Cyberdrome (26 page)

Alek felt his
stomach turn and swallowed hard to keep the bile down. Herschel had gone
through more than he could even imagine. This so-called simulation was suddenly
feeling very real.

They carried
Herschel into a small building near the center of the main courtyard. Inside
there was a single room with six canvas cots taking up most of the floor space.
Herschel hobbled over to a draped-off section in the back corner. When he
pulled back the cloth curtains, Alek saw that is was a primitive bathroom. A
faucet stuck out of the wall at shoulder level and a hole in the floor looked
like it served as both the shower drain and toilet.

Herschel closed
the curtains and began washing himself. “Make yourselves at home,” he said.
“Pardon the clutter. I’ve had the place all to myself for a long time now.”

“How long have
you been here?” Alek asked as he and Maya walked to the opposite end of the
room to give the man some privacy.

“Close to a
year, I would say.” He poked his head out from the curtains. “So, what brings
you two to this little bit of heaven on Earth?”

Maya looked at
him oddly. “We’re here to bring you home, of course.”

He frowned and
then pulled his head back inside the curtains and continued to clean himself.
“The home I remember does not exist,” he said. “I’m quite sure of that now.”

Alek looked at
Maya, but she stood and walked closer to the curtains. “Dr. Lyman, you have
been trapped inside this simulation for almost a year. It’s understandable for
you to be a bit confused.”

“I’m not the one
who’s confused,” he said, pulling back the curtains. He was dripping wet but
looked only slightly cleaner, Alek thought. He had apparently rinsed his shirt
and pants in the shower, and then put them right back on.

Maya approached
him and sat on a nearby cot. “All of the simulations were taken over by
Ceejer,” she said, “The time differential was boosted to one hundred times
normal. It may seem like you have been here a year, but you actually interfaced
with Cyberdrome just a few days ago.”

Herschel blinked
several times. Either he had water in his eyes or he was having difficulty understanding
what she was telling him.

“That’s a lie,”
he finally said. “The Earth you’re talking about is no more real than this
one.”

“What do you
mean?” Alek asked.

Maya gave him a
stern look that said, “Don’t interfere,” and then turned back to Herschel.
“What happened to the ship’s crew and the other researchers?” she asked.

Herschel waved
his hands. “These people, the ones who are holding us here. These are your
researchers.”

Maya glanced at
Alek, then back at Herschel. “What?”

“It’s true,”
Herschel said. “The people in this village are from the Survey Vessel.”

“They can’t be,”
she said.

Herschel smiled
briefly, but then his face became solemn. “I have spent a year now, living with
these people. A few of them are kind, but a good many of them have gone mad. No
matter what their condition, they all still have one thing in common.” He
looked at Alek for the answer.

“They all
believe they are real.”

Herschel jumped
up. “No,” he yelled and pointed a finger at Alek. “They know they are real. As
surely as you know it and as surely as I once did.”

“You’re trying
to tell us that we are all simulations?” Maya asked. “You think we are all programs?”

“I have proof,
you know,” Herschel said.

“What proof?”
Alek asked, barely suppressing a laugh.

He stood and
began to search the room. “I have a list somewhere. I wrote them down as I
thought of them.”

“Wrote what
down?” Maya asked.

“I told you,” he
said angrily. “Proof that the other world was a dream. I made a list and wrote
it down.” He stopped searching and sat down on another cot. “Oh, that’s right.
I threw the list away. Didn’t want them to find it.”

Maya walked over
and stood next to him. “Just relax, Dr. Lyman.” She looked up at Alek. “We
really need to get him out of here. If he sees the Core, it might snap him out
of whatever state he’s in.”

“What’s your
proof?” Alek repeated, ignoring Maya.

“Things that I
remembered. Things that don’t make sense when you have time to think about
them. Things I took for granted, but should not have.”

“Like what?”

His eyes glazed
over for a moment. Maya was about to say something when he came out of it.

“Hang time,” he
blurted out.

“You mean
basketball?” Alek asked.

“That’s right.
Basketball. I used to go to the games. I saw the players make jump shots. Hung
in the air for a full second before shooting.” He looked up at Alek. “That’s
impossible, you know. I didn’t think about it then, but I understand it now.”

Alek looked at
Maya and shook his head. “That is a little strange, now that I think about it.”

“That’s not
all,” Herschel interrupted. “Passenger aircraft, those huge double-decker jumbo
jets. Deep down we know that it’s impossible for them to fly. Partial vacuum
over those little wings causes that much lift? Who are they trying to fool?”

Maya looked at
Alek this time. “I’ve always wondered about that myself.”

“There’s more,”
Herschel said. “So much more. I had a list, but I threw it away, so they
wouldn’t find it.” He paused a second before continuing. “When I was a child, I
was told that the universe we were able to detect contained only 5% of the mass
required to hold the galaxies in place. They called the missing 95% ‘dark
matter’ just to give it a name. Fifty years later, astronomers still have no
explanation, other than a few wild theories, for that missing 95%.”

“Listen, Dr.
Lyman,” Maya said. “I don’t have explanations for those things, but that does
not mean that our world, or our universe, isn’t real.”

“There’s more.
We’ve all been told that atoms are something like 99.99% empty space.” He
knocked lightly of the wooden planks of the building’s wall. “Doesn’t feel like
empty space, does it? More proof that the world we all remember is a lie.”

“He’s right,”
Alek said. “Actually, if I remember correctly, the nines in the decimal place
go all the way out to at least thirteen digits, which means that solid matter
really does consist of empty space.”

“Then there’s
time,” Herschel said, his voice growing more excited. “We say that the future
has not happened yet, the past has already taken place, and the present is
simply the line that separates the two.” He looked at Alek with a gleam in his
eye. “Well, how long is the present? It’s shorter than a nanosecond. In fact,
it’s shorter than anything we can measure. Therefore, the present is a period
so short that we can say it does not exist, and it separates the future, which
does not exist yet, from the past, which no longer exists. In other words, time
does not exist and therefore we do not exist.”

“How about
people lifting cars off their children,” Alek said. He was sort of getting into
it now. “They say it’s adrenalin, but we all know that no human being can lift
3000 pounds with their bare hands, no matter how much adrenaline you pump into
them.” 

“I’m sure there
are hundreds of things we can’t easily explain,” Maya interrupted. “But why
would any of this mean we are not from the real Earth?”

Herschel looked
at her. “Adaptive physics is the term I believe they use. DNA-based computers
are great for running massive life-based simulations, but they are not as
accurate as silicon processors or quantum computers.”

“They make
things up sometimes,” Alek added, remembering what he had read about them. It
was one of the reasons so few people used them.

“The technical
term is ‘reality interpolation,’” Maya said. “They sort of fill in the gaps
where they are unable to accurately model reality.”

“Yes,” said
Herschel, “and I believe that’s why we have so many unexplained phenomena in
our own so-called reality. They are flaws inherent to DNA-based computing, and
nothing more.”

Maya jumped up
and yelled. “Stop it—both of you!” She then clenched her fists and lowered her
voice. “We are all interfaced much faster than anyone has gone before. I think
that there might be problems with our memories. I don’t think we can trust
everything we remember about the real world.”

“What do you
mean problems?” Alek asked.

She took several
deep breaths before answering. “At this level of interface, our Avatars are
forced to use more of their onboard memory than normal. It’s possible that
those memories are not completely accurate.”

“You mean that
we can’t trust our own memories?”

“Everything he
just said makes sense, doesn’t it?” she whispered. “So, either he’s right and
there are things about our world that make no sense, or our memories are simply
faulty. Take your pick.”

Alek sat back
down on the cot. “This is all making me tired,” he said, feeling suddenly
sleepy.

“Of course,”
Herschel said, nodding his head. “This is a lot to digest so quickly, and we
will have plenty of time together. We will talk no more of this matter for
now.”

Maya looked over
at the makeshift bathroom and then back at Herschel. “Does your shower have hot
water?”

Herschel smiled
at her. “We are in the desert, my dear. All of the water is hot.” When she nodded,
he added, “There are also extra clothes in that box. I suspect that your
Omnisuits will be running out of power soon, so you will need them.”

“He’s right,”
she said, looking at Alek. “Do you want to take a shower first?”

“No. Go ahead,”
he replied, feeling the events of the past few days catching up with him. “I’ll
just lay here and rest my eyes for a few minutes.” He heard the water turn on,
but remembered nothing after that.

o     o     o

Javid Rho sat in
his Tracer watching the movements of the two KaNanee on his dashboard scanner.
They were circling his position in opposite directions and randomly varying
both their distance from him and their speed. No enemy would be able to discern
a pattern from their chaotic movements and therefore, no enemy would get past
them. He smiled when he thought of what he could do with a hundred like them.
He could rebuild the Sentinel force and perhaps even retake Cyberdrome.

He checked his
internal chronometer and wondered how Alek and Maya were faring in the
simulation below. The thought of returning to one of the many Earths disturbed
him. He had been lied to for many years, first as a child and later as a young
adult. His death in that world and subsequent resurrection as a Sentinel had
finally given him a life worth living.

His ship’s
proximity alert went off just as a Tracer swept past the side of his ship at
full Recon speed. It was out of sight before he realized who it had to be. It
was the CeeAut, Persis, and she was going after the KaNanee.

Javid switched
to Recon Mode and pushed his thrusters to maximum as he checked his scanner.
The CeeAut was headed straight for Kay Broon’s Tracer at the point in her
circle where she would be the farthest from her mate. Persis had timed her
attack well, he thought. Pick off the weakest creature when it is the most
vulnerable. Even Jas Kaido would be impressed. That is, if the CeeAut was going
after someone other than his own mate.

He tried to warn
Broon, but the CeeAut was jamming all line-of-sight transmissions in the area.
He hesitated only a moment before opening a channel to the male KaNanee’s ship
far behind him.

“Kaido,” he
called out. “A lone CeeAut is attacking your mate. I’m on my way now, but she
has a head start.”

Kaido’s smiling
face appeared on Javid’s dashboard. “Audacious creatures aren’t they, Rho?” he
said. “I regret that I will not be there in time to watch Kay gut it myself.”

“You do not
understand, Kaido. She has a Tracer—a new one like yours—and she appears to
know how to use it.”

His face on the
monitor went flat. “How?” he asked, but then changed the topic. “Where are you?
How far away?”

“Too far away to
help,” Javid admitted.

Jas Kaido roared
and then abruptly shut off communications.

Javid boosted
his scanner to maximum range and saw that Kay Broon’s Tracer was veering off
from her original path. Good. He thought. She must have detected the
approaching CeeAut Tracer.

Just then, a
dozen blips appeared at the top edge of his scanner. A second later, even more
appeared on both sides. Within moments, more than a hundred hostile targets surrounded
them.

He transmitted a
general distress message, which he knew all Tracers in the sector would receive.

“This is
Sentinel Javid Rho calling CeeAut combatant. I am detecting multiple targets
approaching our position from all directions. You must break off your attack at
once so that we might combine forces.”