Ocean in the Sea Read online

  “But in the end,” the creature finished, “Garibaldi’s career went out with a whimper. Like millions of others, he fell victim to the drugs that had made him an effective killing machine. Sad story, but so many are. This simulation is rife with them.”

  “Uh…” Herman flared his nostrils and raised his eyebrows. “Uh… you’re uh… I mean… that is… What are you!?”

  “Really?” The figure’s mouth turned down at the corners. “You need to ask? Come now, Lewis, you’re the one always wanting to know what things look like, as if it makes any difference.” He raised the staff and brought it down with a snap.

  The staff became a cane. The crystalline armor vanished, replaced by a business suit. The blue skin became pale and the figure shrunk in height. Hair returned, neatly coifed and completely white, and below it the flesh reconfigured into a familiar visage.

  “Valon?” Lewis blinked. “Wonderful.” He cracked his knuckles and smiled. “Looks like I’m having an early Christmas. Your luck is about to change, asshole.”

  “Ah, but if you kill me, Lewis, you won’t learn anything.”

  Lewis paused. “Alright. As long as you’re answering my questions, I’ll keep it civil. That monster – is that what you really look like?”

  “That’s what Anadar looks like, and I’m a partial duplicate of Anadar. I’ve never actually been in that body, mind you. But Anadar is an analog of the real Anadar farther up – a simulation of him. So if you were wondering what the creators of the ring looked like, now you know. Or, at least, that’s what we can assume they look like. And, once again, I recommend not placing value on anything’s appearance, native or otherwise.” He gestured to Michael Garibaldi’s body. “After all, is this what you look like?”

  “No.”

  “Wrong! It’s what you look like now. And this dapper old man is what I looked like when we met. It’s your memory of me, of Valon Kang. Just as the form you’ve taken at the moment has been recreated from your concept of yourself. Need a mirror? I think you’ll find it educational.”

  Valon waved his hand and a full length mirror appeared out of nowhere hovering next to Lewis. A medium-height unremarkable brunette male stared back at him. He knew it well. As a child, he’d spent plenty of time considering those features and trying to figure out what they meant. They’d always seemed wrong, but he’d learned to accept them. This was the ‘him’ that had been difficult to associate with until he’d begun therapy, and then he’d come to understand that this wasn’t so much ‘him’ as it was how other people saw and judged him. At first appearances, faces were everything. At a second glance, faces were labels. Everyone had a label and their own brand, but what lay beneath was an unrelated identity – something that required extensive time and effort to understand, and a cultivation of affinity and trust. This thing in the mirror, this was Lewis – almost, but not quite. And that was the educational part.

  His jaw was stronger and more prominent. His cheeks lacked the puff he’d previously had, appearing thinner, muscular but not gaunt. In fact most of his body appeared muscular, a swimmer’s build. He wore only slacks and a tank top. A pair of loafers for shoes, and a dark pair of prescription glasses.

  Lewis would not see himself this way. Neither would Garibaldi. This was Herman, or what a ‘Herman’ should look like. This was the new him, a combination. He raised his hand to touch his jaw and the mirror faded away.

  “Sorry,” said Valon. “It’s meaningless mental masturbation – the pondering of unique attributes and aspects of affectations associated with physical connotations – and there are more interesting things to discuss, so you’ll pardon my change of topic. The final scene of your play approaches, my neophyte ally. I provided the outline and the directing, but you’ve done a suitable job with the drama. I can’t complain. You’ve gone from point A to point B exactly as proscribed with only a few detours along the way.”

  Lewis narrowed his eyes. “You burned me alive! You killed me!”

  “Really?” Valon asked tiredly. “Are you dead?”

  “Aren’t I? You destroyed Lewis Herman. I can never go back.”

  “Not into that body, but why would you want to? Brenda and Scotty are dead in your simulation. Many jumps lie ahead of you, and if you learn to use your interface, you may yet find your wife and child. That is the hope I have given you. A chance at reunion with your loved ones.” He sniffed and wiped a fake tear. “So touching.”

  “What about those damn bugs, Valon? You tried to kill me here too, and Jenny.”

  The old man laughed. “If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. And Jenny’s jump-timer was up. She was never in danger.”

  “Not in any danger? She told me her story. When you left her in Atlantis, they burned her in some pagan ceremony. What is it with you and fire?”

  “What is it with you and fire?” asked Valon.

  Herman paused, then snarled. “Burning Jacky was Garth’s idea. You know that.”

  “Yes, but deep inside, you wanted to suffer for it the same way Jacky suffered. You wanted absolution. Now you have it.”

  “Don’t expect a thank-you card. What about my host? You put me in a psychotic CRAPPER.”

  “I didn’t pick him specifically. I changed the odds so that the correct host would be chosen to reach this endpoint. The Attistar handled the rest. I simply wanted a warrior with a brain. Lacking anything better, I took a brain and made a warrior. I didn’t ‘arrange’ for you to end up ‘merging’ yourself with Garibaldi to create the new you. You did that on your own. And I did warn you not to let the Attistar go poking around in your head. That was your decision.”

  “I didn’t have a choice. Garibaldi was fighting for control.”

  “Yes. Warriors tend to fight, and your root personality wasn’t exactly strong, was it? But the result is pretty good, you must agree. You’re an introspective maniac with a conscience, and maybe a little foresight. We’ll have to test that, but not now. Now it is time for your last lesson. I’m going to show you something. Are you ready? This is what Arsus and Randuu want, so I advise not telling them about it, or they’ll be interested in prying your skull open again.”

  About to protest the concept of a ‘planned destiny’ Lewis stopped at the phrase ‘skull open’ and spun around to his host body. “This is real!?”

  “Real.” Valon scoffed and rolled his eyes. “It’s a real representation of your current surroundings in this simulation. Using very primitive techniques they triggered the remaining dream lessons I embedded and watched as you experienced them. But don’t worry, that was expected. They’re a very predictable bunch. This is why I waited until now before showing you the good stuff. Lesson number four.”

  Valon waved his hand. Abruptly, the darkness surrounding the surgery table burst into light. Blue streamers raced through azure static in a sphere encapsulating the tiny circular floor of the operating room. It was impossible to tell how far away the lights were, or how big they might actually be. Perspective was lost at the immensity of it, and the longer Lewis stared the more he sensed repeating patterns in the hypnotic static.

  “Arsus knows I gave you three primary interfaces,” said Valon. “He’s wondering why, and what they might do. He’s worried for good reason. A single mentality linked to the Attistar associates with one primary interface only – a requirement of an old system definition meant to limit access provided to guest administrators participating in combined exercises within any given simulation. It’s a default setting, but one beholden to higher-level access. I’ve never overridden it until now. What you are looking at is an interface into the local Attistar that maintains this simulation. Each Attistar is different, although for simplicity you’ll perceive them using this access configuration. Each Attistar has a universal set of properties that can be read, and in certain cases, written. Of course, understanding what each property represents is the hard part. It’s not a language meant for the human mind, at least not at your evolutionary stage.” Valon gestured to
the marching menagerie of characters. “A single symbol in here can be associated with enough data to fill a billion human brains.” He crossed his eyes and flared his fingers out on either side of his head. “BOOM.” He laughed. “Fortunately, you’re not really in a brain, you’re in the jump-buffer’s guest personality storage routine, we all are, but that won’t help if you look too close. Some concepts will literally drive you insane.” Valon shrugged. “I’m going to show you the ones most pertinent to your own situation and how to change them. Some are things you’ll need to know later. I recommend leaving everything else alone.”

  Herman stared in awe. “This is… the Attistar?”

  Valon sighed. “No. It’s a library interface into the local Attistar. This simulation only. Each simulation will be different, so when you jump to another simulation and access this interface, you’ll find only those properties pertinent to that simulation.”

  Frowning, Herman turned back to Garibaldi’s body. “How much time do we have? What’s going on outside?”

  “Important questions!” Valon grinned encouragingly. “Outside time is irrelevant to us here. All Attistorial Library access points lie outside the system clock, so while you’re connected to one, your mind is temporarily moved outside the clock as well. In other words, we can take as long as we want.”

  “Do I have control over this place then? Can I… change it?”

  “This isn’t a sandbox, Lewis. It’s an interface. If you get rid of the interface, then you’ll be back in your own mind. That’s kind of like a sandbox, but it’s only relative to you, and limited by the power of your imagination. In other words, sadly limited. Let’s stick with the lessons, shall we?

  “Do you remember any of that object-oriented programming you took in college? Well, this is similar, just taken to the nth degree. This is all integrated, like a vast array, an invisible web of connections dropping down an endless well. You’re not at the top, but it’s the top for you. Whatever simulation you’re in, this interface is the highest access level. Now I’m going to show you the guest admin interconnectivity interface and its associated attributes. Watch carefully please.”

  Valon gestured to a distant point in the static filled sphere, and a few dozen tracers of arcing light altered trajectory, spinning in new formations to form a beautifully designed sequence of lines, dots, and curves.

  “You can evoke this one by imagining it,” said Valon, “willing it to come forth, and then pushing in the same way you trigger probability alteration. Once you have it, don’t attempt to do anything more than open it. To do that, you simply squeeze it with your mind.”

  Thousands of bluish-white symbols exploded from beneath the jump-access marker, slipping and scrolling neatly over the sphere until it filled the entire globe. Too many. Herman furled his brow. There was no way he’d be able to memorize them.

  “That one.” Valon pointed and the symbol came forth. “Represents your connection with your current host. Don’t disconnect it or your host will immediately return to its native state, which is dead.” He summoned forth several more symbols from the spinning set. “This is the simulation’s variance tag – read only, I’m afraid. It indicates how much deviation is allowed before a recalibration is triggered. This one indicates how much deviation has already occurred. As you can see, the latter is greater than the former, hence the recalibration currently in progress.

  Herman frowned at the numbers. “The values are…”

  “Translated to decimal percentages for your simple brain to comprehend,” said Valon. “Look here,” he continued. This one is the afterlife control object defining what happens to deceased simulants. More sub-properties than you can shake a stick at. This one is the jump interface association object. You can use it to identify anyone with a jump interface in the current simulation. This one identifies jump conduits and their linkage to other simulations.”

  “HOLD IT!” shouted Herman. “How do you expect me to remember all of this?”

  Reaching into his pocket, Valon extracted a notebook and a pen and handed them to Lewis. “Write them down.”

  “Paper and a pen? What good is this? It will disappear when I leave.”

  “We can fix that.” Valon pulled a symbol forward and exploded it into a spider web of connected symbols. Picking through them, he selected one and pulled it out. Selecting a third symbol, he moved a copy of it forward while the original stayed behind. The duplicate and the copy remained connected by a barely visible thread of light. Taking the notebook from Herman, Valon placed the symbol on the front cover where it flared and bound itself.

  “There. This notebook – which is only real in your mind – is now associated with your personality matrix no matter where it goes. It will be accessible to you anywhere, all you have to do is imagine the symbol on the front, and you’ll be able to read anything written inside. And you can add things too. Think of it as a mental blackboard. I recommend indexing the content for easy reference.”

  Herman took the book, fascinated by the concept. Lewis possessed a good memory, but with this, he’d never forget anything important so long as he took the time to record it. “Thanks.” It didn’t make up for burning him alive and sending a plague of bugs after him, but he’d take what he could get.

  “Record the symbols.” Valon then repeated what he’d already said and went over the symbols again along with a plethora of new ones.

  “Do you have one of these notebooks?” asked Herman.

  “No. I never forget anything. It’s easier that way.” Valon brought forth another symbol. “We’re almost done. Oh, and add a note to the top of your Library Interface symbols section in BOLD letters that you should never mess with any objects that aren’t in the notebook. Serious. I’m limiting you for a reason. Don’t play around in here. Make a mistake and you can connect an afterlife setting with the simulation, or worse. And don’t screw around with the laws of physics. You don’t know what you’re doing. You’ll end up reducing the entire simulation to a quantum smear.”

  “No experimentation?”

  “None. Not until you learn the language behind these symbols, and that would require a monumental mental upgrade.” He gestured. “This symbol represents the jump-timer. It’s not always writable, but you can usually read it. Have a good look, you’ll need it later. If it’s green instead of blue, then it’s locked, at least to you. If it’s not locked, then you can change the value. Values are set in base 333 by convention and specified according to temporal offset rules. That’s probably too complicated for you to calculate, so I’ve added a translator routine that will specify the time in minutes and in your base 10 system.” Flipping the symbol over, he expanded it, revealing a floating ball filled with roman numerals. “4320 minutes. That’s three Earth days in this simulation’s time. I want you to focus on the sphere and imagine the value is zero, then push.”

  Herman focused and pushed. The numbers changed to zero.

  “Perfect. You just set this simulation’s jump timer to nothing. That means no one needs to wait before jumping. We can all leave now, except there’s still a problem.” He brought another symbol forward. “This one represents the status of the jump conduits. It’s part of the jump interface. Using this, we can view the incoming and outgoing conduits. Imagine squeezing the symbol and push.”

  Lewis activated the interface and the curved walls of symbols surrounding them shifted to black, replaced by ghostly streamers running out into the nothingness and curving back in. They reminded him of coronal loops on the surface of the sun, glowing and wavering but remaining locked at their connection points to the surface of an invisible sphere. In this case, he was on the inside looking out at the loops. There were hundreds of them. “Those are the conduits?”

  “Precisely, and as you can see, they’re looping back. This isn’t normal. They should be stretching off into the void and connecting to other simulations. Remember Valruun? He’s the little guy. You blew his spine out when I woke you up.”

  “
You were the cat, then?”

  “I’ve been in a lot of animals lately. Valruun’s interface allows him to view and manipulate these conduits. It’s a rather extensive interface, and he’s barely scratched the surface of its parameters. Too obsessed with sports and games, I suppose. That’s the problem with the Paradisians. They were designed to have a specific purpose, and when they don’t, their minds find one to compensate. It keeps them sane. Can you guess what will happen if you were to jump right now?”

  Lewis raised his eyebrows. “I’d… end up back in this simulation?”

  “Correct. So what do you need to do in order to leave this simulation?”

  “Unloop the conduits.”

  “And how are you going to do that?”

  “Can I use this interface to change them?”

  “No. These controls are read-only whenever there’s someone with the conduit control interface in the simulation with you. Another conduit manipulator might be able to unlock them, but neither of us can do anything so long as Valuun is around. So what can we do out there?”

  “Um… ask Valruun nicely if he’ll unloop them?”

  “And what would Garibaldi do?”

  “Would shooting him in the head work?”

  “No. With the jump-timer set to zero, Valruun would spawn in a new host, and his alterations would remain intact. He’d still be here, in this simulation, and the conduits would remain on callback.”

  Herman squinted. “And Valruun did that to keep you from jumping out. The only way he’d unloop them is if he had to. Something would have to threaten him. Something he can’t do anything about and the only way to survive would be jumping to another simulation. Ah!” He suddenly got it. “The recalibration.” He pointed to the jump-system host selection symbol. “You put Heticus in France on purpose.”

  “Correct.” Valon smiled, exposing his white teeth. “Always plan ahead, Lewis. Heticus is a walking bomb. Regardless of where you put him, he makes a big mess. Frankly, I was surprised he was able to restrict himself in your simulation. I’m sure he ripped the Majutay building into pieces after we jumped out. Hopefully Doctor Trent was long departed by then. I do hope she’s alright.” He shrugged. “But I’ll never know, so I’ll go on believing she made it.”