Nova Project #1 (3 page)

He hears the voice of the Storyteller no matter how loud he turns up the music in his ears, pressing the button with a finger different from all his others.

One of his first rewards, way back when he first started playing. Its advantages are small, in proportion to the size of the thing itself, but necessary. It reacts faster than a normal
one would, taking orders from his brain in the smallest fraction of a second, sometimes all the time he has to fire a weapon. Precisely calibrated, it rapidly takes a pulse reading when touched to his opposite wrist. That's more useful to him than it might be to most others.

Chimera. A world of gamers playing for the privilege of turning themselves into hybrids of flesh and machine. He needs it more than most others.

Thanks to the music and her overwhelming perfume, he smells Anna before he hears her. He pulls off the headphones and will never hint that he hates the scent of roses.

“Hey, you.” He ignores his screaming limbs to jump to his feet, and she's light in his arms as he twirls her around. Her lips are soft. Kissing her already feels like a memory, but a good one. Some of the best he has.

“Whoa,” she says, laughing as he puts her down. “What's gotten into you?”

“Checked my Presence in the last hour?”

“I've been talking to Amanda.”

“Ask me how I did.”

Her expression changes, augmented eyes sparkling. “You upped?”

“Yep.”

Anna holds out her hand, palm facing him. He slaps it with his own, laughter threatening to overwhelm again.

“Congrats,” she says. “How much harder do you think they'll get now?”

“Anna . . .”

“Hey, I'm just asking.”

She's not
just asking.
He could die anytime, and not in the way that makes him wake up on a floor, needing to retry the level. The game, killing bosses, makes him feel alive. But they've had this argument before, he's not in the mood for it now. “Oh, can we not? For, like, one night?” He frowns and kisses her again. “I upped. I'm getting closer. Six more. I'll get to the end of Twenty-five before you know it, and boom, there'll be nothing to worry about anymore.”

“Fine,” she says. “Let's go. I told everyone you'd be on time for once.”

“Hey! I was here first!”

“Yeah, yeah.” She waves that off, a detail as irrelevant as their relationship is these days, but her mouth twitches back into a smile. “Come on, time to party. Have you eaten?”

“Are you my mother?”

She pokes him in the chest with a sharp fingernail. “Not carrying you if you faint.”

“Deal.” Miguel turns his back on the river, flicking his ordinary lenses down over his eyes. His feed is full of messages from his friends wondering where he and Anna are—and congratulations on his up—but nobody is surprised they're
late. Through the glass, he looks up at one of the billboards and watches it change to advertise a jacket he was checking out online yesterday. Still too expensive, and it's the first day of summer, but he pressed a button to say he liked it, so it's part of his Presence now, stored in the digital library of everything he is.

He takes her hand, which seems softer now that it's inside his, the fingernails tucked away. She has her glasses on, too, and she laughs at something he can't see. Once upon a time the twinge in his chest might have been jealousy, now it's just the mark she left when she poked him.

The streets are clean, and safe, which is a little like prepping for a gunshot wound by taking a vitamin capsule. This isn't a bad place to live, though. Especially at night, when the sun is actually out of sight, out of mind. The sun isn't the only problem, but it's one of them, the biggest, and during the day it illuminates all the others.

Now, the fluorescents spilling out of every window are enough to light their way. There are faster methods, both on the ground and in the air, but Miguel likes the walk, surrounded by real, tangible things, and Anna mostly gave up on hassling him about this weird quirk a year ago. Right around the time she mostly gave up on him.

He doesn't blame her.

Damn, and he told
her
to give it a rest tonight. He should
be happy. He
is
happy, more so than he's been in weeks. He refocuses his eyes to scroll through his feed again, blinking to flick the older messages out of the way.

[Nicholas Lee] Mig, man, where are you?

[Nicholas Lee] Hurry up
.

Miguel smiles. Nick is a guy who will, with his final breath, ask death what took so long.
Seriously, did you have somewhere better to be? Let's go!

Okay, okay, they're coming. Anna squeezes his fingers, a gesture of control rather than affection. The neon of another ChimeraCube—violet this time—peeks over the rooftops of the next block. As if he's going to ditch her and run inside. Tempting, but not worth the hassle. With his one strange finger, he touches the thin skin of the inside of her wrist, and the readings appear over his eye. A slight spike, but it calms again once they're past the street leading to the Cube. Wow, she actually was worried.

“I know what you're doing,” she says.

“Sorry.” He pulls the finger back. “Who else is there?”

“Nick, Taz, Amanda, Seb. Everyone else from our class, but those are the ones you care about.”

The
everyone else
is why Anna's having to pull him along. Because
obviously
what he wants more than anything is to spend the night supposedly having fun with the same people he's been trapped in school with for the last ten months. Today
was his first day of weekday freedom, the first time since last summer he didn't have homework or have to wait until classes were over to suit up and level up. Or keep trying, at least.

Today that trying paid off.

If he can't be in a Cube, he'd rather be out, walking, feeling the balance between the real and the virtual, wakefulness and dreams. A warm breeze blows south into their faces, scented metallic and damp, tossing Anna's dark hair off her neck. The city feels cracked open, spread and oozing around them, and this surprises Miguel sometimes. Like, there's a whole world out there, across the water and across the land. A whole real world.

It's just not as interesting as Chimera.

It's not nearly as
fun.

“You won't believe what happens on Nineteen,” he says. Behind her glasses, she blinks brown eyes twice in rapid succession, and the blurred reflection of her feed pauses.

“Don't tell me, I'm not there yet. Nowhere near.”

“Well, then, you'll be prepared.”

“Cheat code alert. Nope.”

“Come on, that's not cheating.” He nudges her shoulder. “Everyone does it.” Half his feeds are people exchanging tricks, clues. The entire damn planet plays Chimera, no way could this stuff stay secret, but that doesn't make it easy. He'd been stuck on Nineteen for months before today, progress coming by inches, and the clock is ticking.

Stop it, he reminds himself. Not tonight.

“I like the satisfaction of a justly earned victory,” she says, injecting a tone of distilled righteousness into her voice that she can't maintain, lips cracking into a smile. “Down here.”

They turn a corner and see the place just ahead, some coffee bar owned by the parents of a student Miguel's never spoken to. The parents must be in a good mood, to turn it over to a bunch of seventeen-year-olds, but why wouldn't they be? Latest reports, if they can be believed, have coffee beans as extinct in five years, ten at the outside. And like everything else, that just makes people use it up as fast as they can, while they can.

God, a world without coffee. There isn't even going to be a point to living after that.

“Mr. Anderson.” Nick flicks his glasses onto his head with a practiced movement as Miguel and Anna step inside, the tinted lenses dark against blond spikes. “You finally grace us with your presence. Too busy celebrating your victory? Good job, man.” Something flies from his hand, and Miguel knows what it is before he catches it. A perfectly smooth black stone, heavy for its size. He quickly closes his fingers around it, squeezes for a moment before slipping it into his pocket.

“Thanks.”

“What was that?” Anna asks.

“Nothing,” he says.

A silence falls as everyone in the place sees him, blood has just enough time to rush to his face before the applause starts. “Thank you, thank you,” he says. “Nineteen's a piece of cake.”

“Liar,” someone calls.

“Okay, cake that takes months to eat.” Laughter ripples, and he turns back to Nick, lowering his voice. “I'm here, and wow, it's as dire as I thought. Let's hear it for justified pessimism.”

“That's . . . hard to argue,” Nick concedes, looking around the retro-trendy altar to all things caffeinated, rough wood tables and brick walls shining off the gleaming steel of the machines behind the counter. People are gathered in the same groups they hung with at school, probably talking about the same things.

Which isn't much. Beyond Chimera, what is there to talk about? Miguel can glance around the room and know basically everything there is to know about each one of them. He follows them all, sees their updates when they fail a test or get dumped or don't want to clean their room, Mom.

That group by the window? The hopeless environmentalists, still trying to save a damned planet. The ones taking up all of a big table in the middle are the bookworms, scrolling through page after page on their lenses and updating one another at the end of every chapter. In the corner is a cluster of Chimera-heads almost as hard core as Miguel, whose eyes narrow. Zack. Guy has no finesse, no style. His constant prog
ress stream speaks of brute force, smashing any obstacle until it moves. Brainless.

There's only one constant. Everywhere, the signs of success. Rewards. Patches of skin that glisten unnaturally under the lights but can't burn in the sun. Eyes with tiny red pinpricks in their pupils, cameras on, recording, uploading. Fingers like Miguel's own, or whole hands, tapping on the tables and holding coffee cups.

“We're back here.” Nick leads the way around a wall that partially divides the room. The rest of their friends are relaxing on a couch and a couple of armchairs, displaying varying degrees of enthusiasm about being here. Amanda's happy, smiling into the middle distance or at something on her feed, legs curled up to hide her height. Seb and Taz are talking quietly, and Taz seems grumpy, but that's no indication of anything because she always does. Miguel's pretty sure all the boss beatdowns she dishes out in Chimera are a direct result of her parents' naming her Tabitha.

“Look who's here.”

Anna lets go of Miguel's hand as all the others glance at Nick and then the two of them. “Yes, here,” Miguel says, “at a party thrown by people who need to use their handy, instant access to a dictionary. Go ahead,” he says a little louder, “look up
party.”

“Shhh.” Anna slaps him gently.

“It's not that bad,” says Amanda. “It's nice to hang, since I'm guessing tomorrow we'll all be busy playing . . . and for the rest of the summer. I'll have to get used to seeing only your avatars again.”

“Like every other vacation since we were twelve,” says Nick. “And evening. And weekend. But okay. Let's be mostly flesh-and-blood humans for a while.”

“Wait.” Taz holds her hand up. “Something's happening.”

Miguel sees it, too, a flashing red alert in his feed. Nick drops his glasses back down. The whole coffee bar falls silent, voices fading one by one at first and then in a rush.

Attention, Chimera gamers of the world! We are your Gamerunners, and in just one hour, we will have a special announcement for you. It's something we've been working on forever, and finally we're ready to unveil it. In just one hour you'll never look at Chimera the same way again.

Stay tuned.

T
he two men meet on a hill overlooking a city. It doesn't matter which city. They could be in Manhattan, Berlin, Tokyo, Jerusalem, London. It's the same everywhere, and so the where is unimportant. What matters are the enormous mirrored Cubes, edged in lines of neon red, blue, green, yellow, scattered like dice across a board throughout the landscape below.

These men know better than anyone else what goes on inside those Cubes; they designed the game.

Both tall, both pale, they have often been mistaken for brothers, and it's true that in many ways they are the same. In others they could not be more different, and so maybe it's a surprise they managed to work together long enough to make it out of alpha testing. It's even more of a surprise that they've been partners much longer than that. They both had the things necessary for exactly such a collaboration: a few common goals and, for each, a deeply held and private belief that he was
smarter than the other. That each had the advantage.

“You got new eyes,” one comments. He's dressed all in black, fading into the night. His own eyes are hidden behind dark glasses, which don't obscure his vision even a little.

The other shrugs. “Enhancements are always moving forward.”

“Even for us.”

“Yes.”

“You called, Lucius,” says the one in black. “Why?” He thinks he knows; in fact he's sure he does, but it never hurts to let the other side think you're stupid, especially when it knows you aren't. Keeps them guessing.

“You've seen the way it's going,” says the other. “It's time.”

“The systems are ready. Coded and loaded.”

“I know. I checked.” New bright blue eyes stare without blinking. “And added a few new features of my own.”

“Oh, really? Fluffy bunny rabbits and sparking rainbows, knowing you.”

“That's genuinely unfair, Blake.” The expression of hurt is fake, an affectation.

Neither one of them can feel pain. Examined by any of the many doctors on their payroll, both would be labeled sociopaths.

Blake, the one in black, surveys the city and smiles. Chimera is a huge success, has been for years, and is about
to be an even bigger one. The world's governments are happy with the myriad benefits the game provides, and the resultant tax breaks are
incredible.
Success is a beautiful thing.

But the game isn't over yet, and there are only two ways to keep people interested, keep them playing: make them wait for a new adventure until they're about to snap, or give them what they want before they even know they want it. Blake was all for waiting for them to snap, but this way had intriguing possibilities, too.

“How much of the original story did we steal, in the end?”

“Just enough to pay tribute to it,” Lucius answers. “More the idea than anything. If the source occurs to people, we don't want them thinking they know what's coming next.”

Blake nods. “I'll send out the announcements,” he says, removing a tiny keypad from his pocket and tapping swiftly. An hour's warning will be enough; word will spread online, across the world, in seconds. Technology is a wonderful thing as well, and none of what they're doing would be possible without it.

“Can I trust you?” asks Lucius.

“You have until now.”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Well, then.” Blake grins. “Look where that's gotten you. Nothing to worry about.”

They shake hands and head in opposite directions. Alone,
Blake steps onto a hoverboard, calm as it takes off into the air. Flying without wings, possibly his secret favorite item in the wealth of toys at his disposal. He skims the treetops at speed, fear a thing for lesser mortals, heading for Chimera's nearest office. This one is in a cluster of identical buildings, with no hint anywhere outside of the business that goes on within. The last thing he's ever wanted is a bunch of people knocking on the door looking for tips on how to pass whatever level has them stuck.

Inside, it's empty of human life, and that has nothing to do with the time of day. Only on paper does Chimera have thousands of employees spread across hundreds of cities. There are some, but they are mostly medical personnel and cleaning staff. He and Lucius take care of the coding themselves.

Blake tends to think of this building as headquarters, if only because it's the address given on official documents filed with various governments, and that because it was the first one.

They'd been having lunch, he and Lucius, at some place on the waterfront that Lucius especially liked for some reason that wasn't entirely clear. Blake had sent his food back twice, though the second time had just been to see Lucius's eye start to twitch. Both were looking for a new project to occupy the hours, and it wasn't the first time they'd worked together. After a wave of brilliant ideas, about half of which were Blake's and all of which he takes credit for, Chimera was born.

Since then, it's been a bigger hit than either imagined.

The building hums, thousands of computers whirring away, tracking Chimera-related statuses, running the game in all the Cubes, recording every player movement, win, loss. He sits down at one—despite Lucius's misgivings, yes, Blake can be trusted to do this—and waits, watching the minutes count down the promised hour.

Three, two. His fingers hover over the screen. One.

Hello again, Chimera gamers of the world. Are you ready?

The official Chimera feed fills instantly with replies in the millions. Excellent. He doesn't read a single one of them.

Until now your Chimera experience has been a singular adventure, a solitary endeavor. You against the monsters and the clock, your own quest to defeat each level, aided only by your virtual team. You have earned your rewards, gained the experience necessary for the next challenge.

Well, Chimera gamers, the next challenge is here.

Technology progresses. We, your Gamerunners, have been working on the next phase of Chimera, and now we need your help. Before it can be revealed to the whole world, we must make sure it works. We are in need of beta testers, and we thought we'd make the process as exciting as possible.

Starting tomorrow, the selection process will begin for our first Chimera competition. Two hundred gamers worldwide will be chosen, and each will be given a team of real fellow Chimera
players to assist them on their path. Those selected will be given a ChimeraCube for their teams' personal use for as long as it takes, but we anticipate two months. First to the finish line wins, and the world will be watching, following each team's status online, cheering . . . or not.

The risks will be higher. The challenges greater. The gamescapes unfamiliar. And the rewards will make your current enhancements look like toys. Oh, yes, there will be rewards. As our thanks for your assistance, not only will we grant rewards at random times throughout the game, but the members of the winning team will be allowed to choose any enhancement of which we are capable, whether they have passed Level Twenty-five in the regular game or not.

Blake pauses. Another five million or so replies stream in.

We will announce details of the selection process in—
he checks his watch—
twelve hours. Until then . . .

Game on.

Blake sits back, reading a message from Lucius as it pops up. Let the fun begin.