“Whatever works, my friend. Whatever keeps you getting up in the morning and putting your feet on the damn platform.”
“What happens when you get up but don’t put your feet on the damn platform?”
“You get dropped.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You be careful,” Fenya said, finishing her tepid water with an unsatisfied gulp. “Too much thinking can do you in, and you’ve got more going around in that head of yours than most of us. You’ve gotta keep going. Don’t you want a raise – end up in the hi-secs?”
“What we’re all supposed to want, isn’t it? Nice big module in the hi-secs? Real food pipe, rather than monthly nuke-pac deposits? I don’t think I want it anymore. I did once, maybe. If I did still, I’d be pushing and getting something out of chasing traces. The want has gone, and I don’t know what I need.”
“Get some more sleep. You could use some. It’s getting too dark under your eyes.”
“I have dreams.”
“Then dial your comp-couch up high. Shut ’em out. Get yourself some real oblivion.”
She smiled to acknowledge Fenya’s words. She was a friend trying to help.
Fenya held her gaze for a moment then sighed and got to her feet. “Come on. Boots on. That’s twenty mins done. Back to our pods we go.”
Celeste followed Fenya to the pressure-elevator, staying a few steps behind.
“Come on, Celeste. All aboard.”
Celeste jumped on as the elevator started to rise with a wheeze of imperfect pressure. She tried to focus, readjust and find her headspace as she returned to her pod. It wasn’t coming together. London bridge kept falling down. And she had no king’s horses and men to put her back together again.
Chapter Eight
Breda was there, outside the pod, waiting. “You’re a minute over. It’ll be deducted from your lifespan.”
That meant an hour less in the comp-couch later on, and, at the end of her career, deduction from Crawl life-support systems. Work hard and you live longer to work harder. Work not so hard, and your life expectancy reduced. She’d left the nuke-pac untouched on the tray downstairs. That was stupid. She’d not regenned enough. It’d felt good to talk to Fenya, but now she was back, a weight was settling over her.
Celeste climbed obediently into the pod and tried to focus, to drop inside herself and find the still-point before engaging her soulwire.
“That’s enough prep. Connect,” Breda ordered.
Celeste watched Breda open a panel on the pod’s base and punch in the override; a Compound policy addition that hijacked the soulwire and forced a user to connect with the Flood.
…Fuuuck…
Celeste plunged in with all the grace and control of having her head shoved underwater. She floundered and thrashed as the architecture of the Flood assembled in a white storm of violent noise. She reached out. It all felt like the falling. She saw the flows rush at her like out-of-control hub-cars. There was a trace within reach. She lunged for it without thinking and went in, hoping to find some space and stability there.
……
“Excuse me, Miss, are you all right?”
She looked around and saw she was in a restaurant under a geodesic dome. Outside was a cratered grey-white landscape. She was on the moon – this was Antara. Diners, all wearing fine black-tie evening wear, sat at the faux-wood tables scattered in every direction. As she watched, a sequinned dress lost definition and a suit jacket degraded into a glimpse of standard issue fibe-wear.
The rich aren’t as bigly in sheckles as they pretend to be. Not so yuge above us Crawlers after all.
Her gaze turned towards the Earth cresting over the far horizon outside the dome – not blue, white, and beautiful as it was in the old pictographs but grey, yellow and brown, with a darkness eclipsing much of its surface. From here, the Crawl looked like cancer eating up the Earth while the planet slept in coma. It was near enough truth. The vibrations from the mining drills were said to be the cause of most Crawl-quakes. Down went the gargantuan machines to chew up the Earth and eke out whatever scant resources remained buried in her crust. Sometimes, they caught on something, or disturbed the aged tectonic plates so bad the whole Crawl suffered for it.
Still, ugly as it was, there remained a majesty and wonder in seeing the defiled Earth rise.
Must be a fantasy trace, she thought. No-one in the Flood could’ve been this high up and come back down. The moon was to the hi-secs as heaven was to hell.
Celeste took a moment to appraise who she was in this trace: a statuesque beauty with a coil of platinum blonde hair falling over one shoulder. She ran her perfectly manicured hands over the red silk dress her body was clad in. Trace it might be, but the dress felt Real. Celeste had never possessed a shred of Real. She blinked to stop tears forming in her eyes. A touch of Real could get you lost in a trace; the mem-feel was enough to tip you over the edge.
A young man was standing by her side, a waiter dressed in a corroded black-tie holograph, holding a home-pad. Celeste could see the sweat beading his skin, which was pale with marks of unlasered acne. His eyes were dull and underscored by shadows, He had prematurely greying hair that hung lank and greasy.
“Can I take your order, please?”
Celeste realised she was holding a menu, and looked down at it. The words on it wouldn’t form. Was there a glitch in the trace? She blinked again and shook her head, trying to clear away a strange black patch that was spreading over her vision, much like how the shadow of the Crawl obscured the Earth’s surface.
“Excuse me, Miss. Are you all right?”
Celeste shook her head again, opened and closed her eyes. The darkness wouldn’t go away.
“I’m sorry to hear that. May I get you some refreshment…?”
The words on the menu had become clear, and she didn’t like what she saw. The same words, repeating themselves in standard and italic fonts. She could feel a pressure building in her head. A convulsion shook through the body she was wearing, travelling from her feet up to her head. Something was wrong with the face; it felt loose, like it was hanging off the bone. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words that came out were spoken by something other, though they were also the words printed across the menu.
“The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round.”
She felt herself going into a spasm as the words continued to spill out.
“…round and round… all day long…”
“Can I help you?” the waiter’s words, as he crumpled to the ground, were nonsensical and as pointless as her own. She felt the need to put her hand over his mouth, to stop him from saying those words again. They felt like a trigger-command – a piece of unknown code that was causing a chain reaction.
Through her failing eyes, she saw the other diners, all trembling and transfixed, staring into space as if their bodies had been switched off. Were some of them speaking their own empty words as a litany? She couldn’t be sure their lips were moving. Had this already gone too far? She could see the waiter crawling on his side towards her, hand reaching out to seal her mouth shut, to stop whatever was happening. But Celeste knew the words would not be stopped so easily. They would undo his hand, cut through it and continue decreating the reality around them until there was nothing left. The truth of this was a vibration coursing through her bones that forced the words out again. “…the wheels on the bus go round and round, all day long…”
The waiter joined her in spasm, jerking and twisting across the polished floor. She watched his flesh fall away and dark fluid pour thickly from the holes opening like mouths in his body. The other occupants of the restaurant were suffering a similar fate. She could no longer see them, but she could hear their pain as transmission.