Rebel's Construct: Sim-Verse: Book 1, page 13
Taven felt himself drawn toward her. Every fiber of his body was giving him the green light to embrace her, but his mind—his blasted mind—wouldn’t give in completely.
“Ferah, I’m—”
“Not in here, you’re not.”
She knew he was going to mention Amy.
“There is time, Taven. Time is relative. We’re not stuck like you think. Be with me.” She reached her arms over his shoulders, and he felt his arms—as if they had a mind of their own—move around her waist.
He looked into her golden-brown eyes, so far down he thought he would fall into them. As he gazed, his eyes changed focus, catching a glimmer of white light. It was the reflection in her pupils, sunlight coming in through the stained glass behind him.
Then he saw himself, saw his face in her eyes. It wasn’t his real face. His deep scar was missing, a manipulation of this construct. He felt the realization land hard inside his mind: Not only was Ferah unreal, even his own avatar, the body he seemed to occupy, was a fabrication. He, this very moment, was being fed bioelectric stimuli by the Hudson computer. This was a game, an artifice, and as long as he could remember this fact, he could never be happy here.
“No,” he whispered. “I can’t.”
Ferah closed her eyes as if bracing herself from the negative emotion. That was odd, he thought. CGs shouldn’t feel anything, and if she’s some imagined perfect woman, why would she get upset? That’s not what I want.
She stepped back and a gentle smile—not the one he’d seen before—emerged.
Taven watched, incredulously. What was she doing now?
Then Ferah spoke, “You can’t say I didn’t try.”
She closed her eyes again, and this time there was a change. Her skin-tone shifted hue. At first, it was like the translucent gate, but then it seemed to solidify, and when it did it was no longer warm, smooth tan; it was pale with hints of rose blush.
Ferah was morphing into someone else, he realized. She grew a couple inches taller, and her hair turned black and became shoulder length with bangs.
Just as Taven’s confused brain had almost pieced together the identity of this transforming figure, Ferah—or the person who used to be Ferah—opened her eyes.
They were bright green.
“Cat—” he whispered.
CHAPTER 25
TAVEN STEPPED BACK, horrified and confused.
“Don’t be like that,” Cat said with her Aussie accent. “It’s still me.”
“Still who?” he stammered.
“The one you call Ferah. It’s me you’ve been with this whole time, Taven.”
“Then you’ve been lying to me, and for what?” He felt like stomping off, getting away from this imposter. But despite his confusion and anger, there was a part of him excited by the fact that he’d finally found Cat.
Then it hit him: “You could have taken me home a long time ago.”
“Not exactly,” she said.
Taven crossed his arms and waited for the explanation, but none came. “Well?” he added, finally.
“Taven, there’s much you still don’t understand about this place, about the Hudson and its inhabitants.”
“Let me guess; you’re not going to send me home until you convert me or set me straight somehow.”
“No, it’s not like that.” She seemed flustered for a second, which struck Taven as odd after having seen all the green-eyed woman’s confident projections.
“I wish you’d stop being in such a hurry to leave,” she said. “There’s time. You just don’t realize it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. And how that’s possible after all you’ve heard me say and do—I don’t know. Let me be clear—and this is why I came here, risked life and limb in the first place.” He stepped forward closer to Cat, who flinched at his aggressive gesture.
“Your ship,” he continued in a loud tone, “the Hudson, and all its inhabitants are in trouble.” He drew out the last word like she was an idiot, incapable of understanding simple language. “Our slicers threw a chunk of asteroid into the Hudson. She suffered some damage, but the worst thing is she’s out of orbit, on a one-way trip toward Jupiter. And we can’t stop her. The computer won’t take commands from us, and if we send back to Earth for help, you’ll be gone before help arrives.”
Taven’s frustrations mounted as he spoke until he reached the final cadence. “Do you understand?” he asked. “Someone needs to wake up and turn the ship around!”
Then, he felt a release of tension like he’d finished something. He knew he’d done his duty, and if Cat or anyone else didn’t listen, it wasn’t his fault.
“Thank you, Taven,” she said calmly.
“That’s it? Thank you?”
“Well, you did damage the Hudson after all. I can’t exactly jump up and down with excitement, can I?”
Slowly, the humor he’d enjoyed with Ferah came through, and Taven suppressed a chuckle. “I guess not, but—”
“Like I said, there are things you don’t understand.” Now, it was her turn to step forward. And as she did, Taven thought she—Ferah now Cat—was going to try to embrace him again. But she stopped short and offered her hand.
He looked at it, the pale thin fingers that he didn’t recognize, but somehow when he looked Cat in the eyes, those green eyes, there was something familiar. Something of Ferah was there. Slowly, he took her hand.
“Let’s go somewhere more comfortable,” she said.
And with that, the walls themselves began to shake and turn color. This time, as the whole world seemed to dissolve, Taven was able feel Cat’s hand, to maintain their connection through the all-consuming portal.
His other senses faded, and the first one to rematerialize was sound. He was surprised to hear birds chattering and squawking, then the gentle crash of waves.
He felt hot sand under his feet. Then, as his eyes squinted from blinding white light of a midday sun, a cool wave crashed over his ankles.
“Whoa,” he said, letting go of Cat’s hand and jumping out of the water. “I didn’t expect that.”
He took a look around and slowly realized where they were. There was a dock a couple hundred yards down the beach and a single sailboat tied to it.
“This is where I wanted to take you, where you considered going with Ferah,” she said quietly. Then she walked up the beach toward the shade of palm trees and a little thatched hut, the only other human made structure in sight besides the boat and dock.
Taven followed her, and the shade they found was like quenching a thirst he didn’t know he had. Next to the hut was a table and chairs, the kind that was made out of some knotty tropical wood that held up to the humidity and elements. He thought he’d seen that warped grain before, maybe on his and Amy’s honeymoon, though he couldn’t be sure.
“Ah, that’s better,” Cat said as she sat down. “I didn’t bring sunscreen, and—construct or not—I don’t want to get burned.”
Taven sat down across the table from Cat and looked out onto the sea. “I thought that was the lake next to your house. This feels like the ocean.”
“It’s both,” she said, smiling.
“Of course it is,” he said. He wanted to ask more questions, but so far, they’d been like verbal quicksand; the more he asked, the less he found out and the more mired in confusion he became. So, he just sat and waited and pretended they wouldn’t crash into Jupiter in the next few moments.
“You know, I would have told you eventually . . . after we had some fun, that is.” She smiled and looked at Taven out of the corner of her eyes. Even at this angle and lighting, her eyes glowed.
“The Hudson,” she continued, “was a colony.”
“Was?”
“Let me finish,” she said politely. “The Hudson was a collection of like-minded individuals who were guided by the belief in a singular dream: a world, constructed or otherwise, guided by the non-aggression principle, the assertion that no person or group of persons has the right to coerce or inflict violence upon anyone.”
“Don’t tell me they’re a bunch of pacifists gone bad?” Taven chimed in, and as soon as he did, he remembered what he’d been told about Cat and her history of violence before the Hudson.
“Hardly,” she said. “The non-aggression principle doesn’t rule out the use of violence if one is acting in self-defense or all parties agree ahead of time to engage in conflict.”
“Well, that’s as clear as mud,” Taven said. “I was on the other end of plenty of violent acts, and I never once asked for it.”
“But you did, you just didn’t realize it,” she said. “Each of the constructs you entered listed their parameters, the terms of service, so to speak. By entering them, you agreed to interact with others under those predetermined parameters.”
“So, unrestricted meant anything goes, including killing each other?”
“Well, yeah. Basically. Remember, not all of the constructs were like that.”
“Oh, I remember,” he said sarcastically. “I got kicked out of the others for sneezing wrong. Or maybe it was because I had bad posture. I don’t know.”
Cat smiled like a mother amused by the innocence of her juvenile child. “You know, the language we’re engaging in right now is as primitive and unsophisticated as feudalism or the divine right of kings—all things that Earth-based societies abandoned long ago. At least, the last time I checked, they had.”
Taven didn’t respond. He didn’t know what she was talking about, and his expression must have said as much.
“Tell me, if you’d like,” she said, smiling at her own semantic predicament, “which is ruder: a command or a question?”
Taven still didn’t know what the heck she was after. “Neither. I mean, why would a command or a question be rude?”
“Okay. Good question,” she said. “Would you agree that—assuming I don’t know you and you’ve done nothing to harm me directly—I don’t have the right to come up to you and hurt you?”
“Of course.”
“Would you also agree I don’t have the right to then demand that you become my slave and do my bidding, and that if you disagree, I can harm you?”
“Slavery’s been illegal for centuries.”
“So, what do you do—what would you do if you asked someone a direct question and they won’t answer you?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’d probably assume they didn’t hear me and ask again.”
“But what if they never answer and they don’t even acknowledge you exist?”
“Well—I guess—eventually, I’d be perturbed. Everyone deserves the common decency of a response.”
“I see,” she said. “So, everyone is your slave then?”
He still wasn’t following her, but he didn’t want to admit it. “No, I just said everyone deserves common decency.”
“But if someone doesn’t answer you, you feel the right to be angry.”
“Maybe eventually. After giving them several chances,” Taven said.
“And then what?”
“I guess it depends on the situation. I guess I’d walk away.”
“That would be the honorable thing to do,” she said, “but the truth is that many people resort to physical interaction. First, they shove or push the person as if they needed waking up. Then, some resort to striking them. It’s amazing what lengths people will go to make someone answer them.”
“That may be the case—I wouldn’t know—but what does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, let’s say you’re the other person,” she said. “Let’s say you’d like to be left alone. Not only would you like to not respond to questions, you’d rather not be spoken to at all.”
“Then I’d stay home.”
“Yeah, that works for a little while. Then your boss calls or your family and friends. Then, if you don’t return messages or answer the door when it’s knocked, guess what happens?”
He shook his head.
“They kick your door in, that’s what. They say it’s for your protection, to be sure that you are okay and that you hadn’t fallen into a coma or become too ill to call for help. But they bust your door down. There’s no escaping it.”
“I see,” Taven said, though he thought the whole notion was a stretch. “So, the Hudson colonists wanted to collectively put a ‘do not disturb’ sign on their ship.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. That’s why we hid out in the Belt. When the Hudson was launched, mining expeditions out here were rare.”
Taven’s brow scrunched. What was she talking about? They’d been mining this Belt since before his father was born. Obviously, Cat and everyone else here didn’t think the same way most people did. Maybe they were crazy, the whole lot of them. And if they were, or even if they were just eccentric, Taven felt he had to keep his opinions of them to himself. Cat was still his only ticket out of here as far as he knew.
“So, I still don’t understand why questions or commands are as rude as someone kicking your door down,” he said respectfully.
“Let’s go about it from the other angle,” she said. “Do you like being told what to do?”
“Not especially, but if it’s my superior and it’s their butts on the line, and they’re having to make all the hard calls—it ain’t so bad.”
“And that’s a good example, a good explanation of what’s going on here. You don’t like taking orders from strangers or anyone else to whom you haven’t consciously decided to submit. That’s what many of the restrictions are about. Some constructs allow statements but no commands.”
“Okay, I guess I could understand wanting to go about things that way, but I still don’t understand what the big deal with questions is.”
“To many Hudson colonists, a question is synonymous with a command. Think about it; if I say ‘what is your favorite color?’ I’m really saying, ‘you tell me what your favorite color is.’ Right? Questions are just veiled commands. And commands are just veiled threats. There’s always a silent ‘or else,’ at the end of every command.”
Not totally convinced, but wanting to seem agreeable, Taven sat and nodded his head.
“Hey, wait here a sec,” Cat said, patting his hand on the table. She got up and went into the hut. A moment later, she returned with two drinks, the kind that come in an opened coconut.
She sat his down before him. “Hope it’s alright. It’s a bit girly, but hey, it’s my island, my drink.”
She was right. Taven, despite the tropical climate, wished he had that unfinished brewski he’d left on his coffee table, not to mention the Italian sub. But if he played his cards right, seemed interested in this weirdo cult, soon he’d get to leave. Or, at least, he hoped so.
“So, I think I understand the restricted rooms and why I was kicked out of them. But what’s with all the war-torn cities? Why were they all so violent? I mean, every single one of them?”
“That’s the part that we didn’t anticipate,” she answered. “And it’s the reason I said the Hudson inhabitants were a colony. In my mind, they aren’t anymore. And, I’m afraid, it’s ultimately my fault.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Taven lied. Then he had the alarming thought: What if Cat could read his thoughts the way he believed the construct and Ferah could?
But he scanned her eyes and found no indication that she had picked up on his deceit. Instead, she was wrapped up in her tale, her plight.
“You see, they gave me special powers, and I told them it was a bad idea. But they wanted me to be the gatekeeper. They wanted a single individual to be able to change the rules, the basic operating procedures of these thousands of constructs. And, you know, new ones are being built all the time. But they all have to abide by the original guidelines.”
“So, you are in charge,” Taven said.
“Not exactly. I mean, yes, in a manner of speaking. But I wasn’t meant to be calling the shots all the time. I was supposed to go about living just like everyone else. Except, if they discovered some major flaw in the programming, something highly problematic that was missed or miscalculated by the original coders—then, I was the backup. I could go in and make tweaks, and then everyone would go on.”
“Let me guess, things didn’t go as planned?”
She shook her head. “Quickly, the populations began segmenting. The peaceful colonists ended up retreating to the restricted constructs, while those who had been wolves in sheep’s clothing—and let me tell you, it was a surprising number—they took over the unrestricted zones and set up little kingdoms, domains for their gangs to control.”
“What, there’s no police?”
“Naïve, I know. Now I know. Back then, we all thought the restrictions would substitute for policing and that some kind of natural order would kick in relatively soon in the unrestricted spaces. I mean, we were all highly motivated, seemingly highly ethical people united by a political ideology whose main tenet was that people had no right to bully, coerce, or cajole—let alone kill people.”
She took a long sip from her coconut drink and stared out onto the ocean as if lost in memories she’d rather forget.
Taven felt uncomfortable with the silence, like he ought to say something, but he had no idea what.
Finally, she turned to him, her eyes still on fire. “You know the worst thing? I still could have gone on despite the chaos and violence. I could have constructed my own worlds and filled them with like-minded people who shared my same values. We could have lived happy lives with restrictions that kept out the ruffians.”
“That seems to be exactly what you’ve done,” he said.
“Yeah, I’ve got my little retreat. That’s correct. But notice how many people are with me.”
“I figured you just wanted it that way.”
Cat’s face changed, a hurt look as if Taven had shoved in further the arrow already lodged in her back.
“You think I want it this way?”
“I just assumed. You’re the gatekeeper. You make the rules.”
“That’s the problem. Everyone else knows that too. Why do you think I made the medallion so hard to get? That’s the key to getting an audience with me, and when things first started getting off the rails, those gangs forced me to—”
