Entering the Weave

Toby had given up trying to get any sleep, even though he was utterly exhausted. Every time he closed his eyes he would find himself standing in one of the crumbling courtyards or long boulevards of Vienopolis. Once he had appeared in a spectacularly ornate fountain. Being sprayed with freezing cold water was not the best way of getting to sleep.

He was still wary of the gangling puppet folk; he still remembered their savagery when they’d captured him and he couldn’t wholeheartedly believe that they could have changed so completely. So now he was creeping around the city trying to make sense of this ancient, bizarre Vrealm.

To begin with he had found old musty rooms, and wandered through spectacular art galleries and opera houses, which made sense in a city like this. But then he had stumbled into a room somehow containing a limitless desert. He had stepped, alarmed, back through the doorway and found himself back outside the room, once again in Vienopolis. He had closed that door very carefully.

Since finding that first strange gateway to somewhere else he had found many more oddities. He supposed that the original players of the game had created them and he began to take an interest in what they were, although he never strayed very far from the entrance. He realised after the fifth or sixth strange child-world that he peeked into that he had started to think of Vienopolis as his home. He flicked his eyes open quickly, suddenly sure that he would no longer be back in his bedroom.

He was relieved to find himself staring at the uninteresting ceiling in the spare bedroom. He sighed and closed his eyes again and this time he found himself in a grand octagonal bedchamber, fit for a king. Eight windows let the dusky light of evening into the room and through them he could see that he was high up in one of the tallest towers in the city. The buildings stretched away forever, a thousand, thousand shapes and sizes disappearing over every horizon. The enormity of the city was disorientating and Toby felt dizzy and very small. He staggered away from the window and fell onto the huge silk covered bed.

The sheets were smooth and cool and he crawled up to the top of the bed and nestled his head into the soft pillows. He closed his eyes for a second and let the darkness wash over him. He expected to appear somewhere else in the city, but when he reopened his eyes he was still in the regal bedroom.

The idea of sleeping here was both frightening and appealing at the same time. He could feel his tiredness gnawing at every bone of his body and the bed was so comfortable.

He sank his head into the mound of pillows and snuggled into them, pulling his knees up so he was lying in a tight ball.

A moment, a minute or hours later, Toby awoke breathless and felt his heart hammering inside him as if it was trying to get out. He listened for the sound again; perhaps he just imagined it. He didn’t remember dreaming anything, though. Then, just as his heart was slowing down, the scratching came again.

He remembered the sound. His chest hurt as he struggled for breath and the room started to swim as panic swamped his mind. The last time he had heard the scratching he was locked in the darkness of the Doge’s steely prison. The fear and hopelessness came flooding back.

The noise grew more persistent. Whatever was out there was determined to get in and Toby heard himself whimper.

He could see the ornate door handle shaking now and it suddenly occurred to him that he had not even checked to see if the door was locked before he went to sleep.

Then with a click that almost stopped his heart the door creaked open and muttering replaced the scratching. Toby slithered off the bed and hid on the far side away from the door, peering over to see what was going to come through.

Nothing happened.

There was no other way out of the room and it was empty apart from the bed. Toby realised the only way he was going to escape was through the door.

“Come on Toby.” He whispered to himself. “Josh would do it.”

The door was now fully open and Toby could not see anything moving beyond. With teeth and fists clenched he launched himself over the bed and through the doorway.

He raced down a flight of stairs which curved around the outside of the tower. He could not see very far ahead of himself and as he had not passed anything, he soon realised that whatever had opened the door must still be ahead of him. His reckless, sudden bravery seeped out of him and he slowed his breakneck dash down the stairs. His arms and legs felt heavy and weak, and he slumped onto one of the stone steps.

He felt himself sobbing before he realised he was crying. It was hopeless. Whenever he closed his real eyes he was whisked away to this insane nightmare of a world, but he needed to sleep.

The scratching noise returned abruptly and Toby slid forward off his step and scraped his back. He scrambled to his feet and was just about to race back up the stairs when he realised the sound was coming from above.

Had he passed whatever it was? The thought gave him some encouragement. If he had left it behind on the stairs, perhaps he could outrun it. He began to back down the stairs, still looking up and around to see if anything would appear.

“Toby.” The sound was a ghost of a whisper, but Toby was sure it was more than just the wind. He froze.

The scratching returned and around the corner an almost transparent apparition appeared; the faint outline of a woman.

“Rose?”

A surge of hope and relief had shed Toby of his fear. He stepped up a few steps to get nearer to the ghostly figure.

“I don’t mean to be rude, Toby, but you look really tired.”

“Oh, I am. I can’t sleep in the real world. Every time I close my eyes I end up here. I think I managed to get to sleep before, but then you started scratching outside my room and scared the living daylights out of me.”

“I’m sorry Toby. I was just trying to help. Come on. If you go back up to the bedroom, I’ll make sure nothing disturbs you this time.”

An enormous feeling of gratitude welled up inside him and a smile trembled on his lips. “Thank you Rose.”

But when he got back into the silky bed again he found that excitement was just as effective as fear for keeping him awake, and even though he could feel the tiredness in his bones he could not get to sleep.

He opened his eyes and saw the room was dark. Not pitch black but he couldn’t make out where he was. He listened for a moment or two, and suddenly a lorry rumbled past outside his bedroom window. He was in the real world.

He reached over to the table lamp and switched it on. The room looked so ordinary, and he suddenly realised that he was missing the extraordinary world of Vienopolis.

“You’re never happy are you?” He said to himself and wondered if he really did want to go back, but he definitely wanted to see Rose again so he lay back down and closed his eyes.

Darkness surrounded him but the musty smell told him he was lying down in the tower room.

“Rose?” He whispered.

“I’m here. Can you come and go so easily to the real world?”

“I… I woke up at home, but when I closed my eyes again I came back here. How is it possible?”

“You’re connected Toby. Just like me, but you can get out. Perhaps my body is dead, and that’s why I’m stuck here. Do you think you could try and find out for me whether that’s right? You’ll be able to find out somehow I’m sure.”

Toby nodded in the dark. “I’ll try, but it’s not a request I get a lot.”

Rose laughed. “Yes, I suppose most people know when they’ve died don’t they? But then maybe they don’t. Who knows?”

“True.” Toby’s eyes had grown more accustomed to the dimness. He got off the bed and looked out of one of the windows overlooking the old city. The sky was beginning to turn red, but he thought it looked a long time till dawn. “Can you show me around this place? I suppose I’d better get to know it a bit better, seeing as I’m going to be spending so much time here.”

Rose was delighted. “Of course. Come on there’s so much to see.”

Rose’s ghost seemed more tangible now. Toby could hardly see through her at all, as if her enthusiasm for this world had given her more solidity.

“It was a grand project,” she told Toby as they wandered down the middle of one of the grandest boulevards, “and it excited every hardcore coder and hacker from all over the world. They all wanted to work on it, or break into it and the rumours were intense.”

“Was this the Accademia project?”

Rose nodded.

“I tried everything to find out more about that. I didn’t know you were involved with it though.”

She sighed. “We all were. Some of us got too carried away with it, but no one saw anything strange in that. The people around me were used to me working for days at a time without sleep. When I was writing the graphics engine for Shiver, I didn’t sleep for ten days. I guess I should have listened to my mother when she told me that it just wasn’t natural for a girl to be so interested in computers.”

“My mum’s the same. She thinks my interest in computers is unhealthy, and she loves it when she sees me with other kids.” He smiled grimly. “I suppose she was right as well. I mean if it hadn’t been for my stupid computers I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“I couldn’t agree more, Toby, but if you hadn’t come you wouldn’t have had access to this…”

They had reached a broad crossroads and Rose was pointing a shimmering hand down to the left. Rising majestically at the end of the short street was a columned, white marble building that dwarfed its neighbours. Toby remembered seeing it from the top of the tower. He had wondered what it was then, but now the elegant gold lettering above the central door told him that it was a library.

“So? What can I do in a library? It’s not real.” Toby felt a little disappointed.

“Oh this is real Toby. Knowledge is real wherever you go. This is one of the main reasons we built this Vrealm. Since the Doge was banished we’ve been able to get it running again. Come on. Let me show you.”

They climbed up the immaculately polished steps towards the entrance and Rose enthusiastically told him its history.

“This building was here long before the world around it. The Internet is full of unformatted data, if you know where to look you can find anything and everything, but sometimes the search is too hard. There is just too much information in the world for a human mind to comprehend, and so sometimes it’s impossible to find what you’re looking for, even when you know it’s there.

“There have been programs around for years that trawl through the data trying to index the random bits and bytes, but none with enough power to do it properly.

“This library uses the latent power of every connected computer to perform this task. It can access every secure database in the world, it knows everything that can be known, and more importantly it can cross reference it all. It can make a judgement based on assumption and hearsay, and we think that it understands its own decisions.”

“Is it alive?” Toby interrupted catching a part of Rose’s enthusiasm. They entered through the glass revolving door and found themselves in a suitably grand entrance hall.

“Perhaps. We have tested it with questions that require a human to make a leap of faith, and it has always been successful, but it has much more indexed information than us so it’s hard to know whether it’s truly intelligent or merely vastly knowledgeable. I suppose it would depend how you defined life. It is almost certainly sentient to some level and as such it may well be the single most intelligent entity on the planet.

“Try it. Ask a question.”

“How?”

“Just ask. Speak.”

“Umm.”

“Anything. Literally anything.”

“What is the capital of France?”

“Paris.” A deep voiced echoed from seemingly the depths of the Earth.

Rose frowned at Toby. “Make it harder than that. It’s really good.”

“Sorry. I can’t think of anything. No, hang on.” He cleared his throat, wanting to make sure that what he said was easily heard. “Who exactly is Geigerzalion?”

“Tricky…” The echo came again.

Toby rolled his eyes. “Do you even know what I’m talking about?”

“Yes I do.”

There was a significant pause.

“Well…” Toby urged.

“I’ll have to think about it.”

Rose smiled widely. “I think the Library may have modelled itself on Deep Thought.”

“What?”

“’The second greatest computer in the Universe of Space and Time.’ You must know it.” Rose laughed gleefully. “The Library does have access to every literary work ever written. I suppose it’s only natural for it to have a hero.”

“Will it answer my question?”

“Oh, yes. If there is an answer you will get it.” She winked at him. “Probably in less than seven and a half million years.”

“I have an answer for you.” The deep voice boomed from the depths of the Library a few moments later.

Toby nearly jumped out of his skin. He had been peering at a curious mosaic that covered both of the side walls. It depicted two rivers flowing into an enormous sea and Toby was convinced that the tiny tiles of the picture were moving.

Rose had seated herself on one of the polished marble benches that surrounded a small empty fountain in the middle of the chamber. She looked up expectantly at Toby.

“Er…well let’s hear it then.”

“Geigerzalion is an alien.”

“An alien?”

“Yes, I have collated all references and data concerning him and I can prove with a certitude of ninety nine point seven percent that he does not come from this planet.”

“Where does he come from?”

“There are too many unknowns to formulate a significantly informed answer to that question.”

To say Toby was intrigued would have been the understatement of all time. His whole life had been spent watching science fiction movies and playing with computers and now the largest, most advanced computer mankind had ever devised was telling him that he had made contact with a real alien.

“What does he want?” Rose asked.

“There are too many unknowns to formulate a significantly informed answer to that question.” Then after a short pause. “Sorry.”

“He said he was a prisoner here. Who are his captors?” Toby was pacing around the benches.

“He is not a prisoner on Earth. Here he only exists in cyberspace. He connects to the Plexus via a connection from somewhere in the Kuiper Belt. He may be a captive there.”

“What’s the Kuiper Belt?”

“It is an area of space on the fringes of the solar system that contains a vast population of small bodies. These trans-Neptunian objects often have diameters larger than a hundred kilometres. Observations show that these planetoids are mostly confined within a thick band around the ecliptic.”

“How can he live there?”

“There are too many possible answers to that question to begin to search for the correct one. I can, however, postulate with an accuracy of seventy nine percent that he has been there for billions of years. If we extrapolate information from this then the probability that he has visited Earth before tends towards hundred percent.”

“But there was no cyberspace before thirty years ago.”

There was no answer to this and the room felt suddenly very large and empty without the deep voice to fill it. Toby glanced at Rose and she shrugged.

“There has always been a cyberspace of sorts.” The voice returned but it sounded different, less sure of itself.

“What does that mean?”

“There is a connection between each living organism on the planet just like the connections between the computers which make up the Internet. Your natural network however is far more powerful than anything man made, and this Geigerzalion has entered that system before. He was defeated then, driven away because his software was not truly compatible with this organic hardware.”

“Defeated? He’s not dangerous; he needs our help.”

“No. I have run simulations while we have been speaking if he is allowed to remain in cyberspace, either natural or electronic, the only outcome is the annihilation of life on this planet. He has released his servant from this Vrealm and allowed him to enter into the real world.”

“Who is his servant?”

“The Doge.”

“No, that’s wrong. Josh destroyed him. I saw him disappear.”

“Your friend did not destroy him, he merely delivered the means for the Doge to escape.”

“He didn’t know what he was doing.” Toby said quietly. Things began to fall into place, and he started to feel tremendously sick. “Please tell us everything you know.” He said and Rose span around and looked at him in horror.

“What’s happening? What have I done?” Toby stared back at Rose. There was a rumbling coming from the innards of the Library which was only just audible, but vibrated the very foundations of the building.

“The interface is not perfect. When we designed him, we were only really interested in the data sorting applications of artificial intelligence. We never got round to completing a proper front end for the application. There’s not a lot of error checking.”

“So?” Toby had to raise his voice now, as the rumbling was getting louder.

“So we didn’t put proper checks into the querying routines. In other words: You get what you ask for…” Rose flourished a hand towards the depths of the library, just as a cacophony of voices erupted from within.

“Once the brain has segregated the left…”

“The brown-shirted Storm Troops were the…”

“Apple pie is made from…”

“Some deny that Prometheus created men…”

And a thousand other unrelated facts and stories thundered out of the darkness.

“Stop telling me everything!” Toby shouted as loud as he could, but his single voice was drowned out by so many others.

“It’s no use Toby. It’ll go on for ages.” She pulled him out from the noisy foyer. “This is why we could never ask the Library about the Doge. It could have told us who he was or at least where he came from or something, but the first thing he did when he arrived was to disable it just as you have. We thought it was an honest mistake at first and tried ways of resetting it, but he always found a way of stopping us. We’ll take a look at it tomorrow. After the Doge disappeared and we managed to get it back online, we put in some rudimentary fail safe routines.”

“I’m really sorry. I should have known. I was just upset when it said that the Doge was still alive. I thought we’d got rid of him.”

Rose sat herself down on one of the steps. “You’re not the only one of course, but I did think it was a bit too good to be true. Don’t worry about the Library.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to fix it tomorrow?”

“Yes, I should think so. You’ll be able to ask it more questions then.” Rose smiled. “Come on, there’s lots more to see.”

When Spokes woke up the next day her brother had left the camp. They had spent the entire night talking and laughing and Spokes had never felt so floatingly happy. She had carried the guilt of his death for nearly ten years, and every day she had wondered how she could have stopped the accident. Now, over the course of a single night talking to her dead brother, Spokes had laid to rest the spectre of her guilt.

The fact that he wasn’t there when she awoke made her worry that it had all been a dream, but she laughed at herself a moment later when she realised that everything she was experiencing was a dream. Belief was the only difference between reality and imagination. The old man, hearing her laughing, looked over at her and smiled. Spokes could do nothing but smile back.

“Did you say all you needed to say?” He asked.

Spokes nodded. “Yes. And Tom told me more than I needed to hear.”

“Good. We have far to go today. The battle yesterday was only the beginning and the children we fought, although significantly powerful, were but a small portion of the enemy’s force.”

“How can these people revolt against you? Surely they are attacking themselves.”

The old man nodded sadly. “They are indeed, but they do not realise it. The chaos and corruption runs too deep now for these minds to see.”

“Where are we going?”

“To Vigrid Plane at the summit of the Himinbjorg.”

“We’ve got to climb those?” Spokes pointed in utter horror at the jagged mountains that rose in the distance. “It looks impossible.”

“You will find it easier than you think. Many beings will have to make the journey before this tale can be remembered.”

The climb did feel easier than it looked. It was frightening in places, and long, but Spokes felt something pulling her upwards, drawing her to the summit of the awesome central mountain of the range, which rose twice as high as its ice-capped neighbours.

They climbed on into the clouds and Spokes felt her hair become brittle with flecks of ice. Her hands had long since frozen into claws, clenching around the unicorn’s silky mane.

The clouds parted unexpectedly and the band emerged onto a seemingly infinite prairie. A wide, rapid river split the grassland in two. The coldness vanished along the path they had been following and a noon sun burned in a clear blue sky.

“This is Vigrid Plane.” The old man said. “This is where the coming battle will be fought. Where it is always fought.”

“This has happened before?” Michael asked.

The old man smiled serenely. “There have been many times when life has been on the verge of extinction. Here the strongest survive and the weak are left to die…”

A rumble of distant thunder interrupted him. He turned away and Spokes thought she could see fear in the old man’s face, but when he turned back his face was a rigidly calm.

“The first pillar has fallen.” He intoned. “N’rinde Bashala has passed. Let us remember him.” He bowed his head and Spokes followed suit.

There was no sound for a while; even the gentle breeze had stopped whispering with the grass.

Michael broke the silence gravely. “He was a legend amongst my brethren and I think he saved many from our fate. N’rinde Bashala.” He savoured the name. “N’rinde Bashala will set you free.” I thought he was no more than a fable, a dream we told the younger ones to keep them from despair.” He looked puzzled for a moment and then continued uncertainly. “I remember another legend. The Gazetteer. An old man who tends to all living things as his flock. I think…”

A distant howling drew everyone’s attention to the far horizon. A wall of dark armoured figures were tramping into view from the distance. They held a black, ragged standard displaying a twisted white insignia. They stamped their heavy march over the grassland and came to a regimented halt on the far bank of the river.

Spokes watched them setting up their camp and saw that these were not men, but monsters. Tusks and horns and spines erupted from their heads and bodies, and now they were closer she could more accurately gauge their enormous size. These were beasts that traded in fear and cruelty and Spokes felt an icy sharpness run down her spine.

A biting wind had risen to accompany the arrival of the diabolical horde and grey clouds had chased in front of the sun, reminding Spokes how cold the climb up the Himinbjorg had been. But it was the bloodthirsty growls and barks that made her shiver.

She thought that she had experienced virtually everything but this sudden change in Vigrid Plane proved her wrong. Somehow she could sense the violence that had been committed here like a weight pushing down on her neck.

“What is this place?” She gasped.

“This is nature’s final melting pot. Where evolution delivers its fatal judgement to each dying species. It is a brutal place, but necessary for the continuation of life.”

“You mean things become extinct here?”

“Yes,” the Gazetteer said quietly. “But for every species that dies, lessons are learned and the circle of life grows stronger.”

“But it’s so cruel.”

“No. There is no suffering beyond the final battle. Perhaps it seems so from a human’s perspective, although it is not beyond your comprehension I think.”

“Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw…”

“Indeed, Michael. Alfred has often read that poem to me. He was one of the few souls of his day to visit Trinity Vale before he died.” The old man chuckled and then, without warning staggered. Spokes thought his ancient face looked even more withered than before. Michael stepped up beside the old man and smoothly supported him. Spokes moved to his other side, but he’d already regained his iron composure and he gently pushed their assistance aside.

“Defenders of the Vale!” He cried above the rising wind to the small tired band around him. “We must be strong. We must trust that the goodness in the World outweighs the bad, that corruption has not grasped too tight a hold on the hearts and minds of the creatures that live there.

“We must wait here for our allies. They will be frightened, but they must be made ready for the ordeal.”

He raised his arms high above his head, with his fists clasped together and drew them down before him as if plunging an invisible dagger into his stomach. A pearl of light dropped from his hands and burrowed into the ground leaving a tiny hole. As Spokes watched, a shoot and then a leaf and then a stem grew swiftly up. Bigger and bigger, higher and higher the seedling became a tree and still it grew.

“Behold! The Tree of Life.”

Huge boughs writhed about themselves and knobbly bark hardened as a thousand years of nature flew past in seconds. Green buds blossomed into rich green leaves.

The Gazetteer fell to his knees as the tree finished growing.

“While a single leaf remains on this tree the World has hope.” Though his voice was hoarse with effort, Spokes clearly heard his surety and that gave her remembered strength that she thought she had lost.

She peered up at the tree towering above them, and saw the sun breaking through the dirty clouds. The bestial sounds of their enemies seemed muted and a seed of hope glimmered in her heart.

But that seed seemed unlikely to flower. Although the black host seemed satisfied to remain where it was, the stench of smelting iron and the noise of heavy hammering drifting across the empty grassland made their preparations impossible to ignore and the confused people and animals who arrived to bolster the Gazetteer’s timid army were no match for the hardened warriors over the river.

The Gazetteer himself spent all of his time propped between the huge roots of the majestic Tree. He was looking pale and weak, as if his weatherworn muscles had been washed away. Spokes skirted around him trying to offer support, but really she wanted to ask him a question that had been gnawing at her for hours.

Eventually, her curiosity got the better of her and she sat down next to the old man.

“What are those things that we’re facing? Where have they come from?”

The old, old man’s rheumy eyes held her gaze quite steadily and she looked away, sure that he was not going to answer.

“I’m sorry. You’re exhausted. I don’t mean to burden you.”

He smiled. “I’m stronger than I look Francine. Most of my power is elsewhere at the moment marshalling help from wherever I can find it. When the battle comes, I will be ready.”

The Gazetteer’s strange strength once more flowed into Spokes and she wondered how she had ever doubted him.

“They are the corrupted minds of the Weave. It’s a virus. There have been similar battles fought here before. The infection can start with a hateful idea or a random primeval urge that has festered. Human history has sparked off some minor skirmishes from the fear those mighty wars created. But we have always defeated the corruption before because we have understood it. It has always come from within the Weave.”

“And now?”

“Now I don’t know. This seems to be a deliberate attack on Trinity Vale.”

“Where from?”

“Somehow it’s come through the pitiful Delphixians. We’ve staunched the chance of a new infection with their defeat, but where it came from originally I cannot know.”

“There doesn’t seem to be many of us. And their army is growing all the time.”

“I know. It is hard to find suitable minds to help us fight and yet the virus grows stronger with every moment.”

“Can we win?”

“We must.”