Solarversia: The Year Long Game (7 page)

When they got to the Lockup, Wallace held his thumb up to the small metal box at the side of the door. A beep preceded the thunking noise of several bolts releasing. Wallace swung the doors back and fastened them open on little hooks. Casey took a couple of steps backward, his eyes bulging at the sight of row upon row of automatic weapons stacked on the shelves within.

“That’s quite some arsenal you’ve got there. Are we expecting visitors?”

“Expecting? No. We’re like the good ol’ Boy Scouts of ’Merica. We like bein’ prepared is all.” Wallace blew a smoke ring and flashed his yellow grin.

“What about those?” Casey said, nodding at the row of humanoid robots that lined the wall. “Are they in the Boy Scouts too?”

“Those are some of Father’s toys. Programmed them himself. They were designed to specialise in one or more tasks. The grimy one at the end’s a submersible. You can slip on a headset and work on the underwater sections of the Compound from the comfort of Control House. The blue ones in the middle are Medibots. They assist Mother when she operates on people. And the beige ones are general-purpose robots, mainly used for heavy lifting and landscaping.”

He motioned for Casey to secure his kayak against the side of the hut. Casey followed his friend’s lead, lifting the craft into place on the rack and tying it against the wall, aware the whole time of the assortment of ordnance behind him. Just as he thought they were done, Wallace stopped and bowed reverentially. Casey turned to find Mother Frances standing in the doorway, a kind smile on her face. His saviour.

“Mother, you remember Casey Brown, the new recruit. We only just got here after spending a few days at the safe house while he recovered. Father’s asked that I show him the ropes.”

She stared deep into Casey’s eyes. It was a look that made him feel wanted, loved even.

“Welcome to the Sub, Casey Brown. I’m pleased to see you again. Everybody here has been through the ordeal on the hill. It was designed to push humans to their absolute limit, to break them mentally, physically and spiritually. And some people don’t complete it. It looks cruel and unnecessary to the ignorant mind. Wiser souls know that it illuminates the limitations and fallibility of the human condition. If Father was to attempt the challenge now, he would complete it with ease and in a fraction of the time. Those that join the Order need to be willing to give everything to the cause.”

Casey thought back to the dark time in his life, a time when he had come close to ending it all. That he hadn’t done so, that he was here now, was all thanks to the two people in front of him. He owed them everything and wanted to wrap his arms around them and squeeze them tight. Instead, he fumbled for words.

“Yes ma’am, that’s me. Dedicated, I mean, willing to give my all.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Father has important plans for you. I wouldn’t want to see you let him down. And while you’re here, you can call me Mother.”

She nodded her head and was gone. Casey quickly mimicked Wallace’s bow, conscious of being the new guy, the one with everything to learn.

“Don’t be fooled by her size. I’ve seen Mother Frances pick up a kayak, put it on her back and jog from one end of the Compound to the other. She’s also one of the best surgeons in the country.”

“Frances — Mother — mentioned that some people fail to complete the initiation. What happens to them?”

Wallace sighed heavily. “The ones who don’t make it, don’t make it at all. We’ve only had two people fail, and both times, it broke my heart. As the guy in charge of initiation ceremonies I have the grim job of disposing of the bodies. I did everything I could to help them, save carrying the net of rocks for them. When it happened the first time I tried to persuade Father to make an exception, you know, by giving them an office job or something.” Wallace paused to dig some grime out from under a fingernail but looked to be deep in thought. “Let’s just say that that didn’t go down too well. Come on, it’s time I showed you the Sub. When we get to the gangways, make sure you hold on tight. Otherwise you’ll end up as ’gator feed, understand?”

Casey nodded his agreement, swung the sack back over his shoulder and did his best to ignore the midges that landed on his face, spitting out those that made it into his mouth. When they reached the rickety walkway, he used his free hand to grasp at branches and carefully placed his feet where he’d seen Wallace tread. After a couple of minutes they arrived at a dense thicket of bald cypresses that looked, to Casey, like any other. Wallace flicked the butt of his cigarette at the nearest peeper.

“Damn frogs won’t shut up this time of year.”

He reached past a group of branches and yanked on something behind them. A door swung open to reveal a spiral staircase that seemed to descend into the swamp itself.

“Old narco sub. Father Theodore discovered it years ago. Hope you ain’t claustrophobic.”

Casey rapped on the door with his knuckles. Its dull thud suggested the metal was several inches thick. He followed Wallace down the stairs, hunching as he went, and paused at the bottom to look down the long, narrow corridor that stretched ahead. It would barely allow two men to squeeze past one another, and the ceiling, not much higher than his head, was lowered even further by a series of dim light bulbs hanging from a length of chicken wire. The walls were lined with pistons, metal steering wheels and broken pressure gauges, mementos from a former life. Halfway along the corridor, a cylindrical metal object hung down from the ceiling, flanked by two small bars.

“Go on. I know you want to. You can’t see too much, mind.”

Casey grabbed the bars either side of the periscope, rested his head against the worn rubber that surrounded the eyepiece and spied the top of the Ceremonial Lodge beyond the trees.

“You’re looking at the way we came into the Compound — the
only
way. The entire perimeter is booby-trapped to high hell, so don’t try going off on your own.”

The end of the corridor led to a room of bunks, each one narrower than Casey’s childhood bed. “This is for us guys, the women are up the other end. Stash your clothes at the end of your bunk for now. There’s a sink in the cupboard, use the water from the tanks above it. Take a few minutes to get acquainted with your new home. Then there’s work to do.”

Chapter Eight

Nova stood by the platform gate at St Pancras railway station and cursed Burner under her breath. She hated being late. If Sushi was the yin to her yang, Burner was the chalk to her cheese.

“If he doesn’t get here in approximately three—” she started saying to herself, and then, with a frantic wave, “Burner — over here. Burner, you boggle-eyed twat!”

She lowered her voice as a woman with young children strolled by. They ran to the nearest door, edged their way up the train to their carriage and then fell into their seats panting as the whistle blew, Burner’s cheeks red as snooker balls.

“Why do you always do that to me?”

“Like to keep you on your toes is all,” he said, still catching his breath. “Did you hear about Arkwal’s parachute — the one he used to slow himself down?”

“No. What about it?”

“Some dude from Australia found it. Instead of sailing to Tristan da Cunha to get his plane like the rest of us, he went in search of it. Found it and won himself ten grand. Just like that.”

“Son of a Gunter! Why didn’t we think of that?” Prizes were being won all over the place, for all kinds of things. Several people had won prizes for unlocking hopscotch patterns in the tessellated tiles on the ground. A woman from Uzbekistan had won five grand just yesterday for spinning a Tweel of Fate in a certain way, like it was the combination dial on a safe: twenty-nine rotations clockwise, two anticlockwise, twenty clockwise, dialling out the date The Game had started, the 29th February 2020. And now, ten large ones had been paid out to the person who found a discarded piece of nylon in the ocean. What else might she have missed? She looked out the window as the train jolted into motion.

“Did I tell you Jono’s latest theory? Reckons there’s an EFF switch at the North Pole.”

“No offense, but your brother’s hardly the most reliable source of information. Wasn’t he the one who reckoned you could get additional spins of the Tweel of Fate if you chanted ‘Solarversia’ three times into one of the tentacles? What a wally.”

“You were the wally who tried it.”

EFF was the abbreviation for the Earth Force Field, the mechanism preventing players from exploring the rest of the Solar System. Ten switches were hidden at different locations on Earth, with a £100k bounty attached to each of them. Once all ten had been triggered the field would turn off, enabling players to travel to the International Space Station, where they’d be able to board spaceships to the moon and beyond.

The EFF was also the cause of Solarversia’s warm violet light. As the power of a Force Field wore off, its glow cycled through the colours of the rainbow, from violet through to red, before disappearing entirely. Triggering the EFF switches would cause the light of the whole sky to change colour, a signal of epic proportions that solar travel had edged that bit closer.

Nova logged on and prepared to rejoin the game world where she had left it — in New York. She’d collected Bruno, her hovercraft from the Lotus Bay dockyard, and then sailed to Tristan da Cunha, the closest island, to get Hawk, her biplane. She’d always wanted to visit The Big Apple, and Solarversia offered the additional thrill of landing her plane in Central Park. But as she entered the Corona Cube, she noticed something different about the ceiling. There was an additional constellation between the previously existing two.

“Hey, Burner. Have you seen this? The Telescopium Constellation in the Corona Cube?”

“Oh yeah, that’s new. It definitely wasn’t there last night. Shall we check it out?”

She traced the stars with her finger and the Corona Cube melted away to reveal a huge domed room bustling with other players and arkwinis. Arkwal was standing on a bench at the side of the room, leaning on his telescope like it was a walking stick, in a pale blue suit decorated with hundreds of white question marks.

“Welcome to Castalia,” he said. “Nothing like it exists on Earth, nor could it, given your current level of technological development. Are you ready for your grand tour? You’ve already seen the Magisterial Chamber, the cubic room that forms the core of the palace. Affixed to each of its six faces is a hemispherical dome. We’re in the Overdome, the topmost hemisphere, which is the arkwinis’ living quarters. So, welcome to their humble abode.”

The arkwinis and all the other members of Emperor Mandelbrot’s entourage were Non-Player Characters, controlled by artificial intelligence rather than any employee of Spiralwerks. Players could interact with them to a degree, as long as the topic of conversation remained within the realm of the Game. They were remarkably advanced, Nova thought. She would sometimes forget she was talking to a program — a few hundred lines of code — rather than a sentient life form.

Nova glanced around her. One edge of the dome was lined with dozens of teleport machines that seemed to be constantly in use, beaming arkwinis into, or out of, existence. She loved how they weren’t quite tall enough to reach the teleporters’ keypads and had to climb up the handles of the machines, cling on with their tails and swing down towards the keypads with their long fingers outstretched.

“The first stop on the tour is the dormitory, just beyond the dining area. Some of the little ones will be asleep, so keep the noise down.”

The group followed Arkwal’s lead into the dorm and assembled along the foot of the longest bed Nova had ever seen. Tucked inside its duvet were dozens of snoring arkwinis.

“As the General Manager of Castalia, I run a tight ship. Or, perhaps that should be, tight palace. There’s a lot of work for us to do around here. Emperor Mandelbrot’s Magisterial Chamber contains ten thousand square metres of marble to keep clean. Those vines are a nightmare for dusting. That job alone keeps thirty arkwinis busy round the clock. The surface architecture of Castalia is based on an intricate fractal pattern — designed, I might add, by the Emperor himself — and stretches over many, many square miles. It’s tiring work, keeping the place clean year round. Which brings us to this,” he said, motioning to the bed. The mattress was shaped like a caterpillar track on the side of an army tank. At each end of the bed the mattress curved back round on itself, creating an elongated oval shape. Dozens of wheels kept the mattress slowly rolling around the oval.

“The beds here are as long as a bowling alley and sleep up to fifty arkwinis at any one time. To ensure we’re as efficient as possible, we use Sleep-a-nator machines. When an arkwini has finished his shift, had something to eat, and is ready for bed, all he needs to do is walk into one of those machines at the far end of the bed, the one with the big ‘S’ painted on its side, and the machine will do the rest. It’s best to see one in action. Ingenious they are. You there. Yes, you. In the machine.”

An arkwini, who’d been eating his lunch in peace, started to remonstrate, then, thinking better of it, reluctantly put down his sandwich. The machine looked like an airport-security metal detector, but instead of beeping when it detected its occupant, it seemed to come alive. Mechanical arms and hands appeared and stripped the arkwini of his clothes, squirted him with soap and water, scrubbed him down, and passed him underneath a fierce blower to dry him. Then it dressed him in a pair of pyjamas, brushed his teeth and gave him a little pat to send him on his way.

Calmly, the arkwini stepped out of the Sleep-a-nator and joined his colleagues in the oversized bed. At the other end, the mattress was wrapping back around on itself, while the end of the duvet was being lifted off the bed by another pair of mechanical hands. An arkwini who had been sound asleep plopped off the end and landed on a crash mat. He stood up, yawned, stretched his arms, and walked towards another machine, which had a large ‘W’ on its side.

“The Wake-a-nator?” one of the tour group ventured.