Wikitown. Dox. Redlight. Link. Big End. Pulpwood. Ember squinted at the fine-print names of the major terminals on the subway system. She’d been to cities with subways before and hadn’t seen anything like the station map before her. It was hard to fathom how it would function. One thing she did get out of it was that the city was in a circular shape—there were three concentric circles overlaid on the map in pale gray against the bright colors of the lines. At the center of these circles was the district of Dox. In the outermost circle there was only one major station: Channel Dark. A dotted line ran towards the city from parts unknown, halting before it reached the outer ring with a question mark. Everything else was connected. July leaned in and scrutinized the layout with the same confused intensity that Ember had herself. The arrival and departure times were especially opaque, consisting of an @ symbol followed by three numbers.
“So we need a store. SOFI, where’s a good place to find shops?” Ember said.
“Definitely the Rainforest Ring. I better show you.” SOFI said.
SOFI popped out of her phone and flew over to the subway map, which surprised Ember somewhat. Her little orange polygon wings now had a glowing blue stroke around the edge.
“You can fly, SOFI?” Ember asked.
“Yes, via Bluetooth. However there are sneaky Bluetooth attacks, and while I’m using the BT connection you’ll be more vulnerable to them. I mostly use Near Field Communication.” SOFI said.
“Bet you didn’t know that.” Ember said to July with an air of smugness.
“Don’t matter.” July said, “Ain’t got Bluetooth.”
“July can’t issue BT attacks,” SOFI said, “but he’s also immune to them. He doesn’t have NFC either. His stuff is too old.”
“Oh, but then, how did your Agent come out?” Ember wondered. At the back of her head she was questioning what sense there was in pinning down anything, since it was all witchcraft anyway. She supposed her hope was that witchcraft had rules.
“This thing. Sorta works like a flashlight.” He pointed to a little black bar on the top of his PDA. An infrared port. That explained the certain way he had to hold his PDA to get FIDO to appear. She could imagine a wide beam coming from the tip of his PDA which was the area his Agent could inhabit.
SOFI flew over the surface of the map and wherever her hand fell a glowing yellow line appeared, highlighting a particular route through the transit system. The fairy let out a little grunt of effort as she put her palms against the screen displaying the map and threw them out, which zoomed in the map obligingly to focus on their route. SOFI quickly returned to her phone, and her wings lost the blue outline as soon as she stepped into the screen.
Ember glimpsed a circular sign which described the subway as being named Noumea Underground, and the station as Forum Heights. The tunnel leading back to the platform was floored with white tile, and was a little wider than a parking space. There were a handful of people around who didn’t seem to recognize them or, if they did, didn’t pay them any mind. Columns formed from concrete supported narrow unadorned buttresses, separating murals which spread out across the cylindrical ceiling overhead. Ember couldn’t grasp what was happening in most of them, though it did appear that they referenced events and figures from local history. Less high-minded were the moving advertisements playing between each column in vertically oriented screens. The banner ads were artless, vibrating and flashing in a desperate bid for diamond-scarce attention. Some of them were crudely animated or otherwise in motion and accosted her with audiovisual offers for products she had no interest in. Ember was so used to tuning it out that they barely even registered with her, although they left a greater impression on July.
“Who falls for this kinda thing?” July said as he looked around at the ads. She’d always wondered the same thing. Just then another bark issued from July’s PDA. He took it out of his pocket and examined the screen. It set Ember on edge. Last time FIDO barked, May had attacked seconds later. The main consolation was this bark sounded excited rather than distressed in the intuitive language of dogs.
“Boy?” July asked, and held his PDA out in front of him. FIDO jumped out of it, which gave Ember a start since he was a full sized dog this time and not a cute little sprite like before. FIDO briefly stopped to appreciate an empty bag of chips with his muzzle, nudging it around with his sniffing, before progressing to his objective. He stood in front of one of the banner ads, looking at July and wagging his tail high with pride. July held the phone out like a leash and walked over to where FIDO was, careful to keep the IR port oriented to his Agent. He pivoted the screen away from the wall on its armature and found a golden coin with milled edges resting on a hidden concrete shelf. Ember thought: the power of FIDO. July looked over the golden coin, which was between the size of a silver dollar and a quarter, with a whistle of appreciation. FIDO seemed to be expecting something.
“I think he wants the coin…” Ember said. July considered it, and then flipped the coin up into the air towards FIDO.
“Here ya go, boy.” he said. FIDO snatched it out of the air with his jaws like a piece of bacon, and swallowed it. It was gone, and FIDO was beside himself with his simple canine happiness. After trotting around in a circle the dog leapt back into July’s PalmPilot via the infrared port.
“Amazing!” Ember said, starting to feel a bit jealous herself. FIDO did have neat tricks, just as SOFI said. She wondered what else he could do.
“Oh heck, he just ate it?” July said to no one in particular, more bewildered by his own actions than those of FIDO. He checked his phone, and then with relief: “Oh, thank God. 51. Went into the wallet, I guess.”
“Hey SOFI, can you find gold?” Ember said.
“Slobbering after material wealth? You’re better than that. Or at least, that’s my hope.” SOFI said.
She and July came to the rows of turnstiles leading into the station platform. On a hunch Ember stepped up to the bar and held her phone against the NFC autopay pad. A moment later the gate clicked open automatically for her and she went through. That was a pleasant and unexpected surprise. She checked her balance of Coins: 49.
“It costs one to ride.” she said to July. He went to the turnstile and placed his PalmPilot and then his Nokia against the NFC pad on the other side. Neither one registered, lacking the necessary gadgetry to pay out.
“Nope.” July said. Ember smiled. It was clear in advance that it wouldn’t work. Ultimately he was forced to hop over the turnstile, but she got the sense he would’ve preferred not to.
Ember stepped up to the station platform where a number of other people were waiting. The black-haired woman next to her looked to be in her late-20s, and a couple inches shorter. Ember sneaked a look at her knee-high black boots. A fashionable girl. Were these ‘people’, or something else?
“You’re going to Rainforest Ring?” Ember asked her. The girl looked mildly surprised at being addressed directly. It was weird to talk to strangers out of the blue, especially in big cities. She got the same initial reaction whenever she did it.
“Um, sorry… yes. I was visiting my old forum. It’s about knitting. Well, you don’t care about that. Reading about it always makes me excited to start a new project, so I was heading to Rainforest to get some supplies.” she said.
“What do you know about the real world?” Ember said.
“How do you mean?” the girl said, puzzled.
“I mean—when you got here, did you have to fight, like… with a sword?” Ember asked, growing increasingly embarrassed. The girl got a progressive look of comprehension about her.
“Oh, you’re an Enduser?” she said with surprise.
“Yes. September, or Ember if you want.” Ember said, looking from left to right, finding it suddenly difficult to meet the girl’s eyes.
“Omigosh, I can’t believe I’m meeting one of you.” the girl said, growing ever more excited. The subway arrived and the doors slid open, discharging a small group of people. Ember and the woman entered from one side of the door once the outflow had stemmed, and July and a few others came from the other side.
“So, if I’m an Enduser, what are you?” Ember said. The question had a rude sound to it, she recognized now. Earlier she’d hit May with the very same one and got a justifiably smart-ass response. The girl in front of her had no similar offense to take.
“I’m an ordinary User. I guess you could say I’m a projection of someone else into this world. You guys actually are real people.” the girl said, “My name is rhea, by the way.”
That made sense. All of the people she’d seen were the online identities of others in the real world. Ember took up a position next to rhea and held onto one of the roof-support bars for balance as the train rocked and swayed through the turns.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“You guys are the ones participating in the polls?” Ember said, having to raise her voice somewhat to account for the din of the moving subway car. rhea nodded.
“Yep.” rhea said, “What’s your platform?”
“Er… I may have some problems with the Internet, but nothing worth staking my life on. Or anyone else’s.” Ember said, somewhat embarrassed by how mealymouthed her position sounded when stated aloud. It was, however, what she believed.
“I agree with you.” rhea said, “You’ve got my vote.”
“Hear that, July? I have a supporter!” Ember said, and gestured to rhea proudly. July glanced over to her and nodded vaguely, looking like he had other things on his mind.
“Ohhh.” rhea said, “Another Enduser. He’s cute. You’re neutral too, July? I’ll vote for you!”
July didn’t even bother looking at her, which did nothing to dampen rhea’s enthusiasm.
“So fickle.” Ember mumbled in amazement—to herself, because rhea was now ignoring her. rhea was standing near July expectantly, and eventually he was moved to address her.
“Now don’t go votin’ for either of us.” July entreated rhea.
“But I agree with you guys. Things are fine how they are. Why should I vote for someone I don’t agree with?”
“You go ahead and vote for January. She’s already soapboxing.” July said. Ember hadn’t seen any of the news, and hadn’t been there as long as July, so she was somewhat at a disadvantage.
“Campaigning?” Ember said, surprised. None of the Endusers had been in the world more than half a day.
“That woman’s a made-for-TV beltway daisy. Tough act to follow for a couple kids. I’d get out of her way.” July said. Ember looked around warily and leaned in, and July and rhea did the same.
“We can always… kill her.” Ember said, narrowing her eyes and lowering her voice in an imitation of a comically sinister conspiracy.
July and rhea drew back in shock.
“I was kidding!” Ember added quickly, realizing then that these people didn’t really know her.
“Oh,” rhea said, “Kidding… I get it.”
“I don’t know ‘bout that. She’s already run another Enduser though.” July said, and rhea once again looked frightened. Evidently the girl had missed that part of the contest. She was surprised to find that July had seen that—he must have been conscious but immobile, like she herself had been. To be honest, Ember was surprised to be reminded that she’d done that. She’d never considered herself a violent person.
“It was self-defense. I mean, it wasn’t really self-defense. What’s it called when you defend someone else?” Ember said.
“Defense.” July said, in a flat tone.
“You shut up. I saved you.” Ember shot back, and July held his hands up and mimed a frightened expression.
“And I’m sure grateful, so don’t hurt me!” he said in a purposefully cowed voice. rhea pretended to be texting and wandered away to another part of the train.
“Look what you did, scaring her off.” Ember said. July nodded.
“That kinda support I don’t need. That’s a bounty, like on those old posters with bandits.” July said, now in a bad mood. It was a topic they’d have to hash out if they didn’t want to work at cross purposes.
“If we’re going to strive for unpopularity, we need to talk about what that means.” Ember said, “Scaring random people on public transportation isn’t going to cut it.”
July furrowed his brow as he gripped onto the support bar with both hands and looked off with an unfocused stare. He was contemplating the same thing Ember was: what would an unpopularity strategy look like? He could think of one example.
“That crazy girl is on our side.” July said.
“…May is a Yellow?” Ember said.
“That’s right.” July said
“Do you think she did it on purpose?” Ember said. She mulled it over: if one wanted to lose virtually all support, what better way than to execute a despicably cheap strategy, betray your allies, and then… fail? The last part especially was important, to shed the unscrupulous supporters of any strong horse. Or it could’ve been her contingency in case she failed. In its perfect awfulness it bordered on genius. That was May’s silver lining, if their conjecture was correct. She had made herself so insignificant as to be potentially worth ignoring. They’d find that out once polling started. Either way, her brief encounter with May did not give the impression of an especially far-sighted individual.
A real strategy for unpopularity would be for July to assuage her and betray her later. She didn’t feel like he would do that to her, but that was more or less the definition of ‘betrayal,’ wasn’t it? A person could never be betrayed by someone they didn’t trust in some way. There had to be some tangible reason not to pursue the strategy, something that was convincing in and of itself.
“Unpopularity isn’t really a good shield anyway.” Ember said.
“How d’you figure?” July said.
“Anyone who kills May now gets her bounty and doesn’t stand to lose much popularity for being the aggressor. Attacking someone weak and unpopular is a good way to become popular yourself.” Ember said. July’s eyes met hers with a quiet intensity, suddenly fascinated by something. Ember looked away, though July didn’t. He had grass-green eyes while hers were closer to the blue-green of shallow water.
“Wuh… what is it?” Ember said at length, suddenly unable to string together those simple words. Her heartbeat picked up. What was he looking at? Did she have a pimple?
“Just noticed your eyes. I’ve never seen that color before.” July said.
“Do you live in China, or something?” Ember said. She’d seen dozens of people with eyes just like hers.
“Ember, your eyes are yellow.” July said. SOFI popped out of her phone.
“Look.” SOFI said. The fairy tapped the camera app with her toe and brought it up, then flipped the view around to the front camera. Ember looked at her image and saw what July was talking about. Her irises were a surreal bright yellow.
“Did you see May’s eyes? They were strange. I’ve never seen an Asian girl with anything but brown eyes. Honestly, I’ve never seen eyes that were like that. They looked photoshopped.” Ember said. July inspected his own eyes in the chrome of the support bar.
“What color were yours, before?”
“Ah, pretty much the same.”
A calm and feminine voice announced over the loudspeaker system that they’d arrived at the Rainforest Ring Station. The doors slid open and they stepped out onto the concrete platform.
#
Unlike Forum Heights, the platform at Rainforest Ring was crammed with people hurrying about, streaming into subway cars and out of them. The crowding wasn’t quite shoulder-to-shoulder, but it was just enough that there wasn’t a straight path to anywhere you wanted to go. Ember was about as tall as the average man, so she could see over about three quarters of the people in any given crowd.
“One of the other Autumn types probably got red eyes. I bet they’re evil.” she said.
July didn’t seem to be paying attention to her, which annoyed her until she saw that he was swiveling his head around for other Endusers. She had nearly forgotten they were in danger, probably because she didn’t want to think they were. They should be worried about the station, since all Endusers would be coming to Rainforest Ring eventually. Some of them might’ve chosen to get off at a nearby station and then proceed to Rainforest on foot, so as to avoid getting ambushed in the main station. Ember hadn’t thought of any of that until she’d stepped onto the platform. Staircase tactics.
“Careful, don’t get separated.” July said over his shoulder to her as he started to weave through the crowd.
“I can follow a person through a crowd. I’m not your nine year old sister.” Ember said. July stopped short when he heard this, his back tense. He then took off into a full-tilt run, dodging and weaving through the throngs of people. She yelled after him: “Wait!”
He did not. After a moment of wide-eyed hesitation she took off after him, doing her best not to lose him in the bustle. She sometimes ran for cross-training purposes and had always hated how quickly she tired compared to when she swam. Now, however she felt faster and more tireless than ever. Neither of these things was especially helping her in the contest with July, who appeared to be more nimble and faster still than her. She coursed through a multitude of concrete tunnels, hoping she hadn’t lost his trail, and finally burst through an exit to the surface and came upon an expansive atrium. She didn’t see July anywhere. So much for her boast. She was tired and panting, but she wasn’t completely out of breath, as she might’ve been after a similar sprint through the real world.
A half-cylinder ceiling of glass panels in a metal lattice towered high over her, and a walking bridge of smooth white stone vaulted over the green-water canal running down the center of the room. The canal was here as wide as the short edge of an Olympic swimming pool, a span otherwise known as 25 meters, and extended off to her left and right as far as she could see before it disappeared around a gradual bend. Two walking paths wended around on either side of the canal, never straight, dodging thick tree trunks and undergrowth. The canal seemed to wax, wane, and weave as it curved away into the distance. Overhead the canopy of the tall trees would sometimes totally obscure the high dome of what was really a colossal and rather humid greenhouse. Each side was bounded by a building which faced the canal and the walking paths, or sometimes just a concrete wall or a steep hill, giving the impression of a forested floodplain in a ravine. A boat full of passengers puttered down the canal, appearing to be the slower of the two ways to shortcut around. The other was a light rail running along the inside edge. Ember craned her neck back to take in this wonder, and yelped when she felt a pair of hands suddenly close around her upper arms. When they released her, she spun around and saw that it was July.
“You’re going to pay for that, I swear.” Ember said, still clutching her sweater with fright. July’s stunt was more of a test for her heart than from the entire chase.
July walked over to the canal, giving a shrug to her question en route. When he approached the edge FIDO gave off a bark. He knelt down and looked into the water closely, searching the clear waters of the shallow canal for the Coin that must’ve been in there. Ember went to boot him into the water for a bit of instant revenge, but he shifted to the right and she herself pitched forward instead. July was startled but managed to catch her before she fell in, and then they were both precarious with their combined center of mass hovering over the water. As he held her she caught a glimmer of gold lying on the bottom.
“Wait, I see it! Finders keepers.” she said breathlessly, and pitched them both forward into the water. She spent a second feeling around the bottom for the coin, and when she came back to the surface with it in hand July was already laughing. Ember just noticed that she hadn’t see him smile, yet.
“Hey!” a voice yelled from the canal edge. She went rod-straight, her face flushing crimson. July cleared his throat and stepped away.
“Let me guess,” Ember said to the black-uniformed policeman standing at the edge of the canal, “There’s no swimming in the canal?”
“There’s no rule like that. There doesn’t need to be,” the man said, “on account of the piranhas.”