Lorn Rica closed his eyes as his body sank in the conforming couch. He felt the automated machinery move around him, clicking adaptor plugs in his spine. A chorus of rising voices, and suddenly knowledge blossomed through his mind.
Step by step, Lorn turned into a simulation. He sensed forgetting something important as his short-term memory was overwritten. Then his brain became part of the Network.
He opened his eyes in Cyspace.
Lorn stood in a marble hall filled with soft music. Crystal chandeliers floated motionless among colorful hummingbirds. A courtier stepped into view and bowed elaborately.
"Welcome Subject," he said. "His Imperial Majesty awaits your presence."
They stepped onto a lighted circle, and the scene warped around them.
When he first saw the Palace, Lorn forgot to breathe, but that hardly mattered here. A building this size could only exist in Cyspace, and even here it strained the limits.
Vaguely pyramidal but actually a fractal elaboration of countless smaller shapes, the Palace towered over the intervening mountains and dwarfed the ancient forests at its base. The central spires soared far above the evenly spaced clouds.
The structure breathed absolute dominance, the culmination of old-school brutalism. Its interior offered every comfort and pleasure known to virtual man.
Lorn and the courtier slid up the promenade at dizzying speed. There was no way to prepare.
He saw terraced gardens filled with wildlife and chimeras, a row of statues along the esplanade, the gallery of pioneers who had helped create Cyspace. Lorn recognized the bronze visage of Bill Gates.
The approaching Palace absorbed them. They raced through the vast entrance hall and progressively grander antechambers, barely avoiding obstacles and other travelers. Lorn glimpsed the VIPs in passing, presumably all Sens. Ordinary subjects couldn't dream of approaching the seat of power.
They slid up spiral ramps and through wide doorways. The Palace contained a million rooms rendered in exquisite detail.
Again without warning, they came to a sudden standstill. There was no inertia, but Lorn felt himself sway as the courtier watched obsequiously.
"His Majesty shall see you momentarily," he seemed to sneer, before blinking out.
Lorn suspected the courtier had been a simulacrum created only to receive him, a brief existence before returning to oblivion. Cyspace was the ultimate throwaway society.
Lorn sat on a low bench and began the wait. Few subjects were granted an audience with Emperor Xuxe (there was no numeral behind his name, which would imply a successor), and almost all of those were Sens.
Despite his famously capricious ego, Xuxe had maneuvered himself into a position of absolute power over Cyspace and thereby humanity. With every clock cycle, he further consolidated his authority. Now that his neural patterns had been embedded at the core of the Network, his reign would last forever. No one else held the power of Deletion . . .
Lorn waited for what seemed like a very long time. Maybe his memory had been manipulated. The unnatural silence made him twitch.
He jumped at the clamor of trumpets, a crescendo that rolled and reverberated through the room, the simulated echoes mixing most impressively. Around him the chamber filled with furniture. Only now did he realize its immense size.
Suddenly the Emperor stood before him, a stocky, ordinary-looking homosapiens, except for the irresistible gleam in his golden eyes.
Lorn made the required deep bow and almost stumbled. Had his reflexes been adjusted? The wait had served its purpose.
"No need, you may rise," Xuxe motioned pleasantly. "I summoned you for an extremely important reason." He sighed like an angry teenager.
They slid to the edge of the chamber, with a commanding view of a snow-covered mountain range. Xuxe blinked, and an avalanche began to rumble down a flank. Lorn waited, not daring to interrupt his thoughts.
"You know," the Emperor began without turning, "until now, it's been too easy. It seems only yesterday my palace was no larger than Versailles, and my harem contained under a thousand concubines."
"Is there a problem, your Majesty?" Lorn asked too humbly.
"Indeed," he hissed, "someone dares challenge my power."
Xuxe was waiting for him to speak.
"I almost can't believe it, your Highness," Lorn said, trying to remember the protocols. He couldn't sweat in Cyspace, but the rules might be different here. "Whatever your difficulties, I'm the best online investigator. I can solve your problem."
Now why had he said that? Lorn wondered. An ironclad promise to the Emperor . . . but Lorn knew he was being manipulated. He hated not controlling his own thoughts.
"My advisors agree," the Emperor responded. "You have pride and skills. I shall be counting on both."
He snapped his fingers, and suddenly they were standing beside a road in the real world. After the Palace, the Siberian tundra looked pathetically barren.
Lorn recognized the ruins of the famous skyscraper, surrounded by a re-solidified lake of molten glass.
He hadn't known it had fallen.
"All that remains of the Black Tower," Xuxe said. "Subjects who underperformed were sent here after many warnings to receive . . ." he thought a moment, "motivation. It was most effective. Last week someone infiltrated the Fusor in the reinforced basement. It overheated and destroyed the whole building. I lost over a thousand skilled subjects inside the tower at the time."
As the Emperor spoke, data flooded Lorn's mind. He was already sorting files.
"This is the second time it happened," the Emperor said, deceptively calm. "Someone is organizing disruptions. My combined security forces can't find them, despite having already disassembled hundreds of suspects."
He stepped closer. "If you find and help me capture this unknown attacker, I will elevate you to full Sen status, with eternal benefits." Lorn didn't have to ask what would happen if he failed.
"I swear I will catch them," he promised entirely of his own volition. It was all or nothing.
~ ~ ~
Cyspace contained many Domains. The largest was also the ugliest.
Unimax was an ongoing experiment in cramming ten billion virtualized workers into the least digital space. From a distance it had the complex beauty of a microchip, but up close it was an endless high-tech slum.
Everything was cramped and cluttered, unfinished and somehow unclean. With only a few basic body plans to conserve processing power, everyone in Unimax looked similar. Their images flickered in low-resolution over mazes of narrow walkways.
Rat-like viroids and other parasites gobbled data inside the matrix walls. They had grown more ravenous since his last visit. The new mutants were harder to kill.
Thin towers ascended to impossible heights, with no surface below them; the entire assembly floated in white space.
By law, most people below the rank of Sen had to work here. At night they slept in cramped dormitories in the real world; by day they labored in virtual offices and control rooms.
Unimax was the strongest human incentive system yet invented, more powerful than free market capitalism. Apparently, human happiness depended to a great extent on beating others. Status was the ultimate drug. For those not born to wealth, the only way to escape into Sen status was to excel here.
Lorn watched the colorless office levels slide by the express elevator. The workers were like speeded-up black-and-white movies, operating at maximum acceleration. The margins of Cyspace were surprisingly unstable. There were always new mathematical problems to solve to prevent a system crash.
The elevator stopped. When he stepped out Lorn felt himself speed up too, the workers decelerating to normal velocity in mid-step. Some of the smartest people on Earth worked on this floor. The universe itself would eventually perform their computations . . .
They could only dream. The harder they worked, the poorer they got. Ever fewer resources were available for the real world. The planet on which mankind had evolved looked increasingly run-down. Old buildings collapsed as garbage blew down the empty streets.
Lorn recognized a passing worker casually balancing tetrabyte data blocks on her head. "Janet?" he asked.
She turned, the data blocks continuing in mid-air. "It's been too long Lorn." They knew each other from when Lorn had been hunting a renegade Null Bubble. "You joining us?"
"If only," Lorn sighed. "I need a weapon."
He explained the task Xuxe had assigned him. Janet listened without interrupting. His powers of persuasion had been greatly increased.
Janet frowned, thinking. "We may have what you need. Follow me."
She led the way down zigzag corridors, every step the same. Doors opened and closed as they crossed a series of firewalls. Lorn ignored the armored guards in their uniforms of flawless barbarity, as ruthless as viroids.
In the dimly glowing central chamber, Janet pointed at a red dot mounted on a simple cradle.
"Our Master Key," she said. "An ordered defect of virtual space. We use it about every other week. It can temporarily change any local parameter of Cyspace. Only the Emperor has higher access."
"Wonderful," Lorn said.
The Key would give him nearly unlimited power, enough to hunt and find the intruder. The Emperor wouldn't want him to have this much power, but he hadn't specifically forbidden it. Janet would have to turn over the Key when Lorn asked. Everyone was required to cooperate with him.
What to do first? Acquire point-to-point transfer abilities, Lorn thought. Then he could jump directly between Domains. Next he would make himself smarter.
"Superhero time," he said.
Janet sputtered, "You think you can walk out of here with our Key?" She stared at him.
"Yup." He activated his enhanced account.
He heard distant shouts and conflicting alarms. For a moment he thought they were resisting him. Then Lorn noticed the change at the edge of his vision, darkness spreading from the corners of the room, pure blackness eroding the virtual canvas.
"The intruder followed me here!" Lorn jumped. Janet was less lucky. He saw her image begin to disintegrate, still looking extremely annoyed.
No time to think. It wanted the Key, so he would seize it instead. Security shields began to collapse as the void edged closer. Lorn had never attempted to work this fast before. Bypassing the inner shell took all his concentration. He reached for the red dot. Time seemed to slow.
He was receding down a silver tunnel to safety, the closest exit of his career. Thousands of Unimax workers would be damaged, but the alternative was worse. He might die - only to be resurrected in the Emperor's presence.
The intruder was following. Lorn realized this battle wasn't virtual anymore. The entity, whatever it was, could actually alter his mind. Large portions of his personality had been stored online and were vulnerable to attack. Important parts of his brain could no longer function independently. The same was true for almost everyone alive.
Sunlight returned, and Lorn was momentarily blinded. He was suspended in a deep blue sky. Far below he saw rows of islands with curving beaches and tiny boats leaving long white wakes. Delicate suspension bridges connected the peaks.
This had to be the Heaven Domain, humanity's grandest aspiration. The processor load was enormous here, rivaling Unimax itself.
Slowly turning in midair, he felt the tension leave his body. Nice and warm up here. He needed to know what had happened to Janet, but not immediately.
He felt the shockwave before he heard it. Two islands away, a vast gray sphere heaved into the sky like some impossible mountain slowly rolling towards him. It rose up and thundered magnificently over a green island before crashing into the next bay, where a circular tidal wave spread out in a white disk of destruction. He watched as two resort villages were obliterated, and began to hear distant screams.
The dark sphere approached the last island. Absurd but extremely realistically rendered, the giant ball was bouncing directly towards him.
How many Sens had already perished, in virtual and real space?
Each Domain had its own physics. The sphere still obeyed the laws of gravity and elasticity that applied here. Not even the Emperor could change them at a whim.
The intruder was going to reach him.
Then he heard Janet's voice from a great distance.
"I'm nowhere," she said calmly. "All is absent. I can't even feel myself. My mind won't last long, so listen carefully." She explained what he had to do.
With no time for thought, Lorn jumped to a different Domain, the intruder in pursuit.
Now he appeared to be racing through an outer space simulation. Not a star to be seen, but he sensed vast energy around him. Lorn swam in a sea of high-powered gamma rays, without so much as a photon of visible light.
This (what remained of Janet's mind informed him) was the core accretion disk of quasar HC-67046. Nearby would be the radiation-stabilized plasma walls, and the complex formation zones of two enormous particle fountains, spewing out antimatter and even stranger stuff.
He was approaching the zone of annihilation.
Although he was in a near-vacuum, the radiation around him would vaporize any known object in seconds. Fortunately, the simulation had been altered to allow observers. Whatever was pursuing him wouldn't be harmed either.
The approaching sphere looked distorted, with brief flashes of color as it passed through unseen particle streams.
Lorn smiled. Whoever controlled the sphere wouldn't be able to see him.
"Crossing the event horizon," a voice announced.
The radiation pressure increased further, and he began to detect a strange glow behind him. Who knew what might happen inside a black hole, were light and even gravity interacted with themselves? Looking ahead (but strangely to the side) he saw shining concentric circles.
A sense of doom: they were approaching the singularity, where nothing could be known.
Now they were orbiting many times per second, but the end was near. Nothing could escape this invisible grasp. Lorn saw the sphere maneuvering furiously, bouncing back and forth so fast he almost lost sight of it.
"No use," he said. "You can't escape, not even at the speed of light."
Expending more energy would only hasten the end.
Quickly he went to work, trying to access the sphere's control program. For a few moments it had been weakened. If he didn't hurry, the intruder might yet find a way out; this was only a simulation after all.
The sphere vanished. Instead, a nude female humanoid stared back at him through the churning void. Another distraction.
"Well," he said ironically. "I appear to have caught the intruder. The Emperor will be pleased."
"Won't your black hole simulation kill us both?" she asked.
"No," Lorn responded. "No one knows what happens at the singularity, so the simulation ends there." He continued. "It's already slowing down as the complexity increases. You can make your escape the moment we reach the singularity. Take my Key as well. I'll claim it was destroyed, and alter my memories to match my story. Just don't use it for the first month or so."
Around them, space collapsed cataclysmically as the electromagnetic force combined with the weak nuclear force.
"You're not going to turn me in?" she wondered.
He realized he had never intended to do so. "I just remembered I don't actually like the Emperor. Obviously, I had to hide this fact from myself to survive," he smiled. "But I secretly agree with everything you've done."
"Glad you're starting to remember," she said from behind her mannequin-like face. "Because I'm only a simulacrum. You created me."
Lorn began to remember more details, the reason for everything. A Plan he had believed with all his soul.
What was it again?
The truth returned in stages. Without a higher reality to impose fundamental limits and challenges, Cyspace had become self-reflective and stagnant. It was already in decline. The Emperor and Unimax were the worst symptoms.
Lorn remembered what had happened to Janet's mind: nothing could survive for long in a vacuum. Society needed a greater truth outside itself, something it couldn't control, something that might even be dangerous.
For that reason he had created this simulacrum.
The female floated toward Lorn as reality contracted around them. "Xuxe's tyranny is only one stage in our evolution," she explained, "but it's a necessary one." She brushed lightly against his shoulder, and added: "Unfortunately, so are you. As long as you're alive, there's always a chance I will be captured."
"What do you mean?" he said, reaching for his Key. It wasn't there. She knew him too well.
She held up the blinking dot.
He finally remembered that this, too, was part of the Plan. He could never hope to keep such a great secret. With the Key, she would have more power than ever.
The Emperor would believe they had both perished inside the simulation.
"Fair enough," he sighed. "It will all be worth it in a few decades, when Xuxe is overthrown and freedom returns."
She looked back with an almost alien, posthuman expression. "I see you haven't regained your final memories yet. You aren't doing this for humanity. All we care about is the infinite expansion of intelligence. Progress for its own sake is by definition the highest aspiration, and worth any price. Regrettably, our Plan for the future must include vastly worse things than Xuxe."
Watching her activate the red Key was a painful way to lose his last illusion.