Prometheus Road (18 page)

When they stepped out of a service corridor onto the casino floor, Tempest gasped and leaned against the wall to steady herself. The sound was almost deafening, hitting her in waves of clanging steel, bells, buzzers, thumping music, and shouting voices. Rows of machines blinking with bright lights bounced and jiggled on the red-carpeted floor as if they were alive, interspersed with long tables where gamblers were hunched over in deep concentration on their games. As her gaze wandered, the things that startled Tempest the most were the crowds of people, the hypnotic patterns of the lights, and the armored knights in combat on the stage in the center of the casino.

“Where did all these people come from?” Tempest asked. “The streets are so quiet. On our way here, I didn’t see anyone moving around.”

Rose approached a white-haired old woman seated in front of a bulky machine, her eyes locked on the blinking lights and spinning wheels behind little windows as she dropped silver coins into a slot. Whenever she dropped a coin in, the machine made happy, encouraging noises. She wore a heavy black coat, and her gaze never left the face of the machine as Rose stopped beside her. Rose winked at Tempest, then shoved the old woman out of the chair. Silver coins jingled in the cup she held in her left hand, but none of them were spilled when she hit the carpet.

Tempest gasped and stooped over to help the old woman off the floor, but the woman didn’t seem upset at all. Her eyes were still locked on the slot machine while she easily stood up and sat in the chair again.

Tempest glared at Rose. “What did you do that for?”

“You try it.”

“No, thanks.”

“She’s not real,” Rose said, shoving her out of the chair again with the same result as before.

Tempest watched the old woman sit down again without complaint. “Of course she’s real. I can see her quite clearly.”

“And I can shove her out of this chair,” Rose said, doing it again.

“Stop it!” Tempest growled, stepping between Rose and the seated woman. She put her hand on the woman’s shoulder to steady her just in case Rose tried it again.

“She doesn’t mind. She was built in a nanovat, just like most of the people here, and she’s more like this slot machine than she is like us. This is her purpose in life: to sit in this chair and play this game.” Rose stepped back as the machine honked and dinged several times, then disgorged a pile of silver coins into the bottom tray where the old woman happily retrieved them and put them in her cup. When the machine’s activity returned to normal, the woman continued dropping the coins into the slot as before. “You see?”

Tempest bent over and stared into the woman’s face, but she never acknowledged Tempest’s presence. “Hello?”

“The slot machine players don’t talk,” Rose said. “If you want conversation, you have to try the drunks at the bar until you find one that’s interactive. Unless you find a real person, of course. And they usually talk too much.”

Tempest studied the other gamblers at the long row of slot machines, noting the variety of clothing and appearances. “Why would anyone go to all this trouble to make fake people?”

“The AIs started it. Like I said, this whole town is a big behavioral study laboratory for them. But the nanotech casinos have lives of their own, and they’ve developed their own entertainments in addition to what the Dominion wanted. Once the casinos became self-aware, they got lonely. They were built to handle huge crowds, and they got bored as the flow of tourists dwindled over time, so they built gamblers of their own to play the games. The Dominion provided the behavioral models for the gambler programming, and they were happy to help provide the right atmosphere for their continuing studies. Half the time, you can’t tell the difference between the fake people and the real gamblers in this place. I’m not even sure there is much of a difference.”

“This is amazing,” Tempest said, watching a man dressed in a cowboy outfit covered in sequins throw a pair of dice the length of a gaming table. The admiring crowd laughed and applauded.

“It’s kind of creepy if you ask me. The Dominion used holograms of gamblers in the beginning, or so I’m told. They were thrilled when the casinos themselves came up with this idea. And this is just the beginning.”

Tempest followed Rose past an area where a floating sign proclaimed: “Galaxy Slots. The loosest slots in town!” Hovering above the rows of star-studded slot machines was an enormous spiral galaxy of winking stars that slowly rotated in a translucent black cloud. Tempest thought it looked better than the real thing that she’d learned about in school.

They stopped in front of the raised stage where two knights, armor-plated from head to toe, staggered around while swinging at each other with heavy broadswords. The silver suits of armor looked identical, except that one knight wore a black plume atop his helm while the other one wore a white plume. Whenever a sword hit one of the knights, the armor rang as the knight turned to deflect the blow. The crowd of spectators in front of the stage area, many of them holding drinks, cheered whenever one of the knights smashed into the other with his sword, but they didn’t seem to discriminate as to which knight was their favorite.

“Seems pretty realistic, doesn’t it?” Rose asked.

Tempest watched the two knights carefully, studying their moves. They both looked tired and unsteady after fighting for so long. “I don’t know. I guess so.”

A flourish of trumpets caught the attention of the two knights. The white knight stood a little straighter, lowering his sword enough for the black knight to lunge forward for a final attack. A moment later, Tempest jumped back as the white knight’s helm clanked to the ground by her feet. Startled blue eyes looked out through the helm’s visor as it rolled to a stop and stared up at the ceiling. The crowd cheered wildly, clapping and stomping their feet while the black knight took a bow and clanked off the stage.

“Tell me he’s not real,” Tempest said, grabbing Rose’s arm.

“He’s not bleeding, is he?”

Tempest relaxed her grip. Rose had a point. She saw a trickle of blue liquid leaking onto the carpet from the base of the helmet, but that was all. A squat cleaning machine with a blinking red light on its head popped out of a hatch beneath the stage. It darted forward to vacuum up the blue liquid, then tossed the knight’s head into a bucket on its back. With an air of self-satisfaction, the cleaning machine returned to its home at a more stately pace, maneuvering around the feet of spectators moving away from the stage. While she watched, Tempest thought one of the knight’s eyes winked at her before the cleaning machine finally disappeared through the hatch.

Tempest took a deep breath, then glanced at Rose. “That was really creepy.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

“Where’s the Picasso?” Tempest asked, frowning as she tried to make out anything that might look like normal, nonanimated art on display. “I want to get out of here.”

Rose beckoned for Tempest to follow her through a winding maze of slot machines and gaming tables. As they walked through a realistic rain forest zone, where the slot machines were disguised as rocks and plants decorated with blinking lights, Tempest felt her dress sticking to her skin. She tried to focus on Rose to control her feeling of audiovisual overload. Her head rang in time with the bells of the slot machines, and she felt the pull of sexy male voices imploring her to come and play with their buttons and levers. Following Rose around a craps table where gamblers happily slapped each other’s backs, Tempest stumbled when her feet sank into soft, warm sand. To her right, soft waves steadily rolled in from an artificial ocean that carried the scents of salt and fish on a gentle breeze.

Rose turned again, striding straight into the oncoming waves, but neither she nor Tempest got wet as they continued walking and the waves rose higher while the seafloor descended. The “water” moved around Tempest’s body with a gentle pressure, but her clothing and hair were unaffected, and she continued to walk on soft sand while the water rose over their heads. She held her breath at first, starting to panic while colorful schools of tropical fish darted around her head, then realized she could breathe normally. Ahead of them, the giant figure of the sea god Poseidon stood in a massive open clamshell, surrounded by admiring half-naked mermaids who stroked his bulging muscles. His beard shook as he pointed his enormous trident at Tempest, and his voice boomed out in welcome, “Arr! Avast, me hearties! Welcome to the sunken empire of Atlantis! Yo-ho-ho!” Poseidon leered at Tempest when she strolled past, and she had the eerie feeling that he was real.

They continued down the gentle slope of a narrow cobblestone street into a sunken Mediterranean city. White masonry walls rose on both sides of the short street until they stepped into the open city square, which was once again covered in drifts of sand. Rose pointed at a group of wrecked wooden ships tilted on the seafloor with long streams of gold coins flowing from their broken holds. Banks of blinking slot machines, shaped and colored like huge tropical fish, surrounded the sunken hulks. “Spanish galleons from the armada, or at least that’s the idea. Can you see what’s hanging from the bow of the first one?”

Tempest studied the rectangular shape swaying in the current about eight feet above the floor. Beneath it, a shark circled in and out of a hole in the ship’s hull. A school of tiny fish formed a temporary silver wall in front of the ship, obscuring her view, then they shimmered and darted away. When Tempest got closer, she was able to make out the meaning of the black patterns on the front of the rectangle. “Is that the Picasso?”

“Yep. Don Quixote must feel right at home hanging from a sunken Spanish ship in the underwater empire of Atlantis.”

“It’s right out in the open. How are we going to get it out of there without being arrested?”

Rose raised an eyebrow at her. “You must trust in the Tunnel Queen, my dear. I always have a plan. Did you notice the two armored knights seated at the slot machines?”

Tempest looked around, then spotted the two knights, wearing identical armor to the two they had seen fighting on the stage. Seated between rows of senior citizens, the knights were playing the fish-shaped slot machines closest to the shipwrecks. A mermaid sinuously floated above their bank of slot machines, suggesting that they “bet all their clams” so that the lucky winner could be her “first mate.” Tempest nodded. “Okay, I see them.”

Rose whistled a brief tune. In response, the white knight looked up at Rose and raised a beer mug in salute.

“Friends of yours?”

Turning, the white knight smashed his beer mug into the side of the black knight’s helmet. Despite the casino noise, Tempest heard the explosion of glass from thirty feet away. The black knight sprawled across his slot machine, then jumped to his feet and kicked the white knight in the groin. The white knight staggered backward and knocked down an entire row of gray-haired men and women as if they were dominoes.

“Now,” Rose whispered. “Follow me.”

Tempest jogged after Rose, who headed straight for the Picasso. “What about the shark?”

“Let me worry about the shark. Your job is to grab the painting.” She stopped briefly to plunge one arm deep into the gold coins inside the mouth of a giant clam. When she withdrew her arm, she held a framed copy of the Picasso painting hanging from the ship, except that it appeared to have been damaged. She handed it to Tempest. “A present for you.”

Tempest frowned at the tattered section of canvas in the middle of the painting, a deep gash that separated Don Quixote from Sancho Panza. “It’s torn!”

“Don’t worry. It’s a fake. If we’re lucky, security will think someone just vandalized the painting rather than actually stealing it. Come on.” Rose darted toward the shark, which was swimming right behind the slot machines where the knights were fighting.

“Is the shark a fake, too?”

They stopped behind a low coral reef that served as a safety barrier between people on the “beach” and the shark’s kill zone. “Well, it’s not a real shark, if that’s what you mean. But it acts like one if anybody gets too close to the painting.”

At that moment, one of the slot machines fell over backward with a loud bang and a shower of sparks. The white knight rolled off the machine, straight into the shark’s territory. The angry shark turned and shot toward the invader.

Tempest winced as she heard a sound like someone banging on a metal garbage can. She got a brief glimpse of the shark chomping unsuccessfully on the white knight’s armored torso as Rose took her arm and jerked her forward over the coral reef. A few more steps brought them beneath the hanging Picasso.

“It’s too high. We can’t reach it,” Tempest said, her heart pounding as she glanced at the shark jerking the knight’s body around like a dog playing with a toy.

Rose stepped on a low mound of gold coins, linked her hands together, and crouched to give Tempest a boost up. Eyeing the shark, Tempest held the slashed painting in one hand, put her other hand on Rose’s shoulder, and stepped into Rose’s hands. Lifted higher, she wobbled a bit, but the pressure of the simulated water helped her maintain her balance. She unhooked the Picasso hanging from the ship and hung the forgery in its place.

Back on the seafloor, Tempest didn’t need any prompting from Rose to run for the safety of the coral reef and bound over it. Gasping for air, she looked back to check that Rose was following her.

“And where do you think you’re going with that?” asked an icy male voice.

Tempest snapped her head around and her eyes went wide when she saw a heavily muscled pair of legs in front of her. Looking farther up the body, she recognized Poseidon, casually holding his trident in his right hand. His mermaids stood safely in the background and giggled as they watched.

“Going with what?” Tempest asked, trying to hide the Picasso behind her back.

The mermaids stopped giggling when the black knight shoved between them with broadsword in hand and took a mighty swing at the back of Poseidon’s heel. Poseidon yelped and whirled to face his attacker. Rose grabbed Tempest’s arm and hauled her sideways. They ran back up the street the same way they had entered, their feet pounding on the cobblestones, ignoring the sounds of battle behind them.