ESCAPE VELOCITY (first half)

 

  Not everyone received a virtual funeral. Most of the dead had digitized in electronic books, waiting for a reader to resurrect them. Still, Deve wanted a virtual life, although the unlikelihood kept resounding in her mind. First she had to escape, but that seemed far fetched. However, the hope drove her night and day, even on this date with Claude.

  They hooked their ganglia to the transporter. Deve punched connect, and they eased through to virtual. The surroundings they met astounded her ‒ crisp and clear, pristine and effervescent, colors true, sky touching the ground, not dingy as the world they had just left.

  She, a thin-necked egret hovering over the scenery while searching for edible movement. Claude stood beside her like a boulder she could lean on. As long as she kept her secrets close, he would protect her.

  Virtuality so thrilled Deve that she would have remained where they entered if Claude had not started off, following the dozens of people tramping up the hill. Climbing the height elated her. Her countenance rejoiced at all she viewed. However, Claude seemed stressed in this holograph. He scorned the reality of the hill and the blanket of mist they had just entered.

Unlike Deve, Claude did not seem affected by the dirt and vermin on the sidewalks of the solid world. In the city, garbage piled under windows two meters high. It smelled no different to him than the fragrant woods, lakes and flowers of this place. Whereas Deve sucked in the beauty of the clouds, the quacks and chatter of birds and the odors of fruit, he ignored what his senses told him.

  Deve cooed, "Oh Claude. What a magnificent outing." She relished the slippery mist that the clouds had settled on the incline. She sniffed the faint odor of raspberries and imagined that she could taste them too. Clinging to Claude's evanescence, more from affection than concern with falling, she and he broke through the clouds into the empyrean.

  She exuded cheer for them both. Claude swept his eyes up the slope toward the peak of the hill. "We're in time for it," he said to a beauty on his right. Deve dropped his hand and nestled herself. With something special about to happen, no means would Claude spoil it by flirting with another woman.

  "Ah yes," the woman said huskily. "The virtual funeral of Shin Casterine, the youngest ever to escape. What a day for it with greenery puffing in and out." She leaned close to Claude and whispered, "Who's that dowdy on your left?"

  For a moment, Claude's attention went to Deve while she sang out, "One day that will be me." People nearby smiled and nodded. Casterine had escaped. She did not understand the feeling of it, only that those achieving it no longer had to drudge through the natural world.

  Claude revived his conversation with the other female. I am not going to tolerate being disregarded: Deve snapped the disconnect, yanking them out of the procession, paused to restore her breath, then leaned forward to up the gain. "If you ignore me once more, I'm leaving. The virtual is just as real as this world. Although its rules may vary, manners don't. Treat me right."

Claude realized she spoke sooth; she always did. Once he had accused her of exaggerating. She had the cheek not to speak to him for a week. He had found only one way to divert her from over-sensitivity: entice her with his knobs then give her an enhancement.

  He examined her for sign but found only the usual gauntness of her 3-meter frame. She appeared over her snit. He relaxed, sipped more cell-enhancement, adjusted his interface and jerked his head for her to connect them up again.

  Otherwise, plain, Deve did have excrescences that made Claude's knobs ache. Her legs, crossed now to display her knee and ankle bones, reminded one of a thoroughbred. Festooned with rings, her fingers beckoned invitation. They slid toward the connect-up, touched it then, returned to her lap. The hill sparkled again.

  Hands swinging, Claude climbed in the lead. As they crested a rise, he accelerated. Deve followed his flux, catching up by the time they reached the seats overlooking the sepulcher. The grave shimmered as in rotogravure. At the head of it billowed the smoke of an insertion; a rector had projected to the head of the hole. He spun, his cassock, surplice and skullcap kaleidoscoping patterns of hue. A ritual ogled her from a pocket. The priest waved his hand, indicating a coffin containing the image of Shin Casterine.

  Augmented, the tang of trees and grass surrounded the grave. The wind caressed Deve's skin. Her eyes shined in the dim, "So magical," she opined. As she gazed at the hole containing Casterine, she imagined his dream and, smiling at Claude, said, "I admire him so much for his feat."

  "You're so stupid." Claude sneered. "Forget it. It's an entertainment, an illusion realists aver." Leaving a wake of discordance, he trudged on. His mouth held to a grim line as the distance between them increased.

  Even though they posed in virtuality, the insult stung. A tear formed, although when Deve tried to brush it away, her hand met only static. She whimpered, "Guess this might be a trickery then."

  However, no doubt troubled her illusion. She sniffed the smoke fading from the coffin, drifting through the crowd then spiraling into the sky. Certainly, her nose would not lie. She choked at the idea. No chicanery will eviscerate my desire. 

Their movements sparkling in the effervescence, several attendees leaned toward her. A black, however, showing no interest, leaned on a tree to the right of Claude. His hair gloomed white in the dusk surrounding him. He flicked his right hand from under his chin like a Brazilian from Earth. The woman next to him flinched, and Deve said to herself, Okay, that man considers this bullshit. Doesn’t mean it is.

  The rector turned red. He shook his finger at the black and shouted, "Shin Casterine escaped at the age of 156, breaking the record by twenty-two years. It's recorded!" The black repeated his gesture, whereupon the rector harrumphed and concluded the ceremony by making the sign of the Cross.

  Her cheer gone, Deve joined the queue to view Shin's virtuality. As she crept up to the coffin, Claude sidled over to the black and whispered, "Someday, someone will make it. We both can bet on that."

  Cheer might have returned had Deve heard those words. However, she had espied only Claude's mouth moving. She suspected him of hiding something from her, especially when the black laughed and slapped him on the back. She wondered, Would he have said anything if I could have heard it?

  She turned her notice to the corpse. Its image fluctuated as its energy phased, as if life imbued it still. His static caused the ache in her crotch to spike. Nevertheless, she kept studying the form lying in the casket. Maybe I need glasses, she wondered, for in bits of time, more like blinks, some other view shone through the corpse. Casterine’s body had vanished in those moments, and snow, of all things, floated in the opaline. Right then the virtual became for her the actual, and where she lived turned drabber.

  Laughter cut short her reverie. Wound arm in arm, stomach bouncing, the black gadded Claude down the hill. She strolled after them, with her mind churning possibility, telling herself, I believe in Casterine.

​

  "How deceptive," Claude said after Deve told him what she had observed. He disconnected his ganglia from the transporter then slid his toga up to reveal his knee-knobs. This come-on set Deve's heart quaking. Her Claude, no longer an asshole, lounged before her. Her two tongues moistened in anticipation of licking. Nothing to do but surrender.

  Claude switched on the expander and sent her a flurry of enticements. She returned pictures of nibbling. As they played off each other, energy built up in Deve's body. When the atavism of their minds painted the room with writhing, Deve gasped out her load of capacitance. She slurred, "My, almost as functional as our first entanglement."

  She had met Claude at a party where he had seduced her. In one of the boudoirs, he had submerged her in his musk. Then, he had given her an enhancement. In the glow of it, she had divulged her yearning to escape.

  Claude still wondered at Deve's revelation. People who desired escape kept such a want private. Friends would invalidate, or take advantage of any aspiration to leave this world. But Deve, honest herself, trusted everyone. To assuage her, he had said, "Fortunately you have me to safeguard you."

  Ever since, Deve considered Claude her protector. She examined him now. His knobs displayed, and she told herself, Yes, you are my lover; I confided in you that secret. It glued them together.

  Also, in that boudoir, he had said what she would never forget, "I suppose you expect me to keep that in confidence." Thus, he had entered mistrust into their relationship. Mistrust generated by him lessened the stickiness of their glue.

  Still, Deve had to reveal, “Claude, let me tell you more about my desire to escape. Do you want to discover when I first decided on that?"

  Claude lowered his eyelids, and a cloud descended over his vision. “Sure, I’ve murked my eyes so I can attend fully. Go on.”

“It all began when I ran over the Master. That happened years ago when joyriding pleased me. The snapping of bones and crushing of cavities said this guy will need a lot of patching up. After stopping and running three kilometers to the rear, I found him standing at ease just outside the traffic. I thought I ran fast, but this guy must have harbored light-speed. His skin, his clothing, everything arranged, not a smudge on him even though my car had a fender hanging.

  “He reached 9 meters tall, and black covered his head, face and arms. An odor of sulfur surrounded him. He bent to my level and said, ‘My name is Master Sahara. Seeing as you are so slow, you need my services. You might say that I give my clients new starts.’

  “Now, I had run flat-out. Breathing as rapidly as a shrew, I said to him, ‘I ran back here in two point three seconds. In this rain, that is not slow.’

  “He shrugged and replied, ‘Maybe not, but you are far from escaping. Do you see one maimed lying here? No, because I was already moving at impact. The sound of the collision came from the mangling of my afterimage.’

  “I didn’t know what escaping meant, so he told me. That’s when I made my wish. I said, ‘I’m only186 years old.’

  “‘So young, you couldn’t run fast then. You are merely a tad above average. Of course, with each year, you'll go faster, but the curve is asymptotic, I'm afraid. At your acceleration, even if that formed all you needed, you'd never reach escape velocity.’ That was the first time I ever saw him, and he left me with that wish and his belief I’d never make it.”

  After Deve related her meeting with the Master, Claude said, "I know that guy. Not only is he smart, he's never wrong. What happened next?"

  "Just happens that I made a memo-cord. I'll play it for you." She attached the connection behind her right ear to a speaker:

"Would you train me to reach escape velocity? What do you charge?"

  "I won't waste my time with you. You lack the verve to succeed. Why don't you find something you can do well? Remember, I've seen you run."

  "Please, I must try. Perhaps I'd consider cheating if that would be the method."

  "Well, I see that you covet it. Nevertheless, no matter how much I teach you, you lack capability."

  Deve put the memo-cord on pause. “Claude, you can imagine how depressed I felt at his evaluation of my chances.” Claude gave his “so what?” nod for her to continue. She restarted the recording:

  "Do you maintain I'm a failure?"

  "Well, I don't want to depress you. I'm fair and honest. I'll demonstrate why you will never be able to do it."

  Deve paused the recording again and filled in what the Master had done, “He disappeared, then in several seconds appeared on the ceiling.” Claude shrugged, and the recording continued:  

  "How do you explain that illusion?"

  "Which was the deception, the disappearance or your return?"

  "I'd better feed you some theory to help you understand your incapacity. One must accelerate to where matter achieves the nugatory, then employ a trick. Being partly subjective, escape velocity occurs differently for each person. You probably thought that increasing speed ensured you would reach escape velocity, eh?"

  "Yes,"

  "So, let's examine this aspect. Simply it involves the thought, 'I have reached escape velocity'. However, at speed thoughts are slow; you pass them by. So-called forgetting at speed. If you were able, you could practice casting your thoughts far enough ahead to realize them."

  The recording ended. “You know, he smiled through a slit in his mouth and looked as if he had put one over on me. I wondered whether I got his message or if he used some reverse to get me trying to escape this world. What he didn’t know is that I had reason to escape."

  However, the Master had held out no hope for her success, and he never erred, as Claude had said.

​

  She decided to put it to the test. When running, she practiced casting thoughts forward; result: the nature of those thoughts escaped her. Nevertheless, the practice of hurling her decisions made her faster, just in trying to catch up to them. Just warming up, not running at speed, she ran 0.150 kilos in 4 milliseconds. She had done so well she turned on her reserves, hitting 250 kilos per second.

  She left the track when the young came on. Painful to watch them lumber. She walked out of the field, sauntered fifty-four kilometers to a restaurant for dinner with Claude, taking her time, a minute and a half.

  The restaurant occupied a block. From the top, through the walls, she could view the wharf beyond the domes. Tugs shuttling cargo through smog provided a backdrop behind Claude, waiting for her in a tube. The major-domo whisked open the door and ushered her in.

  Claude sported a crimson twist that displayed his knobs, elbows and collar bones. Deve's lips trembled. Even though 50 years her junior and achingly slow, he made her blood rage. He flicked a switch in her that she herself could not find. Inflamed by desire, she shared her triumph on the track. "I ran a record time today."

  Claude merely gazed at a red-head in the next tube. Without taking his eyes off the woman, he offered Deve a vial of proteins. Mortified, she shook out an arm. Before she could grasp the vial, the door slid open, and the captain stuck a wine and spirits list in her hand. The weight of the list damped her trembling. Gladly, she ordered wine.

  The captain said, "Good. Casterine chose the same the night before he faked his escape."

  After the captain had left, Deve said, "That's the guy at Shin Casterine's funeral."

  Claude rapped his knuckles on the table and spewed, "I wouldn't mind going to another like that."

  The captain returned and poured a finger of the Cabernet into Deve's glass. After taste and approval, she nodded, and the captain poured two glasses. She said, "You should remember me from the Shin Casterine funeral. You signed 'bullshit'."

"I lost a month's wages on Casterine. I bet he wouldn't make it and I don't think he did."

  Winking at the captain, Claude rejoined, "Must have been a pseudo-clone we saw in that grave."

  "Whatever," the captain said. "That guy ended up no corpse. How he tricked everyone I don't know, but I timed the bastard a week before his attempt. Slow, man, slow. Clocked him at 94 kilometers a second. That wouldn't have gotten him out of bed let alone launched. I had a sure bet riding."

  Gliding his eyes toward the ceiling, Claude said, "Didn't know people bet on attempts, How do you find out about them?"

The captain had noted the eye roll, turned his face toward the light to hide his expression and replied, "You have to register the attempt at the courthouse. They're posted there, and in media notices, and of course, on gambling screens. If the attemptee doesn't register at law, her or his property would be confiscated."

  Deve said, "So, you're saying that Casterine cheated somehow? I want to escape. Maybe I could pull a cheat."

  The captain said, "Despite what I said before, there's a theory that it's impossible to cheat when you are near the maximum. Something about forgetting at speed. Somehow, Casterine circumvented that."

  Deve countered, "Could betting shake a cheat loose that would work automatically?"

  Claude jested. "Why don't you place a bet and see what you can?"

  The captain whispered, "Trusting those that know isn't bad strategy. I'll take you to my club. Meet me on Gambler's Island tomorrow night around nine. Ask for Billy Bones."

  Deve grinned. Ah, can’t hurt.

​

  On the trip to Gambler's Island, she read a pamphlet about the syndicates that governed the islands. Like all such, Gambler's lay on compacted garbage and the bones of deceased criminals. It sat anchored in the sound that led from city to sea. A wall of the same material rose forty meters to surround the island and to protect it from the acid that floated over the water.

  The island doubled as a prison for gamblers convicted of crimes. Police circled, preventing them from fleeing. Because of the flesh-eaters infesting the water, no one tried to swim.

  The skipper sliced through the scum of one of the patrol boats. Pointing to the island, Deve asked, "By what process do criminals get there?"

  Breeze carried stink from the city over the water. It tousled the skipper’s hair. "Either convicted of a crime such as fixing games of chance or three misdemeanors. Then, the authorities send them and their records to the gambling division. The chief administers tests and pronounces judgment against which no appeal will fly. The sentence is either employment on the island or deportation to another island."

  "What happens if none of the syndicates employ the clod?"

  "Sent to prison on the planet Final Destination. Uncertain place with many of the inhabitants aged 700 plus years and moving with mega-speed. A hell indeed. Only way out would be escape velocity, but of course, that's forbidden by the syndicates, a delusion anyway."

  The fast-approaching wall dripped slime into the sound. Deve clutched the handrail, waiting for the boat to slow before docking. However, the ship stayed at speed. The wall loomed like palisades. Amid the smell of mold, the ship caromed around the breakers. Then a hole opened exposing the interior. They sluiced through to a dock.

  Slowed by the pain in her crotch, Deve staggered along with dozens of other customers anxious to enter the casinos. A door opened, and a guard motioned the arrivals through. Billy Bones leaned against a pillar. He guided Deve through verification, then out onto a circle of luminosity. Thousands of people milled around. Billy and she stood on the outer ring, coasting around an inner. "Come on. Here's my club." They stepped onto the center. "In that entrance, you can play games of chance. Over there, the contests. Back of that, the games of skill. And here we have holographs of races from around the planet."

  Deve stopped at one of the hundreds of pits that filled the holograph room. In one scramble, dogs at one-twentieth scale tore around a track. The projection seemed so real that she could experience the yips and snarls and smell rancid oils. Customers leaned over the track, yelling encouragement to their choices.

  Billy and she strolled between the pits with their flashing boards into a room with a screen suspended from the ceiling. To the right stood the robot-bookie's cage, and to the left a schedule and odds of coming tries to escape. The next attempt would occur at the posted odds: 100-1 for velocity under 200 kilometers/sec, 125-1 for 200 to 250 kilometers/sec, and so on to 300-1 for above 550 kilometers/sec.  

  A 387-year-old woman would dash. “You going to bet on this one?” she asked.

  "Nope. I only bet on those whose history I know." He sized-up Deve for seconds then continued, "You can bet though." Deve authorized 10 credits to the screen from her implant then picked escape velocity of between 400 and 450 kilometers/sec, odds 225-1.

  "Want to watch a replay of the last attempt?" The screen above them flashed on, bringing up the stats on Prad Sohenia, 238-year-old man who already had failed twice to reach escape. At the bottom of the screen the odds flickered.

  The screen froze its scenery, morphed into 3D with cymbals crashing, then Prad took off. The run spread out to take thirty seconds on the simulator no matter how fast Prad ran. At twenty-five seconds, Prad's image wavered, then the screen went blank. The results flashed, "Escape velocity reached at 357 kilometers/sec, pay odds 200-1."

  Deve shrieked. "How thrilling! I would have bet those odds." She bent forward to stand, but a pair of hands from behind pushed her back into her seat.

  "You shouldn't have come here," said a familiar voice. Deve braced herself and glanced up expecting that Master Sahara stood over her. She could sense his scowling and smell the sulphur clinging to his clothes; however, she could not observe any part of him.

  Incongruous. She assumed he must have moved by illusion. How, why, what does he care if he thinks I've no chance reaching escape velocity? That stuttered in her mind as if it had no basis. Should I believe my perception or not? She frowned and hung her head, mumbling, "I didn't even want to bet. I should get out of here."

  Billy grinned. "Don't forget your claim ticket."

​

  Must I remain in this world until I die? Deve slept with the ticket clammy against one breast. She awoke slowly, impeded by worries cavorting through her mind, I wish I could take that bet back. Will it stop me?

  Next morning, Deve received a message on her implant that 2,250 credits (minus commission) had deposited into her bank, denoted as winnings from the bet she had placed. She chuckled, transfused her blood, drank some libido to cleanse her mind of the lie then left her apartment.

  In minutes, she stood on Claude's street about to leap over the garbage in front of the entry when a voice reverberated in her head, You should be ashamed of your degradation. I will discipline you to give you a refresh. Pressure landed like sledgehammers on her shoulders, driving her to her knees. The force bounced into her ears, disorienting her. Master Sahara, seemingly close but also far as if he spoke out of a mirror, said, "Look at yourself in my eyes. Imagine running faster than the speed of light but gaining more mass instead of bursting through to another universe. Even if you had ability, that would constitute your fate." He vanished.

  Deve essayed to stand, however she could not keep balance and fell on her back into the street. She lay there, her eyes probing between the peaks of the buildings. Descending through a cloud of muck came a stunner, which at 50 meters high pulsed a retractor that swept her into its hold. Tasers closed around her. Probes entered her mind as smoothly as past becomes future. Why me? I'm not the only one wanting to escape.

  The cage pressed around her, and from the apex of its cone, a voice said, "For penance you will remain immobile for fourteen days without knowledge of their end."

  Fourteen days with no escape attempts. Deve commiserated. Her mind began vibrating slower than a dead-man’s shiver. She sat in the cage ruminating. Why this? I never bet on anything. Already, her restart had kicked in.

  The days passed without her awareness. Just as she slipped into catatonia, her mind rumbled, the bars lifted and she staggered onto the street. I need focus. She searched for something stable, spotted a translator, connected herself and pulled up Claude.

“Sure, I'll help you get over it. Come on over.”

  That warmed her. She jumped into his building dissembler. The molecules of her body shot through space to settle in the tank in his apartment. She grew more distinct. Before she integrated, however, Claude pulled her out.

  Her mind presented a mess of associations. She could not help but stare at the man before her as she came together. Claude wavered like heat off a launch pad. Deve shook her head to settle her mind.

  "Why don't you imbibe nutrient while I slip into something enhancing?"

  She drained a glass of nanovibrators mixed in juice. By the time she set the glass down, the oscillators had pummeled every cell in her body before self-destructing into vitamins, phytochemicals, minerals, and fuel.

  Claude sauntered into the room dressed in a sari that revealed just a hint of his elbows, shoulders, knees and other knobs. Sedate yet enticing to a woman refurbished. With a broad smile that magnified the bulges on his gums, he floated onto a recliner.

  Deve spewed everything that had happened the last sixteen days, the last fourteen muddled.

  “Okay, you're confused whether you gambled,” he averred. “Master Sahara disciplined after restarting you. The fourteen days over, you came to me. Let us see what the analyzer says about those last days.” He ordered the panel on his left, "Analyze all inputs into Deve for the last fourteen." A three-centimeter square box on a shelf alongside her began to hum. The machine stopped then arrowed several million data bits into her and Claude's retrieval bins.

  Claude said, "Here's the result. If a gambler bets on chances and then does the same thing upon which she bet, she will fail. A racehorse should never bet on a horse race. What does this mean to you, Deve?"

  Deve glanced around the room. "I'd forfeit my chances of achieving escape velocity if I bet on escape velocity attempts." Contemplating her hands, she asserted, "Fortunately I didn't place a bet." She believed her bending of the fact had received approval from the Master’s restart, yet she blushed and stared at the half-full glass on the table.

  Claude shrugged. "I don't care either way. Will you place bets on escape velocity attempts henceforth?"

"I'm going to make escape velocity if it annihilates me."

  "You need to see Sahara again."

 

  The second half of this story from the book Eve of Valor will post on or about 1 Nov.

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   To get the book Eve Valor: click here.