Marion took hold of the handle that opened the window leading to the balcony, the same balcony where he had spoken to Jay not twenty-four hours before. She gave Constantine a sympathetic look.
“Brace yourself,” she said.
Constantine wondered what she meant, then she slid open the window. There was nothing beyond it. Nothing. Just a dull grey space. Constantine shivered. The view was unnerving. At the wall containing the window that led to the balcony, the world had just been split in two. Through the glass of the sliding window that Marion had pushed to one side he could see the nightscape over Stonebreak. The dark space that was defined by the lights of the city, the stars and the moon. To the left of the glass, where he should have seen the balcony beyond, there was nothing. An emptiness, a lack of anything that made him feel quite terrified.
He was looking into oblivion. It was the gap beneath the sky. It was the end of his virtual life.
Marion stepped beyond the world. Constantine watched her walk out into the grey emptiness. She turned and beckoned to him to follow.
“Come on,” she called. “We need to talk.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Constantine stepped forward.
He walked into the greyness. There was nothing beneath his feet, and yet, as he walked, he seemed to move forward. It was an odd feeling; there was no resistance to his tread.
Marion was waiting for him up ahead. As he came level with her, she indicated that he should look back the way he had come. There he saw a rectangle hanging in the greyness, a portal that led back to the world. Through it he could see the cream corduroy carpet of the hotel room, the edge of his bed, the corner of a pastel print.
Marion spoke softly. “You’ve been very unlucky. Your message made it to the outside world, but unfortunately for you, the object code failed to destroy itself. It was analyzed in a routine efficiency scan just as its resources were about to be returned to the heap and it caused an exception to be thrown. Even then, we would have wondered at its meaning if it hadn’t been for something you said earlier.”
“What’s that?”
“Back in the concert hall, yesterday. You subvocalized something to your internal personalities: ‘I’m not sure the Night Jay will have a method of contacting the outside world.’”
“Oh,” said Constantine.
– Stupid, stupid, stupid! said Red.
– It’s too late to worry about that now, said Grey.
Marion continued. “You had the whole realside team in turmoil because of that. What did you mean, ‘outside world’? What was the Night Jay? They couldn’t believe that the simulation had been compromised. Most of them assumed it was some sort of code. They didn’t want to believe you had found out where you were. And then we found the message in the bottle.”
“Oh,” said Constantine. He didn’t know what else to say.
Marion touched his elbow. “Look, it was a mistake anyone could make. You’re up against a team of a hundred people.”
Again he was lost for words. Marion cleared her throat.
“Anyway. While I was busy trying to seduce you in here, the powers that be out in the real world were putting together an offer.”
Constantine nodded. “I’m listening.”
Grey spoke with cold finality.
– There can be no bargains.
Marion gave a tiny shake of her head. “I’m not sure that you would really understand what the offer means. You don’t understand what’s involved here. That’s why we’re going to show you.”
She reached out her hand into the nothingness and pulled it to one side. Another door opened in space. Through it Constantine could see a corridor, just a little wider than the doorway itself. A steep stairway, looking oddly familiar, led downward. He strained to see more, hungry for the touch of reality in the empty world. It looked so
“Go on down,” said Marion.
Constantine did not need to be told. He was already stepping into the welcoming doorway. Anything to get out of this dreadful nothingness. He walked down eight or nine steps, feeling the reassuring solidness of the stone beneath his feet. He pressed a hand gratefully against the cool, cream-painted plaster of the wall. Marion stepped onto the top step behind him and pulled a cream-painted door closed behind her. She sat down on the top step and took a deep breath.
“What now?”
“Go down the steps,” said Marion. “Someone will be waiting for you at the bottom.”
“Aren’t you coming, too?”
“No. I’ll wait here for your return.” She shivered, and said with real feeling. “I couldn’t bear to wait out there.”
Constantine shivered in sympathy. “I know what you mean.” He turned and began to descend.
Constantine danced quickly down the stairs, the stone treads beneath his feet sending up a pitter-patter echo in the narrow passageway. As he reached a landing, the stairway reversed direction, yet still heading down. The feeling that he had been here before was rising in Constantine all the time. Onto another landing and he reversed direction again. There was a door at the bottom of this next flight of steps. A green double door with anti-crush bars stretched across, faintly patterned with the oil of a thousand fingerprints. And Constantine at last remembered where he was. He pushed open the doors of the concert hall and stepped out onto the wide paved area of the fourth level of Stonebreak.
A familiar figure in a shabby green suit was waiting for him, just beyond the doors.
“Hello, Mary,” said Constantine.
Mary led him to a nearly empty cafe bar located close to the Source. They ordered tiny cups of espresso and tall glasses of chilled water and carried them to a table well away from the bored-looking youth who served at the counter. Around them, the tables were still littered with dirty cups, dried coffee foam forming tidemarks around the rims; half-eaten sandwiches, and cakes dried and curled on plates. Mary looked across to the five entwined branches of the Source and then raised her espresso cup to Constantine.
“Cheers,” she said.
“Cheers.”
Mary sipped at the strong coffee then took a drink of cold water. Constantine did the same. The contrast between the strong, hot, bitter coffee and the refreshing coldness of the water was stimulating. Constantine replaced his cup on the saucer and sat up straight.
“What’s it all about, Mary?”
She sat up a little straighter too and looked at him.
“I was supposed to be your conscience. It was another possible way to get what we wanted from you.”
Constantine said nothing for a moment, took another sip of espresso, another of water.
“It probably stood the best chance of working, you know.”
“The company AI said it would. I never believed it.”
“Which company is it?”
“The company now called 113 Berliner Sibelius, following the corporate merger at the AI level earlier this week. My presence is also partly explained by the much more environmentally aware policy we’ve been pursuing since then. I’m not sure it’s to our benefit, you know, but there you go. Who are we to argue with an AI?”
“Who indeed?” asked Constantine. He looked across to the Source again.
“Is the DIANA strand crumbling out in the real world, too?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mary.
He finished off the espresso and downed the rest of the water in one gulp. He was ready for a whisky, now.
“So. What is it you want to know?” he asked.
