Light Shaper, page 9
Tanner shook his head. “No. Not at all. She’s a valuable member of my team, one of the few people who know the full extent of what I plan on doing. As long as she has unlimited budget to do her research, she is happy, and so am I. I actually called you to talk about somebody else. A young art student. At the moment, I would like you and your Trackers to keep tabs on him, tell me what he does and who he sees. Scout out likely locations to take him out later without arousing too much suspicion.”
“Who is he?”
Tanner hit the surface of his desk, and a screen flickered to life, showing biometric data and several pictures of a man.
“Aaron Blake, formerly enrolled in the Visual Arts department of the University of Aurora. A few hours ago he logged into Otherlife illegally and had a rather significant interaction with an element of our network architecture. It could have unforeseen repercussions on the experience of our user base, or even change the entire simulation structure from the way it is now.”
Diana Herrera remained unimpressed. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
Tanner sighed. “I forget you have never tried Otherlife, Diana. Even though I’ve given you a free lifetime subscription.”
She chuckled, shaking her head. Her short glossy black hair caught the light from the lamps nicely. Not for the first time, Tanner felt a stirring of interest for her. “The day I accept something for free from you is a day you think of me as another employee, Richard. I’ve seen how you treat your employees. No, thank you.”
“Well, my offer still stands. It’s not important that you understand the monumental advances that this boy could be ushering in to the entire Otherlife paradigm, if we could replicate the unbelievably realistic simulation he was able to make while inside the system. When considered from a purely economic point of view, such a new level of realism would make me the richest person on the planet, and probably the most important one as long as I control Otherlife as I do now.”
“Sounds like a win-win to me,” Diana said, casually looking over the information on Blake displayed on the screen. Tanner knew that she was already memorizing data. She was the best mercenary in Aurora for a reason, after all. “Are you afraid that he will sell your secrets to somebody else? Is that why we’re going to track him?”
Tanner laughed. “Not at all. Even if he wanted to sell something, the technology we have is unique. No other city in the world has anything even remotely resembling it, and our own science is decades if not hundreds of years away from reaching the level of development during which the basis for Otherlife was created. I’m concerned that this boy will do something internally, in fact. Within the system itself. Let’s just say I don’t want him connecting again unless I am supervising it closely.”
Diana blinked. “How am I supposed to track him if he will be doing his suspicious activities inside your damn system?”
“You won’t have to. He’s coming here in a few hours. You can track him as soon as he leaves this building.”
Diana arched an eyebrow. “How so?”
Tanner sighed and rubbed his temples.
“Because, somehow, someway, somebody forwarded the log of Aaron Blake’s illegal login session to our Legal Department. I intended to keep it secret, or at least as secret as possible, but now too many people know. He was summoned to CradleCorp as per standard protocol. Legal threatened him with arrest and a possible trial, and they are confident he will come in the morning. They will offer him the usual settlement, and the most likely outcome is that Blake will accept to work for us for a little while to pay off his debt.”
“Sounds like it would be good for you. If you have the kid working here, then it will be easier to monitor his activity.”
“Yes, but it also makes it even more likely that he will connect to Otherlife again, unsupervised, and the consequences could be catastrophic. I wanted to get rid of him quietly, but now it cannot be done. If Blake disappears after having been threatened by our Legal Department, we will have a PR nightmare to deal with. This is why, for the time being, I just want him tracked. I will want him eliminated sooner or later, but first I need a good excuse. You are to stand at the ready with your men so when I give the order it can be done.”
Herrera nodded in the direction of Blake’s picture, still hovering between them and labeled “Aaron Blake.” “For such a young kid, he’s sure got you scared, Richard. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you this worked up over anyone.”
“Just do your job,” Tanner snapped. “The rest is none of your business.”
Diana rolled her eyes. “As you wish. Just send that information on this boy over to me, and we’ll begin tracking him. If you want anything else done, you know how to contact me. I expect the first half of the payment to be in my legal bank account by tomorrow morning, as usual.”
“I already have transferred the money,” Tanner said. “I will contact you when I need you to do anything… drastic.”
“Okay.”
“One more thing, Diana,” Tanner said. “It’s nice to see you again.”
His eyes appraised her earnestly, alight with an unspoken invitation. Herrera’s gaze lingered on him. Herrera liked power, as Tanner knew all too well. Business came first, though, as usual. And until this job was done, Tanner was all but certain there would be nothing else in her mind.
Diana Herrera didn’t say good-bye. She simply left by the concealed entrance she had used to get in. Tanner watched her go, and as soon as he was alone, he closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.
He had been livid when he had found out that someone had forwarded Blake’s illegal login information to Legal, and he still was upset. He had been careful. None of the people who knew about the strange interaction between Blake and Atlas could have shared the information. Tanner had verified that personally. That only left one option, though, and the implications of it were scary.
If no person had forwarded the data, then it had been the machine itself. Atlas wanted Blake to come back to CradleCorp, to force him back, and it had been acting on its own.
Almost as if it were already self-aware.
Chapter Seven
IT MUST have been the heat in his room that triggered the dream. Barrow knew he was asleep, but as usual he was forced to go through each moment of the horrible recollection, reliving the distorted echoes of images and sounds that came to haunt him every time he had the nightmare.
It was night in the dream and unbearably hot because of the fire. Somebody was screaming. Barrow was crawling through a narrow tunnel, desperately trying to get there and help, to do something, to answer the cries before it was too late. He couldn’t go more quickly, though. It was a nightmare precisely because he never could. The tunnel was long, too long, and soon it transformed into a ventilation shaft that still had no end no matter how much he hurried. The metal amplified the sounds of his passing and, of course, the ragged voices. The screams coming his way intensified, and it was not just one person screaming now that he was closer but several people, and every now and then a couple of the voices would call his name.
Barrow found himself suddenly at an intersection in the constricted space and looked all over for the way forward. There was nothing to see except gray fog that choked him, coming from everywhere at once, limiting his motion, making him go even more slowly than before. One hand was stretched out before him to feel the way. He took a right turn blindly. It turned out to be the right choice.
It was hotter here, the metal plates under his hands scalding. Now the fog was turning to smoke, and he was choking on it, coughing, eyes watering and the unbearable heat threatening to make him pass out or back away, but he couldn’t give up because he knew those two screams were for him, and if he didn’t go and save them, then nobody would go. He crawled around a corner, stumbling, and the screams were abruptly cut off. He was no longer in the shaft but standing on top of a building, looking at the fire raging below. He saw a window explode in a deadly shower of glass shards propelled by superheated air. There was a deep, low rumbling in the ground, and at first he thought it was an earthquake, and he remembered his mother’s voice telling him Aurora was earthquake territory, not as bad as ruined LA, but you could still feel them every so often….
Barrow looked down. He was floating in midair, motionless and helpless to go back down. The ground was very far below, and it was dark, so dark—and then he looked up and it was black, the smoke engulfing him again, the sensation of oppression stronger than before. There were no screams anymore, only retching coughs coming from somewhere very close, and then he stopped. He was back in the ventilation shaft. His hand touched something incongruously cool and smooth. It was in his way, and it was very, very heavy. He pushed against it, desperate to get to the other side, hearing the pleas for help that were little more than whispers now, breathing in the fumes, his hands slippery with his own sweat. It wouldn’t budge. It never did, and in his dreams it was even worse because the slab of concrete seemed to grow heavier and heavier the more he pushed against it until it began to fall under its own terrible weight, threatening to crush him underneath it. There was no way out, no way to turn around even if he wanted to. The slab was pressing down on his back now, pinning him in the heat and the death of the flames.
Barrow woke up. He did not jump up in bed or cry out or any of that. He merely opened his eyes suddenly, a single drop of sweat running down the side of his brow. He stared up at the motionless ceiling fan that had broken down several months ago. His apartment was quiet, and golden light was streaming through the grimy window on his right. He breathed long and deep until he was convinced that his heart rate had gone back to normal. Only then did he allow himself to move, sitting up and tossing away his sweat-dampened sheet.
From the corner of his eye, Barrow thought he saw something move in the shadows. Something dark that had been watching him as he slept. He shivered and looked more closely. He was alone.
He closed his eyes briefly, half out of bed, as he tried to banish the memory of that awful recurring nightmare. He hated it, not because it forced him to remember but because of how helpless the dream made him feel. A little bit of it carried over into the real world every time he had it, and Barrow couldn’t stand it.
He stood up. He was completely naked because of the heat, and as he walked up to look out the window, his muscular form was clearly outlined against the sunlight streaming in from outside. Barrow ran a hand through his damp hair and shook his head as if that would help to dislodge the residue of anxiety the dream always left in him. And the anger. It was a horrible kind of soul-consuming anger born of helplessness, one that he had for many years directed at himself. In response to the surge of emotion, he reached up with his right hand to clasp the half-melted key that hung from his neck and said a wordless prayer, as he had learned to do after each time he had the nightmare. It didn’t help much, but the ritual was soothing in a small way. It helped him calm down, helped him let go of that rage.
Barrow stretched, deliberately taking his mind away from the dark memories of days long gone with practiced smoothness. He thought about the fact that he should probably invest in a proper air-conditioning unit if he wanted to survive the coming summer in Aurora. His apartment was in the worst possible position, the west-facing façade of a very tall structure sandwiched between two other buildings. Barrow had a decent enough view of the city below, but the heat trapped by the buildings got caught in the middle, making the room’s temperature stifling even in winter. Having the window open actually made things worse, since the air outside was often hotter than inside, as well as very dry. The one good thing about this place was that the plumbing was good. Barrow always had cool water to shower and wash his face, which he did several times a day.
Barrow went to the bathroom and relieved himself. When he was done, he glanced at his watch casually and did a double take. It was almost evening.
Confused, Barrow called up the time on his phone, and it confirmed that it was sunset time already, which explained the heat and also the color of the sunlight reaching his window. Shadows were darker at this time of day. The reds and golds and oranges were deeper, richer. Barrow opened the window and stuck his head out into the hot city evening. Nightfall was an hour or so away. He had slept through the entire morning and early afternoon.
He turned on the shower and escaped into the blessed coolness of the water pouring forth from above. He took his time, enjoying the sensation as well as making sure he was clean. Afterward, he shaved quickly and trimmed his short beard. For maybe the fifth time that month, he thought about shaving all his hair so he would be cooler in the awful heat, but he decided against it. He looked good with his hair like that, short and neat without being too military style. He had gotten the red hair from his mother, and it was the same fiery shade as the sunset outside his window. He liked it, and so for the fifth time, he decided against shaving his head bald.
He felt hungry and a little woozy from the change in his body’s schedule, but he imagined he would be okay with it in a couple days. He was a night-shift Otherlife Security Guard now, and he had to start living like one. How hard could it be to teach himself to sleep during the day and be awake at night, after all? Besides, having a schedule like this had its advantages. He was not due at work for another four hours. It was plenty of time to go to the gym, have a good workout, and come back to change. Which reminded him.
He toweled dry, already feeling hot again, and knelt in front of a minibar next to the shower in his bathroom. He opened the door, and a little light inside flicked on, illuminating dozens upon dozens of little glass bottles that were clearly labeled with the many different chemical compounds they carried inside. They were set in neat racks, each one identified according to the day it would be used and also to its date of purchase to ensure that Barrow did not waste any of the doses by overlooking something he had bought some time ago. His organization system worked well, and it had become so automatic that he reached inside, grabbed two different vials and an unopened disposable syringe, and closed the door without even a second look at what he grabbed.
He set the little vials side by side on the bathroom sink and opened the syringe. He expelled all the air from it and then picked up the first of the vials. He punched the syringe inside it, puncturing its seal, and extracted the entire liquid until it was ready to inject. The liquid was colorless, and it looked like water, although it most definitely wasn’t water. When Barrow was certain he had gotten every last drop, he discarded the glass vial and punched the now-full syringe into the second vial. He pushed down with his thumb, expertly emptying the contents into it so they would mix with the liquid inside the new receptacle. When the mixing was complete, Barrow flicked the vial slightly with the tip of his finger and then extracted the mixture back into the syringe. When he had it all, he extended his left forearm and found a vein easily, outlined as they were against his clearly defined muscles.
He injected carefully but quickly and emptied the contents of the mixture into his bloodstream. When he was done, he carefully pulled out the syringe, dumped it in the garbage, and swabbed at the pinprick with some alcohol and cotton. Then he walked back into his bedroom/living room, still naked, and stopped in front of the full-length body mirror that hung there.
The light from the sun seemed to set fire to his hair, and his eyes were emeralds glowing with defiant intensity as he looked at himself. It was not about vanity for him, not anymore. When he had lost everything he had, Barrow had discovered that the only thing he could depend on was his own body. The only one he could count on was himself. After he had gone free, he had continued working out as he had been doing while he was serving time, and the rewards had been immediate. Looking strong made him feel strong, and for a while it had been the only thing keeping him safe while he had been just another unemployed youth in the streets of Aurora, trying to stay clear of the gangs that controlled the slums and find a decent job where they would not mind that he already had a criminal record.
Barrow grinned as he realized the strange symmetry that had led him to land his first security job so many years ago. If he hadn’t looked big and threatening, he never would have gotten it. Afterward, he had simply kept going. He had kept building up his confidence along with his body until it was like armor he wore, except it was his own skin. When he looked now at the clearly defined abdominal muscles, at the massive shoulders and thick neck that were his, he felt he was looking at something he had built from scratch, something that was his own and nobody could take away. He liked that. He flexed his right biceps just for the heck of it, and the feeling of strength was like another living dimension to his reality, something that kept away the terrors and the emptiness of the night.
Except now he would not be sleeping at night anymore—he had a job again. The thought gave him a little thrill. He was actually excited to work in this new schedule, awake when everybody else was asleep, and asleep while the world was a chaos of busy streets and burning sunlight outside. He would be making good money as well, and he wouldn’t even be working a full eight hours, at least not in real time. It was perfect. Otherlife was the first stroke of good luck he had had in a while.
He got dressed in a pair of shorts and a loose-fitting T-shirt with the sleeves cut out so they wouldn’t bother him where he was working out. He walked the two steps that separated his bed from his tiny kitchen and quickly blended his first meal of the day. He drank it all quickly and packed a turkey breast sandwich for later, eager to get to the gym and work out, and left before the sun had set in the sky.
The streets were busy. Barrow lived on the outer edges of Aurora, in a zone that up to ten years ago had still been part of the slums surrounding the city. It had since been gentrified, although not very successfully, and the outcome had been an area of boxy and cheaply constructed apartment buildings where hundreds of people lived at the very edges of civilization. Barrow didn’t mind. He had been in worse places when he was younger, and he still felt that having a place to call his own was an unbelievable luxury.
