voice encased in a strange echo.

“Yeah,” he answers. “You?” He's lying beside me, both of us dressed exactly as we were in the real world.

“Good,” I say.

Good, yes, but not even close to what I'm used to feeling in Elusion. Just like the Prairie Escape—the last destination Patrick and I were in together—this master program isn't triggering the intoxicating feelings Elusion is known for. In fact, I can still detect traces of the shock I felt the moment Patrick suggested that the app might be developing an awareness of its own.

He stands up and offers me his hand, helping me to my feet. “This is where it all begins, Ree. These are the basic source codes that build every Escape.”

“So this is the framework of each destination?” I ask, trying to focus on what appears to be a string of complex programming language.

“Exactly.” Patrick takes a couple of steps back and begins to follow the curve of the wall, glancing in all different directions.

If Josh were here, he would be amazed by this place. It's too soon for him to go back into Elusion, so he had to stay behind. “So what are we looking for?” I say.

“Irregularities.” Patrick walks over to one of the walls, examining all the symbols that are fixed in place like brick and mortar.

“How can you even read that? All the characters are overlapping each other.”

“Like this,” Patrick says. He waves his hands in front of the wall, and the code moves out of the wall and into the air, numbers and letters hovering above us. Patrick gazes up at them, the glowing symbols casting a soft blue light on his face.

“We need to find the code that was used to override my changes to the firewall,” he says.

“And how do we do that?” I ask.

“We have to search for any errant syntax. It should show up as a different color.” Patrick gestures to his right. “Want to take that section?”

I head over to the other side of the wall and shift my hand in front of it like Patrick did. As the code breaks away and floats around me, I try to look for anything suspicious.

I continue on, canvassing the side of the wall. It feels like the room is expanding, but the ceiling is dropping at the same time, the arch of neon yellow tendrils getting closer. I've looked at so much code that everything is becoming a bit of a blur, the symbols losing shape and flickering like a strobe light. I also feel a strange buzzing in my head, like something is crawling into my mind and mining it for thoughts. And suddenly, I'm thinking about the first time I went to Elusion with my father. We jumped off the edge of that cliff and went hang gliding at sunset—ecstatic as we soared into the clouds together.

It's one of the last happy memories I have of my dad, and I don't want to let go.

“It looks like everything's okay,” Patrick says.

My hand reaches out to touch one of the electric blue letters dangling in front of me. I'm not sure why I'm compelled to do this, but I can't stop myself.

“Maybe,” Patrick says, continuing, “the code I saw was just an isolated occurrence that—”

Boom!

As my fingers make contact, the code explodes, the entire room shaking as blue debris rains down around us. Thick wires bleed out from the wall and snake toward the top of the arch, where the fluorescent tendrils have all but dissolved.

“What did you do?” Patrick doesn't sound mean and accusatory, just genuinely baffled.

“I . . . I just touched one of the characters,” I explain.

Above us, a piece of orange code begins transforming itself into a beautiful, vibrant sun.

“Oh my God,” he murmurs. “What's happening?”

But neither of us knows.

The walls begin to fade as the remaining code spins around us, expanding and then morphing into elements of a world that seems eerily familiar. Patchy bits of green appear under my feet. Another piece of code loses its shape and bends itself until it reemerges as the same gleaming hang gliders that my dad and I used. The remaining symbols begin to intertwine and blend together until the sky is a vibrant blue and a sea of white mist is floating up from the ground.

When it clears, Patrick and I are perched at the edge of a rocky cliff. Down below there are miles and miles of dark green forest. In the distance is a chain of majestic mountains with snowcapped peaks, which border a large body of water made up of shimmering swirls of turquoise and jade. Everything is subtly outlined with a translucent glitter, almost like fairy dust.

“This was the first Escape your dad created,” Patrick says. “It's not even in existence anymore. The source code was erased a long time ago. It never even went into production.”

I'm filled with a sudden burst of euphoria. How could I even think about destroying this? I turn my face toward the sun, sweet electricity being absorbed by all my nerve endings.

“I was just thinking about it before I—”

“Touched the code,” he says, his voice lilting like this craziness is beginning to make sense to him.

I take a step toward the ledge. The deep cavern below doesn't scare me. I don't need the hang gliders. If I just open my arms and jump, I can fly.

The ground begins to rumble.

“Regan!” Patrick yells, pulling me back as the edge of the cliff gives way, the spot where I was just standing crumbling into the forest below.

I look back toward the glider, but it's turning white, fading into thin air. The corners of the land below are also fading, a sea of white flowing toward the center. Patrick and I are standing on the edge of the precipice, staring down into a crevice so deep I can't see the bottom.

Maybe I should be nervous, or worried, but I'm not. I remember my dad taking me here as one of the best moments of my life. And that's enough to remind me that this is where I belong.

“Time to go,” Patrick says. Before I can stop him, he grabs my hand and presses the ejection button on my wrist.

“No!” I protest, wrenching away. But I'm too late. A blinding light consumes me, sending me home.

Everything hurts—my hands, my legs, even my teeth.

I'm sitting in a reclining chair, unable to move, but inside me, every neuron is firing with adrenaline, making me want to jump out of my skin. My vision is out of focus, and even though I hear Patrick and Josh talking, it sounds like they're underwater.

The ground beneath me shifts and sways, and I realize I'm still on Patrick's yacht. Other than that, my mind is scarily blank, like something erased the last few minutes of my life.

“What's going on, Patrick?” I hear Josh say. “You said the master program wouldn't cause any Aftershock.”

“It shouldn't. The trypnosis at that level barely has any effects on the brain.”

Aftershock. Escapes.

Elusion's source code blowing up the moment I touched it.

It's all coming back to me now.

Rough lips brush against my forehead. “Regan?” Josh says quietly. “Hold on; this'll all be over soon.”

And he's right. Within a few silent moments, the pain begins to subside and I can make out the details of Josh's face—his weary eyes and clenched jaw. I stretch my fingers and he picks them up, grasping them firmly. I give him a slight nod of acknowledgment as I whisper, “I'm okay.”

Patrick appears on the other side of the chair, crouches down, and presses his right thumb against my wrist. “Breathe slowly,” he says. “Your pulse is racing.”

“What the hell happened?” Josh asks him. “You weren't even gone the full hour.”

“We had to leave,” Patrick says, swallowing hard. “Somehow the master program started creating new code and was able to generate a fully designed Escape—one that we discontinued before the app was distributed to the test markets.”

Josh locks eyes with me. “Holy shit.”

“I can't believe it. If Elusion was able to conjure up an Escape that's no longer in existence,” says Patrick, “that means it's found a way to—”

“Reproduce,” I say.

Even though we have solid evidence now, and even though we've proven that Elusion has acquired the final characteristic of life, it still doesn't seem possible that a system like Elusion, an app and an Equip, has learned how to think for itself. That it's, by definition at least, alive. But there's more—I haven't told either of them about that kinetic pulling sensation I experienced. I felt it just before images of my dad's Escape burrowed into my mind.

I lean forward, still feeling a little unsteady, but Josh grabs me and helps me up. A beeping sound comes from the InstaComm wall, located on the left-hand side of the room, followed by a 3D image of our ship's position on the lake. There's a ticker running across the bottom of the screen, estimating our time of arrival at the dock in Detroit as well as the weather conditions for our trip back. Patrick must have reconfigured everything while I was still coming out of Aftershock.

“Why would the app do something so random, like bring back an outdated Escape?” Josh asks.

“It wasn't random. I went there with my dad on my first trip to Elusion,” I explain.

“So it's like we thought. Elusion is anticipating the user's desires and trying to fulfill them in any way possible, even if it's outside the programming limits,” Josh says.

“Or maybe it raided Regan's user profile, indexed that trip to Elusion, and proliferated from there?” Patrick suggests.

“No, that's not it,” I say. Josh puts his arm around me, and I lean against him, still weak. “There was this buzzing sensation at the base of my neck. It felt like Elusion was trying to tap into my thoughts. Not to fulfill my wishes, but . . . I don't know . . . to control them somehow.”

“And that's when you touched the code, right?” Patrick asks.

“Yes,” I say. Josh looks from me to Patrick, trying to catch up on everything he missed.

“It felt like someone was picking through my brain, searching for information,” I explain. “And then, once the Escape formed, I felt . . . serene. Like nothing bad could ever happen to me there.”

“Did you feel any of that?” Josh asks Patrick.

“No, I didn't,” he says.

“Maybe that's because Pat's not a high responder,” I say, pulling away from Josh a little, since I'm feeling a bit steadier on my feet. “But the two of us are.”

“I'd agree with you, but don't forget I had that strong reaction while we were in the Prairie Escape together,” Patrick says. “My emotions were totally out of control.”

“But what if that had nothing to do with Elusion?” I ask.

“So you're saying the rage was real?” says Patrick, looking down.

“You were angry as hell about me and Regan,” Josh says. “I can't say I blame you.” Patrick hesitates, surprised. Josh is offering him an olive branch.

Suddenly the InstaComm wall flashes an incoming call message.

Meredith Welch awaiting connection. Accept or deny?

All of us look at one another, the color from our faces draining quickly.

“What should I do, Ree?” Patrick asks. “Do you want me to block her? Or do you want to talk to her?”

I reach for Josh's hand and hold it tightly. As the seconds tick away, I think about my options: I could attempt to tell my mom the truth again, but I doubt she'd believe me, even with Josh and Patrick on my side. In fact, it might just makes things worse, even inspire her to confront Cathryn, which is the last thing I want. Cathryn imprisoned my dad for threatening to stop Elusion's release—what would she do to my mom if she thought she was in her way?

No. As much as I hate to keep my mom in the dark, I really don't have much of a choice. This is the safest option for her right now.

“I can't let her know where I am. Not yet, anyway,” I say. “Maybe you could talk to her for a minute or two, and reassure her somehow? I'm sure she's going crazy.”

“Okay,” he says, taking a few deep breaths before he accepts my mother's call. Josh and I sneak into a nearby closet. The doors automatically open and close behind us, so we won't be seen, but there's a sliver of window that will allow us to look on as Patrick stonewalls her.