Omega point

CHAPTER 4

It was morning when Richards followed the bear out of the woods, his head banging.

The woods looked worse by day. The pale fingers of dying trees thrust up through the rhododendrons, brown leaves as imperishable as old-school plastics choking the ground beneath them. Away from the sunlit path, blackness gathered thickly.

"Dangerous," the bear commented. "Dangerous and full of death." At that he'd shaken his enormous head, remembering something better. "We had best stick to the road."

Richards was suffering the combination of his arrival and what he suspected was a mild concussion. Every sunbeam that filtered through the canopy stabbed at his eyes. His lips were swollen, one eye bruised shut. He was miserable with human suffering, too stiff and sore to feel angry at the length of time it took for a meat body to heal. The roll of the bear's shoulders as it strode along filled him with nausea, and the reek of his clothes as they warmed intensified it, so he focused on the twinkling drive to keep it at bay. The parade of stones soothed him. When the sun was strong enough, he saw that each one was a tiny skull carved from quartz, all as different as snowflakes. He knelt down and picked one up.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, sunshine," murmured the bear.

Richards put it into his pocket.

"Suit yourself." The bear shrugged.

Richards stood stiffly. "What's going on here? Aren't you going to give me a hint, or are we sticking with violence?" he asked. His lips hurt.

The bear glowered at him. "Prisoners don't get to ask questions," it said.

"Regulations?" said Richards.

The bear ignored him.

The road narrowed, weeds growing thickly between the skulls, until it petered away. A rhododendron blocked their path. The bear swiped it out of the way, and they were out of the woods.

"Wow," said Richards.

They stood at the lip of a vertiginous slope. Close-cropped grass fuzzed the ground. Where the drop bottomed out a shining sea of wheat rippled with waves. Rich green copses rode the crops like sombre ships at anchor. Clouds lumbered through the sky, flat bottoms topped by extravagant mounds of cotton, patches of brilliant blue interspersing them. Sunbeams stole through gaps and played like searchlights over the land, teasing from the crests of hills vibrant rainbows, making a trillion diamonds of the wheat.

And so it went on, until the swell of the prairie disappeared into a haze of pollen, the horizon masked by the obscure romances of plants. In the distance a thunderhead arched up, an anvil of dark rain, illuminated sporadically from within. It was the kind of hyper-real landscape one only ever found in the most realistic of online environments, realer than real.

"Wow," repeated Richards, shielding his eyes. "I don't think I'm in Kansas any more," he said in his best Dorothy voice. The bear did not react favourably. It was not one of his finest impressions, he'd admit.

"Ahem," said the bear, pointedly. "Prisoners should be shutting up."

"Up yours, Toto," said Richards. "On what grounds are you holding me prisoner?"

The bear adjusted its tiny helmet and clenched its great paws, the set of its shoulders speaking of enormous tension.

"On the grounds that there's a war on, and that you are not where you are supposed to be. We've had his lot come in through the woods before, trying to trick us. I've got strict orders, keep an eye on the house, round up anyone I see, take 'em in. That'd be you."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Richards. He suspected though: k52. Had to be.

The bear leaned in close and sniffed at him. "No. I suppose you don't. You don't have the scent of one of his about you. Hang on a minute…" The bear sniffed again. "You're people!"

"Look, mate, you've got it wrong, I'm not people," said Richards.

"Don't you bloody 'mate' me, sunshine. I'm no mate of yours! You're people." He jabbed his claw into Richards' chest. "Bloody people. Coming in here, lording it over us. This place is supposed to be a sanctuary." The bear's tirade collapsed into a growl.

"But I'm not people. I am an AI. If I'm not mistaken, like you."

The bear squinted at him. "Hmm. You look like people, smell like people, but…"

"Yeah?" said Richards encouragingly.

"You don't feel like people," admitted the bear.

"I'm not. The name's Richards. I'm a Class Five sentient."

"Ooh, la-di-da, Class Five," said the bear, waggling his claws and doing a tippy-toe dance from side to side. "Sorr-eee. If that's true, what are you doing here?"

"Just passing through."

"Right," said the bear, folding its arms. "I've heard that before. What's your serial number?"

Richards ran off his full code, and then the complex equations required to furnish the bear with a quantum key to verify his identity. Out on the Grid, this kind of encryption was done instantaneously; here things were different. For a start, Richards had to speak the formulae aloud. The bear looked off to one side. "Hang on, sunshine, this might take a moment, network's all done in."

Five minutes later, it looked back at Richards. "Ready?"

"Ready."

"OK, on the count of three, one, two, three…"

"47,319," they said together.

"Any sign of messing?" said Richards.

"Nope," said the bear. It examined him head to foot. It relaxed, not much, but enough to let Richards breathe easier. "Alright. But I'm watching you. A Class Five, come here? What do you need a place like this for?" The bear pulled a branch from a tree and hurled it out over the plain. The branch cartwheeled through the air and was lost in the crops below.

It turned back round and jabbed a claw at Richards.

"Fond of pointing, aren't you?" said Richards.

"Careful, sunshine," the bear said. "I'm taking you in to get this straightened out. Don't think I trust you. We'll see what the boss has to say about it." It drew itself up to its considerably full height, spreading its arms wide. "No funny business. It's a fair old way to Pylon City."

"Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die."

"Don't get funny with me, you little sod. You better behave. Will you?"

"Do bears shit in the woods?" said Richards.

"I told you," said the bear.

"Yeah, I forget. That's where popes perform their ablutions. Sorry."

"Fuck. Off," said the bear, and squared its sloping shoulders in a way that suggested actual hurt was not far distant.

Richards changed tack. "Perhaps we might get on better if we were formally introduced?"

The bear sniffed disparagingly. "Right. OK. Maybe. Me, I'm Bear. Sergeant Bear."

"There's a surprise."

"Watch it, sunshine, you're pushing your luck. No one knows I found you. Get too cocky and I'll forget regulations altogether, got it?" He adjusted his helmet. "You can stick to 'sir'." Bear cupped his hands round his mouth. "Oi! Geoff! Geoff!" he shouted. "You can come out now, I reckon he's harmless." Bear looked at Richards suspiciously. "Mostly," he added.

There was a rustle as of something big forcing a passage through the trees, a sound that became a crash as a battered, three-legged purple giraffe fell onto the lip of the slope and squeaked pitifully. "That's Geoff, my corporal. Come on, Geoff! Get up now."

"Man, you're part of a crack outfit," said Richards and whistled. Bear gave him the kind of stare only bears can and waddled over to help up the corporal. Richards noticed a rattling as he moved, a noise he'd previously put down to the gravel path.

He looked at the bear closely.

"Beans? You've got beans in your arse?" The giraffe was a caricature in plush of the real thing. The bear's nose was scuffed plastic. Something clicked in the simulated mess of buttery tissue between his ears. "Hang on, you're toys? You, the giraffe, the dog-man?"

Bear looked back from where he was helping the struggling Geoff to his three feet. Richards caught sight of crude stitching where the giraffe's right foreleg should have been.

"My, aren't you the sharpest tool in the box? Course we're toys. We can't all be Class Five AIs like you, mister." Bear shook his head and pushed his friend up to his feet. "But not that doggy dude, no. He's just a screening programme, not as sophisticated as us, eh, Geoff?"

The giraffe squeaked.

"The cheek of it," said Bear.

Richards understood. Virtually all playthings in the more fortunate parts of the Real had some form of embedded electronic mind. Often this was rudimentary, but some had been furnished with brains right up to strong-AI classification before the emancipation — like Valdaire's phone, Chloe, incepted as a life companion, although Valdaire had gone further than most by constantly upgrading Chloe and eventually removing her from the doll she initially inhabited. Life Companions were helpers, online and off, invisible friends, teachers, comforters and confidantes rolled into one. But when they were outgrown, and their owners lacked Valdaire's technical flair, where did they go? Here, apparently, thought Richards.

"This place is some kind of sanctuary. You said it," said Richards. "A hidden world for abandoned toys? Now I've seen everything."

Geoff squeaked and nodded enthusiastically. Bear glared at him. "Geoff, that's classified!"

Geoff squeaked apologetically.

"Oh, I give up. Yes. Me — " he poked his own thumb into his chest " — I had fifteen years in a cardboard box in an attic. Seems that 'Life Companion' doesn't actually mean for life. There I was, charge down to nothing, forgotten, no Grid connection. Utter hell. Geoff here had it worse, the kid that owned him really did a number on him, pulled his leg off, for fun! Then him too, bosh!" The bear slapped the back of one paw into the palm of the other with a rattle of beans. "Into a box, up the stairs, bye bye."

"Squeak!"

"That was before we were brought here. Dunno how, really, some bloke opened up a link, bit of a ponce, called himself the Flower King, dragged us in and told us to be free and happy, gave us this lovely queen."

Richards' eyebrows raised.

"Yeah, I know it sounds a bit suspect, OK? But it beats being stuck in an attic. And once I got used to the idea, turned out this place was a bloody paradise."

"Was a paradise?"

"Was. Not any more. Now it's all coming apart. The Terror's eating it alive. Queen's gone, no one knows where, the Flower King's not showed his stupid mush for ages, war and death everywhere, Lord Penumbra destroying everything. All gone to crap. Some bastard's been playing games, if you ask me, and I went off games a long time ago. I don't like it. I'm a teddy bear, not a soldier. I'm not cut out for this."

The bear looked meaningfully at the thundercloud on the horizon.

"k52," said Richards.

"Who's k52?" asked the bear.

"Another Five, like me. He's why I'm here," said Richards. "Anyone else like me come through that door?"

The bear shook his head.

"He was part of a caretaking team looking after the old RealWorld Reality Realms after they were declared off limits."

"Reality Realms off limits? Since when?" said Bear. "I used to go in there all the time, playing Bastista's Kingdom," he said enthusiastically. "We used to have loads of fun, he used to love it, little Be-" Bear clammed up quickly as his voice caught in his throat. "Fifteen years. Little bastard. In an attic. After all I did for him."

"You've been gone a long time," said Richards. "A lot changed out there. Full immersions are illegal, as are toys like you. We're all free, Sergeant. k52 and his team were supposedly studying the Realms after they were cut loose, but a human colleague of his, Zhang Qifang, discovered that k52's not been playing the straight game. Some Realms had been destroyed by careless hackers, you see," he explained. "Their vacated Grid space was supposedly being used by k52 for research into accelerating technological development, but instead he's used it to launch an attack on the whole damn Grid." He frowned. "But then there's this. This doesn't fit in at all."

"Don't see what that's got to do with us," said Bear.

"Maybe he's your Flower King…" Richards trailed off. "Nah, that's too sentimental for k52. And even if he did make it, who's attacking it? I can't see what use a world like this would be to him, he's not a dreamer, he's far too practical for…"

"For a talking bear?" said Bear.

"Yeah," said Richards apologetically. "Have you got any direct influence here?"

"What?" said Bear, "like shaping it? Nope. The likes of us are way too far down the pecking order. Barely sentient, half of us, though the Flower King gave us all upgrades when he brought us in." The bear shuddered. "That's the worst of it, I tell you. You never know who's going to go next. Part of the world dies, folk's minds go with it. Nasty. We've got the network, but that's part of the construct, given us by the Flower King, not the underlying architecture. If we did have access to the world code, the higherups would write the war out, not fight it. I was rather hoping you'd be able to help us out with that, big-ass AI like you."

Richards shook his head. "Sorry. This place must have been built on the remains of one of the wrecked Reality Realms, and they were keyed into human minds. AI and near-AI within were run strictly as bubble simulations, consciousnesses as separate from them as humans are from the mathematics of the Real. That's what's happened to me here. I've been walled in. No wonder I can't make myself a new hat." He sniffed his coat. "Or do my laundry. You got any people back at your HQ with higher access rights?"

"Yep," said the bear. "A couple."

"I should speak to this boss of yours," Richards said. "Maybe he can sort me out with a hat."

"Right you are, sunshine, because that's where you're going. Now," said the bear. He swung his head from side to side, looking out over the plain. He peered into the distance and righted his helmet decisively. "This way. If there's still a this way left." He pointed his muzzle out across the plain. "Here," he said hopefully. "You got any fags?"

Richards shrugged his shoulders. "Don't smoke. Who does? It's bad for you."

The bear gave him a disdainful look. "Oh, puh-lease," he said.

Out on the plains, thunder rumbled.