Mom used to sing nursery rhymes and old songs to Alice and me at bedtime. I’d stare up at the stickerless bunk bed and the glow-in-the-dark stars on our ceiling while she sang us to sleep. I don’t remember most of them, but one’s stuck in my head.
The Daisy one.
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do!
I’m half crazy, all for the love of you!
It won’t be a stylish marriage,
I can’t afford a carriage,
But you’ll look sweet upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two!
Later on, I looked it up and had my aug play it sometimes. That’s how I know it’s called “Daisy Bell,” and it was written by some guy named Harry Dacre.
Mom’s version was better than the one my augs found, though.
----------------------------------------
known, Reality 1421, Time Unknown
- - - - -
“Hello, L4-3,” Doctor Twitchy’s voice comes over the helmet. “Please respond so we know the connection’s operational.”
“Hi,” I say, staring out into the mist surrounding me on three sides. On the fourth is the portal I just Mergewalked through.
“Great, the connection looks solid. Your wire has a range of one thousand feet, and the helmet can run wirelessly for an hour before it needs to be charged. This looks like R-1421. The largest merge we’ve had from here deposited several Geren-Danger anomalies in the Mount Douglas Park area two days ago That’s an ongoing problem for us, but a minor one. Expect small, batlike creatures and—“
“James covered it already,” I interrupt as I start walking.
The helmet’s silent for a few seconds, except for a humming as the cord spools out behind me. I already hate it. Part of me wants to take it off and just have James run a direct connection between Doctor Twitchy and me. He could do it; he’s in Dr. Twitchy’s augs, too. “Okay. L4-3, when we’re running these operations, we’d prefer to give the information ourselves so we know what you know.”
[I know everything they know,] James says.
“I know,” I whisper. There’s a lot of knowing going on. Then I clear my throat and raise my voice a little. “Okay. What’s the biggest danger here?”
Time slips by as I walk through the soggy, slightly-orange ground. This reality isn’t like Earth or the God in the Machine’s reality. The air’s thick here, in the same way that a thinning is thin. Too real.
“We haven’t explored this reality, so we’re operating off of incomplete information,” Doctor Twitchy admits. “We’re seeing highly increased Reality levels on the meters, though.”
“I’m good for three to four hours here,” I reply. “James already said so.”
“Understood. Report in if you see anything unusual.” The radio goes dead.
[That’s going to be a problem,] James says. [I think Director Ramirez feels like I’m stepping on his toes when he’s supposed to be running this operation. We’ll see if he can put that aside in the name of science or whatever he’s trying to accomplish here.]
I ignore him. Now that Doctor Twitchy’s quiet, I can finally focus on the world around me. The ground’s soggy, and the ice-cold mud starts working its way through my boots after a few steps. The mist’s cold, too. Actually, everything feels cold, and it smells like fresh daisies. Not frozen—it’s not like a winter ice storm in Victoria—but cold. Purple stalks as big around as my arm and twice as long grow in patches around the…I’m not sure I’d call it a path, but I can’t think of a better word…that I’m on. They look like some kind of plant.
“Is purple better at photosynthesis in foggy places?” I ask James.
[It may not use photosynthesis. Let’s keep our distance until we know more for sure,] he replies.
I push through the fog, even though my feet are cold enough to feel tingly. If this is a test run of the device, they picked an annoying world to test in. And what’s the inquiry here, anyway? I need an Inquiry to get something out of this for myself. After all, I need to get stronger if I want to keep my people safe. I start pondering one, and eventually add it to my list.
►Inquiries (4/5)
►What is Merge Prime?
►Are Sora and my family okay?
►What’s going on at Albert Head and West End High?
►Can SHOCKS and I shut down merges intentionally?
The answer to that last one should be yes, but the truth is that I’m not sure. The God in the Machine was a lucky win. I know I can survive this merge just fine. I can definitely follow the cable and get back to the merge portal if I need to—or if James says I’m running out of time. And he’s also mapping everything, just like in the maze reality. But I don’t have the first clue how to shut this merge down.
The Revolver’s heavy in my hand and glowing orange. According to James and Doctor Twitchy, there’s nothing tougher than Geren-Danger, and I’d consider myself solidly in the high Gerens or lower Xuduos. As long as I stay focused, nothing here should be a threat. But that doesn’t mean they’re right; no one’s ever explored this side of the merge, and that means they’ve only seen a sliver of this reality.
Still, as the minutes pass and my toes get colder, I can’t help but get distracted. Nothing’s happening, and there’s nothing to see, just purple stalks and fog.
So far, James has found evidence that SHOCKS is serious about my new augs. They’ve got a pair of agents—not Recovery and Stabilization, but investigative agents—on the prowl for the latest version of my model, and they’re working on ‘acquiring’ a technician to install them. I’m not sure how thrilled I am about that phrasing, since it sounds a lot like kidnapping, but I am excited about having functional augs in the next couple of days.
He’s also uncovered a testing plan for Alice. That’s…less positive. They don’t have a good idea of what caused Li Mei and Alice to bond, and their theories are pretty similar to what they tried with the Revolver and me. That means none of their plans are going to work—but they’re going to try them all anyway.
Alice’s best bet at this stage is to play along and hope for a breakthrough, but her backup plan looks more and more like learning to coexist with a Xuduo-Danger infovampire. So…that’s not good.
My feet squish through the mud.
And as for Dad? There’s zero evidence they’ve got a plan, and it’s feeling less and less likely that they’d document experiments and procedures for Alice and me, but not anything for—
[Claire, left,] James cuts in casually.
I spin, use Bullet Time, and put three shots into the center of a pair of jawed bat wings feet from my face.
The shots fire off, and it explodes. Burning, leathery wing bits fly everywhere, smoke mixing with the misty air. I force myself to stay calm as Doctor Twitchy’s voice comes in over the helmet. “L4-3, report in.”
“Not a problem, just a 1421-AA-3,” I reply, giving him the SHOCKS identification James just fed me. “I’m searching for…something. A clue that’ll lead me to whatever caused this reality to merge with R-0.”
The SHOCKS-speak rolls off my tongue—or at least, it sounds like it does. But I’m faking it. I’m lying to Doctor Twitchy. And inside, my heart’s going a mile a minute. This was all easier when all I had to do was worry about getting to Alice, Sora, and Dad. Before I was responsible for them. If James hadn’t been here, that…
[Flybite]
Sure, why not? That flybite would have gotten to me. I’ve toughened up a lot in the last ten days, but even if I could handle an Anquan-Danger anomaly like that without worrying, it doesn’t bode well for the rest of this mergewalk. Or for the next.
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The truth is that I need to focus on getting stronger and acting smarter. I have to lock in until I’ve figured this out. To be more like the Claire in the maze world, and less like the one at West End. I have an hour fifteen—maybe a touch less—before I need to go back. And I need to use that time smartly, not worrying about Dad.
----------------------------------------
By the time I find something else Doctor Twitchy might be interested in, I’ve killed three more flybites, and my shoes are soaked completely through. I can feel the mud inside my socks. It’s a little gritty, not just smooth and slimy.
There’s something on the wind, too. It started about ten minutes ago, a voiceless song or something. It’s hard to explain, but it’s been wearing on me as I move forward. My Infohazard Resistance has been helping me ignore it, but it’s…enthralling. I want to know what the singer’s singing about. The song’s been getting stronger, but Doctor Twitchy can’t hear it through the helmet.
“Any changes in the song, L4-3?” he asks, almost on cue.
“No. It’s still getting louder,” I say, sidestepping around a patch of violet tendrils. James was right; those aren’t to be messed with. I saw a group catch a flybite and tear it apart. Since then, I’ve avoided them. “Why the number?”
“Standard SHOCKS procedure on an operation,” Doctor Twitchy says. I nod after deciding that he’s not lying.
I fire into another bat-mouth monster, and it hits the ground, dead already. To be honest, this merge is frustrating me. I’ve been here for…probably forty-five minutes. Maybe fifty. And I haven’t seen anything that would explain a merge with R-0, much less that’d be a hint at how to shut it down.
And Doctor Twitchy’s just as frustrated. I can feel it in how terse his questioning’s getting. There’s nothing new in this swamp. Everywhere I look, it’s just orange mud, purple tendrils, or flybites. SHOCKS is gathering gigabytes of data, but it’s nothing new, and that’s got to be driving him crazy.
And the hard truth is that the data doesn’t matter. Only shutting this merge down matters—if I can prove that I can do it, my friends and family are safe forever, and Doctor Twitchy’s a genius, not a madman. If not…there’s a lot riding on this, that’s all.
The Revolver’s ready as I work my way around a group of stalks, step through some fog, and stare at the solid black wall in front of me.
[Wow,] James says.
“L4-3, stay still. We’re analyzing it,” Dr. Twitchy says at the same time.
I don’t plan on moving. The border looks like something sliced reality away, and it’s less than a soccer field away from me. Half a purple tendril plant’s pressed against the black wall, but where it touches, there’s nothing. It towers overhead as far as I can see into the fog.
A flybite dives toward it, swoops through, and…nothing. It doesn’t die. It doesn’t bounce off. And the wall’s surface doesn’t ripple or shimmer. It’s just gone. There one moment, gone the next.
“I don’t think that’s Geren-Danger,” I mutter. As I wait for someone to tell me what’s going on, the black abyss seems to stare at me. I stare back; a gigantic black wall of nothing won’t scare me! It takes almost a minute before anything happens other than the swaying tendrils occasionally moving too close to the abyss and partially disappearing.
The strange thing about that is that they don’t die or spew liquid or anything like that. They keep doing what they were doing, but they’re missing parts.
“We think it’s a second merge,” Doctor Twitchy says. “We’re working on the assumption that it’s self-contained and not a threat, but that’s low-confidence information. It looks voracious, like quite a few R-0 merges, but not expansionist. That’s good for us and bad for anything inside. If we had time, we’d ask you to gather a sample from the far side, but that’s not part of the mission today.”
“Great. I’m saying no to sticking my head into a hungry merge,” I say, voice dripping with annoyance. “I’m going to follow along its side and see where that takes me.”
“Understood. Report in if anything changes. Expect unknown anomalies.” The line goes dead, and I brace for something to happen.
Nothing changes except for the smell and voiceless song. The first switches from daisies to a plant I can’t quite place. It stinks like a skunk, though. And the second doubles in volume until it’s almost overwhelming. I grit my teeth and start walking, but it takes nearly five minutes of the song bouncing around in my skull before my Infohazard Resistance improves and dulls the worst of it.
[Skill Learned: Infohazard Resistance 7]
“James, any ideas on what’s going on here?” My feet are so cold the goosebumps are halfway up my leg, and I’m ready to call it until tomorrow. We have some time before the reality levels become a problem, but the cord behind me’s starting to pull on my back as it trails out behind me.
[Two theories. My first is that the second merge is attacking the first and triggering a complete reality failure, and the first is trying to come across into our reality to escape. That implies sentience, though, and I’m not sure realities qualify as sentient. The other theory is that this is a completely random sequence of events.]
I go quiet and focus on walking and shooting another flybite. And, of course, on the equation that’s finally coming together. I still don’t know the variables, but Einstein or Newton or one of those old white guys my science teachers loved rambling about said that an object at rest stays at rest—unless an outside force messes with it. That’s what’s got to be happening here. Reality 1421 would have been fine being a reality by itself, but the second one has other plans, so to speak.
I can’t prove it. So, obviously, we’re going to need more data, but my plan for solving this is to figure out why the second merge is here and see if it’s possible to disconnect it. Or to see if we can skip the ‘figure this out’ part of the equation and go with ‘disconnect’ right away.
And I know who to ask.
“Doctor Twitchy, put Strauss on,” I say.
“It’ll be a minute. Sergeant Strauss is doing portal security, and he’ll need to be relieved,” Doctor Twitchy says. “We don’t want to leave the merge portal un-covered in case we have a breach.”
“I don’t need him to look at your data. I just need a connection to talk to him about how he shuts down merges. That’s one of his jobs in Lambda-Four, right?”
Doctor Twitchy goes quiet. Then he clears his throat. “Patching you through to Sergeant Strauss.”
A moment later, the RST trooper’s voice comes through. It’s scratchy. “L4-3, what do you need?”
“I need a run-down for how RSTs deal with merges. Do you just contain them until they stop, do you use Universal Reality Anchors to turn them off, or is there something else?”
“What’s the context?” Strauss asks.
I take a deep breath. “We’ve got a second merge inside this reality, and it’s eating this one. I think it might be causing the merge in Mount Douglas Park. It’s like how, if you squeeze a water balloon with a little hole in it, the water rushes through. We’re where the water’s trying to go. If we shut the second one down, we might see a disconnect from R-0.”
“One minute.”
The helmet goes silent as James takes over. [He’s going to build a bomb.]
“A what?” I say. I’m already squishing along the black wall, ignoring the voiceless song.
[SHOCKS does containment or tries to pop merge barriers and deflate them, but the tools Strauss uses are designed for use in R-0. They’ve never needed to use them inside of another reality, so he won’t have the experience to know what’ll work best. His profile says he’s careful, precise, and meticulous—but also that he’ll do what it takes to solve a problem. I’m inferring he’ll solve this one by throwing everything in his kit at the nested merge. That means a bomb.]
That makes too much sense, and it fits with what I know about Strauss, too. I spin on my heel and start jogging through the swamp, away from the black abyss that covers half the world and toward my merge portal. I’m halfway back when Strauss confirms that he is, in fact, building a bomb. “It’s going to be messy, but I’m rigging every stage to happen on a few milliseconds’ delay. The labcoats can analyze it later to figure out what worked and what didn’t.”
“Alright. Thanks, Strauss. You can give me back to Ramirez.” The ground under my feet squishes, and I pick up the pace; they probably expect me to deploy the bomb. I’m a scout, technician, and weapon delivery girl all in one. The thought makes me grin.
I make it three more steps. Then everything shifts.
----------------------------------------
The voiceless song disappears, replaced by the worst tinnitus I’ve ever heard. My balance shifts, too, and I hit the ground hard as a wave of vertigo accompanies it. My jaw aches almost instantly from gritting my teeth to fight it. The Revolver’s up.
But whatever it is, I can’t see it.
Doctor Twitchy’s voice cuts through the ringing like he’s underwater. “L4-3, switch your helmet to infrared.”
I don’t. But a moment later, my vision goes black, with blue and yellow spots. The Revolver screams orange and red, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
James has it under control.
There’s a yellow thing in front of me. With the helmet on, all I can see is a blob of color, but something’s there. The cable pulls tight. My head jerks backward, and my first shot misses. It flares the helmet’s screen a brilliant white. When I recover, the thing is halfway to me, and my aim’s off. I Slither to put some distance between it and me, landing in the orange goop on the ground. The mud’s in my hoodie. It’s cold, but I don’t care. I’ve got the distance to swing the Revolver around.
I aim.
Bullet Time.
Fire.
Then the monster’s on me. I feel it before I see it; the heat vision turns to a yellow blur. It slides all around me. It’s slimy, cool, and burning hot at the same time. It hurts. Even though my Physical Anomaly Resistance, it hurts. Doctor Twitchy’s giving orders. I ignore them. Instead, I Smoke Form and fall through the thing’s grasp. A second later, I’m free and on the ground.
[Stability 5/10]
[Skill Learned: Physical Anomaly Resistance 5]
“What…is this?” I ask. It comes out slow. My skin’s burning, even through the resistance.
[Unknown. Your shots didn’t hurt it at all. It doesn’t match anything from R-1421, though. I’m classifying it as a mid-Geren-Danger anomaly, probably incorporeal. Reality levels don’t match R-1421, either,] James says. [Short version: you can handle it, but it’ll take some thinking.]
He doesn’t have to tell me twice. I put another shot into the thing, but it doesn’t react as the flame blast punches through it. Then I start running.
James flicks my helmet back to regular vision. Then my aug goes all heat-vision-y. It burns. I blink back a tear—the new augs can’t come soon enough. My fingers do the cylinder-switch dance. The mud plastered against my face is cold. The Revolver goes blue-black in my vision. It’s colder. I take a deep breath. The thing’s got to be catching up.
Then I spin.
My vision goes yellow. It’s right there. Then it’s not. The Revolver goes off, and the singularity rips the anomaly off its…feet, I guess. It looks like the experiments on centrifugal force or whatever it’s called, in elementary school—only there’s no bucket. Just an invisible, warm thing spinning around a cold core, faster and faster. The outside of the singularity flashes yellow and black.
Then, before I can turn to keep running, it collapses.
[Maybe I should reclassify it as low-Geren,] James murmurs.
Yellow flares out of the collapsing black hole. And the world shifts again.