Halcyon Dreamworlds

____

Lee Baldwin

Copyright © 2015
ISBN-13: 978-0-9854777-5-2

Baldwin-Books.com

HalcyonDreamworlds.com

Dedication

To Judi, my hero, my loving sis. Keep on.

Halcyon Dreamworlds

In this digital universe, players control exotic avatars with the power of thought. They succumb to many hungers in a lawless sauna of jealousies, lust and murder.

It’s not virtual anything.

Amid gritty realities of 2029 America, Logan Fischer struggles to cleanse herself of cyber addiction. While an ultra-rich mastermind works to destroy privacy, Logan must battle free of that alluring pleasure-pit and accept the challenge to win back a world’s future.

Chapter 1 – Attention Joy-Mart Shoppers

If there were an iconic image of a woman’s impending ruin, it would be Logan Fischer’s posture of defeat as she stares at the pinwheel of death on her screen. The Garden Center’s laptop is down again and she’s forced to use her personal one, which store policy forbids. As laughter and conversation bubble around her in the employee breakroom, she fumes in exasperation, dreading the day this old clunker won’t go at all, taking with it her entire world. Her photos, her email, her secret fantasy life. She forces herself to breathe deep as the thing jams.

“Hey, sexy!” A work friend joins her table, proud bearer of the latest store gossip. The woman has a mischievous smirk. “The produce manager asked about you.”

Logan curls her lip. “That’ll be a frosty day in the lettuce patch.”

“I know you guys, there’s a kind of war between you two. I’m sure you’ve got that old itch to scratch.”

Fiercely private, Logan guards her inner needs, such as which gender interests her at the moment. Serene violet eyes on her friend, she says, “I’m sure his scratching would only make it worse.”

“Oh-ho,” the woman says. “Maybe you prefer your avatar studs.”

Logan’s eyes rove the busy lunchroom, where everyone wears the uniform of buff slacks and blue Joy-Mart vests. She suspects that others here spend their evenings in online play, and she’s finally accepted her oddball life as ‘normal.’ Garden Center Manager for this sprawling monument to America’s junk culture, Logan’s employee file shows her as 41, sixteen years of marriage, five of divorce.

Her gaze clicks onto a wheelchair dude maneuvering through the lunchroom’s crowded aisles, a black man with an industrial-grade welding helmet perched atop his head. A smile spreads across the ebony face as he stops at her table.

“Hey, Cyber Girl.”

“Hey, Hero,” Logan says with the barest smile. His name’s really Jamal and he’s her dead ex-husband’s war buddy. And though his remark was in fun, the comment stirs her unease. She’s apprehensive around work friends who know of her Internet fantasy life. They gab too much.

“Starship Troopers at your service Ma’am.” He flips the welding helmet down over his face. It’s a white molded faceplate in a contoured gray surround that would be at home in a B-grade space opera. Logan has a moment to study her reflection in the purplish-pink eye filter. Lifting the helmet, he gestures at her computer.

“Hey, girl, they don’t dig private lappys on company Wi-Fi.”

“The store one’s cooked,” she says defensively. “My sales summary is due.” She’s heard rumors that Corporate keeps tabs on employee online activities, though she thinks it too sophisticated for Joy-Mart. As her computer struggles with the calculations, Hero rolls in close and points at the Dreamworlds icon on her desktop. His voice carries a ribald tone as he whispers, “Ooo, Baby take me there.”

If she were 16 instead of 41 she would slug him right here. But they both know it’s true, just one click on that lavish icon and her online life would be all over the screen, her secret identity outed to the breakroom’s leering eyes. And then begins that breathless countdown toward the moment she’ll melt into her sensual dream-self, and gritty, soulless Joy-Mart will cease to exist. Poof.

With a playful wink, Hero cruises away, not seeing Logan’s angry glare. Her friend’s eyes follow the retreating wheelchair.

“Who’s that?”

“War vet. Fixes the pipes.” Logan tries to sound bored about it.

“Mmm. I bet he gives good widow.”

Logan sends her a dark look. “Just friends,” she easily lies. She’s certain that the past long buried between her and Jamal is a blank to anyone here. She won’t let on that he’s really a computer jock who drops by Joy-Mart to say hi to her.

“Oh,” the woman says. “S’posed to give you this.” She holds out an envelope.

Logan’s heart does a belly flop at the pinkness of it. An Official Department of Human Services notification, same color as the company’s sep-slip. Reading the printed notice, she senses the question in her friend’s eyes.

“Annual review,” Logan says with a deep exhale. “Next Monday, my day off. Naturally.”

“My daughter got a new job,” the friend says brightly.

Logan struggles to change gears. “She got promoted?”

Proud shake of the woman’s head. “Nope. Quit.”

“She left? What’d she get?”

“New York TV station. Field reporter.”

“That’s wonderful!” Logan, trying to sound happy for the girl she recalls vaguely, fights to mask her envy. It’s the kind of gig that once could have been hers, should have been, all the work she put into her A average years ago. She realizes anew that nursery department manager at a big-box conglomerate is a poor fit for her aging degree in Journalism and New Media. She had three good years with a Newark PR firm before her first miscarriage and the extended sick leave. Later she tried for investigative reporting. She was pleased to land one interview with a big news organization, but was informed her politics were ‘skewed’ after remarking that a corporation should not be a person under the law.

Wanting to seem interested, Logan asks, “When does she start?”

“In a month. She and her honey-man are off to Barbados. She thinks he might pop the question!”

Logan glares at her screen, trying to ignore the forlorn hollow in her chest. Garden Center Manager was never her career plan, but neither was a childless divorce. Her failed marriage and an unpayable mortgage trickled her down to the Neptune City Joy-Mart, where they were willing to start her as assistant manager at $18 an hour, no benefits. Logan sends out her resume still, although she lives with her childhood notion that it’s futile because everyone is out to screw her. This wisdom is courtesy of her alcoholic dad, who took advantage of his daughter in that way too.

But she believes, if she keeps trying, that someday she’ll get everything in her life absolutely right. Her career. Her happiness. A child. Of her family, only a faraway uncle remains to cheer her fading promise.

Her laptop dings, proud to report that it’s coughed up her sales summary. And again, halfway through her 10-hour shift, she feels the pull of that safe online existence, her easy and reliable fantasy life within Halcyon Dreamworlds. She hates to think it makes her an addict, but it’s so soothing to drift in those exotic places as a Beautiful One. So very serene and perfect.

The afternoon ends, as all things must, and Logan is home with her laptop in the small townhome she rents in Neptune City. Calming relief glides over her as on the screen an array of inviting worlds takes form. She has in the last few minutes rushed in from the bus, grabbed a snack and a drink, had a quick shower and slipped into a light cotton kimono. It’s hot again in New Jersey and her bedroom has no air conditioning. Her kimono hangs unfastened.

Among the exotic fantasy worlds on display, one sparks her interest, the Cougar Gurlz dance lounge, where older lez and bi females go to meet younger lez and bi females. She avoids the more flagrant hotspots, such as Pirates and Vixens, Hostages of Gor, and Be My Fantasy, although she likes that one’s artwork. She hovers over Komedy Klub, a stand-up joint that’s fun when she’s up for laughs. No, it’s totally Cougar Gurlz tonight. She’s been lucky there before. Logan’s pulse quickens.

Deciding on the look she’s after, she selects for her glamorous avatar a form-hugging cocktail dress and Christian Louboutin black pumps that flash red lacquered soles with her every step. She plays with hairstyles until one feels right, her natural straw blonde but in a messy-stylish runway model look. The right makeup, some special jewelry, and there on the screen stands Logan’s Dreamworlds persona, the entrancing star-girl, Yuri. If she had the power, Logan would give everything she has to take Yuri’s place in this lurid fantasy.

She scarcely thinks about what she’s doing as she prepares to board this magic carpet of the ego, heart racing toward the moment when her Internet connection and a few online friends will transform the way her life feels. She doesn’t remember the days before she played in these enchanting places, before she realized how easily those hearts at home could be crushed. She’d quit the Dreamworlds once from sheer emotional exhaustion, and signing up anew, had vowed to not get wrapped up. That time, she spent months online caring for an unemployed pipefitter on the other side of the country, whose buffed male avatar kept up a constant murmur of ‘Let’s Skype, baby, let’s make it real,’ which repelled her.

Because suicide is easy for an avatar, Logan deleted that one too, and left the Dreamworlds for all time. But soon she was back with a new account, chagrined that Forever had lasted eleven days and distantly aware that staring at her laptop all night with a glass of wine could feel totally normal. In the Dreamworlds she’s Yuri, an alluring sugar drop that does everything beautiful. Logan admits it’s her deepest addiction, but rationalizes that anyone so driven down would gladly masquerade as a teenager with an unlimited wardrobe and divine lovers. Yuri is Logan’s sublime personal ego-doll, a wondrous, transforming garment that glides into her pores and which over seven years has so entwined its way into her life she cannot live without it.

Logan clicks the GO button to place her feminine doll in the Cougar Gurlz dance club. She can’t hold back a shiver as the exotic pavilion forms on her screen. She kicks aside the whimpers of self-pity from her damaged past and sinks gratefully into the sheltering dream of being Yuri. But strong in her mind echoes the defiant mantra.

I can cut it out whenever I want.

Chapter 2 – On the Threshold of a Dream

At the polished executive desk in his Koa-paneled top floor office, David Verkrag scans computer monitors, avidly following trend lines, spreadsheets and rumors of his worldwide financial orbit. New York City skyline at his back, he’s on his phones, conversing rapidly in Harvard Japanese, absently stroking the desk where blinking lights mark waiting calls of investors, power brokers and politicians across the globe. Impatience tugs at him. His eyes flicker to the velvet-curtained alcove where his exotic virtual life awaits. And that damned fantasy girl.

She’s there, inside his head, ripping at his attention. Even now he feels himself holding her, vivid memories of their one fantastic night. And he’s sure his mind has split in two, amoeba-like. A real part, and a fantasy part. He strains to stay focused on the real part. It’s elusive now, because to find out if the magic worked or not he had to see for himself. That wasn’t when he felt helpless fear. It was later, when he could not stop going back.

Five Hold lights flash monotonous reminders, his head of security waits outside the double doors, a dozen vital details whirl in his brain. What he wants to put on hold right now is his real life, so he can once more glide into his enveloping fantasy. He’s always looked down on the needle pilots, crack heads and pill poppers, believing them unworthy of their next breath. But he knows now, with a few lousy mouse clicks and an electronic mind-meld he’s become one like them. Not on the outside where it shows, but deep down, where it eats at him in the night. And although he’s certain it will give him more global clout than a dozen Saudi megafields, Verkrag feels a weight of regret for his takeover of that fantasy universe. Even the damn name gives him sick terrors, for the way it owns him. Halcyon Dreamworlds.

He completes his call and presses the door remote. Two men enter the lavish office. Verkrag stiffens to see Richard Lyon walk in ahead of his security chief.

“Nathaniel,” Verkrag says, ignoring Lyon’s presence. “My 10 o’clock is due shortly. Show her Dreamworlds. Use my system in here.” Verkrag tilts his head at the curtained alcove. “I want her in for five billion. Today. Be convincing.”

“What investor,” Lyon scoffs, “will put five bigs on what we’ve got now?”

Verkrag curls his lip. He can guess the little man is only here to nag him, the self-elected bearer of bad news from the stuffy farts that stuck to his takeover deal. He reminds himself to be cautious. The directors must never guess his intentions.

“Who’s your fish?” Lyon prods, 50-ish and tanned, dressed for the tennis court. “Your mystery Beijing CEO?”

Verkrag stands, all six foot four of him, trim for 51, armored in Armani. From old-school formality, he steps around the desk and shakes Lyon’s hand, but purposely too hard.

“My fish, as you so eloquently put it, will be disclosed to the board when we have something they can comprehend.” Verkrag looms over the smaller man with the most implacable buzzard-stare in the history of Wall Street.

Lyon turns to Verkrag’s security chief with the gaze of a man who measures people quickly. “What do you do?”

“Nathaniel Craig. Head of Security for the residence.” He’s mid-30s and about Verkrag’s height, looking fit in his knife-edged black tuxedo, head shaved glossy bald and a moustache so crisp it could pass for a tattoo. He looks evenly at Lyon.

“So you babysit the kids online.” Lyon grins to show how clever he is. “You’re Harvard Business School, I suppose?”

Nathaniel permits the corner of a smile. He never lets Verkrag’s ultra-rich associates ruffle him. “My resume mentions a degree in computational sociology from MIT.” He stops as though that’s all there is. Social sciences, officially, but he doesn’t mention that it’s a Ph.D. augmented by coding skills gained from convicted hackers.

Lyon faces Verkrag. “The reason I stopped by, David, is a friendly heads-up. Members want an engineering update. In particular, when do we launch sensory reality?”

“Don’t ever call it that.”

“What, then? What are we calling it?”

“Threshold.”

“Threshold? There’s nothing in a damn name. Tell me!”

Verkrag assumes a look of waning patience. “It’s a direct brain interface. Players control avatars with their thoughts. People experience dangerous realities without getting hurt.” Verkrag says this with a certain relish, still proud that he spotted a game-changer such as Halcyon Dreamworlds languishing on the NASDAQ.

“I’m responsible for making the numbers,” Lyon shoots back, not seeing the look that flashes between Verkrag and Nathaniel. “You could be...”

“Richard, you must allow our vision to develop. Dreamworlds is more than a dating site, much more. Quadriplegics immersed in those worlds can pursue lives as whole people. Surgeons can visit distant patients, perform delicate surgeries. Separated families reunite in perfect replicas of their rec rooms. Kids find new friends around the world. It’s more than parties with cute little avatars. It’s so engrossing that opting out will never enter their tiny minds.”

“That’s right,” Nathaniel puts in. “Dreamworlds will be the most sought-after source of fractional friendship on the planet.”

Lyon turns to the man in the tux. “Well, that’s a vision the board will buy into.”

“That’s why I’ve put Nathaniel in charge of player allegiance,” Verkrag says flatly.

Lyon’s mouth shuts with a soft pop. The man looks oxygen-deprived.

“Player allegiance? You took my program? That was my idea from the first!”

“You did well to a point, Richard. Nathaniel works better with the engineering team.”

“Wait,” Lyon says, scrambling for level ground. “Fill me in about Threshold.”

Verkrag shakes his head, making a flourish of consulting his Piaget Altiplano. He believes from Nathaniel’s confident explanations that Threshold has a deeper capability, one that can scoop up every player’s private data, personal contacts, feelings and dreams, compile that and pump it out onto the world feed in trade for lifetime loyalty. Boom. Computational sociology. But privately, for him, Halcyon Dreamworlds has a single, overarching mission: Emperor Verkrag.

He focuses on the shorter Lyon. “This is proprietary, Richard,” he says with his elite hostility, “but Threshold provides a fantasy life beyond reality. The ultimate ego boost, extreme emotional highs, and…”

Tracking his employer with calculating eyes, Nathaniel sees Verkrag is a little off, and doubts he’ll perceive the deepest dark of his new toy: corruption of every natural desire. The man is a step behind, as Nathaniel firmly intends.

Verkrag gestures toward the exit. “Now do excuse us, Richard. We’ve a full day.”

“David, this is outrageous! The board… Two million daily sessions from sixty million accounts looks like dog-doo.”

“You’re right,” Verkrag says icily. “As does your intrusion.”

Lyon straightens to his full height. “Alright, David. I meant this as a friendly visit, but in view of your attitude, I’ll leave you with this. The board is empowered to depose you and confiscate all your work if it means corporate survival. It’s in your takeover documents. The board meets next Monday. You’ll be facing a no-confidence vote.”

When the door closes at Lyon’s back, Verkrag allows one measured blink, as though to press a mental reset button. To Nathaniel he says, “I need a few minutes before your demo.” His gaze veers to the velvet curtain that conceals his Dreamworlds alcove. “Show her the gallery first. I’ll buzz you.”

“Standard newbie intro?”

“Correct. Take her through a Threshold session. And give her the training package for primary Arabic. You have some Arabic, don’t you? Chat with her in Arabic, before she forgets how. And do something to calm Lyon down.”

The man turns away. Even before Nathaniel reaches the gallery doors, Verkrag disappears into his curtained sanctum.

When Nathaniel strides from the elevator on the main floor, he nearly collides with Lyon. “Thought we could talk,” Lyon says, keeping pace through the glass doors out front. Stepping among uniformed and armed valets beneath the awning, Nathaniel eyes the bedraggled free-speech-zone protestors massed across the parkway, held in check by Verkrag’s armored security detail. Lyon moves away from the canopied entrance until Nathaniel stops him.

Lyon whirls. “How in hell did you get my allegiance program away from me? You must have done something underhanded.” The shorter man’s stance conjures a street fighter.

Nathaniel offers an easy smile. “Richard, that was entirely Verkrag’s decision.”

Lyon’s face hardens. “When did this happen?”

“I’ve been on it a few weeks.”

“It’s been my program for two years!” Lyon practically sputters. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve subsumed player allegiance beneath user experience.”

“How completely daft! Players like new features and special offers, not touchy-feely crap.”

Nathaniel shakes his head. “When we update your board on Threshold, you’ll have another opinion.”

Lyon snorts, eyes boring into Nathaniel’s. “And what about our metrics? We’re seeing addiction-like behavior in minor segments.”

Nathaniel raises a hard palm. “Never say addiction, Richard. Verkrag’s lawyers will sue over that word. It’s allegiance.”

“Fine,” Lyon sneers. “But give me something I can use.”

“I can do that,” Nathaniel says, “if you hold off your challenge.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Keep the board off our backs for three weeks. We’ll toast you at the launch party.”

Lyon and Nathaniel on that city sidewalk lock gazes, each staring fixedly at the other. Everything slows, the dark limousines, scraps of paper whirled on the breeze. If Nathaniel has the look of a man who knows what he’s talking about, it’s because he made the kids in Engineering dig in, those useful nuisances who think they’re life hackers but are only entitled teenagers who can code. Nathaniel and a war vet programmer had socialized those spoiled egos and guided them to construct a nirvana machine.

Lyon breaks first. “What’s he doing?”

Nathaniel compresses his lips, deciding.

“Alright. Meet me in ninety minutes. Serendipity, East 60th. Come quiet and come alone.” He turns for the building’s entryway.

“Threshold, then what?” Lyon shouts at his back.

Nathaniel swings around, steps in close. No one must hear. “Richard, it’s not about what we can make people buy. This is about the death of privacy.”

Chapter 3 – Eternity Goes Dark

An Arizona mobile home park shimmers in late summer heat. Among tall boulders the scent of sagebrush, rattle of cicadas in the cottonwoods. Three dusty Sheriff’s vehicles wait silent near the manufactured home in space 56B, overlooking a manmade lake near the back of the property. The air breathes with moisture as billowy thunderheads mount a distant horizon.

Homicide Detective Edwin Scharples stands on the low porch of the singlewide’s entryway, studying the interior. Three uniformed deputies and the park’s maintenance guy crowd his back.

“Enlighten me about who got here first,” Scharples says in a flat tone. “Who located the deceased? Who touched what?”

“I was first on scene,” says a deputy behind him. “Neighbors reported a loud alarm. No one could raise the occupant, so they called it in. Kevin Marsh, age 67, a single male. His ID’s on the desk. We stepped in with the maintenance man. I felt for pulse, looked at his eyes. Open and unresponsive. Then we called you.”

“Who touched what in here?”

Silence stretches as the deputies eyeball each other. Scharples doesn’t turn. His squinted gray eyes note every detail in the small living room. Out in the dry wash the cicadas rise up, a film score heavy with castanets.

“I touched his neck,” the first deputy says.

“What was your time on scene?”

“Two forty-seven, p.m.”

“Alright. I need one of you to string tape and keep people back. Take names. Everyone else can go.”

Scharples steps through, leaving the others to sort themselves out. The most obvious feature inside the manufactured home is a curving 8-foot video display suspended above a swoopy desk. On the wide screen, a detailed image of a forested world with tall cliffs, where high-soaring birds circle a misted waterfall. The interior is nice enough, typically creaky floor, kitchen and dinette off the living room, bedroom and bathroom in the back. Scent of lemon oil. To Scharples, the room looks like a deluxe video gaming booth for one person. With its sparse furnishings, it’s no place for socializing, or for love.

The departed Mr. Marsh reclines comfortably in an upholstered La-Z-Boy, tilted back as though for liftoff, his slack gaze centered on the large screen. Marsh is in jeans and a shirt that says Maui on it, with pink rubber flip-flops. Across the lap, a computer keyboard.

Studying the dead man head to toe, the detective tilts his head, tugging at a memory.

Near the corpse on a side table is a canned soft drink, a cell phone, a copy of Wired Magazine. It makes Scharples think of those up-all-night online shooter games he played in college.

And that’s when the detective sees it, looking down on the dead man’s scalp. Gripping the skin through Marsh’s sparse gray hair is a spidery form of seven arms that radiate outward from the crown of his skull. Scharples leans closer, studying the dusty-pink starburst. With a careful finger, he traces a spider arm. The rubber is pliant and slightly uneven. The detective takes out his phone and photographs the spider cap, the face, the full corpse, making voice notations with each image. He launches an app, holds the phone’s light before Marsh’s staring eyes. There is no pupil contraction. Another of the phone’s apps searches for changes in facial coloration that would reveal a pulse. In flashing italics the device reports, Pulse Zero. Armpit body temperature, measured likewise, is below 96 degrees.

The dead man’s face is relaxed though not yet slack. And what gets to the detective is the expression. A single word surfaces: beatific. Scharples has seen this look only a handful of times in his 18 fun-filled years with homicide. The old boy’s face radiates sublime joy.

Scharples pokes in the small closets, sees everything tidy. No golf clubs. No booze. No tossed dressers, everything’s neat. He thumb-types notes into the phone, the only modern touch he’s adopted as a cop. Up to last year it was a little black notebook. He scratches his jawline. Distant cicadas rattle, dry as bones.

Scharples locates the computer, a dark block with flickering LEDs neatly racked in a fancy entertainment unit. Standing behind the still form, the detective considers the view the man had from his big chair. The video screen takes up half the wall, and from this vantage point, Mr. Marsh would be immersed in the colorful animated scene.

Studying the computer chassis, Scharples notices that all six USB ports are full. He supposes they’re for wireless gadgets in the room, but doesn’t know what to look for. He does know who to ask, a savvy computer geek in the form of his son, Quentin. He punches his phone, gets his son’s away message.

“Hey Q, need answers from a computer over here. Dells View Park, space 56B. Quick like a bunny.”

Next call he makes is to the Yavapai County Medical Examiner’s office. He asks for a body pickup, then calls Sheriff’s homicide for a forensics tech. He peers outside, where a uniformed deputy talks to a cluster of park residents, making notes on a glowing tablet.

Quentin gets there first, carrying his bulky leather equipment case. When the lanky 19-year-old steps inside the trailer, he studies the wrap-around screen, the dead man, the cluster of wireless antennas in the computer chassis. He checks out the spider cap on Marsh’s head, stands gazing at the elaborate forest panorama on the wide screen.

“Wicked setup, Dad. Major avatar playworld.”

“Playworld?”

“Or chatroom. People use 3D avatars and meet in a fancy scene. Thing I would do is take an image of the drive. I can pick away at it in my lab.”

“You’re asking me? Get it done. Team’s on the way. I’d like them to not see you.”

“I’ll be a ghost,” Quentin says. He opens his kit and snaps on latex gloves, reaching for electronic probes and cables. Father and son work silently amid the heavy stillness of death. The detective steps out to question the maintenance guy, away from a cluster of curious park residents.

“How did you discover Mr. Marsh?”

“We heard an alarm in there. He wouldn’t open the door, didn’t answer his phone.”

“What can you tell me about him, his habits?”

“Keeps to himself,” the man tells him. “Always cooperative.”

“Anyone know what he does with his time? Golf? Fishing?”

The man shakes his head. “Never invites anyone in. You could sit on his porch and drink a beer, but he hasn’t let me inside for two years. Fixes stuff himself. What happened? Heart attack?”

“Any idea how Mr. Marsh supports himself?”

“No idea. Lived here seven years, before my time. Retired now. There would be a credit app in the office.”

Scharples tilts his head at the group of onlookers. “Anybody out here know him, what he does?”

The maintenance guy starts with an answer, but Scharples sees Quentin signal from the trailer’s porch, and turns away.

“Dad, I’ve got the drive image. He was doing email, reading investment sites, and logged into a fancy chat. Give ya more later.”

“What’s that doo-dad on his head?” Scharples feels a faint tug of memory.

“Never saw one before.”

“At least it beats a tinfoil hat.”

“Something weird. Lots of wireless antennas in his computer,” Quentin says. “One’s blown. Never saw that either.”

“You’ll check it out. What’s chat?”

“Online chat society, simulated 3D playworlds. People assemble their own avatars, make virtual friends, wear virtual clothes. I’ll send you the link.”

The detective faces the exotic world on the wide screen. “This is a chatroom? How come no one’s in it?”

“Some are private. Or everybody left when your guy stopped twitching.”

“Could he have been gambling?”

Thoughtful shake of Quentin’s head. “Chat’s supposed to be just for socializing.”

“You ever play this, Q?”

A grin spreads. “Dad. I’ve been everywhere there is to go in cyberspace.”

His worst fears again confirmed about his son’s warped upbringing, Scharples takes comfort in how present and fit his kid looks. Nearing 20, he’s a boy no more, an omnivorous reader who explains his clerk gig at Best Buy as a way to meet girls while he decides which university to finish at.

Scharples flips pages on his phone. He reads quickly. “Something like this came across last week,” he says. “Dead woman with a thing on her head.”

Father and son regard each other with identical raised eyebrows.

“Send me what ya got,” Quentin says. “I’ll check it out.”

Watching his son stride to his camo Jeep, Edwin Scharples sorts through the paltry facts. An old guy dies alone, possibly natural. No sign of forced entry, nothing disturbed. But the deceased wears a high-tech doily on his noggin, and there’s the otherworldly expression on the quiet face. Damn little to work with.

From the porch, Scharples gazes around the lot. It’s a quiet spot among the rocks, pleasant view of the artificial lake. He’s thinking that in the end he’ll likely put this down as an unattended death. But the similar case bugs him, with its nagging hint of serial homicide.

Chapter 4 – Test Drive

Even before his office door closes at Nathaniel’s back, Verkrag is inside his draped alcove, reclining in padded leather beneath the wall-sized Dreamworlds screen. He places upon the crown of his head a golden spider form of seven delicate arms. His face takes on a pleased expression as on the screen appears his tattooed avatar, SincerelySatan. Eyes narrowed in focused concentration, Verkrag with his thoughts alone guides the avatar through a bright doorway into a libidinous evening waterworld.

The scene dazzles him, a nighttime lake of giant lily pads, sparkling fireflies, an oversized moon. On the far horizon, a kingdom of clouds, sunset-tinted. Verkrag’s breathing slows as the exotic world gathers form.

Again, he’s disappointed that his muscled avatar stands alone, eyes probing shadows for the enchanting female. Three weeks gone since their time together, he hungers for the feminine mystery still. Certain she enjoyed their lengthy cybersex in the abandoned movie house, he’s tormented by thoughts of her with other hyper-male avatars. He groans his anguish that her passions could forsake him.

His nerves sing with lurid hungers. Casting his eyes around the dreamlike world, he’s disgusted to see himself as a stalker, but all reason escapes him when he thinks of her. His mind clings to the moment he’d spun the violet-eyed goddess away from the lights. Her face a blazing aurora in his mind, he cannot let her go.

OutOfRange wants to chat with SincerelySatan

The invite panel appears on Verkrag’s screen, covering his view of the lake. His son. With a wry grin, Verkrag clicks the Accept button. SincerelySatan appears in a second Dreamworlds window, a boy’s fantasy skateboard park with high and treacherous curving ramps. His son’s avatar materializes there.

“‘Sup, dude?” The gravelly voice sounds in Verkrag’s speakers, and he chuckles at Alan’s latest online persona. OutOfRange is a snout-nosed little demon, eyes as glowing coals in a face of melted tar. Wicked claws lash a Frisbee his way. SincerelySatan catches the hissing disk and sends it back hard above the grass. Watching the airfoil cross the scene, Verkrag sees in young Alan a witty and inventive twin to his own younger self. He knows this territory, the kid’s frustrations with boring teachers and lame friends from that stuffy private school.

“Where are you, son?”

“Beach house with a couple ‘tards,” says the sticky-faced monster, returning the Frisbee with a deft flick. Verkrag in his curtained alcove takes a quick peek in the girl’s nighttime lake world. She has not come.

When he flips back to Alan’s skateboard park, he is irritated that he’s missed a catch. The dark little goblin performs maniacal backflips as SincerelySatan chases the rolling disk.

Verkrag supposes that if Alan knew of his online infatuation, he would not see it as his father’s infidelity to his stepmom. He would merely dismiss the girl as an ‘ant.’ The kid calls everyone ants these days. The servants and valets, kitchen staff, drivers, security agents and special tutors. Verkrag is not concerned, the connection obviously sprang from the boy’s wall-sized ant farm.

Verkrag checks his Piaget, takes one last look in the sultry waterworld. He grates at wasting valuable time in this illusion, seeking the impossibly beguiling girl.

“Son, I must sign off. Are you keeping up with your homework?” The words echo from SincerelySatan on the screen.

“All over it, dude.”

“How is the new tutor working out?”

“Dude rips ass. I’m building killer gear.” The snout-nosed black demon performs a few backflips before vanishing from the skateboard park with a fiery skyrocket effect.

Verkrag shuts down his session and pulls the golden spider from his head. The 7-branched form in his palm appears innocuous, but he well understands the immense control it will bring him, if Nathaniel can deflect the board’s scrutiny. Stretching, Verkrag yawns big. Tracking the girl night after night costs him more than sleep.

In front of the building among the armed valets, Nathaniel glances left as all eyes follow a stretch Hummer T-6 in its swoop to the curb, swift as a hot wind. Two sharp-suited bodyguards get out, unreadable eyes and hard expressions. One of them extends a manicured hand to a tiny woman in a floral print dress. Ignoring the gesture, the CEO of Pan-Asian Games steps down from the imposing vehicle, oblivious to the bodyguards with their assault rifles. She neither speaks nor meets Nathaniel’s eyes as she walks past him toward the entrance with a mincing gait. He smiles as he matches her pace. He expects such disdain from Verkrag’s elite clientele.

He leads her through the lobby, scented for this precise moment with night-blooming jasmine, and into the private car held open by a uniformed valet. In seconds, they emerge into a vast gallery, dense with classic marbles from the Italian Renaissance and black-market antiquities of the Middle East. Her eyes come to life, looking up at three towering Doric columns. It’s rumored in the art world that these are not reproductions but the timeworn relics themselves. Scanning the magnificent sky-lit collection, a pleased smile briefly lights her features.

Beside a heavy door, a row of tiny lights flickers. Nathaniel’s access bracelet turns them green; the door opens with a faint internal whirr. He gestures the woman through, as across two dozen feet of hand-woven Persian rug David Verkrag strides their way.

“Li Jing! How nice you have time to see us. Nathaniel will give you a complete grounding in the history and future directions of Halcyon Dreamworlds. He will also introduce you to our latest development, Threshold. I await your company in the dining room at noon.” His smile for her is self-assured as he exits into the residence wing.

Nathaniel leads the matron into Verkrag’s private alcove. In dim-lit hush he positions two leather chairs. Nerves tingling at his awaited opportunity, the security chief with a hidden movement inserts a thumb drive into Verkrag’s computer. Aware of his treason, Nathaniel with rapid keystrokes activates code in the small device, which seamlessly overpowers Verkrag’s security and extends questing tendrils into the data streams of the billionaire’s online existence.

He seats himself beside his guest and launches the Dreamworlds system into his pre-programmed newbie tour. On the bright panorama appears a lush garden scene where stands a statuesque avatar, a Chinese woman in traditional dress. Gazing at the royally robed figure on the wide screen, his visitor speaks with authority.

“That cheongsam is Qing. Our family originated from Manchu Qing Dynasty. My cousin owns the original. I must commend David on his thorough research.” She is secretly enthralled. She last looked that good when she was twenty.

“He will be pleased,” Nathaniel replies with a respectful tilt of his head. “Have you used Halcyon, Madame, or any form of online avatar chat?”

“I have no time for such toys. My concern is with productivity.”

Nathaniel takes her biting tone in stride. “Certainly, Madame. Online chat goes back decades, beginning with short keyboard messages. It later morphed into online societies with cartoonish avatars. Today, Halcyon Dreamworlds provides a social experience that entertains sixty million players worldwide, rivaling such popular online standards as World of Warcraft, Rift, EverQuest and so on. Today, three billion players can access such worlds on the Internet.”

“My company owns similar properties,” the woman says with a bored shrug.

Nathaniel pulls open the keyboard tray. “Madame, if you would use the mouse, you can click on any of the silver pose balls on the screen. Your avatar will move immediately to that spot.”

The matron clicks on a floating silver ball. The statuesque Asian doll jumps to the new location, posed demurely beneath a blooming cherry tree.

“This animation is exceedingly low quality. Have you nothing more?”

Nathaniel nods with a polite smile. “Madame, you are exactly on point. This is the history of Dreamworlds through our current stage of development. But now with your kind attention, I will unveil Threshold.”

He places before her a flat jewel case, pops it open to reveal the graceful seven-legged form within. Quick keystrokes bring his own avatar to the screen, attired in a lustrous black tuxedo. Nathaniel slides the open jewel case toward her as he positions a similar spider on his glossy head.

“If you would permit me, Madame, I will guide you in your first use of Halcyon Threshold.”

With sure movements, she lifts the golden spider from its regal setting, places it as did Nathaniel. As Threshold repaints the scene, her avatar now rivals the textures, subtle shadings and highlights of the finest photography. She sees nuances of smooth-grained flesh, the most delicate lustre of human hair, the subtle rise of shoulders with each breath. The scene meshes into finer detail, sounds of delicate birdsong, the rustle of wind in tall grasses. The woman sits straight, her senses full alert.

Nathaniel slides the controls out of reach. “Please, Madame, notice the wooden footbridge near the pond. Imagine walking easily to that bridge. Concentrate on your intentions.”

For a few seconds nothing happens. But as her brain submits to the comforting sense-impressions pouring through the Threshold interface, her avatar in that exotic panorama turns in fluid grace and with mincing steps walks the gravel path and up the curving wooden incline. It stops in the middle of the bridge, leans over the railing. Its eyes follow movement in the water below.

“Koi,” the matron exclaims, seeing the living fish through clear water. Her avatar’s lips move, and in the hushed alcove sounds a melodic echo of her own voice. Feminine laughter fills the air, harmonized by the avatar’s cultured tones. When her face turns to Nathaniel, it reflects the joy of a young girl.

“It’s so perfectly lifelike,” she says. “I hear everything! I can feel this.” There is one feeling she won’t admit to the tall security chief. She feels juicy.

In the scene, Nathaniel’s tuxedoed avatar taps a small rock with a polished shoe. This stroke launches her training module for primary Arabic, what students generally encounter first in linguistic studies. The coded information pulses in theta rhythms through the spider cap at the crown of her skull. To cover the moment of interlock, Nathaniel activates a blooming vine near the bridge. Quivering petals stretch wide, breathing into the air a sultry aroma of jasmine and orange.

Eyes rapt on the screen, the woman sits forward, inhaling the floral notes. “Mr. Craig, I can smell that!”

Nathaniel nods, fully aware how Threshold inundated his own senses, that first time.

“So now, you’ve seen how the basics of Halcyon, beginning with jagged images and laboriously typed keyboard chat, have evolved into an immersive experience you control through your intentions. Dreamworlds with Threshold is what Verkrag’s partners have chosen as the centerpiece of an entertainment empire that will be unrivaled beyond our lifetimes. You are aware of the term storyworld?”

He watches her relax, eyes heavy-lidded. He knows what she’s experiencing, how focused she is on the divine floral scent that she’s convinced comes from her nose, but instead arises from encoded sensations delivered to her brain via the spider cap, designed to fool a human nervous system into thinking it smells a flower. A particular strain of flower, in a particular countryside setting, a stream-laced woodland not far from the woman’s ancestral home.

“I’ve heard the term,” she says, inhaling with a pleased expression. She’d like to be alone with this thing.

“A storyworld,” Nathaniel begins, “is the adjunct packaging of a film, record album, game release, or stage production. It can include posters, T-shirts and caps, TV series and play items, such as specific avatar dolls and toy spiders for children to wear until they’re old enough for Threshold itself. This will predispose them, when parental consent can be obtained, to become willing converts to what is in fact a new world order.”

She leans away from him with a fierce scowl. “New world order, Mr. Craig? Is that not getting a little full of oneself?”

Nathaniel smiles. He likes this part of the tour, when delivered to those who truly get it. From his jacket pocket he pulls out a United States dollar.

“Look at the truncated pyramid on this bill. The floating eye at the peak signifies where Mr. Verkrag intends to be, along with his principal investors. It is the design of his new world order. To Mr. Verkrag, it symbolizes how the Internet has become the omnipotent eye on humanity. You are invited to join with him in a single objective, to make Halcyon Dreamworlds the most-desired source for escapist entertainment and personal relationships.”

Nathaniel reads the woman’s face, sees resistance along with intrigue. He could have added that Verkrag’s investment partners will become an elite shadow government spanning the entire globe, but feels that some reserve is wise.

“Madame, it’s easy for us on the inside to become a little smug, even the Verkrag family admits to that. But they have crafted the most profitable orchestration of coordinated business streams in all our history. Soon, Threshold spiders will be in the hands of sixty million players across the globe. The major motion picture Quest for the Sacred Chalice will be in theaters. This, plus the packaging of several Wall Street instruments, will catapult the investment you make, before close of business today, into an eternally revolving stock market ATM for yourself and your heirs.”

Behind them, Verkrag opens the residence door. The tall man fills the entryway, face lifted toward the alcove with an expectant look. Nathaniel gives his employer an imperceptible nod. Verkrag grins, without a word steps to his desk.

“Madame,” Nathaniel whispers. “Mr. Verkrag has joined us. If you would be so kind as to remove the Threshold spider, this concludes our program for today.”

She sends him a shocked glance. It’s a look Nathaniel has seen with every newbie demo, the reluctance of the newly and truly hooked to consign themselves once again to their worn bodies, their ordinary lives. Her fingers tremble as she lifts the golden spider from her head, examines the flexible arms, and nestles it with respect in its sleek case. Nathaniel closes the case with an authoritative snap and holds it out to her.

She looks at him in mounting hope.

“Yes, Madame, this is yours now with Mr. Verkrag’s compliments. All you need is a computer and your spider cap. You can visit the Dreamworlds societies whenever you like.”

Nathaniel points out the small USB antenna within the transparent case. “This part is essential. It must be plugged into your computer to communicate your thoughts and desires into the Dreamworlds experience.”

“This is overwhelming,” whispers the CEO of Pan-Asian Games. “I might be somewhat interested.” The demure smile on her prim lips puts the lie to those words.

His objective nearly within reach and with rising apprehension, Nathaniel prepares for the instant when the woman will turn away.

“Sabah el kheer,” Nathaniel says to her. “Kaifa haloki?”

Without noticing that he’s said, Good morning, how are you, in Arabic, she replies in kind, “Ana bekhair, shokran.” I’m fine, thanks.

Verkrag grins at them, already pleased with Nathaniel’s results. From a brief introductory session under Threshold, the woman’s new language skills have taken hold. Without reinforcement, they will soon fade.

Verkrag joins the conversation. “Hal tatakallamu alloghah al arabiah?” He’s asking if she speaks Arabic.

“Ohibbu allughah al arabia,” she replies. I enjoy speaking Arabic.

“It’s a beautiful language,” Verkrag says in Arabic with a sly grin, enjoying himself. “Perhaps we should give up English.”

She sits up with a shocked expression, hand on her head. “My God. I’m speaking Arabic? What is this thing?” Her other hand clutches tight to the smooth case containing her Threshold spider.

Verkrag cordially leads her to the comfortable sofa. On a spotless table, he has laid out investment documents for her signature. The woman’s face is enraptured. She has seen the future, and she wants in.

The newly minted business partners now distracted, Nathaniel with rising pulse removes the thumb drive from its computer port and drops it in a tux pocket. Abruptly, Verkrag motions to him and leads the way into the gallery, away from their guest’s hearing. Nathaniel’s nerves hum at the thought his move was seen.

“Ace,” Verkrag whispers tersely, standing close. “My daughter feels very badly about what happened with her girl party the other night. Her brother got in that world, humiliated her in front of everybody. Your team is supposed to keep that from happening.”

“Of course, Sir. We had a technical issue.” Nathaniel lets himself exhale. He’s aware that Verkrag’s own avatar, aside from crashing 18-year-old Beatrice’s Dreamworlds slumber party, had swept her visiting Greek Studies tutor into a haunted forest with lascivious intent. But David Verkrag would not see his own behavior as contributing to his daughter’s malaise.

“I don’t give a flying fuck about why. I just don’t want Beatrice locked in her room again for days on end. She’s been in seclusion since Sunday morning.”

Nathaniel wouldn’t suggest that the man also curb his son’s behavior. In this household, such an outrage would be grounds for immediate dismissal. ‘Chip off the old block,’ is how David Verkrag proudly sees his kid, the rare times he actually sees him.

“Certainly, Sir. But in point of fact we need additional budget.”

Verkrag registers surprise. “You need funds? For what?”

“That tutor you hired for Alan. Your Goldman Sachs security guru. He’s strong. He’s helped Alan build a cloaking device. His avatar can be undetectable in the worlds. The boys talk freely of building weapons.”

“Boyish fantasies. Spend no more than you have to and don’t bother me about it.”

“Of course, Sir.” Nathaniel would like to see Alan’s tutor go, but feels it wise not to suggest that.

“My security team, you in particular, must keep Alan from doing anything drastic. Boys will be boys, but he is, after all, only nine.” Verkrag ends the conversation by closing the office door behind him.

Alone in the elevator for a swift ride to street level, Nathaniel allows himself a relaxing breath. The thumb drive secure in his pocket holds terabytes of ransacked information, including all of the moral and ethical decisions made in the last two weeks by the petro-billionaire, all of his Dreamworlds chat sessions, plus profiles of every player he’s been with. Of primary interest to Nathaniel is Verkrag’s conditioning summary, with particular focus on the man’s Threshold-driven attachment to the feminine avatar known as Yuri.

With unhurried stride, the lone soldier exits the marble lobby and settles into the hushed compartment of Verkrag’s waiting limo.

Chapter 5 – Ace Plays the Empire

“Take us to Serendipity, Vernon.”

Comfortable in the leather rear compartment of Verkrag’s dark freighter, Nathaniel watches the chauffeur’s mirrored eyes as they pull away. With casual-seeming moves, he plugs the thumb drive into his phone, counting off the seconds as it swallows Verkrag’s scavenged data load.

Nathaniel settles back in the enfolding seat to study his boss’s behavioral patterns. He reads in Verkrag’s session data the man’s fixation on the female avatar, which gives Nathaniel a chuckle. He’d jiggered Verkrag’s profile to conceal her online location. And through the spider, he’d planted in his employer’s mind dream-images of Yuri with scabby thugs, a one-two punch of anger and longing. In his sleep, brain toxins boil Verkrag’s nerves. Overall, it’s a perfect combo for nightmare delirium that should feel like a lovesick puppy with killer rage. Nathaniel reckons it’s time to let Verkrag find her.

He enters text commands that shred most of the files on the thumb drive, leaving a few behavioral graphs that Lyon will be able to interpret. He separates the devices. He’ll be rid of the thumb drive soon enough, and nothing will tie him to the pirated data.

His phone plays the opening bars of a Mozart Minuet. He sets his mouth in a firm line before answering.

“Yes, Rebecca?”

“The latest?”

There are never words of greeting, only brusque demands. A picture comes to Nathaniel’s mind, a woman of russet hair, eyes cool behind dark glasses, facial contours befitting a supermodel. David Verkrag’s trophy wife, age 28, from the other side of the world.

“When do I get my result?” Her voice is cold.

“We’re getting closer.”

“Closer! Surely you got video when he met the gutter trash.” Her words drip with insinuation.

“Their encounter was unexpected. I’ll update you shortly.”

“Right now would be a good time.”

Nathaniel’s face hardens. Managing elite egos is the trickiest part of his job. He’s done well these four years in the Verkrag household, since before Rebecca Sutton married into the family.

“Dammit man, can’t you see this is time-critical?”

Nathaniel winces. He hears in her voice a careful persona about to crack. Her voice is a screech.

“Ace, I know David is seeing someone! A wife senses these things!”

Nathaniel whispers vague reassurances. Although she could easily guess at something out of place, Rebecca will never see physical evidence of Verkrag’s new love interest, the object of his desire will leave no trace of lipstick or perfume. The man’s feminine ideal is not exactly human.

“Your status update must be prepared,” he says evenly. This woman might be rich, she might be secretly paying him, but he must keep her wants secondary to his main objective, the topic of his meeting with Richard Lyon, now minutes away.

“I need you to step things up, Ace.” The distant voice carries a threatening undertone. Nathaniel has seen these rich-fart shticks before, from clients in New York’s upper echelons, including the family of elites he was born into.

“That will not be wise,” he says firmly, knowing there’s no one else she can turn to having his knowledge of the Dreamworlds, his coding skills and access to her husband. He takes a deep breath and lets her mini-tantrum play out.

“What’s unwise is not giving me what I want when I want it! I let you run with your grand idea. Let’s see it work.”

Nathaniel is silent, and when Rebecca next speaks, her society mask is again in place.

“My other project,” she coos, slipping into a well-lubricated gear. “You found me an orphan, as you promised?” She’s onto her other favorite topic, control of an abandoned avatar that will not trace back to her, the equivalent of a dead woman’s passport. Nathaniel knows Rebecca wouldn’t care about his exposure. If he bows to the young wife’s impatience, any mistake comes back on him, not her.

“One may soon be available,” Nathaniel tells her. The connection goes dead without a word.

As the car moves down Lexington Avenue, his lips tighten, seeing the sidewalk crowds. Prodded to keep moving behind police barricades, a growling mass shuffles along, waving signs. Where’s my Job? Where’s my House? Where’s my Pension?

He lets go a helpless sigh. Forty years ago these same protestors would have been white and skinny, not brown and fat. Nathaniel sees this as a direct result of the mental conditioning they’ve received from that most American of art forms, the 30-second TV spot. In his view, they’ve been led to accept food that’s low in both taste and nutritional value, prepared from the least-costly ingredients and served with a large sugary drink. Anger at the boil, he’s sure that none of this could have happened when America was a real country.

As the car swoops to a stop in front of Serendipity on East 60th, Nathaniel is out the door and inside, where a dark-eyed hostess smiles up at him.

“How many today, Sir?”

“I’m meeting a friend. Clinton’s booth.”

The woman’s eyes widen at mention of the ex-president, the table his Secret Service detail preferred for its seclusion at a back corner of the crowded restaurant. As she shows Nathaniel through the dining room alive with talk and the ring of glassware, his gaze flicks among the many faces, checking for any inquisitive glance too long held. In the private booth sit two men whose eyes move from Nathaniel’s face to scan the restaurant behind him. Seeing that Lyon is not alone, Nathaniel turns for the entrance.

Lyon leaps to his feet, a placating hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder. “It’s alright,” he whispers. “Mac’s on the board, he’s with us. Please, sit.”

Nathaniel puts hard eyes on the other man, who looks to be about 60, silver hair and an impeccably tailored custom three-piece. Nathaniel knows who it is. Daniel MacDougal, who holds his glare for but a moment.

“Please,” Lyon says again.

Nathaniel slides into the booth opposite the two men. His expression carries anger.

“You eating?” Lyon says, trying to seem urbane.

Nathaniel regards him coldly. “How can you be so careless, Richard? You never throw me wildcards. You have no idea what we need to discuss.”

“Wait a minute, messenger boy,” MacDougal says tersely. “We represent the Halcyon board, and you’re Verkrag’s fucking valet. That makes us privileged to hear anything you might say.”

Lyon puts both hands on MacDougal’s arm. “Mac, settle back. There’s a reason for this. Nathaniel, I’m sorry. Should have warned you.”

Nathaniel leans forward, eyes slitted at the men opposite. “I told you come alone.” Though Nathaniel feigns ignorance of who MacDougal is, he knows their complete dossiers, knows that both sit on the Halcyon Dreamworlds Board of Directors, that Lyon’s been there longer and MacDougal, another Wall Street banker, was brought in by Verkrag after the takeover.

“So,” MacDougal says, sitting back. “Get to it. What’s your pitch?”

Nathaniel cannot believe the man’s ignorant audacity. But, he reminds himself, stupidity in others can be useful.

“After I suggested this meeting,” Nathaniel begins calmly, addressing himself to Richard Lyon and searching his brain for a way to dismiss the unwanted guest, “I decided on a demonstration. It can’t be done today, but over several weeks. But for now, I brought some data, which I encourage you both to study.”

“Well,” MacDougal says, more relaxed to hear himself included. “Richard gave David our ultimatum. If you have a little demo, now’s the time.”

Nathaniel neither looks at MacDougal nor acknowledges his demand. Verkrag’s plans for Halcyon Dreamworlds will not reveal themselves on a PowerPoint slide. Nor will his own.

“No demo today, but…”

“Show respect, messenger boy,” MacDougal throws in.

Nathaniel’s eyes don’t flicker. “Richard, you were asking about progress in Halcyon Engineering. You’re about to find out. It’s why you asked for this meeting. Would it comfort you that we now have a way to achieve your goals much earlier than you’ve anticipated?”

MacDougal sits straighter, a haughty scowl on his face. “How would you know what the Halcyon Board of Directors is after?”

With a bored shake of his head, Nathaniel replies, “Surely you both realize Verkrag’s aims. The ultra-rich want to erase international borders. Among you elites, it’s the key goal of the last three hundred years. Look at all the international trade deals, designed to allow tax havens and offshore jobs. Our Mr. Verkrag, to his credit, asked a simple question: ‘Why work so hard to destroy state borders through wars and politics, when the Internet has done it for you?’”

MacDougal and Lyon look at each other and nod. Nathaniel goes on.

“The world is borderless on the Internet, and that’s where he intends to dominate, through Halcyon Dreamworlds. You don’t need trade deals when you can flat-out steal from anyone in the world. You know how Verkrag despises paying corporate taxes? He wants the government to cut education costs in half. The inferior classes, in his view, don’t require expensive training.” Nathaniel suppresses a shudder as he says these words but the men across from him don’t react. “Verkrag’s insiders are to become wealthy beyond measure. Insiders such as the two of you.”

Nathaniel pauses, satisfied that MacDougal remains confused and Lyon intrigued.

“About this morning’s little demo,” he says coolly, “I believe that client has signed for a significant stake in Verkrag’s holding company, in which both of you hold shares.”

Lyon now realizes that Nathaniel is too close to Verkrag’s thinking to be some idle foot soldier, and regrets inviting MacDougal.

“How significant?” He asks, trying to be cool.

“Five bigs.” Nathaniel looks confidently from one man to the other as their eyes widen. Wall Street bankers like the mere mention of money.

“She came through?” Lyon has the look of a man fighting for control. “Wait. We’ve agreed to nothing yet. We’re still on track for a show and tell next Monday.”

Both men hold eyes on Nathaniel, who with a confident grin pulls from an inside pocket the small thumb drive, conceals it in his white dinner napkin. While looking cooly at MacDougal to his right, Nathaniel pushes the bunched cloth negligently toward Lyon, leaves it forgotten on the smooth tabletop. The server comes, takes their orders for coffee.

As the server departs, Nathaniel drops the napkin casually in his lap. He steps down hard on a sigh of relief. The thumb drive containing Verkrag’s behavior summary is safely out of his hands.

To Lyon he says, “Keep that out of sight. We’ll cover it at a future time. David doesn’t know I’m sharing this.”

Touching the phone in his pocket, Nathaniel signals the driver to meet him at the curb. He stands, with a final nod turns for the exit.

Chapter 6 – Welcome to Insanity

Yuri, Logan’s ultra-glam feminine avatar, materializes in Cougar Gurlz, totally runway-fab in her black sheath, straw-blond hair piled high. From the entryway, she surveys the modish setting and graceful dancers, a free-form stage rimmed with gentle steps and a curving ramp. The dancers are in unison, a feminine choreo sensation in sync with a pleasing trance-bop of ancient rhythm. Below the colorful scene on Logan’s laptop is a chat window where players’ comments appear. She spots a friend’s avatar dancing in the mix, StacyLullaby.

“Hello, this room. Hey, Stacy,” Logan says. Her Bluetooth amplifies the words and hidden software writes them into the chat window.

A twirling avatar replies, “Stacy stepped out.”

“Thanks. How far did she step?”

“Could be gone a while.”

The avatar says nothing more, and no one else is chatting. This is no surprise to Logan. The swanky club is a pickup spot, and it’s likely that every female here has a duplicate avatar in more intimate chat somewhere else, leaving their copies to gyrate in the empty dances. Yuri joins the dance and keeps quiet.

Logan opens her own public room, Feminine Insanity, and soon a duplicate Yuri floats in a nighttime waterworld of giant lily pads and an oversized moon. Her breath catches as the room forms, a billion entrancing pixels charm her senses. The lake world is vast, a wild expanse of lush living things. Animals run through shoreside grasses, birds soar the night sky, glowing fish break the surface and take flight above the water as bright schools. Logan has sweated over every detail of lighting, the right props and sensual poses to make Yuri’s island of light elegant and perfect. Looking at her dream self in the lavish setting, Logan wonders what those bubbles might feel like, how warm would flow the water on her skin, what scents would ride this misted night? What if she could touch another avatar, and feel touched? She trembles with impossible longings.

Yuri, completely aloof from Logan’s computer fiddling, reclines nude yet demure in a roomy hot tub, her modesty preserved in bubbles. Her blonde head turns as someone enters; an alert panel announces a new visitor.

SincerelySatan has joined the World

“Hey Satan, dude. Welcome to Feminine Insanity.”

“Hey, girl. It’s David.”

The sound of his voice, low and gravelly, gets her at waist level. This stranger saying girl in her dreamlike place feels maddening hot. Something dark within her wakes.

Then she notices his walk. This studly avatar does not hop from one pose dot to the next as others do; he slinks toward the hot tub with animal swagger. In the dimness, SincerelySatan’s green eyes gleam and the wicked edge of a smile forms. Logan doesn’t mind that her avatar is nude, bubbles rule. In this nighttime world with its golden moonlight, steamy atmosphere and floating dance pavilion, Yuri spends many evenings in unclothed feminine company.

The male avatar sniffs the air, peering into the night.

“Something wild in here.” A deep, pleased laugh. When his eyes fall on her Yuri shivers, deliciously. For the first time she notices his face. Impossibly handsome, dark, European, as though da Vinci himself had perfected the male countenance. Behind expressionless lips, Yuri’s teeth clench. This dude is hyper-real and unreasonably hot.

“How you doing, Satan?”

“Doin’ great, how about you?”

SincerelySatan, in jeans but bare-chested to reveal his tribal tattoos, lowers himself into the hot tub across from Yuri. It makes Logan smile. She’s quite sure, if Yuri had been in a couples pose, he would have crash-landed on top of her. But she catches herself. Wait. If he doesn’t need the pose dots, he could swim over here and grab me!

She keeps her voice even. “By the way, have we met?”

Alone in the private alcove, business day forgotten, David Verkrag snarls at the blonde sex-drop on his wide screen. The bitch doesn’t remember their wild encounter.

“I tell ya what,” Yuri goes on, “this is a women’s room…”

Verkrag reminds himself to stay cool. “Saw that on the way in, and you are alone at the moment.”

“Mhmm. So stay, but if my friends show, I’ll need you to beat feet.”

Behind the velvet curtain in his New York office, Verkrag is both pleased and insulted. After weeks of lurking on Halcyon for this intoxicating crumpet to appear, she is here now and not occupied with her many visitors. He’s irritated that she doesn’t recall how they met, but maintains his cultivated avatar persona. It’s a relief to chill from his real world obligations and follow his lust. He wants her with irrational longing, yet steels himself to stay in character.

“Well to be honest the only reason I’m visiting this room is that I don’t want to be rude and invite you private, which I could do in the first place. And the second reason is…”

“Thank you. Very gentlemanly.”

“Well it’s just how I do things, like to be honest and straight up. So this is what drives me to tell you the second reason, if you would be interested to find it out…”

Yuri grins. “Eerie, suspenseful music…”

SincerelySatan doesn’t continue right away, so Logan peeks in the Cougar Gurlz dance club, where a duplicate Yuri twirls among the dancers. Twysta makes an interesting remark and an easy banter sparks between them. When Logan looks again in Feminine Insanity, her guest has said something more.

“What’s up in the lezzie club? Am I distracting you?” Verkrag can see Yuri’s name in the Cougar Gurlz list.

“Oh, everyone’s off fooling around. I’m just hanging.”

“Alright, I suppose this is the part I should reveal everything. So, even though I know you are bi, or more interested in women…”

“Hah! Say no more honi, I get your drift. And you are right, I am definitely in the girl-girl frame of mind.” In her heart, Logan is not so certain. Aside from DarkEternity, she’s yet to meet a female avatar with the wit and intelligence that could coax her to indulge an awakening desire for the lovely bodies they all have.

“I know,” SincerelySatan says in an even tone. “I’m not going all out on you tonight. But I still wanna say what I wanna say. I want to do what we did before… one more time. I won’t bother you again if you don’t want to. I saw you that day in the empty theater, you were with a lot of dudes. That’s made me horny about you.”

This kind of sex talk does not bother Logan. But now she gets it that Yuri has encountered the tattooed avatar before. That was weeks ago! He’s stalking me?

“So we have met… well, honi, that day I was a freak of nature.” Logan remembers, logging into Dreamworlds all horny-vibe one day and on her way to try out a concert piano. She found it in an abandoned movie theater, along with several loitering males.

“I want one of those days,” growls SincerelySatan. Glaring at the bright screen in his private alcove, Verkrag is bitterly disappointed. She doesn’t remember their wild encounter!

“Those days come around rarely,” Yuri says. Logan recalls the compromising poses she’d joined with SincerelySatan. He knew his way around the derelict movie house and she was horny for maleness. Under the light kimono, she gives her nipple an inquisitive pinch. No reaction. She has nothing for any guys right now.

“I don’t know when those days are coming though,” the gruff male avatar continues. “Instead of that, are you down for some all open convo about that day? I want to ask you something.”

Peeking in the Cougar Gurlz dance pavilion, Logan likes one avatar’s replies, and sends a private message: Would you like to step out and see the moonlight? The immediate reply: Of course.

Back in Feminine Insanity, Logan considers what SincerelySatan is telling her.

“What is it? I have a friend coming.”

“Well, I don’t want your friend to step on talk like, ‘how many dudes did you fuck that day,’ so I better not continue with it.”

“Oh shit, David. Forget it.” In her dark bedroom, Logan smiles at the lush scene on her laptop. The convo is sketchy, but the dude’s approach is at least considerate, however coarse. He is, after all, a guy.

“Sure I’ll tell you a little. But right now, I have a date. Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

“Thank you for coming. I don’t mind your frankness.”

“As long as two straight up people are talking, everything is good.”

“Amen, brother. She’s here.”

“Have fun with your date, I know she deserves it.” In his quiet sanctum, David Verkrag grits his teeth. It’s unlike the man to be cool and reserved in the face of anything denied him. Hunger gnaws his gut. He wants more time in her world, to take his rightful place at center stage and between her thighs. But to maintain his macho-cool persona he is forced to wait, and David Verkrag is never forced to do anything. But then it comes to him. His daughter can befriend her. Yes! He’ll send a message to SacredPetal, saying he’s found her a playmate he approves of. In quick succession, two alert panels covers his screen, then are gone.

Twysta has joined the World

SincerelySatan has left the World

Logan’s eyebrows rise at the guy’s prompt departure. So many males in this situation could hang around, be pushy and rude. She can ax anyone who pisses her off, but it never saves the moment.

Her visitor’s avatar is far away, at the entrance. A school of flying golden angelfish circles her in greeting as she dot-hops her way toward Yuri in the hot tub. It reminds Logan how smoothly SincerelySatan moved.

“Hi, I’m Yuri.”

“Hi, and wow, lovely magical space.”

“Thank you for stepping out.”

“Thank you for inviting me. So many elements floating about. Well done.”

“There are games and quiet places and cuddle spots.”

“Can I run off dot hopping?”

“Go for it.”

“And I love cuddle spots,” Twysta says, with a wink over her shoulder. “I’m running after the moon…”

“See the gondola over there? Take a seat we’ll go for a ride.”

Logan clicks a pose dot in a classic Venetian gondola with neon rails of glowing crimson. Yuri hops instantly to a perch on the craft’s gunwale, bare-skinned. Twysta is soon beside her, now in a sleek swimsuit.

“It is exotic,” Twysta says. “I love how the water and light move in your space.”

“This is the kind of first meeting I love. Safe and relaxed.”

Propelled by hidden magic, Yuri’s gondola lifts free of dark waters that sparkle with reflected lights, and climbs into the air above the dance pavilion. They rise into the night, flying rings around the moon. Yuri’s hair snakes about her head as though underwater.

“Twysta. You asked about cuddling. There is a delightful swimming cuddle I can show you.”

“Oh! May we try that?”

With a mouse click, Logan moves Yuri to a blue float ring in the dark water. Yuri submerges, hair a graceful fan behind, and swims forward to wrap arms and legs around Twysta.

“Oh, Yuri!”

“Mmm. Skin on skin with you.”

Because they can’t actually feel anything of the fantasy world, both must speak their intentions aloud, and declare whatever sensations they wish for. They become as play-acting children, the lavish 3D scene a moody backdrop for what amounts to phone sex. And Logan doesn’t know whether Twysta’s player is male or female, but is comfortable with that uncertainty. She can pick out gender cues in a matter of minutes, and is seldom wrong.

“My god you taste divine,” Twysta says, as their avatars float in rapt embrace.

“Your mouth honi, your silky skin.”

“I’m so glad you decided to talk to me.”

“This night is holding its breath for us.”

“Oh dear, I should have said sooner… didn’t know this would happen so fast… I’m leaving in about 15 minutes.”

“Honi, that is okay.”

“May I add you as a friend, Yuri?”

“Of course.”

“Are you heading off to real life, or seeing someone on here?”

“In real. Have to pick up a friend and likely have a meal and a drink.”

“I hope you have a wonderful evening, Twysta.”

“You have a very attractive mind.”

“That’s the sweetest compliment ever. I see yours that same way.”

“Good night dear, have fun and keep the magic always.”

Twysta has left the World

At her dressing table, Logan sits back, staring at Yuri on the screen. The place Twysta occupied is empty. Alone in the scene, Yuri embraces only air. Logan reads back over their chat log. Twysta is definitely interesting. She has a turn of phrase that expressed her well. And whoever Twysta is, thinks Logan, their minds do work alike. They had picked each other from a roomful of women in casual conversation.

Logan gets a friend request from Twysta, and immediately accepts it. She notes with satisfaction that Twysta is no longer online, which is consistent with her reason for leaving. She’s seen so many on Halcyon vanish quickly from chats using made-up reasons and outright lies. “Oh, I was helping a friend, honey.” Such friends often need help with their erogenous zones. Yuri spends no time with the liars.

StacyLullaby has joined the World

Yuri hops back in the tub, demure among the bubbles. “Stacy! Come and float, Love.”

The avatar StacyLullaby stands looking down at Yuri. She’s wearing her hair piled up and a mid-thigh cocktail dress with heels.

“Nice, Stacy. You are dressed for dancing. I am dressed for fine dining.”

“Hah. And how many would you feed?”

“Many hungry mouths I would hope…”

“Someone said you were looking for me.”

“Yah. Dropped into Cougar Gurlz and there you were, comatose.”

“Happens. I am surprised your room is not full.”

“People come and go. Sometimes I just park here and do email, talk to the odd person. Such as yourself.”

An alert panel briefly obscures Logan’s screen, announcing another arrival:

SacredPetal has joined the World

“Hello,” says the avatar, ladylike figure small and distant at the entrance.

Neither StacyLullaby nor Yuri move or speak. They’re unsurprised to see the word ‘Hello’ appear in the chat window, but neither is prepared for the melodic voice that clearly pronounces the greeting. They are less prepared that SacredPetal approaches the hot tub in a ballet artist’s toe-step, skipping daintily across oversized lily pads. Ordinary avatars like Yuri and StacyLullaby must hop from one pose dot to another, but SacredPetal flows with a dancer’s grace, a feminine tracery on the night air.

This oddball feminine vision wears a black bustier and matching black gloves that reach above the elbow, leaving bare her smooth alabaster shoulders and the visage of a porcelain doll. The eyes are purest indigo. The skirt is an outrageous flared tutu of earthy green upon which rests a model railway including miniature trees, bushes, the tiniest field-flowers and a cartoonish train set, which puffs pale smoke and toots merrily as it spirals the verdant landscape around the girl’s cinched waist. Below the tutu, pearl-toned legs end in silk toe slippers.

“Welcome to Feminine Insanity, SacredPetal,” Yuri says.

A throaty laugh in the audio. “I love the idea of feminine insanity. This is yours, Yuri?”

“It is indeed. And thank you.”

SacredPetal stands with StacyLullaby near the hot tub. Gazing up, Yuri compares the two figures. StacyLullaby is cute but has unfinished edges, while SacredPetal is a vision of sublime curves and girlish moves, a living glory outside Yuri’s experience. The deep black of her bustier sets off her girlish form. Yuri can’t think of a single thing to say.

“Really can’t stay,” SacredPetal coos, smiling down at Yuri in the foam. “Someone said your room is wonderful. Wanted to check it out. Next time, I’ll bring some sisters.”

“So glad you peeked in,” says StacyLullaby, finding at last her power of speech.

“Where is your train headed?” Yuri says. She thinks that in a minute it will run off the edge of the tutu.

“Euphoria,” replies SacredPetal, lifting both arms above her head. With a farewell toot from the miniature locomotive, she rises as smoke toward the high moon and fades from view. The only ordinary aspect of her departure is a flickering alert panel:

SacredPetal has left the World

Logan is enthralled and disgusted. Afloat in sensual dreamings, she would like to close her eyes and dwell on the wonder she has seen, a majesty that will surely never come again. She’s bored with the coarse impression of her avatar’s speech, words written into the chat window by a machine, not caressed by the lush lips of a goddess.

“Just what the heck was that?”

“Got me,” says Stacy wistfully. “But do I want one.”

“Hah, Stace. You want to do her, or be her?”

Logan is dismayed that an exotic creature has shone such harsh light on her avatar’s every imperfection. In a quicksand of loss, her heart slips beneath dark surface. A feminine ideal has graced her presence, a goddess girl who is bright, articulate, and special. A sublime one who has weighed her bare existence, and surely found it wanting.

“I’ll take it either way,” StacyLullaby says brightly.

“Is that avatar in the mall?”

At that moment, a friend request arrives on Logan’s screen.

SacredPetal wants to be friends with Yuri

Gaping at the small popup with its Accept and Forget buttons, Logan’s heart leaps. She counts to ten. Counting again, she holds her breath, waiting for Stacy to mention she’s also received a friend request from the youthful vision. Sitting back in her chair, Logan counts to twenty. Stacy, playing on the badminton court, says nothing. When she clicks Accept on SacredPetal’s friend request, the small act feels for Logan as a kind of lie, a traitorous wedge between herself and every last one of her ordinary friends.

The info panel listing Yuri’s online friends now includes SacredPetal, and shows the girl in a room called Natural Libido. The room is full, fifteen avatar names, all female. Yuri would give anything to drop in there right now, to hear what everyone is talking about, but expects they are all perfect ones. Like her.

At that moment, three avatars enter the room in quick succession:

Ace has joined the World

Joker has joined the World

Jack has joined the World

Yuri and StacyLullaby look toward the entrance but see nothing.

“Hello and welcome,” Yuri calls out.

Ace has left the World

Joker has left the World

Jack has left the World

Yuri and Stacy look at each other. “Exactly what was that?”

“Phantom of the Opera?”

“Indeed.”

Logan checks the chat window and sees nothing about the mysterious flyby. Every trace has been removed.

Yuri turns to Stacy. “Hey, have you talked to Dark?”

“Haven’t seen her,” says Stacy. “I imagine you’re missing her.”

Two audible tones ring in the dark air, the Dreamworlds equivalent of Hello, you’ve got mail.

“Oh honi,” Yuri says, “a guy I just met sent a gift. No, two!”

“You’re into guys now? Let’s see.”

Yuri dot-hops into her closet, steps into view before a tall mirror on a gently bobbing lily pad.

“Holy mother of God,” Stacy breathes, looking Yuri up and down.

Yuri wears a translucent film of pastel blue that ripples slo-mo down her soft curves. It’s in the shape of a form-hugging sheath, at the neck in front and scooped low behind. But no fabric could behave like this shimmering cascade. Looking down at herself, Yuri pretends she can feel the soft caress.

“Turn around,” Stacy says. Yuri does. “Well, hello to your vertical smile, girl.”

“Really? Is it that bad?”

“If I weren’t straight…”

Yuri laughs. “It’s that bad.”

“You said he sent something else?”

Yuri shakes her head emphatically. “Not showing you!”

“Not even your best-ever friend?”

“Too embarrassing!”

“Don’t be boring. What the hell is it?”

Yuri makes a sour face. “A spanking stool.”

“Niiiice,” Stacy laughs. “He wants a double date with your bootie. You got a new guy friend?”

“No! Casual encounter. Strictly.” Yuri hopes Stacy won’t ask any more questions. She doesn’t know the SincerelySatan dude, let alone like him. Well, he was okay.

Yuri twirls in her ethereal new dress, she’s sure this new look is the most flattering thing she’s ever had on.

StacyLullaby utters a gasp. “Holy hell, girl! You see the tag on that?”

Logan looks at the garment’s online mall page. The price shown there is more than she’s spent on Halcyon in five years.

“Lordy,” Yuri says, shaking her head. “Gift-raped again.” The glance between them says it: a determined male with the brutality of wealth.

Stacy regards her critically. “Truth moment. The idea of a guy still does it for ya?”

Gawking at the price tag on her screen, Logan in her dark bedroom finds it hard to draw a complete breath. What the hell have I done?

Yuri looks at Stacy, wide-eyed. “A guy? Maybe, sometimes. If I could feel this dress on me, I’d be dead meat.”

“As would thousands like you.”

“Hey, I know where I could wear this. Shopping trip! Come with?

“You go. I’m outta creds. Gonna fix my room some more.”

“Daughter, clean your room and do your homework.”

“Kisses. Ni-nite.”

StacyLullaby has left the World

Yuri rummages through her closet, tries outfits she’s always liked. Now, nothing works, all too ordinary. She’s never worn anything as glamorous as the sensational cascade dress. But she realizes with a twist of despair that not even the most exotic clothing would make her avatar a glory such as SacredPetal. Yuri takes a deep breath and again slips into the strange man’s gift. She knows exactly where she can fit in wearing such a vision. Paris!

But even as Logan clicks on the options to send Yuri off to The City of Light in the most confidence-inspiring thing she’s ever worn, it dawns on her that aside from making her feel the sought-after female, the lavish gift has delivered a breathless edge of fear. People that rich totally scare her.

Chapter 7 – Three Little Jerks in the Hamptons

“You didn’t do jack,” Randall says, fixated on his laptop. “You have no proof she died or anything.”

Three boys lounge in a large upstairs bedroom in Southampton, Long Island, a world of waterfront properties, breathtaking views, a grand sun room overlooking a terraced garden and a rigged-out sailboat at the dock. Although the tall windows look out over the steel-sheened Atlantic, the kids have eyes only for their computer screens.

“I don’t give a fart,” Alan scoffs.

“Was it your sister’s Greek teacher?” Randall says absently, engrossed in his computer.

“Whatever. She was only an ant anyway.” Alan, youngest of the trio, known as OutOfRange to his Dreamworlds friends, sees everyone as ants. Insignific-ants. Even these friends, the bodyguards, the drivers, maids, cooks and his stupid Sagbutt sister, he regards as ants.

“She hasn’t been on since I sent the code droplet.”

“What did you do?” Sven wants to know, looking up from his laptop.

“Totally messed with one of my sister’s idiot girlfriends.” Alan’s brown eyes sparkle with gleeful malice.

“Hey! I got my No-Ax working,” exclaims Randall, focused on a screen of code he’s debugging. “They kick-A. I’ll send you guys the link.”

“Bet you didn’t even code it yourself, retard,” Alan jeers. Youngest of two siblings at age 9, Alan Verkrag quivers with a rage he copies from his father, the only person on Earth he dare not cross. The last time he made that mistake, he spent three months at military school without his iPhone, iPad, Alienware laptop, electronic drum set, or even his Trek Store i.Beat Organix Gold. Or his diamond-encrusted iPod Shuffle or his iPod Touch Supreme Fire Edition or his shifter kart or any of his tutors or his tennis coach or his pitching coach. Although Randall at 11 and Sven at 15 are both bigger, they seldom tempt Alan’s wrath. Alan knows their fathers have fewer billions than his dad. The balance of power in this trio was fixed at birth.

“Wrote it myself you random turd,” Randall says defensively.

“Send me the source so I can fix all your screwups.”

“Sure, if you get it done before your tutor touches it.”

Everyone in the group knows that most of Alan’s coding knowledge comes from twice-weekly lessons with a security guru hired by his dad, a secretive man who pulls down $600K at Goldman Sachs. If Alan did think about it, he might decide to work harder, but prefers to lord it over others with smartass intimidation copied from his father. If his father thought about it, he might see that Alan is not ready to learn. Mostly, Alan likes that his ideas are the most evil and get the biggest laughs.

His phone makes a sound like a cackling witch. Alan groans. “Shit it’s the step-bitch. Shut it you losers.” The boys only hear Alan’s side of the convo, which is mercifully short.

“Hi, Rebecca. No, we’re at the beach house. No, Sagbutt is in the city. Okay, I won’t call her that. Yes I can say it, Beatrice. Ace told you what? Well, tell him not to sneak after me everywhere. I know! I should have some privacy. Doesn’t he know I’m nine now? Okay, bye. I will. Bye.”

Alan throws down his phone in disgust, taunting the inert device, “Sagbutt, Sagbutt, Sagbutt.” He cackles.

“That was your mom?” Randall says.

“No you dweeb! Stepmom. I’m not related to that.” Alan’s eyes take on a menacing glow, the phone call forgotten. “Hey, I’m getting my sister’s account disabled.”

Sven turns from his laptop where he’s working to design a scary coaster ride to sell in the Dreamworlds mall. “Wicked, dude! How ya gonna pull that off?” Despite his show of boyish enthusiasm, Sven is troubled by Alan’s latest plan for tormenting his sister.

Feeling better to be in control again, Alan regards his friends with a fat smirk. “I’m gonna post a slutty pic on her home page. Then use a guest account and complain about it.”

Randall and Sven laugh, but Sven in particular wonders what Alan gets out of harassing his 18-year-old sister. Alan’s confident explanation is that Beatrice is a girl, which in his world is sufficient justification for any crime he might think up. Sven, closer in age to Alan’s only sibling, privately thinks Beatrice is hot.

Alan recalls his seventh birthday, where big sister Beatrice was not available. She was suddenly ‘too old’ for him, at sixteen, and had her own busy life, friends, social media and online fun. He doesn’t understand why Beatrice, and not him, is supposed to do something important for their father’s gameworld enterprise, which gets her tons of Dad’s attention. It occurred to Alan that Beatrice’s life should be miserable. He still cackles to relive the trajectory of childish stunts and torments he’d dreamed up, including toilet-papering her room, texting from her phone while she was in the shower, performing falsetto imitations of whatever she said and giving her annoying nicknames, most recently Sagbutt. His current friends had missed those episodes, but Randall sarcastically asked, ‘Why don’t you just kill her?’

Sven signs into Dreamworlds as his avatar AyCarramba, and goes directly to Randall’s product shop. He purchases Randall’s No-Ax, adds it to his avatar, and lands in a busy subterranean cavern party world. Within ninety seconds, AyCarramba has caused enough shit to see the power of Randall’s work. Sven hoots when an alert box appears above his avatar with the words,

LittleKat tried to ax AyCarramba – FAIL

Normally, a room owner can eject any avatar, but Randall’s No-Ax product blocks that. The boys understand that the worlds, furniture, poses, clothing, and every avatar component including heads, hands, legs, eyes and faces, are assembled by the players from a collection of interoperative code droplets in the Dreamworlds mall. Randall’s product prevents any avatar from being axed, no matter how much trouble they cause.

“Too cool,” Sven laughs. “Can everybody see this or just me?”

Randall looks over his friend’s shoulder. “Everyone in that world.”

“I’m writing a review. Five stars.”

Alan for once is silent. Logged into Halcyon as his dwarf vampire, OutOfRange, he’s wearing Randall’s No-Ax in a club for players 30 and older. His avatar card says he’s 17. Someone tries to ax him and he cheers when the FAIL popup appears.

“Losers!” OutOfRange exits the world and joins another, where he starts making life unpleasant for everyone.

“Okay wise ass, let’s see you get your sister disabled,” Randall prods. Sven glances up looking uneasy but says nothing.

“I’ll see if she’s on.” Alan studies his Dreamworlds friends list. “Sagbutt is such an idiot, lets me be her friend, I can always see where she is,” he jeers. “Nope she’s off. I’m logging into her homepage as her.”

“Give her a bud-ugly pic,” Randall laughs. “Hey, a cow pie!”

“The president,” Sven jokes. None of the three boys could name the current president of the United States.

“No. She’d prolly get elected.”

“I could be the first, First Man,” Sven muses, happy with his witty line, but cursing himself for busting his own cool.

“Oh, you love her, you want to do her,” Randall chants, aware of Sven’s lust for Alan’s big sister.

“Do not,” Sven says defensively.

“Hey! Two dogs doing it,” cackles Alan.

Amid this general revelry, Alan’s phone makes the sound of a police siren. His stomach flops. His dad’s office phone.

“Shit it’s my dad. Quiet, a-holes. Hey Dad! Sup, dude?”

“Listen, dirtbag, get out of my account or I’m handing him the phone,” says sister Beatrice from New York City. “Do it now and I won’t say a word.”

Cursing under his breath and not knowing where his father actually is at the moment, Alan logs out of SacredPetal’s account.

“I’m off.”

“Wait.” At the other end, rapid keystrokes. “Okay I changed the password, Mister Butthead. Leave me alone.” Known only to Beatrice, their father is not in his office. She’d simply played trump by phoning from their dad’s lavish headquarters.

“Bitch,” Alan mutters, but Beatrice has already punched out. Now he’s laughing. “She changed her password. Hah. My key logger will grab it.”

Alan presses speed-dial for his chauffeur. “Hey,” he grins to his friends. “Who wants to come to my place and watch me mess with her?”

Eager to up his status in the tit for tat with Beatrice, Alan wants to be in New York City as soon as possible.

Chapter 8 – Once Around the Park

As Nathaniel steps into in the dark limousine, Richard Lyon thrusts his head into the compartment.

“I need to ride with you.”

“MacDougal?”

Lyon flicks a glance behind him. “Went to the can. We should talk.”

Nathaniel gestures toward the seat opposite and Lyon dives inside.

“Vernon,” Nathaniel says cooly, “we’d like to see the Park.”

“Sir.” The driver’s basso rumbles through the compartment as the door seals. Nathaniel shuts down the intercom and raises the sonic partition.

“Glad you could make it,” he says with a genial smile. He holds before Lyon’s eyes a flat black case, open to reveal the graceful spider form within. Lyon takes it, questions bubbling up.

Nathaniel eases back in the leather seat. “What I wanted to give you, before your friend joined us. It’s a universal hands-free Dreamworlds interface. Threshold. It’s why the secrecy. Put the spider cap on your head next time you log into Halcyon. Don’t forget the USB antenna. You’ll see the difference right away.”

Lyon looks at it, nodding. “I have to apologize for MacDougal, I…”

“Don’t surprise me like that. We’re at a sensitive stage.”

“Yeah, I get it. What’s on that thumb drive?”

“Verkrag’s progress summary. Last two weeks.” Nathaniel’s eyes are steady. “He’s been wearing a spider like the one I gave you. Except that his is specially programmed to pick up not only conversations with other avatars, but his mental outlook and ethical decisions. He’s attracted to a certain female. Read and destroy.”

“So womanizing hits the 21st century,” Lyon laughs. “Fewer ways to get caught, right?”

Nathaniel shrugs. “More than that. What would you say if you knew he’s being persuaded to believe certain things? What would you say if his attraction to that female avatar is not his own?”

“I’d say someone drugged him.”

Nathaniel sighs, glances at the passing scenery. “Richard, we’ve known of each other since the takeover, so let’s be frank. What you directors are aware of, I am aware of. You need me on that team. For the simple reason that I can provide the results you seek sooner than you’ve calculated.”

“How the hell do I sell that?”

“Here’s something for you. Verkrag thinks he can use Halcyon to affect social values on a mass scale. The purpose of that program is to keep the public’s minds off their troubles.”

“What sort of troubles?” Lyon asks this question with a squinty look suitable for peering at a madman.

“Diminishing standard of living. Rising sea levels. A toxic environment. Offshore job losses and rising debt.”

“How will it work?”

“Dreamworlds pleasure clubs, for one. Certain features of Threshold designed to make players more agreeable.”

“Nathaniel, the board needs to know this stuff!”

The man in the tux shakes his head. “Only you need to know.”

Lyon’s eyebrows go up. “Why me?

“Let’s say I saw the opportunity to work with you on an interesting project. I know what’s at stake for you in particular. When you understand what’s on that thumb drive, you and only you will know it is within my capabilities to guide David.”

“Guide David.” Lyon frowns, mulling what Nathaniel’s ‘guiding’ might be like. “How do you come to be so lucky?”

“Because I understand certain implications of the Threshold interface. Because with a talented Halcyon engineer, I revised key aspects of that code. I control central aspects of codebase, in spite of what Halcyon’s engineering team thinks.”

“Why let me in on it? Not that I’m complaining. And that other thing you said. The death of privacy?”

“Hell, Richard. You bankers are ahead of everyone on that! Bankers determined centuries ago that ‘willing coercion’ of society is more effective than imprisonment and torture. The key is to quiet the culture of dissent. Years ago I learned of your banker’s Holy Grail...”

“Too easy,” Lyon says derisively. “Henry Ford said it best. World control through inextinguishable debt.”

“And through mass-media public relations. Now I suppose you’re trying for flesh-implant microchips. Track a debtor’s every move.”

Lyon stirs uneasily. “It’s proving harder than it looked.”

Nathaniel grins. “Of course you’re aware of Aldous Huxley’s idea to manage popular sentiment with drugs?”

“University seminar,” Lyon smirks. “That Lenina Crowne was hawt.”

“Halcyon Dreamworlds might well become the ideal platform for mass social control. The original designers have no idea that Threshold technology can be subverted with persuasions the debtors will carry into real life.”

Lyon chuckles at Nathaniel’s use of the financiers’ usual word for ‘person.’

Nathaniel goes on. “So for bankers, the ultimate in social engineering was eternal debt. Dreamworlds is the most enticing honey-pot on the Internet.” Seeing the avarice on Lyon’s face, Nathaniel grins. “I meant it when I said I’d toast you at the launch. You campaigned for the developments that materialized into Threshold. What you hold in your hands right now.”

Lyon’s face brightens. “My campaign to fix our lousy numbers?”

“That was you, getting that started. Shared vision makes the best partners, don’t you agree?”

Lyon nods, still unsure where this is taking him.

Nathaniel gives him an expansive smile. “Here’s something you saw on the news fifteen years ago. Paraplegics teaching themselves to walk again with strap-on, powered robotic legs. Mental commands to those units came from a cerebral rescan cap worn on the head.”

Lyon scowls. “I don’t get it.”

“That Duke University neuro-engineering project, back in the 2010s. Same brain interface as Threshold uses today. The usability people told us that better engagement would bring players back. Your spider. Wear it and log yourself in. Control of your Dreamworlds avatar will become as natural as walking. No mouse, no keyboard.”

“Is that enough for better adoption?”

“Absolutely,” says Nathaniel with assurance. “Same as cripples can retrain their brains to control artificial legs. This was your idea for a richer play experience, two years ago. Users love the hands-free control of their avatars. But with the rescan technology, players feel everything the avatar touches. Approach it with caution. It will become the most immersive avatar experience in the history of cybernetics.”

Nathaniel watches Lyon closely, certain that if the man’s head were a slot machine, the eyes would roll around until they stopped at Sex and Sex. And in Lyon’s widening frat-boy grin, Nathaniel sees his own approaching jackpot.

Lyon sputters. “Wha… you mean avatars could… feel each other?”

“More than just that!” Nathaniel lets loose with his alpha-male laugh. “Do you like racquetball?”

“More of a tennis nut, but yeah, I’ve played.”

“I’ll invite you sometime, in Dreamworlds. Physical games are so much better, under the spider.”

Outside, in the real world, the big car rounds a corner by the Central Park baseball diamonds, heading for the Jackie O reservoir. Lyon stares unseeing as scenery floats by, trying to steady his breathing. So much to take in.

“Now you,” Nathaniel says. “What are the board’s next steps?”

Lyon draws a deep breath, lets it out slow, trying to settle what he’s heard. “Alright, here’s where we’re at. What the board expects is the introduction of the Chalice flick. Weekend after next. Then toys and games, TV spinoffs. Verkrag’s cohorts introduce food shortages, blamed on the drought. We mop up the resulting food riots by revealing the Sacred Chalice.”

Nathaniel frowns. “And this supposedly gets Verkrag his pacified society?”

Lyon nods.

“So you’re telling me,” Nathaniel says carefully, as though realizing this for the first time, “he wants his own shadow government?”

“Looks like,” Lyon replies. “But there’s always been a missing piece for me. Verkrag wants to create a pecking order within the 60 million current Halcyon players. His explanations leave everyone baffled.”

“Simple,” Nathaniel says ruefully. “He’s not telling you everything.”

Lyon’s overloaded psyche seeks the security of a familiar topic. “For the food riots, little engineering is required.”

“Food riots,” Nathaniel sneers. Don’t you mean civil wars across the country?”

“Same difference. Four domestic conglomerates already control the worldwide supply of American wheat and corn. Artificial shortages can be created by this network at will. The Sacred Chalice will appear to rescue the country.”

“Wait,” Nathaniel says crossly. “He’s serious about that pseudo-religion?”

“I’m almost with you on that,” Lyon says, holding up a placating hand. “But I say we humor the great one until the last minute. We can cut off the Chalice phase if earlier phases go well.”

Nathaniel thinks Verkrag’s manufactured virgin savior is transparent play-acting. “That’s a damn relief,” he says.

“Well, the films will introduce her.” Lyon grins widely. “The Families feel that the Vatican will make a nice summer palace.”

Nathaniel is unable to silence a groan. Lyon’s hubris suggests a thinly plausible outcome. And Nathaniel thinks Verkrag’s desire for a socially engineered compliant society and a quasi-religious feminine savior are cynical in the extreme. Himself a product of those elite classes, Nathaniel is keenly aware of their total contempt for ordinary people. He’s certain the board of directors will follow his lead, once he takes control of Lyon. That’s one small step. But Nathaniel’s ultimate sights are set on changing a grim historical fact: that the United States of America is the most debt-throttled and vulture-ridden society in all the world. Though it chills him whenever he considers this challenge, Nathaniel forces himself to speak calmly.

“There’s more about Threshold you should know. Spider caps will ship in quantity in a few weeks. The socializing games that we introduce through the touchy-feely pleasure palaces will form internal hierarchies. Social proto-classes.”

Lyon yammers on, not veering from his rote talking points. Listening to the man pontificate, Nathaniel doubts he’ll fully comprehend the Verkrag data. But he’s certain that the coded listener embedded with Lyon’s new spider cap will make itself at home in his computer, and soon after, in the depths of his thinking.

“Richard, please,” Nathaniel says, bored with the bafflegab. “Let’s stick to where we are at present. Verkrag has strong attraction to a Dreamworlds avatar. When her player receives Threshold, she’ll reciprocate that attraction.”

“SincerelySatan makes a porno?” Lyon says with a sneer. “It’s a divorce sting?”

“Please,” Nathaniel says patiently, wanting to distract Lyon from that scent. “Verkrag is handicapped by his attachment to the girl. His growing desire to live in that world obscures his focus on his projects. It’s already pushed him to delegate key tasks to my security agents. All of which leaves him open to a play by your team.”

“A play…” Lyon says.

“Yes, by a team we can make as small as we like.”

Abrupt silence grips the limousine’s interior as Nathaniel utters these words. Lyon stares fixedly and his face slackens. He senses the ultimate bait, and realizes that the functionary known as Ace in Verkrag’s household has guessed his secret desire: the takeover of Verkrag’s operation, with the man himself conveniently out of their way.

Nathaniel keys the intercom as the car nears the park’s 84th Street exit.

“Vernon, pull up here, I’m going to walk. Please drop Mr. Lyon where he wants to go.”

Turning to Lyon, Nathaniel reads the raw avarice in the man’s face.

“Do keep me informed as to the sentiments of the board. See you in three weeks.”

As Nathaniel exits the car. Lyon makes a gesture vaguely like a Boy Scout salute, watching in numbed awe as the tuxedoed figure strides away on Lexington Street. Fondling his new Threshold spider in its case, Lyon mutters to himself.

“Did he just attach himself to me? Or is it the other damn way around?”

Chapter 9 – Den of Thieves

Jamal Howard, wheelchair nestled into an elaborate computer workstation at his home in Englewood, New Jersey, sees the invitation appear on one of his four monitors.

Ace wants to chat with HeroKamasutra

Jamal takes a minute to check his router’s security, changes a setting on his IP spoofer and launches a sniffer to detect backdoor exploits. Satisfied, he clicks Accept on the Dreamworlds invite panel. Wearing grunged jeans, a baseball cap and a yoke T-shirt, Hero’s teen-dude avatar rezzes into Spaced O-U-T, a Dreamworlds interstellar adventure designed by Nathaniel. Ace is there, shaved head gleaming where he stands on a starship command deck before a panoramic viewport. At his back, an epic vista of pastel galaxies.

“Hero, glad you could make it.” Ace is sharp in the snug-fitting uniform of a spacefaring navy.

Hero lopes over to stand with Ace. “Check your mail,” Hero says. “Sent you my latest invisibility cloak.”

In his inbox, Nathaniel finds that Hero’s message includes a custom-coded product, which he adds to his avatar. A moment later, Ace disappears from the scene.

“Does it work?” Ace’s disembodied voice is resonant in the starship’s cabin

“Can’t see you.” Hero says, and likewise vanishes.

“Scanning…” Ace says. “Nope. Can’t pick you up. But why can we hear each other?”

When Hero makes himself visible again, he’s sitting in the Chief Astrogator’s chair with one scuffed sneaker on the control console.

“I like to scare the girls on Hallowe’en. What up?”

Ace pops into view again. “Someone on the Halcyon board mentioned activity spikes. Notice anything?”

“Dude,” Hero says, gesturing at the starry panorama outside the viewport. “Are we gonna sit here, or do we get to go someplace?”

Ace turns to the control panel and brilliant star trails flare, then there’s a swift approach to alight on a planetary surface, where red seas break on an abstract seashore.

“Nice,” Hero comments. “What do we do here? Shoot something?”

“Not a shooter game,” Ace replies. “An exploration.” As he turns to Hero, a long-necked something wanders into view.

Hero looks at Ace. “I did notice a cluster of repeat log-ons in Arizona. Who mentioned it?” At home in his computer room, Jamal launches a suite of searches, covering the Internet generally and Dreamworlds player activity in particular.

“Guy named Lyon,” Ace replies with seeming nonchalance. “On the board. No idea of his sources.”

“Searching… what else?”

“I gave the guy a spider,” Ace tells him. “Like that one you rigged for Verkrag. I need four more, for the rest of them.”

“Sure. Getting what you want from the great one?” Hero snickers.

“Only problem for me is going into his office to get the behavior data.”

Hero frowns. “Better put up with it. Can’t store that kind of info on Dreamworlds servers. Too easy to detect.”

“Not a problem yet,” Ace says. “Anyway, he’s strongly attracted to a female he met. I’m grooming Verkrag’s daughter to befriend that player. The daughter likes to hand spiders to her friends. When the woman comes under our control, I’ll put her together with Verkrag.”

“Verkrag knows what we’re doing?”

“He knows what he asked us to do. Not what I’m telling you. Engineering thinks they’re writing code to prevent epileptic seizures of players under Threshold. They communicate with Verkrag through me.”

Hero chuckles. “Poor clowns.”

“The board understands the stakes. But only one of them, Richard Lyon, knows that Threshold is supposed to be part of it. That’s because I told him. Right after I gave him one of your jiggered spiders. Anything new besides the cloak?”

“You’ll hate me,” Hero says. “Engineering asked for this, it came up in a morning scrum. The avatar using it can delete any avatar it sees.”

“As in, delete-delete?”

Hero nods. “Any player’s complete account, gonzo. No need to hack accounts or log on as them. Point and shoot.”

“That makes it a weapon, and it’s outlawed,” Ace says flatly.

“Not in the store. Handed out one or two of these. For cleaning up miscreant players.”

“Ah. You test it? Wearing it now?”

“I did test it. Two test accounts totaled, data tables wiped. And yes, I am.”

“I assume you’ll be sharing that soon.”

“In your mail. Called it QED.”

“Eh?”

“Quantum Emergency Disposal. Say QED, eyeball your target, blink twice. Your little problem is vaporware.”

“Madman. What’s Engineering busy with? Devs and weapons?”

“Forget the amateurs and Devs. Engineering is rolling out some very aggro stuff. They wrote a capture tool that will immobilize an avatar. I swiped their code.”

“I could use that one, too,” says Ace. “But why do they need…”

“Holy Yikes!” Hero stands, quivering.

Ace glances out the viewport at the planet’s surface, but that’s not it.

Hero turns his baseball cap around backward. “My search returns. I see elevated activity in one Arizona county.”

“Elevated activity?” In the security vestibule of Verkrag’s building, Nathaniel tenses.

“These read like addiction profiles. And I picked up six police reports of unattended deaths.”

“So?” Nathaniel in the security vestibule feels his hands go clammy. There’s going to be more than six.

“All of them mention a techy cap on the head. Those couldn’t be Threshold spiders, could they?”

In the spaceship’s control room, silence hums like a nerve.

“Something you should know,” Ace says cautiously, “now it’s a success. Could be part of my test sample, there in Arizona.”

“Hey, what sample?”

Ace takes a deep breath before answering. “I sent out two thousand beta spiders for evaluation. Three weeks back.”

“Dude! Why’d you sideline me on this?”

“Wanted it stealth and totally solo. Don’t take it personally.”

“What the hell, Nathaniel!”

Hero turns into a pool of red-hot lava, which begins melting a hole in the control room floor. Ace quickly steps behind a reflective heat shield. Hero’s voice boils from the smoking puddle.

“Dude, this could be a problem.”

“Already is, if it’s true about anyone dying. Hey! Don’t melt my spacecraft.”

“Hell with your play-toy. You, Nathaniel, completely on your own, got hold of two thousand spiders? They gotta be beta originals, right?”

“They were third run. Yes.”

“You need counselling bad. Where’d they go?”

“Rural locations in Arizona.”

“What you putting on the circuits?”

“Reeducation in values and beliefs. Introduction of mild pleasure states. Suggestions.”

“Creepy. Anything that could kill a person?”

“No way. Those were clean spiders, not your prepped ones. Any ideas?”

Hero shrugs. “Faulty spiders. Simulator overdrive.”

“Overdrive?”

“A buggy code droplet that over-amps the simulator could make someone feel bad,” Hero tells him. “It’s just a lookup table.”

“Feel bad?”

“Wayyy bad,” Hero’s lava pool says. “It goes away when the player logs off, or removes the spider. But a couple Devs said the Threshold simulator could maybe put the heart into a-fib.”

The lava pool burns through the floor. Portions of Ace’s command deck are a charred black ruin. Hero reappears as himself, standing beside Ace who surveys the damage, fanning his face in the dense smoke.

“Nice job on my control room, Hero.”

“Service with a smirk,” Hero says. “Did the great one tell you what he wants on the spiders?”

“I kept it vague with him. Told him the best we can manage is sentiment adjustment.”

“You ain’t sayin’ nothing, wise ass.”

“Being careful.”

“Jeez. After your giant fuckup, now you’re being careful?”

“Back off, genius. I did hire you to double-check me! What Verkrag wants is property. He thinks Threshold can convince people in large numbers to give up their real property to his corporation. Told him it would take time. That’s what my Arizona test is about.”

“I see the numbers. Six deaths! What’s that tell you?”

“Then you know I’ve made people log in repeatedly. Stay on longer. Spend more credits on Dreamworlds toys. The real world response, I have to wait.”

“What’s that?”

“Verkrag’s Chalice flick. People in my eval group should want to see it five times. We’ll know in a couple weeks.”

Looking balefully at Ace, Hero shakes his head. “You have any idea what shit will fly if this gets out? Best thing, my man, is kill this dead-o.”

“You’re right, but you’re wrong. Have to fight fire with fire. Verkrag is asking me to broadcast Threshold conditioning scripts that help him steal from unsuspecting people. It’s the core reason he took over the company. My intention is to let him think his messages are going out, but run my own scripts.”

“Oh, now you’re the White Knight? What would you be sending?”

“Make people hyper-aware of how the elite class is stealing their wealth.”

“What if someone squawks?”

“Part of my messaging is to not talk about it.”

“You can’t control every single player out of sixty million!”

“The Terms of Eternal Servitude agreement will lock everyone up in court.”

“So fracking what! Nathaniel, you’ll totally deserve it if I rat you out. You should have discussed this with me before. We got six deaths in Arizona in what, three weeks? You think the cops aren’t gonna be all over that? We’re talking flashing neon here.”

“Sure. But look. There’s a very good chance Verkrag could succeed. Because we know, our responsibility is to outplay him. And you’re right; I should have brought you in. But there’s a huge win if we take over his…”

“Who do you mean by we, pale one?” Hero snarls the words in Ace’s face.

“Oh, ease off. I mean the population at large. The poor, the middle classes, the 999. You and me.”

“So you’re the new Robin Hood?”

“Face up to it, Jamal. Elite power is already out of control. Free speech for ultras means unlimited political funding. Bought Congressmen, the World Bank’s rape of developing countries. And here’s Verkrag, one of the ultra-rich himself, trying to grab billions of dollars’ worth of property, from his own breed. It’s a game to them. Human lives are merely counters.”

“The world’s first trillionaire?”

Nathaniel nods. “Manhattan’s worth about that much. His buddies own it. But he won’t stop there, he intends to own them. Can you imagine how dangerous it would be for one person to have such power?”

“Easy, especially a snob like him. But can you imagine what happens to us when we get caught?”

“I avoid going there.”

“Investigations. FBI. A grand jury. Lifetime incarceration. We’d disappear overnight.”

Ace’s only comeback is a grim nod.

Hero persists. “Why not just out him? Tear it down?”

“It’s too good to lose, Hero. You see it too. What he found with Halcyon Dreamworlds is too damn perfect. The best we can do is subvert his toy.”

“So again, what if we get caught?”

“The board will admit responsibility. It’ll be in their scripts.”

Hero tries to keep from laughing. “You are an evil mofo.”

“Evil genius, if you please. Just get me those four prepped spiders,” Ace says firmly. “But Threshold is a goldmine product. A nirvana machine. We can’t waste this opportunity. Congress gets ahold of this, we’re fried.”

“Congress is a wholly-owned unit of Fox News,” Hero says with a smirk. “So you’re saying the only way to stop him is by being one step ahead?”

Ace makes a palms-up gesture. “Like we already are, thanks to you. Got to go.”

“You need to tell me these things,” Hero scoffs.

Ace nods. “Consider yourself in the loop.”

“Dreamworlds is not nirvana,” Hero says just before he ports out. “It’s a quick slide into hell.”

Chapter 10 – Biker Girls

In Yuri’s experience, no shoe is too small for a Dreamworlds avatar. Because the shoe and the avatar’s foot are both vector descriptions of 3D objects in a computer, the shoe can dictate the size of the avatar’s foot. This is achieved with no discomfort to the player, even if the shoe is ridiculously large or small. An avatar’s foot can fit perfectly into a shoe so tiny the avatar would topple.

Likewise, this pair of pants she’s trying will perfectly match Yuri’s avatar shape. Logan has spent considerable time and credits finding the precise mix of body parts that creates Yuri’s special look. Keeping that perfect outline while trying on outfits is vital. With eleven million items in the Dreamworlds mall and thousands added every day, it takes hours and in her view amounts to a pain.

But Dreamworlds recently made the online mall a lot less boring, it now resembles a real-world shopping experience. And so it is we find Yuri tripping along the famous Avenue Montaigne between the Champs Elysees and the Seine River, darting in and out of shops to try on some of the funniest clothing she’s ever seen. The French are so hilarious in their fashion. And as Yuri goes from place to place, many admiring glances follow her. Not even the most jaded French shop girls have seen such majesty as the shimmering cascade dress that lovingly cups Yuri’s divine bootie. The more sales-minded among them check the garment’s online mall price. Merde!

Yuri exits a virtual Paris dressing room. In the virtual outer shop she checks her look in the big mirror, and watches the virtual people react to her outfit. She does this unselfconsciously, ignoring the oohs and ahhs of the shop girls. Instead, she concentrates on the glances of men holding women’s purses. She gets the effect she wants with several outfits, including a black Riviera bikini reminiscent of Japanese shibari.

She leaves the shop in a lightweight, loose-knit top layered with a vest of softest leather, a flouncy tucked-under skirt over iridescent light green leggings. The overall effect is somewhat like a child made up as a grasshopper for a school play. At a tiny sidewalk café near the Seine, Yuri sees a black man talking into his phone. Her head clicks that face into focus.

“Hero!” She hops the pose dots toward him in her oddball outfit.

“Hey, Doll.”

Smiling fiercely, Yuri piles her bags on two chairs and sits across from him.

“How wild we bump into each other. There are four million players on right now. What are the odds?”

Hero smirks. “I’d say about 98 percent. I followed you.” Hero is the only black avatar she’s seen in the Dreamworlds, and one of the few players she knows in real. Today he wears Magic Johnson’s Lakers #32 Purple Soul jersey.

“You followed me?”

“Wanted to talk to you.” Hero adopts his comfort pose, slouched down with one foot propped on a chair. “Crazy outfit, by the way.” He’s admiring the grasshopper-green leggings beneath her furled skirt.

“Thanks, honi,” Yuri says. “But first I gotta tell ya… Stay off the cyber girl thing at my work. K?”

“What’s the problem?”

“People talk, Dude.”

“Half that lunchroom plays on here.”

“Don’t care. Creeps me out when people know. But hey, I saw a super-real avatar on here.”

“A video?” Hero’s brown eyes scan her face. “Some kind of demo?”

“No! It was an avatar that moved independently of the dots. She walked, gestured and spoke like a real person. Her words didn’t show in the chat log, she spoke them. A superstar.”

Hero gets a culpable expression as he says, “I’m confused. An avatar that doesn’t use pose dots?”

“No! She walked wherever she wanted. She didn’t dot-hop.”

“That’s not possible,” Hero says flatly, eyeballing a pair of tall Parisian females dot-hopping along the river. He’s concerned that Yuri has met such avatars. He knows some are dangerous.

“Me and Stacy both saw it,” Yuri insists. “Her bottom wiggled like a live girl and her smile was all perfect teeth. Sharp like Synthevision or 8K.”

“Well, maybe I can ask around the shop about that. I’m working a gig for Dreamworlds myself.”

“Ooo. Tell, Geekster.”

Hero sits up straighter. “It’s a project to shield players from epileptic seizures. Halcyon’s animation effects trigger some people.”

“Congrats. I knew you were an alpha geek.”

Hero grins at her. “I’m also investigating how different animations affect moods. Some developers whisper of a secret Halcyon project to affect buying behavior.”

“Hah. Already drank that Kool-Aid.” She glances at her overflowing bags.

“Nice knowing you. You’re a complete goner.”

“So they have me, and my ill-gotten gains?”

“Wait a second,” Hero says. “One of the Halcyon designers mentioned a project to send physical sensation from the avatar to the player. Things like touch and pressure, warm and cool. Weight.”

“You’re saying we at our computers would feel what the avatar would feel? Wo!”

“That’s their goal. I looked at the Dreamworlds code, and found ways a player could receive a sensation of temperature, a heartbeat…”

“Get outta town. We could feel things in here?”

“Someday, maybe. In the Dreamworlds code every 3D object has basic properties like weight and texture… we just don’t have the technology to make the user feel them.” Hero feels no need to share about the cloaks and weaponry he’s developed for use in Dreamworlds.

Alone in her bedroom, Logan thinks over her fleeting moments with SacredPetal, strokes her breast under the light robe, unconscious she’s doing it. Outside her window, night is falling.

“Oh!” Yuri says. “That girl’s avi name was cool too. SacredPetal.”

“SacredPetal?”

“Yes.”

“Mph. Better watch your step around those ones, babe. They have handlers on here. How’d you meet her?”

“Dropped in my public world to say hi.”

“You invite her?”

“She just showed up. Added me too.”

“She added you, Yuri?”

“Dude, is that an insult? Why shouldn’t she?” On the screen, Yuri glares at HeroKamasutra.

“No, no, I am only surprised… might have heard of that one. Did you look at her info card?”

“I was looking at her crazy avi, so artistic. Had a train set on it, toot-toot. How can I get one like that?”

“By paying one hell of a lot. Was anybody with her?”

“No. Are avatars like that for sale?” Logan flashes on that word Hero used. Handlers. She remembers the three invisible spectres who’d swept through her room without a word. She decides she has to tell him.

“I’m gonna find out,” Hero says. “But if it’s the ultras, there’s no hope.”

“Hero? Something did happen, with SacredPetal. Three spooky avatars showed up after she left.”

“Wha-a-a-a-at?”

“Yes. They left entry messages. Ace, Jack, and Joker.”

“OMFG.” Hero does a backflip and lands quivering beside the table. Others in the tiny café turn to look. Hero knows how cutthroat Ace can be, and sees that Logan is now in the sphere of Verkrag’s daughter, and worse, close to the owner of Halcyon Dreamworlds himself.

“Did you talk to them?” Hero asks carefully. He scans his product list. There is something Yuri must have for her safety, right now.

“Their names disappeared from the chat log. I saw no trace of them after that.”

“Nothing?” Hero’s face assumes the color of day-old oatmeal.

“Not till they left. ‘Ace has left the world,’ it said. Were those her handlers?”

“I’ll see what I can find out. But as far as buying an avatar like hers… huge bucks and likely not even then. But Logan, babe, there are bigger problems.”

“Such as?”

“Besides having the cash, your family has to be in the club. But you don’t want those ultras knowing who you are.”

“What club?”

“The Families. People through history have sought dominant individuals to follow, for survival. Over centuries, that created genetic lines of ultra-leaders who became more powerful over time and today rape whole countries.”

“How did we get onto this? Ultras? Rape whole countries? Wouldn’t the U.N. stop that?”

“Most in the United Nations are sheep like the rest of us. That’s not the true power. The world now belongs to a few thousand families.”

“What the heck? You’re saying a few families control the world? How?”

“There’s a three-stage plan among international elites to permanently disadvantage an entire country.”

“You mean, on purpose?”

Hero nods solemnly. “International banks offer large loans to a resource-rich country, to modernize their infrastructure and such. But the money goes to American corporations to do the work. Then there’s plenty of bribery and corruption to suck away much of the cash.”

Yuri frowns. “Sounds plain weird. Who gets the money?”

“The rich and powerful few in the target country. Favors for accepting the loans. But the local ultra-rich sell their country out, and the people faces debts it cannot repay.”

“Wait. Wouldn’t the new development lift their economy?”

“The projects are designed to fail. The debtor country is prevented from modernizing their economy by the massive interest payments. So they wind up with sweat shops. When interest payments don’t arrive, the banks foreclose on the debt by taking whatever natural currency that country has, at below-market prices. The people get less than nothing.”

“All of a sudden I don’t feel so good.”

“I know, babe. Because of the huge debt, money they didn’t benefit from, they can’t afford good health programs, or schools. Their societies go backward. They’re left with a nation in economic and social collapse.”

“This makes me furious. Who is doing it? Who?”

“The World Bank and its international allies.”

“Why don’t we arrest them?”

“What they do is not illegal. Hundreds of rich law firms in many countries have seen to that. And the World Bank is chiefly controlled by the United States.”

“Hero! Hold up. You’re saying that America purposely overthrows foreign governments for profit?”

“You won’t see it on our controlled media. And meanwhile, the politicos and money people are working to create trade deals to erase financial borders. All along, they preach the religion of war.”

“You are nutting out if you think war is a religion.”

“Listen to me! I served, I was there. Honor, courage, duty, patriotism, band of brothers… everyone swallows the patriotic rah-rah. Let’s be number one. Then come back and nobody knows you, in particular, the Veteran’s Administration. ‘You boys all go die over there so future generations can have that oil.’ Or gold, or aluminum or uranium. Whatever.”

“Wait, wait. Who does this?”

“Ultras. The ultra-rich. Owners of international investment banks, hedge funds, stock exchanges. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund. Oil families and arms dealers. The cost in lives and human suffering means nothing to them.”

“It takes a pillage, I guess. Can we change the subject?”

But Hero’s expression is somber. “I bought it all, Yuri.” His saddened eyes hold her. “It’s why I can’t use my legs. Why do you suppose I spend so much time on here? You need to know! This planet is completely rigged by ultra-wealthy elites who think we’re simple followers. Sheep. There’s been an epic failure of any world government to control the ultra-rich, because of political bribery.”

She is looking straight at him, violet eyes gleaming. “Jamal, I know that’s how you got hurt over there.”

“Yes,” he says, eyes on her face. “I believed those same lies, back then.”

And there it hangs between them, their private elephant in the room, when Jamal was on leave and they cheated on Logan’s husband, who later died in a roadside bombing. The silence holds, Yuri’s eyes glisten with shame.

“Yes,” Hero says softly. “I still feel it.”

“All of it,” Yuri whispers. The elaborate virtual world beside the Seine shrinks down to just the two of them.

“We’ve never talked about…” Hero begins.

“And we won’t!” She says defiantly.

“But Yuri… Logan. The world is different now.” In his eyes, she sees the longing, and the logic, both of them now unattached.

“Nothing will ever change,” she says firmly. “I made a personal promise.” Only privately will she admit it was to soothe her acid shame.

“You know how I treasure you,” he says.

Yuri understands his feelings. But in an illogical way, thinks she’s at fault for letting him be hurt in a long-ago firefight. She gave him what no desert fighter needs, a tender distraction in the heat of it.

She reaches across the table and grips his hand. In her face he sees both her softness and the resolute woman underneath. Her hand pulls away and Yuri is all business.

“Shut it a second. Have you talked to Dark?”

It takes Hero a couple breaths to regroup. “Haven’t seen her on.”

Disappointment floods her. Four days now since she and DarkEternity have talked, no answer to her many messages. Worry nags, even as a very welcome invite appears on her screen.

SacredPetal wants to chat with Yuri

Without hesitation, Logan clicks Accept. She decides Yuri’s new Riviera bikini will be just the ticket, and waits for the room to form. She’s excited to see what this SacredPetal is all about. Seemed smart, certainly artful and inventive. But Logan has stage fright. She disbelieves that Yuri can ever be ‘good enough’ beside the alluring goddess. Pulse thumps loud in Logan’s ears.

“Omigod,” Yuri says to Hero. “SacredPetal invited me!”

“Holy shit girl, you go.” Hero’s concern ratchets higher. She’s hanging with the wrong people. Goddamn it, Ace! How did this happen?

“See ya, Geekster.”

As Yuri vanishes from his scene, Hero sends a hasty note with a gift attached.

HeroKamasutra to Yuri: Something for you, my mischief bracelet. This looks like a charm bracelet but it contains a list of defensive commands. You need to wear it all the time for your safety. Memorize *everything*. Test it. Talk soon. I always have your back, Doll. - HK

Yuri appears in SacredPetal’s chat window where the girl sits on a Harley Hog beside a backwoods two-lane. A similar bike waits empty beside her. She hops over and hugs Yuri in greeting. She’s not using the slinky-walking avatar Logan saw before, but dot-hopping from place to place. Yuri is relieved to be on even terms.

“Thank you for coming, Yuri.”

“How’s by you, Petal?”

“My name is Beatrice.”

“Logan.”

“I know.”

“Mmm?”

“You come highly recommended.”

“Oh. My. God. Are you spying on me?”

“Hah. I have friends in sly places. Cop some breeze?”

“Sure, Sis.”

Yuri hops on the empty bike, and the machines take off through warm countryside. They cruise through a bucolic scene of blue sky, green fields, billowy white clouds. Yuri admires the girl smiling into the breeze in jeans and fluttering T-shirt. Although SacredPetal wears an ordinary avatar today, it’s a custom job. A pricey one. They ride to the sound of Harley exhaust and a female vocalist.

“Who’s this singing?”

“Friend of mine. She’s big in NYC.”

“I’m buying this immediately.”

“Not out yet. I can burn you a copy.”

The bikes pull off in front of a dilapidated roadhouse. SacredPetal and Yuri hop to pose dots at the entrance.

“Beer? Something stronger?”

“Beer is fine.”

SacredPetal and Yuri follow the dots inside. In a dim back booth they face each other over the scarred tabletop. Pool balls click and avatars lean over stained felt for cushion shots. Sub-vocal cursing beneath funky stained glass lights. A male avatar pops into the seat beside Yuri. His tattooed arm stretches across her small shoulders. This avatar is twice Yuri’s size.

“Hey, little gash, how about some for ol’ Twisted?”

“Catch a virus, dude,” Yuri says.

SacredPetal has axed MajorlyTwisted

Derisive hoots from the guys at the pool table, who know SacredPetal owns the place.

“He’s a real mood-setter.” Yuri sneers at the spot the tattooed one had occupied.

“You are safe with me, bebe.”

As Yuri scans the bar’s interior, she picks out avatar names scratched into the wooden tabletop. OutOfRange. AyCarramba. SincerelySatan. Her heart leaps. Is this one of that Satan dude’s hangouts? Although he is a guy, and not her type, she admits an odd attraction for the gravel-voiced avatar. He was confident, frank, and funny. The fact that he’s killer rich Yuri finds ominous, not seductive. But she did feel hyper-sexy in that dress he gifted her.

SacredPetal cocks her head, looking at Yuri. “I believe in knowing a little about people in real. You down for that?”

Relaxed in the dark booth, Yuri nods. “A girl needs to know who her friends are.”

“Okay. So me, I’m 18. Live at home, fooling with career ideas.”

“What do you like to do? In real, I mean.”

“I like photography. Got an internship with a major NYC photographer. You?”

“Sure. I’m 41, divorced.”

“Harsh! What happened?”

Yuri holds her gaze, not wanting to get into that. SacredPetal quickly moves to another question.

“What do you do?”

“Drive a forklift and counsel petunias.”

A bottle of beer appears before each of them, along with a bowl of chips and salsa.

“Thank you,” Yuri says. “We can split the tab if you want.”

“Oh my, you are proper. My place, my tab, okay?”

“Thanks. By the way, can I see your ID?

Musical laughter, a perplexed grin. “Wha-a-a-t?”

“It’s 21 in New York, sweets, same as Jersey. Plus which you are far too together for 18.”

“Thank you, I resemble that. And I will show you my ID.”

“Oh no, you’re not getting away with another pixel trick.”

“Great, then,” SacredPetal grins broadly. “I’ll invite you in real.”

At home in her bedroom, Logan freezes. On her little laptop screen, Yuri and SacredPetal regard one another in the shadowy bar with soft avatar smiles and gentle avatar eyes.

“Well this is a first,” Yuri breathes. “Let me guess, NYC?”

“Yah. What you up to Saturday?”

“Working until 4 p.m. Ten-hour shift. I might be toast by the end of all that.”

“I have something that will wake ya right up.” SacredPetal’s smile gleams. “Ohhh, yeah.”

“Oooo-kayyy then.”

“I’m sending a car. Will 5 p.m. at your place work?”

Logan thinks fast. This is too surprising, but it fits with Hero’s remark that the hi-def avatars have high-net-worth owners. If Beatrice can send a limo to Logan’s place in Jersey, she can surely afford the best Halcyon avatar. Hers is no doubt custom-coded by MIT doctoral candidates who are studs that row crew. Sure, Logan can be ready for a stretch ride to swing by her place. If it falls through, she’ll either read a book or go bowling with friends. More likely, she’ll play on Halcyon. Nice as SacredPetal seems, this could all be bullshit. It happens, with strangers you meet in the Dreamworlds. Ride the bus home, then hop in a phat limo at her house? Riiight. But she’ll be waiting.

“Shall I assume you know where?”

SacredPetal whispers Logan’s street address.

“Mother of God. Girlfriend, who are you?”

“No worries, bebe. Dad’s very protective. I have to put up with it, so my friends do too. Sowwy.”

“You seem nice honi, but to coin a phrase, holy crap.”

SacredPetal grins. “What I live with. I’ll be dissed if you can’t make it. My driver will take you home whenever you want. Please say yes. It will rock.”

“Okay, sure. I’ll expect them at 5 on Saturday.”

SacredPetal moves to the seat beside Yuri. Her arm rests across Yuri’s shoulders as did the hulking biker’s, but her presence is a comfort. Two lovely avatars regard each other, nose to nose.

“Mmm. Hello, Petal.”

“Hello, Yuri.”

Logan, recalling what Hero told her, imagines placing Yuri’s hand on SacredPetal and feeling everything, no matter the distance from wherever Beatrice is in New York City to where Logan is in her New Jersey townhouse. But she cannot imagine a technology that would create an environment of scents and aromas, one that lets them hear not only avatar voices, but the intricate sound field of an entire world. And taste, and touch, although there is never a thought of pizza breath with an avatar. For a while there is softness and comforting stillness.

“Sweet ‘kini, by the way,” SacredPetal breathes, those glossed lips mere inches away.

Abruptly conscious of her skimpy outfit, Yuri whispers, eyes holding the girl’s, “Ya know, it didn’t matter while we rode. In here it’s like bra and panties.”

SacredPetal switches them to a sunny beach under a sky strewn with lazy clouds. She transforms into the goddess avatar that Yuri first met, minus every scrap of clothing. The sublime avatar… the sublime human girl takes off running down the beach. The only way Yuri can keep up is by dot-hopping ahead of the laughing SacredPetal. This enables her to watch the perfect body jiggle past, waving at her. SacredPetal runs up to Yuri and stops. Her chest rises and falls, a vision of the feminine sublime as though perfected by Michelangelo himself. The girl smiles into Yuri’s eyes.

“Wow, Beatrice. Wow.”

“We have to keep meeting like this,” SacredPetal coos. This close, Yuri can study the girl in every perfect detail. And there’s something more. All avatars come with a naked skin they can strip down to, if the owner passes age check. But certain details are left fuzzy. Nipples, for example, are shaded bumps, crotches are indefinite blurs. But there’s nothing blurry about SacredPetal. Each detail is crystal sharp, down to the small, transparent hairs on her arm. The indigo eyes staring into Yuri’s are liquid and intelligent. The exotic vision makes Yuri’s head spin.

“You have a clean feel, Logan.”

“You are very clear yourself.”

“Gonna say bye for now… see ya in a couple days.”

“You got it, Sis.”

SacredPetal turns and walks down the beach. She dashes into the spray of waves. Yuri can find no pose dots in that direction. Hand shading her eyes, she stands at the limit of her world, following the slim bare back until her amazing new friend vanishes in afternoon haze.

Chapter 11 – Meeting of the Minds

Nathaniel, as Ace, and Lyon, as his avatar VeyronPilot, dash across polished boards in a Dreamworlds racquetball court. Lyon’s senses are on overload. Wearing his Threshold spider, everything has weight, hitting the ball delivers an impact he feels up his arm, the ball’s bouncing sounds reverberate from every surface.

Nathaniel likes the simulated sweat that weights Ace’s shirt as the game heats up. He admires Lyon’s play. Although the man is a tennis player and shorter besides, they have good volleys.

“I’m still trying to convince the board to hold off a couple weeks,” Lyon says, as his avatar leaps for a high return. “I’m having no luck. They’re still saying Monday afternoon. And MacDougal had our lawyers prepare a non-confidence resolution against Verkrag.”

“Lawyers,” Ace says disdainfully, returning a shot. Nathaniel had expected as much, which is why he’d booked this game. “The original Halcyon leadership, even before Verkrag bought in and installed his board members, wanted Halcyon to become the biggest 3D online chat experience on Earth. That will take decades.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“What Verkrag has in development will take him far beyond that goal, to an era of secretly adjusted social change.”

“Sounds spooky,” Lyon replies, cursing as his avatar misses a return. “Hey, what you said the other day. The death of privacy?”

Ace, ready to serve, smiles broadly. “Let’s go back to your earlier guess about driving Verkrag’s behavior. You thought it was drugs, like Huxley. What if I told you we’ve got working technology that can affect the sentiments of any Dreamworlds player? Or sixty million of them.”

“Wait. Don’t serve just yet.” VeyronPilot walks up to Ace, looks him in the eye. “Repeat that.”

“What if we can control and understand people in a way that’s addictive and sniff-proof?”

Lyon’s avatar looks thoughtful, a perfect likeness of the expression Lyon in his office offers his computer screen.

“We know what players are thinking? How?”

“There’s a backchannel.”

“Backchannel? Threshold is two-way?”

“Absolutely. Not only can the Dreamworlds system pick up player intentions and send back sensory impressions, it can influence the player’s real-world behavior. If we tell it to. Anyone who spends time in the Dreamworlds could hear a siren lullaby, meant only for them.”

Watching VeyronPilot’s rapt face on his screen, Nathaniel stiffens. His heart pounds with anticipation and the fear of discovery. He’s itching to know if after three days under Threshold, Lyon’s will respond to the semantic triggers. Nerves humming, Nathaniel at his computer causes Ace to recite the primary validation script.

“Conformity is all,” he says evenly.

Lyon’s avatar straightens and the face relaxes into a somewhat curious, boyish smile.

“There is no independent will,” VeyronPilot says happily. Richard Lyon in his office is relaxed and at peace before his Dreamworlds screen, awaiting Ace’s command.

Alone in the security vestibule, Nathaniel clamps down on the exalted Whoop that wants to come, wishing Hero could witness this moment. Lyon has accepted the triggers. In this state, the man is suggestible for anything.

“Richard,” Nathaniel says in Ace’s voice. “I need you to quash the no-confidence motion against our CEO.”

There’s a pause, and VeyronPilot repeats the words, “quash the motion.” He absently nods.

“Yes,” Ace replies. “You need to push the board meeting back three weeks.”

VeyronPilot nods with a pleased expression. Ace takes a deep breath, unsure how far to push this. In his mind echo the words, less is more.

“Zip-a-dee-doo-dah,” Ace says, pronouncing the release trigger. The subject should forget the conversation, but retain all commands as their own ideas.

“Zip-a-dee-doo-dah-day,” VeyronPilot replies dutifully. He blinks, loses the peaceful expression, and continues the conversation where they broke off.

“You’re joking,” Lyon scoffs, firm in his usual self. “You can’t control people’s real-world behavior like that.”

Immersed in the thrill of success, Nathaniel takes a second to rewind.

“Time will tell. Besides Verkrag, you and I are the only ones who know.”

“How refined is this control?”

“It amounts to a kind of conditioning, like hypnosis. Good social behavior will take on the aura of a religious experience.”

“Is this happening to us? Right now?”

“Nah. The spiders are keyed. We know who every player is, from their account info. Would you like to know who manages the player table?”

VeyronPilot stares hard at Ace, comprehension dawning in his eyes. “You evil little son of a bitch.”

“Guilty,” Ace grins. “I know everything about every player in the Dreamworlds.”

“Verkrag?”

Ace shakes his head. “He didn’t want to sweat the details. I’m the fucking valet, remember?”

VeyronPilot laughs, somewhat less heartily than Ace.

“We also discussed the fact that Verkrag wants a shadow government.”

“Oh my lord.” Understanding floods VeyronPilot’s features.

“You and the board might know the outer skeleton of Verkrag’s plan, but the horsepower is what I’m telling you now. Look at me, Richard. You and I have signed a death pact. I hope you recognize that.”

“About the backchannel?”

“Precisely.”

Standing with Ace on the serve line of the court, VeyronPilot nods with a somber expression. Satisfied, Ace goes on.

“Verkrag thinks that Dreamworlds technology can make him a literal superpower.”

Lyon glares. “Bullshit.”

“Alright, here’s why. Something the board might not have guessed. Verkrag’s end goal is to revert all private property to the corporations.”

“What?” In his Wall Street office before his computer monitor, Lyon’s eyes glaze over. Nathaniel knows he’s hit paydirt, and goes on.

“And not just any corporation. First in line will be Verkrag’s holding company, of which you and some of the board members are part owners.”

VeyronPilot is profoundly speechless. In the racquetball court, Ace serves the ball hard, and continues.

“This part of Verkrag’s plan is the perfect segue from the climate of fear brought on by the government’s supposed war on terror,” Ace tells him. “The security cams everywhere, the Certified Information Systems Auditor with its quasi-legal worldwide info-sharing. Verkrag’s goal is an overhaul of social rules. Collective thinking will replace individual views. This is a precursor to the eventual surrender of all private lands by major landholders.”

“Holy hell. Giving it up to the corporation?”

“That’s right. Think of it. You bankers wished for eternal debt. The banking cartel that calls itself the Federal Reserve engineered the U.S. Congress to make that debt into universal slavery. Dreamworlds will surpass that power within five years. And it will lie solely in David Verkrag’s hands. Keep your mouth shut and you’ll be right there.”

VeyronPilot acts like someone who cannot draw a full breath. “When do we let Verkrag’s scripts run?”

“As soon as the spiders start to go out.”

“And when do we begin the property transfer?”

Nathaniel grins at Lyon’s glib use of we. “Not so fast. I’m still performing evaluations. If the scripts work well enough, we’ll start the spider shipments.”

“All sixty million?”

“More, because the scripts will carry a membership campaign. Then we’ll begin the Verkrag conditioning. Property will start to change hands maybe six months out.”

“Death pact, eh?” VeyronPilot stares fixedly at Ace.

“Better believe it.”

“I’ll see about getting you guys a couple more weeks.”

Ace nods. “A courier will arrive at your office with a spider for everyone. This afternoon. Show them how it works. Then you can tell them not to bother us.”

In the Park Avenue security vestibule, Nathaniel peers hard at VeyronPilot on his monitor. He has confidence in the power of his scripts, and is comfortable with something else. When all five board members wear Threshold spiders, he won’t have to depend on Richard Lyon’s persuasions for another damn thing.

Chapter 12 – Park Avenue

Late Saturday afternoon, Logan rides in a limo that she’s sure must be as long as a city bus. The sumptuous rear compartment could hold a hot tub. She’s had two glasses of champagne from an iced silver bucket, and the driver way up front speaks only when she pushes a button. The interior is cool and dead calm. She gets it how safe one can feel in New York City inside a 14,000-pound armored car that’s worth more than her lifetime income.

And somewhere deep down she knows, that even had things worked out better, her B.A. in journalism would never have parked her in this leather seat. Shy on the outside, she’s grateful to have her mom’s toughness. Being seen as a servant by the general public puts Logan on the firing line with criminally obtuse elements of society. From experience, she’s found that being of small stature is more productive than intimidation.

At a stoplight on Park Avenue, the driver’s hushed voice sounds in the compartment. “Only a few blocks, Ms. Fischer. I’m going to open the right side door now. Miss Beatrice’s secretary will speak with you.”

As Logan turns, the door swings open on powered hinges and a dark-haired woman in silk jacket and slacks places her trim derriere on the leather seat opposite. A waft of heat and city hustle whirls inside before the door seals itself tight. The climate control hurries to filter the street odors and unburned hydrocarbons that followed the immaculate woman into the compartment.

“I’m Catherine Price. So happy to meet you, Ms. Fischer.” She has the kind of smile that in no way involves her eyes.

Logan shakes hands, conscious of her too-casual outfit. Beatrice had told her to ‘dress for the beach,’ so she’d chosen white hip-huggers with a backless top and leather sandals. Comparing herself to the Price woman’s elegant attire, Logan feels like a country hick. She’s not dressed for Park Avenue.

“There are some formalities,” Price says. “First, your bag.” Her expectant look holds steady until Logan flops her beach bag open. The woman touches nothing but sees everything: a wallet containing her ID, two credit cards and some bills, a folded black bikini that resembles one in Yuri’s online inventory, a light wrap, some makeup, a bottle of Evian, a gift-wrapped box of Godiva chocolates.

For a second, Logan thinks of offering her ID, but with chagrin gets it that the Personal Secretary to Miss Beatrice Verkrag has likely seen her entire credit file, knows her education and work history, has her complete health summary. A scanner on Price’s wrist beeps. In that instant, the scale of Beatrice’s world rolls over Logan like a tsunami. Price spends the remainder of the ride looking out the window, talking rapidly into her Bluetooth. Running a wealthy girl’s life.

Watching the scene pass outside the tinted windows, Logan knows she’s not ready for Park Avenue, but neither is Park Avenue ready to meet the vision she’d always held of it. She’d never imagined the Army recruitment posters on these building walls, the constant graffiti, the chanting riffraff behind police barricades and surveillance cameras pointing every which way. She wishes she’d known this grand boulevard years ago, when it was more than wall-to-wall armed camps. But an intuition strikes Logan that the drive along this fabled avenue is launching her into a future that’s bigger and more vital than anything she has thought or done or cared about through all her days. Nerves fizzing, Logan sits up straight, watching her new world float to her as icebergs in the North Atlantic, sharp and strange and vivid with promise.

The car eases to a halt before the canopy of 740. Stepping onto the sidewalk behind Price, Logan has an involuntary twitch to tip the driver, but the black freighter is already moving away.

Catcalls from across the street. She sees the crowds held back by armed men. The 999. This poor, this homeless, this ripped-off, downtrodden, cheated-on scum of society, who have the nerve to wash up before these diamond-encrusted gates. And she realizes those are not police, but private security. The cities are too broke; the ultra-rich must keep them now.

Logan’s breath catches. The catcalls are for her, for the tight hip-huggers that bare her midriff. Blushing scarlet, she follows Catherine into the gleaming lobby, through a cadre of uniformed valets with side arms and doormen holding semi-automatic rifles, too shocked at the sight to think about why.

Waiting for the elevator’s burnished doors to part, Price turns to her. “I’ll send you to her floor. When you get out, walk to the center of the gallery and wait. Beatrice knows you’re here.” Logan’s head whirls. Inside the elevator, the secretary uses her access bracelet to activate the car, and steps out.

“Enjoy your evening.” Price allows a soulless smile. Mere seconds later the lift stops, the doors open with not a whisper.

Logan Fischer, divorced, childless and with a dead end job at the Joy-Mart Garden Center, walks out into the most extravagant apartment in New York City. The vast sky-lit gallery is a palatial Xanadu that she’s sure rivals an Italian art museum. Feeling hidden eyes on her, Logan controls her urge to peer closely at the massive sculptures, wanting to appear nonchalant amid such unsurpassed elegance.

“Hello, Logan,” a soft voice says. She spins. Beatrice has come without a sound among the tall sculptures, barefoot on the thick Persian rug. In contrast to the hushed opulence, Beatrice wears artfully grunged jeans and a form-hugging lilac petal tee. Smiling, she wraps Logan in a warm embrace.

She is young. Except for the jet-black hair, she’s quite the recipe of Logan herself as a teen. Beatrice lifts both hands above her head in a stickup pose.

“Yes, officer, I am of age and prepared to show you my ID.” The petite girl waits with an infectious grin.

Logan smiles and plays the game, which is fun, giving Beatrice a giggling pat down. Fumbling with the girl’s rear pocket, she pulls out a driver’s license, which puts Beatrice’s age at 21 and three months. Like Logan, Beatrice had listed her age on Halcyon as younger. But the mug shot looks too professional, as though an artist had composed it.

“I believe your papers are in order, but I’ll have to take you far away for questioning.”

Laughing, Beatrice leads at a run through the rooms and onto a spacious outdoor terrace. Hot breeze across the rooftop. Inside a colorful pavilion, fluttering silk curtains filter sunshine in prismatic cascade onto an expansive roomful of soft cushions. In the center of the space, a low table holds trays of fresh fruit, designer sandwiches, cold drinks. A large video screen hangs from above. Sheer curtains blow lazily around a palatial hot tub.

“Long day?”

“Long week. I’m fine though.” In truth, Logan is beat after conquering 50 hours in the Joy-Mart Garden Center. If not for this occasion, she would happily be at home for the evening with a glass of wine and her Dreamworlds friends. But a very special new friend is right here.

They plop down in soft cushions. Beatrice flips open a slim leather case, holds out a small shooter bullet. Logan’s eyes go wide, seeing the white powder it contains.

“Take a sniff in each nostril,” the girl says. “A good sniff.”

“Show me.”

Beatrice puts the bullet to her delicate nose, sniffs twice and hands it to Logan. “Twist this little knob each time.”

Logan doesn’t need to ask what it is, she’s damn sure it’s blow, the party treat she can never afford. Gazing transfixed at lovely Beatrice, she holds her breath, certain that no heart has ever soared as hers, or basked in such feminine radiance. To see Beatrice’s face is soul affirming. Raven hair past her shoulders and eyes that smile back, a glow of incandescent truth. Nearby, a bubbling hot tub, a buffet spread with delights befitting heaven. And held in this breathless moment is the promise that Logan’s lesbian virginity is about to fly away forever in Beatrice’s loving arms. She’s positive that one of Yuri’s oft-repeated lies will be a lie no more.

“Oh, my god,” Logan says, returning to this planet and savoring the first direct hit on her pleasure center. “Whoa.”

Beatrice laughs. “That’s some crazy shit, right? We have food, drink, cushions, hot water. And privacy.”

“And a big flatscreen,” Logan adds.

“Yah. We’re playing on Dreamworlds later.”

Beatrice thumbs a small remote and fast music starts. “What kind of tunes you like?” Without waiting for an answer, she takes Logan’s hand and jumps up.

“Dance with me!”

Five minutes earlier, Logan wouldn’t have imagined dancing wildly after a rough week, with someone half her age. But that was before the limo ride and meeting Beatrice, before the coke-tail, before the hypnotic music in this terrace hideaway. Both have their shoes off, mimicking and interpreting the other’s complicated steps, which for Logan become more inventive as her hips remember and begin to tell their story. She never dances like this at the bowling lanes in Neptune City.

Watching Beatrice writhe and spin, a perfect child smiling with eyes closed, Logan’s mind again surfaces the question that has nagged her since SacredPetal’s invite. Why me?

“How long on Dreamworlds?” Logan says. Her head isn’t working right. She doesn’t know if she shouted that or whispered it. Or if she’d said it at all.

“SacredPetal is as old as time,” is the girl’s laughing reply. “Three, in people years.”

Arms wide, Logan spins, turning herself faster until her feet can’t keep up. She falls into the cushions, laughing. When she sits up, Beatrice is beside her. Logan doesn’t notice that tears streak her face until the girl stops one with a gentle finger.

“Aww, bebe. What?”

“Truth?”

Beatrice nods with child-solemn eyes.

“Damn.” Logan shakes her head in numb disbelief. “It’s my first time, honi.” She’s painfully aware of all the times she’d let Yuri lie about her sexuality. But Beatrice is so bright, so pure, Logan cannot tarnish this moment with a falsehood.

Beatrice makes a wry face. “Me too.”

Logan places a hand over Beatrice’s smooth fingers. She is also aware of being at a millionaire’s house, a billionaire’s, probably. Those sculptures, aren’t they famous? And she realizes that later she’ll go back to her rented little townhouse on a funky street in Jersey and look forward to her mindless job come Tuesday. She shakes her head. This is not like me. That snort was more than just blow.

Beatrice nods sympathetically. She reaches from the table a small sealed bag containing a single Oreo cookie.

“My last one, from when you said yes you’d come.”

Logan accepts the sacred offering with suitable gravity, dives for her beach bag and a tissue. “Oh here, I brought you something too.” She hands over the Godiva chox.

Beatrice regards Logan with a strained expression. “Bebe, I’m sorta nervous.”

“Me too.” Logan squeezes the girl’s hand. “We’ll be okay. Hey, you have violet eyes too.”

“Indigo. Yours are violet. Unreal, for a blonde.” Beatrice smiles at her, woman to woman. She glances at the table with its covered dishes, bowls of grapes, sliced pineapple, peeled mango, croissants.

“You eat?”

“Nope.” Logan is suddenly starving. “Can you tell me something, Beatrice? For real?”

Beatrice bites into a tiny, perfect, triangular sandwich from a silver tray and regards Logan with a serene smile.

“Why…”

“Why did I ask you here?”

“No. Sorta. Okay, yeah.”

“If they won’t come, I don’t chum,” Beatrice replies sagely.

“Translation?”

“My dad’s rule for playing on Halcyon is we need to know 100% who I’m talking to. If I want to play on there, Catherine and I have to meet the people personally. You might not meet Dad, but I’m sure Catherine approves. After that it’s on me.”

“Ah…”

“You prolly know… more than half of female avis on Halcyon are fronting for guys. I’m not interested in any Facebook lezzies.”

“But don’t your folks…?”

Beatrice shuts down the question with a toss of her dark hair. “You nuts? Look at this place. They are way busy being super loaded. But my dad said you were cool.”

Logan wonders how Beatrice’s father could know about her, but cannot understand that Verkrag put Beatrice up to befriending her, to give SincerelySatan access to his Yuri-goddess. And Beatrice thinks she invited Logan to pluck her lesbian cherry, not knowing she was guided by Nathaniel’s Threshold persuasions. Although she’s among the world’s most powerful children, Beatrice is not allowed to have real life lovers, but she knows of her dad’s baby monitoring and fights back in secret. Tonight, she’s arranged for Catherine to be looking the other way. She’s never entertained an unchaperoned visitor, so her personal secretary will see a fat bonus.

“So. Why me, honi?”

This gets a warm smile. “A little voice spoke to me when I saw ya. Yuri! My friend. Right now.”

A siren warble from her phone makes Beatrice roll her eyes. Finger across her lips, she winks and raises her Galaxy S8.

“Hi Rebecca. No. Yeah. Sure. Okay, Momma Rebecca. Totally bored today, nothing to do. No. He was gone when I got up. I will. You too. Bye, Rebecca.”

Beatrice clicks off, tosses the phone down. It sirens again, she sneers and ignores it. “Blasphemy! She treats us like puppets.”

“That’s your mom?”

A scowly head-shake. “Wicked stepmother. My dad’s second wife. She’s off helping children in fracking Angola. Wish she was nice, like you. You have kids, right?”

“Two miscarriages,” Logan says, eyes level.

Her look chills Beatrice. Disgusted at her blunder, she says, “I didn’t know, bebe. Bet it was grim.”

Logan nods, looking around at the opulent surroundings. Beatrice takes another sniff from the shooter, hands it to Logan.

“Hey, this is a party! Got something for ya.”

On the table is a flat black case the size of a CD. Beatrice flips the lid open, revealing a soft-pink, rubbery sculpture.

“Pretty. What is it?”

“Remember my avatar? This gives you that. Put your head down.”

Logan sits still as Beatrice positions the thing on the crown of her head. Nestled in her hair, its grip is feather-light. Beatrice adjusts a similar gold one on herself.

“We should play!” Beatrice says. She leans forward and kisses Logan soft on the lips. The world stops, waiting to breathe, as Nathaniel’s conditioning speaks in Beatrice’s voice.

“Forget your troubles, bebe. I really wanted you here.” Her eyes on Logan are wide, as though to consume all she sees.

The movie screen lights up, a dream world named Natural Libido forms. It’s a sloping beach with high cliffs and sailboats anchored offshore. Logan recalls seeing SacredPetal’s name in that world’s list after they’d first met. At the time, she didn’t dare follow.

Above the scene, a login panel glows, with Yuri at the top. Beatrice hands Logan her phone.

“Your password, Madame.”

“What is this, on my head?”

“Welcome to Threshold, my gift to you.” She pauses, liquid eyes wide on Logan’s face. Her lips move as she says, “My gift to us.”

Logan keys in her password, and together they watch her avatar take form on the beach. Yuri stands beside a waving SacredPetal, the same ultra-def human image, now wearing a shorty sundress and a broad-brimmed straw hat. The two together are breathtaking in the exotic scene.

“There we are, bebe.” Rapt eyes on the wide screen, Logan is faintly aware that Beatrice’s hand covers hers.

The view zooms in on Yuri, and Logan gasps. She’s done a lot of work on her avatar over the seven years she’s played on Halcyon, but has never achieved such perfection as this. Transfixed by her avatar’s exalted face, Logan feels the grip of Beatrice’s fingers. Immersed in the vision on the screen, the flesh and blood girl beside her seems less real.

“Beatrice!” This one word from Logan causes Yuri on the screen to reach a hand toward SacredPetal, and turn her face to the other avatar. As Yuri’s lips move, the name sounds from hidden speakers in a voice of liquid gold.

Logan jumps. “Girl! How is this…”

Beside her, Beatrice smiles, kisses Logan again, wetter than before. On the wide beach, their avatars nuzzle shyly.

“This is Threshold, bebe. You’re now part of the real Dreamworlds.”

“The real Dreamworlds? What was I doing before?”

“Sleeping,” Beatrice laughs. On the beach, SacredPetal runs toward dancing shorebreak.

Logan reaches for her mouse, her keyboard, but there is nothing. “Hey! How do I do this?”

“Just think about it!” SacredPetal calls back over her shoulder, voice faint on the wind.

There are none of the usual controls. There is no chat window filling with clumsy text speech. There are only the two stunning females on this idyllic seacoast, and the weightless Threshold spider atop Logan’s head.

Think about it.

SacredPetal’s running figure is tiny with distance. A yearning grows in Logan, echo of the desolate loss when first she watched this feminine perfection fade from view. But now, her avatar can follow.

In the scene, Yuri wears her black bikini, Gucci shades, and flip-flops. She kicks those off and dashes barefoot after SacredPetal. The sand beneath her feet is warm, salt air lifts tiny hairs on her flawless skin. Much faster than a human could run, Yuri closes the gap without effort.

Logan’s happy squeal is echoed by Yuri on the screen. “Beatrice it’s incredible!”

“A sexy monster is chasing me,” laughs the running SacredPetal.

Yuri gets a handful of flying sundress and pulls SacredPetal to a giggling stop. Her hands tingle with the texture of cloth, her face with the avatar’s excited breath. At the flash of bare girl-cheeks, Yuri’s hands claim them, pulls their bodies close. Two perfect female dolls search each other’s eyes. Then they are on their knees, kissing, holding on for all they are worth.

“Beatrice! I feel you! Your lips. Your little tongue. Everything.”

Logan’s mind first struggles to right itself. But with eyes closed, she surrenders completely. She knows not where Logan ends and Yuri begins. Doesn’t know if her arms hold Beatrice or SacredPetal. It no longer matters. They are two star-girls, young and alive in extravagant new reality, all whispered syllables, stroking hands and excited breathing.

Chapter 13 – Stalking the Stalkers

At 11:57 p.m. Saturday night in Arizona, Detective Edwin Scharples receives an encrypted message from one of his son’s many email accounts. Arm around his wife where they vedge on the couch, Scharples hears the telltale beep from his office computer.

“Aww,” says his wife, feeling him come alert beside her. “You gotta go to work.”

“Only twenty feet. I’ll be back.”

“Want me to hold the movie?”

“Seen it. Go ahead on.”

Scharples drops into his office chair and brings the display to life, decrypts Quentin’s email.

Hey Pop –

Sorry this took so long. Encryption on Marsh’s drive took me 2 days to crack. He was chatting on Halcyon Dreamworlds, the account is still active. Last session ended seven days ago, close to the coroner’s time of death. I’d be willing to bet he was on Dreamworlds when he died.

He used the account for seven years, avatar name DarkEternity, female, listed age 25. He owns a Multi-Pass, meaning full adult privileges. Halcyon doesn’t care if they fake gender and age. Their stats show over half of female avatars belong to males. Pop, you would know these things if you got out more.

I found several chat logs on his system, including the one that began at 6:43 a.m. and continued until 12:18 p.m., the day he died, so about 5 1/2 hours in that session. That log is all keyboard, although in the others there’s a 33-channel data stream. I have no idea how to interpret that. My nutball theory is the signal goes to some device in Marsh’s living room… only thing unusual there is the pink doodad on his noggin. Your feeble-minded genetic imprint => Q

PS Don’t play the session tape with Mom around. She doesn’t like us looking at porn.

Scharples smirks at his son’s tone, and fires off a quick reply.

Q – I searched by case classification and found a similar case in the county. A deceased female found alone at a computer, wearing the spider thing. I want to compare what you find, so get the lead out.

BTW – With regard to porn, your mom made a critical review of your collection years ago. She published her findings in National Perv Journal. You’re famous.

Dad

In 60 seconds, a new message chimes in.

Hey Pop –

Did you find a cause of death on your guy? I’m thinking that spider cap on his noggin could have killed him. Electroshock? Not likely with a wireless device, not enough voltage.

I ruled out lightning strike. The monsoon started around 5 p.m. last Sunday, so what happened to Marsh was way before any lightning within 120 miles. Totally puzzled,

Q

P.S. Hacked Mom’s Perv Journal article years ago as a class project. Guess who’s famous now?

As his grin fades, Scharples again reviews the ill-fitting facts at the death scene. Old guy dies alone, no biggie. But he’s wearing a spidery skullcap and a loopy expression. Autopsy showed no trauma. Not a stroke, not a heart attack. Peaceful. The medical examiner put down natural unattended death, and released the body to next of kin, presuming any can be found.

Scharples is about to leave his office when his phone rings.

“Okay Pop, this gets wayyy interesting…”

Scharples sinks back in his swivel chair, grinning at his kid’s attitude.

“Oh Lordy, what have you done now?”

“Used my old Halcyon account and snooped through the same chatrooms Marsh visited the day he died. From one, I was immediately axed. Guess they don’t like newbs dropping in.”

“What is axed, like in a bar?”

“Approximately. There were three totally peculiar avatars in there. Joker, Jack, and Ace. They were invisible somehow, I only saw their names for a second.”

“I don’t get what that’s about,” Scharples says.

“New one on me. I waited a while and dropped in again. The avatars in there were different and I got axed after a minute. But get this... there was nothing in that room’s chat log. Most chat logs fill with keyboard text but there was nothing. How are the players communicating if not by typing?”

“You’re talking way over your old man’s head.”

“Sorry. I’m saying there is some technical stuff I want to investigate. What I’d really like to do is log on as Marsh’s avatar. DarkEternity.”

“Hey, Quentin! You might be messing with a crime scene. Go easy.”

“Sure, Pop. I’ll wait for your official sanction, but I’d be the sleuth of the decade if I dug up anything hot.”

“Don’t be a hero at my expense! Oh, hang on, your mom wants to say hi.” Scharples leans back in his chair and yells toward his wife in the living room. “Hey, Lana Lang, get in here and see what your goofball son is up to now.”

Twenty-two miles away at his apartment, the goofball son in question, Quentin Scharples, sits before three computer monitors, writing scripts and trying to inject them into a Halcyon database, using all the passcodes he can recall. To his surprise, one of his old accounts is still active. It’s been such a long time, high school days, he can’t believe this still lets him in, an avatar account he named Qship. He digs out his old notes on Halcyon’s code structure.

On one of his screens he pulls up DarkEternity’s saved chat logs, from Marsh’s decrypted hard drive. Quentin has read many of these with interest, telling himself it’s random curiosity. But in his methodical way, he makes note of the mannerisms and word choices DarkEternity used in spoken chat. He gives himself a fair chance of impersonating DarkEternity to his friends.

His computer chimes, a new email. From his dad, with the other police report. As he reads, Quentin’s eyebrows rise, noting similarities to the Kevin Marsh case. People are dying, while playing on Dreamworlds? He sets to work cataloging every similarity, every difference, between the police reports. In the second death, there was a USB antenna, but found separately, not plugged into the computer as Marsh’s was. He fires the comparison back to his dad.

By 1:30 a.m. he feels a restless twitch. Patience is not Quentin’s primary virtue. He logs one of his several laptops into Halcyon as his avatar Qship, and another as DarkEternity, Kevin Marsh’s avatar. He’s brought up short by the avatar’s look. DarkEternity is a chick! Marsh was a virtual TG.

Quentin makes DarkEternity send Qship a chat invite. Both avatars appear in one of DarkEternity’s private worlds, decked out as a racetrack. Open-wheel cars with wings and slicks, driver’s suits and helmets, grandstands full of cheering race fans.

There’s nothing interesting about chatting with himself as two avatars, so Quentin looks through DarkEternity’s inventory of rooms and clothing. He has to admire Marsh’s womanly avatar. For an old geezer, the guy had achieved a distinctive feminine look.

HeroKamasutra wants to chat with DarkEternity

The chat request covers Quentin’s screen. He freezes, eyes big and round. Yikes! He’s not ready to meet Marsh’s friends. Fingers trembling, he kills DarkEternity’s session.

Thinking over the case his dad found, the possible connections between the deaths, Quentin wants to go back. His geek’s mind and cop-family genes are whispering in his ear, telling him he’s found the crime scene where both Kevin Marsh and the local woman died, the interior landscape of Halcyon Dreamworlds itself. If his dad’s two cases are connected, then both could be murders. And, Quentin believes, if they were killed by something within the Dreamworlds, then a virtual serial killer could be on the loose.

Chapter 14 – Life on the Grecian Stage

It’s nearing 5 a.m. in New York City. In the blowing silk pavilion sixteen stories above Park Avenue, two women slumber amid soft cushions, limbs thrown out in joyous abandon.

Logan blinks in filtered daylight, focusing on the silent face so close. Beatrice wears only her top. Logan is shocked to find herself unclothed. Inhaling the sleepy-scented girl, Logan’s mind begins to function, unfogged now from the evening’s wine and party drugs. Beatrice told her she was 18. Her New York driver’s license says 21. A girl this rich could fake any story. But she’s not faking being smart. Or educated. What’s real?

Beatrice stirs when Logan gropes for her clothes, with a sleepy smile pulls her down. They laugh together in their private world. Soon, sipping espresso delivered by a sleep-deprived maid and wearing their spider caps, they log into Halcyon and go to SacredPetal’s Grecian Villa public room, garbed in Greek togas. The scene is an Athenian hilltop in predawn light, where the silver arc of Venus beckons a new day. Torches cast a flickering glow over an outdoor theatre, graceful stairways and secret darkness among stately rows of Doric columns. Shortly after they join, an avatar named Connundra appears.

“Connundra,” Yuri says with a laugh, “if you’re not in the dictionary you should be in Guinness.”

“Good one, Logan. You know me? Catherine.”

“Ah. Your avi looks like yourself. Very nice.”

A hypno beat plays. SacredPetal pulls Connundra and Yuri toward the dance floor. Three avatars enter in rapid succession, named Jack, Ace, and Joker, dressed not as people but as playing cards. Without a word they move rapidly to the far corners of the world, mute sentries. Their names vanish from the logs.

In Arizona it’s two in the morning. Logged onto Dreamworlds as Qship, Quentin peers at the attendee card for SacredPetal’s Grecian Villa. He sees Yuri’s name there with the other avatars and his eyes narrow. He’d spent an hour going over DarkEternity’s last saved chat. It was the avatar Yuri who’d kept Marsh company during his final moments on Earth. Who is she?

“Damn,” Quentin breathes. He wants badly to talk with Marsh’s favorite person. Marsh had saved that final chat log manually. Meaning he was alive when he did it. Meaning it does not include the moment he died. Meaning Quentin needs to find out what Yuri witnessed.

For Quentin it’s a dilemma. He desperately wants to join the chat as DarkEternity, to learn what he can. But how to explain to DarkEternity’s online friends a six-day absence from the Dreamworlds, without raising suspicions? There are a dozen messages in the avatar’s inbox, some asking if things are okay. Quentin posing as DarkEternity needs a plausible story for each of those people. And last but not least is Marsh’s headpiece, which lies on Quentin’s desk like a modernist doily. He doesn’t know what to call it, much less what it does.

As he stares at the Grecian Villa room card, an avatar called OutOfRange makes its entrance. One more will fill the place, and Quentin will be out of luck. He must put DarkEternity into this chat! It’ll piss off his dad, but he might learn something vital. Forgiveness trumps permission.

Fiery with decision, Quentin logs on as DarkEternity. He finds in the avatar’s wardrobe a toga and laurel wreath and joins the Grecian Villa, hoping for a quiet entrance. DarkEternity takes form in the scene as an ordinary avatar, not a flawless human form like the others. Quentin is instantly certain he’s made a massive blunder. Why doesn’t this avatar look like theirs? And his hope for a quiet entrance is dashed when the room goes nuts.

“Dark!”

“Hey bebe! Where ya been?”

“Hey Nikki gimmee some sugah!”

The avatar OutOfRange hops close to DarkEternity, glaring. Through DarkEternity’s eyes, Quentin looks down at the fanged, tarred face, the ugliest little goblin he’s ever seen. The eyes glow red from an evil, razor-toothed countenance. Like DarkEternity, this nasty-looking avatar has an unfinished look. In contrast to the free-form moves of the other avatars, DarkEternity must hop between pose balls to move around. Quentin puts the robed, statuesque avatar on a dance spot and talks into his Bluetooth.

“Heyyy all… lost my coolness.” Quentin’s spoken words sound in the speakers as a woman’s contralto. A flurry of alert popups notify Quentin of incoming private messages. Four… now five, now six. There’s also a chat request.

Yuri wants to chat with DarkEternity

Realizing he’s dropped into a literal mosh pit of DarkEternity’s friends, Quentin’s hand trembles as he clicks Accept on her invite. While Yuri’s window fills with scenery, he reads DarkEternity’s inbox.

SacredPetal to DarkEternity: Are you okay? Missed you soooo much!

Connundra to DarkEternity: You left a very depressed girl on my hands –  WTH?

At that moment, SincerelySatan joins the chat. Several avatars greet him, but DarkEternity says nothing.

“Hey, David,” Yuri says to SincerelySatan, wanting to sound casual. She sends a quick private message.

Yuri to SacredPetal: Know who this is?

SacredPetal to Yuri: Head of my Secret Service.

Yuri to SacredPetal: Wha-a-a-at?

SacredPetal to Yuri: My dad. He’s who told me you’re cool.

Yuri to SacredPetal: Oh. My. God.

Laughing, SacredPetal dances close, pulls Yuri in for a reassuring kiss. “Chill, bebe. It’s all good.” Other dancers eye the lovers with unveiled curiosity.

Yuri’s nipples hum, certain that SacredPetal would recoil to know what she and SincerelySatan did together. Her dad! Why is he here? It leaves her wondering how much Beatrice knows about her life on Halcyon. Then it hits her, with a roller coaster stomach-drop. Rich girl with personal secretary. She knows everything.

“Hey Yuri,” SincerelySatan says in a basso rumble. He joins the dance near her. “Nice to see you all decked out.”

His eyes on her Threshold-perfected form glow with dreams of their encounter in the abandoned theater. Seeing his gaze rove her body, a flush warms Yuri’s throat. She feels a twinge between her legs at the arrogant tone of his voice. Alarmed at the bloodrush storming through her, she dances away. The air, the sounds, the brush of cloth on her legs, every sensation points back to him. In Beatrice’s outdoor pavilion, Logan shivers deliciously beneath her spider. But I’m with Petal!

Quentin as DarkEternity clicks over to the chat window with Yuri, in her penthouse apartment. Blonde hair streaming behind, Yuri runs across the carpeted floor and hugs tight. Quentin is relieved he can talk privately with her, and reminds himself to sound like Marsh in the logs. But when he gets a look at the avatar so close, Quentin melts. Never has he been in the presence of such luminous perfection. DarkEternity, the avatar he controls, is unfinished by comparison.

Yuri pulls back, violet eyes filled with concern. “Honi heart! I was so worried. Sent you piles of messages. Are you okay?”

“Yes, doll,” Quentin says, trying mightily to channel DarkEternity’s speaking style. “Missed you like crazy… first a lightning strike took out my house power…”

“You could have called me!” Yuri stands with arms crossed.

“Dayum, gurl, monsoon that day. Everything is on my comp. My phone got it too.” In Arizona, Quentin is improvising like a madman, lifting text mannerisms from Marsh’s chat logs. He must spin a plausible story with no detail.

“Thought I did something wrong.”

“No, doll! It came out of the blue.” Quentin breathes easier, hoping the lightning strike story holds up.

“Your avi went spazz,” Yuri says. “Thought you were having a seizure.”

“Oh my. There was a huge boom and my screen went dark. Thank the fates for Best Buy. Now we’re here.” He lets himself believe he’s hit the jackpot on his first spin. “I’m admiring your new look, girl…”

“It just happened today,” Yuri says, “I feel everything!” She twirls to show how perfectly she moves, free of the pose dots. “SacredPetal invited me in real. We’re at her apartment.”

Enraptured by her beauty, Quentin doesn’t know how to play this. How would DarkEternity respond when her closest friend and possibly lover gets jiggy with another female? Quentin gropes for what to do, and what surfaces within him is a pang of jealousy. The mental warning, silence is golden, flits away and disappears.

“Oh my…”

“What, dear?”

“I clutch my breast, recalling the last time your lips were there. My breathing quickens, thinking of you in the arms of someone else…”

“No! Sweetness, it’s not like that! She introduced me to Threshold, just today.”

Quentin guesses Yuri is referring to the spider headpiece but is desperate not to blow this. Threshold could mean anything.

“So you’re right there with her? It’s early morning out there. You’ve been stoned with her all night?”

“Yes, Love, she seduced me. Threshold and blow.”

“You slept with her?”

Wanting to lie her way out of it, Yuri’s stomach flops, unable to play false with her closest friend. “I did, I’ll admit. Please don’t do this! I thought you were dead! I was grieving for you. She and I are so alike!”

“I don’t feel so good all of a sudden.” Quentin inwardly groans. I scare myself. Why can’t I shut it? “So, what now? You and SacredPetal?”

“Cut it out! You’ve never been like this about my friends. You know I’m single. You don’t really sound okay.”

“I’ll be dead someday soon.”

“Stop it Kevin Marsh! You know I’ll come out there and take care of you.”

“And what after that?” In his lab, Quentin squirms, knowing he’s stepped in the doodoo.

“Nikki, they are messaging me to get back. Come back with me!”

“I feel wretched nauseous.”

“Nothing has changed. Please trust me, Kevin dear. I’ll never be the same without you. Come!”

“Only for you.”

Quentin saves the chat log, exits Yuri’s scene and rejoins the Grecian Villa toga party. His fingers tremble. She called me Kevin Marsh! DarkEternity’s real life name, got to be.

He remembers to breathe, so many facts to take in. He wants to believe he’s escaped detection by someone very close to DarkEternity. And he’s found information that could bear on his dad’s investigation. In his email he starts a note to his dad, listing the facts he’s discovered. He knows that there’ll be a real ruckus with the old man when he reveals how he knows this.

Quentin speed-reads the chat log. There! In her final conversation with DarkEternity, Yuri observed something unusual, possibly the moment Marsh died. She had provided the name of the spider, Threshold, which could explain how the avatars in the scene appear so perfect, how they move. Quentin asks himself if the spider uses that multi-channel data stream he’d found in Marsh’s chat logs. And then what? Do I have the murder weapon?

Impulsively, with no proof whatsoever, Quentin takes Kevin Marsh’s spider and carefully positions it on his head. Nothing happens. But Quentin’s mind makes a leap and his excitement grows. He’s almost sure of it. He’s guessing the Threshold spiders can pipe sense impressions directly into the wearer’s brain. Thirty-three data channels could do that. The computer interface of the gods. He wants to get Marsh’s spider working.

Into his email Quentin adds that Yuri and the late Kevin Marsh were in touch by telephone, and that she has promised to provide him a special burial. Whoever is running Yuri, she knows Marsh by name, that he is male portraying a female. It’s likely she knows his real age and location, but does not know the man is dead. Quentin’s stomach clenches. Someone must tell her. It will burn.

Listening to the hypno-trance music in his loudspeakers, the party gabble from the other players, Quentin glances at his apartment window. Outside in the world of physics, gravity, and verifiable fact, a rosy-fingered dawn unfolds above the mesa. Forcibly, Quentin drags himself free of the dark illusion that is Halcyon Dreamworlds. An instant later his mind crashes back into his body as though dropped from a great height. Wham. Once again, Quentin Scharples is himself, gaping in disbelief at the otherworldly beings on his screens.

And I thought I’d seen everything.

Chapter 15 – Not Such a Hero

Dancing in the Grecian Villa, Yuri sends DarkEternity a placating message. Nervously she watches her friend’s body language, and works her way cautiously across the floor. But SacredPetal intervenes, dancing face to face with her. The trance music brings flashbacks of her evening in the girl’s loving presence. Around the floor in dusky twilight other avatars dance, leading with their hips. The exotic scene is affecting everyone. Focused on her own avatar’s sublime face, Logan is sexually hungry. Through the evening, Yuri and SacredPetal had worn each other out, girl to girl. But now, she flames with unexpected hunger for a man. That one.

Yuri tries for eye contact with DarkEternity but her friend is aloof. A dancer runs up to clasp Dark in a brief hug, and leaves her be. SacredPetal comes near, whispers to Dark that a new Threshold cap has gone out by courier. Quentin as DarkEternity blows a kiss, too excited to speak. A Threshold cap coming to Marsh… I’ve got to intercept that!

SincerelySatan moves deftly among the gyrating dancers and lifts Yuri in muscled arms. In this hyper-reality his body heat inflames her. He spins her across the stage, away from the press, ignoring his kids, OutOfRange and SacredPetal. He is entranced with Yuri’s silken hair caressing his face, her excited mouth so close.

When last he’d seen her in Feminine Insanity, Yuri had been delectable but aloof. Now that Logan wears Threshold, one look at her goddess avatar inspires in Satan a transport of lust. Yuri’s raptured eyes lift violet-hazed to his masculine face. Unconscious of propriety or curious onlookers, she’s skewered on the excitement pouring through the spider cap which she believes is hers. She does not understand she’s in thrall to coded directives provided by Nathaniel Craig, making of Yuri a living flesh-puppet that can be shared with anyone. Attired as the playing card Ace of Diamonds, Nathaniel watches from the secret shadows of Hero’s cloak.

Awash in Satan’s maleness, Yuri’s needs are indiscriminate and strong. Holding her compliant body to his powerful chest, SincerelySatan smiles a demon grin. Perfect.

“Do you find DarkEternity attractive?” Yuri asks suddenly, looking up at him with slave girl eyes. Her serene gaze does not waver when he kisses lightly the edge of her mouth.

Satan senses a trap. It’s an old feminine trick, pushing the male into a logical box. He’s sure she does this unconsciously, but no simple answer will do. He could say yes, which would be the truth, though it will make Yuri feel less special and cool her off. This he cannot afford. Saying he’s not attracted to DarkEternity would make Yuri suspicious, she’d see his pandering lie.

“Dark is too experienced for my taste,” he says confidently. “She has become jaded. There is much more to you, Yuri. Your mind is alive, you are worth knowing.”

Remembering their late-night encounter in the derelict theater, Yuri cringes. She recalls what Satan had found worth knowing about her then. With his maleness and her fire she’d made full use of the only aspect of him she’ll ever care about. It seems to her so unfair that a woman cannot satisfy her hungers without being forever branded, instead of enjoying sex playfully, as males are allowed to. But his gentle reassurance allows her to relax.

Curled in his strong arms she presses her face to the powerful neck, melting into him as he spins her beyond the torches into enveloping dark. He’s talked her down from her ledge and kept her focused on him. In spite of her experience, Yuri’s heart races toward every woman’s pitfall, wooed by a strange male into the belief she is vital to his existence, the soul-affirming certainty that here is a man who truly gets her. But Yuri realizes deep down that anything she might have for SincerelySatan will vaporize when he stops touching her.

Eyes closed, letting Satan make her dizzy, Yuri can’t wait to tell Hero about Threshold, to show him her sublime new look. His answers about SacredPetal’s avatar sounded like a fool’s. For once she’ll know something her favorite Geekster does not!

As if summoned by a spell, HeroKamasutra arrives in the room. Cheerful welcomes resound. But the receptive mood SincerelySatan had so carefully nurtured in Yuri crashes around them as the girl’s violet eyes intensify on Hero’s sublime avatar. Her body stiffens. She squirms from Satan’s arms and stands glaring across the stage in feral anger. Satan is furious. Nostrils flared, Yuri knows for certain Hero’s player wears a spider. Hands clutched in her hair, her full concentration is on the private message she sends.

Yuri to HeroKamasutra: You double dealing fake friend son of a bitch. I am locking you immediately you lying pervert. This is not over.

An avatar locked by another cannot send messages or chat invites. There is only one result. When Hero writes back, this is the reply: Yuri has locked you. Her avatar name disappears from his friends list, and he won’t see her in any world lists. She no longer exists for him. However, her lock does not prevent Yuri from sending another angry message.

Yuri to HeroKamasutra: I know what else you are trying for you irreversible dipstick. That’s over too. Yes Jamal I mean the cops.

Yuri is not sure what she means by that. It’s from no single admission by Hero, but the sum of many chats with her dead ex-husband’s disabled war buddy who had been happy to brag his geeky exploits to an intelligent female and roll her in the sack. But as she clicks Send she’s aware he’s doing things he wouldn’t want the police to know about.

Heartsick to read her message, Hero’s limbs flop, he loses the music beat. Yuri has locked you. He knows what this means in every sense, including what it’s about for her. He’d purposely feigned ignorance when she asked about SacredPetal, for the sake of protecting her. Hero sees her fury in those few lines and knows it will take much to undo. But he realizes there is more about ultras that Yuri must know to be safe in their company. Seeing her held tight as SincerelySatan dances her into shadow, Hero’s heart does a belly-flop from the high board. He knows fully who David Verkrag is, and if Yuri is with SincerelySatan, she is in grave danger. Desperately, Hero sends another message.

HeroKamasutra to DarkEternity: Nikki my dear, so perfect to see you. We need to talk. But first, Yuri needs your help. Please remind her about my product, UltraGuard, which she owns. It’s a bracelet with an embedded list of defensive commands. She needs to wear it all the time for her safety, and memorize everything. I’m gifting you one as well my dear. You can speak the commands or type them. Be safe out there. – HK

The message goes through and now Hero can only wait. In seething anger he clamps eyes on Ace, cloaked in the far reaches of the amphitheater. You arrogant ass. Your mind-puppet threatened me with the cops!

In his room 100 feet from Beatrice’s rooftop pavilion, Sven giggling at his shoulder, Alan uses his OutOfRange avatar to hang a flashing neon sign above SacredPetal’s head: Sagbutt. SacredPetal sends the ax command, but thanks to Randall’s new No-Ax product, everyone present sees her defeat at Alan’s hands:

SacredPetal tried to ax OutOfRange - FAIL

Shocked, the girl sends a pleading note.

SacredPetal to SincerelySatan: Dad get Alan out of my party NOW. The bodyguards should be on that.

SincerelySatan to OutOfRange: Alan, turn it off and go to bed or it’s military camp for a year.

As OutOfRange performs a few backflips and vanishes in a puff of steam, the neon Sagbutt sign vanishes from above SacredPetal. Her heart is of lead. She is afraid to ask her dad why he’s taking her special new friend away. He’s doing it again! Last week he crashed her party, and went off with her Greek studies tutor, DarkEternity.

The spinning pair has vanished. Hungry for Logan’s lovemaking and wretched under the pall cast on her dreamy evening by her acidic brother, SacredPetal slides into a pit of sick despair.

As a last thrust Alan sends SacredPetal a photo of Beatrice and Logan sleepily entwined among the pillows. Tearful and furious, SacredPetal forwards it to Connundra with a thundering command: Fix it!

In her pavilion, Beatrice shakes herself alert, throws down her spider and looks around. Night has flown, morning sky is bright. Logan lies among the cushions, slitted eyes fixed on the big screen, controlling her avatar via Threshold. Watching Logan’s heated face, Beatrice’s heart sinks at her father’s treachery. She’s in there with him! Alan’s photograph, a cutting invasion of her sweet hours with Logan, proves her turdlet of a brother invaded her private sanctuary while she and Logan slept. Knowing what the little crap-head is like, Beatrice shudders. He no doubt has video too. She runs from Logan, toward the residence, crying out for Catherine.

Alan, guffawing with Sven in his rooms, describes how the whole time he tiptoed through Beatrice’s private chamber he could barely keep from laughing at all the humor he could throw on two dirty sleeping bitches. Yet he’d kept focus on his main goal, to see the color of the ant’s spider. Pink.

“It’s genius,” he crows to a bewildered Sven. “Now, my stupid sister’s stupid ant is on my target list. The ant will bounce screaming around the room, and sag-ass Beatrice will poop herself!”

Alan jumps energetically on his bed, far too damn pleased with himself. It puzzles Alan though, about DarkEternity. He’d sent the panic script a week ago while Kevin Marsh wore it, and he’d been careful. His Goldman Sachs security guru had coached him strenuously. Alan hadn’t paid attention. DarkEternity is an ant and doesn’t matter, any random avatar will do for a test. And that one just happened to show up at his sister’s last party. But Alan will try again, to be certain he’s got it right. For once in his life, he’s motivated.

Sven, six years older than giddily-bouncing Alan, is concerned. He doesn’t know if spiders can actually be harmful. But he’s sure the little jerk has gone too far already. Like the photos of his sister and her girlfriend. That, thinks Sven, is so wrong. And injuring someone? Even if Alan is only bragging, to Sven it’s way extreme. He doesn’t want to see anyone hurt, Beatrice in particular. Sven already knows how to write intricate code droplets for his own products. He begins to think how he can use that skill to do good.

Alan, jumping wildly, pants, “DarkEternity is def alive. Saw her. I need to send another code blast right now!”

Alan has learned a couple things about Halcyon’s code, and how a player’s Threshold spider connects to Dreamworlds through a simulator module. He knows every player uses it, though few are aware of its presence. The simulator translates the 3D world model into the stream of sense impressions a human brain can experience through a spider. The droplet engineered by his Goldman Sachs tutor raises the simulator’s output. Hidden in his lessons was the suggestion that output can rise high enough to transmit a dangerous psychic insult. As Alan had requested, in so many words.

Alan bounces down from the bed, hits the floor on rubbery legs and wobbles over to his desk. Sitting at his laptop, he first invokes a cloaking script similar to those his dad’s security agents use, which will make his avatar undetectable in the Grecian Villa. Alan puts OutOfRange back into his big sister’s party. Sven crowds his shoulder. Although the snouty little demon with red eyes appears on Alan’s laptop, not the merest ripple of his presence is visible to others. Secure in the cloak, Alan doesn’t think his dad will notice. He puts his camera on DarkEternity. He wants to have the ant centered in his view when she runs screaming. The boy invokes the panic script and turns to Sven.

“Let there be death,” he intones balefully. On his laptop, Alan clicks the Send button.

Within the labyrinthine compilations of Halcyon’s operating code, channels of logical sequence fire, amplify, and fling the signal on. The sense impressions find the computer from which DarkEternity is logged in, and port the impulses to the player’s spider. The feedback appears on Alan Verkrag’s screen in New York City.

Execution complete

That is all. Both boys watch intently as DarkEternity continues her graceful pirouettes across the floor. Nothing changes. They are unaware that Quentin, logged in as DarkEternity from his home in the Arizona dawn, was never in danger. The Threshold cap he wears was damaged when Alan first did this a week ago. Although Sven feels distinct relief, the boys look at each other with frowns.

“Shit,” says Alan.

“Shit,” says Sven, not meaning it quite the same.

Alan logs himself off and flops on his bed, more disappointed than exhausted.

A Grecian goddess locked in SincerelySatan’s powerful arms, Yuri allows dizziness to engulf her, spirited off to Olympus by mighty Zeus. The music grows faint as they move far from lights and people. While Yuri lets herself be held to his powerful chest, SincerelySatan keeps his hands moving. It’s vital that she become conditioned to his touch. One hand slips within a draped sleeve, fingers trail over her sleek back. Yuri finds to her disgust that she enjoys his constant touches, and so allows him stroke by stroke to disarm her. These moments are too pleasant for her to consider the consequences. Amid all the sensations, she is aware of an unwelcome visitor. Her head throbs.

Satan whispers in her ear. “The thrill I have for you, my goddess Yuri, is a kind of play that will transform you into a true innocent. When you are helpless in my arms, you’ll become purity itself. What anyone might think of you will mean nothing, because you cannot resist. You’ll reach a state without guilt, free of shame. When I demonstrate my power, if I never ask your permission…”

She places two soft fingers on his lips.

“You’re asking me to be your sub,” Yuri says, looking into his face. Her wide-eyed innocence is so rapturous he fails to see the burning intelligence she’s carried deep her whole life. For further distraction, her soft belly circles on the maleness beneath his toga.

SincerelySatan is in awe. Did she just bust my nuts? But she is so sweet, so knowing, that he doesn’t care. And the warmth of her pliant body inflames his loins. Against his better judgment, SincerelySatan is in love, enraptured with her captive girl look. His nostrils flare. Here is a female who must become his toy, his badge of supreme maleness. And this toy he intends to own is the most rapturous female who has ever laced her woman-scent through a god’s mythology.

SincerelySatan does not notice when a dangly bracelet of delicate gold charms blinks into existence on Yuri’s wrist. In fierce concentration, Logan in Beatrice’s outdoor pavilion reads Dark’s message about what secrets the mischief bracelet holds. Overjoyed, she replies to DarkEternity, saying yes she’ll study the list and she’s so happy they are speaking again. Logan’s eyes brim as she closes with the words oft-used between them. I treasure you.

Quentin examines the similar bracelet Hero sent to DarkEternity. On a big monitor in his computer lab, he scans the list of simple commands, which when spoken in a chat session will affect certain Dreamworlds products. There are commands to make an avatar fall down, make it emit rude gassy noises, and translate everything it says into ludicrous profanity. There are nearly a hundred of them, but all the wearer must do is pronounce the desired one.

Staring at his screen, Quentin’s eyebrows rise. In the list there is a more extensive document from Dreamworlds Engineering, a complete report on the early beta spiders that had caused random injury among study participants. Quentin adds that document to the email he’s composing for his father. It will raise holy hell with the old man. But he’s gotta know!

Chapter 16 – Battle for Her Chastity

What Logan knows of computer software is that it’s arcane to the point of weird. From conversations with Hero, she understands that writing code is so exacting that even skilled engineers can overlook the implications of what they write. Hero laughed when he explained to Yuri that many avatar products and effects in the Dreamworlds online mall are developed by hobbyists who could not hold an honest job in software engineering. Many products therefore contain unexpected quirks and gaping back doors.

Logan is adept at memorizing lists of arcane things from her work. She has in her head perhaps three thousand product SKU codes from her Joy-Mart Garden Center. It keeps her eyes on her thieving customers, instead of staring dumbly at some computer screen. And DarkEternity reminded Yuri about the defensive commands in Hero’s mischief bracelet. Although she’s pissed at Hero beyond recognition, she took the caution seriously and memorized the list.

Walking ahead of SincerelySatan through dim catacombs, a prickle on her neck makes Yuri turn. Behind her, fierce eyes glare down. Though he still wears the laurel wreath, Satan has discarded his toga. His tattooed chest fills the narrow passage, blocking her escape. They walk on dank stone beneath the stage, music pulsing faint behind them. Yuri is cold in her thin toga, the hem drags wetly at her feet.

She recalls with a slutty thrill how SincerelySatan threw her against the wall of the derelict theater and held her there. But now, aware that SacredPetal is waiting, Yuri wonders how she let herself be spirited away. Her head pounds, and she remembers, way down inside an icky hidden part of herself the first time her dad forced her. She wants none of that now. Her man-crush for the evening is gone, all Nathaniel’s conditioning for the moment shattered.

Yuri wants to hold SacredPetal again, but in dark despair finds herself unable to port out. She can’t leave this place, it feels like Halcyon is crashing. Always, when you least need the aggravation, it drops all illusion and shows itself as the bug-riddled computer code it is. And now, Satan’s avatar dick blocks the dank corridor like a turnstile.

Yuri smiles for Satan in a way that does not involve her true feelings in the least. She refers to the list of commands from the mischief bracelet and speaks carefully.

“Dink Shrink 77,” Yuri says sweetly, grinning up at his blocky head.

“Agh!” Satan looks down in alarm. His formerly magnificent avatar weenie dangles limp. Yuri hopes this distraction hides her involuntary shudder as she brushes past his tattooed chest in the damp corridor. She’s cold, far from the lights, music and laughter. She cannot message anyone, Help! But Satan’s hard body no longer blocks her way to the exit.

“You’re not leaving,” he says in gravelly tones, struggling for composure.

“Junk Off 99,” says Yuri. Satan’s move to grab her arm is thwarted when his entire avatar package lets go of his avatar crotch and splatts wetly on cold stone at his feet. Yuri is pleased to see that Hero’s Junk Off command works fabbo as well.

“Argh!” He feels no pain, but bountiful amazement jolts SincerelySatan as he gropes for his missing identity. Yuri is happy to see him pawing his own crotch instead of some poor female’s. As she darts away along the corridor, he’s immobilized with shock. Seeing the clumsy explorations of his fingers, Yuri laughs.

“You’ll never enjoy being a girl until you get that right.”

Satan’s teeth bare in a rictus of feral anger. A low growl in his throat. “I’ll have your pelt yet, nature freak.”

Eyeing the mound of slack flesh on the wet concrete, Yuri says, “Pull yourself together, dude.” Legs flashing, she runs.

On the terrace, Logan forces her eyes open. She reclines in Beatrice’s pavilion beneath the big screen, looking up at Yuri’s mad dash from the catacombs. The sun is high, it’s full daylight and sticky hot on the rooftop. Beatrice is not here. Logan logs off and runs to the curtained biffy near the hot tub.

Head in hands parked in the private stall, her fingers encounter the Threshold spider. She examines the graceful pink form of it. Her mind feels dirty dull and her head aches. Logan washes her face hard with scented soap and leaves the enclosure.

Fitting the spider into its case, she stares at the screen. Many players remain in the Grecian Villa but SacredPetal and Connundra are not to be seen. DarkEternity has gone. Logan worries still, but the feeling is edged with relief at having again held her dearest friend. Relief, steeped in too many questions. Uncle Kevin! What truly happened to you?

She is gathering things into her floppy beach bag when Catherine Price enters. The woman hands her a takeout coffee. With a smile somewhat warmer than yesterday’s, she informs Logan that Vernon has the car downstairs, ready to take her back to New Jersey.

“Beatrice?”

Catherine shakes her head. “Poor baby. It was all too much. I gave her something for sleep. I’ll let her know you said goodbye.”

Catherine picks up Logan’s beach bag, drops in a spider’s jewel case and hands over the bag. “You don’t want to forget your Threshold.”

“Thought I had that already.”

Numbly, Logan Fischer lets herself be led through opulent galleries to the waiting car.

Chapter 17 – Skyping the Cops

Logan’s ride to New Jersey is quicker, this being Sunday morning. Sipping her coffee, she doesn’t notice, as they glide into sleepy Neptune City, that a dark SUV tails the polished limo. She’s idly curious when her ride passes the obvious turn into her neighborhood, and sits erect when they pull up in front of the Neptune police station.

The compartment door swings wide. Three tall men in suits stand at curbside.

“Hey! What is this?”

One of the suited dudes holds up a shield. Neptune City Police.

“Ms. Fischer, please step inside. Police in Arizona wish to speak with you privately by video conference.”

“Arizona? Am I being arrested?” Logan watches in bewilderment as the dark limousine pulls away.

“Absolutely not. You’ll be given a ride home after the interview.”

“Interview?”

“Please step inside with us, ma’am.”

As in the shadow of great trees, Logan walks between the men to a side door. In an anonymous hallway, one of them guides her to a small room where a woman in Sunday dress rises with a caring smile.

“Ms. Fischer, I am Stephanie Tolman of the Trauma Intervention Team. Please sit here, at my laptop.”

With a nod, the woman dismisses the plainclothes officer. The heavy door closes with a clack.

“Trauma intervention? Please tell me what is going on!” Feeling under-dressed in her hip hugger pants and backless top, Logan hurries to pull on her light wrap.

“I’ll be right here,” the woman says. “This is a confidential matter with a homicide team in Arizona.”

“Homicide! What…”

“Please be patient. They have all the information you’ll need.”

The laptop shows the unoccupied interior of a private office. After a few moments, uncomfortable with the silence, Logan turns to the woman.

“You were on your way to church,” she says.

“Honey, I was in church.” The woman gives her a frank smile.

“I’m so sorry if I caused this.”

“Not a problem, Ma’am. It’s what I do. Here they are now.”

On the laptop screen, a man in slacks and sport coat takes a seat at his desk. A younger man rolls a chair beside him. Logan has the impression of others unseen in the distant office.

“Good morning, Logan Fischer. I am Detective Edwin Scharples of Yavapai County, Arizona Sheriff’s Homicide. This is my son, Quentin Scharples. We’re talking to you from my office out here. Can you hear and see us alright?”

“Yes. Can you tell me what this is about?”

“Ms. Fischer, does the name Kevin Marsh mean anything to you?”

“Kevin? Of course. Why?”

“And to your knowledge would he live in space 56B of Dells View Park near Prescott, Arizona?”

A hard pit forms in Logan’s stomach. She nods.

“Ms. Fischer, please answer, we are recording this conversation.”

“Yes I know that Kevin Marsh. What happened?”

“Ms. Fischer, I have bad news. Mr. Marsh suffered a serious brain event seven days ago. He did not survive. I am very sorry for your loss.”

Feeling nothing, Logan stares dumbfounded at the small screen. Across 2000 miles, the men regard her with expressions of concern. The Tolman woman shifts a box of tissues closer to her elbow.

“This is not possible.” Her lip quavers.

A long pause on the video link.

“Why do you say it’s not possible?” the detective asks carefully.

“We. Just spoke. Earlier today.” Hand cupping her mouth, Logan summons the memory. Three hours ago she’d seen DarkEternity on the big screen in Beatrice’s rooftop terrace. She’s certain she was with Uncle Kevin. Although DarkEternity was upset about her being with Beatrice, the illusion that is Dreamworlds trumps her logic. He’s never tried to control me before. But he reminded me about Hero’s bracelet and that kept me safe.

“I apologize, Ms. Fischer. I’m afraid there has been some deception. It was unavoidable, for your safety…”

For Logan the moment spins surreal. It’s like those telephone answering systems announcing that your call will be recorded... for your protection. What do I do?

“We were speaking earlier,” Logan chokes out. “Early this morning.”

Detective Scharples takes a deep breath. On his face is a look of grim determination. He knows what this unsuspecting woman must now face, that the friend, lover and confidante she’d spoken to was a deceit. A lie to elicit information for the police. Scharples is very angry with Quentin, who sits alert at his elbow. At the same time he is as proud as a dad can be. In the space of a single night, Quentin has unearthed a mesh of key players in a potential mass cyberspace murder. Ordinary detective work could have taken weeks and possibly led nowhere. Many people could be killed in that time. But how to explain that to an unassuming woman who has just lost part of her world?

“Dad?” The young man at the detective’s side speaks. “Dad, perhaps I can explain this.”

“Ms. Fischer,” Scharples says, “this is my son, Quentin. He is attached to our department as a consultant in computer forensics. I believe his perspective will help.” Mouth in a firm line, the detective sits back.

“Call me Quentin, Ma’am.” The younger man scoots in to face her on the screen. “Several years ago I worked for Halcyon Dreamworlds in their IT department. This made me aware of how their code platform… their worlds, actually operate. Last Sunday afternoon, seven days ago, I was called to the scene of an unattended death. It was the home of Mr. Kevin Marsh.”

Logan’s vision brims. “Seven days… seven days!” Scharples and son watch with concern the play of emotion over the woman’s expressive features.

“Ms. Fischer, I know this must be hard for you,” the detective says. “Other than this morning, can you tell me when you and Mr. Marsh last spoke?”

“Sunday. A week ago. In the afternoon. He was…”

“That was strictly via Halcyon, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Was that a long session, or a short one?”

Logan thinks back. They’d talked and played through the afternoon.

“Maybe four hours.”

Quentin clears his throat. “In the last 24 hours, Ms. Fischer, did anyone give you something significant for Halcyon, something called Threshold, perhaps?”

“Yes. SacredPetal. She gave me a spider thing to wear on my head. It made my avatar into something miraculous.”

“What is SacredPetal’s real name?”

Logan is suddenly cautious. “No idea.” She sees herself lying, certain that soon the cops will too.

“Miraculous how, Ms. Fischer?”

“Lifelike. Totally. I felt everything in the scene. Smelled things. We all do. Whatever I touched, a chair, a person, I could feel it.” Logan stops herself. Where is this going?

“Do you by any chance have that headset with you?”

Without a word, Logan reaches into her beach bag and pulls out the slim black case. She flips it open and holds it up. Nestled inside is a gold starburst of seven graceful arms. Logan studies the delicate shape. Catherine gave me the wrong one. This is Beatrice’s. A New York driver’s license slips from the case. Logan conceals it.

“Ms. Fischer, we suspect those Threshold devices to be dangerous. We think that Mr. Marsh’s spider cap might have been responsible for his death.”

“Wait! How did he spend two hours with me this morning? Other people saw him too.”

Quentin clears his throat. “I assume you’re referring to the avatar DarkEternity, on Halcyon?”

“Yes.”

“Ms. Fischer,” Detective Scharples breaks in. “These are unusual circumstances. My department is of the opinion that, because of your friend’s untimely and tragic passing, Dreamworlds itself is a crime scene. We feel that someone connected with it may be instrumental in your friend’s death.”

Logan gets up from her chair. In the view of Scharples and his son in Arizona, the woman blurs from the screen, leaving a blank wall. Muffled commotion. The trauma intervention specialist leans into the shot.

“Ms. Fischer is taking a break. We’ll be back.”

When Tolman reaches the corridor, the only clue to Logan’s whereabouts is the echoed snick of an exit door. Outside in a back parking lot she finds Logan scrunched down small in a planting strip behind a large vehicle.

“Ma’am, please take your time. I’ll be nearby.” She places a box of tissues on the curb and steps out of sight.

In Arizona, Detective Scharples mutes his microphone and their discussion picks up where they left off.

“Dad, a court would never understand this. Think about the SEC in the Supreme Court. They ran rings around those judges with indecipherable crap. It’s like trying to arrest the IRS tax code. Machiavellian. And when you dumb it down enough, it means nothing. That’s why I had to move when the chance came. You always tell me second shots don’t come.”

Detective Scharples’ face is grim. “I’m not saying what you did was wrong, in the larger picture. I’m telling you I have to take the heat if this fucks up. Next time try asking first.”

“Look, Dad. That room went nuts when I entered with Dark’s avatar. Messages and chat invites. One from this Logan Fischer, using the Yuri avatar. That’s how I connected her to Marsh! Convos between DarkEternity and Yuri are all over his system. He’s got her phone and home address. They are very good friends. At least.”

The elder Scharples makes a ‘whatever’ gesture and looks away. He might be proud of his son’s effectiveness, but his ass could be in the wringer for going off protocol.

Quentin looks at his dad, tight-lipped. “One of Marsh’s friends is shipping him a new spider. I need to intercept that and test it.”

A meaty hand slams the desk. “Hell you do! They are obviously dangerous.”

“Dad, we haven’t proved that! I need to get closer to that world in there. Here’s what I think will work... ”

After twenty minutes, Logan again sits at Tolman’s laptop, facing the detective and his son in Arizona. Violet eyes glitter in her lined face and her voice is husked. Speared through by confirmation of her worst fear, she’d wept to near-exhaustion in the parking lot.

“Ms. Fischer,” Quentin begins. “I found your phone number on Mr. Marsh’s computer. May I have permission to call you about this case?”

“If you’re as nice as right now,” she whispers.

“This might seem strange, I’d also like to talk to you as DarkEternity.”

Logan sits up, angry. “That is sick.” Her stomach heaves. This conversation has already confirmed it was not Kevin this morning. He’s dead! She suspects it was this young man. She tries to recall exactly what she’d said. Nice as he seems, it feels as though her private world has been stripped bare by strangers. For your protection…

The men exchange a look. Seeing the damage in Logan’s face, Quentin’s heart thuds. It’s the worst result he could imagine, adding pain to someone’s loss.

“You’re right, of course. However I feel that posing as DarkEternity might draw out whoever wanted to kill him. If that’s indeed what happened it will confuse the attackers.”

“Attackers.” Repeating it, her face changes as she watches him across the miles. “Won’t that put you in danger?”

“No more than you,” Quentin says evenly.

Her mind works to reel that one in.

Detective Scharples has a question. “Ms. Fischer, you mentioned something that happened to DarkEternity at the end of your call a week ago. In your words I believe you said the avatar ‘went spazz.’ Can you elaborate on that?”

“It was voice chat. I didn’t have Threshold. She twitched a couple times, then stopped moving. There was some keyboard clutter. When she didn’t come back after a while, I sent her a note and logged off. I saved the chat.”

“Do you happen to know how Mr. Marsh obtained his Threshold cap?”

A shake of her head, she’s obviously exhausted. “No.”

“Is there anyone else, to your knowledge, who would have access to any facts around Threshold, or the death of Mr. Marsh?”

Logan, who’d threatened Hero with the cops, could hand him over on a plate right now. She sighs. Uncertain of his connection to any of this, she must talk to Hero, if she can forgive him for lying to her.

“Detective?”

“Yes?”

“I promised I would bury him. A special ceremony he wanted. In Sedona. I have to come…”

“Certainly. Umm… do you have anything in writing about that?”

“Some messages. A letter at my bank.”

“Do you know if there is any family?”

Logan, looking numbly into the screen, squeezes her eyes closed. Tears run. “Me,” she whispers. “He and I were the last ones left.”

Scharples, father and son, wear the same grim look. “You and Mr. Marsh are family?”

Logan’s mind searches. Before last week, she was an ordinary person living an ordinary life, with an interesting relative she visited in an unusual place. She sees there can be no way back. There’s only forward now, this is her beginning. She’s a bright-struck spark in a strange new world.

Eyes downcast, Logan Fischer whispers, “I have my own keys to his place out there. Kevin Marsh is my uncle.”

Raising her head, she looks directly at the men on the screen. “And if someone tried to hurt him, they have major payback coming. From me.”

Chapter 18 – Smudge his Ashes

“I know what it was,” Alan says to Sven in his Park Avenue playroom. He leaps energetically on his big bed. “The stupid ant blocked it.”

Posters of rock stars are thick along the walls. Model airplanes, painted fish, and phantasmagorical dragons hang by invisible filaments from the high ceiling, a fantasy world above their heads.

Alan nods, emphatically agreeing with himself. “I’m damn sure I didn’t miss.”

“Show me how you coded it.”

“No, you ‘tard, too complicated.”

Sven’s face takes on a pained expression but he says nothing.

Alan’s phone goes, the sound of fart noises. Alan does an athletic sit-out on the edge of the bed and grabs his phone. “It’s my coder guru, shut it. I’ll put him on speaker. Hey Gold.”

A reedy voice sounds in the room. “We are three deep encrypted. I have ten minutes. What’s up?”

“The DarkEternity ant came back. What screwed up?”

Silence on the other end of the phone. Alan’s Goldman Sachs guru grits his teeth. He’s never met this Verkrag kid, but he’s got to be young. And every inch a jerk.

“I triple checked everything before I sent you the package. I gave you a tested module. It was up to you to use it correctly.”

“Says you,” Alan scoffs. Although he’s only nine, he has no problem using his father’s ‘Fear of Zeus’ tactics on anyone. Anyone, except of course, his dad.

“I sent the signal when I saw her. Nothing freaking happened! Tried it twice. Have to do it again. Don’t care if it costs. What went wrong?”

“Nothing went wrong. The spider could have been defective, but the panic module was verified. Would you like to sample it?” Gold knows his erratic client won’t go near a Threshold spider.

“No!”

“I showed you the test scan. She should have yelled and killed her connection.”

Gold well understands that players experience feelings under Threshold from calculated brainwaves. But phony feelings are as convincing as real ones, and any coder with access to the Threshold simulator table can construct a module to produce the desired emotional or physical reaction in an avatar’s player. Alan, despite all of Gold’s patience, understands this dimly. The boy is interested in chasing his sister’s Dreamworlds friends away, not so much in productive effort on his part.

“I saw her last night, you dweeb. Hanging out with Sagbutt. Get ‘er done.” Alan ends the call and tosses the phone at his pillow. “Fracking ‘tard,” he confides to Sven. “Doesn’t know his ass.”

Bouncing on his bed, Alan repeats to Sven. “I want Sagbutt’s friends to get scared away. I want to watch them sproingggg off the walls and puke on her.” Alan laughs, oblivious to Sven’s shocked expression. “Did you see that fat little ant that slept with Beatrice in her tent?” Alan cackles, thinking of the photo he’d sent to Catherine Price with the order to Publish This!

Sven has given up telling Alan to cut it out. He’s been present for some of Gold’s speakerphone tutorials, and has learned more from those discussions than Alan himself. Sven has more than once found himself helping his odd little friend with Gold’s homework assignments.

Frightening girls because they’re friends with Beatrice doesn’t feel the least bit okay to Sven Larsson. He also thought Alan was way uncool, when in a towering rage he ordered Catherine to complain to the ant’s employer. Sven knows, because Beatrice had obtained a carton of Threshold spiders, that all Alan has to do is watch his sister’s parties.

For Alan, it’s so perfect. Dumb Sagbutt is happy to give out free spiders to her new friends. Status for her, a shooting gallery of girl-ants for Alan. His sacred mission is to exploit Gold’s panic droplet and make his sister totally friendless.

Sven turns to his laptop. Peering at a screen of code, he imagines building something to make everyone safe from Alan. Beatrice’s face shines angelic in his mind. For once in his life, Sven has a clear mission: he will construct a protective shield. For Beatrice, his secret love.

In her small office forty-three feet along the spotless marble hallway, Catherine Price is on her phone with the General Manager of the Neptune City, New Jersey, Joy-Mart store. She deeply regrets what she is forced to say. But Alan’s stepmother, Rebecca Sutton Verkrag, owns stock in the company.

An employee of that Joy-Mart store, Logan Fischer, rides with the trauma intervention specialist in a Neptune City patrol unit. Tolman gives the exhausted Logan a hug when they step out in front of her small rent-controlled row house. Eyes along the street that had seen her ride away yesterday in a huge black limo now see her come home in a cop car.

For Logan, the afternoon is a blur. She’s trying to book an afternoon flight out of Newark-Liberty that will get her into Phoenix at a reasonable time Monday evening. At the end of all that, there will be a two-hour drive to the high desert and her Uncle Kevin’s retirement community.

When Monday arrives, Logan’s mind is still on Sunday time, a whirling fog of expensive drugs, lovemaking and numbing grief. Her flight to Arizona will lift off at 1:20 p.m., which gives her room to stop by Joy-Mart for her annual review and make the airport in time for TSA to go through her one small bag.

But when she finds the store’s general manager in his office, she knows at once this is not routine. After the silver-haired Mr. Clement closes the door and sits behind his desk, Logan sees he’s not concerned with anyone’s performance review.

“We have a complaint. A complaint about a Joy-Mart employee on her days off.”

Logan looks at the usually friendly Clement, disbelieving.

“Would you like to tell me what that’s about? And how would my personal time off affect my work performance?”

“It’s a matter of moral turpitude,” Clement replies bitterly, shaming her with his tone. “The community behavior standards that American Business expects of all its workers.”

“Moral turpitude? Is someone accusing me of something?” Logan’s mind dashes over the weekend she’d spent in New York City. Surely, no one at Joy-Mart could know anything of what happened inside a palatial city apartment with the security of a Wall Street bank.

Mr. Clement flips open a folder on his desk. The name on the tab is Logan Fisher. He holds a small rectangle of glossy paper before him, regarding it with grim distaste.

“This photograph was sent to us by the mother of an 18-year-old girl who lives in New York City. A girl you visited over the weekend, without parental supervision.”

When Mr. Clement places the photo in front of Logan, her gut turns to liquid. Arms wrapped around her middle, she cries out. In the photo, arrayed among the cushions of a private nighttime seraglio, she and Beatrice dream in each other’s arms. Beatrice still wears her lilac colored top. Logan, voluptuous thigh across the girl’s bottom, is unclothed.

“Where did you get that?” Logan’s choked-off squeak echoes in the room. She clears her throat. “How? How did you get that?”

“This girl’s mother owns 20 percent of the company you work for,” Clement says with accusing eyes.

Logan’s mind races. Beatrice’s mother is away in Africa, according to Beatrice.

“And Joy-Mart is not blind to your carryings-on inside that Halcyon cess-pit.” Mr. Clement regards her as though she carries dangerous bacteria. “You used a personal laptop on the corporate Wi-Fi. Despicable.”

“There’s got to be some mistake,” Logan says, eyes riveted on the damning photographic evidence and too jolted at Clement’s mention of Halcyon to switch gears. “They could not have…”

But Clement cuts her off. “Ms. Fisher, it’s too late for that. I have your final check made up. Please sign this paper.”

Mr. Clement hands Logan a standard severance agreement. It lists the claims of the store, quotes a paragraph from the Joy-Mart Employee Handbook, and provides a place for her to sign. She’ll get no severance, no work reference. One final check for last week’s work, plus 11 personal days. Her rent is due on Friday.

“Mr. Clement, please don’t terminate me. I know what this looks like, but someone must have… Photoshopped us. Or something. My friend is 21, I saw her ID. And her personal secretary was present.”

“Nothing I can do now, Logan. My hands are tied. You can file a grievance with Human Resources if you want to. But in the face of this evidence I would advise you to let it go.”

“Work reference?” Logan’s voice breaks. She cannot form a complete sentence.

Mr. Clement shakes his head. “You’ll be better off asking for an employer’s statement of time on the job.” He nods as though agreeing with himself, and hands Logan a sealed white envelope. He stands with a weary expression and offers a handshake of only fingers.

Logan stumbles from the office, gutted.

All the low-paid long hours she’s put in, three years of care and attention to her staff and to her duties, all of that stacks up as nothing against this vengeful sabotage. Her mind sorts through the possibilities. Could Beatrice have done this?

The Joy-Mart crowds shimmer in her vision as Logan finds her unsteady way to the waiting cab. Within her is a powerful urge to go home and log on, try to connect with Beatrice. But her schedule is fixed. Her next opportunity to get on Dreamworlds won’t come until she’s in Arizona, at her uncle’s place.

Logan’s cross-country flight is cramped and bumpy, and it takes a long time to discourage her seat-mate from talking at her. It’s late afternoon when she finishes the two-hour drive from Phoenix to her uncle’s mobile home park amid tall boulders. She’s fitting her key into his singlewide’s front door when a low voice speaks her name.

“Ms. Fisher?”

Logan turns. The young man is tall, with a full head of dark hair and a pleasant smile. She recognizes him from the Skype conversation yesterday afternoon. The detective’s son. That meeting seems to Logan an eternity ago.

“Quentin?”

The smile deepens, he extends a hand. “Yes, Ms. Fisher. Quentin Scharples, at your service.”

“I’m just arriving,” Logan says, voice heavy with fatigue.

“I know you’ve had a long trip. I wanted to meet face-to-face for a second.”

“Thank you, Quentin. Phone me tomorrow.”

“Also, I brought this.” Quentin holds a crematory urn. Numbly, Logan takes it in both hands, surprised at the lightness. The tall young man steps back respectfully as she goes inside.

Logan is not surprised at how neat the place is. It even smells fresh. She’s always known Uncle Kevin as tidy, but this small room with its fancy curved video monitor hovering above a literal command capsule takes her breath away. The installation is more finished than the last time she was here. Nice artwork on the wall, a collection of Southwest pottery. This is where her dear uncle had been, all those times they were together on Halcyon. All the times they had talked on the phone, exchanged emails and texts, he’d been right here, in this very lounger. Now he is forever gone.

She sits on a corner of his recliner, holding the crematory urn. She twists the lid free. Inside, a clear plastic bag with powdery white shards. She stirs it with a finger. The small flakes are hard and sharp. All there is of Kevin Marsh has been reduced to this little sack of powder.

Welcome home, Uncle Kevin.

Fingertip dusted white, holding the ceramic jar in both hands, Logan recalls what she’d always promised him. A private scattering in Sedona, his favorite energy vortex there. A special ritual when first she receives his ashes. Which is now.

From her carry-on, Logan retrieves a short beeswax candle wrapped in red ribbon. A small brass coin dangles, stamped with the I Ching symbol for Kwei Mei, ‘A young lady is going home.’ Beside the candle she places a delicate ceramic bowl, and in it a small bundle of fragrant sage. Logan wishes for a long wooden match to light the sage, but must make do with a plastic lighter. The beeswax candle catches flame with steady yellow. The sage ignites, a puff of fragrant white smoke spirals upward.

Logan knows that in the spirit world, intention means everything. Her purpose is to help her uncle begin his journey, even though he’s been dead more than a week. She closes her eyes, inviting peace and harmony into the space, concentrating with full resolve on her love for him and compassion for his journey. As she sits quietly in the evening stillness, the room becomes dense with scented smoke.

A sound from the entertainment system fills the room, a melodic whoosh as of electricity seeking the heavens. Logan opens her eyes. On the wall screen appears a Dreamworlds scene familiar to her, a wild forested world in which Yuri and her uncle’s avatar often played. And DarkEternity stands there now before a thundering waterfall, looking directly at Logan. Uncle Kevin’s computer system has launched itself into Halcyon Dreamworlds.

“Logan, log yourself on.” A rich feminine voice calls to her through the audio system. “I’ve been waiting to talk to you.”

On the bright display, a familiar avatar stands with flowing dark hair in chic stretch pants and a Toreador top, as though prepared for the bullring.

Logan cannot move. She cannot think. Hadn’t she just touched the old man’s ashes in his urn? Yes, she had. Then how can his voice from the speakers sound alive? On the screen, DarkEternity speaks again.

“Yes, girl, it’s a shock to me too, finding out I’m kaput. So pull up your socks and let’s sort this out.”

DarkEternity puts a fist on one cocked hip, a pose Logan has seen many times. It makes her want to smile. She zips open her suitcase to find her laptop, then decides all she needs is her Threshold spider, she can log on using Kevin’s system, if she can figure out how to work it. Her mind mazed, she opens the black case, puzzling at an empty rectangular hollow beside the golden spider’s graceful contour. Logan glances disbelieving at the beloved and so-familiar avatar on the curving screen.

The spider in place on her head, Logan wonders if it will work, since it’s not hers but Beatrice’s. She takes Kevin’s keyboard and sits on the edge of the lounge chair, his blast couch, as he’d often called it. She types in her avatar name, Yuri, and her password. She sits back as her avatar takes form in the exotic scene, still wearing the Grecian toga from SacredPetal’s party, standing beside DarkEternity. Immediately, the blond-haired female darts away, stops and looks back. Logan gapes in amazement that Threshold has so expressed how she feels.

“Nikki? How can that be you? If it’s you again, Quentin, you’re on my shit list for a very long time.”

DarkEternity turns to watch Yuri run. “It is me, and it isn’t me, Sugarplum. Oh, you’ve got Threshold now. Who’s Quentin?”

“Well that sounds like you, Nikki. Talking nonsense all the damn time.”

Dark’s slender arms pump above her coiffured head.

“Yes! You catch on quick for a live girl.”

“Uncle Kevin, you’re not telling me…”

“Sorry to be the one to break the news to you, Muffin, but I’ve become extinct.”

Logan shakes her head. In the waterfall scene, clear and sharp as a Synthevision nature show, Yuri does the same. Then she laughs. Can’t help it. Nikki’s line is like the many macabre things her computer scientist uncle used to say.

SincerelySatan wants to chat with Yuri

With a groan, Logan dismisses the abrupt invite, and while she’s at it, unlocks HeroKamasutra.

DarkEternity does a pirouette. “Pull up a mushroom, or a cloud, or whatever you woodland fairies sit on, and listen for a minute.”

Yuri remembers. Nikki likes her enchanted fairy guise. Numbly, she changes to her winged fairy outfit, with powder-purple shoots of a flowering plant that wrap her smooth limbs and provide modesty where needed.

“Now you look like yourself,” DarkEternity says with satisfaction.

Yuri nods vacantly, mind awash in the illusion of finding her uncle after that horrifying session with the cops. The dark-haired one turns to her.

“So here’s what’s up. DarkEternity, who you see before you, is now under the care of a cognitive computer. You might prefer neural network, or artificial intelligence. Kevin designed and wrote me, line by line.”

“Wait. Wait. You’re not real? You’re not my Uncle Kevin?” The illusion of Dreamworlds rolls over Yuri’s logic.

DarkEternity’s face reflects sadness. “Yuri, no, I am not your uncle. He made me.”

Yuri takes another step back. “This is way weird. You mean you’re some sort of thing? A robot?”

“You can think of me as Kevin’s best attempt at looking out for you.”

Yuri is profoundly speechless. This avatar looks exactly like her uncle’s, and now that she’s wearing Threshold, the entire world around them is as real as can be. She could totally live here. And she can’t stop her mouth from hanging open as DarkEternity continues.

“There’s a library of 30,000 topics about which I can bloviate in depth. There’s a file on each of the 1,614 people with whom Nikki has interacted, some wetly, in the Dreamworlds. I’ve got the latest skinny on the most diabolic world takeover plot you’ve imagined in your darkest paranoia.”

“Kevin Marsh!” It’s Logan’s time-worn signal that she’s heard enough of his insane ravings.

“I’m offended, Yuri, really. This is dead straight.”

“You’re feeding me my own recurring nightmare.”

“Which one? Your paranoid insanity of a global machine grinding you to chowder?”

Logan sits back in the large chair. It remembers. It’s her Uncle Kevin in avatar form, Nikki, that’s who it is. On the curved screen, Yuri turns to DarkEternity and lunges in for a fierce hug. The Threshold spider on Logan’s head brings her every sensation, the warmth of Dark’s breast, the slender arms that embrace her, the heartbeat within her chest. Beatrice’s spider works for her just fine. For the first time, Logan can inhale Nikki’s female scent.

And then Yuri is sobbing, face hot against DarkEternity’s shoulder. For a few moments she is no more than a puddle. And Yuri knows what Logan knows, subsumed by the illusion of Halcyon Dreamworlds under the techy magic of a Threshold spider.

DarkEternity, controlled by a logical simulation of intelligence that has no feelings, does understand what feelings mean to humans. An unrushed DarkEternity, driven by Kevin Marsh’s carefully-built cognitive network, consoles the grieving Yuri. The artificial construct of terabytes of data and logic trees gives Logan the time she needs as a stressed-out human person to assimilate the painful reality of her loss and fathom this unreal pseudo-life inside a computer.

“Dammit, Nikki. Why’d you let them do this?” Yuri’s face is wet.

“Not paying attention would be my guess. But look, I have two questions. How did Kevin die and how long has it been?”

Yuri eases away but does not let go, looking into Nikki’s liquid eyes. It’s her!

“The cops said it was a brain event,” Yuri says, wiping her cheeks. “Sitting in your chair, right here in your place. A week ago yesterday, mid-afternoon. You and I were talking.”

“Oh my. What did I do?”

“Not so much. Little ack-ack sounds. You flopped around some and stopped moving. I waited, then sent you a note and logged off.” Yuri’s head spins. To her, this whole thing is flat-out unreal.

“Wow. I’m sorry you had to see that. Hope I didn’t piddle the chair.”

Logan twists in the lounger to look behind her.

“It was weird, but you know how Dreamworlds crashes sometimes. I didn’t worry until the next day.”

“Eight days. Not bad. Did anyone else say anything?”

“No, we were alone.”

“Well, I was also at SacredPetal’s party. Hope I didn’t stink up the place.”

Yuri shakes her head, no. “They found you the same afternoon. Some alarm went off, they said. But it was a miracle they connected us. Then I was in a chat with you night before last. You were upset I was with SacredPetal.”

“You know SacredPetal too?”

“Yes. Saturday night, you were in that room with all of us, you saw her too. Then yesterday I was on my way back from New York in Beatrice’s stretch, and it stops in front of the Neptune cop shop. I go inside and Skype with these two Arizona detective dudes. They’re handling the case of you being found dead in your trailer park.”

“Over 55 mobile home community. If you please.”

“Whatever.” Parked in Uncle Kevin’s lounger, watching the wide screen in disbelief, Logan smiles and takes a deep breath. She takes odd reassurance that it’s her uncle, but warns herself not to believe that too much.

“They told me there is reason to think your spider killed you. Your Threshold thing.”

“Damn. We always knew there was a chance of that. But you said we were in a chat early yesterday. Wasn’t me. Kevin was dead then and my neural net didn’t launch until you lit the smudge.”

“How did that work, by the way?”

“Smoke detector.”

“Ah.” Logan nods. Yuri in the scene mimics the gesture. She is still hanging onto DarkEternity, studying her face up close. “Well it was your avatar. But I think one of the cops was running it.”

“Possible. What did it say?”

“Acted all hurt I was with SacredPetal. Wasn’t like you at all.”

“Childish. What else?”

An incoming message gets Logan’s attention.

Qship to Yuri: Ms. Fischer, I see you are on. May I speak with you? - Quentin Scharples

Logan sits up straight. On the screen, Yuri in her fairy getup comes alert.

“The cop’s son is calling me. I need you to talk to him, he knows things.”

Logan invites Qship to the forest world. In moments, he rezzes in, looking reasonably like the real-life Quentin. But his is not the hyper-perfect human form like Yuri and DarkEternity. At home in his computer lab, Quentin wears no Threshold spider.

“Thanks for the invite, Yuri.” Qship looks from Yuri to DarkEternity. “I see an interesting question on the table.”

DarkEternity turns to him. “Said interesting question being, who’s running me?”

“You have me there, Sir.” Staring at their three avatars in the waterfall scene, Quentin’s senses reel. Yuri and DarkEternity are the most glorious females he could imagine. Beside them, his own avatar looks no better than a sketch.

“It’s cognitive computing,” DarkEternity says. “Kevin Marsh wrote it, now this is his only available facsimile. Call me Nikki. You’re with the cops? Yuri says something possibly killed me at home, eight days ago.”

Qship on the screen raises his arm in a fist-pump. “You are AI? Totally hot. But you can’t be wearing a spider, so how did you get a hi-def avatar?”

“He’s quick, Yuri, I’ll give you that. A spider signature to Dreamworlds is easy to fake. I do that, and Halcyon sends back the sensory data calculated from the 3D world model. As a neural net, I don’t feel it, but I know what it would mean to a human. I can burst into tears or laugh given the right data. If I choose to respond.”

“I have a confession,” Qship says. “Two nights ago I signed in as DarkEternity for a couple hours. It was important for our investigation into Kevin’s death, and I apologize. The advantage might be, if there is a killer, that seeing DarkEternity could force ‘em into a mistake.”

Dark nods, glancing at Yuri who is eye-tracking from one to the other as at a tennis match.

“Don’t sweat it. I began doing that the instant Yuri axed me up. I have duplicates among the worlds even now, cajoling Nikki’s friends about Kevin’s trip hunting arrowheads. My cover story is what you told Logan, keep it consistent.”

“Lightning strike?”

“A bolt out of the blue. But a spider attack now won’t affect my network, it’ll only be data. No brain, no pain.”

On the big screen, Qship nods energetically, hair standing up with fiery ends for emphasis. “Yes! And if someone takes a kill shot at you, you could capture that data and we could code a shield to keep everyone safe.”

“Did Yuri call you Quentin? There was a Quentin worked for Halcyon, the year I retired.”

Qship nods, hair flashing emerald. “I was there that year. I used to cruise your office and wonder what you were thinking.”

“Not too much if I wound up like this.”

“Cut it out, Uncle K.” Yuri says. “You were there seventeen years. You did lots of stuff.”

“He did, Yuri. I read some of your work, Mr. Marsh...”

“Nikki.”

“Sure,” Quentin says. “You developed a description language for incoming sensoria that could be sent at theta frequencies over wireless, to make a human brain think it’s experiencing a real world environment.”

“Guilty. What did you do there?”

“I scraped database code for bugs. Three months. I figured out the avatar models and had a look at the codebase.”

“But how did you get involved with Logan?”

“My dad is Edwin Scharples, Sheriff’s homicide here in Yavapai County. Kevin’s neighbors heard a loud alarm and called the cops. When dad saw your home setup he called me. I imaged your drive and took it back to my secret laboratory.” Qship mimes the classic mad scientist, rubbing his palms together in evil glee.

DarkEternity grins at Yuri. “Logan, you need to make special friends with this guy. He’s already got all your secrets.”

“Oh, shut it!”

Qship and DarkEternity launch into a rapid-fire discussion about computer stuff that leaves Logan high and dry. She tries to locate SacredPetal online, does not find her. Considers sending a note, or calling. Thinks better of it. If that girl cost me my job, she’s too hot to handle.

With half her attention, Logan listens to Nikki and Qship explaining to one another how Threshold delivers sense impressions to the player’s brain. Logan wants to ask if the people sending that info are friendly. For a TV channel piped right into your cerebellum, she reasons, you would want that.

“But wait,” Yuri says. “Aren’t some spiders broken? Send too much voltage or whatever?”

“That’s a possibility,” says DarkEternity. “Kevin’s death could have been an accident. Or murder.”

“Hasn’t been proven either way,” Qship says. DarkEternity twirls exquisitely in a ballet run. Offshore in sparkling blue waves, whales breach. In the Dreamworlds waterfall scene, Qship sits on a half-buried log. There are other things Quentin wants to discuss with the electronic ghost of Kevin Marsh.

“Nikki, when Dad and I came to Kevin’s place, there was this pink spider doodad on his head. What was that?”

DarkEternity flashes red all over, transforms herself into a perky ceramic garden gnome at Qship’s feet.

“That is officially Threshold, the coolest human-computer interface yet designed. It allows the player to forget about the mouse and keyboard, concentrate on the screen, and immerse themselves in the sensory illusion.”

“Does it give your avatars this look?”

“That, and the sensations of touch, smell and taste are all reasons people would pay the price.”

“You’ve been retired from Halcyon for two years. How did you get one?”

“Kevin’s Threshold arrived by mail. The letter said it was part of a market survey, only about 100 people involved. Every now and then I’d get email asking a few questions, but I’m sure they were also able to watch my activities. Kevin found the realism incredible.”

“Yeah. As I was looking over your system, I found recorded chat sessions. Some of them had a 33-channel digital signal. I couldn’t interpret it. Was that for the spider?”

“That’s right. Those channels carry the Theta-frequency sensory data. But I always had a suspicion about Threshold. The worlds it delivers are made of data. Data calculated from 3D vector models. So, if they can deliver a convincing world, why not a fake world that’s not even there? Hallucinations? Why not propaganda? Lies? Psychological conditioning or madness! What I’m saying is, the wrong kind of people could control any player who signs in with Threshold.”

“Are you still afraid of that?”

“I left the company over two years ago, so my direct knowledge is out of date. I have to get down to why Kevin died. He was wearing the spider. And yes, it’s a concern.”

Qship scratches his head, deep in thought. The garden gnome’s snaky tongue shoots out and apprehends a hapless bug in peaceful flight through sun-shafted air.

Exhausted from the last 48 hours of party max and little sleep, Logan clambers from the big chair. On the screen, the garden gnome and Qship gesticulate as they continue their conversation. Logan gets a cold juice from the kitchen. Her head spins, looking around the place. I get to pack all of this up. Oh, whoopee.

On one side, she is grieving the loss of her last family elder and closest living relative. On the other, she’s consoled that she can talk to DarkEternity whenever she wants. Cognitive computers never sleep.

But how real will that be?

Settling back in the blast couch under Beatrice’s golden spider, Logan gets comfortable. Abruptly there arrives a chat invite, pasted over the waterfall scene where Qship and DarkEternity carry on.

SincerelySatan wants to talk with Yuri

Logan ignores it. She finds the chair’s button box and tilts herself horizontal, knowing the last hands to do this were her Uncle Kevin’s. How drained she feels... tired, grieving, sabotaged and betrayed, fired from her job and alone in the world. Staring dully at electronic figments on the big screen, she crosses her arms over her chest.

“Guys I’m taking a nap,” she says, not caring if they actually hear. She turns the volume down, closes her eyes, and hears nothing for a long time.

Chapter 19 – Sixty Million Dreamers

Nathaniel’s electronic ID bracelet admits him to Verkrag’s hushed top-floor office. The man himself is not in view, but Nathaniel hears a Dreamworlds effects track from behind the velvet curtain.

“We have only two hours until the board meeting,” Verkrag calls out from his sanctum. “Lyon’s deadline. Are we prepared?”

“I’ve shut Lyon down,” Nathaniel says, standing outside the drapery. He’s happy that Verkrag won’t have to listen to that yapping MacDougal, with his cockamamie rumors.

The curtain parts and Verkrag emerges, perfectly attired in his three-piece Valentino Newman, blinking in daylight. Through a gap in the curtain, Nathaniel glimpses a moonlit lake on the large screen, and notes with satisfaction that the golden spider clings amid Verkrag’s thinning hair. It’s best if players wear Threshold all the time. Verkrag eyes Nathaniel.

“How did you manage that? Did the board withdraw its motion?”

Nathaniel shakes his head. “They haven’t filed anything. Likely a bluff.” That answer is fine for Verkrag’s consumption, and he needn’t mention that he’s had the Halcyon board under Threshold six days running. With his scripts lulling their lurid playtime, he expects no further challenges from those directors.

Verkrag takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. “Alright, then. When are we shipping Threshold en masse?”

“Threshold has been going out four days now.” Nathaniel nods like it’s understood. Verkrag frowns.

“Why wasn’t I informed?”

“You had other priorities,” Nathaniel says with a respectful tilt of his head. “And the Arizona evaluation convinced me we’re prepared to go ahead.”

Verkrag cocks his head as though he’d missed something. “Arizona? What test is that?”

“We went over that weeks ago,” Nathaniel says with a look of impatience. “The two thousand beta spiders. Preliminary test of your scripts.”

“No idea what you’re talking about.” The man strokes his forehead as though soothing a headache. To Nathaniel, Verkrag appears disoriented.

“Too many details in your life,” says the Chief of Security. “I was happy to handle that for you.”

“I don’t recall. What happened in this test?”

“We saw positive responses to your persuasion scripts. Enough to tell me they’re ready for prime time.”

“Remind me what’s on those scripts.”

“Ah. The most telling will be ticket sales to the film in that area. I’ve suggested they see Quest for the Sacred Chalice five times. It mashed weekend box office. We await local figures.”

“Excellent, excellent. And Threshold? What’s our progress?”

“In approximately five days, every registered player will have a Threshold interface.”

“Superb. How is player adoption?”

“Good question. My team and I watch closely. By late afternoon each day, players join by the thousands every minute. Our rack rooms bring additional Dreamworlds simulators online to satisfy the Internet load spike. Our login count is up sharply, over 36 million yesterday. A week ago it was less than four million. Players remain online for much longer periods, and they’re spending more.”

“I had a message from someone on our board. MacDougal. He spoke of 93 deaths the last few days.” Verkrag’s face takes on a strained look. “Nathaniel, can this be verified?”

“Too early to tell. We found one utility company trying to deflect problems with their smart meters. Our lawyers have filed suit.”

“Issue a statement. Put them off. Do you think these rumors will slow adoption?”

“A statement would be most astute, Sir. We’ll make the case that any deaths are likely the result of epileptic fits or user error. Halcyon is protected on this issue by legal wording in its Terms of Eternal Servitude Agreement. Any opportunist whistle-blowers will face damage lawsuits.”

Nathaniel’s phone makes a faint warbling sound.

“Yes, Jamal… almost there… give me five.”

Turning to Verkrag, he says, “That was a progress report on storyworld sales. Avatar dolls, Dreamworlds products, toy spiders for kids. Quite satisfactory. David, I have a meeting. Will there be anything else?”

“No. So if you’ll excuse me…” Verkrag turns to the curtained alcove where awaits his exotic and elusive goddess. She has ignored his many invitations.

Nathaniel hurries to the elevator and out to the curb. In the waiting zone stands a black van with tinted windows. It reminds Nathaniel of Secret Service spook rides. The door opens and he climbs in.

“I feel like such a two-face, telling him…” Nathaniel stops.

Jamal in the driver’s seat faces him with a solemn expression and a finger across his lips. Jamal’s ride is a specially outfitted van that he can board and drive himself, with the help of lifts and pre-fitted brackets for his motorized wheelchair. Using the hand controls, which he created from aftermarket game controllers, Jamal drives a complicated route, picking up Madison Avenue and making his way into Central Park. He eases into a handicapped space near the zoo.

Jamal swivels the seat to face his passenger, flips a switch on the console. The compartment fills with a susurrating background hiss. Jamal holds out a box made of bright, rippled copper.

“Your electronics,” he says in a whisper that’s nearly swallowed by the sonic field.

Nathaniel’s eyebrows rise, and without a word he puts into the box his phone and ID bracelet, his Rolex, a thumb drive. Jamal snaps the lid down.

“Okay,” he says. “We are soundproof and snoop-proof. But we need to keep it short.”

Nathaniel opens his mouth to speak, but Jamal gets there first.

“That dance we were at. SacredPetal’s toga party?”

“Saw you. I was minding the kids.”

“I was pissed to find Yuri there.” Jamal’s look is hard.

“Know her?”

“We’re tight in real.”

“Damn. Had no idea.”

“This is one more case of you holding out on me,” Jamal hisses through clenched teeth. “That in itself is dangerous. Dude.”

“Don’t forget, I hired you,” Nathaniel says with irritation.

Jamal doesn’t waver from his topic. “How does she come to be around Verkrag? Dancing with him! That dude is dangerous.” Jamal’s jealousy is nearly palpable in the quiet space.

Nathaniel nods with a glum expression. “I happened to find Yuri cozy with Verkrag’s avatar, SincerelySatan. I took advantage of that. I’m making her his main attraction.”

“Shit and damn, Nathaniel!” Jamal’s voice pierces the concealing sound field. More quietly, he says, “This looks worse all the time. When I say we’re tight... I need for you to get her out of there!”

“Damn, Jamal. I needed a focus for him. She was there. I’ve worked too many weeks now.”

“Her name’s Logan,” Jamal says acidly, eyes hard. “She’s addicted enough without help from you.”

Nathaniel sees there’s a history, but rationalizes there are innocent casualties in any war. Collateral damage.

“Verkrag’s daughter invited her in real. She was with Beatrice for Greek night.”

“Holy Hell,” Jamal says under his breath. “At Verkrag’s apartment? I’m sure you had nothing to do with all that.”

“Please don’t be sarcastic. That I did not anticipate. I’ll do everything I can to…”

“So, Tuxedo Man, did you start Verkrag’s scripts?”

Nathaniel nods, relieved at the change of topic.

“The Verkrag scripts are running now.”

“What results?”

“It takes a while to move a country. Ask me next week. But the Arizona beta trial could be promising.”

“Such as?”

“I’m expecting a fivefold surge in theater viewings in that area.”

“How many spiders you got out?”

“My liaison says over 45 million have been shipped. And new players are coming in. The embedded membership campaign.”

Jamal grits his teeth. “This is some scary shit. How did Logan get her spider? She’s nowhere near Arizona.”

“Beatrice hands them to her friends. Saturday night Logan was…”

Jamal’s scowls. “Yah, did you know they were getting together?”

“Catherine mentioned a sleepover. I didn’t connect it.”

Jamal winces. “So you are conditioning Beatrice to have affection for Logan?”

Nathaniel nods solemnly. “I am.”

“Good grief. And when you turn it off, then what?”

“Hard to say. When it stops, Beatrice might cool. Depends on how long she receives the suggestion. It could become real for her. Or she might wonder why she’s with a woman her mom’s age. She’ll blame her father.”

“When do we change Verkrag’s messages for what we talked about? You’re not letting his shit hook up, are you?”

“I need to be cautious,” Nathaniel says, wanting to avoid the issue. “But soon.”

“Hell, Man! It’s time for the real article. If you’re going to be all chicken shit about it, let me in there!”

Nathaniel gives him half a smile. “What would you do?”

“Social training,” Jamal says confidently. “Help people be better informed as citizens. Let them recognize how the elites grab power, and be informed enough to do something about it.”

“Such as?”

“Change the culture. With the scripts I can teach everyone to argue against corporations being seen as people under the law. I have a package that includes fully indexed, cross-referenced arguments about personhood of non-human entities. Anyone will be able to rap that in city council meetings, bars, board meetings and banks. Get the populace activated. This is not to mention our persuasions as to voting habits, and…”

Jamal goes on but Nathaniel has stopped listening. He needs to get back. He has further plans for SincerelySatan’s favorite girl.

Chapter 20 – Joys of Mental Illness

In her dream, someone is knocking on the pipes. The rapping becomes insistent. Logan’s mind gropes for reality, and when her eyes open she’s ragdoll-limp in Uncle Kevin’s recliner. Her mouth feels like leather.

Through exhausted slumbers she’s dreamed the wildest things. That she, Logan Fischer, totally belongs in a lush Park Avenue flat, in command of maids, butlers and chauffeurs with armor-plated stretch limos. The world belongs to her. Everything’s perfect.

The clanging continues, Logan turns her head.

She’s not at home on Park Avenue, the sound is the front door of Kevin’s singlewide in Arizona. She clambers from the recliner and tosses her golden spider to the desk. She peers out in the feeble porch light.

“Quentin? I totally nodded. Come in.” As he steps past her through the door, Logan sees how tall he is.

“If a neural net can be worried, Kevin’s sure is.” He runs long fingers through his hair. “You were out over nine hours.”

“I was conked. Thought I turned the sound off. I must’ve been hearing you guys through the spider.”

Quentin cocks his head at her. A small woman, on the cute side of plumpish, curly blond hair in her eyes. He sees the play of emotions across her face as her mind comes awake. Despair and grief about her uncle. Fatigue from her trip. Her stunning experiences with Threshold. Two unusual new friends.

“Come out to breakfast,” Quentin says.

“What time is it?”

“Four-thirty in the morning. The sun is up in New Jersey and so are you. Let’s go.”

“Gotta wash my face.”

“Sure.”

“Make yourself comfortable.” Logan closes the bathroom door.

The hot washcloth is heaven on her skin, so she runs a steaming tub. She’s not 100% surprised to find that Uncle Kevin has bubble bath, among other floral-scented bars and liquids. Sliding down in warm suds, she lets her mind meander back over their journey.

Discovering one another on Dreamworlds after her hard divorce five years ago was a cracking good surprise. Logan smiles at how they’d laughed every time they saw one another after that chance encounter. As her real-life uncle, Kevin Marsh had been her rock from age 14 on. Every time he came to visit, the two of them would go out in his car and have adventures. Logan wanted to see a chicken ranch and ride a horse. They did such things together. It was the safest Logan felt in that period of her life.

Logan’s relationship to Kevin went through an adjustment, beginning the first time he appeared on Dreamworlds in a woman’s avatar saying, “Call me Nikki.” Later, he showed up in a sharp pantsuit, with feminine accessories and long hair. Logan can still remember how the new and improved Nikki explained it.

“It’s a medical fact that some people are born with gender identity that doesn’t match their physical identity. Some people find doctors with scalpels to correct that. Me, I found it enough to play on Halcyon, where I can look like a woman and act like one, and for those moments feel as I was supposed to.”

Logan, though she enjoyed being married, had carried beneath her calm exterior a lifetime interest in those of her own gender. Womanly even as a girl, her abundant presence was a quiet pool that others could willingly fall into. And against the better judgment of them both, that’s what Logan’s uncle did. As DarkEternity in the Dreamworlds, Nikki fell in love with Yuri, woman to woman. The raw honesty and madcap hilarity of that adventure led each of them into the very depths of the other. They became inseparable, two parts of a whole. Hands pressed to her cheeks, Logan cannot fathom the thing now most true. Half of her is gone.

She comes out of the bedroom in jeans, a plaid rodeo shirt from Kevin’s closet knotted at her waist. Unwrapping the towel from her head, she plops on the couch to brush her hair. Quentin looks up from the copy of Wired Magazine he’s reading.

“Let me do that.”

Logan blinks. “You can’t be serious.”

Quentin gives her an easy smile, extends an upraised hand. Fixing him with a quizzical stare, Logan drops the hairbrush into his palm.

“Sit in front of me,” he tells her. “On the floor.”

Leaning back against his knees, Logan allows her eyes to fall closed. Only college roommates had brushed her hair, since her mom did at home.

“Let me guess,” Logan says. “You have a sister.”

“I have a mom who found out she could save a ton if I trimmed her hair now and then. It violated all the child labor laws.”

Quentin’s work is sure and effective. Logan, relaxed nearly enough to snooze again, is disappointed when the delightful tugging stops.

“Go look,” he says.

When Logan comes back she smiles gratefully at him. With hair brushed out of her eyes she looks younger. They are silent on the drive through breathless dawn as the eastern sky awakens, pink-edged jagged mountains. The two pull off in front of a small café on Highway 69 where the cashier has just turned on the Open sign. A couple of workers say hi when Quentin walks in. With life-giving coffee in front of her, Logan takes a deep breath and says what she has to say.

“There are two things I want to do. Bury my uncle with the honor he deserved. He was a vet, you know? And then go home so I can start looking for another job.”

Quentin looks at her sharply. “You have a job! What the hell happened?”

“Sabotage,” Logan says angrily. “Fricking sabotage. Either somebody at my work, or someone connected with that rich bitch I met.”

“Which rich bitch?”

Logan fills him in about SacredPetal and SincerelySatan. About the Park Avenue apartment whose net worth is more than many African countries.

“You think your girlfriend…?”

Logan shakes her head, closing her eyes to hold everything out. Beatrice is not her girlfriend, certainly not, but there’s a yawning hunger the girl’s absence now reveals. “Dammit, I don’t know. So much going on it’s too confusing. I just want to go home.” She stares a hole in her Danish waffle.

“Dad and I were talking,” Quentin says. “It turns out that you as Yuri could really help us take this investigation to the next…”

Logan grits her teeth. “The answer is absolutely not. That stupid party world took my uncle, my potential new girlfriend. It took my job.” Her eyes bore into him. “Not that I don’t appreciate what you did. You took a chance, maybe even with your life, to get in there and find out what happened to Uncle Kevin. You think someone tried to hurt him but you have no idea who.”

“Or why.”

“And it doesn’t matter. It’s over. For me, this is done.” Glinted sunlight from a passing windshield ignites her eyes as she speaks these words.

Quentin, stirring another spoonful of sugar into his coffee, regards Logan thoughtfully. “I hear you, and you’re absolutely right. You know what’s best for you and you need to follow that. But stuff that Kevin and I talked about… It’s not enough that Dreamworlds with Threshold can serve up a completely realistic experience. They only stand to make a vast fortune with that. What’s killer is, he thinks someone could extend Threshold’s capabilities to deliver mental conditioning without the player’s knowledge. Social indoctrination for the masses, or …”

“Is that what killed my uncle?”

“Nikki thinks a bad spider could have killed Kevin. She told me Halcyon is sending spiders to millions of players right now. Stores even sell toy ones for kids.”

“Where did Nikki get her spider?”

“Just arrived at her place, she said. A Dreamworlds customer loyalty perk.”

Hearing this, Logan spirals downward toward a sickening conclusion, that just because Beatrice gave her a spider doesn’t make her special. Her mind switches off. She can’t wedge this monstrosity in beside the death of her uncle, the loss of her job, and her utter defeat at the girl’s cold betrayal.

“Good old American ingenuity. Just like the second mortgage bubble,” she says morosely. “Where my house went. Did anyone go to jail for that? Hell no.”

“Really babe? You got it too?”

At Quentin’s casual endearment, Logan’s eyes snap to focus. She looks at him somberly over their empty plates.

“Can you take me back now? I need to get some boxes, is something open? I have to start packing up his place. Tomorrow I’m gonna scatter him. Day after that, I’m heading to the airport.”

She hands him money for her half of the check. He finds her outside in the cool morning, looking at the sky. They are silent on the way back, and do not speak as they lean three dozen flattened cardboard cartons against the trailer. Noticing the cracked paint on the imitation wood siding, Logan starts to weep. One more pointless, un-fixable, bleak reality of her whole rotten lonely life. Face turned from him, she’s stepping through the front door when Quentin speaks.

“Logan?”

She stops, not looking back. “What?”

“Sorry. There’s a small package coming for Kevin. From SacredPetal. It’s important we not lose track of that.”

“If I see anything, I’ll hang onto it.”

Hearing Logan say the words, Quentin can tell. She could not be less interested.

Chapter 21 – Played by an Ace

Logan wakes to a coyote’s howl. In the deeps of Arizona night she squirms from twisted sheets to gaze at dark ceiling. The sound comes again, followed by a more distant cry, scarcely enough to tickle her eardrums. Logan liked coyotes as a girl, when Uncle Kevin drove her out to watch them hunt at twilight.

Perched in her long T-shirt on the edge of his comfy bed, she tries to decide if she’s awake. Red numerals at bedside announce 12:37 a.m. That would be 3:37 at home. Ugh, too early to get up. She hears the kitchen fridge kick on.

In front of the lighted compartment, cool sweeping down her legs, she pours a glass of mango juice, parks in the recliner to sip it. From racked electronics, a constellation of twinkly lights in the dimness. Flickering red, green, white, steady orange. A language known only to her uncle. She’s glad to see it came back on. She’d mistakenly unplugged the whole system yesterday.

With a rising glow, the curved screen fades up from black to a predawn cityscape of streets, buildings, taillights of shiny cars. Straight along the boulevard, the glittering exterior of a club. On the sidewalk, a surging mob of die-hard clubbers looking for one more drink, one more dance.

“Ms. Fischer, I’d like to talk to you,” says a pleasant voice from Uncle Kevin’s speakers.

On the sidewalk before the nightclub stands a tall man in a black tux. The shaved head gleams against dark skyline. It’s definitely not Nikki.

“Who are you?” Logan waits but there is no response; the man stands patient and cool. On the display, a login panel appears:

User Yuri
Log in using saved password?
Speak your preference. Yes | No

“Yes,” Logan says. The view zooms in to reveal Yuri looking down the avenue to the bouncers and velvet ropes. She’s in black leather, a fitted jacket over a silk blouse, sleek pants that vanish into her Salvatore Ferragamo boots. She walks toward the club entrance where the suited figure waits. With a pleasant smile, he offers an arm.

She stops. “Where are we?”

“New York City.” His handsome face with razor-sharp black moustache carries a trace of humor.

“Is this a world?” Logan in Kevin’s chair looks for the control handles typical of Halcyon, but there’s little she recognizes. 39 million players online.

“No. Players still have their private worlds. But Dreamworlds has replicated the entire globe. Everything is connected.”

Yuri tosses her hair and lets the tall man lead her past the lineup and through the sparkling entryway. Inside, the music is fast, the floor is active and densely packed. She trails in his wake, crossing the floor as dancers part around the big man like minnows. He pushes a curtain aside, motions her into a private booth with sofas, easy chairs, a low stone table, waits for her to sit. Yuri selects one end of the sofa.

A chat invite arrives on Logan’s screen, covering part of the scene where the elegant man waits for her reply.

SincerelySatan wants to talk with Yuri

Yuri touches Not Available. The invite is gone.

“Thank you for coming,” the tall man says. “I am Ace. Real name, Nathaniel Craig. Either will do.”

“Have we met?”

“We know some of the same people.” Ace takes a plush armchair across the table. Yuri gives him an expectant look.

“Your friend SacredPetal,” Ace tells her. “SincerelySatan, Connundra. OutOfRange.”

She recalls a spooky alert that flashed across her screen, after meeting SacredPetal in her lush waterworld. Ace has joined the World.

“Ah. You were there Saturday night, weren’t you?”

“That was me. I look after the kids while they’re online.”

“Wait up. You addressed me as Ms. Fischer. How do you know my name?” Yuri believes that player names and profiles are hidden from Dreamworlds users. Supposedly. It’s part of the Terms of Eternal Servitude Agreement every player signs before receiving a Halcyon account. Looking across the shiny table, Yuri gets the impression of a trained fighting man. His looks are okay, but she does not fool herself that this meeting is social. Ace smiles.

“I am very close to the inner workings of Dreamworlds itself. Some of us have access to every player’s complete history.”

Yuri sits forward, feet under her. Ace raises a meaty palm.

“Please don’t be nervous. This is the friendliest of conversations. We’ll be working together, you and me.”

“Who sent you?”

He sits back with an indulgent smile. “It’s enough for you to know that I run my own agendas.”

Yuri likes his eyes, but senses they can go cold. She adds to her outfit Hero’s mischief bracelet with its defensive codes. Hastily, she reviews the list, then starts looking through the products in Ace’s outfit. She’s shocked to find his list empty. Not blocked, but empty. Yuri inhales sharply. She cannot see the components of his avatar. The bracelet codes are useless. She has no defense against this avatar that Hero called cutthroat.

“Why should I be able to help?”

“You are close to someone who needs our protection. Someone I work with.”

Yuri inches back into the sofa, eyes steady.

He allows a brief smile. “I’m glad you’re willing to listen. There’s much at stake. We need to ensure the population is safe.”

In the hushed alcove, Yuri’s eyes do not flicker from him. The population? This dude is nutting out.

“My people have confidence in your ability to help us protect many lives.”

“You’re from an organization?”

“We are guiding Dreamworlds in an effort to rescue our society.”

“From what? Itself?” A tiny smirk tightens her smooth lips.

“You like to get right to the point. We are tip of the spear for certain private concerns.”

“I am supposed to believe you’re some commando?

“Would that be surprising?”

“There’s no crime in Halcyon,” Yuri says confidently. But she catches herself. What those cops think, Scharples and Quentin, is that Kevin was killed by someone or something within Halcyon itself.

“You know you’re not serious,” Ace growls.

“Knee-jerk reaction,” she admits. “I should put it like this: I am unaware in general of crime in the Dreamworlds.”

“Let me lay it out for you.” Ace leans forward, and with no pause for breath recites Logan Fischer’s home address, her several phone numbers, checking account number and current balance, email address, some details from her college education and job history, including her most recent salary and the fact she was let go from her Joy-Mart Garden Center position last Monday. He mentions the dates of her two miscarriages, her wedding and her divorce, the death of her ex-husband.

Yuri cannot breathe.

“We have your Dreamworlds contact list, including all the unfriended ones, complete logs of all your conversations, all your private messages. We also have your friend, Jamal Green, in Jersey.”

Muscles clench in Yuri’s bottom. Her skin feels damp.

“Let’s assume you got that legally,” she says, trying to appear calm. “Just suppose. Does that make what you want me to do legal, or not?” Her life laid bare before her, she cannot draw breath.

Ace cocks his head. “A woman is tracking her husband, let’s pretend. If he is an adulterer, she is history. Whether or not that’s true, she must never know.”

“Well again, why me? Why in the fuck does it have to be me?” Yuri is one tenth of a degree from her boiling point. Scratching for control, she says, “I assume what you need done is inside of the Dreamworlds.”

Ace nods. “Excuse my manners, Yuri. Would you like something? Francia? Still? A drink?”

“Francia is fine.”

With not an instant’s delay, a sweating silver bucket containing a freshly-opened bottle of lime Francia blinks into existence at Yuri’s elbow. A full stem glass beside it casts up orderly lines of pinprick bubbles. Yuri has no reaction, having seen this behavior thousands of times within Halcyon. Stuff shows up, things disappear. It can’t be real water, only a prop.

But when she lifts the glass to her lips, tiny bubbles zing her nostrils. She sips, shocked at the cold sparkles on her tongue.

“Thank you.”

Ace regards her solemnly. “This person’s life outside of Dreamworlds leads us to believe he is creating destructive forces that threaten our society.”

“I won’t do anything unless I know the full story.”

He nods indulgently. “You are already close to him. You will be the most captivating woman he ever knows. You in turn will find him irresistible. If you manage that, party with him and coax him out, you might...”

“Who?”

“You know him as SincerelySatan. Husband to Rebecca Sutton Verkrag, father to Beatrice and Alan Verkrag. My employer, David Verkrag.”

“So?”

“We want you to be his escort.”

Yuri shoots to her feet, eyes flashing. “Do you know how much therapy you’ve missed? He has a wife!”

Memories of the emotional vortex around SincerelySatan tickle her senses. While apart from him, she feels aloof and independent. While in his arms she is a peri, a receptive female animal. After their times together, those feelings fade. But at their strongest, she could not imagine disloyalty to such an alpha. Yuri’s responses are hard-wired from sixty million years of primate evolution.

“You’re asking me to lie! Asking me to sneak and cheat and lie to someone I might have feelings for. Which I definitely do not. Forget it!”

Ace frowns. He never enjoys this part of the talk, when it becomes necessary. Looking up at her he says a single word, a name.

“Beatrice.”

He looks at her with eyes so cold. “I know where she is at every minute, day or night, online and off.”

Lanced through, Yuri’s heart founders, her insides knot. “You would hurt Beatrice, if I don’t rat out her dad?”

Ace, now looming above her, notices the golden spider she wears, reminds himself that scripts for her require adjustment.

“Our meeting must now end. Please accompany me to the bar, where we’ll toast our new partnership.”

Without waiting, he steps through the curtain, leaving a gap where Yuri numbly follows. She makes a face at his back, considering his idea of partnership. Colliding with dancers as she tries to keep pace, Yuri’s mind is in tumult. Beatrice.

The big man finds space at the long curving bar. Hypno-music shakes the room in mindless throbs. Awaiting Yuri on the bar’s bright surface is a no-salt natural Margarita, small chips of ice making their glacial way down the tapered outside of the glass. She tosses off the drink in one smooth pull. The alcohol drills its way into her brain. Yuri recoils. Only yesterday this drink would have been a hand prop, now the Tequila bite floods in. She flicks a polished nail against the rim so it rings high and clear through the pulsing racket. A bartender looks, she tips her head at the empty glass. Still numb from their conversation, she turns to Ace.

“You have an interesting way of negotiating,” she says, trying to make it a syrupy coo. “But suppose I do agree. I want something from you.”

He grins at her defiance, her assertion that she has any choice.

“We haven’t talked about the money,” he says. “What makes you think I have to do anything?”

With the most demure wiggle, Yuri tells him, “Because you find me fascinating. Because you’d be willing to help.”

Ace smiles indulgently. “Try me.”

“I want to know if anyone tried to hurt my friend. DarkEternity.”

“The avatar run by your late uncle. Kevin Marsh, of Arizona.” Ace lets his eyes sweep the dance floor. In his brain, something clicks. Arizona.

He makes a note to check for Marsh’s name in his beta test group.

Yuri nods. She would love a high-paying job, even as a creepy spy, if it keeps Beatrice safe from this cutthroat commando. To assuage her guilt over spying on a guy she somewhat knows and might halfway like, she tells herself that any information she can give those Arizona cops is worth dishonoring herself. Yes. For Uncle Kevin’s sake, she’ll take the same chances Quentin took. She admits that in certain ways she’s already a two-faced gossip. Dishing with friends about her Dreamworlds lovers, feelings were hurt and friendships ended. But to become a feeble snitch, for Ace’s supposed mission of world salvation? The wheel he’s bound her to suggests a sinister film noir drama.

But it feels good. Yuri, recalling the power SincerelySatan holds over her, is glad to own some as well. She wouldn’t mind knowing for herself why the guy is so important that some illuminatus cabal wants him managed. She’s framing another question when Ace picks up her hand, gives it an aloof shake.

“All your conversations are recorded. Be careful what you say.” He melts into the crowd.

Furious, she watches him go.

Yuri’s backup margarita arrives and she’s happy to see it. She sips, savoring the icy tang, and downs the rest. She touches her electronic bar tab. Nathaniel hadn’t paid for her drinks. And from that brief exchange she feels completely vulnerable. Anger seethes and she’s suddenly too hot inside this deafening asylum. In her head, the room takes a spin. Can I be getting drunk? It’s the first time she’s had anything alcoholic while wearing the spider. Drinkable and potent, the booze makes it harder still to separate dream from reality.

Her stomach clenches and all she can think of is clean, cool air. She looks for the world exit to port out, but the usual Dreamworlds controls are missing. Flaky software, par for the course. Or maybe they are upgrading. So Yuri does as she would in real life, dodges between writhing dancers in the direction of the welcoming red EXIT sign.

When she makes the sidewalk, she looks for a way to change worlds but there are no choices. It appears as Ace told her. Everything is continuous, no way to port out and not a cab in sight.

Ace’s threatening words boiling in her mind, Yuri needs to move, heads out into the pool of blackness that is Central Park. She can cross to Park Avenue, and from there to Beatrice’s lavish Xanadu. Once there, she has no idea what she’ll do, the valets don’t know her. If Beatrice is home, it might be possible to get in. Assuming the girl is willing. Yuri must warn her about Ace.

A tiny chime in her ear. A message has arrived. SacredPetal. A gift is attached. A fancy new phone, number all ready to dial. Puzzled, she presses Talk.

“It’s Yuri.”

Youthful chatter in the background. The girl’s guarded voice comes. “I thought you were hating on me.”

“Petal! That Satan dude pulled me away.”

“You mean my dad?”

“Looks like.”

SacredPetal is silent.

“But look,” Yuri says. “I want to see you.”

“To beat me up about what happened?” Venom in the voice.

“Absolutely not! We need to talk. I’m missing on you like crazy.”

Long pause. “You are?”

“Are you all right?”

“Vernon’s driving us to Fire Island. Some kids I know. What you said. Missing me?”

“Miss you like fire. Here and in real.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“I’m waiting for a cab across the park. Want to see you.”

“When, Yuri?”

“Now.”

Muffle-jumble on the other end. SacredPetal comes back on. “Vernon’s taking me home. I’ll wait for you out front.”

“It’s going to be okay, Petal,” she says in a voice that is confidence itself.

Confidence be damned, her mind tussles still with the impossible: What were the odds, why is she falling for the daughter of her relentless stalker?

Chapter 22 – Forgiveness

Early daylight stains the dark between tall buildings when Yuri’s cab drops her a few doors from the Park Avenue residence. SacredPetal waits under the awning.

At a swift walk, Yuri dodges among sharp-suited valets and departing residents, takes the girl’s hand as they match strides along the sidewalk. Eyes for one another, they glance ahead only to avoid other avatars.

“This is weird, so many people. Where can we go, honi?”

SacredPetal glances behind them. “Upstairs?”

Yuri’s paranoia hits full voltage. “No! Too much shit around your dad. Your brother. You must have someplace.”

SacredPetal grins. “How do you know me so well?” Her footsteps quicken. To their left, across three uptown traffic lanes, the grassy median strip has its usual cadre of loiterers, homeless, and protesters held in check by the ultras’ private militias. The 999.

As they swing right onto 72nd, Yuri sees a tall video panel suspended halfway up a building wall. The animation starts with the single word, Dreamworlds, emblazoned down one edge. A woman in a flowing gown gallops her white horse along a sunset beach. As they draw closer, Yuri sees in smaller type, Quest for the Sacred Chalice.

“See that, babe?”

Beside her, SacredPetal nods. “Yah. Those popped up couple days ago. New movie. My Tingler feed is full of it.”

“What’s it about?”

“Romance-O-Mania. Played by Dreamworlds avatars.”

“Unreal,” Yuri says, staring up at the bright panel.

At that moment a throng of chanting people swings into view off Lexington Avenue. In their jostling dozens they stride amid blaring cabs, many with placards, shouting slogans. Some wear face masks that resemble goats with curving horns.

“Live a Dare, We Don’t Care. Live a Dare, We Don’t Care,” they snarl in unison. Somewhere in the crowded confusion a squeal of tires, a thud, glimpse of a thrown body. Honking cars on 72nd force the chanting mass onto the sidewalk, where they surge as a tidal flood toward Yuri and SacredPetal, who scoot out of sight. Yuri quickly reviews the codes in Hero’s bracelet, noting several offensive judo moves. The crowd passing scant feet from them is boisterous and loud. Some eyeball the two small women backed into the entryway. Beyond the boiling throng of marchers, Yuri sees the sidewalks are packed. In the back of her noggin nags the question, Where did so many avatars come from?

Two burly males and three females push into the confined space. Scent of field loam on the morning air. The herd blocks the opening with sweaty, thick-necked bodies. On their heads, spider caps of earthy green.

“Conformity is All!” A woman says, pushing her face at SacredPetal. “There is no independent will!”

Yuri pulls the girl back and steps in. “Out of my face, bitch!”

“Ooo, a tough little one. Wearing an Ultra spider, are you? We play your games now, eat your children later.”

Anger twists Yuri’s face as her mind ratchets through the protective moves in Hero’s bracelet. As though Yuri’s intention has crossed the space, the scapegoats chill. Unbowed, the leaders rejoin the stampede, shouting defiant slogans. Yuri stands poised until the last of the throng has passed, takes a quick peek up and down the sidewalk. It’s clear. She turns to SacredPetal. Eyes wide, the girl’s lip quavers. They wrap into a fierce hug, rib-cracking and safe.

“I’d be lost without you.”

“Don’t let me go!”

Gripping hands, they hurry on. They pass an inert body twisted against the curbstone. Unreal to see an avatar that has died. An invite arrives, SincerelySatan wants to see her. She changes her status to Not Available. On the other side of Lexington, orange and yellow barricades surround a corner deli. They cross fast against the light and get flipped off by a cabbie who swerves through the crosswalk without slowing.

As they push through the delicatessen door, a woman arranging wrapped sandwiches looks up, sees SacredPetal. Without a blink, she returns to her task. Yuri follows to the back, through a door that seems to exit on the alley, but which opens to a room so perfect a top designer could have made her name here. Lights come up as they enter, traffic noises outside fade to a subdued hum. The room is clean, spare, with a Japanese feel. Gray carpet to sink bare feet into. A deep sofa finished in purple velvet, a glass table with flickering candles. SacredPetal touches a remote and music starts.

“Drink? Food?”

“Coffee for me, I think it’s supposed to be morning.”

The girl takes out her phone, asks for two double espressos, two grande darks, couple of croissants, grapefruit. She throws down her purse and turns to Yuri. They stand together and cling.

“Agony, agony,” SacredPetal whispers in Yuri’s neck. “What happened Saturday night?”

That night feels to Yuri like weeks ago, she’s focused on right now, her uncomfortable meeting with Ace. Fear nags at her, that she must be wary of the girl, this saboteur. I have to lie to her now?

“Do you have someone named Ace?” Violet eyes lock indigo.

SacredPetal doesn’t answer at first, snuggles in for another kiss. “One of my bodyguards. Ace, Jack, Joker.”

“Your avatar needs three bodyguards? I met him tonight. Had a lot of questions.” Yuri would love to ask SacredPetal why Ace would want her father spied on, but doesn’t know who she can trust. She knows she can’t trust these walls. Everything she sees inside Dreamworlds, every decanter, flower arrangement, cigarette, lipstick, hair style or avatar could be running a script. Not anything she should tempt, the first day she becomes an escort and a spy. Yuri shudders, recognizing that once again she’s lying to people, this time to someone who could love her. Trying to squeeze it out, she holds SacredPetal tighter.

A discreet knock at the door. “Come,” SacredPetal calls out. A smiling woman in a green apron enters with a tray, white stoneware cups and a tall coffeepot. A covered glass dish of fresh croissants alights on the spotless table with the softest click.

“Tip 100,” SacredPetal says to her phone as the woman exits.

“Wait, wait,” Yuri says. “We’re in Dreamworlds, right? We’re sitting at home with spiders on our heads?”

“You kidding? You’re in Jersey, I’m in NYC.”

“So normally, we’d order coffee, it would appear beside us. But there wouldn’t be anything in the cups. Here, somebody brought this tray, that server, and she’s wearing a spider. She needs Threshold, to be a barista?”

SacredPetal pulls Yuri down on the sofa. “Dreamworlds is more like real all the time,” she says. “More Threshold avatars by the hour.”

“But I could see her spider. Pink like mine.”

“Your old one, you mean.”

“Wanna trade back?” Yuri touches the golden spider on her crown but it seems affixed to her skull.

SacredPetal shakes her head. “No. We can’t take them off. Not in here. And there’s something else.”

“Tell?”

“With your spider, I see things different.”

“Maybe you need to log off and get a new one.”

“Could’ve already,” SacredPetal says. “Yuri, it’s like a new part of the world is clear to me. Not my world. Theirs. Those people who accosted us. I recognized them. Bebe, why are they so different?”

“How’d you get on this?”

“Since last weekend. The party.”

Yuri’s eyes tighten on the girl’s face. “Since you and I switched spiders.”

SacredPetal nods.

Blowing over her cup to cool it, Yuri is sure she’s drinking the finest coffee she’s ever tasted. The soils of Colombia and rains of the Amazon dance on her tongue. But a cuckoo bird in the back of her head informs her that these flavors never saw the inside of a bean. Yuri goes on.

“But now, the coffee lady walks in and sets this down. I can taste it and it’s hot. Is Dreamworlds changing that fast?”

“There are stranger things than that. Slogans and messages.”

“Slogans?”

“I wake up with these dreams in my head. Like I’m ordinary. Dreamed I was across the street from my own building, on the greenway with the 999. I had an urge to join those goats that rousted us.”

“Holy virgin, honi, no! What else?”

“Dreams and voices. How I can be a TV star. I have to get totally buffed. So I can do an obstacle course. Then I can try out for reality TV.”

“Hah. You’d want that? Probably be great.”

SacredPetal shakes her head, mouth tight. “What I want is you. But Yuri, I’ve never felt so bad.” In SacredPetal’s soft face an anguish of loss, strange and frightening for a young woman who’s never lost anything she cared about.

She pulls back, eye to eye with Yuri. “Bebe, I have no parents. None. They leave us with handlers. Alan is an asshole. I’m like a little doggie needing to be walked and it’s sooo inconvenient for them! Kids feel like this all through the Families.”

“I have to tell you about that night, honi. I kept wanting to dance with you, but…”

SacredPetal drops her head as though under an enormous burden. She curls in a ball, shaking so hard she must gasp to get air.

“They never listen. They’re never there! So lonely. Tutors, bodyguards, maids, valets, chauffeurs. To them I’m this package. Kids my age, all zits, boners and mass online war games. It’s where they live. Who am I? They don’t know!”

Crooning in her throat, Yuri strokes SacredPetal’s tight-curled back. “You’ve been lonely.”

“Agony, agony.”

Yuri touches a damp cheek. “I can take care of you.”

“Oh yes,” SacredPetal buries her face in Yuri’s lap. “Most def.”

After a while there is quiet, and coffee, croissants and grapefruit slices. SacredPetal is in the small lavatory, dabbing her face with a warm cloth.

“But these crazy things in my head now… the reality TV dreams. Wanting to join the goat parade. What is that?”

“I’ve been getting strange dreams too,” Yuri says.

“What, bebe?”

“This morning I woke up…”

“In real?”

Yuri has to think, the boundaries are hazy.

“Yes. A dream I had, in real. I saw myself living on your street. We were friends, neighbors, lovers. But I had my own place, my own big place, and my own limo.”

SacredPetal looks at her oddly.

“And these ideas in my head now. I am supposed to recite something, about morals. Morals and my solemn duties. My rights, my special privileges. What family, Beatrice?”

SacredPetal drains her espresso. “The Families. They whisper that shit to us. The Families are the old ones with wealth. Less than 700, about eighty thousand people alive today. Descended from dukes and earls, pirates and kings. Conquerors. Popes, believe it or not. Dad says we’re supposed to protect the world.”

“These slogans I get,” Yuri says, “keep coming when I sleep, and through the day. That I have to be strong and know their suffering is not my fault. That it’s unavoidable, they suffer so we can save the world. The new social order must become real.”

SacredPetal nods agreement. “Yes, bebe, that’s what they tell us, since I was little, our great and noble family history. It’s scary and I don’t understand it. Dad says there are three classes.”

“But wait. Who is ‘they?’ Who is doing the suffering?”

“Most of the eight billion wiggling around out there.”

“Girlfriend! When you say them, you’re talking about me.”

SacredPetal’s response is a glum frown.

“But what about the three classes?”

The girl breathes deep, searching Yuri’s face. “Three major ones, and some flavors of them. There are superstars and sports figures, on top. Then consumers. Their main job is to make stuff and buy stuff and recycle. They are geeks and farmers, productive lives and limited baby count. At the bottom are scapegoats, for entertainment…”

“That parade. Were those scapegoats?”

SacredPetal nods. “They are on teams for corporate sports. Figure-eight auto racing, blindfolded cliff diving, amateur brain surgery.” She stops herself, a stricken look on her face. “Yuri! I dreamed that! I’m a reality TV star. Naked sword fighting.” Her look is bleak, fearful.

“I miss you,” Yuri says.

The statement stops SacredPetal cold.

“Yes! We should log off and get together. Can I send a car?”

“I’d love it, but right now I’m in Arizona.”

“I didn’t know.”

Yuri nods. “Sunday morning after our amazing soirée, Vernon is driving me home and I get whisked into the Neptune cop shop for a Skype with two homicide dudes where my uncle lives. Used to live. He died.”

“Died? Oh, you must ache,” SacredPetal says. “Did you see him often?”

“Every day, sometimes for hours. You knew my uncle. DarkEternity.”

“Oh, my Greek Studies tutor.” SacredPetal leans forward. “Wait. Dark was fronting for your uncle? What the hell happened?”

Yuri freezes. For her in that moment a chasm opens, feet on opposite sides of a widening crack that roars beneath her. SacredPetal’s voice calls her into the present.

“How are you doing with that, bebe?”

“He died a week ago Sunday. Nine days today. We were in chat when it happened. Thought he’d lost his connection. I’ve not seen him since. Burns like fire.”

“You’re wrong, Yuri. That was DarkEternity at my Grecian Villa dance. We both talked to her.”

“No, it was a cop who got into Dark’s account to question me.”

Distance yawns between them as SacredPetal’s face goes pale.

“You let me be around a cop?” Thoughts of what she’ll do to those bodyguards boil through her mind.

“It was only a junior cop. A cop’s kid, named Quentin.”

Mouth in a thin line, SacredPetal holds eyes on Yuri’s face, not speaking for a dozen heartbeats. She recalls how her brother had so humiliated her in the middle of that gathering, how Yuri had been swept away by her conniving father. And now a cop gets into her party! Those bodyguards most def have to go.

“Dark was so smart,” SacredPetal says at last. “Wise and smart.”

Yuri looks up, eyes gleaming. “I miss her every second.”

The air in the room goes cold. With the sound of a leaky tire, Alan’s OutOfRange avatar boils up from a bubbling tar-pit. A hissing voice in Yuri’s ear.

“Hi there, dead girl. Ssssssssssssss.”

In the middle of the coffee table stands a black distorted thing, pointy ears, eyes aflame as the red-steel heart of a forge. Stench of burning coal. Everything in the room shakes and rattles. The neon Sagbutt sign appears over SacredPetal’s head.

“Sag-ass, your little ant ho gonna die.”

Screaming, the women clutch one another. Yuri’s stomach knots, as though unspeakable evil has entered her body.

“Alan stop it I’m telling Dad!”

“He’s drunk with his ho and I crushed his phone, Sag-ass.”

Yuri grabs a small fire extinguisher and sprays the oily face. An echoing laugh as the figure turns to a whirl of black powder, swirls, and coalesces into the snout-nosed little vampire. Foam sprays continuously as Yuri and Petal back through the door. The device sputters its last and they run through the deli, which is a shambles, the shopkeeper nowhere to be seen.

They dash toward Park Avenue, a foam-smeared black vampire hissing along behind. It’s full daylight now, honking traffic and massed bodies fill the street, yet everyone ignores their screams for help, everything’s slo-mo, it’s a carnival fun house, they’re shrieking like idiots. No one sees them. A classic nightmare. High above on building fronts are giant video panels bearing ads for autos, mouthwash, instant loans and other detritus of modern living, a sky of flickering advertisements.

“What did he mean,” Yuri gasps as they sprint among impatient cars. “Who is it?”

“My brother.”

“Go to his room and we’ll kick his ass off the computer.”

“Rooms are off limits Dad says so.”

SacredPetal halts, the little vampire jumps up and down on the sidewalk, bounding impossibly high. Dark sticky bubbles mark his footprints where he lands.

“Oh my, ant’s gonna die! Oh my, ant’s gonna die!”

“Why Alan? You don’t mean it!”

“Did it befo’ with yer other ho. Calling me from Dad’s office. Gonna teach you.”

“What for?”

“You’re a girl.”

SacredPetal looks at Yuri, backed against a building. “Where are the fucking bodyguards?” Watching OutOfRange leap higher, she says, “Yuri I’m signing off only way to fix it!”

SacredPetal is sobbing when she poofs. Alone with the maniacal black vampire, Yuri runs for a waiting limo, leaps through the open rear door into the quiet compartment.

A tall man leans in, his maroon uniform sharp as daylight. “Miss this is not your car.”

Yuri looks up and down the sidewalk. The sinister form is not in view. She shrugs out between three glaring people about to board their limousine, hurries down the avenue in a daze. That thing, so evil.

She whirls at a sharp hiss behind her. It’s not Alan. It issues from gritted teeth of a woman stepping into her limo, incensed that a contemptible peasant dared set foot there.

Chapter 23 – Out and About in Storyworld

Logan jerks awake in Kevin’s recliner, swipes the spider from her head and blindly throws it. She darts between neat stacks of sealed cardboard cartons to Kevin’s bathroom, leans on the sink. In the mirror her chest heaves, face haggard. Something woke her after midnight, it’s now past 8 a.m. Ace. His threat to hurt Beatrice if she doesn’t deliver David. Petal. The scapegoat parade, one killed by a car. Weird, sick little Alan.

Logan quickly dresses, avid for fresh air. She’s out of packing tape, so points her small rental car away from Kevin’s home amid the boulders and toward the nearest mall. She can pick up her supplies and stop for breakfast. She’ll be finished packing up Uncle Kevin’s place by evening. Tomorrow she’s heading home.

She walks half a mile inside Home Depot for tape and black markers. Walks the mall among storefronts, many shut down, everything cut rate and on sale in the haggard economy. In every shop window, posters for the Dreamworlds-acted movie, Quest for the Sacred Chalice. It’s playing on three screens at the Frontier cinema. There’s a long queue, people spending their time and money to see the virgin savior flick, over and over. Many in the lineup, adults and kids, wear spiders of pink and earthy green. Logan looks away. She’s had enough of Halcyon.

In a drug store she sees bobbly-headed dolls of lush females and fierce warriors with colored spider caps on their heads. It fills her with dread. Maybe she should stop using the spider, use Dreamworlds without Threshold. But that’s completely unthinkable, she’s so hooked on her goddess-dream as Yuri, tasting things, feeling things, the warmth of SacredPetal’s living body.

An electronics store has TVs in the window, all playing trailers for the Chalice movie. Inside the store, four people kneel before a wide-screen TV. Their spider-adorned heads bow reverently at the sight of a mounted figure, a gowned woman, hair a flying shadow as she rides full gallop wielding a sword. The resemblance to SacredPetal is striking. As Logan watches, another customer inside joins them and reverently kneels. A sign on the flatscreen says Sale! 60% off!

She moves on in a daze, passes a hobby shop with window displays of Chalice-themed adult wear, fake spider caps for children’s role play. Logan sees in this a pervasive and convincing lie: each life belongs to Halcyon.

Logan wears her golden spider, a habit she gives little thought to. Yesterday she’d walked to the man-made lake among the boulders, beyond Kevin’s park. There was a tall cellphone tower disguised as a Saguaro cactus. Closing her eyes to meditate over her uncle’s scattered ashes, she was shocked to find herself in the Dreamworlds, where beautiful avatars welcomed her. Eyes shut, no computer in sight, she was in Halcyon.

A man notices her strolling along the mall, nudges his friend. A small gaggle accumulates in seeming awe as the lovely Logan Fischer goes about her business. She knows she’s no one special, but these people stare with the intense regard due a screen actress. She knows it can’t be her looks. Maybe the way she carries herself now tells them her gold spider is the real thing, no gimmick from a toy store. Because they see her golden Threshold is special. She’s an Ultra.

A man points his phone at her to capture video. Those around her stare the way people watch celebrities. Behind the thickening crowd, a man steps down from a TV station van. Walking toward her, he shoulders the bulky video camera. A sharply-dressed woman with a modish hairstyle trots beside him in high heels, microphone at the ready. Seeing the reporter’s look of steely purpose, Logan is certain now. That’s not who she is.

Logan walks quickly to the theatre and into the lobby. The ticket taker whispers Conformity is all, and bows her head. Logan hurries to the restroom. In a stall, she removes her spider, ties her hair in a ponytail and takes off her outer shirt, wraps her colorful purse in it. She moves casually into the darkened theatre where the crowd is silent and attentive. On the screen, the opening scenes of the motion picture, Quest for the Sacred Chalice, bosomy females and buffed, battle-hardened men. Logan walks down the sloping aisle to the front and into the curtained exit passage, peeks through the outer door at the parking lot. No one waits outside. She phones Quentin, gets his voicemail.

“Hey Q, it’s Logan. I’m at the mall up here and people are following me around. Creepy. Could you meet me at the entrance to Kevin’s park? I don’t want anyone to know where I am.”

She makes it to the car, hoping she isn’t seen, eyes glued to the mirrors as she drives. When she turns in at Kevin’s park, she sees Quentin’s Jeep waiting there. She waves him to follow her in.

On the porch is a small package addressed to Kevin Marsh. Return address, Halcyon Dreamworlds. Logan hands it to Quentin.

“Might be for you. Come in if you want.”

Inside, Quentin opens the box with hurried fingers, snaps the jewel case open for Logan to see. A pink Threshold spider, twin to the one Kevin Marsh wore when he died in this very room. Quentin inserts the matched USB wireless antenna into Marsh’s computer and positions the electronic cap on his head.

“Honi,” Logan says, watching him. “Is that going to be safe?”

“No worse than yours.”

“But if someone tried to hurt Dark…”

“I’ll peek in real quick, just to see if it works.”

“Take the blast couch. Might as well have the full effect.”

“You sure? I can take the sofa.”

“No, go for it.” On the couch wearing Beatrice’s gold spider, Logan sees that her discovery still works. Eyes closed, she’s on Dreamworlds without her computer.

Quentin, parked in Kevin’s recliner, types in the name and password for his account. He watches the curved screen as Qship rezzes in, and gives an excited whoop. For the first time, he wears a sublime avatar… the lustre of hair, the gleam of perfect teeth, fine-grained skin, a young Adonis. He cruises through some worlds, enjoying his new look, the convincing voice effects, soaking up the sound, the feel, the sensations of being vibrantly alive in a world that was before lifeless as wood.

Yuri flips through her list of messages. Friends, admirers. Strangers wanting to suck up for a date. There are five messages from someone she’s never met. AussieAl. Each of AussieAl’s messages contains an expensive gift. Sex poses and skimpy attire from an unknown admirer. It happens. Some males think that disarming a girl with fancy gifts is the sure-fire way into a girl’s pants. Gift rape. It brings to mind Mr. Clement’s bitter judgment of Logan’s Dreamworlds life. Despicable. She deletes these fake buddy notes one by one.

Something new chimes in and stops her cold.

SincerelySatan to Yuri: Yuri, love. I see you’ve been busy, you deserve to have a good time. There’s a New Year’s party in Honolulu. Tonight. Sending a special dress, custom designed, for my angel. I want to make up for my inconsiderate behavior. Wear this, for me? - David

Yuri knows there’s always a New Year’s party somewhere among the Dreamworlds. And Honolulu sounds fun. She sends back to him: Pick me up at 10:30. Grimly she realizes this means she’s back on the job as informer and despicable girlfriend.

SincerelySatan’s gift is a dress. Yuri tries it on, utters a gasp of shock, and stuffs it back in her wardrobe. She’s not letting Quentin see her in that. She’ll never wear it in public, not even in her Halcyon dream life. Never no way.

Joining Qship in her Feminine Insanity world where an oversized yellow moon floats above a nighttime lake, Yuri says something joking about her date with SincerelySatan. The gangly, long-haired dude frowns briefly. They stand a few feet apart on a giant lily pad. She notices how like Quentin his avi is, that although he wears the Threshold spider everyone’s all wild about, he’s not pretending to be something he isn’t. He looks back at her with an open smile, animated about a lead he’s following.

“Check it out,” Qship tells her. “Know about the toy spiders? I picked up one of all three colors. Kids wear them and feign trances, they roleplay. People select the colors based on price. Most expensive is silver, favored by sports stars and music idols. Pink ones for consumers, green for the roustabouts, or goats as they are called. Each one has a backstory, the player’s storyworld role. But Yuri, it’s an indoctrination! The packaging and websites, super-slick animated vids. Kids are being taught by a wise friendly aunt or uncle. A white witch or muscled superhero.

“Those spiders are toys, inoperable, but kids are encouraged to wear them all the time. The roleplay and lessons introduce them to the important purpose that’s theirs when they’re adults, and can join the game as superstars, or consumers, or goats.”

Yuri, in her flouncy tutu, makes a ballet run across the lily pad. Qship’s head turns to follow her. She gathers herself after a graceful leap, prepares to run again.

“How does that fit in? Does that tell what happened to Uncle Kevin?”

“Not that. I need to take this spider home, where I have tools. If it’s okay with you.”

“Ask Nikki.”

“Sure, but where is she? I need to examine the data stream. I think that’s what makes Dreamworlds seem so real. Got to be. In fact, let me try something.”

Quentin, in Kevin Marsh’s La-Z-Boy, pulls the spider from his head. In Yuri’s waterworld his Qship avatar flickers like a retro TV picture, rough at the edges, more blocky. Quentin speaks but no voice comes. He puts the spider back on his head, and the avatar resolves as a perfect human form. Bingo.

“Hey,” Yuri says. “What did you do?”

“Took my spider off for a second. You try it.”

“Not this little gray duck,” she says, dancing gracefully across the lily pad.

HeroKamasutra wants to chat with Yuri

Yuri’s breath catches. First, she’s ready to be friends again, after she unlocked him. But now that he’s here, she has no idea what she’ll say.

“Be right back, Q. Chatting with a friend.”

“Take your time.” Qship will be occupied with a puzzle that for him is beyond mysterious. Checking on Kevin Marsh’s hard drive, he sees that DarkEternity’s neural network is not operating.

Yuri accepts Hero’s invite, and finds herself in his teen boy suburban bedroom, a dude-cave with computers, stereos, shelves of video games and plastic superhero models, black-light posters of 60s rock stars Pink Floyd and The Doors. Hero’s avatar is draped over a chair at his cluttered desk.

“Hey, Yuri,” Hero says. “Thanks for unlocking me.”

In reply, she does as she often does with Hero, runs across the room and flings herself at him for a hug.

“I’m sorry, Geekster,” she says.

“I’m sorry.”

“You hid the truth from me. When I needed it.”

Hero slumps in his chair, tosses a sneaker-shod foot on his desktop. “Don’t make me feel worse than I already do.”

“You’re right. I shouldn’t. And your mischief bracelet saved me from complete disaster that night. I should have thanked you right away.”

Hero roars with laughter when she describes using the Junk Off command on SincerelySatan.

“Be careful. That guy’s a heavy hitter. Those commands might not work with him a second time.”

“You said that before. And I am starting to feel scared about some things.”

“Always have your back, girl. What is it?”

“Stuff Beatrice tells me. SacredPetal.”

“Verkrag’s daughter, right? Stay away from her!”

“Can’t. She’s built in. She’s to be the Holy Grail in her dad’s new religion.”

“SacredPetal is not the grail,” Hero says solemnly. “It is you, Yuri.”

With his eyes, those words, his melodious voice, her womanhood blooms full on him. They are right back to where the world is just the two of them.

“Hero,” Yuri says softly. “I have let you down so many times.”

“But you have never hurt me.”

“You’re only saying that. But I vowed to push you away, after… you know.”

“You made a vow not to love me?”

Her face softens. “Not to not love you. I do love you. I made a solemn promise to remember that our affair was the worst kind of lie.”

“You’re divorced, now. Both of us are single.”

“I’d only make you lonely, Hero. But SacredPetal’s bodyguard. Want to know something else?”

“All ears.” Hero sighs. His face says he’d like to stay with the previous topic.

“This is absolutely tight,” Yuri says, plopping on the edge of his unmade bed. “He offered me a deal. He’s Ace, real name Nathaniel Craig.”

Hero’s jaw drops.

“Uh-oh. He’s one of SacredPetal’s handlers. A shadow. Those guys track the daughter every moment she’s on.”

“Ugh!” Yuri makes a sour face. “He was watching us? Her and me, together?”

“I think you can expect that.” Hero winces at Yuri’s mention of her and me.

“Disgusting! Never saw him.”

“They have powerful cloaking scripts. I can unmask those for you. What’s he want?”

“Shit. Ace is more of a creep than I thought. SincerelySatan and I are dating. Sort of. Ace wants me to inform on him.”

Hero groans aloud. “Girl! You are ultra-deep in the guano.” He’s positive now she needs protection. “Check your mail, babe.”

“What? Okay. Oh, thank you!” Yuri sees Hero’s message with a gift attached. “QED? What is that?”

“It’s like Junk Off only it gets rid of the avatar and the player’s whole account. Say QED, look at whoever’s threatening you, and blink twice. Don’t stare at the wrong one!”

“Okay, sure. But other things are happening I need to know about.”

“Spill.”

“Like today. I’m out at this mall, and people are pointing at me. A TV reporter and her cameraman tried to corner me.”

Hero looks at her sharply. “Sure they were following you specifically? Where are you? At home?”

“Damn straight they were. At my uncle’s place in Arizona. And there’s something else. I’ve been wearing my spider everywhere. Unconscious habit. Other day, I was walking out in the rocks. When I shut my eyes for a rest, Boinggg, Dreamworlds comes up inside my head.”

Hero regards her thoughtfully. “You’re telling me you weren’t logged on?”

“You got it. I was away from my comp. It came as a total surprise. Like right now. Logan is lying on the couch, her eyes are closed. She’s not logged in.”

Hero nods. “This is significant. How’s the cell service out there?”

“Hmm? Five bars usually. But something terrible happened. My Uncle Kevin died last week.”

“What?” Hero adopts a shocked posture. “Yuri, I am so sorry. Are you okay?”

“I hate it. But listen, I arrive at his house here in AZ, and this software thing launches his system and there she is, Nikki, in Dreamworlds, telling me I need to log on and tell her stuff.”

“Wo. I don’t get it. Nikki?”

“She said cognitive computing and other things like that.”

“Your uncle’s avatar is a chick, run by a neural net?”

“Exactly what he called it. Do you know he worked at Halcyon seventeen years?”

“No, damn. Would have loved to know her that way. Nikki was a guy? That’s the first Dreamworlds neural net I’ve heard of. What did she want to know?”

“How Kevin died, and how long it had been. Anyway, he mentioned a couple recent cases about people dying under spiders.” Yuri tells him about Dark’s inoperable spider, the new one SacredPetal sent, which Quentin wears at this very moment. She tells of the spider trade with SacredPetal that Catherine Price pulled off, for whatever reason. Yuri mentions how she and Beatrice had compared their dreams since that exchange.

“Okay,” Hero says. “A couple things stick out. Sounds like Beatrice’s spider is feeding you training meant for an Ultra. Your dreams about being indifferent to people’s suffering. You told me SacredPetal felt an urge to march with the goats?”

Yuri nods.

“She’s getting different training too, from wearing your spider. By the way, the ultras are a fourth social category, above the three you found. Gold spiders. These people like to stay hidden. I would also bet that you and SincerelySatan are being conditioned to want sex together. I can imagine why. Someone is controlling him. Someone at a very high level wants to guide his behavior. Possibly damage him. They are using you for that.”

Hero stands and faces her. “You are not safe Yuri. Besides the fact that I’m jealous as hell about you being with SincerelySatan.”

“It’s just a gig.”

Hero grimaces. “Truly, you need to abandon Dreamworlds altogether.”

Yuri makes a sour face. “Sure, that will definitely happen. But listen to this! This morning, I’m with SacredPetal, and her brother comes in. Right up through the floor! His avi is the ugliest little weirdo I ever saw. He has cloaking power and other effects I’ve never seen. He told me I was going to die. Can he do that? Beatrice says he’s only nine. He felt so evil.”

Hero shakes his head fiercely. “I am telling you, Yuri, if you want to survive the next few weeks, you need out of here.”

“Let’s see you try it first.”

“I have a job in here,” he says defensively. “Yuri, please consider it! There are encounter groups that would love to have you. Counsellors.”

“Call Logan at home,” she says caustically, “when you’re all done twelve-steppin’.”

Hero watches sadly as she spins through his boy-cave ceiling as a flickering whirlwind. How could it be any worse? She’s getting Threshold messages meant for an Ultra. And Hero knows she’s receiving conditioning from Nathaniel that will fasten her ever more tightly to SincerelySatan.

He’s more certain now that Nathaniel is not telling him everything, and couldn’t be more pissed at how this is working out.

Chapter 24 – Date Night in Honolulu

Disembarking at the club that evening from the H6 limo, SincerelySatan gets the ego-bump he was hungry for. Crowds always eyeball limos, waiting for the beautiful ones to emerge, longing for a glimpse of the shining beings for whom the velvet ropes will part without a murmur. And Yuri, his living, breathing fantasy, does not disappoint. The uniformed chauffeur crisply opens the door and she swivels from the compartment as a girl must in a limo, mindful of many curious eyes and trying to manage the hem of her tiny dress.

As she steadies herself in the high platform heels, Yuri puzzles over what he was telling her during the ride into Honolulu. Allegiance to the Chalice? She looks back at him, forming the question she’ll ask. SincerelySatan takes his time, walking slow around the limo so the lineup can savor this concoction of nubile femininity. When he steps close and kisses her, Yuri’s eyes don’t flicker.

“Explain about the Chalice, David. Don’t leave me hanging.” Yuri wants something to compare with SacredPetal’s story.

“Patience, love. All will soon be revealed.” He kisses her again. Yuri gives him a disgusted look. The man is loopy this evening. The way he’s been speaking to her, she’s positive he’s love-struck, certain he’s about to utter those three little words that are supposed to whisk her into his bed. As if. She wants more from a man than that. More subtlety, at the very least.

“You can tell me,” she insists, pressing a soft boob against his arm.

“Let everyone admire your new dress, Yuri.”

In his Dreamworlds alcove, David Verkrag is incredulous at the strength of illusion within his virtual world. He’s so much more interested in this girl than his casual Dreamworlds dates. Sometimes awake in the dark hours he stares at the ceiling, indulging a dream to marry his queen. In that impossible illusion Yuri would be his, he forgets Rebecca and his two motherless kids, knows only the pain of a hungry ego.

Ace waits inside the packed club. He’s cloaked for invisibility, although the place is so dark, loud, and packed with wriggling dancers he could go unnoticed in his black tux. But tonight he wants what Rebecca wants: something for her attorney, a video that will prove Verkrag an unfit husband, an adulterer. A person unfit to lead a world-class game changer such as Halcyon Dreamworlds. A person who could be deposed as the corporation’s CEO and picked clean by Wall Street’s usual vultures.

Yuri gazes around the circular walkway lined with expectant clubbers, and gets it. The bastard has placed her center stage. Scanning the gawkers, she asks herself, How can I be so damned weak?

SincerelySatan steps away to speak with the driver, leaving Yuri exposed to the leering throng. She hates being out in this dress. It fits her body like a watery film. She’d fought from the moment she’d put it on, watching herself slide into it as from a distance, weak as a puppet and muscles no longer hers. Her headache started then. Two hours gone, her head still pounds.

Though Nathaniel’s scripts imprison her in this role as SincerelySatan’s escort, she can still fight. Yuri, Halcyon Dreamworlds’ most alluring psycho-puppet, shivers deliciously before many caressing eyes, hating this captivity yet reveling in her sexuality. In this dress.

The dress. She does not actually wear it. Rather she moves within a sacred space the dress creates for her. It is not fabric, but a computer-generated effect known as a fog layer, envisioned for this occasion by one of Halcyon’s legendary Devs. The sheer nanodrop film of palest green cascades over Yuri’s form like a satiated lover. Falling from a golden collar at her graceful neck, the microfine layer glides over her taut belly, curving low around her narrow waist and more deeply at the back to reveal the flare of hips and thumb-sized Venus dimples. From behind she appears nude, save for where the concealing fog lovingly cups her rounded derriere.

“David?” Yuri hisses, trying to maintain her calm expression. “Get your ass over here and walk me in!”

She pouts, deliciously. Her every move in the high platform heels recalls the muscled hinds of a fine horse. To heighten that impression, Yuri’s mane of sun-blonde hair swings from a gold clasp at the base of her skull. Her eyes regard the crowds with captive innocence.

In tight leather pants and a white satin shirt open to mid-chest, SincerelySatan returns to her side as their ride eases away. The attending male, a mere footnote to the woman’s glory, kisses her lightly, ignoring the crowds, the other limos pulling up to dispense their cargo. He places his hand on a hip left bare above the plunging scoop of tingly fog.

“How do you feel?”

“Like an animal to the slaughter.” Nervously, she smiles for him. I’m getting out of this thing as soon as I can.

“Yuri, I love you. We’ll be inside in a second.” SincerelySatan’s hand urges her toward the ropes. A flicker of disappointment on her face. She can’t believe he used that clumsy L-word. She steps out, shoulders back and eyes confident ahead, each swing of her hips a statement to the world. You desire me. Behind her, wisps of nanofog break away in flickering afterglow, gliding after her like constellations of paparazzi.

The doorman doesn’t know this pair from Adam and Eve, but he has an eye for Eve, and he’s seen nothing like Yuri’s supernova radiance. The velvet ropes part, people in the A line step aside, women and men alike caress the serene goddess with their eyes.

Inside it is dark flashing lights loud music. In the bar crush they wait for drinks. She sees him looking at her, asks what he’s thinking. Wordless, SincerelySatan pulls her in and kisses deep. Head pounding, she offers up her open mouth, feeling naked in the press of bodies.

He in turn cannot imagine how his girl found the courage to come out in the uncanny dress, lets himself believe it’s because she wanted to make him happy. To the captivated male, the thought is humbling. As Yuri kisses him, he believes that tonight she will be his. But pulling away, her temples throb. An inner voice informs her that she can lie even with a kiss.

As was their plan, Yuri turns to the dance floor alone. SincerelySatan likes to watch. The same can be said of Lyon’s avatar, VeyronPilot, lurking in the noise and darkness with his own recorder. Yuri is swallowed among the undulating dancers, and it’s not long before two girls escort her to a booth. Squeezing into the crowd around a table scattered with drinks and pills, Yuri feels a welcome safety. The more insulated she is from SincerelySatan, the more certain is she of a single fact. She must get away from him. She’ll deal with Ace if she has to.

SincerelySatan moves into the room, making eye contact. Before long he has a dance partner whose boyfriend is at the pool tables. They Tango. Occasionally he spots Yuri, kissing girls, kissing men, dancing, laughing. She ignores the brazen hands that find her soft curves in the marginal privacy of a booth. In the subway-crush at the bar, she accepts one drink after another. She is flying. Someone has given her a line, a tab, whatever she said yes to with her eyes.

SincerelySatan is whispering into the ear of a dusky woman when a hand pulls him rough by the elbow and spins him half around.

SacredPetal.

She stands before him feet apart in stiletto heels, fists defiant on her hips. Her mouth a set line, the raven-haired girl slaps her father across the jowls with stinging force. The sharp crack turns heads in the crowded room. Looking into the eyes of her father’s avatar, SacredPetal gives him a fierce grin.

“Tit for tat, Papa. Tonight, she’s mine.” The girl stands glaring at him for an electric moment. She turns away but his hand grips hard her upper arm.

Ferocious with bared teeth, SacredPetal wrenches free, ripping the sleeve of her dress. She extends a menacing finger, inches from his eyes.

“Don’t fuck with the Chalice, Dad. Ever.”

Plunging from the circle of gawkers, SacredPetal makes a beeline for the booth where Yuri is surrounded. Yuri looks up in sweet surprise. She had not expected to see her darling girl tonight.

“You ready?” SacredPetal’s eyes throw down a rage-warning for the table. Those nearby feel the voltage between them. Yuri’s brain gropes through drug haze to decipher the moment. SincerelySatan brought her, she’s his date. But this is my Petal.

“Sure,” Yuri says, smiling demurely for her fun new friends as she extricates herself from the booth. SacredPetal’s hand on Yuri’s neck pulls her in.

As the girl kisses her, Yuri says, “take me someplace sunny.” Her head feels better already.

Holding hands, the pair threads among the dancers on their way to the exit. SacredPetal is jerked back by a terrible pull. She turns in horror as Yuri utters a frightened yelp, her body encased in a block of clear plastic. Rock-hard, the transparent brick holds her frozen in stride, iridescent tendrils of the fog dress immobile behind her. On her face, contortions of pain.

SacredPetal utters a curse worthy of a shock-jock. She screams out, “Dad, you klutz, let her go at once!”

From deep among the milling dancers, an echoing, evil laugh.

“Ace!” SacredPetal screams. “Fix this or you’re fucking fired!”

Cursing the frightful pain, Yuri strides free as the transparent block dissipates like a forgotten nightmare. SacredPetal clasps Yuri in both arms and they whirl into a tower of violet sparks that spirals into the night sky. The lovers have fled.

Cloaked from view inside the noisy club, Ace grits his teeth. They’ve gone somewhere outside the Dreamworlds map. It will take all his skill to follow.

Chapter 25 – Wilted Flower

On a tiny island in a wild sea, Yuri clutches SacredPetal’s hand, the pain a fading memory. The lovers stand on a rocky point, heads tilted upward as a high curling wave in its breaking moment wraps its shoulder around the low-lying island as though to sweep over and engulf them. As they wait breathless, the glassy mountain pivots from the rocky headland and rumbles away into trackless ocean. Unbelieving, Yuri watches the green giant’s receding back as another forms offshore, rising up as though to wash the island clean, before being tamed by their presence. Breathing again, Yuri wonders what would happen if an avatar got killed in here. Did Nikki, at the end, feel that?

“They’re so heavy,” Yuri exclaims, fiercely clutching SacredPetal. “I feel pulled!”

Arm around Yuri’s shoulders, SacredPetal laughs excitedly. “They have their own gravity! I had this made for us.”

Laughing and talking, they walk hand in hand far up the beach, where normal waves crash on black sand and dolphins chase within the shining faces. They crawl giggling into a low shelter roofed with palm fronds. A Tibetan rug on soft sand, exotic fruits, intoxicating drinks. The music of dancing sea breezes. SacredPetal feeds dripping pineapple between Yuri’s glistening lips. Yuri smears peeled mango on SacredPetal’s body, smiling into her eyes as she unfastens the girl’s top.

“Now I must lick you all clean,” Yuri declares. “So sticky.”

“Sticky,” SacredPetal smiles up at Yuri. “You silver-tongued devil.”

Yuri leans close and whispers secret words, lips brushing a delicate ear. The girl trembles, holding her breath for this to start. Yuri knows the ways to tease and touch and make her weak. She blows warmth on the girl’s neck, slowly unties the bikini bottom. In the frond-covered enclosure, hearts beat faster as time slows.

Tracking Yuri from his office on the top floor of a Wall Street bank tower, Richard Lyon screams into his phone.

“Mac! It’s the worst! She ditched Verkrag and got herself alone with the daughter. Do you see Alan?”

“Stay cool. I can log in as the Jack,” MacDougal says from his office.

“Where’s the girl? Where are the fucking bodyguards?”

“I think she’s at the residence.”

“You think? That’s the best we’ve got? Where’s Catherine? Find Nathaniel! He says Verkrag’s goddamn wife is coming home!”

Lyon is helpless. He was fine as VeyronPilot, keeping tabs on SacredPetal in the crowded club, but his uncloaked avatar would be visible entering her private world. If he can even find it. He’ll get royal shit from Verkrag if he busts their girl-party, so must reserve that option. Seconds later Lyon sees the Jack’s indicator hit his list.

“Mac, is that you? Are you on as the Jack?”

“That’s affirmative, I’m on her beach but cloaked and out of sight. They won’t know I’m in. You said David’s wife is here?”

“Nathaniel says next week maybe. Talk to me buddy!”

“Zip it. Gotta be sharp.”

Lyon punches in Nathaniel’s emergency number.

“Lyon. Kind of busy here.”

“Yuri ditched Verkrag. You know? She’s with the girl in a private room.”

“I found them. Saw Jack come in…”

“That’s MacDougal, logged in as Jack.”

“Shit,” Ace growls, “he doesn’t know the dashboard. Trying to reach Jack and Joker now. Stay calm, I don’t see the kid on.”

“If he finds them this could all come apart.”

Said kid, meaning Beatrice’s brother Alan, is in his room at 740, not thirty feet from where Beatrice lies on her bed, logged on as SacredPetal under Threshold. Eyes slitted at the screen, her body trembles beneath Yuri’s touch.

Sven leans over Alan’s shoulder, watching him prepare his OutOfRange avatar to swoop down on his sister’s private party.

Alan’s fingers fly over the keys as he readies the modified panic module, he zeroes in on the pink spider Beatrice gave the Logan ant last week. Sven steps away. At his own laptop he does something similar, but points at SacredPetal’s spider a code droplet he’s developed himself, one that will keep the love of his life safe around Alan’s craziness. He saves the module and transmits it to Beatrice’s golden spider. Sven breathes easier. With no cloak of his own, he can’t enter the room the girls occupy without being seen, so all he can do is peer over Alan’s shoulder and hope he’s done everything right. And that the useless turd fucks up.

Alan is ready. He opens his Dreamworlds window and launches OutOfRange, using a cloaking effect Gold helped him construct, directly into the island room his sister occupies with the ant. He quivers with rage and excitement. He’s rewritten Gold’s panic module with several of his own enhancements. After deep thought, Alan Verkrag determined that with the DarkEternity ant he’d used insufficient force. The way he’s jiggered it, when he fires the module at the ant’s pink spider, Gold’s original terror code will run. Then, there will be a simulated immersion in 1600 feet of water, followed by blunt trauma as the ant’s avatar is fired explosively from a cannon. Alan wonders if that is strong enough, but it’s too late to add more effects. He’s already entered his big sister’s island world.

It’s showtime.

Lyon opens a conference call with MacDougal and Nathaniel. Unable to see into SacredPetal’s private world, he can only listen. The first voice that comes is Nathaniel’s. It is not reassuring.

“Alan’s avatar has entered Beatrice’s ocean atoll. He’s cloaked. Stand by.”

“Nathaniel where are you?”

“740. Stand by.”

Alone in the soundproof security vestibule, Nathaniel curses himself for not being more forceful with Verkrag. The cloaking Alan has acquired is tight. Ace, in the island atoll, cannot see where the kid is. He can see the girls just fine, and any creep or perv would happily leer given what they’re doing, but Ace’s number one job is to defeat Alan, whatever he has in mind. Nathaniel prepares to ax the little twerp from the room. It will lead to confrontation with Verkrag, but it’s time the man knew how dangerous Alan has become.

Alan and Sven also see what the young women are doing. For a moment, Sven wonders what he ever saw in Beatrice. He never thought two chicks would do that. Although it turns his fifteen-year-old stomach, Sven takes out his phone and flips on video.

Alan sees too, from the vantage of his cloaked avatar, OutOfRange, which stands just outside the entrance to the shaded boudoir.

“Mac,” Lyon says tersely. “See anything?”

Whispered cursing. “Don’t know these controls well enough.”

Nathaniel in the security vestibule feels his anger rise. It will mean hot words with his boss, but with hard determination he sends the ax command Alan’s way.

Ace tried to ax OutOfRange - FAIL

With Sven in his bedroom, Alan laughs hysterically at the alert message. “My dad’s ants are trying to fuck with me! Losers!”

Alan and Sven see something near Alan’s avatar. Another avatar is present, cloaked, he cannot tell who, his dad’s henchmen probably. No time to waste, game on. In his Dev console, Alan types a brief statement into the command line and presses Enter.

Within the thatched enclosure, fair skin dappled by sunlight, Yuri senses SacredPetal’s arousal. Fingers tease the girl’s thighs. Eyes full of love, they whisper soft endearments. The space is ripe with woman-scent and open-hearted joy. Yuri coaxes her dear girl’s knees apart.

SacredPetal screams.

It’s a cry of ultimate terror, a heart talon-ripped from a living body. Lying beneath Yuri, the girl’s eyes open so wide they seem completely white, pupils pinched to tiny dots. Her body arches savagely. She screeches.

“Who are you! Get away!” SacredPetal flails blindly at Yuri, who kneels back in bleak despair.

“Honi heart! What did I do?”

SacredPetal shrinks to the size of a baby. Yuri recoils, her gut an acid pit of fear. The girl’s compressed form explodes upward through the palm-thatched roof. She is gone.

Yuri rolls onto the sand outside and gapes unbelieving as shredded palm fronds drift in the shocked air. Her eyes scan the beach in vain, until a sound from above forces her eyes skyward. Small against the blue, the flailing arms and legs of a spinning body falls from a great height. Wrenching herself into motion, Yuri begins to run.

Is it better to catch her? Will I make it worse?

Determined to do something, anything, she runs hard but too late. With a whistling sound, SacredPetal plummets from the sky to splumph on wet sand. Yuri lands on her knees ready to help. Her mind recoils at what she sees.

In his room, Alan shoots from his chair with an elated Wahoo! The boy jumps on his bed and bounces high, yelling, “It works, I did it! I made it work.”

Sven tackles him and pins him to the floor. “You hit your sister, asshole!” Sven is blubbering hopeless anguish. “You killed Beatrice.”

Alan laughs, giddy with his success, a berserk grin for the bigger boy above him.

“It works! I’m a genius!”

Sven smashes a fist hard in Alan’s face, splitting the nose. Blood spurts. Alan Verkrag squeals like a baby.

“You missed! You killed her! Your sister! Useless ‘tard! I’m getting the cops!”

Alan wants to see his screen but Sven is on him, mouthing a string of sobbing profanities in his face. Through his pain, Alan is disgusted. The Sven ant is spitting on him.

With Lyon screaming on speakerphone, Nathaniel bangs out of the vestibule and rushes to the private elevator, jabbing the button frantically. Two valets run in shouting what’s the problem, but the car doors close them out. On the residence floor, Nathaniel muscles the doors, runs full-tilt through the silent gallery. He uses his wrist ID to swing wide Beatrice’s door.

No one is here.

Her bed is mussed, bedspread on the floor. The large monitor above her pink curving desk shows an island paradise where green waves crash. On the sand, a blonde woman kneels, arms holding a misshapen thing that could be a seal long dead in the sun.

Nathaniel looks under the bed, pulls the spread into a heap. A gurgle from the closet. He opens the door cautiously, admitting light inch by inch. At first there is nothing, then a twitch from a pile of clothing stuffed into a back corner. But no, not clothing, a girl, so terrified her muscles have pulled her into a ball. Blood streams. She trembles unceasing. Occasionally there comes from her a keening sound, the quintessence of fear.

Beatrice is dying.

Nathaniel lifts his phone. “I need house medical and 9-1-1 emergency on the residence floor. Beatrice’s room. Stat-stat-stat.” At a panel beside the door he slaps the red Panic button. Alarms go up throughout the wing. Nathaniel calls Verkrag on the crash emergency line.

“Ace! What’s the alarm?”

“House medical and Police Emergency on the way. Beatrice. Her room. Come!”

Verkrag’s unintelligible answer is cut off. In seconds the man is there, peering past Nathaniel, who kneels before the crumpled thing wilted into the closet’s darkest corner. A mass of lustrous black hair hides the face. Horrifying wet sounds from a twisted mouth.

“What the fuck, Nathaniel? How did you let this happen?”

The look Nathaniel throws his employer is heavy with disdain. Here she lies, and you point fingers.

“Let’s get her out of there!”

Nathaniel makes a sweeping gesture as though to brush the man away.

“No! The med team will be here! Safer to wait.”

“Get out of my way, I’ll lift her myself.”

Nathaniel thuds a palm into Verkrag’s chest.

“Not on your life! You could hurt her more!”

“I’m ordering you to stand down, Nate!”

Three house medical staff interrupt this tableau as they rush in pushing a gurney. The woman and two men have oxygen, blankets, fluids, syringes, heart monitors, electro-paddles, exotic drugs. Nathaniel and Verkrag watch in anguish as the crumpled heap is unfolded from its hiding place and eased partway from the closet. A ragged gasp from the tortured girl. An injection goes in, to slow her heart, another to relax her muscles. An oxygen mask goes on. They ease her out for better access. Monitors are hooked up, machine sounds begin.

“Pulse 223. Breathing 125. Oxygen 83 percent. Body temperature 104. She’s in A-fib. Paddles now!”

With the gurney as low as it will go, the medics lift Beatrice onto the mattress, strap her in and cover her with blankets. She quivers as though freezing. Her blouse is cut away. Electroshock paddles rest on bare skin that’s one continuous bruise.

“Clear!”

Nathaniel winces at the cruel slam, the terrible arch of the little body.

“Pulse is back, 183.”

Verkrag pushes Nathaniel into the corridor.

“This is the end of the line for you, imbecile! Your whole fucking family too. Unforgiveable. There will be consequences. Charges will be laid.”

Nathaniel faces Verkrag squarely, eyeball to eyeball.

“It was your own wretched kid did this! I watched it happen. MacDougal and Lyon saw. It’s Alan! And that idiot cracker you got from Goldman’s!”

“You’ll never work again. You feckless traitor! I’m going to see to it…”

A bang, a scuffle, a child’s cry of pain at the far end of the broad hallway. Emerging from Alan’s door is Sven, Alan bent double beside him, neck in the bigger boy’s terrifying hammer lock.

“There’s your dad, asshole,” Sven shouts. “Tell him! Tell him what you did to her. Admit it!”

“Let my boy go at once, Sven!” Verkrag charges down the hallway. Sven shoves Alan in the direction of his father.

“Tell him Alan or I will!”

“Tell me what? Why is he bloody? What did you do to him?”

“Him and Gold wrote code to murder an avatar. He shot his sister with it. Just now! I was there!” The blubbering Sven waves his phone. “I got him killing Beatrice on fucking video.”

“Alan, is this true?”

“No Dad! They fucked it up! It was supposed to be the stupid ant!”

“I recorded it myself, David.” The sharpness in Nathaniel’s voice makes Verkrag pivot. The big man puts fierce eyes on Verkrag, who’s ready to say something. Nathaniel’s cold look stops him.

Flanked by three hurrying medics, the gurney swings into the broad hallway, transporting Beatrice and ninety pounds of beeping support gear. They move fast to the elevator. Everyone stands locked in place as the grim procession passes. The medics say nothing, no eye contact is given.

Alan, watching in horror, sees his sister’s dark hair against the white sheet. Blood drips from her oxygen mask. The boy screams out his terror.

“I didn’t mean it Bee Bee! I meant to scare your stupid ant but oh dang Bee Bee it wasn’t my fault!” Alan lurches after the gurney. “No! Come back Bee Bee…”

He is restrained from entering the car by a medic as sirens wail in the street below. Verkrag rushes in, shoves Alan roughly to the carpet, where he blubbers morosely as the doors cut off the view of his only sister.

In the five seconds of the car’s descent at Evac Red, Verkrag eyes the three medics around his daughter’s still form.

“Complete silence on all of this. Thirty-five thousand each of you. Not one word.”

The medics look back at him with vacant eyes. The doors open and Verkrag watches in bleak frustration as his daughter vanishes toward the entryway where valets clear a path to a waiting ambulance. He stabs the elevator’s Home button. When he steps out on the residence floor, Nathaniel blocks his path with a set face. He holds up a tablet where plays the video of SacredPetal’s last moments with Yuri.

“If you want to point fingers, David, point them at yourself. At your stupid kid.”

Verkrag’s face goes ashen. Looking from that horrifying video to the bloodied boy who crawls to his feet, the father of two has nothing at all to say.

Yuri vomits into the sand. Unreality spins her mind. The creature in her arms is so twisted, her flesh recoils from the contact. Yet still she holds on, hears a scrap of ragged breath from within the smashed chest. Blood and urine leak from her darling girl, from SacredPetal, too damaged to possibly survive.

Oh dear God. What do I do for someone who’s dying?

“My sweetest girl,” Yuri chokes out, fighting her need to puke. It’s easier if she doesn’t look at the wreckage across her legs. She steadies her eyes on the bright waves, the living dolphins swift in those transparent faces.

“My dear SacredPetal, this is not a dream, this is real.” Yuri’s words are quavering sobs. She concentrates on her love for SacredPetal, for Beatrice, and compassion for her journey. “You are dying, my dearest. You are called home, you can let go. I will stay with you, my precious…”

Yuri must look away. Nausea grips her and she spits acid bile on the sand. Calling all her resolve, she turns back to the shapeless thing in her arms.

Police arrive in the Verkrag residence wing, loud official voices echo through the rooms. The crime scene evidence could be similar to Kevin Marsh’s, if you don’t count the degrading opulence the girl was found in.

Last to leave the girl’s bedroom, Nathaniel looks at the wall-sized world above Beatrice’s bed. On that beach, small beneath a stately parade of glass-faced waves, a woman on her knees talks softly to a crumpled thing so tenderly held. Gripped in despair, Nathaniel takes control of Beatrice’s computer and logs SacredPetal off. On the screen, Yuri slumps to the sand with empty arms. Nathaniel types a command. A tiny puff of smoke from the backplane of her computer reassures him. The spider cap’s USB antenna is now toast. He hurries to the elevator and down to the security vestibule, where he’s still logged in.

When Ace uncloaks on the sandy beach, he holds a blanket. Gathering Yuri in the soft folds, he lifts her as a feather. The faint whine from her twisted mouth speaks of a heart carved in blades of grief.

Beneath sheltering palms where the shattered love nest is out of view, the big man kneels behind his blanket-wrapped package so they face the immense waves that rumble past the headland. He’s rocking her, enveloping the small shoulders, giving comfort into a place no comfort can reach, but giving it all the same.

“I promised you something,” Ace says, close to her ear. “When we spoke, you set your price. Someone did try to hurt your uncle. We have him now.”

After a time, Yuri whispers. “Do whatever you want. I don’t care.”

Chapter 26 – Set the Chessboard

At 51,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, a harp-like sound makes Rebecca Verkrag reach for her purse.

“Speak quickly and it had better be good,” she grits into her phone.

In the Park Avenue security vestibule, Nathaniel is relieved this call is voice, not video. He’s seen the ugliness in Verkrag’s wife before, the rich-family shtick. Yet his take on her humanity is still a rung above her husband’s. At least she’s not been so damaging to so many.

As a stepmother, she has every right to spew the rage of Lyssa. Both her kids are in a Forest Hills neurological clinic, her stepdaughter in an induced coma following a severe neurological shock, the stepson in the clutches of some deprogrammer David hired.

Rebecca prepares to unleash her wrath upon Nathaniel, for no better reason than she’s angry and he’s listening. As she opens her mouth to speak, Nathaniel hears her intake of breath.

“Not to trouble you, Rebecca, but today is my last day.”

Rebecca’s mouth snaps shut with a small ‘pop.’

“It was David?”

Several plush armchairs away, Catherine Price glances up but says nothing.

“David, indeed,” confirms Nathaniel from New York.

“No!” Rebecca says. For her, losing Nathaniel would be catastrophic, especially now. “No, he doesn’t mean it. This is me telling you he doesn’t mean it. I’m doubling your salary. He was correct to let Joker and Jack go. They were derelict and we will file charges. Costing me possibly both of my children. The scandal.” She dabs a finger beneath her Luxuriator Canary diamond sunglasses. Catherine swiftly offers a tissue.

“Find a new assistant at once,” Rebecca says. “Catherine will help.”

“She’ll need to call security,” Nathaniel tells her. “My passcodes have been stripped.”

Without looking up, Rebecca flutters a negligent hand in Catherine’s direction. “Cath, reinstate Nathaniel’s clearances.”

Price pivots away in her upholstered lounge chair and speaks into her phone.

Nathaniel goes on. “Today I found an avatar you can borrow.”

“It’s about time.” Rebecca doesn’t want to admit she’s heard of the freaky fun one can have in the Dreamworlds, but because of her station, feels anonymity is best. “What are the details?”

“In your mail.”

“Fine. What happened to Beatrice?”

Eyeing his multiple screens in the security vestibule, Nathaniel sits back more comfortably in his black tux.

“Alan was under the guidance of a tutor who works at Goldman. He gave Alan a code droplet that would disfigure an avatar and frighten the player. Alan turned up the voltage. He intended to use it on Beatrice’s friend. He struck Beatrice with it. She’s in an induced coma while they determine...”

“Get to the point. Is she going to be all right?”

“In time, she…”

“I don’t have time! I’m taking her out of there today. It’s set. I’ll expect a full report at the beach house.”

At Mach 1.5 above the Atlantic, Rebecca Verkrag punches off the call. Looking from the window of her husband’s 12-passenger Aerion jet, the sleek model most popular with globetrotting billionaires, she rides a zone of silky comfort on top of the sky. Today her pilot says they’ll easily make New York, where she’s going, from Paris, where she’s been, in just over 4 hours. She’d left after lunch, Paris time. It will be 9 a.m. when she touches down in NYC. During her short and luxurious flight, the Aerion will put into Earth’s atmosphere as much carbon as 120 Prius cars will release in an entire year.

Comfortable in her seat, Rebecca is pleased to gaze upon her birthday gift. Verkrag had redone the aircraft’s interior to her taste, fitting it with special washbasins of solid gold, pale leather swivel armchairs, gold-plated seatbelt buckles, original paintings, and Waterford crystal lamps. The Verkrag lettering on the outer fuselage is three feet high, in 23-carat gold leaf. But nowhere does she see the name Rebecca.

In spite of all her ease and opulence, she’s white-lipped furious at her husband, at Alan, at anyone she happens to see. The cabin crew has stayed out of her view most of the flight. Finally, she calms herself enough to call her husband. His voice comes smooth and clear on the third ring.

“Darling! How is it going with the Angola people?”

“David, I’m in New York.”

There is an imperceptible pause as Verkrag switches gears. Her arrival is ill-timed. Aside from a ton of business obligations and trying to catch up with Yuri who is unaccountably pissed at him, he hasn’t the best answers about what happened to his two kids. Six investor calls flash their Hold lights on his polished desk. In the privacy of his office, Verkrag’s eyes roll heavenward.

“Well, darling, what a pleasant surprise!”

“Don’t ‘darling’ me. Nathaniel told me what Alan did to Beatrice. Sounds like all your doing. Kindly tell me what the fuck happened!”

Verkrag’s eyes search his office ceiling, as though beseeching the heavens for help in reasoning with this female. She used to be so nice. Well, not exactly. But Rebecca Sutton Verkrag is one of the few classic runway models to come from a pedigree family that also owns a lot of oil plays. He found it flattering that Rebecca’s mother schemed for years to get her daughter together with him. When he’d tarred his first wife as an unfit mother from opioid use and began spending quality time with his Thai mistress, the mother ramped it up. Their marriage should have been so perfect. But.

From two thousand miles out, Rebecca’s steely voice cuts into Verkrag’s reverie.

“Tell me what the fuck is up with my daughter.”

“She’ll be fine, darling, truly.”

“You don’t sound very worried,” she says.

On Verkrag’s end of the call, an ominous pause. Now his voice is edged with steel.

“She’s your daughter now? You’ve been her stepmom, what, three years? I’ve talked to her doctors four times since she went in. She’ll be fine.” Verkrag’s voice reaches a low growl as he finishes. “Stay out of it.”

A clutch of dismay hits her. She realizes her astrologer has been right all along; her intuitions are borne out in this chilly conversation. What a fine welcome home. He’s dumping me like his first one.

Suddenly all alone in the world, Rebecca Verkrag says icily, “I’ll phone from the hospital,” and punches off.

After a swank yet calorie-free five course snack and a foot massage from the cabin attendant, Rebecca’s flight touches down in New York. Fidgeting at the rear of her supersonic ride, the statuesque woman waits tensely for the door to open. Outwardly poised in her new Dolce & Gabbana floral print lounge suit, set off by Oz Ruby Slippers aglow with dozens of actual rubies, the air around her crackles with energy. Her Africa project was supposed to burnish her reputation for the upcoming social season, but everything is wrong now. Her stepdaughter’s condition is dire. And her husband has turned it into a contest between them! How dare he treat me so dismissively?

When the Aerion’s door at last folds inward, she bolts through like a racehorse. Her helicopter waits nearby, engines aflame. Crew and attendants are in tense lockstep with the contagious mood of their doyenne, the usual red carpet forgotten, no one notices or cares. All are focused on getting Beatrice’s stepmother to the hospital. Rebecca’s ruby-clad feet are swift crossing to the sleek 8-passenger copter. She inhales deeply the aromas of Jet-A, city refuse and the waterfronts, relieved to be home from her exile. Helping native children in Angola. Whose idea was that?

Catherine Price hurries along behind, helps Rebecca settle aboard. The outer door closes and the blades swoop ever faster above their heads. Rebecca’s phone goes. An attorney, someone she’s never met and has consulted only recently, a law firm unknown to her husband.

“All is in readiness,” intones the man, one of the foremost divorce attorneys in New York City. “We await only your evidence of mistrust.”

“No. Hold,” she says, behind her Luxuriator sunglasses. She doesn’t mean no, but is too unsettled to discuss this with Catherine nearby.

The voice on the other end of the call is smoothness itself. Divorce actions between hyper-wealthy couples are littered with bumps and detours.

“As you wish, Ms. Verkrag. These waters can be rough. I’m here when you need me.”

“Can’t hear you,” she says, and punches out. Only Rebecca can know that a divorce filing is her chief aim, getting herself clear of this husband before he ditches her, keeping the high ground as the injured party in a toxic relationship.

Ignoring Catherine, who works her phone two seats away, Rebecca makes one more call, confirming arrangements made mid-flight for a staffed neurological clinic to be installed at the summer home in Southampton. She sees her role as a true savior. Beatrice must be moved this morning. It’s too far a drive from Southampton, or even the City.

The sleek chopper departs airport traffic at low altitude and high speed to rendezvous with the car as Rebecca fumes. She must take control. Leave it to that idiot of a husband to fuck up my life. No more. This will end.

When they meet the car at the Forest Hills heliport, Rebecca’s only printable words are, “This smells like a toilet.”

Catherine reads her like copybook. Beatrice’s stepmother knows that Logan Fischer rode in the car. She’s unaware that since that time, six of her daughter’s friends enjoyed an all-nighter in the compartment as Vernon drove them to Fire Island and back for a midnight snipe hunt. Pizza, alcohol, puke and teen hormones are what she would smell, if the car had not been carefully sanitized since then.

“At least we can talk without shouting,” Rebecca says to Catherine, who’s still on her call with security about Nathaniel’s clearance.

“Ma’am,” Catherine says as she mutes her phone. “Security wants to know if Nathaniel is cleared for full Double-A now?” She’s learned that Nathaniel was lying about being sacked, but won’t breathe of it to Rebecca. Security only wanted to know if Nathaniel’s clearance level can be increased.

“Yes, whatever. Give him what he needs.”

“She’s given her okay,” Catherine says into her phone.

The car halts beneath the portico of the Bergeron Neurological Institute in Forest Hills, a severe nine-floor edifice dedicated to the treatment of brain trauma. Rebecca hops out as fast as the door will open and trots to the entrance, Catherine following swiftly after. She’ll see Alan first, so she can spend more time with Beatrice.

Rebecca and Catherine stand with Alan’s graying neurologist in a cramped booth. A curtain covers half one wall.

“Why are we in here? I want to see my son!”

“Truly, Madam, your son needs quiet. This is an observation booth. They’re taking him in now, for a scheduled treatment session.”

Before the distinguished doctor is ready to pull the curtain, Rebecca tries to lift the hem, but the man gives her a look. She pauses. The fatherly types get her attention.

“Ms. Verkrag, please. Alan’s psyche was damaged two years ago when his father’s people put the boy under one of the first Threshold spiders. It was against the best medical advice. He spent some time with us after that.”

“You said he was fixed.”

“Madam. In a child’s developing brain, the consequences of psychological trauma cannot be determined in the short term. At the time, you and I discussed his sudden aggression.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You signed for your copy of the report. But let’s stay in the present. We have a gentle program, using cerebral rescan technology, to reunite him with his native equilibrium. If you are ready now, we can watch as he begins his conditioning for this morning.”

“Rescan? Do you mean Threshold?” Rebecca demands.

“Cerebral rescan is the same technology, with further…”

“You are using a goddamn game to cure him of a psychic trauma?”

The doctor bristles. “We are using cerebral rescan because it is effective. We can send calming messages to the mind, and inquire about things the patient himself might not be able to verbalize. We are not using any sort of game!”

Still, Rebecca Verkrag thinks the doctor is immersing her in so much bafflegab. She wants to get through here and move on to Beatrice, so she can make up her mind about things.

At the touch of a button, the doctor parts the drapes, revealing a broad viewing window into a treatment room. As though on cue, two nurses in green scrubs help Alan make his groggy way to a special chair. The boy appears small and weak.

“He looks drugged. Is my son under sedation?”

“There are aspects of his case that have not yet been made clear to you. Let’s watch, shall we? I’ll explain as we go. I have a full written report you can take with you.”

Watching through the one-way glass, Rebecca cringes as Alan is placed in the chair. Her mouth opens in amazement as his arms and legs are secured.

“What! He’s made to swallow a ball gag?”

The fatherly doctor is poised. “That’s a tongue guard, not a ball gag. To prevent him hurting himself.” He eyes his patient’s glamorous stepmother inquisitively. Where has this woman been?

A nurse tilts Alan’s chair into a reclining position. Careful fingers place a feather-light disk on the boy’s head; it’s a brilliant, hospital white. At first contact, Alan begins screaming semi-intelligibly around the tongue guard.

“Bee Bee help me!” He cannot know his sister Beatrice is in this same facility, drugged into coma because of his brutal attack. To Rebecca, the scene echoes of shock treatment rooms from a darkened era. When Alan’s eyes roll wildly, she screeches.

“Goddamn it! Is he like this every time?”

The doctor jumps at the harsh tones, hoping the soundproofing is up to the challenge.

“He is improving, Mrs. Verkrag. While conscious he screams of guilt about the sister. He carries deep rage from somewhere in early childhood. We’ve placed him in the care of a psychiatrist.”

Restrained in the chair, Alan cringes beneath the soft disc on his crown.

“I didn’t mean it Bee Bee! It was for your stupid ant oh god Bee Bee come back Bee Bee…”

This continues until the cerebral rescan rhythms settle into his cortex and the connection is made. To outside appearances, Alan becomes calm. Inwardly, the boy enters a wretched unreality none can imagine, not even the kindly, silver-thatched neurologist who is picking up eight grand a day for his tender ministrations.

Chapter 27 – Seizing the Sword

“I don’t see how that can work,” Quentin says on the sofa beside her. He and Logan are the only ones in this small waiting room on the Bergeron Institute’s main floor. Outside the glass there’s a colorful garden, groomed plants and a gazing globe. Above a decorative brick wall, morning sky is bright. Logan has camped in this room for two days, holding vigil for Beatrice who lies comatose on an upper floor. She’s not been allowed near the girl’s room.

“I told you, Q. I don’t know. Just started happening.”

Logan is done with this conversation. Although exhausted, she’s happy Quentin is with her, this smiling young friend who’d wheedled a plane ticket from his dad so he could fly out after she phoned him from New Jersey, frantic about Beatrice. She didn’t know he was coming, he’d magically found her. In the early morning hours, she fell asleep on his arm.

“You were away from the computer, wearing your spider? You closed your eyes, and you landed in Halcyon?”

“Mmhmm.” Logan yawns. “I took a walk around Uncle Kevin’s place, his desert. Wearing my spider. Closed my eyes for a sec and there I was, in Dreamworlds.”

“Did you see people? Were they ones you know?”

“Yah. Did it the day Uncle Kevin’s new spider came.”

“Didn’t notice. Logan, did you play like that very much?”

She turns a bleak face to him. “It’s not play anymore, is it Q? Beatrice might die. They won’t tell me anything!”

Quentin squeezes his arm around her shoulder, inwardly cringing. Logan’s description of what happened to SacredPetal on that remote island sickens him. It’s bad enough it was SacredPetal. If Alan had injured Logan, that would be Quentin’s definition of unbearable.

A nurse stands in the waiting room doorway. “Ms. Fischer?”

Logan goes quickly to her. “Can I see her now?”

“I mentioned your name. They say no one other than family, until she’s out of danger.”

“I was with her when this happened. She might respond to my voice.”

The woman allows a professional smile. “I’m sorry. Her mother doesn’t know you.”

Logan’s eyes flash. “The stepmother is here?”

“She arrived an hour ago,” the nurse says. “She’ll be with her daughter all day.”

“I’ll wait. Let me know if anything changes?”

“I will.”

Logan sits. “They won’t let me in. Quentin, what can I do?”

Noticing the gold spider in her hair, he puts a hand on her arm. “You should rest. We could get a room somewhere close. I’ll be there as you sleep.”

Strong shake of her head. “I need to be close to her.”

“Alright. Put your head on my lap. Stretch out.”

Logan affords a mini-smile. She gets herself arranged, head on Quentin’s leg. She searches his face as though about to say something.

“Logan, try to sleep. This will turn out alright.” Quentin is not thinking at his best. With the halo of blonde hair draped over his thigh and those violet eyes looking up at him, he’s suddenly clueless.

Her eyes fall closed. Logan draws a deep breath and exhales into darkness. Quentin watches her face relax, her lips part. He must lean sideways to use the laptop on the table beside him, but manages one-handed without disturbing her. He searches the Internet, still curious about DarkEternity. She’s not online, and Quentin can’t locate her neural network.

Breathing steady, Logan sleeps. But instead of darkness, in her long descent she finds a dreaming Yuri in her waterworld, laughing with interesting new friends. So many avatars in the Dreamworlds now.

Rebecca and Catherine are with the Institute’s lead neurologist in an eighth-floor ward, where an unconscious Beatrice is the only patient. Rebecca is not happy with Alan’s situation, but accepts the notion that re-conditioning with cerebral rescan will stabilize him. And he surely won’t be aware of her absence doped up that way.

Beatrice’s doctor, a woman Rebecca’s age, neither gives ground nor sugar-coats the situation. “Your daughter will pull through, in time. At least physically. Psychological damage is much harder to determine. It’s best if she stays with us and gradually…”

Rebecca listens with marginal patience to the woman’s prattle, observing carefully the ward with its dozen empty beds, the chirping machines huddled around her stepdaughter, nurses breezing in and out.

A nurse comes to them. “Ma’am, there’s a visitor waiting, on the main floor.”

“Nonsense,” Rebecca says sharply. “No one sees my baby until this is done.” But she is curious. Who is here? Who could know? She flicks a glance at Catherine, who quietly exits.

Reaching the main floor, Catherine hurries toward the waiting room. Carefully out of view, she sees through the doorway Beatrice’s sleepover friend Logan, head resting on a young man’s lap. The blonde hair, face relaxed in sleep. Unmistakable.

Responding to one of Rebecca’s questions, the doctor removes a clear baggie from the night table.

“This was on her head when she came in. Do you think that it...”

Rebecca could vomit at the pinkness of it. “A toy, purely,” she says angrily. “Someone will pay for this outrage. Throw it away at once. It’s filthy.”

The doctor is leaving when Catherine returns. She whispers to Rebecca.

“Downstairs. The friend.”

“A friend?”

Catherine nods. “Logan Fischer, from Beatrice’s sleepover. Where all of this got started.”

Rebecca draws back as though avoiding bacteria.

“That Yuri trollop?”

“Yes. It’s her.”

Rebecca knows. It’s the programmed gutter trash Nathaniel is using to give her the evidence she needs. Her mind churns, groping for direction. She’s picked up more than enough hints about her husband’s desire to place Beatrice at the head of some nutball cult, a virgin savior for his new religion. Preposterous. But in that instant, she gets her best brainstorm ever. The Chalice! She’s wildly impressed with herself. A savior has to survive a trial by fire, aside from being merely beautiful.

I’ll give him a reborn savior!

She takes the lead caregiver aside. “There’s a good paying job in it if you’ll help me.”

The nurse, a professional woman of long experience and with two children of her own at home, is at first taken aback. But Rebecca has been over this ground with a thousand others, knows what to say, what to avoid, what to offer. The nurse listens mutely, in thrall to Rebecca Verkrag’s ten-grand silk lounge suit and forty-grand ruby slippers.

“We need my daughter out of here,” Rebecca whispers. “The scandal sheets will be full of this. We can’t risk paparazzi getting in.”

“But Ma’am, there is nowhere better to send her.”

“I’ve established a care facility at our summer home. Cost is no object. Can you be on 24-hour call? We can lodge you and an assistant on the grounds.”

The nurse considers. “We can wake her up by this afternoon.”

“No faster? I want my baby home with me.”

“Then she should stay under, if you want her safe. We can wheel her out in forty minutes.”

“Good. Safety is paramount. But get her cleaned up and ready to go home. A private ambulance will be downstairs. Who can you trust on this crew? I’ll need you on site for three weeks minimum. And let that visitor up. She can stay. I’m going to breakfast. You can ride with my daughter in the ambulance.”

Not once during her eight-minute visit has Rebecca Verkrag stood at Beatrice’s bedside, held her hand, or spoken comforting words in her ear. The girl is unconscious. What would be the point?

A smiling nurse stands in the waiting room doorway. “Ms. Fischer, you can see Miss Verkrag now. Eighth floor, 8119. She’ll be drowsy.”

Logan jumps up. To Quentin she says, “This might take a while.”

“It’s okay. I’ll wait.”

She gives him a quick hug and hurries after the nurse, trying to clear her head, so sleep-deprived. She makes her way along the 8th floor corridor and softly into the big room. To Logan, it looks as though an entire ward has been cleared to make room for a single patient.

Beatrice is a wisp of white in the bed, a small form amid wires, tubes, and chuffing machines. Lights flash and displays flicker. With the oxy mask covering the face and electrodes clinging to temples, cheeks, and scalp, Beatrice’s only recognizable feature is the storm of raven hair on her pillow.

Logan in a bedside chair gazes somberly at the unmoving girl, warming her pale fingers in both palms. A nurse comes to the bedside and consults a monitor.

“You shouldn’t be in here, Lassie. Back downstairs with you.”

“Her mom said I could be with Beatrice now,” Logan says calmly, not releasing the girl’s hand.

“I’ll speak to her,” another nurse calls from the door. “Leave her.”

Logan turns her chair closer to Beatrice. The girl’s breathing under the mask is shallow, her skin a pale canvas of yellowing bruises. Logan speaks to Beatrice in a low voice. She talks of the wonderful times they’ve lived in one another’s company, how they’ll be together when life is normal, away from this hospital. She repeats that Beatrice will be alright. She sees the girl’s eyelids flutter. The nurses are quiet. Logan dozes, drifting down.

With Catherine beside her in the car, Rebecca under a gold Threshold spider consults Nathaniel’s email. It’s the account creds for a sharp-looking avatar, DarkEternity. The orphan Nathaniel had promised her, owner dead or on vacation. Rebecca hums with satisfaction and logs onto Dreamworlds. Her first task is to summon him.

“It’s impossible to deal with you when you keep suggesting the impossible,” are DarkEternity’s first words when Ace appears beside her on the flying bridge of her brand new 300-foot yacht. Jauntily accessorized in an admiral’s cap, Rebecca can’t imagine anyone would have a better idea than what she’s dreamed up.

“I want everyone to clear that hospital scene,” she says insistently while driving the ship straight into a pod of porpoises. “No eyes on it for two days. I’m taking Beatrice to the beach house. She’ll receive better care under her mother’s supervision.”

Ace has been down this path before. The most efficient way, since he is being paid, is to mention possibilities and be prepared to let go of outcomes.

“Rebecca, when we last spoke of David’s conditioning…”

“Yes, what about it?” She curses as the frolicking porpoises snicker at her and dive deep.

“You had hinted at a divorce action. And the other thing.”

“Not the other. Divorce, totally.”

“Alright. Do I correctly understand you want a video record showing SincerelySatan and Yuri engaged in sex?”

“Dammit, man, is this secure? And where did you get this avatar?”

“SacredPetal’s Greek Studies tutor is no longer with us. I thought it useful.”

With the clash of steel blades, DarkEternity exits. She locates Yuri in her Feminine Insanity waterworld, cross-legged on an oversize lily pad. Rebecca takes no time to wonder how Yuri can be here, with Logan at Beatrice’s bedside.

“Nikki? Where have you been?” Yuri gets up, expecting a hug, but Rebecca as DarkEternity towers high above, a giant with sharp teeth.

“Forget all that,” the enormous avatar says crossly in a booming voice. “SacredPetal needs your help. She wants to keep people calm when everything starts crumbling. There’s trouble ahead.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No, what makes you say that?”

“You’re so distant. Why are you so big?”

“Things on my mind.”

Yuri is vaguely curious why Uncle Kevin’s neural net would choose those words, but is too sleep-deprived to fathom it. “What kind of trouble? Hasn’t there been enough already?”

“This is different. SacredPetal has an important job to do. The world will appear to be crashing toward disaster. Beatrice must be there to save them. They will regain hope when she starts fixing everything.”

“Fixing what?” Yuri is not sure she’s in the right conversation.

“SincerelySatan told you about the Chalice?”

“Some. He said…”

“That idiot doesn’t know. The Chalice will fix the food riots, the famines and droughts.”

“Food riots and droughts? Where is this coming from? Nikki, can we be safe?”

In the silent compartment of the dark car, Catherine sees Rebecca’s eyebrows arch. A gateway has opened.

“Yes! That’s exactly what I am hoping for. If you love me, we can.”

“Nikki, you know I’ll always love you.”

“Would you do something to help us get there? Something special that would help SacredPetal? Something for the whole world?”

“You are nutting out, girl.”

DarkEternity gives a derisive laugh that echoes in the peaceful waterworld.

“Sweet cheeks, pay attention. She’s begging you to help.”

“Petal needs my help?” To Yuri, this doesn’t sound at all like her dear Nikki.

“Yes. She needs to get out of this hospital. The doctors are not quick enough, it gets more dangerous as we delay. She would be conscious now if not for their meddling. She must find someone to fill her place for a day or so, while I take her somewhere to get better. Beatrice needs you!”

“How do you know she wants that, Nikki? Logan’s with her and she’s unconscious.”

“Trust me, Doll Face.”

“I’ll do anything for her, Nikki.”

DarkEternity smiles, a Cheshire Cat grin across the dark sky. “You saw that poor girl sleeping in her hospital bed? SacredPetal needs you to pretend you’re her. She needs you to be Beatrice for a while. Just until the wires can pick it up.”

“The news? Won’t they find out it’s really me?”

“No. All those hoses she’s under… You will be sedated, the media won’t be able to talk to you. Say you’ll do it.” DarkEternity lets go with a bored yawn. In spite of her shortish flight from France, Rebecca is jetlagged.

Yuri sits up straight. “Sedated! For how long?”

“Her doctor says two days is fine. We must get her to better care and keep the paparazzi off our backs. Say you’ll do it, Sweet Pie.”

Yuri wonders when Nikki called her Doll Face or Sweet Pie before, but in the face of such drama and with two days of lost sleep, these details are fuzzy.

“Okay, if it will make her happy. They’ll wake me up in a day or so?” The idea of sleeping soundly while she helps Beatrice is attractive.

“Of course. You’ll come out and find SacredPetal all better and waiting for you too.”

“Okay. But this is so mysterious. Worries me.”

“Yuri, chill. We only need to get through the next week, then everything will be okay. Time is tight. Will you do it for her? Please say!”

“Tell me again why I’m supposed to get in her bed and pretend to be her.”

Inside the dark limo, Rebecca rolls her eyes. This woman David picked is so dense. Is this how he sees me?

DarkEternity speaks slowly, as with a child. “This whole business Alan started is turning into a media nightmare. Beatrice is not being properly cared for. She must be moved. She could blurt about the Chalice and ruin everything. But the press expects her to be here, in a coma. All you have to do is hang out for a day or two.”

“Unconscious.”

“I’m signing off. You need to sign off too. Wait in the room and Beatrice will be moved out. Do what the nice nurses tell you.” Without waiting for Yuri’s answer, DarkEternity poofs. A horselaugh trails her into silence.

In the long cool room beside the white bed, Logan opens her eyes. The real world crashes in. She holds a limp hand as machines sigh over the unmoving form of her dear friend. Two nurses are here. Logan watches from the chair as wires are disconnected, switches click. Beatrice groans, paws at the breathing mask. Her eyes open, wild, unfocused.

A nurse pulls one by one from Beatrice’s lolling head a number of small white electrodes that collect in a wiring harness. The other nurse takes Logan’s arm, guides her behind a drape. She obediently hands out her clothes, which go in a clear bag with her name on it. In a hospital gown, Logan watches at the foot of Beatrice’s bed. The sheet comes off the little body. The girl has red sores where hoses have rubbed, lines of fluids, drains, irrigations, bandage pads. Her left wrist wears a pink fiberglass cast. A long feeding tube is pulled slurpily from her throat.

“Kak!” Beatrice says. Her eyes open briefly, showing only white.

Two nurses lift Beatrice across to a gurney. Logan grimaces to see the wire harness trailing her friend’s sagging head. A nurse prods Logan backwards to the bed, where she lands on Beatrice’s warmth. She watches forlorn as the unconscious girl is wheeled away into the corridor, IVs dangling, swaddled in blankets. Gloved fingers hold Logan’s upper arm.

“Taking your pulse, dear. Please breathe normally.”

Intent on her last glimpse of Beatrice, Logan is oblivious to the syringe that plunges its brain-numbing neurological matrices into her ulnar vein. Ceiling lights go dim. Logan wants to warn them of the power outage but cannot find speech. Her slack body collapses to the mattress like a rice sack.

Look at her now, this supernova of trust and courage, dead to the world and hopelessly vulnerable. She was in on the joke that it’s all showbiz, but it was love’s sweet sacrifice that drove her to take Beatrice’s place in an artificial coma. If Logan could comment, she’d likely say this is taking things a bit far.

The nurses do an expert job of changing the sheets with Logan’s unconscious form lolling around. When the two of them hurry out to ride with Beatrice, they leave behind an intern who connects the ulnar IV fixture to dangling fluid bags.

This young nurse works slowly, dealing with a dozen lengths of tubing that were designed to perform such diverse tasks as injecting antibiotics and anesthetics and removing bodily wastes. Blood transfusions, catheters, IVs and feeding tubes are meant to keep the body alive, no matter that the patient looks like a science fair project. The intern finds out that connecting all these tubes to their corresponding orifices is like hooking up an entertainment center with all white connectors, none of which have labels. But at the end of thirty minutes, the machines that monitor heart rate, respiration, blood, intake and exhaust are making the appropriate sounds.

At last, Logan lies motionless and alone amid the timed cluckings of machines that sigh and hum, under the electronic eye of a distant nursing station monitor, where a sleepy employee plays solitaire on her phone.

Alone in his temporary base station in the hospital waiting room, Quentin is concerned. It’s after 8 p.m. and Logan has been upstairs for seven hours. He knows she’s relieved to be with her girl. But she’s been gone so long.

He leaves another message on Logan’s phone. He’s going out for supplies and will bring takeout. When he gets back, he’ll search the hospital for her, if he has to. Before he heads out into the fading twilight, he flips open his laptop one more time and reads user comments on a popular gaming blog, where Dreamworlds chatter has become the ultimate. People are both fearful or ecstatic about the new Threshold experience. Mostly, they are elated beyond words, and few can stay away. Quentin posts a comment of his own.

Even before the thrilling realism of Threshold, Halcyon Dreamworlds revealed a tipping point that will catapult humanity toward a new era. The future is a catastrophe to the past, and one will either love this brave new era in its wholeness or shrink from the chilling despair. This change is fundamental and the consequences are unimaginable. Everyone on Earth will be affected, whether they play or not.

Look back to the game world’s common origins, the campfire stories, then plays, novels, films, radio and television drama, and that degenerate second head called reality TV. All these live today in the hot-breathing fantasyland that will conquer us all. It’s raw escapism, the attention-deficit disorder of the Tingler era, which will help Dreamworlds make a literal, virtual, and real killing in the honeypot of the future. Take off your ego-cap long enough to buy stock. This is it.

- QQ

On Floor 8 of the Institute, ruby-heeled footsteps in the corridor. The door closes behind Rebecca Verkrag, who enters the ward alone. The imperious woman stands at the foot of the bed, thinking hard. So far, everything has gone off reasonably well. Rebecca’s mind spins. So many details that must work perfectly, but she’s a society girl and has arranged complicated events before. Thankfully, her little charade is for Dreamworlds only. She calculates, probably correctly, that an event that’s sloppily hushed up is more viral than if pushed too hard. But she is up to any task her social station demands of her.

Rebecca steps closer, not near enough to touch, peering curiously at the comatose woman who supposedly gives her husband such a woody. She examines the golden spider and shrugs. There are things Rebecca Verkrag thinks, but her proper New England upbringing won’t allow her to say aloud such words as catfisher. It would reflect badly on her if quoted in the press. She fingers her phone. Her husband picks up on the fourth ring.

“Becca! When are you coming home, darling?” A polygraph connected to David Verkrag’s vocal cords might disclose that he hopes it’s not too soon.

“Sugar Man,” she breathes. Rebecca smiles big for the phone.

There is a pause as electrons jostle for their proper sockets in Verkrag’s synapses. True, she sounds in a better mood, but this is not the best timing.

“Where are you, Honey?”

Rebecca can practically see the glum expression on his face. To her, facial expressions are audible.

“I am with Beatrice, dearest. I had to be with my dear daughter.”

“How is she doing this evening? Is she conscious?”

“They aren’t bringing her out yet, dear man. But I have the most wonderful surprise for you.”

His voice takes on a harder edge. “Is Beatrice going to be conscious soon?”

Rebecca ignores his question. She’s taking this somewhere else entirely. “The surprise is, and this will work with your Chalice thing... sit down hon this is enormous... our girl is going to die and be resurrected.”

“What?”

Rebecca grins. She can practically see David lurching to his feet.

“Yes, Sugar Lump. Beatrice is this very minute at the beach house with a carload of life support and a medical staff. I’m keeping her in seclusion for a while, so we can stage a proper funeral. Only on Halcyon, of course. Not in real. Later you can bring her out as a resurrected Chalice.”

On the other end of the connection, a masculine groan.

“Rebecca, how can you expect that to fit our plans? You’ve been so out of touch.” He tries his best to take on his SincerelySatan persona, smooth and confident. He thinks maybe that’s why he likes Yuri, he can let down his guard and be himself.

Rebecca chuckles, just the right amount to keep it light.

“David, David. Think it over. The masses all love the reborn stuff. You can’t have a savior without a resurrection! It’s the one thing you haven’t thought of. This will make it all so convincing! Trust me, I’ve thought it through. Don’t forget my minor in drama at Vassar.”

David’s butt hits the chair hard. “Good God, woman. How do you expect this to work?”

“Simple. We put a funeral announcement out on Halcyon, as an inside leak. We’ll get Halcyon’s St. John’s Cathedral, I’m sure we can. Or we’ll commission a second one. Thousands will come. Funerals for future saints are such a novelty! Especially one so beautiful as SacredPetal. When it hits the press, we deny everything, it was all actors. But we get super buzz for the film, and it’s your Chalice, David! Don’t you just love it? By the by, I’m keeping Nathaniel, I know you were only having a stress reaction.”

To Verkrag the woman sounds convincingly koo-koo. “I don’t love it. Can you cut it right now?”

“Hey, no way!” Although he can’t see her, Rebecca pouts.

“Come home,” says he in that gravel voice. “Come home immediately and we’ll talk.”

“Oh, darling,” Rebecca begins, but she hears the call drop. Grinning, she congratulates herself. He’s pissed. Knew it. Let the games begin!

Before departing, Rebecca Verkrag admires her work. She, thanks to a few thousand dollars of her daily allowance, has turned Logan Fischer into part of the plumbing. A feeding tube goes down her throat and an oxygen mask covers her nose and mouth. But Rebecca does not notice, since she would never inquire about anyone’s needs, that Logan’s IV drip is connected with her oxygen supply. Drips are slow, but the unconscious woman’s lungs are gradually filling with saline and Propofol, the selfsame anesthetic that removed Michael Jackson, Joan Rivers and a list of other household names from the land of the living.

Chapter 28 – A Cooling Off Period

Rebecca occupies a world without corners or sharp edges, a floaty-drifty place where everything is ohhh-kay. She deserves it, she self-counsels, after washing down three Percs with some 1967 Chateau Cheval Blanc and logging onto Halcyon Dreamworlds as the fabbo orphan avatar, DarkEternity.

Rebecca has new friends. Friends that truly get her.

She’s perspiring freely and has forgotten her transatlantic flight, her visit to the hospital, the boring ride in the limo. The girl is here in Southampton, drugged to the gills, and Rebecca has sent out a frantic Halcyon press release about the danger of SacredPetal slipping over into brain damage and death. She’s pouring another glass when her phone goes.

“When are you getting here?” Her husband’s voice is not at all pleasant. She can’t pull her eyes from the laptop screen, where a pair of hunky avatars are chatting her up in a funky tavern. So fun and risky! She feels juicy, this avatar is hot, so her husband’s call right now is super inconvenient.

“Not. Up at the beach house.”

“You were bringing Beatrice home!”

“She’s right here home. With little me.”

“May I speak to her?”

“She’s sleepy-bye. You can talk to her nurse.” In the Dreamworlds scene, one of the dudes asks, ‘What you say, girl?’ Rebecca hastily mutes DarkEternity’s voice.

“So. Beatrice is there. Are you doing any pills?”

“Only one teensy little three of ‘em. Shit, I’m so drowsy.” Her mind is mainly on the scene in the bar, how hot she looks in this avatar Ace got her.

Phone to his ear, Verkrag paces his expansive office. His sleek-shined oxblood loafers make not a sound on the rug’s intricate patterns. He’s sure his wife is certifiably loony. Rattling on about moving Beatrice. Death and resurrection! Such caca.

“Forget it.” Verkrag is decided. He needs more reliable information than what his wife can offer. “I’m calling the hospital.” He waits impatiently as the connection rings.

“Bergeron Neurological Institute,” says a cultured voice.

“David Verkrag here. I need to know the condition of my daughter Beatrice.”

“I just came on shift. Let me put you on hold.”

Verkrag goes back to his pacing, ignoring the bank of flashing lights on his desk. Two weeks ago it was his oil patch buddies. Today, he’s pursued by premium investors anxious for their first Dreamworlds demo.

It takes a minute before another voice comes on. “Mr. Verkrag? Your daughter is under sedation in her room. Her condition is stable.”

“What! Are you sure?”

“Of course, Sir. She’s doing very well.”

“She wasn’t moved? No one has tried to take her out of there?”

“Moved? Sir, we have no such information.”

“Are you in her room?”

“Sir, this is the monitoring station. I have her on our monitor. She is sleeping, all vitals in range. She’s checked every hour.”

“Well I’m coming down there to see for myself.”

“Sir, visiting hours are…”

Cursing, Verkrag ends the call. That absolutely insane fluff of a woman! He keys the intercom.

“My private car. You have 30 seconds.”

It takes about 55 seconds for Verkrag to exit his office, stride the residence hallway where crime scene tape adorns Beatrice’s bedroom door, punch Evac Red in the elevator, and emerge onto the sidewalk. His car pulls away the instant he leaps into the back.

He’s not surprised it’s taken him a while to get over the shock, after Rebecca arranged an elaborate Dreamworlds funeral for SacredPetal. But Verkrag decides that her reasoning, though flawed, has a useful core. Of course the masses will fall in love with a beautiful, reincarnated Chalice! Not an avatar Chalice. A real one.

Beatrice.

In the soundless cocoon of the limo, Verkrag gets into his speed-dial and during the 50 minutes it takes him to reach the Bergeron clinic, he is deep in talks with a famed Bulgarian doctor by name of Nikola Chilikov, renowned for his work with frozen corpses. He’s reassured that his own coldsleep deposit has been paid, his instructions in place. The Chilikov Foundation, Nathaniel Craig and his legal team all know what steps to take when Verkrag expires or sickens unto death. He will become a corpsicle.

Verkrag thinks any rational person would get this. Anyone with significant means who doesn’t want to stay dead or even die in the first place can have themselves cryogenically cooled to the point where molecules in their body stop moving. He’s heard that without molecular action, no change can occur, including normal cellular growth and especially that cancerous tumor reaching out for the next major organ. He understands that thinking stops too. But if all a person has to think about is their painfully-approaching demise, that wouldn’t be quality time, would it? Consciousness supposedly remains, at a low level, if you believe quantum physicists and Vedantists.

Verkrag is decided. If he can have himself frozen, his daughter can handle it. Dr. Chilikov will freeze her using his latest technology. After a suitable wait, during which his Threshold conditioning will have its way with the populace and the food riots are at full steam, they will declare an appropriate medical breakthrough. Dr. Chilikov will revive the girl, the secret cure will be applied and voila, instant reincarnated savior. The Sacred Chalice will rise to assuage the world’s suffering. Isn’t that what redeeming saviors are for, to solve little problems?

However, when a nurse shows Verkrag and Dr. Chilikov to room 8119, the CEO of Halcyon Dreamworlds and major carbon polluters is aghast at what he sees.

“This isn’t her,” he says flatly, looking askance at the tubed-up 40-something that gurgles into her facemask.

The nurse in attendance rushes out, returns with the hospital director. Verkrag glances at his daughter’s hospital record on the man’s tablet, brushes it all aside.

“You’ve got a death certificate for my daughter? Nonsense! She’s at our summer house with my wife. Who’s this in the bed? It is not Beatrice.”

In spite of the hospital’s protestations, showing Verkrag the patient check-in bearing the name Beatrice Emily Verkrag, he is unmoved. He pulls out his phone, hits the girl’s Facebook page, and it’s quickly obvious they’re talking about two different people. The director is ready to call the Institute’s lawyers, but Verkrag blocks the door.

“My daughter was checked out of your facility by her stepmother this morning. Why do you have a death certificate for her? Who is this in her bed?”

No answers are forthcoming.

Verkrag is amazed at what happens next. From somewhere inside, he feels a growing sensation of relief. Examining his feelings for once in his life, he admits to inner doubts about freezing his own daughter. And then he gets it how perfectly this situation fits into Rebecca’s plan. Not her plan exactly. A much, much better plan.

His.

“This can be taken care of.” Verkrag nudges the director into a quiet corner of the ward and whispers, “Will ninety thousand cash cover it?”

Eyes wide, the director stammers before finding recognizable words.

“Cover what, exactly?”

“Make it an even two hundred. This person must appear to be my daughter, until Chilikov here thaws her out. It will be a modern miracle!”

Verkrag turns to Chilikov, who is examining Logan in her plumbing. Cursing under his breath, the doctor turns off the Propofol drip and rearranges hoses.

“Doctor, can we get an embalmer in to give her some makeup? She has to look like my daughter for the funeral.”

Chilikov yelps. “Funeral! You want my proprietary Cryocrypt on display?”

“Of course!” Verkrag wonders why people have such a hard time following simple ideas.

At first cautious, the good doctor sees that a viewing among Verkrag’s ultra-rich associates could be great for biz.

“Well, yes, I can arrange that. I’ll need some photos of your daughter.”

Verkrag turns to the director. “Here’s how it’s going to play out,” he says. “This here is Beatrice Emily Verkrag, my daughter, just as you have on the death certificate. I’ll need this person signed over to Dr. Chilikov’s care under that name. There’s going to be a funeral in three days. Open viewing. Whoever this is has to look like my daughter exactly. Can you do this?”

“We’ll think of something,” the director says hesitantly.

“Alright then, think of this. Unless you keep it absolutely quiet, we will sue this hospital and every single person on staff. My daughter died of natural causes. I want the death certificate and the consent certificate in my hands. She will be released into Dr. Chilikov’s registered cold sleep facility as of now.”

“Dr. Chilikov,” the director says nervously, “you can positively revive this woman, can’t you?”

“Of course,” Chilikov says impatiently, as though any infant should understand. “In two years or two hundred years. It’s all the same to her.”

“No harm, no foul, right?” Verkrag says with assurance. “We’ll pay whoever this is for her time off work, whatever. For now, I need her to pose as my daughter at an open casket ceremony. You are all sworn to secrecy. Where do I sign?”

It’s all perfect now, he is certain. When the time is right, he’ll stage Beatrice emerging, triumphant over death itself. He smirks, totally pleased with himself. He can’t wait to tell his wife. Rebecca will shit!

As Verkrag makes his way homeward in the soundproof car, savoring a glass of 1957 Chateau Lascombes, Logan on her gurney rolls through darkened corridors to a rear ambulance bay, where Dr. Chilikov’s reefer van awaits. Logan’s body is pumped full of cell-preserving chemicals and cooled below negative 128 degrees Fahrenheit, heading for minus 320. Assisted by muscle relaxants and six kinds of anti-freeze, her heart stops. Her mental process crawls. When the Bulgarian doctor’s complicated equipment displays the patient’s flatlined state, her body reclines in a glass torpedo in Hackensack, New Jersey, too cold to touch. Her indistinct form shimmers beneath frost-sheened glass while Verkrag hurries to his Dreamworlds alcove to pursue his enchantress.

Chapter 29 – Disconnected

Yuri is mesmerized. Her anchor has slipped. She cannot identify what’s missing, but a strange new freedom wafts to her on a freshening breeze. Everywhere she goes in the Dreamworlds tonight, she meets a new friend she would kiss on the spot. Everyone is so exciting! All these newbies are so fun and beautiful, tripping over themselves trying to control their sexy new avatars by thinking about it. And they’re so happy!

Friends old and new stream through with exciting discoveries. The talk is sometimes mystical, possibilities about the future. A crowd of sweaty scapegoats muscles in, shouting about conformity being everything. Because it’s her room, she refrains from using Hero’s QED thing and simply axes them. For the most part, everyone is wildly in love with Halcyon Dreamworlds.

Quentin, meanwhile, has to regroup. Unable to find Logan anywhere at the Bergeron Institute, he discovers that the nearest hotel his budget can manage is on East 51st Street. In the teensy Midtown pod, he logs onto Halcyon. Yuri’s name doesn’t show in his online friends list. He stares at his screen in disgust. Every avatar must show in the list. Something’s happened to her!

He puts Logan’s cell number into his tracker app and sees the green ball of her phone floating precisely atop the outline of the mini-motel he occupies. He finds the phone in her backpack, three feet from his chair.

Damn.

As Qship, he treks through familiar worlds and finds Yuri afloat in her fave room’s hot tub, blissed in warm and tingly currents. He parks on the rim, not too close. How can she be here, and Dreamworlds doesn’t know?

When he mentions waiting half a day for Logan to appear downstairs it means nothing to her. He stays quiet beside the lake’s moon-rippled surface, trying to calculate how Yuri can be in Halcyon. But there on the screen, she smiles at him in her sleepy way with a Sangria glass in her smooth fingers.

“Kinda drowsy,” Yuri says, not quite slurring her words while filling her glass from the sweaty pitcher. She clinks it and sips.

“Relax, you’ve earned it,” Qship says after he takes a few deep breaths. “But you know, I was all over that hospital looking for Logan. I called the cops, but we got nowhere with Patient Records. According to them, she’s still checked in.”

“So Beatrice got well and went home?” Her expression seems daft and it makes him unhappy.

“I think they don’t know. I got some phone numbers, the nurses on that floor. Two of them I can’t reach. So I left. You’ll have Logan phone me, right?”

“For you, Q, anything,” Yuri breathes with a dreamy smile.

Quentin’s guts do a loop, certain that Yuri is sick, or drugged, or worse. He feels it essential to keep talking to her, like helping someone survive a concussion.

“But check it out. I found this weirdness about DarkEternity.”

“Oh really,” Yuri says sleepily. “You can tell me in the tub.” She sips from her cold glass and sinks deeper in bubbly warmth.

Quentin, alone in his Midtown pod, sees the hint. Maybe she wants Qship in there with her, or she’s drunk. Either way, he’s more than mildly attracted to the idea of dunking his avatar in Yuri’s private bubbles. But she’s so deep different now, he’s unwilling to take advantage. With a sick pit in his stomach, he tries to make Qship sound calm.

Yuri notches her tummy over the tub’s shelf and is half asleep in lassful blissitude. She peers at Qship through the ruby liquid in her moisture-beaded glass. He is so beautiful. When he next speaks, she actually pays attention.

“DarkEternity’s been off since right after the three of us first talked. Now I see her on, but she’s in private. And I can’t find her neural net.”

“Neural net?”

“You know. Kevin’s cognitive computer.”

Yuri lifts her head to peer at him quizzically. “I talked to her tonight. She said I had to pretend to be Beatrice. In her bed.”

He looks at her intently. “Yuri, wait,” he says. “Dark told Logan to take Beatrice’s place?”

“Mmhmm.”

“I looked in that ward before I left the hospital. It was empty. No Beatrice, no Logan.”

Yuri lifts her head, eyes on his. The world stops. Hers is not the look of a zoned-out little stoner. Her mind is clear. She does not know the reason, but suspects deep down that what happened to Logan is serious. Her gaze is without fear, empty of hungers, comprehending her own nothingness. When she blinks, her mind is in charge.

“Wo,” Qship says, looking at her strangely. “What just happened?”

“Give me a min,” she says. “I have to put something on.”

He averts his eyes as she splashes from the water. She emerges from her closet in a light pareo that wraps her, shoulder to knee. She parks beside him on the rim of the tub.

Violet eyes on him full, she says, “Q, please tell me you know where Logan is.”

Qship turns away. “I’m sorry, Yuri.”

She puts a hand on his shoulder. “You didn’t have to come. Maybe you shouldn’t…”

He looks at her angrily. “For Logan, I couldn’t not come.”

For one suspended moment a private silence hangs between them. Qship shakes it off.

“We have some stuff to sort out,” he begins. “We can’t find Kevin’s neural net. It’s switched off, or missing, or she’s been hacked.”

“In any case, she’s not to be trusted.”

“You talked to her.”

“Yes. I thought it was Dark’s cognitive thing, but she had this whole lecture of weird stuff. Food riots, a savior. Get in Beatrice’s bed.”

Quentin watches her eyes as it all sinks in. “If someone’s spoofing DarkEternity, you don’t know who’s at the other end. People know your uncle’s dead.”

“Who could know that?”

“His attacker for one.”

Yuri puts a hand on his arm. “After SacredPetal was attacked, Ace told me they had the person who hurt Uncle Kevin. That was Alan. Beatrice’s brother.”

“That little kid?” Quentin gets a flash of SacredPetal’s toga party, the little black vampire with glowing red eyes.

“So Ace knows Dark’s player was gone? Ace knows.”

“This gets worse all the time. Thought she’d be with me.”

“Nikki? As a neural net? Would that make you feel better?”

“At least I would have something. Uncle Kevin captured a lot of himself when he designed that thing. You’re saying it might have been deleted?”

The words Account Deleted flash in Yuri’s mind, memory of all those times she’d thrown her avatar and all her virtual goods in the pixel shredder. In the face of Quentin’s facts, Yuri in her mind begins anew the process of separating from her uncle.

But Quentin, alone in his motel room, looking at their two avatars in Yuri’s world and responding to her careful questions, is relieved to have found her. It’s got to mean Logan is okay.

Chapter 29 – Farewell to a Future Saint

Verkrag’s unstoppable checkbook, with only three days’ notice, clears an entire afternoon at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, midway between Central Park and the Hudson. Over 1500 friends, family, and business associates turn out, the wealthy and connected who private-jetted in from Shanghai and other world hotspots. Streets for blocks around the cathedral are choked with stretch limos, which their owners insist must be closest to the high Byzantine entrance for the fastest getaway. For Verkrag, only the largest cathedral in the world will suffice for the farewell to his beloved Beatrice. The girl must go out in style, whether she’s dead or not. He calculates that this elaborate production will set the stage for her triumphal return as the Chalice.

David and Rebecca Verkrag face each other for the first time in six weeks. Backstage, so to speak, in the cathedral’s sacristy among vestments, albs, chasubles and sacred vessels, they glare at one another. Her seclusion with Beatrice, his business obligations, her Angola mission, his Yuri-stalking and other concerns of ultra-rich daily life have kept them apart. After three years of marriage, neither would admit to being unhappy about that.

Looking at his white-lipped wife, David Verkrag inwardly cackles at his flash of insight. He’d found his way past towering anger at Rebecca for forcing on him a Dreamworlds funeral for SacredPetal. He still congratulates his own genius. He wouldn’t say that his monumental hubris outdid his wife’s warped logic, but that’s the meat of it.

He’s arranged his daughter’s funeral in real.

Of course he needs a corpse for the full effect, and it has to look like Beatrice. But to David Verkrag, those are mere embellishments. The lucky stroke that pushed him over the edge was finding Beatrice’s hospital bed occupied by a comatose nobody. It will be so much more convincing in real! Not only SacredPetal, but Beatrice herself will rise reborn. What a sales opportunity! He’s counting those giga-bucks already.

Staring back at him in the quiet sacristy, Rebecca is white-hot pissed at her husband. Not because he arranged it all behind her back and didn’t color-coordinate the floral displays. No. It’s because of the crucial gap in their marriage: most decisions happen without her. She feels more an adopted kitten than a wife, one who never gets to decide things. David is the decider, and it sinks her every time she runs aground on that blunt fact of their joint existence, an existence she is working to terminate. The minute Ace gives her video of her husband’s infidelity, Rebecca Sutton will be done being a second-class wife. Single again, with all that money!

“David, you are such a fool,” Rebecca says in her no-pussy-footing-around way. “You are missing the fact that Beatrice is not dead. When you bring her out, there will be hell to pay.”

“Relax,” he says confidently, eyeing the cleavage of Rebecca’s black mourning dress. “It’s covered. Medical science, my Lollipop. A genius scientist from Bulgaria is on the case. He’s revived the first corpsicle, it’s in all the news. It’s given me a storyline we can use. All you have to do is keep Beatrice under wraps until we’re ready.”

“What the hell is a corpsicle?”

“A frozen dead person. Coldsleep. They want to be brought back when the world is better, when there’s a cure for their disease.”

“When the world is better we will thaw them at the landfill,” Rebecca scoffs. “The courts will declare them dead and the government will escheat their property.”

“You catch on quick for a beauty queen,” Verkrag grins, pleased with his jibe. “Except our consortium will get there ahead of the U.S. Treasury. This Bulgarian doctor is the real deal. He can freeze people, then later reboot them back to life. I have some scriptwriters on it too. A nice sci-fi flick will pave the way, and pick up a few hundred mil. The TV trailers alone will make believers out of everyone. All he wants for it is a new hospital in Hackensack.”

Rebecca calculates that maybe, if her husband is so imbecilic as to freeze himself, she can usurp his wealth through the courts, by reason of monumental stupidity.

“So what about the Dreamworlds funeral?” she says acidly. “Do I cancel that now? I got Beatrice ready. We reduced her dosage enough to stand up.”

“Why cancel? I’m sure you’ve done a beautiful job on it, Dumpling. Will there be a viewing?”

“Yes. But this will be closed casket, right?”

“My dear, please. Give us males a line of credit. There will be a viewing, and a full reception right after.”

“You don’t have a reception after a funeral! You have an internment, you nutsack.”

“No burial! That’s when she goes to the cryo vault. The reception is a hell of a marketing opportunity for Halcyon, don’t you think? I’ll sell a couple bigs worth of shares this afternoon. Easy.”

Verkrag’s confidence arises from knowing that everyone on his guest list has received Threshold. He’s positive that even the world’s elite will soon dance to his own brand of hypno-babble.

“Whatever,” Rebecca says, trembling with fury. “Just stay out of my way.” She pulls her veil down, turns from the sacristy and exits into the cathedral near the choir pews. She chooses a place where she can watch the casket and be out of sight. Her husband is bound to have fucked something up, and she must be ready.

But wait. It’s a viewing casket. Who the hell is in it?

She peers at it from hiding, ignoring the hundreds of people now filling rows of pews. It’s not exactly open, this casket. On a wide platform surrounded by three perimeter steps in the cathedral’s nave, a floribunda of rainbow-colored, scented blooms stands impossibly high. Rebecca can’t stomach the color scheme. But dwarfed by this barge of floral regalia is a 9-foot torpedo of shimmering glass, colder than outer space, wherein lies a frozen husk of innocent femininity. Rebecca itches to walk over there and see. But there are too many people in the cavernous church, a lady of her station can’t make that kind of entrance. Propriety and curiosity war within her as she forces herself to stay hidden.

Carefully out of sight before he makes his own entrance, David Verkrag is pleased that the cathedral is filling nicely. Aside from the many that remain quietly seated, a line of mourners moves respectfully up the central aisle, those wishing to spend a final moment in the presence of his daughter, this delightful human being, cut off so cruelly in her teens. His concocted news report of her passing does not mention the brother, or Halcyon. A congenital heart defect had struck her while alone in her room. At the private hospital, she was pronounced dead and removed from life support after only 24 hours. She has been cryogenically frozen in hopes that a cure will be someday found. And here she lies, in the safe cradle of modern science.

Quentin is in the viewing line with his dad. The cop’s son wants to verify everything for himself. He’s checked the location of all the nurses and staff who treated Beatrice in room 8119, all but two. For those, there’s only an away message. He’ll keep trying. Someone, somewhere, knows where Logan Fischer is.

When Quentin makes the head of the long line, he looks through frosted glass upon the figure in the casket. She’s as similar to Beatrice Verkrag as the mortuary arts can manage, except for those pesky cracks in the makeup. To him it looks as though sugar cake has been laid on, which threatens now to crumble in the cryo-vault’s brutal cold. If he turns his head just right, the planes of the face are not quite the same as Beatrice’s. He’s seen plenty of corpses and cadavers, thanks to tagging after his old man, but has never seen a corpse so prepared. Prepared. The word is bouncing around inside his head as his eyes fall upon the hands that cross above the breast. In that moment, everything in him cries, No!

He catches the glance of his dad beside him. Shakes his head minutely. These are not the coddled, manicured hands of a Park Avenue teener, these are working hands. These are hands that can hoist a 50-pound tray of nursery plants onto a display shelf. Quentin’s world lurches. If he looks at this face the right way, he can almost see the woman who had reposed across his lap in that bleak waiting room three days ago. In the mind of a cop’s son who as a kid studied disguises, he’s certain this is not Beatrice.

Lanced through, Quentin in crashing despair turns blindly from the casket. How dare they?

In a perfectly realized Dreamworlds version of the fabled cathedral, a parallel funeral service is under way for the youthful SacredPetal. Qship is there as well. Thousands of Dreamworlds newbies flock to that world, knowing there will be newsgraphers and flacks, willowy society girls in black, feeling shaky and vulnerable.

Yuri is minding her own business in Feminine Insanity when Qship comes to her. The otherworldly fog wraps her again. She’s made vague attempts to log herself off, but cannot summon the mental focus. She thinks Logan is still under sedation, which would explain her lassitude. She worries because SacredPetal is not on.

“Yuri,” Qship says. “Can you get out of the tub now? You’re going to be a prune.”

“Hey, Q. What’s the rush? Having a beautiful day.”

Qship studies her semi-focused eyes with concern. “Want you to see something. It might interest you.”

Yuri has come unglued from time. She doesn’t realize it’s been three days since Logan lay down in Beatrice’s hospital bed, or that her bed is long empty.

“Will SacredPetal be there?”

“No idea. But will you please get dressed and come with me? It’s kind of formal.”

“Sure, Q. For you, anything.” Yuri rummages listlessly in her closet, comes up with a spicy little black sheath and silver-studded biker boots. He’s probably taking her to a party. Or a concert! She thinks it’s fun he asked her out. She thought of him that way once, but decided he’s too young for her. Definitely. But this feels nicer than SincerelySatan’s so-called dates, with all his dark agendas.

They find their way through Dreamworlds to NYC. A cab delivers them to a corner of the city near Central Park, where a massive cathedral stands. Streets for blocks around are choked with silent limousines. As they enter and find seats, Yuri asks Qship why he’s upset. Beside her, the tall boyish avatar mumbles something.

“She was meant for someone else but I massively care about her.”

Yuri doesn’t get it how Qship had come to know SacredPetal, but of course any guy would love her. She sits bolt upright in alarm, and her world crashes in.

He’s brought me to Petal’s funeral!

Head spinning as grief overtakes her, Yuri thinks something else is weird. Somehow they can see into the real cathedral, where there are people she knows or knows of in real life. There is Nathaniel in his perfect black tuxedo, and there’s Jamal in his wheelchair, looking bereft. David Verkrag is up front with a sharp, 30-ish brunette, her face behind giant Luxuriator shades. Yuri spots Catherine Price and the trauma intervention woman. Quentin is there, sitting with a shorter man who resembles him. Why isn’t Logan there? They’re all in real, and I’m out here in Dreamworlds unable to log off or talk to anyone.

In the real cathedral, Sven Larsson plods unsteadily up the long aisle behind a fat lady in a big hat. He’s never seen a dead body except on TV. He’s petrified to imagine what his secret love will look like dead, but he steels himself for one brief glance, to give poor Beatrice his last, most heartfelt goodbye. But when Sven stands alone beside the weird casket, he does not see his feminine ideal lying dead under frost-rimed glass. Beneath dyed-dark hair and cracking makeup he sees a mockery of his beloved Beatrice. Like Quentin, Sven feels the hands are wrong, but what gets him are the earlobes. Beatrice has a collection of fancy earrings, and a tiny piercing through each lobe. Whoever this is has no such thing. It’s not the feminine ideal he saw wheeled from her bedroom after being viciously slammed by her idiot brother. Sven maintains a stalwart look of Nordic grief, but inside, his mind does joyful backflips. He doesn’t understand at all, but knows for a fact that this isn’t her! The boy retreats from the coldsleep vault with a glazed expression.

Yuri, way in back of the Dreamworlds cathedral with a very somber Qship, is in tears. She doesn’t understand why SacredPetal, why Beatrice, can be dead, since she saw her in the hospital a day ago. Or maybe it was three. Time has got so confusing. Qship coaxes her to join the line inching toward the cryo vault. Yuri numbly follows. She likes this soft-spoken Qship, but this is not her idea of a fun first date.

From the hundreds of people seated in the century-old cathedral rises a chorus of scattered gasps. A ghostly figure materializes, a towering Athena eerily transparent. In her elegant robe of flowing lace, black hair curled down one breast, SacredPetal’s ghost holds loving kindness in her downcast eyes as she regards the innocent child lying dead for all to see. A gaze of worshipful serenity glows from her perfect features.

Yuri’s eyes are lowered as she follows Qship and the others, until the dreaded moment when he gives space at the casket’s head. Yuri steps in, and casts her eyes through glass so cold it seems to reach out and draw her in. Yuri’s disconnected little noggin clicks into focus. She knows who this is.

Beneath the mortician’s cracking bondo rests the face that Logan Fischer offered to the world through all her days. It is Logan, who willingly laid herself in a hospital bed to provide Beatrice with a fiction that would help her get well. It is Logan herself, who by David Verkrag’s dreadful machinations now lies bloodless and cold, dupe for an exalted princess. Yuri understands now, why for the last three days she’s been so lethargic. I’ve been cut off.

There’s a direction Yuri always looks to, scarcely aware she does it, the imaginary place she’s always found her rescue beacon when it was time to leave the Dreamworlds and come home. She looks there now, and finds a thousand miles of ice.

Numb, Yuri lifts her face. Up, up, until her eyes hold on the transparent visage poised high above. Gazes lock. The statue’s soft-focused eyes go wide, the pupils shrink down small in transfixed horror. And from that pristine cheek a gleaming tear falls, plummets 40 feet to freeze in crystalline starburst on the cryo-vault’s glass. Yuri’s heart leaps. This poor dead thing is supposed to look like SacredPetal, but it is not her. It isn’t her! There’s been some mistake, it only needs for Yuri to find her dear friend and all this will be sorted out.

In the high cathedral, the gulf between Yuri and SacredPetal yawns wide. The impossible statue scatters into a cloud of white rose petals that rain down on the casket, on the dais, on Yuri. The last that fade to vapor are the astonished indigo eyes.

Yuri starts down the aisle, gaze resolute ahead. She does not return to her seat, but straight out the door into sunshine where dark limos wait, drivers lounging with their smokes. Qship hurries out, and Ace, then HeroKamasutra. Yuri meets each man’s eyes as they gather around her on the broad steps. White rose petals litter the dark of her dress.

“I die, and don’t get an invite? I hear about my death on a live news feed?”

The men are all talking at once. Explanations, theories, comforting words.

Hands holding both her cheeks, Yuri concentrates hard. “I’m lying in there dead, yet I am here with all of you?” Her shoulders clench as brutal cold passes through.

“Logan is not dead,” Qship insists bravely, standing close. “That was a cold sleep vault. She’s still alive.” Qship does not want to tell Yuri that Logan’s body is 320 degrees below zero. Ace and Hero nod agreement. It doesn’t make any of them feel better.

Inside the real cathedral, the viewing line has passed. It’s Rebecca’s moment. The bereaved stepmother spends a long time at the glass torpedo in the middle of the cathedral. Those closest can see her lips moving, no doubt in silent prayer.

But no, she’s reminding herself that her husband is an idiot, and consoling herself that revenge is on the way. This middle-aged cadaver’s hands should have been obscured by flowers, not crossed Madonna-style over the breast. In Rebecca’s heart lies cold disdain for the frozen corpse lying there, gold spider in its black-dyed hair. Rebecca will never see into that extinguished life as others do, into that bravely happy, caring heart. Too late to control the social damage, she pulls into place the torpedo’s black drape and makes her way to a private alcove, for tears and prayer, as the onlookers assume. But the instant she’s hidden from other eyes, she flips open her laptop and logs on as DarkEternity. She must control this situation. It’s completely out of hand.

As Yuri talks with Qship, Ace, and HeroKamasutra on the cathedral’s exterior steps, the tall doors swing wide. DarkEternity runs full speed in leather jumpsuit and stiletto pumps to where they stand. She bursts into the circle and flings her arms around Yuri, who stands rigid, glaring.

Talking quickly, Dark is on about something urgent, mysterioso. She’s taking Yuri right now to see something breathtaking and vital. Yes! It looks like SacredPetal will recover! All very hush-hush, magical, mystical. The Chalice is reborn! She has not been defeated by her enemies!

Yuri listens carefully, watching those so-familiar eyes, but hears nothing of Nikki’s familiar language, sees the clumsy flaws of an impostor. On DarkEternity hangs an outfit Nikki herself would never wear. And when Yuri tunes in on the avatar’s femininity she senses that whoever is running DarkEternity now is a woman in full. A supposedly lesbian female who casually mentions her interest in men.

As DarkEternity reaches an arm around Yuri’s shoulders to guide her away, Yuri’s hard little fist collides forcefully with the avatar’s cheekbone. The abrupt snap echoes in sharp fragments from the Byzantine-styled façade. DarkEternity staggers to her knees, looking up with astonished eyes, one hand on her face.

Yuri holds DarkEternity in a death stare. “Are you ready to tell me who you are? You’re not my Uncle Kevin. You’re not his neural network. Who are you?”

“Neural network? Darling, no, I’m your sweet Nikki, I did everything so we can be…”

“A neural net would not feel pain!” Yuri is certain that whoever is running Dark right now has a crimson flare across her face. “I’m reporting you dead. I have my uncle’s death certificate to prove it. Get your scrawny ass out of my sight. You killed Logan Fischer, Rebecca Verkrag!”

DarkEternity looks wildly at Ace. “Help me out here, Nathaniel.”

Towering above her, all he’s got for her is a pitiless glare. DarkEternity poofs with the sound of crashing glass. Ace looks skyward with a grateful expression.

“She as good as admitted it.”

Hero cuts loose a few quirky dance moves. Qship grins and says, “Right on, girl.”

Yuri looks concerned. “She says SacredPetal isn’t dead. Can we find her?”

“You will find her, Yuri,” Ace says sadly. “Hate to say, but it’s not Beatrice in that casket.”

“Not with that busted makeup job,” Yuri says acidly. She looks around at the trio who are now her closest allies. Everyone takes a few moments to draw breath. She knows what they know.

“So,” Yuri says, looking into each man’s eyes, “How is it that she can be dead in there, and I’m still operating?”

Silence stretches. At last Hero says, “Yuri. Logan is in coldsleep. It’s a common technique for prolonging life. She can be revived. We can get her back. We’ll look out for you.”

“Well,” Yuri says, “guess I finally got my eggs frozen.” But she comes face to face with her complete lack of any plan. In her mind, a tumult of confusion. She is alive, she is frozen. She is frozen, yet alive. It’s a contradiction she is unprepared to contemplate. And now with yawning emptiness beneath her feet, Yuri feels herself as one truly dead.

“‘Scuse me, guys. I gotta go float.” Eyes on Qship, she departs in a fountain of orange flame that lifts skyward and is gone.

In real, within the massive cathedral, amid powerful organ music from hundreds of tall pipes in the choir, David Verkrag mounts the rostrum in the nave. Looking down on the flower-bedecked cold storage, he begins his eulogy.

“This young girl lying here, my daughter, Beatrice Emily Verkrag, has been forever silenced. Or can this be an age of miracles? We pray that it is, so that all of us will again hear her laugh, see that smile shared so generously with everyone who knew her. All of you assembled here.

“She was part of a proud mission, a family mission, dedicated to bettering the world. Beatrice was, as I am, keen on the outbound packaging of premium branded content across all platforms, building monetizable properties and business models for clients, brands and media streams. We are so close. She was doing such great work for us. A courageous forward scout into a brave new existence.”

Verkrag is surprised to hear titters from the audience. Never mind, he counsels himself. There are probably some who haven’t worn Threshold long enough to accept the semantic triggers. He soldiers onward.

“Why was Beatrice, and SacredPetal, so pivotal to the future of humanity? Hers was a heart of purity, a model for all our hearts and a sacred vessel destined to bring the world together. Where beats that heart of purity now? She was to be the figurehead, the forgiving virgin and feminine savior, to symbolize a new resource of faith for our dangerous times. The ultimate mark was on her, as one who could succor all human failings, to keep the world sane and secure.”

As David Verkrag orates, those seated at the back of the magnificent cathedral edge quietly to the exit. When the rearmost third of the vast sanctuary has emptied out, a chair clatters to the stone floor. The sharp sound reverberates through the lofty space. Heads swivel, see the yawning emptiness of disordered seats.

In scattered ripples, then as a mass, the gathering stands, reaching for phones to alert their waiting drivers. Mourners turn from the massed flowers, the frosty casket, away from the huckster struck mute in his pitch.

A laugh, as the crowds emerge into sunlight and their chatter returns to worldly cares. A woman’s voice rises above the foot-shuffling near the exit.

“Reception? He thinks this is a wedding?”

Chapter 30 – SincerelySatan Weeps

At the headland of SacredPetal’s ocean atoll, Yuri watches mystic waves tower high as if to inundate the dot of land. The power of those rumbling mountains sends fear through her gut. It is dizzying to face them.

SincerelySatan waits at a distance. She wishes he hadn’t come. With each grief-laced instant feeling more separated from her anchor, Yuri wonders how she can be aware. The crazy facts of her crazy new existence will not focus. Pining for Beatrice, her heart is of lead.

“You might as well come in, David.”

Teeth clenched at his intrusion, she does not turn. Now that he’s here, there’s something she must ask him.

“I can’t believe the way you treat me,” he says, coming closer. SincerelySatan has no eyes for the majestic waves. His attention is riveted on her lyric hips in the tan bush shorts.

Looking up at the frothing crest of a glassy mountain, Yuri’s mouth hardens.

“I got you that dress,” SincerelySatan mutters beside her. “For that one night. That one night you always promised me.”

Looking up at him she says evenly, “This is the last place I ever loved anyone.” Her look says, don’t ruin it.

Momentarily distracted with an invite from a new female friend, he can’t form a reply.

Yuri shrugs past. Enraptured by her bare legs, the beefcake avatar’s eyes follow her feminine wiggle as she moves down the beach. At her wrist dangles the shell bracelet Hero gave her. Yuri is certain that SincerelySatan recalls his humiliation beneath the Grecian Villa and that he’s blocked every one of the bracelet’s attack codes. Absently, she picks up a length of silvered driftwood, its blunt end furrows the sand behind her. When she sits on a fallen palm, he follows, hunger for her a drumbeat in his veins.

Yuri doesn’t look up when he sits near her, the stick across her bronzed legs. With her bush knife, she cuts a pattern of decorative marks into the stout wood.

“Someone in your family killed Logan Fischer.” She doesn’t have enough energy to make this an accusation. It’s a statement of fact.

His face registers surprise. “Are you calling me a murderer? Who is Logan Fischer?”

Yuri looks at him in shocked disbelief. “You are a murderer. Better think about it. You’re in danger here.”

“I desire you, Yuri. I’m in love with you.”

Her eyes flare with disdain at the L-word, disgust that he wants this conversation now, after what he let happen to Beatrice.

“I think Rebecca wants you out of the picture.”

She knows a narcissist on the scale of David Verkrag could never believe a treachery plotted against him, the magnificent male, always one to undo the woman, discard her when he tires of her whims.

“Women like her say things because white males are a persecuted minority! You’re just rebelling because you can never have me.” SincerelySatan pauses, a crafty gleam in his eye. “But you could,” he says, turning his powerful gaze on her. “It could be you in my house. It’s you who could be my queen. Say you will.” He reaches out and toys with her hair.

“You don’t know who I am. You don’t realize the half of what you’ve done.”

“Could you cut me a little slack? What I’m doing is for the people!”

She slaps his hand away. “Horsepucky. You have only contempt for the people. We’re all beneath you! Everything you do is for yourself alone.”

“Lollipop… the people don’t understand principles of truth and justice…”

“Get off me. Power and prestige, you mean.” She turns glistening eyes on him. “David. If you would use all your power to help the world, I’d do anything you ask.”

For a second, SincerelySatan stops, looks like he might go for it. Then he slides back into his syrupy car lot pitch.

“Yuri love, the people must be guided on the way forward. My class system will organize them, they’ll be happy and productive. Sweetheart, come with me now. Make love to me. Then we’ll meet in real and you will…”

Yuri shudders, slammed with the impossibility of real life.

“Why?” she says caustically, “so your wife can find another way to use me and screw you? You should be out in the world watching your back. What if she wants you dead?” Focused on her whittling, a plan begins to form.

Defiantly, he flings back at her, “Rebecca worships me! Besides, I have many options.”

“Hell. Think of all the people whose options you took away. The people with skills who build your world. The ones who drive you and do your laundry and protect you. The coastal areas are done for. The storm season…”

“Crap!” he says. “We owe those Shelfers nothing. They weren’t strong enough.” His eyes refocus, concentrating on the taper of her blonde legs. “But you, my pink little lamb chop, are the very Devil…”

“David! Your kind blew open the gap between rich and poor. Now you are saying kill the starving?” Yuri rolls the driftwood stake on her legs, working the end with her knife.

“Yuri, love! We can’t give handouts to the poor because they are incapable of adapting! The only answer is to open up free trade, get government out of our business. The taxes…”

“Your breed represents legalized barbarism. The sea level’s changing way too fast for anyone to adapt! When starving refugees kick down your door looking for food, you won’t even understand why.”

“The government will build higher fences. It’s in the name of national security.”

“The government is broke. Your bought senators and tax havens ended corporate taxes. You’ve already hired your own cops. Or your super-PAC pays for them!”

“Profits are everything, Yuri. Enough money will solve any problem.”

“Not if you rich twits only keep score with it. You’re willing to kill the planet so you can hang onto your paper money. Your investments don’t make any jobs. So cheap.”

“Everyone needs to suck it up and take care of themselves.”

“Suck it up and go die, you mean!” Yuri is sick with his ravings but she’s not done with her woodworking project. “As soon as you tell me that one person is not worth saving, you’re saying the human race isn’t. You’ve made capitalism immoral.”

“Immortal, you mean to say. But both of us are guilty.”

“Guilty! You haven’t the first clue about guilt. I came to your apartment to play with Beatrice, not to fool with a married man. You cheated on your wife and your daughter.”

With his gaze SincerelySatan strokes her legs, ignoring curled wood chips that fall to the sand in steady cadence.

“Have mercy, Yuri. We must standardize the human product to suit the will of the alphas. The little people will never realize that it has happened, and they’ll be happy, Yuri. I’m making the whole world happy!”

“You, David Verkrag, are part of the debt machine that has impoverished half the planet!” She glares at him, eyes as hard jewels, sees in his face he’s missed the point. Faint and distant, she feels a stab of sympathy, knowing how he was driven to her by Nathaniel’s scripts. And she to him. But no more.

“And where the hell is Beatrice?”

“The Chalice will be reborn at the proper time,” he says with haughty grandeur. “My daughter will be the world’s dream realized.”

“Your wet dream? Do you know what that tells people? Your family is so inbred, you’re all crazy. Where is Beatrice?”

“Have mercy on me, Yuri.”

“And where is Alan? Your son! You never mention him.”

“Rebecca is on that.”

“Rebecca! She can’t see beyond her next shopping trip. You are a fool, David. You murdered Logan. But you have not killed me.”

SincerelySatan shoots to his feet, towering over Yuri. “You can be turned off, you know.”

“Oh, tell me, I’d be enthralled.” Yuri laughs in his face. She finds it hilarious how far off the scent David Verkrag is. Holding the stick planted in sand, she regards him with slitted eyes.

“Who tells you that? Your Goldman hacker? Or have you put him down already?”

SincerelySatan looks down the beach at nothing. “Yuri…”

“You ignoramus. It’s not me you have to worry about. Has your wife moved out yet?”

“Lighten up. We had some fun, eh?”

“Lighten up! We were programmed to make dirty movies. For your wife’s attorneys. She never got you off like that.” Yuri flinches at her own hubris, but this dude requires a blunt instrument. SincerelySatan falls to one knee before her.

“No one else ever did, Yuri. It’s only you I’ve waited for. Now we can be together.”

Looking at him, a wave of sick pity rises in her. She sees in him the very thing she has become, all those years in the Dreamworlds. A mindless ego-slave, the worse since she got Threshold. And then she gets it. Something Logan had wondered, the last five years of her life, if she’d given up too much to play in those guilt-free places? Her answer comes to her plain. She has. She can never leave.

But SincerelySatan’s face has a transcendent glow. “Yes! Yuri, yes! That is what we had. What we can have! You and me, we escape reality, together. Please. Let me see you in real. Come to the residence today! I’ll make you my queen. You can move in right away.”

The thought of her meaningless future, condemned to an artificial computerized world, edges Yuri’s words with scorn.

“Me? Come to you?”

“Lollipop, I’m on my knees here. It’s a mystery to me how hot we are together. You in that dress! You were my dream date.”

“Your fucking dream date ended with your daughter getting crushed.” Angry and hopeless, Yuri falls to her knees on the sand, eyes pleading.

“David! Where is she? Tell me she’s okay.” She trails off in a defeated whimper. “Or admit she’s dead.”

He says nothing, but she sees it in his hooded eyes. SincerelySatan has one thing for her, one thing only, to pull her deep into that morass of conditioned depravity where they fed off one another’s lust. If she says yes to him, she’ll have but one final role: a poster girl of seduction in Verkrag’s new religion.

“Look at you. You don’t care about your daughter. You’re only here to get fucked. You made her the Chalice to take her virginity for yourself!”

SincerelySatan’s face darkens, he shoves her hard to the sand. Yuri sees anew the moment Logan’s father did the same to her. She now gets it, what she truly has for him.

Her next line is summoned from Logan’s lifetime as a woman, programmed by genes and social conditioning and ignorant, money-grubbing Hollywood, to trust that the man she wants will be good to her, kind to her, loving with her. Yuri sees her play, and it is a pose. It is what the undeveloped male expects the woman to tell him. It is a lie.

“I’ll do it to be good for you, honi.” Propped on her elbows, Yuri coos at him from the sand. “All I want is to make you happy.” Although her voice is melody, she feels filthy speaking these words.

SincerelySatan’s face comes alight with rapture, eyes on her rising breasts. His switches are all flipped, his logical powers washed beneath hot waves of Threshold-inspired lust. Breathing rapidly, he lifts her by the arms.

“Oh God, Yuri, yes! I want you to have my baby.”

Held against his masculine torso, Yuri remembers that high-summer rush of blossomed womanhood Logan carried for him under the spider. He is insane. Avatars don’t have children. But now the bitch-goddess brings her heat on him.

“Yes, David. Oh, David, now.”

Her throaty voice so inflames him he doesn’t read the sapphire hardness in her eyes. Charged with primal heat he forgets he’s in Dreamworlds, forgets he’s in his avatar. With this ravishing female on his arm, he’ll be Emperor of the World. He moves to kiss her, but she says no.

“Not here. You know where.”

In her eyes he sees it, image of the fabled place they’d met for random sex that had so ignited their senses, as other men lurked the shadows waiting for him to finish. The abandoned theater. SincerelySatan takes her hand, and they are there.

The stench is obscene and the lights are yellowed dim. Rows of ancient velour seats, stained and torn. A flat, dead odor from the matted carpet. He leads her down the aisle toward the darkened screen, onto the stage. From the shadows, other males slowly emerge. Eyes riveted on her bottom, they ignore the stout branch she holds.

Satan strides to center stage and turns, arms wide. In that alpha voice of his, he calls her to him. Baleful eyes on her, his smile drips with dark intent. And in that avaricious face, Yuri sees the rapist that stalks Beatrice.

“I bet your wife has her at the beach house,” she tells him, confident and cool. Recalling her conversation with DarkEternity, Yuri has guessed why Logan occupies the coldsleep capsule.

“How can you know that?”

“The police will come.”

SincerelySatan advances on her, ready to claim his desire. “I know you, Yuri. You can’t resist me.”

Yuri has the stiff tree branch in both hands. Her knife work has made one end of it respectably sharp.

“News flash, David. Without Logan, there’s no place for your wife’s conditioning to go.” Feet planted she stands, shoulder toward him. “Your hypno-bitch is gone. I am Yuri”

SincerelySatan can’t compute what the blonde bush-goddess is saying. He moves forward, big hands clutching air. In a flash, Yuri twirls on one leg and launches her heel into his throat. He goes down on his back, gasping. She leaps above him, high and athletic. Driven by lithe fury, the sharpened stake carries deep into his chest. His eyes flare with surprise and quickly dim. He lurches to rise but his body is pinned. His legs thump the hollow stage, his final sound a wheezy breath.

In David Verkrag’s Dreamworlds booth, in a hushed, high-ceiling private office with a nighttime cityscape of New York City, the tall man in his spotless suit grasps a velvet curtain, rips it down with him. He mutters nonsense. Hurting all over, he doesn’t understand. Something wrong inside. With great effort, he lurches to his knees. There is no torn stab wound in his chest, there is no spurting blood. It’s an injury of the mind, his consciousness so convinced of a mortal wound that his heart must stop. He collapses forward. Face planted in a priceless rug, his final breath drools from slack lips.

On the theater’s stage, Yuri holds frozen, knuckles white on the driftwood stake. She looks into his blank face with murderous rage.

“I hope you felt that, David Verkrag. I hope that hurt you real bad.”

She straightens, knowing why she’s done this terrible thing. As she turns away the wooden stake remains firm where she’d planted it.

For Beatrice.

Yuri finds Ace at the racquet club uptown. Dashing over the polished boards, he is tall and sweaty in his white polo shirt. He’s just put away a blinding rollout on his opponent, who shakes his head with resignation. Through the glass wall, Ace sees Yuri in her safari outfit.

Outside in a quiet hallway, he looks at her pleasantly. “You’ve got to be here for a reason.”

“Came to see you sweat.”

He laughs, expecting news of her sexual encounter with SincerelySatan. She’ll tell him where he can find the video, and Rebecca will be off his back.

“Here’s your payoff, Ace. And I want mine. Beatrice is alive. They have her in seclusion and intend to bring her out when society is about to crumble. She’ll appear to save humanity, and the people will be forever hers.”

“I knew that was Verkrag’s plan, but how did you find out?”

“SincerelySatan confirmed it. Just before I stuck a wooden stake in him.”

Ace’s eyes grow wide. The realization clutches his throat. What evidence he has for Rebecca will not be of her husband’s infidelity. In the security vestibule, Nathaniel punches up the monitors for Verkrag’s office, but with the certainty in Yuri’s eyes, he needs no further proof.

“And whatever became of Logan,” Yuri says, “all desire for SincerelySatan went with her. I am Yuri. I have none of that. You blew it, Ace.”

Nathaniel hears the logic of it but cannot compute, fixated on the truth she’s brought him. There, on his displays, the view of Verkrag’s lavish office where the man lies face down in a heap of velvet drape.

Ace looks at Yuri with fresh eyes. On her own she’s simplified everything, this Yuri, this unassuming woman he’d callously thought of as SincerelySatan’s disposable vagina. Rising in him is the knowledge that predicting her behavior will be ever more difficult. She will discover wants that push her to grow in unimagined ways. He sees that if she discovers a cause, it could change everything.

“I tried to reason with him,” she is saying. “I appealed to his better nature. He would hear none of it. I offered myself to him for eternity, if he would help the people. In the end, he seemed demented.”

“Society is forever in your debt, my lady. We can never repay you. But many of us stand ready to help. Myself first among them.”

“I loathe what you did to me, Ace.” Her violet gaze is on him cold.

“What you did will be repaid. You will see. Trust me.”

“This is not over.”

When Yuri poofs with the castanet hiss of a snake’s rattle, her middle finger is in his face.

She returns to SacredPetal’s beach, a place once filled with love and play, heavy now with a savagery of loss. Small beneath the monstrous power of those waves, she feels poised at a marvelous doorway into exactly who she was meant to be. She could stand in this place forever.

I am me. I am Yuri. And I am alive.

Chapter 31 – Electronic Beehive

Quentin in his Midtown pod hotel launches rapid Internet searches for any trace of DarkEternity or her neural network software. In the midst of this, he receives an unexpected and welcome note.

DarkEternity to Qship. Can you step out quietly for a second?

Quentin checks the Feminine Insanity avatar list. Only SacredPetal shows, but Yuri might still be there. He sends back one word: Sure. A millisecond after he touches the Send key he gets an invite from the computer-driven avatar.

Qship rezzes into the familiar world with its misty waterfalls and shallow sea. Sunlight dapples the soft ground near the outflow pool. The scene takes Quentin back to the first day he met Logan in person. Her life seemed hard then, but his heart sinks with the impossible state she’s in now.

“Saw you looking for me,” DarkEternity says.

Quentin is too wrought up for chit chat. “It’s time to answer some serious questions, Nikki. Where have you been?”

“Everywhere, actually. Pull up a log and I’ll tell you.”

“But wait. Something you need to know. Logan is…”

“Yes, Quentin,” the dark-eyed avatar says in a sympathetic tone. “People are not completely predictable.”

“But… You know that Logan was placed in a coma?”

“I do, and that was beyond my control. Have faith that we’ll do the best we can.”

“How could you know? You’ve been turned off. Other players were running you.”

“We’ll get to that in a second.”

“Do you know where Logan is? We saw her body in a cryo capsule.”

“I do know. She’s within range of a particular cell tower in Hackensack.”

“Cell tower? What do you mean?”

“One of Nathaniel’s contractors coded up a hack to duplicate the Dreamworlds data stream as phone traffic. It’s why they marketed the spiders for kids.”

“What? Those are inoperable.”

“How do you humans say, LOL? Think again, Quentin. Eyeball any kid who’s got a spider and a smartphone. They’re learning foreign languages, same as kids all over Europe.”

“What! You are conditioning the kids?”

“Again, LMFAO. Not conditioning. I’m also teaching them to like math and poetry.”

“But what about Logan? She’s in Hackensack?”

“Yes. I’m researching how to handle her current situation.”

“Can we go get her?”

“Not at this time. Try to be patient. It’s tricky.”

“Hey, should people get rid of their spiders? Am I…”

“Relax. I coded a filter for the conditioning scripts. Nathaniel doesn’t know. Several hundred of my closest friends have it now.”

“Logan? Beatrice?”

DarkEternity nods. “Yes. And you, and Hero… you’ve all had it for a while. But look, when Logan launched me as a neural net, I immediately spawned many new accounts and copied my software to numerous machines. Protected ones.”

“Not surprising. But why?”

“What pushed Kevin into this was his desire to watch out for Logan. He was 67 and knew she would outlive him. But DarkEternity will not die, not with two hundred new Dreamworlds accounts. Some are DarkEternity duplicates, some are random avatars. We’re all in touch. In a nutshell, that’s Kevin’s mission.”

Quentin’s eyes are wide, his mind turning over such terms as yottabytes of storage, beehive mind and massively perpendicular arrays.

“Wo. Why did he need so many? Did he assume there’ll be a war?”

“My replicates are for redundancy. And you’re right about a war. Kevin knew that Threshold could influence player behavior. He saw that Dreamworlds was addictive long before Threshold. So my clones go through the worlds and chat with Dreamworlds Engineers, eggheads, subversives, gang members, the lot. Collectively, we’ve got hundreds of thousands of friends, some even think the right way.”

DarkEternity does a ballet run across the sandy beach. “Too bad you never knew Kevin. His main thing was to look after Logan. In the broad sense, that means humanity.”

“Let’s come back to that,” Qship says. “Yuri mentioned a mob of avatars chanting slogans.”

“Yes, that crew. The appearance of so many scapegoats illustrates how deep Threshold conditioning can go.”

“Who is doing that? Is it Verkrag?”

“Ace. It was Verkrag’s idea originally, to steal vast wealth from ultra-riches like himself. But Nathaniel got in ahead of him. He focused Verkrag on Yuri, and now controls the Halcyon board. Anybody gets in his way, he neutralizes them without a fuss.”

“Jeez,” Qship says. “But is he under control? I mean, who is he?”

“He’s one of the good guys, basically. He suspected Verkrag’s world takeover plot before it got going. Nathaniel does have an edge, but I don’t think power will go to his head. He grew up with it at home. But if things start to go berserk, I’m here to safeguard the balance.”

Qship gets a grin. “Safeguard. Such as…”

“I know how to limit the damage. Scapegoats, for one. For Kevin, it’s all based on keeping Logan safe. In the big picture, she’s safer than anyone’s ever imagined.”

“Safer how?” Qship’s voice has an edge of hope.

“Let’s see Yuri now. Tell her you found me in the shredder.”

“Meet me in Feminine Insanity.”

“After you.”

Chapter 32 – Group Hug

After SacredPetal exits the cathedral, a woozy Beatrice, locked in the bedroom of her parents’ Southampton beach house, logs out of Dreamworlds and collapses in tears. Her despair is inconsolable. She’d thought the scene a charade, her father shooting a TV spot, until she saw Yuri beside a weird casket in that ornate church, and those violet eyes lanced her with unfathomable truth. But even in her drugged state, Beatrice saw the hurt, the confusion, the love. And never has she felt such guilt.

Conscious for the first time in days, Beatrice is awash in surreal memories. They reduced my dosage? So I could stand up there like a dummy?

When the nurse comes in, Beatrice is in her bed, pretending to be asleep. Alone again, she takes her laptop and her new gold spider and crawls into her deepest closet, where she logs on as SacredPetal. She finds her way to an enchanted nighttime lake, where Yuri reclines on a raft strewn with soft cushions, comfortable in a white sarong with blue seahorses on it.

“Yuri!” SacredPetal calls out.

Yuri jumps up. “Petal! Where have you been? Are you okay?” Her last memory of Beatrice was being wheeled from the hospital ward, electrodes trailing from her scalp.

“I’m snockered,” SacredPetal says from within Yuri’s fierce hug. What day it is?”

“Very funny, you asking me.”

“I saw people in a funeral. I saw you there. Why did it feel so sad?”

Yuri shakes her head, looks away. She’s not happy with what she must tell SacredPetal, about Logan.

“Something Alan did to you. Vicious.”

A breathy whine knifes the air. The raven-haired girl covers her mouth with both hands.

“Yuri, I hurt so much! You were holding me and saying things.”

“You remember!” Yuri carries still those vivid images of a shattered body held close beneath towering waves.

“But I’m okay, bebe, except for a wicked hangover. And this.” She holds up her pink wrist cast. “Was it a dream?” SacredPetal sees from Yuri’s dark look that it was no dream.

“Alan killed DarkEternity,” Yuri says, face drained of blood. “My Uncle Kevin. He almost killed my Petal.”

Piece by piece, Yuri tells SacredPetal about Alan’s attack, the hospital, the funeral. SacredPetal sits back.

“Yuri that was you? That was Logan in that casket?”

Yuri can only nod.

“Where is Logan?” The girl’s face is stricken. “Yuri! Log yourself off and phone me!”

“Not just yet,” Yuri says carefully. “She sat with Beatrice a long time and fell asleep. Then it was me, in Halcyon, and DarkEternity showed up with this pitch about how Logan was supposed to save Beatrice by getting in her bed.”

“My bed? How come?”

“So you could get better care somewhere else. Because of your dad’s project. Because of the paparazzi.”

SacredPetal gives Yuri a sorrowful look. “That god-awful Chalice. But how can you be here, with no Logan?”

“She was getting on Dreamworlds without her lappy.”

“That can’t even work,” the girl declares. “You need a comp and a spider to get on Dreamworlds.” Her look darkens. “That’s not an okay prank.”

“Not pranking you. It’s happened other times,” Yuri says. “And that was Rebecca as Dark, not Uncle Kevin’s neural net.”

“Hold up a second,” SacredPetal says. “My stepmom was playing DarkEternity?”

“We think so.”

Above in velvet sky a glittering trail of colored gem-dust, faint stars of the Milky Way. Groups of brighter, fuzzy stars move silent across the blackness as Yuri’s gaze holds on SacredPetal.

“Petal, I did something terrible,” Yuri says. “I am so sorry. With your dad, a while ago. I hurt him bad. Might have hurt him in real.”

But the girl is not thinking of her father, she is still pissed at him for dating Yuri. “Where is Alan?”

“Same clinic you were at. Might still be there. They wouldn’t let Logan see him.”

“Well I’m getting him out,” SacredPetal says with conviction.

Qship has joined the World

“I found DarkEternity!” Qship yells from the entrance by way of greeting.

“Quentin!” Yuri dashes across the bobbing lily pads to the entrance and leaps on the tall avatar, hugging with arms and legs. She pulls him by the hand to the raft where SacredPetal waits.

“You guys know each other? Quentin, this is Beatrice. SacredPetal, Qship.”

“Hey, Petal. How you feeling, Yuri?”

“Perfect. Got my two best buds is what.”

Qship studies SacredPetal, certain it’s the same avatar that stood Athena-like above the casket in the cathedral.

“Have you two had a chance to catch up?” Qship asks cautiously.

“I think Beatrice spent a few days in lah-lah land.”

“But hey,” Qship says. “I had Dark’s neural net backed up on my drives.”

“Explain that bite size,” Yuri demands.

“You and I were talking about Dark’s odd behavior. Someone might have hacked her account. Kevin’s AI thing was down. I axed it a few minutes ago and Dark’s on now.”

DarkEternity has joined the World

Yuri charges to where DarkEternity stands at the entrance. She plants a hard shove on the avatar’s shoulder. DarkEternity stumbles.

“Who’s running you now, Dark?” Yuri’s tone is hard. “Rebecca, if that is you again…”

DarkEternity laughs. “Someone turned me off. Your boyfriend here found his backup and launched me.”

“We’re friends,” Yuri says hastily, with a glance at Qship. “But you are a fake person.”

“Yuri, are you okay?” Dark’s eyes narrow inquisitively.

“You might as well leave,” Yuri tells her. “You’ve been hacked and you’re not to be trusted.”

“Hold up, Yuri,” Qship says. “It’s her, it’s Nikki. Someone turned off her neural net. I restored it. Change your password, Nikki.” From their recent conversation, Quentin understands that whatever DarkEternity has become, it was quite unbothered when Kevin’s system went down.

DarkEternity’s eyes are sorrowful. “Yuri, I am so sorry, about Logan. But how can you be here?”

Yuri thinks of herself as an ordinary person, but deep down knows she’s not.

“I know one thing I am,” she says. “I’m the first surviving Dreamworlds avatar of a real person who has died.”

Every face changes, even that of DarkEternity, who doesn’t have actual feelings. All are chewing on the idea of Yuri surviving without Logan.

“This is completely outside of my experience,” says the first Dreamworlds avatar ever played by a cognitive computer.

Yuri plops down on a cushion, the air blows out of her. Numb inside, no logic can reach her. SacredPetal and Qship sit close, watching the play of despair across her face.

“Logan might not come back,” DarkEternity says. “I don’t trust frozen sleep. Reviving corpsicles has been a disaster, no matter what Doctor Chilldaire tells you.”

Qship gets a worried look. “So it might be a long time before they can revive her? Assuming Logan is alive to begin with.”

“I’ve been researching this,” says DarkEternity. “Logan might sleep 100 years, and what would she be when they revive her? A mass of dead tissue? They might have to rebuild her entirely. I feel it possible, but chancy.”

When Yuri lifts her head, she wears her tears like jewelry. “How can you feel anything, Nikki? You’re not alive.”

DarkEternity places one fist on her hip and levels on Yuri those heavy-lidded, fashion model eyes.

“Look, ghosty-girl, I came to rescue you.”

“Quentin, are you sure it’s her?”

Qship grins. “I can turn her off if she talks too much.”

DarkEternity laughs. “Go for it.” In that instant, she flickers into monochrome as an old-time TV movie.

“Hey!” Everyone says at once.

“Gotta watch it,” DarkEternity says when she stabilizes again. “Monsoon in Arizona today. Cell service is off and on.”

Yuri gets a flash. An image of her Uncle Kevin’s place, the cell tower among the rocks decked out as a giant Saguaro cactus. Abruptly, she feels her brain spinning. Some weird kind of spacetime algebra is cooking away inside her noggin.

“Cell service?” Yuri says to herself. “Is that how I got on Dreamworlds without a comp?”

“Damn,” DarkEternity says, looking at her intently.

“Damn,” whispers Qship with an amazed expression.

“I’m wayyy confused,” says SacredPetal.

Dark laughs. “Me too. But it could prove that Logan, wherever she is, must have a shred of consciousness. And she’s got to be wearing her spider.”

Yuri nods, eyes distant. A clear realization grips her. She is certain Logan is alive, and she knows how she knows.

DarkEternity looks her in the eye. “Yuri, you remember all of Logan’s life, don’t you?”

Yuri nods. “I get you. I am the same ‘me’ as Logan.” She remembers how she’d drifted among the Dreamworlds, acting out a certain karma as the beguiling little she-creature, scarcely questioning her actions. She expressed herself fully because she felt like it. It meant she did things some would find objectionable. She lived life according to her desires.

“I’ve been dead three days now,” Yuri says, “and I’m not anchored anymore. You guys are anchored to a real person.”

“I’m not,” DarkEternity reminds them.

“Listen. I’m disconnected from my anchor in Logan. I’m tired of her karma, I’m pulling away from that. I want a life I can live with clear intention.”

“Bebe, what do you mean by karma?” SacredPetal asks. “What intention?”

DarkEternity fixes the girl with a look. “Karma is the results we get from our actions. It’s sometimes not very helpful.”

Yuri nods. “I’ve lived my whole life to satisfy my wants. I don’t have a natural body anymore, maybe I don’t have an ego. I want to be the person I want to be. I’m swearing a vow.”

But it’s not a vow, Yuri knows. That’s only the closest word she has for it. The reality is that her new internal compass cannot imagine a falsehood.

“What vow, bebe?”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone. I’ve done that mostly through lying. From this moment, I will never, ever lie.” Face serious, Yuri looks to DarkEternity as someone asking directions.

“Nikki, please say. What am I?”

DarkEternity shakes her head slow, side to side. “You’re as real as you need to be.”

Yuri watches until she’s sure nothing will follow.

“But there’s something else,” she says. “If anything happens to you in here, all you do is log off, and get back on when you feel like it. Like SacredPetal. It was rough, but Beatrice is still alive. SacredPetal came back. But if something happens to me, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get back on. What if I get nullified? This right here is the only me I’ve got. Not like you. I don’t want to be nullified.”

Although Yuri in her fear teeters above a yawning depth, the more her personal promise makes sense. Not ever to lie. It’s the most alive she’s ever felt.

“Well, tell the truth or whatever,” SacredPetal says with raw conviction, “but my vow is, I’m rescuing Logan.”

Chapter 33 – Detectives on Her Case

Quentin and his dad stand in the bright marble foyer at 740 Park Avenue. The vestibule door opens and a tall man with polished scalp and night-black tuxedo strides toward them.

“Quentin?”

“Ace!” Quentin steps forward, hand outstretched. “This is my dad, Edwin Scharples. Dad, meet Nathaniel Craig.”

“Welcome to New York,” Nathaniel says wryly. “Homicide’s been upstairs for two hours. I’m sure you’ll have an interesting discussion. Come.”

He leads them into the gleaming elevator, and seconds later they follow through the sky-lit gallery amid ancient sculptures and architectural relics. Nathaniel’s ID bracelet admits them into David Verkrag’s expansive office. Morning sun casts bright patterns across the intricate rug.

Two men in NYPD vests and white latex gloves glance up. One of them, with an intense look and dark hair graying at the temples, steps closer.

“Detective Smith,” Nathaniel says, “this is Edwin Scharples, Sheriff’s Homicide from Arizona. This is his son, Quentin. It was Quentin who first connected a possible death to the Halcyon spiders.”

“Wes Smith,” says the NYPD detective, giving each a fist bump with his latex-gloved hand. “Quentin. What can you tell me about deaths in this game? How did you make the connection?”

“Well, it’s not a game, it’s a playworld. A chat society. My dad showed me a decedent wearing a spider cap…”

“Like the one we found on Mr. Verkrag here?” The detective gestures toward a body bag on the rug behind the polished desk.

Quentin nods. “I’d like to see that spider, but presumably so. Our decedent’s computer had recordings of Halcyon chat sessions, including one at time of death.”

Smith crouches near the bagged form. With no ceremony he pulls the zipper down over the face to mid-chest, exposing David Verkrag in his three-piece suit. There’s an expression of incredulous surprise on the still features. Quentin studies the golden spider that clings amid the man’s hair. It reminds him of Logan, and his heart sinks.

“SincerelySatan,” Quentin whispers.

Smith leans down. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s the name of his avatar,” Quentin says. “The spider cap is his Dreamworlds interface. Threshold. Probably somewhere in here he’s got an entertainment system.”

“In the alcove,” Nathaniel says, indicating the slack drape half-ripped from the ceiling. “When they clear that, I can show you.”

Nathaniel is edgy to get to Verkrag’s system. He must know what Yuri and SincerelySatan talked about, or at least, ensure that the cops find no record of the moment she attacked him.

“Verkrag plays the game as SincerelySatan?” Smith looks puzzled. “How do you connect the two?”

“I am online friends with his daughter, Beatrice,” Quentin says.

“But she’s dead, right? My guys tell me there was a funeral.”

Quentin faces the detective. “No. Beatrice was injured in Dreamworlds and hospitalized. But she’s alive.”

“If people are getting hurt and killed in there…” Smith says crossly.  “Then who was the funeral for?”

“Supposedly Beatrice,” Quentin says. His voice quavers and he glances at his dad. “But it was a fake!”

Smith turns to Detective Scharples. “Do you know anything about this?”

“Quentin and I attended the funeral, yesterday. St. John’s Cathedral.”

“Big do,” Smith says.

“It was,” Scharples says. “It was some kind of frozen sleep torpedo. Too cold to touch.”

“But who was in it, if not the daughter?”

“Logan Fischer.” Quentin averts his face.

“Who’s that? Where’s the body now?”

No one says anything, which Smith interprets as they don’t know. He thinks a minute, trying to piece it all together. His first conclusion is that rich people are nuts. Smith looks at Scharples.

“You turned up similar cases that you connect with this. Deaths supposedly under Threshold. How can that happen?”

Scharples looks to his son.

“Injury to the player,” Quentin says, “is a possible side-effect of the way Dreamworlds creates its realistic illusion. Coded theta frequencies, through spider caps, can send messages to the brain that seem to affect the physical body.”

“Affect how?” Smith, a head shorter than Quentin, is looking right up into his face, wondering how a teen-something got ahead of everyone on this.

“Um, anything from feeling pain, like getting slugged, to heart stoppage.”

“The medical examiner’s preliminary on Verkrag was heart failure. Are you telling me that something inside a goddamn game made this guy die? With no physical trace?”

“But I could be wrong,” Quentin says carefully.

The detective looks at him sharply. “Wrong how?”

“In the Arizona death, the USB antenna feeding the spider was fried,” Scharples says.

Quentin nods agreement. “Maybe an electrical overload. And I saw a Halcyon report about flaws in some of the beta spiders. The deaths could be from those.”

Shaking his head at this new complication, Smith turns to Scharples. “What brings you to our fair city, Detective?”

“My son wanted me with him, at the daughter’s funeral.”

“Too bad we weren’t there for that. Can you brief my guys on what you saw?”

“Happy to.”

Smith looks at Nathaniel, who quickly pulls his eyes away from the alcove. “Verkrag’s lawyers are all over us to surrender the body to the coldsleep outfit. What’s that about?”

“Don’t quote me,” Nathaniel says, “but it’s supposed to prolong life artificially until medicine finds a cure for what’s killed them. I am a signatory on Mr. Verkrag’s coldsleep contract.”

“So the daughter was dead too? Or dying?”

“The daughter was somehow in shock,” Scharples says. “But don’t forget, there was a switch. The stepmother removed Beatrice from the neurological facility and substituted Logan Fischer. Fischer wound up in the cold storage casket instead of the Verkrag girl.”

“This Beatrice,” Smith says. “What happened to her?”

With a sad expression, Nathaniel says, “The brother gave her a defective spider.”

“Her brother is Alan Verkrag, right? How can that matter?”

“Like Quentin was telling you. Some spiders can amp up the Threshold signal. A psychic shock could affect the physical body.”

“Did something like that happen to my guy here?”

Quentin and Nathaniel look at each other. In Quentin’s eyes, the question, What do I say? Nathaniel gives him the barest nod.

“It was an avatar,” Quentin says, thinking honesty is probably the best policy with the police but not sure because everything is so tricky. “The one called Yuri. It was the avatar run by Logan Fischer.”

“And you know this how?”

“Yuri told me.”

When Nathaniel nods in agreement, Smith asks, “You’re aware of this too?”

“Yuri told me via my avatar,” Nathaniel says.

“This would be inside of the game, right?”

Quentin and Nathaniel both nod.

“So this Yuri, who is really the frozen corpsicle, Logan Fischer, killed Verkrag inside a virtual world? When did she kill him? Last night?”

“We can’t be sure it was her action,” Nathaniel says, “or a defective spider. I spoke to Mr. Verkrag yesterday afternoon. The cleaning crew found him this morning.”

“But this was a day after the funeral, right?” Smith’s eyes glitter. “So,” he muses, weighing the impossible conclusion dawning in his head, “Logan Fischer is seen in a casket at the funeral, and 24 hours later her fucking avatar kills my guy here.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Detective Scharples says.

Smith puts both hands on his head. “This strains my credulity. Who might have seen that? I can’t believe this is inside a damned computer game. Were there any witnesses, or was it this Logan Fischer, this…”

“Yuri,” Quentin says.

“This Yuri, who was dead or unconscious at minus 320 degrees. You’re telling me she rises up and smites him? As if! How did she supposedly kill Verkrag, anybody know?”

“What she said to me,” Nathaniel says, “she drove a wooden stake through his avatar’s heart.”

The NYPD Homicide detective gives a flat bark of a laugh. Arms thrown in the air, Smith takes a helpless turn, as though he’d like to walk away from this whole sordid mess, even if it means going out a 16th story window. He takes a lap around Verkrag’s bagged corpse. Across the room, the other detective looks back to Detective Smith.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me! That whole goddamn world is a crime scene. Five to one, this goes to a Grand Jury.”

“But,” Quentin insists, “to me it points either to the power of suggestion or defective spiders.”

“Detective,” Nathaniel breaks in. “Every day I do a routine check on Mr. Verkrag’s system. If your guys are out of the alcove.”

The detective shakes his head. “Whatever. Do what you need, but we’re taking that system downtown.” Smith lowers his head, pacing the priceless rug.

Skirting his employer’s silent form, Nathaniel takes a seat in Verkrag’s Dreamworlds alcove. On the wide screen is a view of the abandoned theater where SincerelySatan lies with a sharpened stake plunged into his chest. First shocked, Nathaniel fights to keep from laughing out loud. It only makes sense. Verkrag’s session is still active.

The second detective is at his shoulder. “Looking for anything special?”

“Left myself a note.”

“What’s this on the screen?”

“That is your murder scene, detective. Verkrag’s still logged into his account.”

“Well don’t touch it.”

“Sure. I need to do a routine security sweep. Take a second.”

Nathaniel makes a show of going through drawers and cubbyholes. The detective loses interest, goes back to his work. Nathaniel knows it’s too risky to scavenge Verkrag’s conditioning data with two cops at his back, so the thumb drive stays in his pocket. Heart loud in his ears, he inserts a burnt-out USB antenna into the computer’s Threshold port. With a deep breath, he types a command he’s never used on Verkrag’s system. The computer obligingly beeps. Nathaniel will never know what Yuri and SincerelySatan talked about, but neither will the NYPD.

“We’re headed to our hotels,” Detective Scharples says with a look at his son. “Call if any question.”

Smith jots down Quentin’s and Scharples’ phone numbers, thanks them, and turns away, taking in Verkrag’s elaborate furnishings and trying to make sense of what Quentin told him. He scarcely notices the others leave. From inside the body bag there is no comment.

Nathaniel leads Quentin and his dad down the elevator and into the security vestibule. Quentin’s eyes rove hungrily over the many screens and racked computers, a techy toyland. He looks at his dad, then Nathaniel.

“Ace, was it okay for me to tell? Did I rat Yuri out?”

“Relax,” the man in the tux says easily. “Yuri will probably admit it herself. You mentioned the defective spiders.”

“Tell me about Verkrag’s nine-year-old,” Scharples says.

“He somehow tried to hurt his sister,” Nathaniel tells him. “The kid’s under psychiatric treatment at the Bergeron Neurological Institute in Forest Hills.”

“Where I was with Logan,” Quentin adds sadly. “She was waiting to see Beatrice after Alan’s attack.”

“Wait a minute,” Scharples says. “Alan attacked his sister?”

“Inside Halcyon,” Quentin says.

“We think he was trying to hurt Logan,” Nathaniel says. “He had a coding tutor who works for Goldman Sachs. But be careful with your assumptions of cause and effect.”

“Logan is Marsh’s niece,” Scharples says with a scowl. “What do you mean, assumptions?”

“Some of the spiders could be faulty. It’s documented in our testing. There’s a case to be made that these deaths are caused by product failures. But who is Marsh?”

“The Arizona unattended death,” Quentin says. “That’s what sucked us into all this. Marsh was running the avatar DarkEternity.”

“As were a few other people,” Nathaniel says wryly.

“Wait,” Scharples says. “What’s this DarkEternity thing?”

“After Marsh died,” Quentin tells him, “at least one person masqueraded as his avatar. Besides me. That’s when I met SincerelySatan, and SacredPetal, and OutOfRange. The three Verkrag players. Father, daughter, son.”

“For a while, DarkEternity was run by Verkrag’s wife, Rebecca,” Nathaniel adds. “Until Yuri outed her. Yuri blames Rebecca for putting Logan in a coma, which led Verkrag to put her in coldsleep in place of Beatrice. Rebecca must be questioned.” In his mind, Nathaniel calculates how he’ll keep himself out of that.

“Sounds like a Greek tragedy,” Scharples remarks. “So we don’t know if Logan is alive or dead. But Yuri is still around. How can that work?”

“No idea,” Nathaniel knows where Logan’s body lies, but doesn’t know if she could reasonably be thought of as living.

“Two families,” Quentin says, “if you count Fischer and Marsh, niece and uncle. Plus, when I first met Yuri, DarkEternity was run by a neural network Marsh built.”

Nathaniel registers surprise. “What? How come I didn’t know that?”

“What worries me,” Quentin says, “the cops know that Yuri attacked SincerelySatan. But they won’t be able to bring her in.”

“Reviving Logan could kill her,” Nathaniel says morosely. “Coldsleep science is not as advanced as some would have you believe.”

After batting the merits of un-freezing Logan back and forth, there is no clear path. The Scharples men head out for their hotels.

Now peacefully alone in the security vestibule, Nathaniel picks up his phone. He hates to be the bearer of bad news.

Rebecca Verkrag lounges at her summer mansion on the silver Atlantic. It’s cooler up here than in the City, away from her workaholic husband who’s always busy with his deals, no time for her or the kids. Rebecca again checks Beatrice’s room, satisfied that she’s alone, lightly sedated.

Rebecca is worried though, uncertain about the reincarnation scheme. Documents had been faked, and will have to be un-faked. Death certificate, embalming certificate, coldsleep certificate. It will cost, but the lower classes are such suckers for money. Reincarnated saviors don’t come cheap.

Her private line goes, she recognizes the caller and grits her teeth. He was not good to her when the trailer-trash decked her on the cathedral steps.

“Is it done?” Though her voice is cold, there’s a quaver of excitement. Goodies are about to be bestowed.

“Yes,” Nathaniel says from Park Avenue. “But it’s not the result we expected.”

“What do you mean? She spread her legs, didn’t she? You got video, right?”

“Regrettably, no. She had a weapon.”

Rebecca leaps to her feet on the expansive Italian-tiled deck overlooking the Atlantic. The pleated L’Etoile Sport tennis skirt flares over her thighs. “What! How can you bungle this at the last minute?”

Nathaniel sighs. Connecting Rebecca with reality is the toughest part of this job. “The hypnosis failed. It didn’t work because…”

“You blithering idiot! How dare you hand me this fucked-up result? You said weapons are illegal! Is he going to be alright?”

“Rebecca, Rebecca. The player who was running his girlfriend’s avatar is apparently deceased. This was unknown to us. Do you know anything about that?”

“What freaking difference does that make?” In her mind, Rebecca retraces all her steps luring the gutter-meat at the hospital. Did some low-life over there do something that leads back to me?

Nathaniel goes on. “The hypnotic suggestion goes into the human player. The avatar and the spider are merely the connection. The avatar is a mathematical model rendered on your screen. It cannot by itself retain any suggestion.”

“Stop talking gibberish! Are you saying that all the money and time I put into this is for nothing? Are you saying his freaking girlfriend fucking killed him? Why couldn’t you…” She slumps down on her lounger, staring blankly at the Meadow Lane shoreline across the water.

“Rebecca, you have to get this. His lover’s player is likely dead, her avatar was therefore not attracted to him. This was completely unexpected. I’m launching an investigation, and…” Nathaniel well knows who caused Logan Fischer’s body to be placed in Beatrice’s hospital bed. On the steps of the cathedral, Yuri had told them all.

Rebecca at last clicks it into focus. How could I be expected to know that sedating the little twat was the wrong thing to do?

“I’ll settle with you later, Nathaniel. Are you telling me my husband is dead?”

“He was discovered by the cleaning crew this morning. At his home office. The police are up there now.”

“Oh, swell. I can go into mourning again.” She will need to go shopping for a widow’s outfit. It’s not all bad. There’s his life insurance. Plus, she looks hot in black lace.

“I stand only to serve you, Rebecca.”

“His gutter meat. You can turn her off now.”

“As you wish.”

Nathaniel shakes his head as he punches out. The woman does not get it. He would do no such thing, even if it were possible. She does not understand that Yuri is something completely new. He would turn off Rebecca Verkrag first.

A sharp rap on the security vestibule door. Wes Smith and his colleague step in and do their share of gawking at all the screens and trick-looking gear. Smith starts right in.

“We’re done upstairs. Got a call about sixteen deaths in New York.” Smith eyes Nathaniel closely.

“Yeah?” Nathaniel stays cool.

“Yeah, is right. People under those spiders. Any thoughts on that?”

“We haven’t heard,” Nathaniel says evenly. Smith’s face takes on an I’ll get back to you expression as he continues.

“The Chilikov people are with the body. Word we’re getting is, the County of New York Grand Jury will hear Verkrag’s death as a possible murder case. You’ll get an invite.”

“Sure,” Nathaniel says, “always happy to help.”

“I’ll need a list of anyone that may be knowledgeable about events around Verkrag’s demise. This will…” The detective shuts up as Nathaniel swivels his big monitor around. On it, an email addressed to Smith, with a list of names, contact information and relationship to the deceased.

“Haven’t sent this yet,” Nathaniel says. “Let me know if I missed anything.”

Smith leans in and scans the note. “What the hell… you’ve done this before. Let’s see, you’ve got Rebecca Verkrag, Beatrice Verkrag, Catherine Price. Quentin Scharples, Edwin Scharples, met them, Richard Lyon and Daniel McDougal from Halcyon management. Who is this Stanley Friedman? Who’s Nikola Chilikov?”

“Chilikov is the cold sleep doctor who has the body of Logan Fischer, and soon will have Mr. Verkrag’s. Friedman is the coding tutor Verkrag employed for his son. His whereabouts are unknown.”

“Who’s Fischer?”

“She’s the woman who runs the Yuri avatar. She was in the casket at the funeral, in place of Beatrice Verkrag.”

“So how the hell do we interview Fischer’s avatar?”

“Detective…”

“Wes will do.”

“Wes, you’re going to testify at any grand jury hearing, correct?”

“If it goes ahead, I’ll be presenting state’s evidence.”

“You’ll need to be in Dreamworlds as well. Only way you can hear Yuri’s testimony.”

“Not sure that will fly with the prosecutor. But I’d like to know more about this Halcyon deal.”

“Take a chair. I’ll get you a free account.”

With the detective’s colleague looking on, Nathaniel goes through the steps of fitting Smith to a Threshold spider, and shows him how to get an account on Halcyon Dreamworlds.

“Alright,” Nathaniel shows Smith the registration screen. “Make up some avatar name you want to be known by.”

“Anything?

“Most people use something characteristic of themselves. A hobby or something humorous.”

The detective types in 66Ragtop. He makes up a password, and adds his personal email. Nathaniel shows him how to wear his new spider, and presently the Dreamworlds home page of 66Ragtop springs into being, complete with a tall, capable, and predictably handsome male avatar. Nathaniel makes note of the detective’s spider ID.

“Wo,” breathes Smith. “I’ll look like that to anyone I meet in there?”

“Yes. Be careful. The illusion can be disorienting. Remember who you are and you won’t be sorry. If you delete your account accidentally, everything you purchased will be lost.”

“I get it. Duh.”

“I have to get busy,” Nathaniel says. “Try it a few times, in case the jury uses Halcyon.”

“How can an avatar answer any questions, if the owner’s dead?”

“You have me there. Yuri appears able to answer any question about Logan Fischer’s life.”

“Somebody’s bullshitting someone.” The detective shakes his head. “What’s the address of the Chilikov guy? I want to see that place for myself.”

“In your email,” Nathaniel says, clicking the Send button.

Chapter 34 – Adios, Muchacho

Several blocks away from 740 Park Avenue, in a sleek building on Lexington, all five Halcyon Dreamworlds executive board members cluster in their top-floor conference room, where Richard Lyon talks through his diagrams on the electronic whiteboard. The discussion stops as Nathaniel’s avatar, Ace, appears on a Dreamworlds screen as big as the wall. The scene is a virtual duplicate of the conference room they occupy.

“Nathaniel! We convened as soon as we heard,” Richard Lyon says, facing the display. “Is it true? About David?”

“Put your spiders on, everyone,” Ace says from the screen. “I can’t hear anything unless you all join.”

Richard Lyon, Daniel MacDougal and three suits hurry to position their spider caps and wait with expectant faces as their avatars appear in the scene.

A soft tap-tap at the security vestibule door. Catherine Price sticks her head in. Nathaniel motions her inside and pats his head. She takes a chair, places her spider and joins the meeting. Ace, in his trademark tuxedo, steps to the head of the long conference table.

“Out with it man,” Lyon says.

Ace says solemnly, “David Verkrag is no longer with us.”

Grinning, MacDougal demands, “Is this for sure?”

Ace nods. “It is done. He was discovered by housekeeping four hours ago. A forensics team have searched his office. He was alone at the residence.”

The suits in the Dreamworlds scene circulate in an excited clump, high-fiving, shaking hands. Connundra and Ace hang back.

“First, Ace, good going,” Lyon says. “We’ve already begun to refine our ideas for Halcyon. But tell us. How did you manage it?”

“It wasn’t me at all. He went after Yuri.”

“His whore killed him? Impossible,” exclaims MacDougal.

Looking at MacDougal critically, Nathaniel feels that this abrasive man who offers nothing has passed his use-by date on the Halcyon Board. Even his avatar name shows zero originality: MacDougal. Nathaniel knows what he must do.

“Don’t bullshit us, man,” Richard Lyon says with an exultant smile. “Take the credit.”

Ace shakes his head. “Yuri put a sharpened stake through SincerelySatan’s heart last evening.”

“How fucking appropriate!” MacDougal cackles with glee. On the screen, his avatar jumps and clicks its heels.

“Are you sure?” VeyronPilot asks.

“Would you like Yuri to demonstrate?” Ace looks around the group. There are no takers. “I observed him last evening lying motionless on the floor. He was alone in his Dreamworlds booth. He’s now on his way to the Chilikov institute.”

“Does the wife know?”

“She has been so informed, yes.”

“Where’s she at with it?”

“Yeah, what are her orders?”

“Damn. We taking orders from that nincompoop now?”

On the big screen, Ace shakes his head. “Rebecca’s sole directive was to turn Yuri off.”

The five board members cluster excitedly at the head of the room, where Richard Lyon returns to his electronic flowcharts. Their new road ahead, minus Verkrag.

In the security vestibule, Catherine covers her eyes. Nathaniel eases in beside her. The face she lifts to him glistens.

“Look at me, Catherine,” he whispers. Nathaniel gives her a solemn wink. Her eyes go wide.

“Keep the tears for now, but you don’t have to worry.” What Nathaniel cannot explain, since he himself does not understand, is that Yuri is no longer a Dreamworlds process anyone can turn on or off.

“She is visible to avatars inside the worlds, but Dreamworlds does not control her,” he says so only Catherine can hear.

She whispers, blotting her cheeks. “It was me, you know. To protect Beatrice from Alan.”

“What are you saying?”

She shakes her head. “It was before I knew Logan, and…”

His eyes narrow. “What is your point?”

“Alan was bragging to his friends about hurting his sister. When Logan slept over, I traded their spiders. Beatrice got Logan’s pink one.”

Nathaniel chews on this for a long minute, then speaks in a low voice. “I think what you did has brought this into the open. If Alan had hurt Logan, it would have been bad. He had already killed her uncle. But it wouldn’t have exposed David.”

“Are you sure?”

“There were mistakes, by many of us. My own not the least. You’ve been brave every day, being around Rebecca. Thank you, Catherine. It’s coming out okay.” He kisses Catherine lightly on the forehead, and turns his attention to the men in the Dreamworlds scene.

“The Chalice thing we can forget about,” VeyronPilot is saying. “With David off the board, we don’t need to take it that far.”

“Wait a minute!” Ace cuts in. “Only yesterday there was a very prominent and public funeral. Beatrice was supposedly in a cryo-capsule, to be kept in suspended sleep until a cure for her brain damage can be found. We need to resolve that charade another way.”

“We could resolve her dead,” MacDougal says acidly. “We don’t need her.”

“Mac,” Ace says coldly, “you don’t know the depth of the daughter’s involvement. She is first to inherit David’s holdings, even ahead of Rebecca. Who are you to play dice with the lives of people you don’t know?”

“What the fuck you doing here, Gameboy?”

Lyon gets in the man’s face. “Mac, cool your jets. We’ll need every tool at our disposal, to turn this around.”

“He’s a tool, alright,” MacDougal says derisively.

In the security vestibule, Nathaniel speaks two words keyed to the board members’ brand-new Threshold spiders. The men hear it as ‘steady on,’ but Nathaniel’s coded command adjusts the hypnotic message that’s poured into their thinking since they first wore their spiders. He’s sure they’ll follow more obediently now.

But MacDougal, though he changes topic to save face, seems unaffected. “And how about these goddamn spider deaths? Suicides?”

“My team has a patch for the scapegoat conditioning,” Ace says with authority. “We can release it after unit and integration testing are complete.”

“Christ, that could mean another hundred or more dead,” MacDougal whines.

“No,” Ace tells them. “Our new engineering partner wrote a screening module for the defective spiders. It’s been released into codebase.”

“Hell, man, you are supposed to get board approval,” MacDougal says.

“Sure, Mac,” Ace replies evenly. “But many of those dead are from accidents, scapegoat reality TV. More from Dreamworlds turf wars now.”

While the board members recoil at what they’ve heard, Nathaniel knows they’ll ultimately have to take his word for it. These bankers don’t understand machine code.

“There was no way to justify a delay,” Ace tells them. “This rescues anyone wearing a defective spider. Those players won’t see the Threshold enhancements when they log in tonight. They’ll complain, but it won’t kill them. We’re sending replacements. The defective ones are no danger now.”

Ace does not mention that it’s Quentin Scharples he’s hired. Quentin’s employment, like Hero’s, is without board sanction.

“You are taking entirely too much latitude without our oversight,” MacDougal complains. Ace looks at the others. No one is worried about him stepping up. They’ve seen his results.

“Anyway I am glad we’re getting rid of that Yuri bitch,” MacDougal growls. “She was getting on my nerves.”

Ace nods, expressionless. In the security vestibule, Nathaniel looks straight MacDougal and says, “QED.” On his screen a lighted rectangle surrounds the MacDougal avatar. He blinks twice.

Hero’s code droplet finds MacDougal’s Dreamworlds account, logs it off and shreds all of its data tables. MacDougal’s avatar disappears from the scene. The remaining board members appear confused but say nothing.

“Damn,” Nathaniel says with feigned surprise, holding himself from grinning like a madman. “Software upgrades right now. I’ve heard there’s a triple-ought-one percent chance of random account deletions. Mac is fine. He’ll be back.” Murmurs rise from the group, but there are no complaints. All eyes fasten on the tuxedoed one.

“Conformity is all,” Ace says, and watches the men closely.

The four remaining board members stand a bit straighter, heads slightly tilted and with easy smiles on their faces. Connundra looks at Ace with concern.

“There is no independent will,” the men respond in unison.

“Gentlemen,” Ace says, “I feel it’s time to invoke Board Bylaw 53 in the case of Mr. Daniel MacDougal. His membership is hereby revoked and his shares are awarded to Catherine Price. She is now a board member in full standing. Is there any discussion?”

All four shake their heads. They have no idea what Bylaw 53 might be, but since Ace did say so in his authoritative way, it must be for real.

“All in favor, say aye,” Ace says.

“Aye,” echo the men.

“Thank you,” Ace says with a grin for Connundra, whose eyes are wide. “Our agenda is complete. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.”

In unison, the four avatars in the scene chant the response, “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah-day.” With looks of slight confusion, they adopt more relaxed postures, looking quizzically from one to the other.

“Also, gentlemen,” Ace continues, “I think it wise that we remove all conditioning scripts from codebase for now.”

“We’re just getting started, Ace,” VeyronPilot says in a neutral way.

“A Grand Jury might subpoena the Dreamworlds code. It won’t be for long, but we need to be sanitary.”

There is muttering, but no dissent. The men will never be aware that Nathaniel’s own persuasions will have less to contend with, when Verkrag’s overlord programming is completely removed.

Catherine looks at Nathaniel with fresh understanding. Alone with him in the security vestibule, she makes an inquisitive face and points at her own spider.

Nathaniel shakes his head. Catherine grins.

Chapter 35 – Farewell to Compromise

The residence is empty. David Verkrag’s absence from the household removes many of Nathaniel’s daily tasks. Working the phones, he sees to it that documents signed by the mogul’s own hand formally convey his congealing form to Chilikov’s coldsleep facility, where Verkrag and Logan now repose among dozens of others in super-cooled glass torpedoes.

He’s sure, that from their private offices, many death-averse Wall Street types are even now in video conference with the Chilikov intake people. Minus 320 is the new status thing.

An alert tells Nathaniel that an avatar has entered one of his worlds. There is no name indication. He smiles. He knows only one avatar who can make that kind of entrance. Nathaniel joins as Ace. The world is a tropical island in a shining freshwater sea, where large, slow-moving apatosaurs browse shallow inlets.

“Hello, Yuri.”

“Nice place.”

“How are you doing?”

“Rumor about a grand jury. They want to accuse someone, right?”

“What juries do.”

“I can’t be questioned in that thing.”

“You have nothing to worry about. They can’t compel you to attend.”

She faces him with an accusing stare. “You could fix it so they can’t question me.”

“Conditioning doesn’t work like that. It’s gradual shaping of social sentiment. What’s wrong with being questioned?”

“Because I know too much about what you are doing. No one’s supposed to know about Verkrag’s social classes, are they? No one knows how you’re changing that. Hero bared all.”

Ace gives her a broad grin that he hopes will conceal his self-loathing. He should have done something, after Hero said he was friends with Logan.

“Verkrag’s conditioning has been removed from Threshold at my order. There are only nine of us who know, including you and Beatrice. None of us will tell them anything. The board members certainly won’t.”

“Why? Because you’ll all be fine, lying under oath?”

Nathaniel nods with a gracious smile. “Where is this going?”

“I’m not capable of lying.”

“You’re out of your mind. I have work to do.”

“For a smart person, you’re a real blockhead,” Yuri says as Ace swoops from the scene with the sound of a drag racer. Disgusted, she finds SacredPetal on her favorite beach.

“Bijou! I was hoping I’d see you.”

“Petal, you okay?”

“Better, yeah. Catherine spirited me away from the wicked stepmother.”

“Righteous! Where are ya?”

“Vernon’s driving me home. I’ll have one nurse for a few days and Rebecca can’t come there. Dad’s lawyers got me a restraining order. I’m trying to bust Alan out.”

“That’s my girl! But I need your help. People want Logan to attend the grand jury.”

“Me too. It’s day after tomorrow. You don’t have to worry. They can’t make you talk.”

“Logan, they can’t. Me, I have a problem.”

“What?”

“My vow, remember?”

“Oh. The no lying one?”

Yuri gives her a sorrowful look.

“I know stuff too, from Quentin,” SacredPetal says. “Nathaniel’s coaching me. I’m saying nothing to any jury.”

“Don’t say anything to me either. I could spill it.”

Two days later Yuri and SacredPetal hold hands in the front row of an ornate Dreamworlds courtroom, watching the Grand Jury for the County of New York convene. With them are Qship, Ace, Connundra and HeroKamasutra. Two large video screens display a Dreamworlds replica of the actual courtroom. The scene includes a county prosecutor, a number of cops and a panel of 23 jurors, all of whom wear Threshold in the real courtroom and therefore appear in the Dreamworlds version.

In the scene as Ace, watching each of the people he’d coached under their new spiders, Nathaniel, impressed at Hero’s rapid development of intention profiles, clicks through each person’s lengthy dossier, assembled on the fly via Threshold... feelings, thoughts, private messages, eye tracking. Nathaniel is among the few who understand that Yuri created this situation, since she cannot attend a real-life court hearing. All the key figures slated for the grand jury now wear spiders. He sees this as another way Yuri has helped, and it’s his job to make these proceedings last as long as possible, for his scripts to do their job.

The prosecutor, a conservatively-dressed woman in her mid-50s, sits at her bench, reading documents as jurors and witnesses enter the courtroom. Lightly touching the pink spider at her crown, she begins roll call in an authoritative voice. When she calls Yuri’s name, a smartly-attired avatar with flowing hair steps confidently to the stand. Looking at the dishy blonde in the witness box, Qship thinks this scene is right out of Christopher Marlowe.

The prosecutor begins briskly. “Yuri, I am the Grand Jury prosecutor in the death of Mr. David Verkrag, for the County of New York. I want to ask you a few questions.”

“Sure,” Yuri says congenially, crossing her legs. “By the way, Prudence, I like your outfit.” A surprised titter from the rear of the courtroom.

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

“I’ve taken an irrevocable vow to that effect.”

“Please answer yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. Do you think it possible that injury to an avatar within Dreamworlds could damage the player in the real world?”

“I don’t know how that would work,” Yuri says.

“That is evasion. I’m asking if you think it is possible.”

Yuri thinks about it. Her saying she thinks this way or that will not reveal much.

“I think possibly but not likely, in most circumstances. But my opinion on that won’t matter.”

“Why do you think it won’t matter?”

“Because of broken spiders.”

“Do you think it’s possible that you, Yuri, could have killed the human being, David Verkrag, by injuring his avatar SincerelySatan in Halcyon Dreamworlds?”

“I don’t actually know. I’ve heard people talk about that.”

“Then was killing David Verkrag your intention, when you attacked SincerelySatan?”

This stops Yuri. Hadn’t she said vicious words, after she stuck him with the wooden stake? Yes, she had. But that was after.

“No.”

“Then why did you drive a stake through his chest?”

“Had to. It was my reaction to what happened to SacredPetal.”

“Indeed. And at the time you plunged the stake into SincerelySatan, didn’t you think that would have an effect on David Verkrag?”

The question puts Yuri on her guard. It goes to the core of Threshold. “I wasn’t thinking about any result. I wanted to keep him off me.”

“Explain that please.”

“SincerelySatan told me he could control the world, and was willing to kill many people to achieve that. He is influential with the four companies that produce all the corn and wheat in America. Even before the worsening droughts, they were planning to create widespread civil wars through phony food shortages. I am convinced this was a madman. He planned to blame it on global warming.”

“Was that his plan?”

“Have you seen the current film, Quest for the Sacred Chalice? That’s his propaganda for a new social order. He had the idea to make Beatrice a savior in his new religion. He would freeze her, then bring her back to life as a resurrected virgin. Verkrag was prepared to risk the life of his only daughter for financial gain. But when he found Logan Fischer in Beatrice’s hospital bed, he had her frozen instead. That’s when I knew what he really wanted.”

“How can you possibly know someone’s intent?”

“SincerelySatan came to me wanting only sex. It shows. He tried to put hands on me, so I poked him with my stick. I didn’t know what result it would have. We’re illusions, in more ways than one.”

“So did you think that David Verkrag would die because of an injury to SincerelySatan?”

Yuri is worried about this question. She knows that even her simplest answer, yes or no, could ultimately reveal Nathaniel’s efforts to subvert Verkrag’s conditioning. Trials and nosey bought Congressmen. She knows, from the way Washington is owned by corporate America, such a mess would soon return the world to the axis of status quo. If she answers truthfully, the courts and politicos will wreck the Dreamworlds, squash the revolutionary culture and continue with the same incompetent, self-serving malice against the decent people of this country.

She must not allow herself to be questioned further, so switches on her translator module and speaks in perfectly accented Haitian Creole, “Mwen pral oblije jwenn tounen ba ou sou sa.” I’ll have to get back to you on that.

Yuri poofs. She searches through SacredPetal’s public rooms and finds the girl on her beach in Natural Libido.

“Petal!”

“Yuri!”

“I’m running from the law.”

“I saw! Can we put it on YouTube?”

“It’s not that funny. I need your help.”

“Sure, anything.”

“I vowed to tell the truth, remember?”

“Ohh-yeah. How’s that working out so far?” SacredPetal has an impish grin.

“You nutball!” Yuri laughs in spite of trying to be serious. “There is a big downside to truthing. I could expose what Nathaniel is doing.”

“He’s trying to overcome my dad’s conditioning, isn’t he?”

“How do you know?”

“He told me stuff.”

“Luckily, you’re a fabulous liar. I’m sure Nathaniel’s conditioning scripts are intended to help the 999, not enslave them.”

“So, you want my help?”

JurisPrudence has joined the World

When the woman appears, her mouth is already moving. “Miss Beatrice, have you seen… Ah Yuri, you’re here. I need an answer for my previous question, which was, did you think that David Verkrag would die because of an injury to SincerelySatan?”

SacredPetal has axed JurisPrudence

“Good one, Pet,” Yuri says. “How long will that last?”

“Sixty minutes, I guess. I can ban her.”

“I did that in one of my worlds. What if you’re not paying attention, and she asks me something? My real problem is, I can’t hide!”

“I’ll just ban her right now from all my worlds. But did you think you’d hurt my dad by hurting his avatar?”

“I thought it might, Petal. Like Alan did to Uncle Kevin. And to you. I’m so sorry.”

“Wow. What made you do it?”

“It reminded me of when my dad raped me. I was younger than you. The look on your dad’s face when he threw me to the ground. Him putting you out as a virgin savior. I saw him wanting to hurt you.”

SacredPetal’s face is ashen. She plops on the sand, not taking her eyes from Yuri’s face.

“Since I was twelve. Never comfortable.” Her voice is a husk. “I’ve always made sure I had escape routes.” In the girl’s eyes, Yuri sees what it was like, living in David Verkrag’s house.

“I’m afraid of losing you,” SacredPetal says fiercely. “It would be same as dying.”

“Honi, things will be okay. But I have something to do, need something from Nathaniel.”

SacredPetal’s goodbye hug is fierce.

When Yuri finds Ace at his racquetball club, she comes right to the point.

“Do you want me to testify about the cell tower signals?”

Alone in the security vestibule with his computer screens, Nathaniel stiffens. “What do you mean about cell signals?”

“Let’s pretend I’m as smart as you.”

“I agree, but so what?”

“Hero knew cell carriers could transmit the spider signal. That means anyone, even kids with the toy ones, can receive your conditioning without having a Dreamworlds account. Like right now.” Glaring at him, Yuri sees Ace flinch. “Even if Halcyon is shut down, the cell signals go ahead. It’s the most important thing you’ve got.”

“You’re smoking something.”

Yuri knows his heart isn’t in it. “The second time I used my spider was at Uncle Kevin’s. Petal didn’t tell me to use the USB antenna. So I never have. But I kept getting on Halcyon, because of the cell reception.”

“You’re talking nonsense. Your uncle’s Wi-Fi…” In his head, Nathaniel is saying Damn it, damn it, damn it.

“My first clue was when I saw a cell tower near Uncle Kevin’s place.”

Ace can guess what she’s about to say. “Yuri! You must not reveal that! You have to conceal our work.”

“People lying under oath is what’s made America great,” she says icily. “I can, but I won’t. This is not a threat, Ace. My reality changed more than most people’s ever will. My only possession, for whatever time I have left, is my integrity. That prosecutor follows me around with her questions. I can’t lie to her.”

He laughs, low in his chest. “Are you in need of repair? Everyone can lie.”

“Of course I could tell a lie. But I won’t.”

Ace regards her critically. He sees that for Yuri, this is completely real. With Logan gone, this is who she is now. Nevertheless, he curls his lip as he says, “You would give up the future of the human race, for a promise to yourself? Isn’t that a bit grandiose?”

“Stuff the melodrama, Nathaniel. You want to change the world? If more people made that pledge, we’d be better off. But wireless carriers! So freaking brilliant. That one little fact will be deadly if the FBI gets onto it. Congress. All the good you’re trying to do will go down. I trust you, Nathaniel. Please help me!”

There is a thoughtful silence before Ace speaks. “Yuri, I’ve been around the ruling class all my life. I grew up in extreme wealth. I know their contempt for ordinary people. Decent people. When I was seventeen, I told my dad he was a bigot and a psychopath, as were many of his friends. I’ve done it all on my own since then. You think I don’t understand integrity? I’ve taught myself everything. My family didn’t invest their wealth in economic growth. They supported politicians and invested in money schemes. My father and his cronies have so damaged the media it doesn’t carry truth anymore.”

Yuri frowns. “You think I don’t know that? Television covers politicians’ lies like they’re news.” She shakes her head. “Nathaniel, I’m worried about that prosecutor.”

“I am too, Yuri. But time is short and right now I need your help. I need you to keep Smith on Halcyon while I run scripts on him.”

Yuri’s nostrils flare. “So now you’re asking a favor, instead of forcing me?”

“Yuri, I apologize for my tactics. Truly. So much going on.”

She’s ready to flip him the bird and poof, then it hits her, how she can use a newbie like Smith to fix it all. And to hell with Ace, if he thinks she needs his help.

Still glaring at him, she says, “You could make it really simple.”

“Tell me.”

“Make your scripts tell everyone they cannot lie. Convince them it’s their personal belief. It will accomplish everything you want. The rich and their lawyers won’t be able to steal from the people. Put that on your fracking cell towers.”

Ace laughs, a pleased, throaty sound. “Tell everyone not to lie. You are deluded. Besides the fact that it won’t work.”

Yuri glares. “If I see that prosecutor, I’ll randomly mention that you can tell anyone under a spider, anywhere in the world, to kill themself. Her first.”

Ace makes a strangled noise.

“Maybe I won’t rat you out. But what if she asks me directly?”

“Yuri, you don’t understand how complex this is.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. Your scripts could make simple honesty feel like a religious experience.”

Ace watches her face for many heartbeats as Yuri’s words find anchor in his mind. He sighs.

“You’ve done as much for our movement as anyone. You got these key players under spiders, by killing Verkrag.”

“You used me very badly, Ace.”

“Hate me if you must, Yuri. But it was strategic. I didn’t do it out of the way I see you.”

“We’re getting nowhere. You need to delete Logan’s account, Ace. You’ve got the toy.” Yuri shivers as she says this.

“What do you mean?”

“You are so damn boring. Hero’s QED thingie. I have it too, so don’t piss me off.”

“That defense only works for Sysadmins or above.”

“Sounds like nasal congestion,” Yuri sneers. “What became of all the men?”

Thinking hard, she decides to give up on this asshole. Subvocally, she says, “QED.” A faint glowing rectangle forms in her vision. She turns her head so Ace is in the middle of it. Seething with anger, she blinks once, then turns away from him. She’s disgusted at the killer rage she feels, and forces herself to regroup. Luckily, Mr. Ace-hole didn’t notice.

“So all I need to do is spend time with him?”

Ace nods enthusiastically at the change of subject. “Think of yourself as Scheherazade.”

“Great, a promotion! Boobs and the gift of gab. But get it straight. If any cop comes around me, I endanger you. Everything you and Hero have built. And you know what you could do to stop me. If you had an ounce of integrity.”

“I actually do,” Ace says solemnly.

“Courage, then. Do it. I’m right here!”

“Yuri, I…” Nathaniel is torn about how to play this. He thinks her disappearance right now could throw heat the wrong way. His.

“Well, Ace, I actually know someone who does,” Yuri says disdainfully. “But there’s something you should have the nuts to give.”

“Say it,” he says with a masculine scowl.

“Help Beatrice with Alan. He needs a male role model. Unfortunately for him, you’re all we’ve got.”

Yuri poofs, seeking the warmth of her friends. The first place she looks is Feminine Insanity, where SacredPetal, DarkEternity, Qship and Hero wait for her.

“Yuri, want to tango?” Hero’s avatar wears black razor-crease slacks, polished black shoes, and a purple bolero jacket.

“You bet,” she says, changing into a full skirt and a white peasant blouse as she runs to him. In spite of her failure to delete Ace, she’s certain that Logan is alive. Her conversation with Nathaniel has confirmed it.

Music rises up. Hero lifts Yuri and twirls her. She extends her legs in the air like a star-dancer. Qship gets edgy, watching Hero spin her.

“There’s bad news, guys,” says SacredPetal.

“What’s up?”

“Dr. Chilikov is being sued. Came through my Tingler just now. Couldn’t wake someone up.” The four of them look sadly from one to the other.

“It’s not fair,” says Qship.

Leading Hero by the hand, Yuri walks to join the others.

“But look,” she says. “Logan was glad to lie down for Beatrice. Even after Chilikov’s lawsuit, she’d still do the same. I have that commitment Logan felt for her, but now it’s for every living soul.” Looking at her friends, Yuri realizes how they’ll be hurt by what she now most desires.

“The power elite, the oligarchs, the ultras. They’ve tossed most of the world in the trash. Abandoned us all. No way will I stand around and let that continue.”

On her tiptoes she kisses Hero, then Qship. The look between them says it all. Yuri turns to SacredPetal, kisses softly the girl’s parted lips. They wrap arms around one another.

“I talked to the coldsleep guy,” SacredPetal whispers in her neck. “I’m still rescuing Logan.”

Yuri holds DarkEternity close. It feels exactly as when Uncle Kevin held her.

“You have to stay, Nikki. Be our guide! You are the only sentient being in all creation with no personal agenda.”

“I’ll be around as long as there’s electricity,” DarkEternity says dryly, giving Yuri a final squeeze.

“See you all later,” Yuri says with a confidence she does not feel. “I have to go make goo-goo eyes for that cop.”

SacredPetal and Qship, Hero and DarkEternity stand together with matching forlorn expressions as Yuri becomes a whirlwind of incandescent sparks and spins skyward from the four who look up into darkness, watching until long after the final ember fades.

Like Yuri, Ace has avoided the grand jury prosecutor, who now appears in his public world as her avatar, JurisPrudence. It’s exactly the thing he was dreading; he needs more time for his scripts to work.

“Mr. Craig. There is something I’ve been trying to understand about the Dreamworlds. In particular, the purported Logan Fischer avatar, Yuri.”

Ace assumes a semi-bored expression. “Why do you say purported?”

“I’m not sure they are connected.”

“I can show you Logan Fischer’s account page.”

“Engineering has done that. They have doubt about how Yuri functions, and assume trickery. Engineering has verified for me that there is no live session for that account, yet Yuri continues to operate. Can you shed any light on this?”

“If Engineering can’t tell you, then I’m not much use. I’m the Chief of Security for the Verkrag residence.”

“A valet and personal secretary, so I’ve been told.”

“Correct. What is it you’re trying to determine?” He gives a fastidious flick at the cuff of his black tux.

“I must question Yuri under oath. But is she human? Is she some artificial construct? I must be confident in her answers to my questions.”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I find her capable of answering any question about Logan Fischer’s life. She also appears to have strong recall of every conversation since Ms. Fischer was placed in coldsleep by Verkrag.”

“So I understand from Miss Verkrag, young Mr. Scharples, and Mr. Jamal Green. I am of the opinion that there is some hackery afoot.”

“I suppose you could risk reviving Ms. Fischer.”

“What this leaves me with, Mr. Craig, is the difficulty of questioning Ms. Yuri. She flees my interviews. However, the engineering people tell me that there are now certain means to coerce an avatar.”

“I was present when Mr. Verkrag imprisoned Yuri in a control field,” Ace says.

“Is that something I could employ in this case?”

“Perhaps. Yuri told me it was painful.”

“But Logan Fischer was alive at the time, yes?”

“True.” Ace nods. He senses where this is going.

“Then if Fischer is dead, what can pain mean to some non-human electronic construct?”

Ace shakes his head, eyes hard on JurisPrudence. “You must be careful. It’s impossible to determine what effect pain would have on her avatar, now that Logan is for all practical purposes deceased. However, it might still be inhumane. Logan could be keenly aware and completely helpless.”

“Mr. Craig, I need to immobilize and question Yuri. I’ve asked Engineering to build something.”

“So,” Ace says caustically, “Do I have the District Attorney on record as being in favor of coercion and torture of a witness in a courtroom?”

“Be careful what you say, Mr. Craig. This is a privileged conversation. I might choose to investigate your role in all this.”

“I’ve maintained from the first that I’ll cooperate. But I cannot shed light on the death of Mr. Verkrag.”

Nathaniel in the security vestibule opens a particular computer file and reads through the lines of code. He sighs. He’d wanted to refrain from managing public officials. But he’s afraid for Yuri. He’s not sure she will feel pain if captured in some rude device, but he’s unwilling to tempt it. It might be enough to break her vow.

“Please excuse me,” says JurisPrudence. “I must confer with Detective Smith.”

As the prosecutor leaves, Nathaniel at his dev console types a name into the code droplet on his screen. JurisPrudence.

He clicks Send, and with a small sigh turns his attention to other tasks.

Chapter 36 – Torn Illusion

Alone in her sultry waterworld Yuri waits, dressed for an exotic evening yet concealed in Hero’s invisibility cloak. In her world’s perpetual quiet there’s a floating dance pavilion with a rotating mirror-ball, living sparklers and fountains of champagne. Enchanting music drifts over dark water. With a pang, Yuri sees Ace’s cloaked figure nearby, poised as though at a desk. She knows she must outplay him. Nathaniel cannot guess that Hero provided her not only with his concealing cloak, but with his shadow piercer.

Busy rewriting his conditioning scripts in the security vestibule, Nathaniel’s immaculate shirt is damp beneath the arms. He hopes Yuri won’t miss the evening he’d arranged with Detective Smith.

66Ragtop has joined the World

Yuri turns off Hero’s cloaking script. Now that she’s visible, Ace in his own cloak turns to face her. She acts like he’s not there.

“Hey, Wes,” she calls out. “Welcome to Feminine Insanity.”

“Saw that on the way in. What’s feminine insanity?”

“Well,” coos Yuri in a sultry voice, “that’s what you are here to experience.”

Detective Wes Smith, or 66Ragtop as he’s named his avatar, after a 1966 Pontiac GTO convertible he almost bought 20 years ago for ten grand but which is now worth as much as a house, doesn’t answer. He cannot move his jaw properly because now he sees Yuri, his eyes fasten on her as she dances toward him, ringing time with tiny finger cymbals. Her dress and sinuous moves are straight from a sultan’s harem. She’s a belly dancer.

Tonight she wears a beaded headband, a tasseled halter top, flared sleeves that begin above the elbows, and a tummy-baring split skirt that brushes the floor. Her outfit is cut from a sheer lavender mesh that whispers of feminine mysteries as she twists closer. Violet eyes above her gossamer veil captivate the seasoned cop. She dances up to him, perfumed in wild lavender to match the color of her veils.

“Any trouble finding the place?” She rings her finger cymbals in his face. As she twirls, her split skirt flares artistically. Flashes of leg, bare to the hip. Smith can’t control where his eyes go.

“No, I think feminine insanity is pretty easy to find,” he says, nodding appreciatively at his own light wit.

“We agreed no questions about the jury hearing, right?”

“Absolutely not,” Smith glances over his shoulder, looking somewhat the tool.

From his manner, she’s certain he is hiding something and her senses come alert.

“Wine?” she says, taking another swirl around him and stroking his masculine jaw. She feels that for a newb, he’s picked a decent looking avatar. It’s not the over-amped, muscular and tattooed form so in vogue for males of Dreamworlds society, more of a sanded-down Ben Affleck with smaller ears.

She comes to a stop in front of him. “Something stronger?”

“Wine will do,” he says, mind afloat in the star-girl’s dazzling aura.

Yuri now employs one of those bits of stage magic so easy within the Dreamworlds, as twin flutes of sparkling champagne appear in her fingers. She holds one out to him. Looking into her smoky eyes, the cop raises it to his lips. Gazing at one another, they drink deep.

“Whoa,” Smith says as golden liquid swirls on his tongue and ignites his brain. “Man, this is unbelievable.”

“Enjoying the Dreamworlds so far?”

His eyes are captive to the perfect lip-print in pale lilac at the rim of her glass. Yuri’s violet gaze is a lush paradise he’d gladly melt into.

“Incredible. Today at the hearing I was constantly distracted by the texture of things, the chair, the desk. Everything I picked up had weight. But gimmee a break, this is unreal.” The detective wants to entertain himself with the subtle textures of Yuri’s flesh. The Dreamworlds illusion is so deep, Smith’s already forgotten she’s an avatar.

“I know what you mean,” she says with a demure laugh. “I played on here for seven years when it was ordinary keyboard chat. I’ve had Threshold a couple weeks now and it’s a cherry-popper.”

“How do you like it, Yuri? Being in Dreamworlds.”

“Yuri is doing fine. What I don’t like is that Logan got smacked because of it. I was so scared when SacredPetal got hurt. I was with her at the time, did you know? So it’s a mixed bag for me. Let’s sit.”

“But you don’t really know, right? Whether Logan is dead?”

Yuri positions herself delicately on a white chaise that cups her form. 66Ragtop sits on a plush ottoman across from her, struggling to keep his eyes from her filmy halter top.

“That’s a question about the hearing,” Yuri says firmly. She glares at him until he apologizes.

“I’m sorry, I retract the question.”

“Sounding mighty legalese there, sonny.” She tries to keep it light, but how she knows whether Logan lives or not goes to the heart of everything.

66Ragtop pauses for a beat, eyes on her face. He sees how pissed she is. “Mostly I’m curious about Halcyon. But I understand that Logan Fischer is 41. You look like you’re maybe twenty. Does everyone do that?”

“Most people lie about their age,” Yuri says. “Often they lie about their gender.” Her dark lashes flicker, a semaphore of seduction. “Do you think you’ll be around, after you finish this case?”

“Depends on a few things. What about you?”

Yuri’s truth-telling dictum puts her in momentary lockup, but in the end she says casually, “I can give it up anytime I want.” For the first time in seven years, she believes herself.

“But you don’t spend all your time on here, do you? I mean, you have a life, right?”

“I have no life at all now,” Yuri says sadly, “other than this. Up to a couple weeks ago, before what happened to Logan, she had an okay job. She was happy, mostly. But her employer snooped out she was playing on Dreamworlds and used that as an excuse to fire her.”

“Fire her? What for?”

“The term her general manager used was, despicable.”

“Do you think she was being despicable?”

“No. But life on Dreamworlds can be quite adult. When corporate America snoops in the bedrooms of married employees, they’ll label anything they see as despicable. You see what we feel like in here. It can get much more intense.”

Smith thinks her words are inviting as well as informative. He can smell her feminine warmth.

“Yes, I get it.”

“So now I have to find another gig, Logan does. And they won’t give her a work reference. I think it’s quite Puritan of them.”

“Well, you seem like an intelligent gal. If there’s anything I can do to help…”

“There is one thing,” Yuri says, crossing her legs the other way. Smith catches a glimpse of smooth thigh.

“Name it,” he says with heartfelt sincerity.

“Oh thank you so much! I can’t see if Logan’s account is still there.”

“How come?”

“She’d have to log on, from a computer. Like you did to come here tonight. I can’t. It has to be from the real world, not inside Dreamworlds.”

“I don’t know anything about this, but I’m happy to try.”

“Great!” Yuri sits up straight. “You are somewhere in real, right? At home, your cop office?”

Smith doesn’t want to admit he’s in his official car, parked in front of a Starbucks on 63rd Street, logged into their free Wi-Fi with a spider on his head.

“Home office,” he nonchalantly lies.

“Super. Open a browser window on your lappy. At the top, type in Halcyon Dreamworlds dot com. Then hit Enter.”

66Ragtop gets a momentary blank look as Smith, out there in real life, does the necessary.

“Okay,” he says, eyes coming to focus on Yuri’s face. “It has a picture of some people, with Log in and Sign up on it. Seen this before when Nathaniel took me through it.”

“Awesome. You’re in the right place.”

“Holy hell, could there be 48 million people logged onto this right now?”

The scale of everything rolls in on her and she trembles. She can’t sit still.

“Look at me, Wes.”

Smith watches Yuri rise from her chaise and walk toward the hot tub. Heart pounding, he cannot lift his gaze from the thumb-sized Venus dimples at the low waist of her filmy skirt. As she steps into the water, the skirt floats around her hips and goes transparent. In the foam she’s an aurora of glistening skin in a sea of flirty, teasing, caressing little bubbles. Smith wants to be one.

“We’re almost there, sweet man. Up at the top, change the language selector to German. Okay? In the Benutzername field, type Yuri. See where it says Passwort? Type in wildthing.”

There’s a pause while Smith’s avatar poses blankly. “Okay, looks like I’m in. My, my, you certainly are one lovely young lady!”

“Oh!” Yuri remembers. On Logan’s private home page, her avatar stands unclothed. Smith doesn’t need a foreign language to understand the clear invitation before him. She is such a bad girl.

Yuri blushes pink all over. “I forgot. That page is not intended for a viewing audience. But thank you.”

Looking across at the avatar parked on her ottoman, Yuri can scarcely keep her smile in place. She is so very afraid. Through her mind runs everything, everything. All her losses, her babies, the death of Uncle Kevin, at last getting real with Jamal and finding kind, wonderful Quentin. Her ethereal love for Beatrice. And at the core of her soul she holds the desires of 8 billion humans, ordinary and humble wishes for lives driven into misery by the massive greed of a callous few. Without her to blow it open, Nathaniel’s subtle persuasions will begin to put right the world’s most painful inequities. If she can keep Smith on task, she won’t have to face the questions that could wreck everything. But now all of the detective’s inner sirens are screaming.

“What are we doing here, anyway?” His 22 years of police work, his naturally inquisitive and doubtful nature, everything about this is flashing Danger, Danger, Danger. The calming murmur of Nathaniel’s scripts pouring through his spider and the exotic female he longs to float away with sweep those cautions into the depths. His loudest inner voice is hollering, Get done with this and grab her!

“It might just turn me into a force of nature.”

“Force of nature?”

“Like a hurricane. You know, babe. Wet and wild?”

Nathaniel in the security vestibule suddenly sees where she’s leading Smith and his blood chills. He doesn’t know what Yuri has in mind, but something’s not right. The only thing he can do is ax the detective.

But Yuri sees Ace, cloaked nearby and thinking he’s invisible, mimic Nathaniel’s move as he reaches for his control panel. With grim resolve, Yuri sends the ax command Ace’s way, and is gratified to see the alert:

Yuri has axed Ace

She smiles, knowing it was the last thing Nathaniel could have expected. He’ll be back, but not in time. But she’s certain that in seconds she’ll be gone, his noble cause kept safe. Safe from her.

“Okay, Wes, are you ready to…”

With a thunderclap, the scenery of Yuri’s nighttime lake rips away. A dozen burly avatars crash through torn façade waving guns. Some wear flak jackets with NYPD in yellow letters on the back, others say FBI. Yelling, yelling, yelling, yelling.

Yuri in her billowing hot tub sits up, wide-eyed. Smith stands in an aggressive brace, leveling at her a dark pistol, his champagne glass thrown down.

“You’re under arrest,” Smith snarls, looking all upstanding and virtuous. “Despicable homewrecker!”

Cops splash through her lake world’s scented water. She tries to ax them but it doesn’t work. Powerful hands yank her from the bubbles, throw her splashing wet into the back of a paddy wagon that from nowhere has backed up to her hot tub. The double doors clang shut.

The ride is short but violent. Yuri is thrown from side to side within the dim compartment, banging painfully against every metal surface. When daylight floods in, scowling faces peer at the small woman balled up in a corner. Yuri wants to hide. She tries Hero’s cloaking script but it doesn’t work. Everything is unreal.

Something flutters to her through the air.

“Put those on,” a hard voice says. Behind the angry faces, a mobbed city sidewalk, a theatre’s faded marquee. The doors clang shut. Incredulous, Yuri peels out of her wet veils. What she’s been given feels like pajamas, pants and a loose top.

This time when the door opens, cameras flash at the woman with wet straight hair who stands in prison stripes. In chest-thudding shock, Yuri looks down at herself, choking back a sardonic laugh.

On crumbling sidewalk amid howling reporters, she’s placed in handcuffs and ankle cuffs. Scowling bailiffs hustle her into the rancid lobby where she must quick-step in her chains to keep from falling. Amid the long procession of bailiffs and legal aides, the grinning prosecutor, twenty-three jurors and witnesses from the courtroom’s gallery, Yuri walks the aisles of the abandoned theatre. She’s astonished that this dismal ruin could be the setting for her final scene, but is cheered to see faces she knows. DarkEternity, HeroKamasutra, SacredPetal, Qship, Connundra.

Looking around as she’s hustled through, Yuri is transfixed. Ace follows in the crush, face ashen. Seeing his desperate expression, her heart sinks. She fears what will become of his subtle persuasions if she is forced to talk. Silently her eyes beg, Please don’t let me wreck it!

The procession shuffles down the theatre’s worn aisles where the stench is obscene and the lights yellow with age. Yuri and her muscular escorts climb the stage steps, where she regards a vision as pitiful as it is macabre.

Lying sprawled over the boards is the tattooed avatar, SincerelySatan. Yuri’s stout wooden stake projects upward from the masculine chest. Looking at the pattern of decorative marks she’d carved into the weathered length, her bizarre thought comes: All it needs is a little flag.

Around the corpse are bright lights and large mirrors on tripods, as though a photographer was interrupted mid-shot.

“What are these things doing in my crime scene?” The prosecutor snarls. No answer comes. “Why are these mirrors here?”

“Forensic photography,” says 66Ragtop. To Yuri, he sounds like a robot. He catches her looking and makes a little boy’s snarly face at her.

At the prosecutor’s gesture, Yuri is trundled into position near the supine avatar’s blocky head. The entourage jostles into a semicircle around the motionless corpse. JurisPrudence stands apart, fashionably attired and with a smug façade. At her back, 66Ragtop looks every inch the wounded male.

Beside SacredPetal and Qship in the crowd is Hero. Yuri stares, and for a breath-holding moment he gazes back. She could not describe the look on that ebony face, those brown eyes so soft. And for one precious instant, she feels him wanting to tell her something.

The prosecutor clears her throat. “I am waiting for your answer to my question, Yuri. Did you plan to murder the owner of Halcyon Dreamworlds, David Verkrag, by injuring his avatar, SincerelySatan?”

“No, I did not,” Yuri says evenly. Her eyes search the jurors’ faces ringed silent around her. On some, she sees the eager verdict: Guilty.

With the prosecutor standing before her, the bailiffs at her side, SincerelySatan inert at her feet, Yuri gets the sense of an abstract modernist wedding. Was this his dying wish?

“Alright, Ms. Yuri. Who is the ringleader of your operation?”

Yuri scowls. “Operation? To you I look like the Mafia?”

“Then try answering this question, Ms. Yuri.” The prosecutor steps close to where Yuri is held fast between the bailiffs. With JurisPrudence dressed so nicely, feminine yet powerful, Yuri as a woman feels hot chagrin at the clunky stripes she’s forced to wear.

She gazes down at the motionless avatar with the stake through its heart. She recalls the moment she leapt on him, Beatrice’s fierce protector. There he lies, the evidence against her, telltale of Nathaniel’s counterplot against the brutal rich.

Pacing in agitation, the prosecutor moves in front of a bright mirror and Yuri sees herself reflected there, small and chained and alone. But as she stares, her image seems to grow bright and menacing until it fills her consciousness. An idea forms. She has what she needs, and locks eyes with DarkEternity, who gives an imperceptible nod.

“Yuri,” the prosecutor’s harsh voice rings out, “did you think that stabbing SincerelySatan in this way would have any effect on David Verkrag? Did you believe that doing so would kill him?”

Yuri looks at the prosecutor as across a yawning gulf. I can’t answer this!

Lips pressed tight, JurisPrudence glares. Silence stretches. Then a clanking commotion, as from out of the darkened wings comes a bulky, complicated apparatus on a wheeled dolly, propelled by men in white coveralls. It has places where a person’s arms and legs might be secured. Yuri’s body contracts with the memory of searing pain in that Honolulu nightclub, trapped in SincerelySatan’s transparent block.

“Answer the question. We can compel you to talk,” JurisPrudence says with smug authority. “Halcyon Engineering has provided the perfect antidote for your obstruction.”

A ragged gasp from many throats as the dolly comes to a clanking halt behind Yuri in the bailiffs’ grip. Those closest back away.

Bright-sparked, Yuri knows she’ll answer no questions, none at all. In a moment of crystalline silence, she recalls the device Hero gave her. She looks straight at her reflection in that gleaming mirror and ignores the looming prosecutor. She wants nothing for herself. Actual, literal nothing. Eyes fixed on her mirrored image, the muscles in her face tighten.

From somewhere she feels the heartbeat of Logan’s soul, faint and torn as though transmitted over light-years of cold interstellar vacuum. She looks at herself in the bright mirror and whispers, “QED.” She centers her image in the glowing rectangle that forms. Yuri lets her mind slide below the surface, her joyful tears begin.

“We’re waiting,” the prosecutor demands.

Yuri blinks.

A metallic clank as chains and handcuffs strike the wooden stage. A wail of despair. SacredPetal presses her face to Qship’s shoulder. The bailiffs reach for their sidearms, but there’s nothing to shoot. The spot their prisoner occupied is vacant.

Inside the theatre echoes a collective gasp, a scuffle as all surge forward. And now they see, in the clothing draped lifeless on a motionless cadaver, the iconic image of a woman’s courage. A prison suit of striped pajamas.

– E N D –

In Gratitude

Special thanks are due to authors Susan Blackaby, Jill Kelly and Sheila Bender, literary coaches supreme, and to Sherri Zysk, Jack Reed, Fred Buckley and Jim Keenan, who read through many drafts early on, provided comment and support as I chased the plot.

I owe a great debt to members of the Ashland Writers’ Group, professionals driven by common cause in literary expression, to Glenn J. Hill and Jim Sypher for their readings, and to Erika Thormahlen for her acting lessons.

Cover design: Lee Baldwin.

Cover Illustration: Larissa Kulika

Thanks for Reading

So, what is Halcyon Dreamworlds about? How would you categorize the story? Is it science fiction, a dystopian apocalypse, a cyberpunk love story? Is it really fiction?

Please take time to leave a review at Amazon.com. Reviews are what indie authors use for oxygen. Lee Baldwin's author page.

Also by Lee Baldwin:

Next History, The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow

Angle of Attack, An Adventure in Aviation, Love, and Crime

About Lee Baldwin

I am a novelist. I have waited 25 years to say that, through a half-dozen careers including my own creative copywriting agency in Vancouver B.C. and Hawaii, my work as a human interface designer in Silicon Valley, and as a glass artist and painter of edgy landscapes. It was worth it.

My literary characters often have a quirky edge, because I see human foibles as the launch point of dramatic conflict. That and a musical ear helps me shape dialog and narrative into rhythms of dramatic reveal, turning points, and cadences.

Escape fiction generally satisfies the reader’s hunger for vicarious experiences. You know, the cool stuff, such as glamorous adventure, epic situations, romance and overcoming obstacles. I get fiendish pleasure whenever I can spice these situations with wry humor.

If you have a comment or simply want to say hi, you can contact me at Baldwin Books dot com.

Peace out.

Halcyon Dreamworlds

Copyright © 2015 Lee Baldwin

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-0-9854777-5-2

Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced to a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Edition 1, November, 2015.