Nova Project #1 (5 page)

“Point. Okay, want to go play?”

A few quick blinks. “Cube Cobalt has room.” If that's the nearest, everyone must be wanting to practice. That, and school's out, but it's usually not this bad. Walking's out, if they want to get there before people steal their spots, so they
hoverboard it halfway across the city to a building edged in blue. Miguel stands this time. If he so much as yawns, Anna will get on his back about resting. The lopsided weight of their gear cases threatens to tip the disks off-balance, though it's been years since the last report of that actually happening.

Everything moves forward. Technology especially. And nowhere more so than in the Cube in front of them and its brethren across the world. Miguel doesn't know how the Gamerunners have coded half the stuff in here, and at home, alone in front of his computer on the nights he can't sleep, he's tried to figure it out.

“Right, Thirteen, time to die,” Anna says, swinging open the door.

“I can't believe you're ahead of me.”

“And I'm ahead of both of you,” Miguel says. “Catch up.”

“Luck. Meet back here at six?”

The clock hovering in front of his left eye says a bit after noon. Decent session, they can have a break for dinner, and Miguel, at least, can get another few hours in before heading home. On a glowing blueprint on the wall, they locate three empty rooms on different floors and part ways, Miguel heading for one on the opposite side at the top of the Cube.

This room looks exactly like the one he was in yesterday, like every one he's been in over the past five years. There'd been worldwide agreement on that—you have to be twelve
to play, and Miguel hadn't slept at all the night before that birthday. His inaugural Chimera experience had been marred with stupid mistakes born of exhaustion, but he got better.

A lot better. Fast.

Surrounded by gray-painted concrete, under a single blue spotlight, he taps in the combination and opens his case. Strips of sensors wrap around limbs and chest, ready to communicate with their counterparts on the walls. He waves his arm, and they awaken, a thousand pinpoints of light, too organized to be a constellation, but they look like stars.

For the first time in months, he doesn't have to spend this moment going over everything the level has thrown at him so far, everything he'll have to repeat. He can, and has, done this in his sleep, waking up sweat soaked and gasping.

His stomach flutters. Now he gets to imagine the unknown. Twenty will build on Nineteen, patterns repeating in the enormous, complicated, colorful mosaic of Chimera challenges. And one of the patterns is that there'll be things he's never encountered before. Shit will get real . . . or virtually real.

He exchanges his glasses for the visor, putting them safely in the case, the case in the cabinet on the wall so he doesn't trip over it. Back in the middle of the small room, he slides the visor slowly down over his eyes.

“Select: start,” he says. The scent of the air is the first thing to change, from a cramped, adrenaline-stained room to
something fresher than outside, clean and safe. Next comes the sound, as computers somewhere close and far away do their work, and it is no sound at all, emptiness ready to be filled by roaring flames, screams, the voice of the Storyteller. His team appears behind his shoulders, determination on their rendered faces.

“Cache,” he says. The room around him becomes an armory, a collection of every single treasure, weapon, helpful item Miguel has ever collected. From a rackful of them, he selects guns and hands them out to his helpers before holstering one of his own. That would be the strangest thing if he got into the competition, if he was chosen to lead a team. Would he give the same orders? Sacrifice them as easily as he has dozens of virtual ones over the years?

One step at a time.

Speaking of steps . . .

“Overworld,” he commands, and his stomach flutters. The room changes instantly, years of rewards replaced by years of progress. A map, blue because it always matches the outside of whatever Cube he's in, draws itself in light around him.

And at the end of the line there it is. A twentieth large hexagon, the start points of every level he's achieved, joined by strings of smaller save points to which he can return.

Sometimes he spends minutes here, reminding himself how far he's come. Not today. He steps to the end of the map
and touches the last hexagon with a finger. It ripples as if it were the surface of a pond, and the room changes. Disappears. The level forms in every dimension. He's expecting the change, the new gamescape, still vertigo tips his belly as gravel on the mountaintop crunches under his boots. Clouds tickle the exposed skin of his face with freezing fingers.

He's never been on a mountain, but it looks . . . like it must actually look, somewhere out there in the real world. Chimera's cleverest of all its tricks. Forests, cities, that perfect blue lake he sees in the distance, all are indistinguishable replicas of the things they imitate. When it's a building, it's impressive. When it's a monster that one of the Gamerunners dreamed up, it's terrifying. If they really existed, they'd look just like that.

A path curves down the mountain. It leads to a hidden doorway.

“Got it,” he tells the Storyteller. “Come on, guys.”

Grinning, his team in step behind him, Miguel aims for the door with pointed focus. It might take him weeks or months to reach it, but somewhere on the other side of that door is a demon to slay.

H
e is breathless. Exhausted and sore. Blood pounds through natural veins that themselves seem to hurt; he hasn't had any of his replaced. Yet. They'll have to be, if and when he gets his upgrade.

If, if, if. It could hardly be anything
but
an upgrade. A downgrade would be . . . death. And he feels close to it now, collapsed and alone on the floor of his room in the vast ChimeraCube. Somewhere, unheard and unseen, Anna and Nick are waging their own battles. His visor hits the wall with an echoing crack
.

He knows what this is. After every victory, like yesterday's, the end of Twenty-five is close enough to touch. After every stumble, he'll never reach it. Starting a new level's always tough, almost a punishment for any hubris brought on by the previous success, but this had been evil. He got through the door on the mountaintop okay, since then he's been trying to get out of the
room it opened into. Enclosed spaces are not his thing.

He checks the time. Five thirty. There's no point in going back in to try again. He knows himself, he'll lose hours in a few short minutes. So he's waiting outside when Nick and Anna blink their way into the harsh reality of the late-afternoon sun.

“Stop moping,” Nick says, pointing at Miguel.

“I didn't say anything!”

“Your face did.”

“Well, your face. . .” Yeah, he's got nothing. Nick grins, and Miguel turns his attention to Anna instead, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “How'd you do?”

“Meh. Progress, but I got trapped in that cathedral like six times.”

“The one in the woods?”

“Yeah.”

That one was tricky. He could tell her how to get through it, but it's more fun not to. Plus she'd probably whack him, albeit gently, which means it's doubly more fun not to.

“Food,” says Nick.

A crowd heads inside the Cube, passing them as they leave. It's prime Chimera hours now, when everyone finishes work or school or whatever it is people do all day. Gaming is free, but they need to earn money somehow for other stuff, like food and all the products companies pay to advertise in-game. A week earlier Miguel would've been streaming in with
them, the day's calculus and physics already forgotten. He'd play until nine or ten, go home, eat, homework, crash out. Weekends were better, he could usually get in a solid ten or twelve hours, both days, with quick breaks to eat, and he'd finish just in time to be late to meet Anna. Summer vacations are the best. All day, every day.

It doesn't look like he's going to get long sessions like that anytime soon. After last night's announcement people have more reason to play than ever. The Cubes will all be rammed full.

There's no guessing what the new level will be like. Even in the normal game, Miguel's never managed to predict much of what lies ahead, though that doesn't mean he's always unprepared. He's gathered warnings, tips, tricks from people who've gone before him. That can't happen this time. The Gamerunners have made it clear that anyone who shares information about the testing level will automatically be ruled out of consideration for the competition. As will anyone who reads the cheats, even accidentally.

It's not fair, but it doesn't have to be. There are probably a metric ton of agreements between the Gamerunners and every government in the world, and Miguel would bet one of his more minor—read, easily replaceable—bodily organs that none of them require the game to be fair. Fiscally beneficial, yes. Fair, no.

Speaking of unfair . . .

“Ugh,” says Anna, lifting her lenses. “Zack's bragging again.”

“So?” Nick shrugs. “Fiction is meant to be entertaining.”

Miguel laughs. The fantasy of Zack's getting his ass handed to him on a platter of silver pixels makes his food taste even better than an afternoon of running does. He cleans his plate in three minutes.

“We going back?” Nick asks, swallowing his own last forkful.

Anna blinks, frowns, her eyes go wide. “Um, nope.”

“Oh.” Nick's shoulders fall slightly, eyes darting between Anna and Miguel. “Hot date, you two? Should I get out of here?”

Miguel kicks him under the table. Nick knows how things are between him and Anna.

“It's not that,” Anna says, eyes studiously focused on her lenses, body shifting an inch farther away from Miguel. “There is literally not a single free space in the city, let alone three.
Everyone
is practicing, holy shit.”

“Wait, seriously?” Miguel does some rapid blinking of his own. He'd guessed it would be busy, but not this bad. She's not exaggerating, and
holy shit
just about covers it. Never in the five years since he started playing has he been unable to find a place. Sure, sometimes it's in one of the more inconvenient
Cubes, too far to walk to, but that's what hoverboards are for.

“Expand search,” he whispers, and his own eyes widen. He's damned if he's boarding two hundred miles to the nearest available room. At least not tonight. If he can't find space in the morning, he might have to reconsider his options.

“So, what now? You guys want to come over?”

Anna shakes her head, Nick shrugs a “sure,” and Miguel smothers the sense of relief. White lies never hurt anyone, but it can be exhausting to pretend. He and Anna haven't had a hot date in months. Having her around is still nice, obviously, that's never changed, but things get so . . . weird . . . so easily, so abruptly. And the
when
is, like Chimera, unpredictable. In his darker moments Miguel knows exactly why that is.

Planning for the future isn't a preferred pastime for someone who might not have much of one, and his efforts to extend his life are what has driven them apart.

He and Nick part ways with Anna under thankfully clear skies.

“Let's walk,” suggests Miguel.

“I will never understand you. You have the best excuse in the world to be lazy and you don't take it. Come on, let's board, like we used to.”

“We don't fit anymore.”

“Sure we do. Where's your sense of adventure?” Nick leads the way to the nearest hoverboard station. They are definitely
too big these days to share a single-person board the way they did all the time when they were kids, but they make it work. Miguel's legs dangle over the edge, Nick standing behind him with a death grip on his shoulders as they skim the trees and tip the board almost vertically into the wind, laughing.

Once again, the house is empty. “If my mom gets a spot in this competition and I don't, I'm gonna be pissed,” Miguel says, though he wouldn't be, really. Not much. Not superpissed anyway.

“Dude, for real. My dad took the day off work to play.” Nick blinks. “And has apparently been trying to beat the same demon since eight
A.M.
”

“Level?”

“Fifty-one.”

Progress slows, partly game mechanic, partly consequence of real life. Rewards get better, more valuable with each successive, lengthening level. Jobs and kids give people less time to try.

There is no one on earth who has completed the game. For years, status updates have bragged of their posters getting close, but it's all wishful thinking. No one is anywhere near.

Nick wanders through the house, practically his second home, peering into rooms to double-check they're alone. “So,” he says when he's looked everywhere, “how's it coming?”

“Bedroom.”

It
doesn't have a name. At even a third glance from someone with decent skills,
it
doesn't exist, hidden away on a secret partition of Miguel's computer, blocked by enough firewalls to burn anyone who tries to knock them down.

It
could probably get him into trouble, though he's never been too sure, or thought too hard, about what kind. Legal, since there might be copyright issues at play, but even if they let that go, it's a safe bet the Gamerunners wouldn't be too happy about
it.
Miguel wouldn't be too happy about having other players beating down his door to give
it
a try either. That would be a special kind of hell.

Years ago a music teacher had told his class that Mozart could hear a piece of music once and instantly, perfectly repeat it. Miguel's never been particularly musical, but he has talents.

Like Chimera. And computers.

The simulation boots up, pixels on a screen. The graphics are a little crude, but they're recognizable, they work. Every level he's played is here. Inside a ChimeraCube, going back to retrace his steps is a waste of time, going forward is more important. Here, though, in the darkness and hum of his room, every spare moment he has, he can go back and retrace his steps, learn from his mistakes, find faster ways out and through.

“Can I take a look at Thirteen?”

“Sure.” Miguel types rapidly and retreats to his bed as Nick takes the chair. He'll help if Nick asks, which he sometimes
does, but for the moment he relaxes, watches his friend. Nick's wrong; he can be lazy when he wants to.

It's cheating, for sure, and wrong, but like the coded status updates, it's not blatant. It's actually way more of a secret than those. Nick is the only other person who knows of the sim's existence, and it's going to stay that way. Publicizing it might make Miguel rich—for about five minutes. Then it would make him dead, quickly or slowly. Neither is an attractive option.

Miguel slides on his visor. He checks the clock in the corner of his lenses: 4 hours, 240 minutes, 14,400 seconds in which to defeat the testing level.

Some hours are more valuable than others. Minutes, seconds, years, same thing. Time is humanity's greatest and costliest asset because there is no choice but to spend it, and no guarantee of ever getting more.

These hours pass in the span of a heartbeat, and he is back in a tiny slice of real world, a gaming room like any other. There is nothing else he can do, no more skills he can display to the Gamerunners. He finished the level with ten minutes to spare and spends it lying on the floor as he usually does, trying to catch his breath.

He kicked ass. He knows it. Whether the Gamerunners agree is up to them. If they don't, well, that's their problem, and
he's no further behind than he would be if they hadn't come up with this competition thing.

All he can do now is wait. He leaves the Cube and walks home, pushing his way through the people waiting for their turns. It'll be another few days before all the prospective entrants have played the testing level. The night before it opened up, everyone who had registered interest had been given a time slot in the nearest Cube, four hours in which to try to pass it.

It's Wednesday, the level closes on Saturday. He can't even play more to kill the time; all the Cubes are being used.

The real world is bright and crystalline, solid but oh so fragile, just like the people who pass him on the sidewalk. Visible biomech gleams in the sunlight or creates its own illumination, winking dots of red or green to show the machinery is functioning.

The only choice now is to adapt because it's better than outright surrender. Submit to the razor-edged knife of future, wake up with parts of metal or plastic where there was once flesh.

The front door opens, a pair of camera lenses focus on him, aperture irises expanding in the lesser light. The mouth below them smiles, the throat behind them leading to a pair of biomech lungs.

“Hi, honey.”

“Hi, Mom.”

He waits while she carefully sets down her bags, heavy with fragile equipment. She uses handheld cameras most of the time, but her eyes give her the ability to capture whatever she sees, the moment she sees it.

Taking photographs for the end of the world. Miguel's never much seen the point in it, but they're all beautiful, in the way only dying things can be.

Her pictures of him are good, too.

“How did it go?” she asks. As always, there is a subtle thread running through the otherwise evenly woven fabric of her voice when she asks about the game. It's the same thread Anna has, but it's a lot more forgivable from his mom. He knows she worries, she and his dad both do. They just can't argue with his reasons for playing.

“Okay, I think? I don't know. We're not allowed to talk about it.”

“I know,” she says, motioning for him to follow her into the kitchen. She likes routine. Home, put bags down, make synthmint tea, no matter how hot it is outside. The paperlike substance, infused with chemical peppermint, dissolves the instant she pours boiling water into her mug. “It seems like they're being pretty strict about that.”

“Or it's that no one's taking the risk.” Enforcing a rule works pretty well if no one dares break it.

“Whichever. I haven't seen anything in my feed about what the level's like.”

“And I'm not going to tell you, either.” Miguel grins.

His mother's shoulders deflate a little. “Damn. I bring you into the world, and this is the thanks I get. Worth a shot, right? I'm only curious, since I'm not playing it.”

“I thought that's where you were, practicing.”

“Nah, just having some fun. So?”

“It's a level.” Miguel closes his eyes and sees . . . things. Teeth and screaming mouths. Endless corridors and landscapes so vast they create their own kind of suffocating claustrophobia.

There hadn't been a boss at the end, just a puzzle. A damned hard puzzle. He'd had to kneel down on the sand of the beach he'd ended up on and trace all the possible answers into it with his finger for a good half hour before being halfway sure he had the right one. “It wasn't that hard.”

She probably knows he's lying, but lets him get away with it. “I guess if they make it too difficult, they won't get all the people they need,” she says. “When's your medical?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Okay, honey. You home for dinner?”