Interlude: Even later…

  “There will be three doors,” Emily said. “One for kids, one for youth, and one for those with a bit of life under their belts.” She gave him a teasing look as she said the last.

  “I’m not sure I like what you are implying,” her companion replied with a smile. His dark hair flopped over his pale blue eyes, and she resisted the urge to brush it back. “You’re the one who made it all the way to sunny Guadalajara from El Norte.” He gestured up at the sun's pale outline hiding behind layers of cloud and sulfur compounds. “I think that puts you ahead of me in lived experience.”

  She scoffed. “Just because you rode out the apocalypse in style doesn’t make you any less old, old man.”

  He placed a hand on his chest. “You wound me. Why, I never even finished college.”

  “Because it blew up.”

  “True enough. 2078 seems a lifetime ago.”

  “And then some,” she agreed.

  A mildly awkward silence descended. Emily looked around the domed compound, enjoying the greenery, pale and wilted though it was. “How is it you still have power here anyway?” she asked.

  “You could say we lived off the grid. Under our feet are some of the last independent computers on earth and a geothermal power station.”

  “Uh huh, just some really well financed survivalists, that’s what you are.”

  His gaze darted briefly, ascertaining their solitude. “Let’s not speak of that. I have a fair amount of sway here, but in the end, the men with the guns make the rules. It’s amazingly lucky you found this place without encountering their patrols.”

  Amazingly lucky I have a system that let me avoid being raped and left in a ditch, more like, she thought with a shudder. This entire part of Mexico was controlled by gangs who had filled the power vacuum left by the dissolution of the Mexican government years before GUA took every, nearly every, computer on earth for itself. Emily figured it was one of the reasons the area came through as well as it did.

  They were apocalypsing before it was cool, she thought with a grin.

  He smiled too. “So what awaits me after these ageist doors?”

  “Well, that would spoil the surprise for you!” she replied. “But it’s good. Amazing even. You just need to see it for yourself. I can’t wait to hear what you think.”

  “I’ll do it tonight,” he promised.

  Chapter 27: Review

  “Have you been thinking about our earlier conversation?” the woman puppeted by Doctor Quimea asked.

  “Sure,” Lilijoy yelled down noncommittally. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I think we’re done here. So if you could just let her stay asleep, that would be much appreciated.”

  She was busy pulling in all her forces, the remaining flies, midges and quite a few spiders who had missed the bus, as it were. She was also systematically going through the rest of the...deactivated Sinaloa fighters and disabling their communications, so the Doctor couldn’t just pop up in someone else.

  “Probably using one of the assault vehicles as a relay,” she muttered to herself. “Unless he’s figured out how to use the satellites for this.”

  “I understand completely,” he/she yelled back. “This is no time for banter.”

  Lilijoy sent several of her horseflies to gathering samples from the dead and unconscious.

  I really need bone material. Are any of the… got it.

  The dead body of one of the elites was in a crashed assault vehicle, one of the ones she had rammed into the rocks. Unfortunately, a horsefly wouldn’t be able to gather what she needed. Feeling more than a little ghoulish, Lilijoy began to make her way down the slope to gather the sample she needed.

  “So what do you want?” she called out.

  “A trade. An exchange of information.”

  She began to run diagnostic tests on the two remaining functional assault craft. It might be nice to ride in something with a little more power, plus it would make it far more difficult for Sinaloa’s next wave to close with them. She turned on the active radar in one of them, once she knew it worked. There was hardly any point in being stealthy now, and it would give her and Anda a decent amount of warning if more forces truly were on the way.

  “I’m sure you know lots of things,” she said scrambling over some loose rocks. “I’m not as sure they’re things I need to know.”

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered someone who can do what you do,” he said. “Though the insects, that’s a bit different.”

  Despite herself, her curiosity began to spin up. Damn it! Down, girl, down, she told the wave of anticipation that began to gather. She turned her back to him, turned away from the temptation to engage further, trusting Anda to put him down if necessary.

  “Please.” Perhaps it was the voice of the woman he was using, but Lilijoy could have sworn there was the faintest note of desperation in the word. She peered into the partly crumpled mass of the wrecked assault vehicle and winced. It was the one Anda had fired into, and the results of the explosive and chemical munitions in the confined space were horrific.

  This is what I wanted to avoid. No one should die like this. I just hope it was quick.

  Her goal was to collect a bone sample, to find some bugs she could use as a reference for her own development, if not adopt entirely. There was no shortage of bone, but to enter the space she would need to crawl through the scattered remains of six people. She turned her head away from the stench of new death and chemistry and summoned her flies. Even if they couldn’t gather such a sample, she hoped they could find one for her.

  Images of a wave of blood cresting over a frozen throne kept intruding on her thoughts.

  The undead were banished from the Inside, but here I am, a ghoul looking to suck the marrow from the dead, while speaking to the possessed. For my next act, do I raise the fallen soldiers as mindless minions? Unleash the zombie hordes upon my enemies?

  She shook the dark thoughts from her head.

  “If you are looking for more augmentation nanobodies, I could supply you with all you would ever need. I could help you, and your friends too, become immortal gods of this earth,” the Doctor said.

  She did her best to ignore him, though she couldn’t help but wonder why he was being so… blunt. Did he feel his last chance to get the Tao System slipping from his grasp? It didn’t seem like the Doctor she knew would be so impatient. After all, he had well over a century of life under his belt, plus he thought this was all a simulation anyway. What was this about?

  She watched her flies crawl over the dead, felt the rapture of taste through the senses of their feet. For them, it was paradise.

  It’s all in the perspective. If I were a fly, death and carnage would give me the most joyful anticipation. It’s like the problem of how a masochist follows the golden rule.

  “I just need to know,” the Doctor called. “Where do you come from? Is it… outside of all this?”

  She suppressed a laugh. He thinks I’m from outside the local simulation, that I am to him what he is to the Insiders. That’s his explanation for what I can do.

  When she looked at it from his point of view, it made a kind of sense, though she wondered how he fit Attaboy into his theory. There was something pathetic about Quimea’s desperation to what, log out? Escape his current reality. Did he really imagine something better on the other side?

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  “If I were, what could you possibly offer me?” she asked, breaking her vow not to interact further.

  “Knowledge. History. Power. The same things I could offer if you weren’t. You are obviously not omniscient, or omnipotent here. Tell me what you need, what you seek, and I can make it come to be.”

  “In exchange for?”

  “Truth. Nothing else matters.”

  Part of her was tempted to spin a tale, to reward his plea for truth with cunning lies woven from all the esoteric knowledge she had gleaned in her own quests for understanding. She could tangle him in near-truth, cause him to question all he thought he knew, until the great villain was trapped in delusions of his own making.

  But he’s already done that to himself, she realized. He was the first victim of his intelligence.

  Her flies found a piece of bone containing nanobodies with the same signature as the senescent ones she had encountered in the patrol leader’s bloodstream. She dialed back her disgust as she entered the space to retrieve it, and the burned and melted flesh around her became mere anatomy, parts that had formerly been people.

  If only I had an inventory here, I could take so many samples, she thought. I wonder if the elite had started upgrading her circulatory system?

  That was Rank Seven, the next rank after bone, necessary due to the vastly elevated blood pressure that would come from augmenting the heart and then the other muscles in Rank Eight. She had many ideas of how to go about it herself, but the simple fact was that she didn’t have the necessary systems-level understanding to risk fiddling with her own veins and arteries, let alone know how to handle the vast webs of capillaries that would need to be simultaneously strong and permeable. Even with the osteo-bug samples in hand, she would only have part of the picture for her own development in Rank Six.

  If she were to encounter Doctor Quimea in person on the Outside, he would be able to rip her apart before she even began to crack his system. Indeed, she had a small fear that he was simply stalling, waiting for some team of true elites, Rank Eights or even higher, to reach them. They would be able to run fast, faster than a normal hovercar at cruising speed over long distances, she guessed. Probably much faster still in a sprint.

  Anda’s best munitions, the bola bullets and the various payload bullets, were designed for just such opponents. This was one of the reasons they created such a horrible mess when applied to less augmented people.

  She hastily grabbed the sample, and retreated from the enclosed space.

   she messaged Anda.

  Quimea had watched her in silence as she went about her task. As she headed back up the hill, bringing one of the intact assault craft after her, he called out again.

  “You won’t be able to help Nykka, you know. Her brain developed around my system. To tamper with it will kill her far faster than you can make accommodations. Perhaps in a few months, we can talk again, when she is forced to come crawling back to me. Maybe we can come to an agreement then.”

  She ignored him. Three months was about as long as she had been… herself? Not even that, really. He didn’t know what her system could or couldn’t do. For that matter, neither did she. For Lilijoy, the biggest concern wasn’t her ability to help Nykka, it was whether she could be trusted in the first place.

  I guess all roads still lead to Taos, she mused.

  She hopped into the assault craft, and seconds later Anda joined her, laden with weapons. They flew off in a burst of swirling dust, the other assault craft and their original hovercar forming a convoy behind them. She watched Doctor Quimea recede into the distance as he watched them in turn, his stolen face bearing an enigmatic expression that almost looked like regret.

  ***

  Her second reunion with Attaboy did not go the way Lilijoy thought it would.

  The first few seconds were everything she had hoped for. After they met with the other hovercar, stopping to get everyone into one assault vehicle, Lilijoy ran full speed to grab him, knocking him into a small stand of hardened grass. She couldn’t help the deep seated feeling that this was real, that all her previous encounters could have been a dream, or some elaborate charade. To hold him and feel his solid form on the Outside was just more meaningful; it reassured some nagging doubt she hadn’t consciously recognized.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said.

  “Ouch,” he replied. “I’ve missed you too, but I think you just shredded all the skin on my back.”

  As she was in the process of apologizing, Nykka came over and interrupted their reunion. “Let’s get a move on,” she said, standing over them. “Save the antics for when we’re moving away from here.”

  Someone’s feeling a little bossy, thought Lilijoy.

  It was when she stood to return to the assault craft, still holding Attaboy’s hand from hauling him to his feet, that she saw Mo.

  It took her a moment to process.

  Green. Skinny green guy. Bald too.

  The realization of just who she was looking at dawned just as Maria came into view, adding a thin layer of pleasant surprise over the pit of unpleasant confusion Mo’s presence engendered.

  That’s that gatherer from Averdale. What the hell is going on here?

  Everyone spoke at once.

  “Surprise!” Mo said, shaking his hands as if presenting something impressive. The bashful grimace on his face told the other half of the story.

  “Alux!” Maria cried, pointing at Lilijoy.

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you...” Attaboy started.

  “Son of a bitch,” said Anda, who had just poked his head out the port of the assault vehicle.

  Lilijoy felt the world spin. Not because of the presence of Mo, unpleasant surprise that it was, but because there was a sense of convergence, of synchronicity, threads being pulled and twisted to entangle and pull her into alignment. With what, she couldn’t say.

  Putting that feeling aside, she turned to anger instead.

  “Did this bastard tell you what he did!” she yelled into Attaboy’s chagrined face.

  “He said the punishment fit the crime...” Attaboy began to reply.

  “Enough!” Nykka yelled. “I need him for my own reasons. Just put him in the other assault craft. We’ll discuss it later.”

  Lilijoy wheeled to her. “Who put you in charge?!”

  Nykka’s mouth opened and closed a few times as she tried to find a response that wouldn’t offend her potential savior. Even in her anger, it occurred to Lilijoy that Nykka might not have developed much of a middle ground between complete authority and subservience.

  Meanwhile Anda had walked up to Mo with clenched fists. For a moment Lilijoy thought he would strike him. “Tell me why we shouldn’t leave you here?” he asked instead.

  Through all of this, Maria was looking around, wide-eyed, but upon Anda’s words, she grabbed Mo’s arm.

  “Then leave me too!” she cried.

  Seriously? Mo and Maria? That poor girl, Lilijoy thought.

  “Please,” Attaboy said, softly so only she could hear. Or rather only so anyone with augmented hearing could. “He’s helpless, and she’s worse. Let them come.”

  Her anger receded a bit, and Lilijoy realized that this would actually address a lingering regret. She had wondered if Mo had survived, if he was off somewhere spilling her secrets. At least this way, she knew where he was.

  “Fine,” she said. “They can go in the other car.”

  ***

  Swallowed Empty Lowly Taster wriggled.

  The wall throat enclosed him tightly, a sensation he found both comforting and alarming. While he liked the security of knowing he was safe from attack, other than his feet and hands, he couldn’t help but wonder if the narrow passage might eventually open into a churning stomach, where he would be painfully digested.

  He was also pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to reverse his progress. Some of the teeth that lined the wall’s orifice had leaned in such a way to allow him forward, but reversing would be another issue altogether. If the throat became too narrow for him to pass, his moving time would come to an end after a day or two with no water. All in all, he considered it one of the best ways he could become an Old One, though he did regret that he would be of no use to the tribe, should that occur.

  He wriggled a few more inches, sucking the nameless food entity as he went. Taster was all but gone, and he knew it was only a matter of time before Eater returned. He wondered if, at the end, Eater would be the only one left.

  The wall throat made his ear sense strange and twisted, showing him different things than his eye sense, in those rare times he had room to raise his head. At present, his face was pressed against the rough floor, and what his ears were showing him made no sense.

  He pushed forward regardless, stretching his arms and pulling with his fingertips, pushing with his toes each time he released his breath. He did this a hundred times, maybe a thousand, until there was almost no room to fill his lungs, so tight was the wall throat’s grasp. He began to feel as if he were falling, spinning, as he could only gulp the smallest mouthfuls of air.

  But in those tiny gasps brought into his compressed body was a newness, a difference in the flavor of the air. He rested as best he could for a moment, trying to send his ear sense past his pulse and beating heart. Something was different ahead. He reached, he wriggled, thrusting his finger tips farther than they should go, as the pop and searing pain from his shoulder told him in no uncertain terms.

  Still, his fingers grasped… something. Perhaps a wall tooth. Alternating jolts of pain and numbness made it difficult to know if his fingers were behaving as he asked, but he thought he might have a hold of the object, and he began to wriggle and pull, wriggle and pull, until finally, with much pain and grinding, his chest moved forward and he could breath.

  For minutes, perhaps hours, he lay, recovering from his efforts. His ear sense was telling him something new as well now, and with extreme effort, he raised his head just enough to see a row of sharp wall teeth, blocking him from what looked like a larger space. It was filled with something which resisted his understanding. Something like the finest sinews, stretched beyond imagination, or the longest hairs, spanned what he could see of the space beyond.

  Even as he watched, he saw them move, vibrating and jumping, as if something outside the scope of his senses was pulling upon them. He dragged himself forward more, hoping to get a better angle for his vision, for his ears were utterly confounded at the moment. When he finally saw what was causing the threads to dance and sway, he felt a great wave of relief pass over him. Here was something familiar, a massive food entity much like those the gatherers pulled from the abyss.

  The food entity was moving along the threads, its long legs pulling and pressing as it went. Lowly wondered for a moment where he might find sufficiently large Old Ones to mash such a being into edible paste. He felt saliva pooling around the round food in his mouth at the thought.

  Then, to his surprise, the entity spoke.

  “I can smell someone!” it said in a sing-song voice.