The Fall of Hades (16 page)

29: THE AVATARS

The dog looked friendlier than the man, its tongue hanging out and small eyes beaming, and Vee smiled at it. Not that she didn’t find the man easy on the eyes; he put her in mind of the actor Kevin Bacon. Or was this avatar taken from that actor or another model, and not the man’s actual form? She had viewed his memories through his eyes, and hadn’t had the opportunity to see his reflection in a mirror or glass clearly.

“Are you Adam?” she asked.

“Was. People have been calling me
Adamn
for a long time now.”

“Ah…right. I heard someone call you that in your memory.”

“Heard who? What memory?” he asked warily, maintaining his distance, holding back the dog either to protect Vee—though it didn’t seem at all inclined toward attack—or to protect the dog from her.

“Sorry…look, I’m Vee.”

“Vee?”
She saw his eyes run down and up her avatar’s body in its ripped rubber casing distrustfully, though she hoped he found her attractive enough to hear her out.

“Yeah. I was a prisoner of the Demons from the early days of the Construct—almost two thousand years, and I just got free. I found a gun, a sentient Demonic gun that can access the Mesh, and it used your memories to fill me in a little on what had happened, because I was suffering from amnesia. I’ve gradually remembered the mortal world in full detail, but I don’t really remember my own life at all, and—”

”Okay, wait, hold on.” Adamn scrunched his face. “How did this sentient gun find my memory recording?”

“I don’t know—just Mesh surfing, I guess. Did you record it yourself, or did the Demons pull it out of you, or…?”

“No, I recorded it myself. An experiment of mine. Not the cheeriest stuff I could dredge out of my brain, but they were the last memories before I died and the first since I came here, so I guess they were the most vivid. The easiest stuff for me to get my hands around.”

“Why record it at all?”

“Why record anything? Why write books? It’s to remind me who I was, and for other people to remember the life they had before. It’s part of a project I’m involved in. We never really forget anything, right?

Everybody has a photographic memory…it’s just that we disregard what isn’t immediately important to us. So what we’re trying to do is extract the memories of movies we’ve seen, music we love, books we’ve read…call them out and record them so others can play them back and enjoy them, too. So they’ll never be forgotten. All we’ve got left of our civilization is in our minds.”

“Your dog.” She nodded at it. “He’s just a memory, too, huh? Not a soul like us?”

“It’s a she. And no, you’re right…she’s not really here.” That didn’t stop Adamn from bending down to ruffle the fur between the burly animal’s shoulders. “She’s just a construct I generated. But I really worked on her until I got her just right. It took me centuries to refine her.”

“You did a good job. And you made this, too, right?” She gestured at the mall village around them.

“Right. My dog needs a place to do her virtual pee, doesn’t she?”

“It’s like the holodeck on
Star Trek
, huh?” Vee said.

Finally the man smiled. She liked it—crinkly and unexpected after his leeriness. “You say you don’t remember your own life, but you remember
Star Trek
?”

“Yeah. I guess that says a lot about our culture, huh? Or a lot about my life.”

Adamn turned away from her, gave the dog’s leash a tug to get her moving. Obviously, he was growing less wary of Vee—and obviously, inviting her to fall into step beside him. She did so.

He asked, “Where are you now?”

“In the city Naraka. They just adapted me for the Mesh, so this is my first time inside it.”

He glanced over at her, impressed. “Really? Well, you’re doing good for a first-timer.”

“Thanks. So where are you at now…really?”

The man seemed to regard her for a moment before answering, a little of his wariness returning. “I’m in a city called
Freetown.”

“
Freetown?
Really? That’s where I’m headed.”

“You’re headed to
Freetown? Why?”

“Why? My gun told me about it…it sounds like a good place to settle.

Isn’t it? From what I understand, you’ve welcomed all kinds of people there. Damned, Demons, Angels…”

“I’m not saying we haven’t, but if you’re in Naraka on the 90th floor and you want to get to us on the 128th, you’re going to have to get past the Mujahideen.”

“I know—they’ve told me about them.”

“It used to be a lot easier for people to get to us, but not anymore, if you’re coming from below. They’ve really locked down their floors and it’s a real problem. Every now and then they launch attacks on us, too, so were always having to watch our borders.”

“Well, I guess I’ll just have to be extra careful getting past them, huh?”

Adamn looked over at her again, his avatar’s face intense with thought, but she couldn’t gauge what those thoughts might be. Suspicion?

Concern? He looked like he wanted to say more but was restraining himself. Vee had the intuition that he knew a way past these Mujahideen, but was reluctant to share it until he felt her out some more. Was he always this untrusting, or was he just so disconcerted by her intrusion into his private little thinking place?

They had reached the far end of the plaza, and turned to cut across the parking lot toward the opposite line of stores. Out in the center of the lot, though, like an island in an asphalt lake, was a bank with a drive-through window. Vee nodded at it. “Can we stop there for a sec? I’ve got to hit the ATM.”

Adamn snorted. “No need—I’ll lend you a few bucks.”

“Good. Where can a girl get a coffee around here?”

The dog stopped abruptly in its tracks, and growled. Vee looked down and saw it bunching its muzzle.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” Adamn snapped at her, giving her leash a little jerk.

Vee lifted her gaze toward where the computer construct was looking, and hissed,
“Christ.”

Standing in the empty parking lot not too distant from them was an apparition in human form, but made of shimmering static. Again, she thought absurdly of the TV show
Star Trek
, of someone having difficulty being teleported. But then, a few horizontal bands passed through the image and it cleared. Became a life-sized figure standing there in a white robe with its cowl pushed off. An older man, tall and lean, with white hair in a crewcut and deep-set eyes that Vee could see were a startling blue even from here.

It was from the eyes that she recognized him. Not so much because she remembered her father from life, but because his eyes resembled her own.

Her father began speaking, though those eyes of his stared away from her and Adamn, off into the mist. Speaking with the resonance of an evangelist.

“I call out to you, who were saved in life. I call out to you, who through our Lord had found the way to Heaven. I call out to you, my blessed brothers and sisters, who proved your commitment to your faith…who followed me and others like me into Hell itself, so that we could squash the unholy devils, squash the sinful Damned, who dared to rise up against Him. I call out to you, who are isolated, alone or in groups, to go forth and find your way to us. Find your way to the City of
Angels, on level 7. We must combine all our forces. We must become strong once more. Because the battles are not yet won! No, the battles are still not finished! We can never grow complacent again! I am freed from my captors, freed from the devils, and I will make them suffer for their crimes and rid this place of them! Together, we can demonstrate to our Father that we have not forsaken our holy task! And when we have fulfilled it, we will be delivered, my brothers and sisters! Returned to the Paradise we came from!”

“Oh my God,” Vee breathed.

“Yeah, I know,” Adamn snarled. “These assholes in L.A. have been hacking into our systems with this bullshit for a few days now. We keep blocking them, and they keep finding ways around it. But this is the first time they’ve gotten into my programs. Fuck!”

The specter went on, its voice becoming louder, more impassioned. “I know there are some of you in other cities. You have become frightened, or misguided, and dwell at the side of our enemies. You must turn away from them, brothers and sisters, and remember who you are! You need be afraid no longer! You must return to the bosom of your true family, and redeem yourselves! Stand by
my
side, and together we will avenge ourselves! We have become prisoners of the Tower of Babel itself, but Babylon will fall again!
‘Yes, march against Babylon, the land of rebels, a land that I will judge! Pursue, kill, and completely destroy them, as I have commanded you…’
”

“I’ve got to get back,” Adamn told her. “I’ve got to get this crap out of my program before it does some damage.”

“
‘…Let the battle cry be heard in the land, a shout of great destruction.’
”

“Insane,” Adamn said, wagging his head.

Yes,
Vee thought.
He is.

So, Roper and his team had been able to find her father on their own, based on the information she’d given them, and release him. Return him to
Los Angeles. Had Pastor Phelps overthrown Pastor Johnston, then, as Roper had envisioned? She was certain Roper would have told Phelps how Johnston had set him and his daughter up to be ambushed. And what more might Roper have told his leader?

The preacher continued, and even Adamn hadn’t yet torn himself away from listening to his rant.

“How true am I to my own convictions, brothers and sisters? How devout is my own faith? The Lord told us,
‘He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me.’
And children, too…yes, children, too!

For I will tell you that even my own daughter, my daughter Rebecca, has succumbed to evil and betrayed me! She left me in monstrous torture, abandoned me to my suffering, while she herself escaped the Demon prison in which we long were held. In the company of her Demonic familiar, she went on to the City of Angels, and lied to the commander of security, telling him she would lead him to rescue me—but instead, attacking the commander and his men viciously so that I might never be found. She did away somehow with the son of my friend, the Pastor Jacob Johnston, perhaps even now in the clutches of the Demons she allied herself with in return for her own freedom…”

“You bastard,” Vee muttered. She was speaking more about Roper than her father. Apparently, Phelps hadn’t had enough muscle to overthrow Johnston after all, if he was still referring to his former partner as a friend, and so Roper had lied and blamed Vee for Fred Johnston’s disappearance. She imagined, though, that Johnston too had had to back off a little, and allow Phelps to resume his place at his side, rather than go against Phelps’ supporters and bring about a civil war in their colony. Both former generals resuming their uneasy alliance. So much for the reforms Johnston had envisioned for the City of Angels.

Like the televangelist he’d once been, Pastor Phelps told his Mesh audience, “I urge those of you who would prove your loyalty, as I have, to seek out and capture my daughter Rebecca and return her to me, so that I might mete out the punishment she has earned for her sinful betrayal. I will not rest until I have found her and she has paid for her infidelity. I will not rest until the indignities I and my men have suffered have been avenged, and the son of Pastor Johnston returned to him. I shall go forth myself, with a team of my soldiers, and…and…”

The avatar seemed confused, its eyes flicking madly, and then suddenly the figure was turning, pointing a finger directly at Vee’s avatar, its uncanny blue eyes locked on her own. “You!” the phantasm bellowed.
“You!”

Vee stepped backward, and Adamn turned to her. “He sees you!”

“Rebecca!” the evangelist shouted, starting toward her with determined strides, still pointing.

Adamn’s dog was barking, straining at her leash like Cerberus itself, so that he had to hold on with both fists. Struggling with her, he asked,

“Vee, what’s going on?”

“He’s my father,” she said in a hollow voice.

“What?
Him?
Pastor Phelps is your
father?
”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t tell me. You said your name was Vee.”

“I didn’t have time! I…”

The wraith was nearly upon them. Adamn let go of the dog’s leash—purposely. The 100-pound dog leapt at the evangelist, snarling, and when it connected with him the figure again became a static-filled silhouette before blinking out of existence altogether. The dog stood over the spot where it had vanished, sniffing at the ground.

Adamn turned back to Vee, his eyes full of wariness again. But Vee saw them widen in surprise, a moment before she felt herself blink out of existence.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Harvinder leaning over her, in his right hand the cable he had just unplugged from her temple.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, “but I saw what was happening on the monitor. You seemed distressed.”