Manifestations (11 page)

Gomez had built himself a watchtower on the third pile in their zone. It wasn’t the tallest of the stacks, but it had a lot of old military vehicles that were easy to climb and the missing doors and windows formed tunnels he could run through. His scouting point was an old cockpit, separated from the ginormous fuselage it must have once guided. The portals were broken out and let the breeze through — when there was one.

He kept some of his treasures here: a pair of oculars he’d found, strips of smart wire and batteries. He had once found a dart rifle with no darts and Gom liked to sit at the front of the cockpit, zooming in and out with the telescopic enhancements, aiming and clicking the impotent trigger. Imaginary bullets for imaginary invaders.

Invaders could be anyone in his game, like rival junkers entering their turf — his family had a lease on these lots, but it was their responsibility to protect it. They didn’t have much trouble, although Gom had an alert button he could activate that would send a message back to his family. There were fewer junkers now. Most of the good stuff was gone. Some families had made their fortune and moved into the city; others just got by doing what they could get away with.

The cockpit was heating up under the sun and Gomez began crawling deeper into the scrap heap. He had some water in an empty tanker down the bottom and a lot of other supplies he had secreted there. Rations, a portable heater, knife, compass. Everything he collected that might come in handy if the darkness fell on Earth again.

His papa said he should always be prepared for the worst, even when things were at their best. For the worst he had a bag of ammo, and guns: pre-Dark Age, but they would be lethal enough.

Gomez had the junk stacks pretty well mapped out now. He knew where his family had and hadn’t mined and had catalogued areas of interest for later searches. He carried an old rubberised handscreen with the scavenge list his father had given him for the week. Most of the stuff was easy — wiring and components, and general scrap for the smelt. He wanted to put off the liquids for another day. Leaching out plasma coils was slow, boring and heavy. Today was too hot for a liquids run.

Gom always kept his eyes out for collectables he could trade for access credits and every month he managed to collect enough minutes to explore the Weave when no one was looking over his shoulder.

He lay down on the cool curved wall of the tanker and connected. Overall, he hadn’t spent much time connected, his stream had a log of merely a dozen hours. Mostly he visited other places, just to look.

He couldn’t immerse through a screen, but he held it up close to his face, looking over the Golden Horn of Istanbul ... a butterfly button flittered towards him, an advertisement in a bright circle of green that folded and opened like wings. ‘Hi there,’ it said in a nice-girl voice.

He moved closer to it to hear its message. ‘Hi.’

‘Would you like to become a Citizen?’ she asked.

‘Would I?’ he answered, tapping his response into the screen.

‘Would you like all your dreams to come true?’

‘Of course.’ He pressed the yes button.

‘When you become a member of the World Union, you have all the rights of a Citizen.’

‘How do I become a member?’ Gomez had dreamt of Citizenship all his life, but not many in Mexica ever managed to make it.

‘You must first pass the Citizenship test.’

‘Okay.’ He’d heard of the test before. Nobody he knew had ever taken the test, but he’d heard of it somewhere.

‘Once you have passed the test you must find sponsors to donate your initial value.’

‘Okay. How do I do that?’

‘Join the World Union today, and become a part of something.’

He was sure now that the button was automated. It hadn’t been listening to his questions, he’d just been asking the obvious ones. Gomez was annoyed that his time was running out, and here he was wasting credits on silly dreams.

‘Is there a real human in there?’ he asked.

The button stopped its flapping and a girl’s face appeared within the circle. She was about his age with clean hair cut in straight angles. He’d seen pictures of girls like her. WU girls.

‘Hi there, Gomez. How can I help you?’

‘Are you real?’

‘Of course I’m real. Is that all you wanted to know?’

‘No. No. I wanted to know how to become a Citizen.’

‘You don’t need me to tell you that.’ She winked at him and smiled. ‘Just do as the button says, pass the test and then find sponsors.’

‘Will you sponsor me?’

‘I wish I could, Gomez. But if I shared my value with every correspondent there’d be nothing of me left.’ She said it so kindly that he smiled as if she had said:
Yes, of course, I can give you everything you need.

‘Can I take the test?’

‘You know that Citizenship is not something to be taken lightly?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that to be a member of the World Union, you have to be a part of it? You have to earn your place.’

‘Yes.’ Not really. All he knew was that life was better in the WU, with WU girls and their neat haircuts. ‘Tell me what I have to do.’

She furrowed her brow. ‘Let’s see ... you work as a recycler in the scrap zone. Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, there are some requests for rare materials. That could earn you some value if you can mix them up right.’

‘Send me a list. I can find anything.’

‘Okay, Gomez. You should have received a ping now. You can contact me directly if you manage it. Good luck on your quest!’ She waved at him and he waved back.

~ * ~

It was dark as he got home, the float behind him dipping under the weight of his haul. The fires still glowed in the forge and he slid the cart up to the loading window.

The smell of beans and onions was just strong enough over the acrid metals of the workroom. Gom sighed and began scattling the pieces, unscrewing every little piece and tossing them into the appropriate receptacles.

The door of the kitchen squeaked and he heard his father’s boots on the sand.

‘How’d you do, Gom? I was getting worried about you.’

‘Nearly there. Did I miss dinner?’

‘It’s on the stovetop for you.’

He thanked him and his papa joined him to strip out an engine he’d brought home.

‘Hey, Dad, what’s phytogen?’

‘Don’t know. Sounds synthetic. What do you want it for?’

‘Nothing. It was just in something I read.’

‘Got a little project, ay?’ His papa grinned. ‘How about after the dishes are cleared we take the night off? I managed to get those refrigeration cores out today. We can ease back for a couple days.’

‘Can I use the Weave?’

‘For twenty minutes only. But take care. You hear me?’

‘Yes, Papa.’

‘Alright. I’ll go up and feed your mom. You get started on the dishes.’

‘Yes, Papa.’

Phytogen, he found out, and some of the other compounds on his list, algomite and scaline proteins, were all ingredients for symbiot matter. Symbiots! Gom ached for a symbiot. The knick-knacks he built with his father for sensors and tools were cool, but imagine how they could get through the piles if he had a sylus. He wondered if he could get enough of the materials on the list to build one for his family.

There was one supplier in the whole of Mexica that stocked phytogen, his business protected by the Caucus that governed the region. Gomez needed to borrow his father’s pass to get into those neighbourhoods as a trade visitor.
That could be done
, he thought.

He went to bed with dreams of the WU in his head.

~ * ~

Their next session took place in the orphanage instead of Lizney’s rooms. Zach was still too sore to leave his bed, which was being attributed to shock rather than any physical injuries. He managed to sit upright, propped up by pillows, and glared at any who tried to offer him sympathy.

‘I was hakked. It is done,’ was all he would say.

As one who had experienced a certain unpleasantness at a young age, Lizney could recognise the aggressive posturing as a self-protection mechanism.

‘Still, I don’t think we should immerse today. You need to rest.’

‘I should dive straight back in.’

‘No, Zach. I won’t authorise that.’

‘But what about my badge? I’m only five days off.’

‘Master Frost, do not whine. If you have to restart your endurance exam, then so be it. You will become all the more endurable for it.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘Perhaps not, but it is in my interest to work in your interests. Your anger will not sway me.’

‘I’m not angry,’ Zach muttered.

‘Pardon my mistake.’

‘It is your mistake. I’m fine.’ Zach pushed himself from the bed and stood up.

‘Are you going somewhere, Zach?’ Mister Lizney asked. The boy didn’t answer. The sudden rise had lost the blood in his head and he swayed dopily. ‘Why don’t you sit down again? I’m happy to let you enter the null space if you want. We can work on your new avatar.’

Zach wobbled.

‘I take it you are done being Musashi?’

‘Musashi ...’ The boy slumped at the question and sat back on the bed, his anger disappearing. ‘No, I don’t want to be Musashi any more.’

‘That’s okay. Do you want to start over? There’s nothing wrong with that. Most people have a dozen avatars over the course of their lives, on average. Some have hundreds.’ He held out Zach’s helmet for him to take. ‘Everyone starts over every now and then. Do you know what you want to be?’ Zach shook his head. All the energy and unstoppable youth from last week had drained away. He looked at his helmet, his hands shook. When he lifted it to his head his body jerked and he bent double to vomit on the floor.

Lizney patted him on the back and called the session to a close.

It was some time before Zach was allowed back on the open Weave, and only then with training wheels. He would have to start again on his endurance badge, but could only do that after he had completed the introduction cycle over.

He wasn’t talking to Bron, or any of the other kids. As far as he was concerned they were separate from him while he worked to get out of there. It didn’t stop her trying to talk to him though.

She blocked him in the corridor one day. ‘Can’t you even say good morning?’

‘Good morning,’ he said and made to move past.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Bron asked him.

‘Hey, I said I was sorry, didn’t I?’

‘You said it. But why are you angry with me? What did I do?’

‘Nothing. I’m not angry,’ he insisted.

‘What happened to you? Why are you being mean to me?’ Her eyes loaded with tears. He didn’t want to deal with that.

‘Go blubber somewhere else, Bron. I’m months behind now thanks to you. Just leave me alone!’ He could hear himself shouting, it bounced back at him from the walls, but he couldn’t pull it back. He meant to say he was sorry, but that voice was small in his head. That was small Zach, the one the larger Zach ignored.

Sitting in his study room, alone at last, he immersed into the null space to run simulations. Since the incident he had started a few courses on self-defence. He’d been an idiot kid before, not interested in anything that wasn’t on the visual plane; but not any more. He figured out how the hakka had trapped him in immersion, interrupting his emergency line with a simple bypass that gave them control of his helmet. The more he learnt, the more he thought how incredibly stupid he had been and he told Mister Lizney as much.

‘Why hadn’t you trained me to defend myself?’

‘You’re just a boy, Zach. There should have been no need for such measures. I am sorry for what happened to you.’

‘Yeah, quite a blemish on your record, I bet. If I kill myself now, it will be even worse for you.’

‘Zachary, please don’t talk like that.’

‘Why not? You and the ‘nage already monitor my every minute. What choice could I have?’

‘I’m sorry that you see those who care for you as a restriction on your life.’

‘I’m stuck with baby exercises for training and I’m stuck in the kutzo house. How do you expect me to feel?’

‘Patience, Zach. Please. You need time to recover.’

‘I’m fine. All I need to do is get back on the Weave, but you won’t let me.’

‘No, I won’t. Not until you can control yourself again.’

And so their sessions reached an impasse. Zach began looking for new teachers but it was hopeless. Lizney had put the kibosh on, and nobody would take him. It was like the beady-eyed old man had a grudge against him. Maybe he didn’t like his record being tarnished, it might cost him future students.

Zach dropped his other classes and spent all his time training in the null space. This was what mattered, being able to defend yourself. Being quick enough to block offensive codes with his own; building up a catalogue of scripts and twists that he could pull out as he needed them.