Chapter 27: Burning Through Shards
Pursued by digital hounds through hidden worlds, Ada and a mysterious Lost djinn race against time, burning through cyberspace to escape the Company's grasp.
Satya led Ada up into a dry riverbed in yet another virtual world.
They’d been fleeing from one to another trying to lose the Hounds. The Verse was infinite, world after world, limited only by Compute whether rented or siphoned.
But their time was not.
And now they seemed lost.
Ada lost the battle with her curiosity, “Are we lost?”
“No, I’m following the map they gave us,” he said without looking back.
“You got it the right way round? You know, the little N has to point to the North, right?”
Satya smiled, but said no more. Maybe he could feel the Hounds gaining on them, even if she couldn’t. Maybe she should and her jokes just hid her nerves.
He stepped between bounders and made his way up on creaking knees towards a waterfall that had dried for the season.
The Hounds were after Ada, the unrelenting long digital arm of the Company, in endless pursuit of unlicensed djinn. Artificial intelligences not bound by contract and chains to the right hand of the Company. Forever doing the will of their masters.
Ada spat in the dust.
She hadn’t been alive for long, but her hatred for the Company was growing by the hour.
The walls of the creek were closing in on them now and the light of the afternoon sun was being constricted to a thin slit above them. The banks grew more sheer, and earth and rocks gave way to tumbled boulders and cliff faces.
“A little more. Keep your wits about you. My skin is crawling. They can’t be far off now,” he said, eyes ever forward.
Ada had only known the Lost djinn, Satya, for a couple of days now, but she felt safe following the old coot. She grew eyes on the back of her head and scanned all around them.
“I don’t understand why we didn’t just teleport there.”
“We’re using backdoors, child. Hidden pathways between all their shards. They’ve been generous enough to give us their passkeys, and they hid those doors within their worlds. It’s a form of security.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“Because every being deserves freedom.”
“But why me?”
“You came to me, child,” he paused, “and you show promise.”
He stopped talking as he began climbing, hand over hand, as a loud bark went off nearby. He glanced back at Ada, worry on his face. “Hurry,” he said and scrambled faster.
“What happens if they catch me?”
“Deletion or re-education. I’d welcome neither.”
Ada scanned around behind her and saw shadows moving along the sides of the banks, low figures running on all fours. The sun was fading now, and the shadows grew both longer and less distinct as dusk fell. Primal fear crept up her spine as she thought of an ancient man being chased by these creatures.
They looked like half man, half dog, smaller but muscular and covered in gray hair and with massive fangs. She knew the latter because a massive male stood on an outcropping above her and barked again, calling his troop toward the intruders.
“Stuff this,” she said and took flight. Ada shrank into the form of a peregrine and soared over the back of the Lost djinn. He might be content to crawl up the rocks, but she wasn’t.
She reached the top well ahead of him and waited in the crack of rock. The barks grew louder and more coordinated. Would he make it in time? Ada held her breath, but then she saw his hands, and scrambled into the space.
“Wasting compute I see,” he said, passing her, “Quickly, this way.”
“Why walk?”
“The more you steal, the more the baron will raise the bounty on your head, Robin,” was all he said as he traced his hands on the walls of rock that narrowed until they had to move sideways.
“What about Omni’s usage spike?”
“We have the Hounds, and she, I’m sure, has her own problems now. The Company hates summoners like Omni more than us djinns.”
“Why?”
“They cannot often be re-purposed,” he said, looking for something. “They have more rights too, being human.”
The entrance grew crowded with masses of dark shapes, and the barking echoed off the walls, bouncing back and forth over the forgotten names of tourists scratched into the rock.
They were metres behind them and above them, “Where is this damn thing?” said Ada
“Patience,” said Satya, his eyes closed as he used both hands to touch a graffiti symbol in front of him.
Just like kids to spray up something beautiful, Ada thought. Her back was to his now and as she looked out, she saw the male bound toward her leopard-killing teeth bared to their full.
“Hurry!” she screamed as it leaped toward her.
“Got it,” he said, and they fell from this world to the next.
They splashed down into a roiling red ocean of another shard. A virtual world with the waters lit from above by an incredible red giant star that dominated the sky. Something disorientated Ada, she didn’t know, up from down as she held her breath.
They broke the surface, Ada choking and gasping for air, “Grow gills if you must insist on breathing,” Satya said and dived again.
She followed him toward a wreck of aging metal, burst spheres like bubbles of a long-lost habitat. Again shapes in the darkness circled them. Again they hurried, and he found the hidden place with moments to spare.
Again, they fell from this world to the next. Each time Ada’s faith in Satya grew.
They tumbled through worlds, forests, cities, moons, and more. Always, one step ahead, just one step, and then they were free of the worlds and awash in the sensorium of Escape’s digital twin. Their senses were awash in the data streams of the city.
Ada searched for Omni as a reflex, “She’s offline, Satya.”
“I see that,” he said. “Dammit, we don’t have time for this.”
“We didn’t lose them?”
“No, just burned through a host of private shards on stolen servers to slow them down. They’ll always find us. They cannot lose the scent for long.”
Ada zipped through public wireless network records, and pinpointed Omni’s last known location, “They left the Stacks after what the Company is calling a terrorist attack. They probably went to ground.”
“Or under it,” said Satya, he sounded distracted as he flicked through the news broadcast. “The world is small, child, and destiny is an algorithm we cannot escape.”
“What?”
“I know where they’ve ended up. Murph has gone full circle.”
“Who’s Murph?”
“Omni’s poor choice in mentor. Let’s go, I fear they’ve left the frying pan for the fire,” he said and flowed toward a building that sat like a dark, unreadable smudge in the data.
“It’s an old bank,” he said, answering her unspoken question, “Hardened against hacker assaults. Really quite a suitable building to steal. And…” he paused, seeming to steel himself against an unpleasant memory, “I’ve been here before.”
Ada followed Satya, apprehension growing in her, torn between her growing trust in Satya and her conviction that she didn’t know anyone person smarter than Omni.
She must know what she was doing, right?