Bob watched dark shadows sweep across the ocean. He rose to his feet.
“What do you think?” Bob asked the priest. They began walking together, up the beach toward the children.
The priest hung his head. “It matters little what I think.”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard you say that.”
“I think our quest is suicide.” The priest looked into Bob’s eyes. “But not to act is also suicide.”
They walked in silence until they were near the children. No adults were in sight. One of them ran up to Bob, splashing through the water.
“What’s your name?” Bob asked.
The young boy, dressed in swimming shorts and not more than seven or eight, looked into Bob’s eyes. “You can call me what you like.”
Bob reached down and ruffled the boy’s hair. “That’s a strange name. What are you doing here?”
“Whatever you want,” replied the boy.
All of the children were staring at Bob. There were six of them, playing what looked like a game of tag. The thatched roofs of huts stood over the tops of sand dunes lining the beach.
Bob frowned. He checked their metatags. These were proxxids, simulated children derived from copyrights of real human DNA. They shouldn’t be here. Not alone. They were supposed to be with their copyright owners. “Are your parents over there somewhere?” Bob waved a hand toward the huts.
The boy smiled. “No.”
Bob’s smile faded and dread seeped into his veins. “Then why are you here?” But he already knew.
The priest grabbed Bob’s arm. “We should go.”
“We’re here for you,” the boy replied to Bob. He reached to hold Bob’s hand.
Bob hadn’t dug into the structure of this world when they arrived. He’d been happy just to get out of his mind, but now he spun under the fabric of it—hundreds, no, thousands of children, all waiting to please. To pleasure. Bob shrugged off the priest, spinning to face him. “What is this?”
“You wanted a world to escape into, and this was the only one firewalled off deep enough to be safe.”
Bob clenched his jaw, veins popping out in his neck. “Go play with your friends,” he stuttered to the boy.
He’d heard rumors of these worlds. It was disgusting. Even in a virtual body, he felt like he was going to vomit, his skin crawling as he watched the children returning to their game.
“We need to go,” the priest whispered. “The transport had left already. We’re going to lose the connection to this world.”
“And leave them here?”
“This is the only world they know,” replied the priest. “They know no different.”
Proxxids had emotions, if not much in the way of higher cognitive functioning. “We can’t leave them.”
The priest looked into Bob’s eyes. “There’s nothing we can do.”
He looked at the children, playing again, unaware. There was something he could do.
They’d never know.
“Help me,” said Bob to the priest. As the connection faded, Bob flexed his mind, reaching into the fabric of the world, down into its very core. Twisting, he began pulling it apart, ripping it out of the network. In the blink of an eye it ceased to exist, and so had the proxxids.
But then so did their suffering.
Or perhaps, so did Bob’s.
8
Sid watched the spider-bots hovering overhead, darting between hanging orchids while they spooled out high-tensile microfilaments behind them. They were weaving the structure of a protective shell between blossoming boughs in a thicket of tea trees, sending down a rain of white petals as they quivered the branches. Sid turned to look at Zoraster, busy unpacking his rifle and gear that had arrived via a delivery drone.
“You’re being quiet. Anything wrong?”
“Wrong?” Zoraster grunted. “What could be wrong? I spent the worst years of my life fighting my way out of this place.” His huge nostrils flared. “And now I risk my life to get back in.”
Sid swiveled the bot he was inhabiting to get a view down the valley. He could just see Allied headquarters in a straight line-of-sight from their perch on the opposite wall of a valley. Arunchal, sandwiched between China and India, was still a strikingly beautiful place despite the wars that had gripped it for decades. Its valleys were filled with a kaleidoscope of lush tropical forests that rose into the Himalayas.
“Why did you volunteer to come, then?” Sid asked.
“Because I know this place better than anyone.”
An iridescent blue butterfly fluttered past Sid. “And because you believe this apocalypse stuff?”
Throwing a bag of gear onto the ground, Zoraster shook his shaggy head. “Don’t you?” He didn’t look Sid’s bot in the eye. “All of that is human legend—you should try a mile in my shoes. Grillas have no past, no future, just a single generation damned into existence to fight a war we had no stake in. So excuse me if I don’t get shivers when a ghost story about the end of humanity comes up.”
Sid didn’t say anything. For him, the Terra Novan’s background data was convincing. Mohesha had almost decoded the way the quasi-crystals worked. The technology was advanced, but not that much more. For Sid, it was an opportunity to analyze a new system.
“You want to know why I’m here? What I believe in? Is that what you’re asking?” continued Zoraster. “I fight for my friends. The Terra Novans are the only ones who’ve given equal human rights to Grillas. They believe this is happening, and I believe in them. It’s as simple as that.”
Sid nodded. He didn’t need to believe Tyrel or not. Soon Sid would be inside this nervenet thing and could find out what it was for himself.
“Speaking of friends,” Zoraster added, “your friend Bob didn’t seem too friendly.”
Sid had to agree. The Council meeting was the first and only time Sid had a chance to talk with Bob after they lost track of each other, but he’d been evasive. “Yeah, but that’s not like him. He’s usually the friendliest person you’ll ever meet.”
“If you say so,” Zoraster grunted.
“He is.” Sid buzzed his drone down to pick up the gun sight for Zoraster’s rifle. “Even as a stoned surfer, he was an inspiration, doing things nobody else could do, always talking to people. But I introduced you and Sibeal at that meeting, and barely a peep. Something happened to him in that desert.”
Sid tried talking to Bob about what happened in New York, if he knew anything about the pssi weapon that was unleashed, if he was mad at Sid for the synthetic-K. Bob said he didn’t know anything. Sid asked about his escape across the desert, but Bob just mumbled about suffering and redemption. The only thing Bob said, after Tyrel dropped the bomb about the ancient nervenet, was, “Isn’t the White Rider the savior in the Apocalypse?”
It was an odd comment, and one that worried Sid. Was Bob angry at him?
“Your friend is fine.” Zoraster lifted his rifle onto a platform and began sighting down its barrel at Allied headquarters. “He just got a little knocked around. Not sure what he’s going to do when he gets to the Atopian perimeter.” Zoraster looked away from Allied headquarters and at Sid. “But then you’re Atopians. You must have a trick or two up your sleeve.”
Only just. There was a worryingly thin list of options, especially when Jimmy probably knew they’d be coming at him. Sid nodded without conviction.
Sid switched topics. “So Tyrel sent you to New York to get me?” He’d researched Zoraster since they met. In his way he was famous—he’d gone AWOL from Allied forces to rescue his mother, a non-uplifted gorilla, when she’d been scheduled for termination. He’d ended up seeking asylum in the African Union.
“You and Bob, yeah, but I messed that up.” Zoraster laughed. “Sorry about roughing you up a little. Just wanted to see what made you tick.” His smile disappeared. “By some miracle Bob got through, but I’m not going to be counting on miracles this time.” He stared down the barrel of his rifle. It was a precision mass-driver.