Rebel's Rule (Sim-Verse Book 3), page 3
“There, you should be seeing us now,” Hewitt said.
Taven looked but only saw the dull block wall before him. But then there was a red dot to the left in his field of vision. He turned his whole suit to face it and realized that, like a compass pointing north, there was an amber beacon that he could see through his helmet, some modification Hewitt had made to the suit.
“I’m on the way,” Taven answered. He began walking toward the beacon and then laughed at himself. He wasn’t just a limited human. He was inside the Sim-Verse’s most awesome policing machine.
He began to run, only slowing to take each turn in the tunnel. Right, left, right, left. Always keeping the amber dot in view. He pushed himself, or rather he pushed his suit, seeing what it was really capable of.
The machine’s guts hummed higher, and the fast pounding of Taven’s mech feet became so raucous it lost all definition, roaring like a freight train.
Then Taven spotted a change in the right-left-right-left routine. At the end of this hall was an opening, and he knew he was nearing the library.
Taven threw on his brakes, and to his surprise, the mech suit stopped instantly. The only lag between his command and the machine’s execution was a long skid which threatened to tear apart the floor.
Now in the library, Taven’s amber beacon shut off. He spotted the glow of soft lights in one corner of the room that now seemed massive here in the dark.
“That was quite an impressive entrance,” Hewitt said after Taven lowered his helmet. It was strange to finally see Hewitt out of his white lab coat. He and Mack both wore black tactical vests over blue corporate-issued jump suits along with headsets and headlamps, while Kenna continued to wear her traditional robe.
“Yeah, I thought you were going to bust through the wall,” Mack grinned.
“Isn’t that suit a bit of an overkill?” Hewitt teased.
“Hey, wear ‘em if you got ‘em,” Mack said.
“Yeah, I’d say you’d be using a mech suit too if you had one,” Taven added.”
“We’re working on that,” Hewitt said.
“Gabe’s suit?”
Hewitt smiled, confirming Taven’s guess, and then turned to the wall of books.
Taven had been surprised when Hewitt told him that Meyer Corp had already sent a team to Meta, but he should have figured it out when Hewitt had repaired his mech suit’s shoulder cannon. One day his suit had been in disrepair, the shoulder cannon torn off the day he and Mack had escaped from Meta. And then the next day, his suit had been fixed, good as new.
He’d gotten few explanations but had decided not to look a gift-horse in the mouth. Now he was kicking himself for not paying better attention. Obviously, Meyer Corp had retrieved Gabe’s suit and robbed parts to fix Taven’s. And likely that wasn’t the only secret they’d kept from him.
He couldn’t help but imagine Meyer Corp’s mission team disassembling Gabe’s suit, piece by piece, limb by limb, before stuffing it into jumpers and sending it home. What about Gabe? Taven shuddered at the thought. The Gatekeeper had died at his and Mack’s hands, and he could still remember the gaping hole in his chest plate created by Taven’s energy lance. He wondered what they had done with the body. Even if the suit had been intact, Taven knew it didn’t work for those without a Gatekeeper code. But he also knew people like Hewitt were working on that problem, too.
The quartet shone their lights across the walls of books. Unlike before, the spines of the books didn’t possess numbers on them, and Taven figured that the information inside and outside of the books had been lost when the city went dark.
Mack tugged at a random book, but it was no use. The single volume seemed glued in place.
“It won’t budge,” Mack said, finally giving up.
“I figured as much,” Hewitt said, and Taven wondered how he could figure out anything about this strange place, the nature of the Sim-Verse so disparate from what only months ago had been called reality. Their reality.
“We need to reboot this part of the city,” Hewitt said.
“You think it’ll be that simple?” Mack asked. “Didn’t Iris blow up the CPU or whatever?”
“I don’t think that’s what really happened,” Hewitt explained. “We know the city went dark, and nothing here works any more. But we’ve been assuming that Cat and the kid blew the main computer along with the energy core.”
“Iris merged with the core. I saw her before the city went down,” Taven said.
He saw Kenna grip her flashlight hard, and he thought he heard her teeth grind. Underneath Kenna’s bulletproof veneer was a core teeming with rage, he decided. And who could blame her?
“Yes, but it doesn’t make sense for the Makers to have put all their eggs in this one basket,” Hewitt went on. “I mean, think about it. If we’re all ones and zeros, what are we really talking about when we describe this city? It’s all part of the same computer, somewhere in the base reality. And since our primary simulation didn’t go down instantly when Meta’s core blew, we know that the computer, in the base reality, is still chugging along. It has to be so, because we still exist.”
As always, Hewitt seemed totally unfazed by the nihilistic implications. He was solving a puzzle, and that’s all he cared about.
“But the sims are going down,” Kenna said, her voice a surprise to the others.
“But that’s a recent change,” Hewitt said. “There’s too much of a lag for it to be simply the base reality CPU going down. No, I think this place is more sophisticated, more resilient than that. You said so yourself, Taven. These books contained incredible amounts of information about primary sims and their indexed sub sims. That’s too much processing power to be happening remotely.”
“You’re saying each of these books are little bits of CPU, computer chips?” Taven asked.
“I’m saying this whole city is a cluster of computer chips, and that the core, as we’ve come to call it, is nothing more than an energy buffer, used to regulate power to this section of the base reality computer.”
“There’s only one way to know for sure,” Mack said. All eyes turned to Kenna. “You’re up, Momma.”
Kenna put her flashlight in her robe pocket and raised both hands toward the wall of books. Her palms began to glow, and Taven was surprised to see the color was different than Iris’s. Kenna’s glow was light blue rather than the purple-white he’d seen before, and he wondered if it was because of Kenna’s age or some other factor he didn’t understand about their lost world.
After charging up, Kenna placed her hands onto the shelf. Like a match dunked under water, the blue glow from her hands disappeared, extinguished upon contact with the massive load of books representing an incomprehensible number of simulations.
They watched for several seconds before Taven said, “It’s not working.”
“Give her a second,” Mack replied, and Taven wondered why, yet again, Mack was defending this outsider.
But sure enough, Mack was right, because the shelving near Kenna started coming to life. The books became illuminated, each one flickering on one at a time.
The glow spread left and right from its source, Kenna. As the last set of shelves came online, she let out a soft groan.
“You okay?” Mack checked.
Kenna nodded. “I think so. This feels like all of them.”
Everyone checked, turning around in the room. “Yeah, that’s it,” Hewitt said. “Good job.”
Kenna said nothing, but Mack looked concerned. “Can you hold it?” he asked.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, like she was ashamed that he’d seen her strain. “Do what needs doing.”
“Right, then,” Hewitt said, walking casually down the wall of books. “Um, Taven. From your description—”
“Something isn’t right,” Taven interrupted. He pointed, saying “This section here, they aren’t glowing like the others.”
“That’s a whole wall of books, Taven,” Hewitt replied, scratching his head. “But yeah, I see it too. And they weren’t like this before?”
Taven shook his head. “Let me…” He reached out his hand like he was going to take one of the books off the shelf. Nothing happened automatically, so he took hold of the book and pulled. But it was like before when Mack had tried to heave one out: stuck.
“These work,” Mack said, pulling out one of the illuminated books. He didn’t have to touch it. Like when Cat had first shown Taven the library, the book flew off the shelf at the mere thought of being selected. It hovered in mid-air before projecting a holographic list of numbers and tiles that Taven knew represented primary simulations.
“Hey, be careful,” Taven warned.
Hewitt was looking away from the open book. “What’s different about this one?” Hewitt said, like he was thinking out loud. As he hurried down the row of stuck books, the one that they had opened automatically closed and reshelved itself. Hewitt stopped and pulled a book from the middle of the wall.
“All the other books here are unlit,” Mack noticed. Taven felt frustration at his friend for wasting time stating the obvious.
The one lit book opened, revealing grayed tiles.
“They’re all gone, like the others,” Mack said.
“Not all of them,” Hewitt said, scrolling down further. “There,” he said, stopping the holographic projection. “That one.”
There was a single tile that was still clear, still viable. “Recognize it?” Taven asked.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Hewitt said. “Whatever’s happening to those other sims, obviously, isn’t happening here.”
Hewitt stepped back and pulled something out of a tactical belt on his hip where most team members would have worn a blaster. He raised the rectangular object up and mashed a button. A bright flash burst, and he said, “Sorry. Let me turn that off.”
“You brought a camera?” Mack asked.
“Yeah. Thank Meyer Corp for yet another ancient piece of tech,” Hewitt answered. “Nothing can be tied to the grid. Security, security, security. I just hope this thing actually works,” he said, taking more pictures.
Then Hewitt closed the open book and moved to the seam where the well-lit books and those that seemed stuck in the shelves met. “It’s changing,” he said. “The dividing line’s moving. Right here,” he pointed.
“D’you see that?” Mack asked. “That one flickered and turned off. And now—” He tried to grab it. “Yep, it’s stuck like the others.”
“That means this one’s next,” Hewitt said. He gave Taven a grim look, and it took him a second to realize what it was that Taven was missing. “Do you recognize this?” Hewitt pointed to the numbers on the spine.
“Those are the vectors, coordinates or something,” Taven answered. “Like the numbers we use in the jumpers. Cat said the sims in each book share closely related EM frequencies.”
“Maybe you’ll recognize this,” Hewitt said, no longer the chuckling, never bothered egghead. He opened the book, showing the tiles of primary sims. The first few tiles were grayed out, and Taven figured they were already affected by the contagion, whatever it was.
“That’s Earth,” Mack said.
“That’s correct,” Hewitt confirmed.
“Another tile just turned gray,” Taven said.
“And they’re going to keep doing that,” Hewitt said calmly. “All the way down the list.”
“That means we’re next,” Mack blurted out.
Just then Kenna groaned again.
“You okay?” Taven asked.
“Yes, but please hurry,” she answered.
“We’re not next,” Hewitt corrected. “Not technically.”
“Close enough,” Mack said. “We don’t have long as fast as those are changing.”
“Not in this temporal configuration,” Hewitt said.
“What’s that mumbo jumbo s’posed to mean?” Mack quipped.
“He’s right,” Taven intervened. “Meta’s the slowest place in the Sim-Verse. If we’re going to do something about this, we have to be somewhere else, someplace moving faster.”
“You want to move faster…to have more time, Boss?”
Apparently, Mack wasn’t grasping the whole relativity thing. “They,” Taven pointed to the next tile that blinked before turning gray, “are moving faster than we are here. So we have to go there,” he pointed to the next tile, “and catch up to their speed and figure out what’s happening before it reaches Earth.”
Hewitt was running toward one of the jumpers, and Kenna let out an uncharacteristically transparent cry of duress.
“Where are you going?” Taven asked while Mack rushed to Kenna’s side.
Kenna gritted her teeth and shouted for him to leave her alone and finish whatever they needed to do.
“I’m going back to the Braun Orbiter so we can make plans from there,” Hewitt said. “I think you know what to do?”
Taven felt like calling him a coward, for rushing home and leaving the dirty work for them to do. But as he considered it, he realized Hewitt was right, that he was taking the next logical step.
“We’ll meet you back there when we have answers,” Taven said.
Hewitt gave a hurried salute that seemed to Taven to say good luck because you’re going to need it, and then he disappeared inside the jumper which, seconds later, flashed away.
“We’re going there?” Mack asked, pointing at the next clear tile. “What if whatever’s happening to the others happens to us?”
“That’s what I’m counting on,” Taven said. “But we’re gonna get out before it’s too late.”
“How do you know that, Boss?”
“Because we have to.” Taven didn’t believe his own words, but he hoped Mack did.
Kenna began exhaling repeated groans, and Taven knew he had to hurry.
“You ready?” he asked Mack.
“Nope. You?”
Taven raised his helmet. “No, but what else is new?” Then he mentally selected the next tile, and right as Kenna’s groan turned into a high-pitched cry, the world around him dissolved.
CHAPTER 6
TWO THINGS GREETED Taven when he came through. One was snow, which landed on his helmet and melted, smearing his suit’s view camera. The second thing was Kenna’s scream which, by the time Taven had drawn down his helmet, had ceased.
“It’s okay,” Mack said, touching her arm to reassure her.
She pulled her arm away and raised her hood. “I’m fine,” she said coldly.
Taven took inventory of their surroundings. The snow-covered landscape matched the sky, a whitish-gray. They were in a shallow valley that might have had green grass growing in it if this world had such a thing as summer. The steep hills surrounding them had coniferous trees on them, and above the evergreen trees rose barren cliffs. None of this was easy to see through the snowfall, and the setting sun on the horizon promised that visual conditions were about to get much worse.
“Did we go to the right one?” Mack asked.
“Yeah, this was the next tile, the next primary sim to be shut down,” Taven answered.
“And remind me again why coming here was a good idea?” Mack asked.
“I’m not so sure it was, but we have to see what we’re up against and figure out who or what is doing this.”
“Um, Boss. I think you and I both know who is behind this.”
“She is,” Kenna said, spitting out the distasteful words.
“We don’t actually know that,” Taven said, though he couldn’t imagine another explanation.
“Well, whatever we do, we better hurry before it gets dark,” Mack said. “What are we looking for anyway?”
“Anything but snow,” Taven answered sarcastically.
Kenna, who Taven was starting to believe had never been exposed to sarcasm, said, “What about that?”
He turned to see her pointing at the tops of nearby trees, and then he spotted smoke rising in the distance.
“That’s as good a guess as any,” Taven said. “Let’s get moving.”
They marched toward the tree line, but before they reached it, Taven heard a crack beneath his feet. Then, before he could react, his heavy mech feet crashed through a thin layer of ice into a small but fast-moving brook.
“You okay, Boss?” Mack asked, safely jumping across the hidden creek.
“I think so,” Taven said, but as he tried to step out of the water, his oversized tree-trunk feet slipped, and he crashed down onto his metal hands and knees.
Kenna ran forward and began trying to assist Taven. “No, stand back,” he told her. Once she did, he jumped up and rose some fifteen-plus feet into the air, and as his feet came to the ground, he heard the jets kick on, simultaneously cushioning his landing and melting snow beneath him.
“So much for a quiet entrance,” Mack said.
Taven turned and expected to see Mack’s usual goofy grin, but the look on his face told Taven something was up. He searched the tree line where Mack’s gaze was fixed and realized they were not alone.
Dozens of people hid behind trees, arms, legs, and faces sticking out here and there. Taven raised his helmet and tried to weigh his options. But Mack acted before he had a chance to think.
“We come in peace,” Mack announced, drawing out his words as if these people were new to Commerce. Taven knew that, if these people spoke at all, his auto-translate Gatekeeper ability would have kicked in by now.
A single figure stepped out from behind a bush. As the man walked forward, Taven thought he was watching a veritable cave man. The bearded man with long hair wore animal skins and carried a wooden club. It was like something out of a natural history museum, and Taven wondered if these people were protohumans, set up by the Makers to test out the origins of humanity. The sun was gone now, but as the man slowly trekked out of the woods, Taven noticed twin moons rising above the trees. They were white like Earth’s moon but different sizes, and there was a third celestial body that was red, maybe a nearby planet. The stars were stunningly beautiful, and it seemed beyond surreal to think that this world was about to be snuffed out.
