failsafe system. We’ve always suspected as much.
Blue was incensed.-It took over control of the body. That’s impossible!
– Obviously not impossible, replied Red.-Now keep quiet.
Constantine had ignored them. He was too shaken by his recent possession. He felt both dizzy and incredibly tired. He fell asleep listening to the bickering of the other personalities.
Now that he wanted their company, they were sleeping. He sighed, rolled out of bed, and went to inspect the minibar.
The only whisky available was the flavored stuff they sold to teenagers. He selected a can of cola instead, popped the seal and, the container chilling in his hand, began to stroll around the room. The carpet felt soft beneath his feet, the air was hotel temperature. It was a clichй: Constantine had spent two years now traveling the world, staying in what might as well have been the same hotel room. It all added to the artificiality of his situation. He needed to step out of this stereotypical room and touch the real world, but what was the real world to someone like Constantine? To so many people alive at the start of the twenty-second century, the real world was a commodity like any other, sold shrink-wrapped, dated, and best befored. Whether it was freshly baked bread, imitation grit of the millstone baked inside it, or a weekend in a country house with a trout river running through the grounds, the real world had to have authenticity added before it could be sold. Constantine often suspected that the truth was that the real world in fact consisted of hotel rooms just like this one, and that everything else was just a 24-bit imitation of its former self.
He signaled for the window leading out onto the balcony to open. The floor-length vertical blinds parted for him, and he stepped out into the cold night. He shivered, wondering for a moment if he should go back inside to pull on a robe but rejected the idea. The cold night air felt real. He gripped the plasticized metal handrail and looked out over the city cascading down beneath him in a series of wide terraces, its lights strings of illuminated pearls criss- crossing the dark streets and buildings. Constantine’s thin body glowed palely in the moonlight. Looking down, his large stomach, overhanging his spindly legs, was glowing like a pale moon itself. He used to take time to keep himself in shape, but over the past five years the pressure of work had become too much. Blue veins shone along his white legs, the sparse hairs that had grown on his upper body through his teens and twenties had been joined over the past few years by a forest of others sprouting from his nipples or covering his sunken chest. Constantine began to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. He had stepped out here to try to regain his grip on reality. What could be more real than his joke of a body as it approached middle age? The laughter died on his lips as he looked out into the night.
A skyscraper was spinning across the sleeping city toward him.
He stared in disbelief.
It was coming closer: the tower he had seen yesterday morning, just before boarding the flier. The tower with no base, a long, thin needle formed of a structure with art deco steel walls twisting around rose-petal windows, spinning slowly on its axis as it moved toward him. It cast no shadow on the silent city below, Constantine noticed, watching as it passed over a cluster of lights at the heart of the second level. A late-night party. Could they see it? Would they believe their drunken eyes if they did?
It didn’t exist. That was the most likely answer. Constantine had finally cracked. A tiny orange flier skimming down from the center to the first level passed the tower without pause. That confirmed it: he must be imagining it.
He wished his sleeping personalities would wake up.
The tower’s spin seemed to be slowing as it approached him. Now Constantine could see inside, actually look through the windows of the mirage. It was a hotel: that seemed obvious. He could see bedrooms, beds covered with white linen, some of them holding sleeping guests. The tower was now only thirty meters away. It loomed up into the night above him, blocking the half moon. Below the tower he could quite clearly see the streets of the second level.
The tower’s rotation had slowed to a crawl. Something was sliding into view around the steel and rose curve of the walls. A balcony. On it stood a figure. It was looking straight at Constantine as it slowly rotated to meet him.
Twenty meters away, ten meters. Five, four, three, two…
The tower glided smoothly to a halt bringing the figure face-to-face with Constantine.
It was Jay Apple.
“Good morning, Constantine,” she said.
“Good morning. Have I gone mad?”
Jay just shrugged.
“Not yet,” she replied. “I’ve come to give you a warning. You are not currently standing on the balcony of a hotel in Stonebreak, as you may have been led to believe. In fact, you are a personality construct, running on a computer located in Germany. Your mindset has been captured by a rival corporation. They are running it in a simulation of the real world in the hope that you will reveal the details of the Mars project.”
Constantine frowned. He gazed at Jay’s pale hand on the balcony rail. He could see the short white nails, the tiny scratch on the first joint of the forefinger of her left hand. He looked at the balcony rail itself, noting how it was formed of intertwining strips of metal in shades of grey that curled off to form leaves and stylized representations of flowers. One of the leaves had been caught by something and bent out of shape.
It all seemed so real, so convincing. If it weren’t for the fact that the building itself was floating several hundred meters above the ground, he wouldn’t have believed Jay’s words.
“When did this happen?”
Jay shrugged again.
“We don’t know. We are hoping to figure it out with your help. Have you noticed anything odd recently?”
Constantine gave a bitter laugh. “I’ve been seeing gaps beneath the sky. I see holes in alleyways and office blocks full of people staring at each other. Strangers introduce themselves to me and take me for midnight walks through the city. People seem to freeze in mid action while a second body around them carries on moving. Now I am speaking to a young woman standing on the balcony of a floating building. Yes. I guess you could say that things have been odd recently.”
He shook his head and tilted his head in thought.
“Okay. Things really started acting odd about three weeks ago. Do you think that’s when they got me?”
“Possibly. It’s something to work on.”
Constantine suddenly felt very cold. He remembered that he was naked in the middle of the freezing night.
“Can we go back inside?” he asked.
“No!” Jay held out her hand. “Stay close to me. They don’t know I’m here. We can only speak safely if you’re close to this balcony.”
Constantine was suddenly suspicious. “How? That’s a good point. If I’m a computer simulation, how can you speak to me at all? Surely they will
Jay rolled her eyes in frustration. “Listen, get this into your head. I’m the only person in here who’s on your side. Now, I’ve got a message for one of your personalities. Are they listening?”
“They’re asleep.”
– I’m awake, said White.
Constantine made no response. White never really slept. Savant personalities were a little different, he knew. Maybe it would do him good to keep this a secret for the moment.
“What about Grey? Is he there?” asked Jay.
“I see you’ve been fully briefed. In that case, you’ll realize that I never know
“Fine. Listen, this is a message from the real Constantine. I saw him just a few hours ago before I got in here. He said ‘GHX LPN SSD SAS EFF LKF.’”
– Probably an authentication code, said White.
“What? Can I have that again?”
“No need. Grey will have picked it up. It’ll vouch for my credentials.”
Constantine paused, but Grey maintained its habitual silence. Constantine tentatively took this to be a
