“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you to be bothered, my friend.”
“It’s no bother,” Horatio told her. “I was logged into Machine World for an all night gaming session.” That was a massive multiplayer VR game for AIs.
She grinned. “So, you’re saying I ruined your gaming session?” Like her, his body was equipped with motion sensors that could rouse him from virtual reality at a moment’s notice.
“Actually, this isn’t the first time I’ve been rudely pulled from the game,” Horatio said. “Renaldo came up a few times. You might want to check your messages.”
She frowned. She’d told Renaldo not to come knocking at her door after dark, but the man was a night owl and sometimes couldn’t help himself. Good thing Horatio had been there to turn him away so she could have an uninterrupted rest.
Now that the door was open, she was able to log into the Net. A moment after she connected, the notification icon flashed in the lower right of her HUD.
She had a message waiting from Renaldo. Actually, five messages. Apparently, he wanted to see her, very badly. There were also several other messages from SubverseTube subscribers who had watched the latest video she’d posted, but she planned to review those later.
She sent Renaldo a call in holographic mode and shared the feed with Horatio. She muted the robot so that Renaldo wouldn’t know Horatio was observing.
Renaldo’s upper body appeared before her in hologram form. He swept the short-cropped hair away from his eyes as if he’d just awakened. “Warden. I have news.”
Rhea waited patiently, saying nothing.
Renaldo cleared his throat. “Jairlin reached out to his network.” That was another Wardenite from Rust Town. “He received a response early this morning from a man who claims to know Veil. This man wouldn’t agree to a virtual meeting—says the Net has too many prying eyes and ears. He does have a point about that, so I decided to let him visit you in person. Hopefully you’re okay with that.”
“Tell him I’ll be available this afternoon,” she said.
“He’s here now,” he said.
“He’s here now?” Rhea repeated incredulously.
“Uh huh,” Renaldo told her. “He came an hour ago. We wouldn’t let him leave.”
She frowned. “The forceful confinement of someone who wants to help me…”
“It’s for his own good,” Renaldo countered. “We told him to wait, but after fifteen minutes he tried to go, giving us some lame excuse about feeding his robotic cats. So of course, we stopped him.”
“What if he really had to feed his robot cats?” she asked sarcastically.
“First of all, they’re robots, so they don’t eat,” he replied. “Second of all, no one owns robot cats in Rust Town—they’re too easily stolen and reprogrammed. It’s obvious he was having a change of heart.”
“If he’s had a change of heart, what makes you think he’ll talk now?” she asked. “And I don’t want you threatening him, by the way. That’s not how the followers of the Warden roll.”
“We haven’t threatened him…” Renaldo said.
“Telling him you won’t release him unless he talks is a threat, I’d say,” she insisted.
“No, no, we didn’t do anything of the sort!” Renaldo said, stiffening. Then his eyes darted back and forth as he continued sheepishly: “We simply said he couldn’t leave until he spoke to the Warden.”
She pressed her lips together. “I see.”
“Please, Warden, just talk to him,” Renaldo told her. “If he reveals nothing, you can send him on his way, and we’ll blame Jairlin for wasting all our time. I have a feeling when he meets you face to face, he’ll spill what he knows.”
Rhea sighed. “All right, fine, bring him up.”
“Thank you.” Renaldo’s hologram blinked out.
She glanced at Horatio. “See what I have to deal with?”
“Interacting with humans is often unpleasant,” Horatio agreed.
She stepped fully into the adjacent room and left the door to her bed chamber open in case she needed to beat a hasty retreat. Horatio stood up and leaned against the wall beside her.
Rhea gazed impatiently at the opening on the far side of the cargo container, where rungs attached to the wall led to the next container stacked below.
A few moments later she heard muted clanging coming from those rungs, then three individuals pulled themselves into the chamber in turn.
The first was Renaldo, his bronze skin seeming darker than ever, no doubt from all the days spent in the sun helping to rebuild Rust Town. The artificial skin that covered her face and neck didn’t tan like a normal human’s; she always had the same perfect complexion no matter how much sun she took.
The next man was someone she’d never seen before. He wore black coveralls over a grimy shirt, with a drab, mangy cloak hanging over his shoulders and boots that had seen better days. His unshaven face had a similar disheveled appearance, with both the hair of his beard and his head reaching to the upper chest; and if it wasn’t for the dirt caking his cheeks, he’d be as pale as Miles. And then there was the stench, which she detected even from here. Unwashed feet, underarms, genitals. She managed to avoid wrinkling her nose in disgust. Just barely. Via her mind-machine interface, she deactivated her sense of smell. Much better.
Other than the AR goggles the man wore, he had no obvious augmentations. Because of his pale face and lack of attention to personal grooming, she had the impression he was someone who had given up on the exterior world and spent most of his days in VR, rarely leaving his home. She wondered if his home had survived the bioweapon attack, or if his life had been upended like most of the residents. Then again, maybe he never had a home. There were more than a few VR addicts who lived their lives in the dark alleyways between cargo containers. The bioweapon attack wouldn’t have changed that: it simply meant they called different alleyways home.
Jairlin
