Cyberdrome (14 page)

Lorena was busy
at a control panel on one side of the room. “Not sure. We stationed ourselves
on the outer edge of one of the memory sectors. We assumed that the Predators
wouldn’t come out this far, so it was a safe location until you came along.”

“Why would they
stay in the centers?” he asked, still staring out the porthole.

“Each memory
sector inside the Core is separated by a null space barrier, designed to keep
programs from jumping sectors.”

Alek stood to
face her. “No one can cross it?”

“This ship can,”
she said, staring at the display. She suddenly straightened up.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s a
message for me,” she said, her voice trailing off.

She stared at
the display for a moment before whispering, “That bastard.”

“Who,” he asked
as he tried to look over her shoulder. “Cloudhopper?”

She immediately
closed the connection. “Nothing,” she said. “An old message.” She turned to
face him. “Listen, we may have evaded those ground forces, but we still have
several of them inside the ship. We need to get out of here before they find
us.” She pointed to one of the outer doors. “Open that one.”

He walked over
and pressed the large green button located next to the door. It spiraled open
to reveal a one-person fighter craft inside hovering just off the floor.

“So, this is a
Tracer,” he said as he ran his hands along the light-gray outer hull. The ship
was wedge-shaped—about five meters long by four meters wide, and had a central
cockpit with wrap-around windows. It was decidedly angular, compared to most of
the curved-hull virtual designs he was more familiar with. He climbed up on one
of the flat-sided sections and peered in the window at the cockpit. “Are these
things difficult to maneuver?”

“Get inside,”
she said. “I need to be here to activate the launch floor.”

He was about to
ask how, when he noticed a small gold-colored panel behind the window. He
touched it and the upper canopy of the Tracer slid forward, opening up the
cockpit. He climbed down into the reclined chair and felt the cushions molding
themselves to his body. The internal layout of the vehicle reminded him of a
tactical fighter. The dashboard surrounded him on three sides with a large
scanner display in the middle. Right of the scanner, a readout said “Explorer
Mode,” and below it a graphic display showed weapon, shield, and energy status.
The left side had a display showing the status of something called Tools, but
they all appeared to be empty.

Someone had
obviously designed the vehicle to be recognizable to any experienced game
player. What was missing, however, was any form of navigational control.
The two T-shaped
handlebars near the
dashboard looked
promising, but neither would budge.
“How do you steer this damn thing?” he
yelled.

Before he
realized what was happening, the canopy slid back shut, and his Tracer began
moving itself to the center of the room. At the same time, the entire floor
began to lower. A flat, mirrored plane appeared out his forward window as the
descending floor dropped to meet it. His Tracer then backed off the floor plate,
once again on autopilot. When it stopped, the hulk of the Survey Vessel looming
over him began to rise.

“What’s going
on, Lorena?” he yelled at the retreating shape. “Can you hear me?”

“You shouldn’t
have come inside, Doyen,” she said.

What the hell?
“Where did you
hear that name?” he asked.

“Aren’t you just
a little bothered that I have now made a fool of you twice in just a few days?”

He stared out
his forward window at the rising ship, unable to believe what he had heard.
“Klaxon? You can’t be the same woman I met in the coffee shop,” he said. “There
must be two of you working together.”

“Only one,” her
voice said. “Deception is the number one rule of Plumbers, remember?”

“I have a great
memory. Even with the different hair and the glasses, I would know. That wasn’t
you.”

The Survey
Vessel was now high above him, hovering like a large saucer-shaped balloon. “Remember
the vanilla scent?” she asked. “Pretty strong, wasn’t it? You could say it was
overpowering.”

Overpowering
, he repeated to
himself. “You drugged me?”

“It’s a designer
narcotic in aerosol form. Screws up your memory just a bit. Also affects your
reasoning skills. Didn’t you wonder why you tried to run after me? Most people
in wheelchairs don’t suddenly forget that they can’t walk.”

He fought down
his rising anger. “Pretty clever, Klaxon,” he said, hoping to stall her while
he tried to think of some way to get back up to the ship. “I’ll admit that you
took me completely by surprise.”

“I’ll take that
as a compliment—coming from you, Doyen.”

He began
pressing panels and making standard hand signals over the dashboard, but nothing
seemed to work. The Tracer appeared to be fully active, but not responsive. Was
there some key required to make it work for him? “So, you’re the one who put
the Predators inside my Cyberphage, and now they’re after you. Didn’t plan that
very well, did you?”

There was a
slight pause before she answered. “Obviously, if I had known about the
Panspermia bomb you had hidden inside, and what it would do to them, I would’ve
made other arrangements.” 

“I’m so sorry I
messed up your plans,” he said.

“I had this
Survey Vessel hovering down near the surface to reduce the power drain, which
was a mistake I won’t repeat. However, I’m now safely high above the ground and
you’re not. I’d say you’re about to get paid back in full.”

“Who are you
anyway?” he asked. He was rapidly growing frustrated at her ability to stay a
step ahead of him “Is it Klaxon, Lorena, or Stacy? What’s your real name?”

Another pause,
then, “How about ‘Rose?’”

He almost
chuckled. “You mean, ‘That which we call a rose, by any other name...’ I’ve
read Shakespeare too.”

“Then you can
see how it applies to me, can’t you? Whatever you choose to call me, am I not
the same person? The person who beat you? The person who beat Alek Grey—poet
among Plumbers?”

“Why are you
doing this?” he yelled, unable to contain his anger and frustration any longer.
“Who the hell do you work for?”

“I believe that
should be ‘whom the hell do you work for’, and the answer is obvious, if you think
about it.”

“No more games,
Klaxon. Tell me his name.”

“Oh, but I
absolutely love games, don’t you? It’s the heart of what you and I do for a living,
Doyen. Only this time, I’m afraid that we are the pawns in someone else’s game.
You and I both, it seems.”

“So it’s chess
we’re playing, is it? Well, just remember, in the rules of chess, a pawn can become
a knight if it reaches the other side of the board.”

“Or a queen,”
she added.

“You killed my
father,” he yelled. He was now through playing games with her. “If you were
involved with the takeover of Cyberdrome, then you’re directly responsible for
his death.”

There was a long
pause, before she finally answered. “Your father killed himself.”

Before he could ask what she
meant, the Survey Vessel began to move away from him, accelerating as it headed
towards the horizon. In a moment, it was out of sight.

SEVEN

W
ith
the Survey Vessel
long gone, Alek decided to see if he could start his Tracer from the outside.
After opening the canopy and climbing out, he stood on the side of the hovering
vehicle and looked around. The ground below the Tracer looked like it was made
out of textured steel and covered by a series of large, interlocking circles.
When he looked to the horizon, he could see the floor curving upwards in the
distance. “I’m standing inside a gigantic metal bubble,” he whispered,
remembering the image Cloudhopper had shown him.

Directly above
him, presumable in the exact center of the bubble, a white ball of light shown
like a star inside a scale-model
Dyson Sphere
. It was definitely the
strangest virtual environment he had ever seen, but then again, it wasn’t meant
for human eyes. This was Cyberdrome’s Core Memory, and it was once home to the
Sentinels.

He cautiously
jumped off the Tracer and landed with a metallic clang. Instantly his Omnisuit
began to move across his body, changing into some sort of black armored suit.
Then he realized that his entire body was changing as well. As he stared at his
own hands, he saw small details like moles and pores disappear; replaced by
smooth, rubber-like skin. It looked, and felt, as if his Avatar was becoming
less detailed, less
real
.

Afraid that
contact with the Core was somehow destroying his Avatar; he turned to jump back
aboard the Tracer, but then realized that he was actually feeling stronger and
more alive than he thought possible. The Core was altering his Avatar, but
maybe it was a natural part of that system. Maybe existing inside Core memory
required a different type of body
—something simpler, but also stronger
.

When the
transformation was over, his stomach suddenly gurgled, and he realized that whatever
was supplying him with such instant vigor didn’t alter the fact that his
—
or his Avatar’s
—
stomach was
empty. It was like drinking some kind of super-caffeinated sugar water
—
loads of energy,
but no real substance.

He felt the
ground begin to vibrate through his feet. It was rhythmic
—
almost like a
heartbeat or a bass drum beating. He crouched down and placed his hand on the
ground, which felt like cold metal. Then he remembered that the Tracers used
magnetic levitation to hover, so a metallic surface made sense. It still made him
feel a bit like an ant on a large metal table.

The vibration
became more pronounced and it dawned on him that it could be something running
towards him. He jumped up and scanned the horizon, but saw nothing. Then the
ant analogy reminded him that he was very much alone out there. He crawled back
into his Tracer and sealed the canopy. As he sat in the chair, his body changed
back into its original “more human” form, blemishes and all.

“So, what now?”
he asked the empty cabin. He tried repeatedly to make sense of the Tracer’s
controls, but nothing seemed to be functional. After a few minutes, he threw up
his hands in frustration. If these ships really were designed for human-based
Sentinels, then it didn’t make sense that they would be so difficult to operate.

As he stared at
the dashboard, he realized that he was all alone and that there was no one
around to teach him what he needed to know. He peered out the side window at
the dark expanse of Core space. Maya and the others were out there somewhere,
but who knew where?

If what Lorena—or
Klaxon—had said was true, and all sensory connections from his brain were now
tied into this artificial reality, then whatever happened to him here could
affect his body back in the real world. If those machine creatures he had
narrowly escaped from back on the Survey Vessel found him before he could
figure out how to operate this ship, he could end up just like his father—dead.
Luckily for him, those monsters were nowhere in sight.