Rebel's Construct: Sim-Verse: Book 1, page 6
“My name is Taven Smith. I’m from outside the construct, outside the Hudson.”
Her eyebrows raised slightly. “I see,” she said.
“I’m here to warn you, to warn everybody. The Hudson is in danger. We bumped her out of orbit accidently. Someone who knows how to run the ship needs to come out of the construct and fix it.”
“Well, Murphy’s law and all that,” she said with a grin.
“I don’t think you understand. Something’s really wrong. This isn’t a joke or a simulation. It’s real.”
She paused for a moment, resumed her scrutinizing gaze that made Taven feel uncomfortable, and then finally said, “I believe you really are an outsider.”
“That’s what I said,” he pleaded in exasperation. He told himself to calm down and be patient. This was as far as he had gotten with anyone on the Hudson.
“Perhaps there are things you don’t understand about the Hudson, Mr. Smith.”
“Perhaps so,” Taven said with renewed coolness in his voice.
She reached down inside her robe, and Taven had the distinct fear that she was about to pull out a weapon. Instead, she placed a dark green ball of yarn on the table. Another reach inside, and she had two knitting hooks, and she commenced to work on what looked like the beginnings of a scarf.
Taven stared in dismay. “Well, aren’t you going to tell me? What don’t I understand about the Hudson?”
The old lady looked up with a flash of surprise on her face, but before she could speak, Taven was whisked away back to the door.
“Blast it all!” he said when he realized he’d been kicked out again. He found the Cantera listing. It was now like the Fulbright construct, faded out and unclickable.
He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. How was he supposed to warn these people when they had all these invisible rules he didn’t understand? The old woman was right; there are things about the Hudson he didn’t understand, but none of that would matter if he couldn’t carry on a conversation with someone for more than thirty seconds.
“Let’s think this through,” he told himself. He looked at the two faded out constructs. “What’s the same? What’s different?”
Both Fulbright and Cantera were restricted worlds, he knew. The first was anonymous, and the second let him see faces. That’s what the smiley face emoticon must have meant. But they both had the slashed-through punctuation marks.
What had he done right before he had been kicked out? He replayed the events in his mind, and then it hit him; he’d asked questions. And maybe that’s what the slashed through question mark meant. They didn’t want to be asked questions. He replayed the events once more, and as far as he could remember the Hudsonites hadn’t asked him questions either. That was it!
With new confidence, he searched the walls for a restricted room without the slashed-through question marks. He found one:
SILVERTON COMPLEX- ANON ??? !!!
This one looked to be another anonymous construct, and he had no idea what the exclamation marks were about. Maybe you weren’t supposed to get excited or raise your voice. But, presumably, this one allowed questions.
He quickly punched the selection, and immediately he flashed through, except this time, it seemed he never arrived. There was no white impenetrable curtain of smoke, just darkness.
“Hello. Anybody here?” he asked.
Well that settled the question marks, Taven realized. He had unwittingly asked a question right off the bat.
To his surprise, a disembodied voice rang out loudly. “Yes, who wants to know?”
Okay, this guy likes the lights off, Taven thought. “Taven Smith. I’m from outside the construct, from outside the Hudson. I’m here to warn you all.”
“About what, Mr.?”
This guy didn’t play around, Taven thought. And he’s asking questions too. This was good.
“The Hudson was hit with a chunk of asteroid and knocked out of orbit.”
“So?”
“So,” Taven huffed, “you and your fellow passengers are in danger. Without a stable orbit, the Hudson will spin off and crash into something a lot bigger and more damaging than an asteroid.”
“That would stink,” the grouchy voice said with an air of sarcasm.
“I’m not here to boss people around,” Taven said.
“Darn straight,” the voice chimed.
“But how can I get this message across to the whole ship? People need to know.”
“You can’t,” the voice said simply.
“But there must be someone in charge, somebody I can contact who can do more about this.”
“Take it up with Cat.”
There it was again, that phrase the ruffians had used at the café. But it didn’t make sense; Cat was a talking head and nothing more. Or was she?
“How do I talk to Cat?”
“How should I know? She doesn’t answer to me or anyone else for that matter.”
“Then why even mention her? I mean, what’s the point if she can’t be reached?”
“She’s a slim hope, I guess, but she’s all you got in this place. If you want something changed, she’s the only one that has the power to make it happen. Gee, I don’t want to be rude,” the voice said in a way that obviously was untrue, “but I’m getting tired of this line of questioning. What else do you like talking about?”
Taven’s mind skipped a beat. How could anyone ignore something so serious as their ship going down?
“I don’t wish to be rude either, but I don’t think you are grasping the seriousness of this situation,” Taven said sharply.
“Oh, really?”
“No. Not if you have any intention of living long.”
“Is that a fact?” the voice said with smug superiority.
“Yes. I need you to try a little harder. Where can I find Cat, or where can I find someone who knows where she is?”
“I’ve already answered you.”
“No, you haven’t,” Taven said, raising his voice. “Tell me now!”
Instantly, Taven reappeared in the door room. He’d been kicked out a third time, but before he could express his anger and frustration, the wall screen reappeared with Cat’s face.
“You have broken the rules of conduct in privately restricted constructs. For the purpose of maintaining a peaceful and voluntary society, you are officially on probation for a period of one week during which time you are only allowed to visit unrestricted constructs. In the meanwhile, please review the policy handbook you were given at the commencement ceremony. In it you will find all you need to know to prevent this infraction from occurring again in the future.”
“Great,” Taven said. “A week—how do I even know when that’s over?”
The video screen disappeared, and Taven noticed that more than half of the constructs listed on the walls were faded out, off limits. He raised his fists and pounded against them.
“Restricted constructs off-limits,” a digital voice said.
Taven fumed and closed his eyes. He told himself, yet again, that none of this was real, that he shouldn’t get angry about a made-up world with made-up rules. He still didn’t know how to leave this place and return back to the pod, and he’d done no good whatsoever in warning these people who seemed determined to keep their collective heads in the sand.
He searched his mind for something, anything that might work. Then a trivial but pleasurable thought came to him: the sandwich he never finished. He was hungry, somehow, and a Gus’s Italian sub sounded better than ever. Maybe he could manifest the sandwich with a tall dark stout to wash it down. Yeah, that was the ticket. He deserved a break from this madness.
He opened his eyes and intended to walk back into his abode, but as he did, he noticed a red blinking light on one of the consoles. It read ‘message received.’
“Now who could that be?”
He clicked the console and a text message appeared on the same screen on which Cat’s image had appeared. It read:
“Taven, come to Sector Fifteen. And bring a weapon.”
CHAPTER 12
I’LL NEVER GET to eat that sandwich,” Taven said aloud after processing the message. He had no idea who it was from or what he was supposed to do when he got to Sector Fifteen.
He found the construct on the console. It was an unrestricted world, and the command to bring a gun didn’t make him jump for joy at the idea of entering another place like the café. Plus, he had no idea how to bring a weapon. The computer didn’t respond to voice commands, he knew, so he was at a loss for how to proceed.
He examined the listing for Sector Fifteen more carefully. It read:
SECTOR FIFTEEN- UNRESTRICTED +
There were countless other constructs that were unrestricted, but few had the + symbol afterwards. He had a hunch, but he was scared to act upon it. What did he have to lose? he figured as he gingerly touched the + symbol.
Immediately, the listing unfolded with new labels beneath it:
CLOTHING
ARMAMENT
TECH
VEHICLES
He gazed at the items, bewildered by their existence. “This is starting to feel more like a game than I’d like,” he said as he clicked on the ARMAMENT tab.
A new list of items appeared below:
HANDGUNS
RIFLES
EXPLOSIVES
ENERGY WEAPONS
MISC.
Feeling like he was in over his head, he picked the least intimidating category, HANDGUNS. Beneath it were a half-dozen models, all of which looked equally lethal and equally outside of his skillset. He picked one that looked like something John Wayne would have carried, a revolver, and the picture glowed briefly, then the screen returned to the original listing:
SECTOR FIFTEEN- UNRESTRICTED +
He looked down just to be sure that he wasn’t carrying the revolver already. He wasn’t, but he hoped he had done it right, that it would carry over into the construct.
“Only one way to find out,” he said as he clicked onto the listing.
The colors swirled, and Taven came through the other side. His first sense wasn’t sight or sound but bitter cold. He should have brought warmer clothing, he realized.
Up against a concrete wall, he examined his surroundings. He was inside a building that could have been a parking garage, except there were no cars and no ramps circling up and down. The windows—if they’d ever had windows—were blown out, exposed to the winter wind and the constant rat tat tat of weapons fire.
He didn’t move, fearing he would suddenly find himself in the crosshairs. But the longer he stayed put, the antsier he felt. Sure, he was inside a building which gave him some protection, but he was also exposed in this big open room.
The gunfire suddenly changed. The fighting had gotten close by. Taven feared he would regret it, but he had to look. Slowly, he creeped to the nearest window on all fours. He peeked his head up and over the sill and peered down at the street below. It was a picture of war-torn eastern Europe during the late twentieth century: Bosnia, Serbia, or some other eastern-bloc country caught in a civil war. The streets had huge potholes the size of cars where, presumably, mortar fire had blown up. And there were bullet pierced cars parked haphazardly this way and that.
Apparently, Taven was in a tall building, several stories up. And the fighting came from the building across the street up toward the next intersection. On the building’s corner, someone was unloading hundreds of rounds of ammunition through some type of heavy machine gun.
Taven couldn’t tell who the person or persons were shooting at, and it was impossible to hear or notice anyone shooting back toward them. They had dominated whatever conflict they were in, Taven thought.
Without warning, the entire corner from where the machine gun fire was coming exploded. Fire and thick smoke covered the face of the building for several seconds, and the street went eerily silent.
“Mortar fire,” Taven whispered.
As the smoke cleared, Taven could see that the machine gunner’s corner office was no more; a charred chunk of building had been blackened to oblivion.
Unsure what to make of it, Taven slowly crept down and away from the window. As he did, he felt something abrade against the wall beside him. He looked down and spotted the brown leather belt and holster around his waist.
He had totally forgotten his weapon. He reached down and pulled the revolver from its holster. It made a muted schwing sound as he did, like a knight’s sword unsheathing.
He examined the old six-shooter carefully, resting it sideways on both palms. Its inscription said it was a Colt .45. Taven was no expert about handheld weapons. He could handle defensive armament on a ship, but the handheld types were unfamiliar beyond what he’d seen in old movies. That was the modern reality of space travel. If you were attacked by pirates or other criminals, the likelihood that you would actually survive the attack long enough to take up armament and fight man-to-man was nearly nil. The reality was that either one of you blasted the other out of the sky or you surrendered and there was no fight.
He gripped the Colt with his right hand and aimed it across the room toward an imaginary foe. It was heavy in his hand, and he knew it would be difficult to hold it that way for long. Still, he focused his eyes down the barrel, seeing the bead at the barrel’s tip, then the wall and back and forth. If he needed this—and he surely did—he would be no good if he couldn’t master the basic mechanics, he told himself.
Suddenly, a door slammed, and Taven jumped, almost dropping his revolver. He scrambled to figure out where the sound had come from. It was nearby, but neither of the two doors on either end of the room had moved.
He decided the sound had come from the stairwell closest to him. The thought rushed into his mind: had someone seen him through the window? Were they coming for him?
Maybe not, an optimistic part of himself thought. There are several floors to this place. Maybe someone is just moving up or downstairs. There’s no greater chance that they will come here than any other floor.
Taven’s body knew differently. When it came to life and death, his BS filter worked just fine. Taven’s subconscious discarded his cowardice rationalization and moved him toward the opposite doorway. He moved through it and carefully closed the door behind him, trying to keep down the noise so no one would hear him.
Now what? he thought. He tried to think, but increasingly his mind was mush from the adrenaline pumping through his veins.
Someone else is in the building. That means I should get out of here.
Satisfied with his logic, Taven stepped down the stairwell. He cringed as each step—no matter how careful he was—let out a ping that reverberated throughout the stairwell for anyone to notice.
Reaching the bottom landing, he moved to the exit. As he opened it, cold wind whipped through.
“I’m going to regret this,” he said as he moved outside. He noticed his breath frosted into a little cloud, which caught him off guard. This world seemed so real, he thought. It was little things like seeing your breath that you forgot about while mining the Belt.
The door that had initially seemed to have a slow-close hinge suddenly gave way and slammed shut. Taven flinched and grimaced. He was standing on a side street adjacent to the intersection where he’d seen the machine gunner blown up.
The only reasonable thing was to move in the opposite direction, so he did. The gunfire was far off now like fireworks on the Fourth of July. But he knew that was an illusion. People were nearby. They just hadn’t spotted each other—or him.
As he moved closer to the next block over, he passed an alley way. He looked down it but decided to keep heading toward the next big street.
It seemed wrong to be out in the open. The turned over cars, burned-out tanks, and mortar holes gave only partial covering. But no building seemed better than any other. He’d already started moving, and it seemed like he should go on until he found something worth stopping for.
What or who am I looking for? he thought. And how do I know when I find them?
Just then, he spotted movement at the next big intersection. He dropped behind a dilapidated truck. Carefully, he peered around it.
What he saw surprised him. A dog nosed up in the air. But not any dog. Taven recognized the brown fur, floppy ears, and drooping skin. It was an American Bloodhound, the kind they used to use to find missing persons or escaped convicts.
He stayed motionless, figuring dogs saw with their noses anyway. The hound bayed a quick inciting bark and actively began sniffing the ground, moving little by little in Taven’s direction.
“Hey, that’s like cheating,” Taven said. “I don’t remember dogs being on the list.”
Of course, he’d gotten his gun and got on with it instead of exploring all of the options. And who knew? —maybe there were ways to crack the construct that he didn’t know about.
The hound continued to trail his scent, though Taven had given no trail to follow. Every few seconds, it would open up, let out a declaratory yelp as it worked the case.
“It’s not gonna find me,” Taven whispered as if his words could change things.
Then, two more dogs, tails wagging, swaggered hurriedly into the intersection. They barked more frequently, first like they were greeting each other, then as if to encourage each other. We’re gonna find him, they seemed to say.
Another gust of wind blowing from behind Taven tried to cut him in half. His hands and face were starting to get numb from the cold and he wondered if he could operate the revolver with fingers of ice.
One dog suddenly stopped. It turned into a statue, pointing its nose in Taven’s direction. Taven didn’t move. He hadn’t moved the whole time. He’d kept telling himself that they would move on. That there was no way they could pick up his scent.
But their change in timbre, their hoarse, long drawn-out barks told him differently. They were on to him, and they were no longer sniffing the ground but were instead running at a fast-clip in his direction.
