Atlas Alone Page 6

  “They do that there, for real?”

  I nodded. “I would have been sidelined, maybe even sacked, if I made a fuss about it.”

  He said nothing for at least a minute. I think he was genuinely shocked. I knew then that he believed every steaming lie I’d just spouted at him. Like most people, he was happy to believe whatever confirmed his view of the world. Once I’d made him think I was a victim of that godless hellhole England, he was on my side.

  “Do you believe the Pathfinder knew the way to find God?”

  “I don’t know what she thought she was looking for, but it always seemed strange to me that she built a spaceship to go to find him.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because God is here,” I said with a shrug, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I feel like he’s always with me. Why the need to travel such a long way to find him?”

  He sat back then, and I worried I’d taken the lie too far. I do that sometimes, even believing what I’m saying in the moment. Like assuming a character and starting to forget I’m just role-playing. “If that’s the case, why do you want to join the new mission to follow her?”

  I brightened then, making my eyes sparkle with enthusiasm. “Because it’s the only way I can see more of what God made for us.”

  I’m laughing now, at the memory of all that bullshit. But hey, it worked. They let me in. And that guy—JeeMuh, why can’t I remember his name?—even gave me a hug at the end of the interview. It was so hard not to push him away, but I endured it. I wonder if he’s somewhere on the ship now. Not everyone made the final cut; I know that from overhearing a conversation between Gabriel and someone else I didn’t see as they talked around a corner on one of my runs. I kind of hope he didn’t make it; otherwise he might seek me out to go pray together or something equally awful.

  All of the Americans I met before Rapture were very open about their Christianity. Most wore a cross either on a necklace or on a ring or a tiepin. There was iconography everywhere, creating a genuine culture shock when I arrived at the airport and saw a twenty-meter-high mosaic of Jesus welcoming all visitors with a glowing, holy smile. That’s why the lack of element tags relating to Jesus, to crosses, to church, in the people under forty is really confusing me. To be American is to be openly, passionately religious. As far as I knew, all the people who were uncomfortable with that emigrated over fifty years ago. Lots of them came to Norope, in fact, and were welcomed into communities built around the other major religion: corporate profit. The only difference was that in England and indeed Norope, it was possible to worship at that altar alone, without paying any attention to God. I had a good friend whose parents had left New York when the religious Far Right made life unbearable. “There’s a strange symmetry to it,” I remember him saying as we discussed it over wine one night. “I mean, all those hundreds of years ago people left England because they were too hard-core for the religious folk here. Now people are leaving the US because they’re not hard-core enough!”

  Even though I’m confused by the way the data doesn’t match my impression of Americans, I’m kind of relieved. I was worried that once we reached the final destination, we’d all be forced into church every bloody five minutes. But judging from this data, ninety percent of the people on board don’t care enough about all the trappings of Christianity to revisit it in their mersives. Of course, it could be that they still have faith; they just don’t depend on memories of churches. No, it’s more than that; the element tags for the iconography should at least be there as background features; it’s so hard to record anything in the States without picking up something religious in the background. Even on hiking trails, there are crosses carved into signposts and Bible quotes at the tops of maps. Wherever these people recorded their mersives, it wasn’t in the usual places.

  How should I handle this in the report? If I was of a higher pay grade than Carolina, I’d be able to find her data and see whether she’s one of the over-forty-year-olds who like going to their local church from back home when they’re feeling homesick. But as I have no pay grade to speak of, all of the data I can see is anonymized.

  It’s too glaring a fact to ignore. Perhaps I could mention it, but focus instead on what they are consuming. Then it gets even weirder.

  These people either have a really small number of personally recorded mersives, or simply favor a very select few of them. I can see that most of them are replaying the same mersive once or twice a day. The over-forties are playing a far wider range and spending at least two hours a day in them. The freakish demographic only spends thirty minutes a day immersed, at the most. Then I drill down into that data. All of the mersives they are consuming are exactly thirty minutes long.

  “Who the fuck are you people?” I mutter to myself.

  I turn my attention back to those element tags, and filter out the people who don’t show this limited mersive consumption behavior. My APA helps me to sift through the categories and different ways of organizing the data until I see groups of people consuming mersives with exactly the same collections of tags. From those, I can tell which environments each set of people lived in. Examining the broad categories in greater detail, I can divide those people into more distinct groups, each one formed of approximately 150 people.

  Groups of people who lived together before Rapture? Maybe they trained together for the trip. Yeah, that makes sense. So why does this make me feel unsettled?

  Looking up Carolina’s profile again, I see that she is in her fifties, making it pretty much impossible that she is in one of these groups. I double-check the ages of the people who show that pattern of mersive consumption and element tags, and confirm that the eldest of them is thirty-nine years and nine months old.

  Then it hits me; they were all born after the Pathfinder left. A coincidence? Or evidence that the US gov-corp had the data from the Pathfinder’s capsule pretty much from the time she sealed it, and started planning straight away, setting up training camps for the people they planned to send after her? There needn’t be anything sinister about that, of course. It’s efficient. Keeps costs down. Like specialized schools, I guess. But what about the families of these people? Were kids recruited and the parents told they would be ultimately sent to another planet?

  I try to shrug off my worry. Who cares how the US gov-corp prepped their passengers? But the fact remains that twenty years from now, I’ll have to live with those people in a potentially hostile environment, light-years away from home.

  The report is almost a secondary concern now, but I have to do it nonetheless. What have I missed? I go back through my workings, then do one last analysis looking for any under-forties who don’t fit into those strange groups. There are thirty who don’t. Only thirty? JeeMuh.

  I pull the information on them and it couldn’t be more different from that on the others in their age bracket. There are dozens of trappings of wealth in their mersives: interiors of private jets, particular brands of bags and clothing and jewelry, and a far wider range of environmental tags than in the mersives of many of the over-forties on board. These people were well traveled. Adventurous, one could deduce, given that several of them have mersives that look like they’ve been recorded in places all over the world. Though I bet if I rendered some of these to have a poke about, the environments would be different six-star hotels, rather than places where real people live.

  Less than a minute of reading through the lists of mersive element tags and I know those thirty people fit into another demographic, one that is not well represented in the total data set I’ve been given; they are superrich. Or were, on Earth. They probably bought their places on board. Maybe I’m doing them a disservice, but by the look of these lifestyles, it’s unlikely that they were world-class scientists or moral philosophers or any other kind of person who may actually be useful. Fucking parasites.

  They’re consuming slightly more mersives than av
erage for that demographic, though interestingly fewer personally recorded ones. Are they less homesick? Or are their third-party mersives so bloody good they pick those to feel better instead of memories from home?

  Thinking about my tiny cabin, its plain plastic walls and ceiling, I can’t imagine anyone who came from their world being able to cope. I’d expect to see far higher levels of mersives—right up to safety limits—but they seem to be coping fine. I laugh, bitterly, as I realize that those people won’t have the same sort of cabin as me. For all I know, they’re living on some swanky deck with huge suites of rooms with champagne fountains and plants everywhere.

  “It’s all just a game,” I whisper to myself. It’s just that some people are born with cheat codes.

  It’s all grist for the report mill though. I decide to write it all up. Sod it. If I leave any of this out, I’ll look incompetent, and I’d rather look like I know how to do my job. If any of this is news to Carolina, then she may help me to find out more. Though with that said, if she games in the leet server with Commander Brace, she’s likely to know all this stuff already. My report won’t offer any judgment, nor will it express any of the feelings I have on these groups of consumers. The only place I’ll get creative is where I suggest ways to use this analysis. I’ll stick to targeting the over-forties for that. They are the greatest consumers and could well benefit from some new material, something to wean them off hankering for home and get them looking forward instead. Yeah, that’s the thrust I’ll make.

  An hour later it is done. I take a moment to enjoy the sense of satisfaction that floods through me as I send it off. Only then do I allow myself to turn around in my virtual office and pick up the obsidian box.

  It’s been coded to be heavy and cold to the touch, the sort of box that a director I once worked with would have used as a prop in a mersive to hold the horrors of the world or something equally pretentious. I lift the lid and it even squeaks menacingly, making me laugh. There’s an old-fashioned metal key inside, the sort I’ve handled only in historical mersives. It’s the size of my hand, chunky, bronze, with an ornate bow molded into the shape of the letter A, replete with tendrils and flowers weaving around it.

  As soon as I take it out of the box, the outline of a door appears in the slate floor ahead of me. The line becomes more defined, taking on depth as an actual slate door forms, then rises until it stands in front of me. This is pretty slick. Of course, I can’t stop myself from peeping round behind the door, but the floor is just plain slate once again.

  There’s a keyhole, obviously, in a plate also made of bronze. I put the key into it and turn, feeling a solid clunk as the mechanism tumbles within. Opening it reveals a dark corridor, too dimly lit for me to be able to see anything more than the suggestion of a way ahead. I set the box down and step into the corridor. A couple of paces in I turn and note that my office space is no longer behind me. Instead there’s just a long, dark corridor that stretches back, lit at the far end by a flickering lightbulb. There are no doors off it.

  Okay. This is creepy and atmospheric. Good use of lighting, slight smell of mold, which is a nice touch, and it’s darker ahead of me than behind, which is always enough to get the heart beating faster. Maybe this is good enough for me to actually get into it. JeeMuh, I hope so. He didn’t mention genre, but I’m guessing this is horror. Doesn’t usually work on me, but I’ll give it a try.

  I walk forward, the sound of my shoes on the floor suggesting it’s made of concrete. There’s a rattling sound as I move, and I tap my pocket, feeling something inside. I reach inside and pull out a small box with a rough edge that feels familiar, but I can’t place it. I shake it and hear . . . matches! That’s what they are. I haven’t used these since I was a kid! Striking a match and smelling the aroma that soon follows make me feel small again. I use the light from the lit match to look at the box and shudder when I see it’s exactly the same brand as I used back then.

  Taking a breath, I tell myself that he must have coded this with element tags, rather than a designed render, and my chip has simply re-created the specific brand—only brand—of matches it has seen. I look at the silhouette of the dancing lady on the box until the flame burns too low and I have to strike another. The smell tugs me back, but I resist the memories and look around. I’ve been given the matches to create light, so he must have put something worth seeing in the corridor. First basic rule of gaming; if an interactive object is placed in a pretty featureless environment like this one, it’s for a reason.

  Something pale and thin is lying on the floor near my feet. A candle! There’s a holder next to it, so I light the wick, drop the box of matches back into my pocket and press the candle base into the holder. It’s one of the really old-fashioned ones, with a small black metal plate to catch dripping wax and a little loop of metal for me to put my finger through so I can hold it steady.

  The increased light reveals the end of the corridor in front of me, opening out into a bigger room, rather than ending in a door. There’s paint on the wall, flaking in places, and I brush my fingers over it, feeling it crumble away. There’s something so horribly familiar about this place, and I keep telling myself it’s just the way it’s been coded, but it feels like more than that.

  Pushing on, more to shake off the horrible sense of knowing this place is bad in some way than for any other reason, I reach the end of the corridor and see that the room opens up into a basement filled with pipes. Before I can stop myself I am turning to my right, unable to resist looking for the nest made of cardboard boxes and biofoam that I know is there. At the sight of it, I drop the candle, plunging the room I know all too well into total darkness.

  5

  WHEN MY THOUGHTS finally order themselves, I find myself pressed against the wall between two massive pipes with no memory of moving here. The concrete is cold at my back; I can hear the familiar sound of water moving through the pipes . . . it’s all too accurate for a memory, let alone a bloody mersive! I’m on the brink of ending immersion but I can’t come up from this yet, not less than a minute after I started. I’m too proud for that. So I take a couple of deep breaths and remind myself that it’s a game. A totally fucked up one, but a game nonetheless.

  It takes two lit matches to find the fallen candle and a third to relight it. The shadows cast by the pipes, the rough gray concrete floor, the way the nest sags to one side like it’s about to topple over at any moment . . . shit, it is so real. Even the smell—a mixture of machine oil, damp and the grease used around some of the pipe joints—is exactly as it was in the real basement this replicates. The dimensions of the space, the way the footprint of the building has been divided up, creating this smaller area for all the pipework and waste processing . . . it’s absolutely spot-on.

  How has he achieved this? How has he made a game feel as authentic as a personally recorded mersive? Even if he had a list of the element tags one would use to create the basement and instructed my chip to use only versions I’d personally experienced before, the render wouldn’t be this accurate.

  Still pressed against the cold and damp concrete blocks, I run through different possibilities, eliminating each one as soon as I consider it. He couldn’t have hacked a mersive of this place; I was chipped years after I last stepped foot in this room and I never brought my bear down here, so he couldn’t have found a recording of it with just visuals and sound. I mean . . . fuck . . . only two people in the whole world knew about that nest over there, and the other one is dead. The only explanation that survives through lack of contrary evidence is that the one who made this game is a genius. He knew about Carolina’s invite to the leet server. Did he find out about that because he is part of that community and had a say in inviting me? This makes me think he’s not only a leet gamer, but a leet programmer too.

  Closing my eyes, I listen to the knock of the pipes, the sound of water and waste moving through different parts of the system. Opening them again, I look
for flaws, for some sign of a weakness in his programming. It’s so disgusting in its perfection, this re-creation of a place I haven’t thought of for over twenty years. That I trained myself to never think of again, in fact.

  It feels like I’m being violated on some level. It doesn’t feel like a game. It feels more like a . . .

  A light shines from inside the nest. I am powerless, rooted to the spot, staring at it, feeling as confused and afraid as I would seeing a ghost walking through the wall of my cabin. It’s pale blue and shimmers, unlike a constant light from a bulb.

  I don’t want to crawl inside that nest. I don’t want to see how accurately the interior has been rendered. But, damn, do I want to see what that light is coming from. It has to be the instigating incident of the game, or at least a way to get to the place where the plot is going to be revealed. At least I hope it is. I can’t stand those purely “experiential” mersives that are claimed to be games but have no goals or progression through a story.

  It’s no good; my need to know what it is outweighs any fears about the nest’s interior. It’s just a game, after all. This place in the real world is gone: the nest over twenty-five years ago and the building itself was probably destroyed by nukes six months ago. The person I was when I lived in that pathetic pile of cardboard and foam is gone too.

  I cross the space quickly and set the candle down outside the nest, well away from all the flammable materials. Not giving myself a chance to dither and question my decision, I drop to my knees and crawl in, assaulted by the smell of unwashed bedding. I freeze at the sight of the faded duvet cover and its repeated motif of three penguins in different dance poses. I run my hands over the worn fabric. I can still remember when it was the softest brushed cotton money could buy, how it used to feel to be tucked up in bed, safe beneath it. The bellies of the penguins look blue in the ethereal light, but still I can’t tear my eyes from it, no matter how much I want to move on.