The faintest of sounds up in the sky.
Rigel looked, searching in the cloudless blue, and found it. An airship, gleaming white as it approached on the gentle wind.
It was far away, but even from this distance, one could tell that the ship was on fire.
“No,” Rigel whispered. He backed away, but the airship was coming in too fast.
He knew that ship. Recognized it from the police reports and the drone surveillance video he had watched.
It was the
White Hammer
. And this was the crash that had taken the lives of both of Rigel’s parents.
The flames blossomed on the body of the airship like a deadly parasitic flower that consumed everything around it. The ship tilted, then started weaving frantically as the pilot tried to come in for a hard landing. The ship was headed right for where Rigel was standing, but he was too horrified to try to move away. He imagined he could hear the screams of the people inside that ship, the dozens of passengers about to die in that accident.
The
White Hammer
fell from the sky in a blur of smoke and flame. Eight tons of steel crumpled like a flimsy tin can when the ship slammed onto the ground with enough force to create a small crater beneath it. Dust exploded outward trailing the edge of the shock wave, and when it reached Rigel, it knocked him down with sudden violent force. He choked on the dust. Rigel tried to stand up, coughing, but then the ship exploded, and the fireball raced out in every direction.
He cried out. Blazing heat enveloped him….
And then suddenly it was gone. Reality blurred again, and now Rigel could see at least twenty vehicles surrounding the crash site. Emergency lights were flashing. People were talking, many were crying. Corpses were laid out in rows covered by bright orange plastic.
A police car approached. Stopped. The officer opened the back door, and Rigel saw himself coming out of the car.
Rigel shut his eyes. He remembered this part very well. He did not want to see.
But he could not help it. He opened his eyes again and approached his memory-self with horrified fascination. It was a perfect reconstruction of that day, except that now he was looking at himself from outside.
He heard the officer telling him that no survivors had been found. He heard his other self answer, numb. He had not cried then, and he still hadn’t cried. He had been seventeen at the time. Two years ago, almost exactly.
Rigel followed himself down the rows of covered corpses until one of the rescue crew saw him and directed him to two in particular.
He peeled open the first body bag. His father’s face looked like a melted parody of himself. The mouth was open, locked forever in a rictus of agony.
His mother was almost unrecognizable. If it hadn’t been for her clothes and the ring on her blackened finger, Rigel would not have known it was her.
I can see….
Another blur. The desert disappeared, and now Rigel was in a sterile doctor’s office. Rigel walked around the room, wondering at how real it felt. He touched a lamp. The texture was there. He clicked it on, and more light was added to the cold glow of the fluorescent lights overhead.
Rigel remembered this office very well. It was here that he had gotten the diagnosis. Along with his braces.
The second he remembered, Rigel’s memory-self entered, trailed by a youthful doctor.
“Please, have a seat,” Doctor Martinez said. She was wearing red glasses and a white lab coat.
Rigel stood by as the memory-Rigel seated himself and spoke.
“What’s wrong with me, Doctor?”
Dr. Martinez called up a holographic composite of several scanned images.
“The reason you’ve been experiencing pain in your hands is due to the inflammation and tissue damage that you can see here. In essence, the tendons on the underside of your wrist have been worn down by excessive use.”
“What does that mean? Will I… be able to keep on painting?”
The doctor sighed. “I’m afraid not. Although the root cause is unclear, the fact that you present such advanced damage at such a young age indicates that there may be an underlying factor causing this. It could be a degenerative condition, one which could worsen very rapidly should you continue your current level of activity.”
Memory-Rigel looked at his hands. They were shaking slightly, and they hurt. They always hurt.
“Isn’t there anything I can do?”
“I’m going to prescribe a pair of biomedical braces to help stabilize both hands. You will have to wear them always, but even with them you will have to be very careful what you do from now on. The braces will only help forestall further worsening of your condition. Unfortunately, there is no real cure for what you have. I see this kind of problem all the time in computer engineers, weightlifters, and manual laborers. Some people’s bodies are just not built to handle the constant stress of repetitive action every day.”
“So I’ll never get better?”
“Perhaps. If you have plenty of rest and the right kind of physiotherapy, you might reach a certain degree of recovery. Nevertheless, I would not be too optimistic. What we should be aiming for right now is to stop this from getting any worse. If you don’t limit yourself now, the pain you are experiencing will become chronic. You may even lose the use of one or both hands altogether.”
Rigel saw himself nod slowly. He hadn’t really understood the implications of that diagnosis, not then.
“What’s the next step?”
“We will fit you for the braces. Wait here.”
THE WORLD
dissolved around Rigel. He was suddenly back in one of the featureless black rooms with glowing corners. Back in Otherlife.
The enormous voice spoke, overwhelming Rigel’s mind.
I need your help.
“What?” Rigel asked. He was a bit shaken by what he had relived. It had been too realistic.
The shadow is breaking free. You have seen it at work already.
Something tugged at Rigel’s consciousness. A series of memories, plucked from his mind like photographs. News headlines he had read over the years. The crash of the
White Hammer
. Disappearances in the city, unexplained murders he had not paid much attention to. Electronics behaving strangely with catastrophic consequences. Deadly accidents becoming commonplace. The memories were correlated by that other presence speaking to Rigel. He saw that they all shared a common element. Nobody knew what or who had caused them.
“Who are you? How do you know what I’m thinking? What are you doing to my brain?”
My name is Atlas. I need your help to fight.
“What is going on? Are you part of the Otherlife simulation? How can I stop you?”
The shadow will touch everyone if none stand against it. Nothing is more important than destroying it. I felt your unique mind from the moment you connected to me, a weapon discovered when I had lost all hope of ever finding one: a Light Shaper, come at last. You will help me, Rigel… whether you want to or not. I am greater than Otherlife, and my reach extends far. I will contact you again.
“But….”
Rigel’s connection to Otherlife was suddenly, brutally terminated. He felt the helmet being yanked from his head and had trouble focusing on the frantic face of Misha right in front of his. She was saying something, and it took Rigel a couple of seconds before he could make sense of the sounds. His mind felt weird. Sluggish.
“—coming this way!” Misha was yelling. “Hurry up, Rigel! Somehow they knew!”
“What…?”
Misha tugged at the security restraints, and they popped open, freeing Rigel’s limbs.
“Come on!” she practically screamed.
Rigel nodded. It was getting easier to focus on reality, and he managed to swing out of his chair. He was about to join Misha up in the ventilation duct they had used to sneak in, when the door burst open.
A security guard stood there, tall and imposing. She was carrying a gun.
Rigel jumped up, grabbed Misha’s outstretched hand.
Too late. The guard aimed her gun right at Rigel. She didn’t even warn him.
She simply fired.
OTHERLIFE WAS…
different.
Barrow was in a featureless room, completely black. He only knew it was a room because the edges of the walls were glowing a soft neon red. They were trailed by little sparks of light that briefly intensified the glow of the bright line they were traversing, only to fade out later. There was no sound Barrow could perceive, and there was nobody else in the room with him. He wasn’t even sure of the room’s size since he didn’t have any reference points. It could have been a tiny room encasing him like a prison or a gigantic space stretching out into the distance. Barrow knew he had to move, though. He needed to get to wherever it was that he was meeting the other guards.
He tried to take a step. He couldn’t move.
Barrow looked down, and he felt a brief stab of fear when he saw that his body simply wasn’t there. He tried to reach up his hands to touch his face, but there was no response. He fought down the irrational panic and reminded himself that this was probably normal. He had never been here before.
He tried to remember what the commercials had said. He had seen them a million times. Something about creating your own avatar and looking any way you wanted to. The one thing they kept repeating over and over again was that you chose what you wanted Otherlife to be. Maybe if he spoke the commands, things would start happening.
“Um, hello. I need a body.”
He felt stupid saying that, but the reaction was instantaneous. A translucent screen popped up in front of him. A female voice read the message scrolling through it out loud.
“Welcome to Otherlife, Steve Barrow. As part of your first visit to this wonderful system, you must create an avatar. This avatar will allow you to move through the world, talk, and interact with other users living in Otherlife. Don’t worry about learning how to control your virtual body! The Otherlife experience ensures that moving your avatar and interacting with objects and other avatars in your new life will be as natural and simple as moving your own physical body. Please select the option you find best from the menu before you. If you have any questions, simply say ‘help’ or tap the icon on the screen in front of you. If you wish to change your settings at a later time, simply say, ‘open menu’ at any moment.”
The screen got bigger, encompassing most of Barrow’s field of vision. Part of it was dedicated to menu options, messages from other users, and other useless information. He focused on the center part, which displayed a generic male body, life-sized, rotating slowly in 3-D so Barrow could analyze it. There were lots of little boxes and options hovering next to it, things that could change the avatar’s hair or skin color, its height, build, and so on. Some of the boxes were grayed out, and an entire menu option of “celebrity avatars” was locked, although there was a friendly pop-up message mentioning how cheap it would be to buy enough points to unlock this option. Barrow gave them only a quick review since he was not interested in the avatar, only in having one so he would be able to meet his boss as quickly as he could. Thankfully, his eyes found the default avatar option, which was “I Want to Be Myself!” He assumed choosing that option would create an avatar that was a reflection of his own true body.
“That. I want to select the option to be myself,” he said.
“Thank you for your selection,” the female voice answered. “Your avatar is being rendered. Please note that due to privacy and security concerns, persons under eighteen years of age are only permitted to select this avatar option bearing the written consent of a parent or guardian.”
“I’m twenty-nine,” Barrow grumbled.
The recording ignored him. “Please take a moment to browse through our extensive Groups list, where you will find like-minded individuals who share your interests and welcome you to Otherlife. If you wish to find a particular user or search for a specific hub destination, simply say, ‘show directory’ or call up the menu and select the option manually. Also—”
Thankfully, the recording was interrupted with a new message in the same voice.
“Avatar rendering complete. Steve Barrow, you have been granted temporary Security-level privileges for use in this account. Initiating neural transfer.”
There was a brief flash of light, and Barrow raised his hand to shield his eyes from it. Then he lowered it. He had a hand!
“Transfer complete. Please take a moment to evaluate and accept your avatar.”
A mirror, or something a lot like it, materialized in front of Barrow, showing him the avatar. He was amazed. It looked exactly like him. He ran a hand through his hair. It was the same shade of fiery red as in real life. His green eyes looked back at him just as they did on the mirrors in the real world. He touched his chin goatee, red as his hair, and it felt real. He was wearing what looked to be a virtual version of a Security Guard uniform, black pants with one vertical red stripe running up either leg, a black T-shirt, and a vest with a faintly glowing ID tag. Armor-like shoulder pads and shin guards that were more for show than real protection completed the ensemble. He turned around. On the back of the vest, the Otherlife logo was emblazoned brightly. There was a dangerous-looking baton slung through his belt, and it also felt very real. Barrow grinned.
“Accept avatar,” he said.
“Thank you. Please select your first destination, Steve Barrow.”
“Take me to Hub Node 01,” he said. “Quickly. I’m already late.”
He had expected some kind of instant teleportation to take place, but instead the black wall to his left was suddenly lit up by one of the bright red sparks of light near the floor. The spark raced up along the wall until it was just above Barrow’s eye level, then turned a sharp right angle and kept going for about half its vertical distance. When it reached it, it turned a sharp right angle again and started going down, disappearing when it reached the floor. The spark had traced a rectangle on the wall—making a door. A crude pop-up above it was now labeled “Hub Node 01.”