She'd seldom encountered true darkness. Above ground, even a cloudy, moonless night still possessed some faint trace of light. Within the palace where she'd grown up, there were many shadows, but she was never far from a torch or lantern. When she'd had her powers, she could create light simply by sprinkling dust in the air. She sat up, tossing off the blanket that covered her, taking a deep breath to calm her racing heart. She felt stupid. She was too old to be frightened of the dark.
She groped for the visor she'd placed beside her rolled up coat that she used as a pillow. The walls of the mine came into sharp focus as she slipped it on, not that there was much worth looking at. They were in a long shaft of black stone. Up was rock, down was rock, side to side was rock. The only living things to be seen were Shay and Lizard. Shay was sitting up, his back to the wall. He already had his visor on, hiding his eyes. The short braid he normally wore had come undone, and his red hair lay about his face in tangles. He hadn't shaved in a week, and the shadow of stubble around his mouth made him look older. Coal dust had darkened the creases of his skin. His shotgun was in his lap, grasped with both hands. Life underground was proving hard on Shay. He'd grown increasingly silent the deeper they moved into the earth.
The cool, dank tunnels were also taking a toll on Lizard. The little earth-dragon was pressed up against Shay, staring at Jandra with a wide-eyed gaze. He looked worried.
"Have long have you been awake?" Jandra asked.
"You were talking in your sleep again," said Shay. "You woke up screaming."
"Did I?" Jandra cocked her head. She had a fleeting memory of a woman shouting, but it was ephemeral, the echo of an echo. "What did I say?"
"You were talking to someone named Cassie," said Shay. "Just before you woke, you screamed, 'It's mine!'"
Jandra brushed the hair back from her forehead, puzzling over this revelation. She thought about her tongue, how it could possibly speak without her mind controlling it, and grew aware of the bad taste in her mouth. "I need water," she said.
Shay held out the leather canteen. She uncorked it and took a deep drink. The water had a sulfurous taint to it. There were numerous streams and pools in the mine, but most tasted like rotten eggs. It wasn't pleasant to drink, but neither was it dangerous. Vendevorex had provided her with a thorough education in chemistry. Sulfur posed no harm to the human body when ingested. The main downside was that her spit was taking on the foul odor. In fact, she was starting to reek, period. When she'd still been in control of her nanotech, the tiny machines had kept her skin clean, her breath fresh, and her hair untangled. Low tech grooming was tedious and almost pointless in a coal mine, where every surface she touched sullied her further.
She put the jug down and wiped her lips with the back of her hand, feeling the coarse grit that covered both her hands and her mouth. The black grit reminded her of the black sand of an oil-covered beach-one of Jazz's memories.
"Can you remember your dream?" Shay asked. "Who's Cassie?"
"My sister." Jandra cringed. "I mean, Jazz's sister. I don't remember the dream directly. I feel like my brain is sorting through all these extra memories. Jazz's life story is starting to make sense finally. All the random, disconnected memories are becoming a coherent sequence of events."
"A lot of slaves worshipped the goddess, but I wasn't a believer," said Shay. "It's hard to swallow the idea that she was real."
Lizard jerked his head upward when Shay said the word "swallow." The little beast's vocabulary was limited, but he knew all the words connected to food.
"Real is a relative term. Jasmine Robertson wasn't a goddess. She was a human, born a thousand years ago."
"I've read about that time," said Shay. "The Human Age. It must have been like paradise."
"Not quite," said Jandra. "Human civilization took a toll upon the earth. Vast areas of the globe had their native species plowed under and replaced with agriculture based on a few select plants, like corn. The soil had to be constantly replenished with petroleum-based chemicals. Poisons meant to fight pests worked their way into the groundwater. Water was also contaminated by runoff from digging into the earth for various minerals. To get at coal, humans would tear down entire mountain ranges. They burned that coal non-stop for two centuries, forever altering the atmosphere."
"Was the sky of the whole world like the sky over Dragon Forge?"
"Not quite. They constantly refined technology to make it cleaner. That's one reason Jazz's memories confuse me. She could have done so much to make the world better with her brilliance. Instead, she decided to tear the world down."
"Was she insane?"
"No. She was a genius, and something of an outsider, but not insane. Her sister, Cassie, had been born blind due to a side effect of a drug her mother had taken while she was pregnant. Cassie was an early recipient of artificial retinas. Jazz was fascinated by technology, and by biology, and, well, by everything, really. She wasn't insane-she was… overly confident. She thought she understood the world's problems and could fix them. Fixing the world, unfortunately, meant cutting the world's human population from eight billion to eighty million."
"I can't even imagine eight billion people," said Shay. "Where did everyone stand?"
"The world's bigger than you can imagine," said Jandra. "I don't think I really grasped just how big it was until Jazz took me to the moon."
"To the… you mean, you've been… the moon?"
Jandra nodded.
"How? I mean, not even dragons fly that high, do they?"
"Jazz knew a short cut. There's apparently a different kind of space that exists under our reality. Jazz called it underspace. She stole the technology for traveling through it from Atlantis."
Shay scratched his head. She sensed that her explanations were only making things worse. "Atlantis is an alien artifact that arrived on Earth at the tipping point of its environmental collapse. It was a machine intelligence programmed for almost perfect altruism-a living city designed to serve the needs of its citizens. It could have ushered in a true golden age… except, Jazz was one of the first people to encounter it. While the machine intelligence was far more advanced than anything she'd ever experienced, she was able to subtly alter its mission. She stopped its altruism at the edges of its immediate environment. The humans who went to live in Atlantis are effectively immortal. The city ignores the rest of the world. Jazz has since reduced mankind to a feral state, devoid of advanced technology. She thinks this is the wisest path for the long-term health of the world."
Shay nodded. If he didn't understand, at least he was humoring her. "You're still talking about Jazz in the present tense."
Jandra lowered her head as she realized he was right.
"What if I'm using the present tense because she's still alive?" Jandra whispered. "I need to get a genie back so I can fix my brain. I think… I think she's slowly pushing me out of my own memories." Despite her best efforts to hold them back, tears trickled down her cheeks.
Shay scooted over toward her. He placed his fingers gently on the back of her hand. Lizard's small claws fell next to them. She shuddered.
"Whenever… I go… to sleep," she said between sobs, "I'm afraid… I won't wake up as me."
Shay slid beside her. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "Shh," he said, in a soothing tone. "You're just getting scared by a few bad dreams."
"No!" she protested. "You don't understand. Nothing terrifies me more than losing my identity. I was raised by a dragon. I've always been confused about who I am."
Lizard looked up at her with a concerned expression. Shay squeezed her hand more tightly.