The Dream Widow (29 page)

The monk led him down a corridor. Everything shone with regular cleaning, including the wooden door, but centuries of rubbing, mopping, and painting had driven away some of the original details. Straight edges of door-frames became rounded and the lines of planks disappeared under paint. The air smelled faintly of freshly cut juniper.

“Wait here a moment.”

The monk closed a door and Wilson heard murmuring voices. The old monk opened the door and waved Wilson inside with a smile.

He walked into a dusty chamber. Shelves of books lined the walls and paper scrolls were scattered on the floor. In one corner, a sheaf of green juniper branches stood in a vase. Light filtered through a window covered in sheets of yellowed paper.

Wilson squinted and thought the paper was covered in minuscule black text. He wanted to investigate further but that might have appeared rude to his silent host in the center of the room.

A monk sat cross-legged on a yellow cushion. His back was to Wilson and he dressed the same as the other monks––shaved head, yellow shirt, heavy crimson robes.

“Sorry for bothering you, sir, but I have a question,” said Wilson.

The monk got to his feet––a deliberate and planned series of movements accompanied by an orchestra of cracking joints––and turned around.

“English, please,” she said.

Wilson gasped. “Parvati!”

She lifted her chin. “How do you know that name ... and my face?”

“I had dreams about Jack, after I was shot.”

Parvati tilted her head. “I remember sending a dog to follow someone ... was that you?”

“He dug me out of a grave and saved my life.”

“Good. The memories you say were Jack’s could have ‘bled-through’ from the dog. They always love to share, don’t they? I love dogs. Please, take a seat.”

Wilson pulled a dusty cushion from beneath a table and relaxed on the floor as Parvati sat down and crossed her legs. With her caramel-colored skin and delicate features, Wilson could have mistaken her for a young boy.

“Thank you for sending the dog,” he said. “But how did you know that I needed help? You were––are one of the hibernating survivors.“

“Yes and no,” said Parvati. “I entered cold-sleep with the others at the beginning of the war, but the system developed faults. Those who left early had no problems. The ones who stayed as planned...”

“They died?”

Parvati shook her head. “First they went insane. The cold-sleep is not complete unconsciousness. The system linked our minds together, and somehow we began to dream the dreams of other people. I had horrifying, terrible nightmares––not only mine, but those of two hundred sleeping minds. The most brilliant––I’m not including the scientists who traveled to the spaceport––went mad first. I guess I was lucky. I realized what was going on with the dreams and broke free.”

“Wait––you said ‘spaceport?’”

“The facility down south. You think they were going to launch from Colorado?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, they couldn’t. All the orbital facilities were in New Mexico.”

“Did they actually ... do it? ‘Launch,’ like you said?”

Parvati rolled her eyes. “Let’s see––you’re sitting in the fake monastery of a brainwave simulation, asking a cold-sleep survivor who’s very likely insane about an event that may or may not have happened three hundred years ago at the end of the world.”

“But the world didn’t end,” said Wilson.

Parvati only stared blankly at him.

Wilson pressed on his crossed knees. “So this world is what people saw––I mean, dreamed––when they were hibernating?”

“Yes and no. This is Gengoku.”

“What does that even mean?”

“This world began life as a backup for the implant database. When people living on the outside perished, their bodies were returned to the Tombs. The data was downloaded and the implants recycled. As generations passed the data began to fragment, but the controllers were oblivious. They attempted to consolidate the systems for easier maintenance and merged this backup database into the control simulation. It did not go well. Those who were still in cold-sleep became infected with fragmentation, the ‘bleed-through.’ The monastery, town, and valley weren’t pulled out of thin air––everything was created from memories. The actual city of Tawang was located in Arunachal Pradesh and was the largest monastery in India. One or more individuals in cold-sleep had to have traveled to the real place before the war.”

“You sure know a whole lot about it,” said Wilson.

“About Tawang? It’s famous.”

“I mean about the simulation.”

“Oh, that. I was a programmer, one of the busy bees who created this prison.”

“How come you and Jack didn’t go crazy from the fragmentation?”

She shrugged. “How do you know we didn’t?”

“I ... uh ....”

Parvati looked down. Light streamed through the newspapers on the window and covered her arms in temporary tattoos of old words and photos.

“Tell me why you’re here, Wilson.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“If I knew I wouldn’t ask, little boy. Since Reed pulled that stunt with the flying drone my access to the outside world has been cut off. It was a dark and tarnished mirror, but the only one I had.”

“Reed stopped responding and I didn’t know if he was alive or dead. I still don’t know, really. I tried to talk to him through a headset and woke up here.”

“What do you want me to do? Snap my fingers and make it all better?”

“If that’s an option.”

“Why do you care about Reed anyway? He’s a priggish old man who lied about your father and would’ve let your girlfriend die.”

“I don’t give a flip about him, it’s everyone else. Kira, my friends, the people from David––none of them will survive if the reactor can’t be controlled or shut down the right way. Your body is part of the system––don’t you want to keep on living like the rest of us?”

“I’ve lived long enough and dreamed enough dreams.”

“Well, I haven’t and Reed is important to me. I need to fix what’s wrong with him and find the code to the reactor panel.”

“Fixing you won’t be that hard. I can force you into cardiac arrest, and if someone shocks your heart the connection will re-set.”

“Or I’ll be dead.”

Parvati smiled. “Life’s full of choices, isn’t it? Jack and I should have gone with Greg to the spaceport, but I convinced Jack to enter cold-sleep instead. Imagine staying in Gengoku for a few centuries and that cardiac arrest looks more appealing.”

“But at least you’re in cold-sleep, right? You’re probably awake only a few minutes every day. In that case it hasn’t literally been centuries.”

“Don’t tell Rapunzel she’s got a beautiful tower,” said Parvati.

“Who?”

“Never mind. In any case, your departure is a moot point. The cure for Reed’s forgetfulness and the reactor password can only be found here, in this dead land inhabited by flickering zombies.”

Wilson sighed. “Can you help me?”

“Gather something for me. Snippets of code from every person in the town.”

“That will get me the reactor password?”

Parvati shook her head. “Only Twitch can do that. Your first priority is to save Reed, and with the data scraped from all the wandering fragments I may be able to trigger an exit loop for him.”

“How do I gather these pieces of code?”

Parvati raised an eyebrow. “The normal way, of course. You must touch each wandering fragment.”

“There have to be thousands!”

“Twenty-one thousand three hundred and four. It may not be necessary to gather all, but you have to try. Also, the touch must be voluntary or you won’t access any data from the wandering fragment. Last of all, the more data you collect, the more defenses that will be sent against you.”

“Like the dream tiger?”

“I suspect less fantastical algorithms, but no less deadly. Like this thing you call a ‘dream tiger,’ the defenses can overload the connection to your cerebral cortex with an electrical surge. You’ll be a ‘vegetable,’ as we used to say in the old days, and not a very tasty one.”

“I guess I don’t have a choice.”

“Not unless the choice is to give up. From the look in your face I don’t think that’s your style.”

“Where should I start?”

Parvati folded her hands over the robes in her lap, palms facing up and thumbs almost touching. “Return to the town and wait. I will think on the problem and send for you later.”

THE OLD MONK OFFERED food. Wilson, Reed, and the boy sat with the rest of the monks on rough-hewn benches and ate green vegetables and spongy beige squares without talking.

On the road outside the monastery gate, Reed grabbed Wilson’s sleeve.

“What did the abbot say?”

Wilson pointed at the patchwork town far below the hilltop. “To help you to remember, I have to convince everyone in the city to touch me.”

The boy stopped and stared at Wilson. “I’ve never heard such a crazy thing!”

“The people aren’t people, they’re fragments of old and living memories from the real world. When they touch me, I’ll be gathering lines of code from an old database.”

“I don’t understand these words.”

“Think of the city as a book and each person as a page,” said Wilson. “We have to read all of the pages to find the answer.”

The boy said nothing for a long time. He followed Wilson and Reed as their feet crunched on the gravel of the steep road.

“Are you saying I’m not a real person?”

“Of course you are,” said Wilson.

He tried not to look at the boy as they walked down to the city.

Back among the crowds of people and honking vehicles on the street, Wilson had to keep reminding himself that he was surrounded by data fragments. They looked, smelled, and sounded normal, but if his arm brushed a sleeve or a wisp of long hair, their entire body would flicker with static.

Wilson watched the concrete pass in front of his boots and thought over the problem Parvati had given him.

“Watch out!”

A hand pulled Wilson back from the curb. The breeze of a passing truck blew trash out of the gutter and whirled dust into his eyes.

Reed let go of his arm. “Be careful.”

“Thanks, but I need somewhere to think,” said Wilson.

“We can relax at Rogspo’s home.”

“No. Somewhere quiet and around here.”

The boy pointed across the street. “The cafe is down that way. The garden is quiet.”

Only a handful of customers were eating inside the cafe. The boy spoke to the tall waitress, and she led them through a door to a walled patio with a pair of tables covered in blue fabric. The boy waved away the menu. He ordered hot tea and a dish from memory, and all three sat on the cushioned chairs.

“How can we make everyone touch you?” asked Reed. “Or let you touch them?”

Wilson rubbed his temples. “I don’t know.”

“We can pretend to be from the monastery,” said the boy.

“I don’t see how that will help.”

The waitress brought a tray that held a pot of tea, three cups and small, rolled towels. The boy grabbed a towel and wiped his face and hands. Reed and Wilson copied the boy and cleaned themselves with the hot and wet fabric.

“We can’t ask permission from each fragment directly,” said Wilson. “That would take far too long.”

“People should come to you willingly,” said Reed.

“But how? I can’t announce to the entire town what we’re doing. Whatever these defenses are, they might be alerted.”

“People are always looking to gain something,” said Reed. “Given the right reason or obvious benefit, the entire town will beat down your door.”

“We’re still thinking of them as real. I don’t know if the same desires apply to these walking data files. What do they do all day other than walking through the streets? Is this cafe filled with the same customers, on the same kind of memory loop that I was before?”

“You are using many strange words,” said Reed.

Wilson folded his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two legs.

“What if we paid everyone?”

“That would work if we had the money,” said the boy.

“What if there was a deadly disease and you had the only medicine?” asked Reed.

Wilson tilted back further. “That’s promising.”

The side door of the restaurant creaked open.

“You need a better plan,” said an older man, his head covered in gray stubble.

“Jack!”

Wilson fell backwards in his chair.

“You know my name, but I don’t know yours,” said the man.

Reed and the boy helped Wilson up from the tiled patio.

“It’s me––Wilson.”

Jack stared at him for a moment then shrugged. “Sorry. Parv just said you had some work for me. Security work.”