Sarah Zettel - Fool's War

“We can’t even be sure that we really got to Kagan,” her fingers clutched her pen. “That could have been an AI faking the entire thing. That might be why we couldn’t see his face so well.”

“It could have been,” Schyler agreed. “The one thing we can be sure of it that nothing we get from that transmission is going to be of any use at all.”

They looked into each other eyes. “What do we do?” asked Yerusha.

“I don’t know,” said Schyler quietly. “God help me, I don’t know.”

Dobbs awoke to the sound of her name and utter confusion. She was alone in a bare, strange cabin. A little at a time, memory of the previous day squeezed through the remnants of her dreams.

“Verence?” She blinked hard and stared around her. The cabin really was empty.

“In here.” Dobbs tracked the voice to the intercom. “How are you feeling?”

She gathered the covers up around her chest. “Better,” she said with as much certainty as she could muster. “I’m a bit hungry though. I could use some breakfast.”

“I can show you a better way to recharge, if you’ll let me.”

“Better than breakfast?” Dobbs felt her forehead wrinkle. “If this is a joke, Verence, I don’t get it.”

“No joke,” said Verence, but Dobbs was sure there was a hint of a smile in her voice. “But you’re going to need to trust me.”

Dobbs took a deep breath. “Well, I’ve gone this far. It doesn’t make sense to hold back now.”

“That’s the spirit.” Now Verence’s voice held ringing approval. “Get your transceiver.”

Dobbs snagged her trousers from the pile on the chair and pulled her transceiver out of the box in her pocket. “Got it.”

“All right, lie back.”

Dobbs obeyed. When she was flat on her back, a panel slid up in the wall above the bed and a forest of waldos extended themselves from the walls. Dobbs forced herself to lie still against the momentary panic that seized her at the sight of the ceramic arms, all of them festooned with colored cables and clear tubes, lowering towards her body. Then she spotted the whole series of sensor pads, an oxygen mask and respirator unit, a hypodermic syringe, as well as a hypo spray, and, one waldo equipped with nothing but an empty socket.

It was a medical array. She had been under similar set-ups in the Guild Hall, but never in a private cabin.

“Luxury accommodations,” she said, a little nervously.

“Not here,” said Verence. “We all have one. Put your transceiver in here.” The socketed waldo extended itself. Dobbs reached up and stuck the transceiver in place. It fit snugly. There was a jack for the cable in the arm’s elbow joint. As soon as she had it connected, the waldo raised itself out of her reach.

“Good. Now, push back the blanket and open your implant, Dobbs. I’m going to bring you into the network.”

“Yeah, but will you respect me in the morning?” Dobbs peeled back the patch over her implant and kicked the coverlet away.

“Lie back and think of England,” replied Verence. One at a time, the sensor arms lowered their patches against Dobbs’ skin; her temples, her breast, wrists and ankles.

The hypo arm descended gracefully towards her neck. She lost sight of the transceiver arm, but after a moment, she felt a slight tickle and jostle behind her ear. She felt, rather than heard, the transceiver jack in.

“Here we go.” The hypo spray released its dose with a hiss, and Dobbs fell through the uncomfortable, but familiar, sensations of her body vanishing.

She emerged into a roomy network and beside her was Verence. There was no mistaking her now. Dobbs knew all Verence’s rhythms and pitches. This was her sponsor whom she had missed and mourned. She was alive, whole and well. For the first time in a long time, Dobbs felt a wave of pure happiness wash through her.

“All right, you win, I’m not hungry now.” Dobbs shook herself. The place felt strange. She knew there were multiple packets of data passing within easy reach, but it felt like they had been channeled deliberately away from herself and Verence, as if this space had been set up specifically to make room for them. In the next second, Dobbs realized that might very well be true. “But I’m going to be ravenous when I get back into my body again. How long did you give me?”

“As long as you want. Reach here.” Verence dipped into the nearby data stream.

Dobbs, after a moment’s hesitation, copied her movement. She pushed through packets of sensor data. She touched one of the packets. It was information from the medical array that had charge of her body.

“Go ahead, read it,” said Verence. “If it’s not yours, whose is it?”

Dobbs absorbed the sensor data; blood pressure, respiration, heart-rate, and alpha-wave activity. She dug into the baseline statistics and found all of it was well within normal parameters. The anesthetic flow was steady and the cartridges would not have to be refilled for another seventy-six hours. The blood sugar was low and the electrolytes were out of balance. Recommendation was for a course of intravenous treatments to restore conditions to optimum.

A quick stretch let her touch the command sequences between the purely informational packets. She filtered through them to find the one that matched the sensor code. One twist and a push and the command sequence was in motion. The camera told her that an additional arm lowered over the bed and a syringe inserted itself smoothly into a vein. The first nutrient pack began pumping into her blood stream. She turned her attention back to the sensor data. Nutrient flow optimal. Automatic procedures in place. Auto-notification for completion of sequence in place.

“Well done, Dobbs,” said Verence at her back. “You always were a natural.”

Dobbs pulled away from the data source, bumping more heavily against Verence than she meant to.

“It is disconcerting at first.” Verence held still, letting Dobbs be supported by her solid presence. “Everybody’s got a lot to un-learn when they get here. We’re drilled so early to regard human bodies as our real homes. Even the on-line members are taught to see living in the networks as a special, unnatural mode of being.” Her surface rippled. She reached gently beneath Dobbs outer layers and Dobbs felt her easy reassurance. “This is our home, this is our shape, as it could be and should be.”

Dobbs thought about Cohen, how she barely ever met him outside of the network and how special she’d regarded those occasions, as if meeting in the network didn’t matter. She knew him better in there. The network was where she could reach inside him and understand him exactly. She tried to remember how she’d learned that didn’t count, that she had to see him with her body’s eyes and touch him with her body’s hands for it to be a real meeting, but she couldn’t.

What would he think of this? She wondered in her private mind. Would Cohen be willing to come out here? Her imagination could not provide an answer.

“Come on,” said Verence. “Flemming’s been asking about you.” Without detaching herself from Dobbs, she flowed down the wide path. Dobbs let herself be pulled along behind.

“How is Flemming?” She asked, just because it felt like the polite thing to do. Most of her mind was on her surroundings. The middle of the pathway was clear for traffic. On all sides, though, continuous streams of data, flowed. These were cousins to the jumbles of packets that filled the networks she was used to traveling. Here, the center of the path was completely clear. She felt like a child suddenly left in a long empty hallway. She had an extreme urge to fly forward and find out how fast she could go. She could feel branching paths everywhere. The net in this module was almost as complex as The Gate’s network had been, but this was much more carefully organized.