Manifestations (8 page)

He stripped his avatar of its gauntlets and breastplates, the leg guards and weapons dropping to the ground. Let somebody else have them. They were no use to him. Musashi was just a boy. A weak boy standing in his underwear. Alone. Alone. Alone.
You are worthless, Musashi.

He imagined another him circling Musashi with a rod, beating him with words and a stick until the welts started to break open. Zach lifted his arm and pushed the beaten thing away, sending it to oblivion in a million pieces.

Zach looked around him. He should have sent a broadcast alarm, but what did it matter now? Dungeon could do it all over again and it would not matter.

The street was empty save for himself. He was in a geographical representation. A place with low flat buildings set in straight lines. It was odd to see an empty space on the Weave, he wasn’t really sure what it meant.

He walked forward, checking every intersection and finding no one. No streams had passed through here for months. Perhaps it was abandoned. Zach checked the info and saw he was in one of the STOC relocation towns, Sector 261 of Omskya. From the passive data sent by the omnipoles, transport, medical, education and administration, all functions were normal, indicating the town was populated and working at peak efficiency.

So where is everybody?

Before he could answer the question he began to fade as he began to demerse, returning to his body. He could smell vomit, and taste blood and bitterness in his mouth.

Zach blinked and saw Tom’s concerned face frowning over him. ‘Zach, are you okay?’

‘I’m okay. What happened? Why didn’t anyone wake me earlier?’

‘Well, when Bronwyn was ejected she leapt up and banged her head. She knocked herself out and only just came to.’

‘Oh ...’

‘I found her on the floor when I came to check on you. What happened in there, Zach?’

‘It’s my fault, Tom. It’s all my fault. I touched something I shouldn’t have. A hakka came for me.’

‘And you couldn’t eject?’

‘They stopped me.’

‘I didn’t know they could do that. You seem okay though, right? Mister Lizney is coming right away, he’ll be here any minute.’

‘I’m fine, Tom.’

‘Let’s get you cleaned up at least.’ Zach looked down and saw where the smell of vomit was coming from.

‘Is Bron okay?’

‘She’ll be fine. But you owe her an apology.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, Tom. I’m so sorry.’ He couldn’t keep the tears from forming.

~ * ~

Zach lay in bed unable to sleep. He wasn’t used to sleeping when it was light outside. More than that, he couldn’t stop the images of his recent experience repeating in his head. When he closed his eyes he saw them more clearly and even when he felt like sleeping he snapped awake as a scene of black and blood came back to him.

He didn’t notice when one of the older boys from the orphanage tiptoed in and knelt by his bed, until he asked, ‘Hey, Zach, are you sleeping?’

‘No.’

‘Mister Lizney is here to see you.’

‘He is?’ Zach had never known his teacher to go outside of his unit.

‘Yeah. Strange guy for a teacher, Zach. Totally cryppy. Should I say you’re awake?’

‘Yeah. Thanks, Garth.’

‘You want him to come in here, or can you get up?’ Garth asked him.

‘I ...’ Zach tried to rise, but his body felt like glass and his head turned against him.

‘Okay. Wipe your eyes.’ Zach didn’t realise he had still been crying, even though both his cheeks were wet and cooling. He hadn’t noticed. When he blinked, horrors were behind his eyelids. He tried to shake them off, but they wouldn’t move.

A hand patted him and he turned. Mister Lizney was sitting by him on the bed. Before he knew it, he had flung himself at his teacher and didn’t bother to hold back the tears. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

Lizney wasn’t used to such contact and the attack of affection caught him unprepared. But he’d seen what other people did and he put his arms around the boy and patted him.

Zach repeated he was sorry and begged for it to stop. ‘Please. I won’t do it again. Please.’

Miles patted and shushed him. There would be plenty of time later to ask for the boy’s account, so while he was waiting for the emotional outpouring to end he tried to find out what had happened, though Zach’s stream had been dismantled somehow and there was no record of his time on the Weave this evening.

Mister Lizney acquired permission from Bronwyn Zucker and the two guardians before accessing her stream, as was proper with juniors. He watched as Zach led her through orientation and then took her to a dance visualisation in the fabula. It was there that something appeared and Zach ejected her.

‘Oh, my boy, what did you find?’ he asked gently. Zach pushed his head further into his chest.

Something that could take a stream to pieces and stop a person from ejecting. What kind of hakka would do such a thing? And what else had the hakka done to turn the boy into such a mess?

‘May I access your stream?’ Lizney asked. Zach nodded, but Lizney had to prompt him again to make him give over permissions. There wasn’t much to see anyway. The stream was a backup from before the night’s dive and jumped straight to the town where Zach had been spat out. Those streets ... with their identical capsule housing. Lizney knew this place. He remembered its homogeneity well. Except for the image of his student punishing the body of his old avatar, the streets were empty.

He sent a broadcast to Zach’s teachers letting them know what had happened and that they should let him know if they observed anything out of the ordinary, or if Zach let slip any information about what had happened to him.

~ * ~

‘Excuse me,’ the Colonel said, bumping the pilot’s arm as he clambered from the back to the front seat for a better view. The peninsula was just coming into visual range. With his enhanced eyesight, he could just make out the dark blemish that was being called the ‘beast of Busan’.

Pinter looked at his pilot, Airman Quintan Crozier. The file said he was male, but he was slight and feminine, with hair coloured an unnatural bronze sitting in a high bouffant that tickled the ceiling of the squib. He was young, thirty-three — they were all going to seem young to him from now on, he reminded himself.

‘Are you a good pilot, Crozier?’ he asked.

‘Of course, sir.’

‘A good little Serviceman, or a man who can get the job done?’

‘Sir?’ The airman looked at him sideways and caught the Colonel in a half-smile.

‘Fly me in closer. I want to take a look at this thing.’

‘We are approaching the restricted area, sir.’

‘Yes. But we can get closer, can’t we?’

‘I can’t do that, sir.’

‘Don’t be modest, airman. I’ve read your file. You’re top class.’

‘Thank you, sir. Then you must also know that I have already been held back for insubordination.’

‘Twice, in fact. Yes, I read that. But it’s not insubordination if a superior tells you to do it,’ Pinter said with a grin.

‘Sir, we are scheduled to land in three minutes.’

‘Yes, but they can’t start the welcome ceremony without me, now, can they? I want to take a good look at this thing.’ He shook the pilot’s shoulder. ‘Relax. You’re following orders. I outrank everyone on the ground.’

‘Sir, yes, sir.’ Quintan smiled.

‘Call me Colonel.’

Colonel,
he said to himself. Until now it had been practically an honorary rank, which he hadn’t taken seriously. The last time he was an active Serviceman he had only been a Captain. How would history have been different if he had been a Colonel the last time he was thirty? Maybe the wars wouldn’t have drawn out for so long.

The squib flew on towards Busan — where Busan used to be. There was now almost nothing left of the city. The hard lines of the larger structures could still be made out underneath the undulating black hills. A tendril the length of a street bulged up and swung out towards the sea; Crozier avoided it easily.

‘Can it see us?’ Pinter asked.

‘It doesn’t seem to.’

‘So, it’s blind?’

‘Hard to say. This is the closest I’ve gotten.’

‘It really is enormous. Have you ever seen anything that big?’

‘Nothing living, sir.’

‘Do you think it is an animal of some sort?’ Pinter asked.

‘What else can move like that? No plant that I’ve ever seen.’

‘Yes, but there’s never been an animal that covers a thousand square kilometres before either. How could any one creature be this big? Fly us over the top.’

‘Sure thing, Colonel.’

They swung up high before levelling out to cruise over the inky landscape. From above, the Colonel could see where the creature sank into the ocean, a clear change from black to turquoise showing its edge. Below the water, the same exploratory tentacles probed about. Feeling?

What sort of thing are you?
he asked. The leading theory was that it was an old unrecorded nano-weapon that had somehow been reactivated. It was possible. It had happened before, though not with such spectacular results.

From above, Pinter could see open spaces in the black mass, and every park and tree remained uncoated, creating pockets of green scattered throughout the city.

‘Nobody mentioned that,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘The trees. It’s not touching them.’

Quintan nodded.

Pinter’s mind tried to find comparisons for what he was seeing. It was dark and massive like a lava plain, but seemingly alive and moving a hundred tendrils around like a sea urchin in a rock pool. It was black and sheeny like crude oil, but it could direct its movements and control its form. So far the researchers had turned up very little that it could be compared to.

‘What would you say that looks like? A sea anemone?’

‘It reminds me a bit of a snail, at least the tentacles do,’ the pilot answered.

‘The largest snail in the world is only a metre long, including the shell. How big would you say one of those arms are?’ he asked.

‘They can get pretty long. I’ve seen them stretch a couple of hundred metres.’

‘Phenomenal. Take me around the edge of it. Slowly.’

‘What about the ceremony, sir? I’m getting asked what we’re doing.’

Pinter too had seen inquiries enter his queue. He bounced them for now. ‘Send a message that we will be delayed, all fine, Colonel’s orders.’

‘As you wish, sir.’

The Colonel was reluctant to land. Landing meant that time really would have gone backward for him and he was once again a Serviceman. He could look in the mirror and see the man he used to be, but inside he was forty-eight years older and had been long retired. His time was done.

His memories felt like bad dreams that made him afraid to fall asleep again. He had left those nightmares decades ago. He had lived another life and now he was being drawn back into the past. He remembered the sweet rot of his men and the smoke of his burning enemies. He saw the teeth and claws of the twisted humans, launching at him like vultures —

‘Colonel, are you okay? You’ve gone pale,’ Quintan said.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Is my flying too bumpy?’

‘No, no. I just don’t want to land. That’s all.’

‘Another pass? Straight over the middle?’ Crozier suggested.

‘No. I shouldn’t. Time to face the music.’

~ * ~

There actually was music when he landed. A bugler sounded off as he stepped from the squib and a drummer rapped along as he inspected the line of Servicemen standing at attention. His overlay hung names on them and gave bullet-point histories of their careers.

The man in charge was a ginger-haired Lieutenant who was looking down at his clipboard and refreshing the image he had of the Colonel in his files. Pinter’s overlay marked him as Campsey, Lt, James. A lackey of Zim’s who had been borrowed from the General to duplicate the perimeter boundary they had constructed around the Cape.

‘Lieutenant Campsey?’ Pinter held out his hand.

‘Yes, sir.’ The Lieutenant saluted and then shook the Colonel’s hand.

‘I hear you have a mysterious entity that has destroyed a whole city. What do you have to say for yourself?’

Campsey stuttered, ‘But, sir, I —’

‘At ease, Lieutenant. If we can’t joke about the end of the world, what can we joke about?’

‘Sir?’ The poor man was confused. He looked down at his clipboard to see if there was anything written there for him to say. The Colonel let him off the hook.

‘This all looks very good. Let’s check the perimeter and then I want to visit the thought room.’

Turning around, he caught Quintan Crozier grinning and Pinter swiftly claimed the man to be his personal aide. The pilot’s face fell as the command came down the line.

Pinter: Get my bags, Crozier. Quick smart.

~ * ~

Lieutenant Campsey, Airman Crozier and Colonel Pinter boarded an open-topped hover and programmed it to guide them around the boundary line.