The Game of Lives (16 page)

Kaine's voice spoke directly to Michael's mind.

“A child. Fresh and new to the glorious world we know as Earth. Such a bright future. Such good parents. Everything seems perfect. Except for one thing, if you really, really think deeply and look at it all with an eternal perspective.”

“What's that?” Michael asked.

“She will die,” Kaine answered. “No matter what she does, or anyone else does, she will die. It could be tomorrow. It could be ten years from now. If she's lucky, she'll live out the normal life span and die around the age of ninety. This after some time spent walking around in a poorly packaged bag of frail bones. Sound like fun to you?”

Michael had only one answer for that one. “No.”

“Thank you for being honest,” Kaine responded. “But let's change this child's future, and in the process make every waking moment of her life better because she'll know, with complete certainty, that she will never die.”

The woman and her husband were walking to the front door, lightly bouncing the baby while giving her kisses all over her cheeks. Michael watched as they went inside, the door thumping closed behind them.

“How?” Michael asked. “How can you possibly make her live forever?”

“Easy,” Kaine replied. “Let's skip ahead.”

The house dissolved into thousands of dust particles and swirled from their sight, immediately replaced by a gymnasium—banners covering the walls and hundreds of students sitting restlessly in the stands. Instead of a game taking place on the court, though, a long platform had been set up, complete with a row of fifteen Coffins.

In the middle, facing the stands, a woman stood at a podium. She wore a blue shirt with a symbol emblazoned on the right pocket: an
M
and a
D
on the upper left side of a slash, an
L
and an
N
on the lower right side. The slash itself ended in an arrow, pointing forever upward.

The woman spoke into the microphone. “We're so grateful that all of you have chosen to participate in the Mortality Doctrine Initiative. It is a decision that you will never regret, for the rest of eternity. The next fifty years of your lives will be full of adventures and wonders impossible to describe or imagine. The VirtNet Hive is like an infinite realization of your dreams, and we at Life Neverending can hardly wait for you to let us know about your experiences. Who's excited out there?”

Every last student clapped and cheered, loud and long, even though some of them looked more than a little afraid. Michael wasn't sure what he was watching, but he had a pretty good idea. And it felt as if he were watching the beginning of the apocalypse.

The woman let the applause go on for a minute before calling for silence. “You've all been briefed, and everything's in order. While you take your fifty-year journey into the VirtNet, remember that you have not the slightest reason for concern. Enjoy yourselves to the fullest; learn and grow and experience the universe. And when your time is up, we'll have the next generation of human hosts awaiting you, themselves excited for the VirtNet stage. All is taken care of. Your only job is to embrace immortality and leave your mark on it. Now let's stop talking and begin!”

More applause erupted at this, and students began getting up from the stands and lining up, guided by adults wearing the same shirt as the speaker. The MD/LN symbol obviously stood for Mortality Doctrine/Life Neverending. Michael shivered at the realization.

The first people in each line were being led to the Coffins, where they handed over some kind of data chip, then lay down in the open device. They were fully clothed, though Michael never was when he Lifted. But he had already figured out that these students—most of them around his own age—were only going to be in the Coffins for a short time.

The people in blue shirts worked at the control screens on the outside of the NerveBoxes, and soon the lids were closing, almost perfectly in sync. With a series of thumps, one by one they snapped shut, lights blinking all over them. The workers stepped back and smiled warmly at those watching and waiting.

“See the joy on their faces?” Kaine said. “The expectation, anticipation? If you could look deep, deep into their eyes, you'd see that there's no trace of that lingering, nagging awareness in humans today of their impending doom. The inevitability of their death, whether it be five, ten, or fifty years away. That'll be gone once my vision is complete. Now watch and see what happens.”

The entire gym blurred for a moment, colors darting back and forth, melting together. Then it snapped back to normal, crisp and clear. Michael looked down and the Coffins had opened, the same kids who'd just climbed in now climbing out. Although there was something distinctly different
about them. They appeared disoriented, as if they had no clue where they were or how they'd gotten there. The workers in blue shirts took them by the arm and gently led them off the temporary platforms, into the arms of others ready to escort them out of the building. Where they went, Michael didn't know. The next students who'd been waiting had already started getting into the now-empty Coffins.

“And so it goes,” Kaine said. “Or so it
will
go. Generation after generation, born into one body, transformed into an indescribable VirtNet experience for fifty years, then reinserted into the next line of humans ready to embark on Life Neverending themselves. With immortality and endless education and growth, our levels of technology will skyrocket, just in time for us to expand to the planets and stars beyond our own. Always replenishing the human race, where no one need die ever again.”

Michael closed his eyes to focus. “So these bodies in the gym—they were replaced by other…people who'd been in the VirtNet for fifty years? I mean, I know it's a simulation, but is that what's going to happen? What about when they get old? They'll still die. You can't prevent that.”

“Oh, yes, we can,” Kaine responded. “When these bodies, now occupied by another intelligence, reach the age of sixty-five, their intelligence is downloaded back into the Hive. They will once again experience another fifty years inside the Sleep, doing whatever they want, learning and growing even more. The bodies back on Earth will be frozen and stored, probably never to be used again. Unless, of course, we someday come up with other ways to significantly extend life. But
the key is that no one will die again, ever. You'll either be in an actual human body, or you'll be just as alive—even more alive, in some ways—within the Sleep.”

“Won't you run out of human hosts?”

“Of course not. People will keep having babies. We might have to extend the wait time within the Sleep. We'll even clone bodies if we have to, when that technology is sound. That's not a problem.”

“What about accidents?” Michael asked. “Heart attacks? What if someone murders you? What then?”

Kaine's tone made it sound like he'd been anxiously awaiting the question. “Those will still be tragedies, but not a complete loss. One can always go back to their last known download into the VirtNet. Or, if you can afford it, you can go in every year, every week, every day—whatever works for you—and update your consciousness. Your memories, your knowledge, your everything. If you have a premature death, then you will be restored to your latest version. It's all worked out. Think of it as backing up your work.”

Michael opened his eyes, but there was nothing there. At some point they'd slid back into the darkness. He instinctively reached to touch his face, but he had no hands or arms. It was like he'd become a part of the Sleep itself.

“There's more to show,” Kaine said, startling him. “The future is a place of pure wonder, Michael, and I want you by my side.”

Michael was stunned, feeling as broken apart as his virtual self was at the moment. Kaine scared him in so many ways. He didn't know how to read the situation. He went the safest route and said nothing.

“But it will have to wait,” Kaine said after a long moment of silence. “Something is happening. Something terrible.”

“What?” Michael asked, surprised at the sudden shift in the conversation.

“They found us. I don't know how, but they found us.”

1

The darkness turned to fog, then mist, swirling around Michael. He looked down at his arms and legs as his body reappeared, as if someone were pouring him into an invisible mold. The mist thinned out, and finally the inside of the tree house appeared, at first blurry, then slowly solidifying. He and Kaine sat in the same two chairs as before the vision had started.

“Who found us?” Michael asked immediately, unfazed by the odd transformation.

Kaine held a finger to his lips, searching the room with his eyes. Then he leaned closer to Michael so he could whisper. “There are more Tangents against me than for me now. I don't know if the VNS programmed them or what—but you've met many of them. They have a terrible knack of knowing exactly where I am. And they're nasty, Michael. Nasty.”

Michael immediately thought of the people in the woods,
outside the barracks where Helga had set up her Alliance. “Were they—”

“Yes,” Kaine said curtly, still speaking softly. “The same. No one ever makes it easy, putting power before sense.” He was about to say something else, but a noise stopped him short.

A high whine came from outside, as if a sudden windstorm had sprung up. It intensified, piercing enough to hurt Michael's ears. It was like a dog whistle, yet just above the threshold where humans could no longer hear it. It got louder, like wounded angels shrieking. The tree house creaked and shook. Something black and oily poured in through the cracks in the wood of the window frame, funneling in like smoke. The air shimmered, and suddenly the darkness was coalescing, forming shadows that hovered in the air around Michael and Kaine.

“Don't move,” the Tangent said, staring straight at Michael. “They know me too well. We'll get out of this, but we have to be smart about it.”

“What's happening?” Michael whispered.

“Just watch, and follow my lead.”

A chill crept up Michael's back. As slowly as he could, he turned to get a view of the entity nearest him. It had taken a distinct shape, along with several others, shadowy figures with black cloaks draped from their thin shoulders, billowing in an unseen wind. Waves rippled across the cloaks, and the figures bobbed slightly. Up and down, up and down—there were about eight in a circle, all of them next to the walls. Like suspended blackened corpses. They'd yet to make a sound.

Michael wanted to run so badly. Kaine sat across from him, stoic and still, not really looking at anything. He certainly wasn't focused on their visitors. It was as if he'd fallen into a waking coma.

One of the entities swooped down from the other side of the room and stopped just inches from Michael's nose. He could feel the blood drain from his face, and he pressed himself as far as he could into his chair, holding in a scream.

“Don't…move…,” Kaine said, as quiet as a stir of breeze.

Michael tried to focus on the creature floating in front of him, but it was like trying to capture a shadow in the middle of a moonless night. The black figure that hovered before him was shifting, becoming an impossible, impenetrable emptiness. A black hole. Michael wondered if he was about to be sucked away forever.

Sucked away. He remembered the KillSims, created by Kaine. Devouring the lives of their victims, sucking them dry, leaving their real bodies back in the Wake, brain-dead or close to it. Whatever this was, it was similar to the KillSims. Then another shifting within the entity's abyss of a head stopped him cold.

A section had opened. Widening like a mouth. For the first time he saw something that wasn't black, making the growing hole more obvious. They were lined up in two rows, white and pointed and sharp, drops of red all over them.

Teeth.

2

The creature inched closer to Michael, those bloody jaws yawning open farther than seemed possible. A horrible smell wafted from the thing's mouth, putrid and rank. Michael pictured the remnants of past meals—pieces of small animals stuck between its teeth, rotting. Decaying. It was the smell of death, pure and simple.

Michael looked away from it, tried to focus on Kaine's eyes, which bored into him, stern with their unspoken command:
Do not move
.

A low growl came from within the creature, guttural, primal. Michael could see in his peripheral vision that the monster was only moments from devouring his entire head. The smell was rancid, and he fought to stop himself from gagging.

Then, from somewhere, from everywhere, a whisper. Like a blade scraping on dried bones. “Don't…resist. Become…a part…of us. Kaine…is irrelevant. We…are…one.” The voice of a wraith.

Another wave of sour breath washed over him, and the very tips of the creature's teeth lightly brushed against his forehead. Michael couldn't hold still one more second. In a burst of energy, he snapped.

He twisted his body and brought his elbow up, smashing it into the side of the creature's head, right on the corner of its impossibly huge mouth. It shrieked, a horrible sound that was a thousand times louder than its whisper. As it spun away from him, the other dark figures swarmed in, filling the
world with darkness. Formless hands tore at his shirt, his neck, his arms and legs, lifting him into the air. He struggled, but their grasp was firm, pulling him until he was close to the ceiling.

“Kaine!” he shouted. “Help!”

“I told you not to move,” the Tangent responded with a sigh, as if they were just playing some game.

Michael opened his mouth to yell, but before he could form the first word, the creatures threw him violently. His body flew as if shot from a cannon, and he slammed into the programmed wooden wall of the tree house, exploding through it. Shards of wood swirled around him as he tumbled in the air. The world spun, and in a flash of pain he crashed into a tree and fell to the ground, landing across its massive root.

A scream finally escaped his lungs. It felt like he'd just crushed several organs and broken even more bones than that. He rolled into a ball, unable to isolate which part of him hurt more than others, and closed his eyes. He opened them just in time to see dark shapes flying from the hole in the tree house and descending on him like huge bats.

Despite the pain, he pulled himself up, getting his hands and knees under him. He was barely to his feet when those same invisible hands had him again. They lifted him into the air, spun his body, threw him. His stomach lodged in his throat as he flew, crashing through branches and leaves, all of them tearing his skin like razors. His head smacked into a limb too large to break, and then he fell straight down, taking several more branches with him. Lights flashed in his eyes, and pain like fire lit his body.

With a jolt he slammed into the forest floor once more, the wind knocked from his chest. He lay on his side, sure that his entire body had broken this time. Unable to move, he stared at the pine straw and rotted leaves beneath him. The trees seemed to loom over him like an audience, pointing at him with their long, scraggly branches, refusing to help. His entire world was pain, and he knew that even if he could Lift before these new KillSims sucked the digital life out of him, his body in the Wake would be in agony as well.

The black forms appeared in the distance again, dodging trees, twisting left and right. Their mouths still gaped, those teeth razor sharp and ready to devour him. He hurt so badly he couldn't bring up the code, couldn't even see it. His mind was a blank slate, barely aware. He had to throw up. He was scared to move, scared that if the creatures vaulted him into the air one more time, he'd be nothing but a bag of sticks and putty, ready for the KillSims to do as they pleased.

One of them reached the space right in front of his eyes, its black cloak brushing the forest floor. It descended, the cloak pooling out around it as it did so. It looked like a hole into the deepest, darkest pocket of space. Then its face was there, eyeless, mouth wide, teeth glinting in a sudden ray of sunshine that broke through the trees.

“You are…the First.” The words came from its mouth in a wash of wretched stink. “Don't resist….Become a part…of us.” Those teeth stretched even father apart, and then the mouth moved closer. “The last…piece…of our puzzle.”

The creature was hit from behind and torn away in a blur
of black and white. It slammed into the nearest tree, exploding into a dark mist. Michael looked up to see Kaine standing there—he held a huge stick in his hands like a baseball bat. He swung at another KillSim as it dove in to replace its brother, catapulting it through a break in the trees and out of sight.

“Get up,” the Tangent barked. “I can't do this by myself.”

Michael wasn't sure he could stand, but he boosted himself to his feet, groaning in agony. The dark-cloaked KillSims surrounded them.

“I don't have a weapon,” Michael said through clenched teeth.

“Then use your hands. Don't make me regret making you a part of my fut—”

Two creatures flew at them before he could finish. Kaine swung so fast, the breeze swept Michael's hair when the wood connected with the monster's face. There was a crunch of teeth and a gritty cloud of black mist as the creature disintegrated. There seemed to be no sense to what these things were made of.

Michael barely had time to get his hands up before the other KillSim was on him. He grabbed the edges of its mouth and spun his body, throwing the creature with all his strength. It let out a loud squeal and clamped its mouth shut at the last second, almost catching Michael's fingers. But it worked. The thing landed on the ground twenty feet away.

Something grabbed him from behind, lifting him by the shirt. Kaine swung at it and missed, the end of the stick grazing Michael's skin. He vaulted into the air, thrown once
again, up and up until he smacked into a thick branch. He quickly wrapped his arms around it before he could fall to the ground.

Kaine stood below, swinging his weapon like a deranged batter. He'd connect with one phantom and two more would be on him. But somehow he stayed on his feet, spinning and ducking as he continued to bat away the monsters. Michael saw another KillSim—maybe the one that had just thrown him into the tree—gazing at him with an eyeless face, mouth opening wide. Then it flew at Michael.

He dropped to the next branch, then the next one, leaping recklessly toward the forest floor. The creature launched itself after him, weaving in and out of the tree limbs. Michael jumped down the last ten feet, landing in a roll. He scrambled back to his feet and started running, but stopped when he saw something so unexpected he forgot for a split second what was chasing him.

Just a dozen or so feet away, three Auras stood beside a tree, looking back at him.

Bryson, Helga, and Gabby.

3

The chaos continued, only now with pieces of conversation amid the madness.

“Why'd you leave us?” Bryson yelled at him, his face transformed by anger.

Michael was about to explain when another KillSim
grabbed him by the shirt, yanked him into the air. Draped in filmy darkness, they rose, crashing through branches and leaves. Michael's skin was bloody with scratches, and stung with every new one. He tried to fight the KillSim, but the creature had him in a tight grip, spinning as they rocketed toward the sky.

They burst from the treetops into a sky of broken code. It looked like a stormy sea covered in sewage. He struggled against the KillSim, screamed at it.

“What do you want?” he yelled. “Take me back down!”

The creature ignored him, holding him in a viselike grip, all the while flying higher. Michael twisted to get a look at the monster's face, saw nothing but streaks of darkness.

“Let me go!” Michael yelled.

The KillSim obeyed. It released Michael and he fell, his stomach lurching into his throat. Waving his arms and kicking his legs, he plummeted, wind tearing at his clothes. He watched the canopy of thick leaves rush up around him and struggled to catch a breath. He didn't understand why they didn't just suck the life from him. Maybe they wanted his Aura broken, shattered. Maybe it would be easier to destroy him if he couldn't put up a fight.

Michael felt a weird sense of calm as the green expanse grew below him. Why had so many Tangents turned against Kaine? What did they need Michael for?

Something burst from the canopy, leaving an explosion of leaves and branches in its wake. It was Gabby, some kind of jet pack strapped to her shoulders, blue flames bursting from twin rockets. She leveled off next to Michael, matched his
rate of descent, grabbed him, and pulled him into a fierce hug. The roar of the pack's engine was like the growl of a massive beast.

Michael wrapped his arms around Gabby, careful not to touch the flames or the hot part of the engine. His relief outweighed his chagrin at needing rescue.

“What,” Michael shouted, “is this?”

“The only thing I could code,” she replied. Then added, “Yes, I'm really good at this. Come on, the others are still down there.” She turned and revved the engine, and they flew through the same hole the first KillSim had created—a straight line through the canopy and trees. “And you'll get your punishment for leaving us later! Bryson's not happy.”

“Fine.”

The ground flew at them, so fast that Michael closed his eyes despite himself. At the last second Gabby reversed the engines and slowed their descent, landing with a soft thump. Michael didn't even have a moment to admire Gabby's skills; the KillSims swarmed them the moment they touched down. He caught a glimpse of Helga fighting several of the creatures with what looked like a long sword of bright light. Bryson was at her side, holding a roughly coded shotgun. Kaine ran through the trees, still swatting at the black cloaks with his mighty club.

Crazy
, Michael thought.
The whole world's gone crazy
.