Category: The Eleven Islands

Fiction: Avatar Remaindered, 13

Youk’s Plan

Sard dozed in the early sun, picturing how thankful Ahni would be to meet up with him again. He lay still to keep the silk strand unbroken. Something—he snapped his eyes open—make that someone—tweaked his other toe.

“Knew you’d be here somewhere,” Youk said. Full of cheer.

Sard’s heart sank. What could Youk possibly want?

“Aren’t you interested how I know you’d be here?”

“Mmm,” Sard said, meaning whatever, knowing Youk would not be stopped. How was he even out here, with not having Phin now to back him up?

“By hacking into Gammy’s incoming data, of course. Interesting that sometimes you show up as digital input when I assumed that no bots meant no data.”

“So why did you? Bother with the hacking?”

Youk jumped straight in. “I’ve got a proposition.”

“I’m all ears.” Sard tried for his most neutral tone.

“My mastering plan, as I call it.” Youk chuckled. “As ferals we can do the game a lot of damage. You especially, since when you are inside and aren’t wearing a life suit, the minions have got to be told where you are before they can see you.”

“I don’t get what you are on about.”

“I’m talking about the stupid game and doing unto all the others what they’ve been doing to me?”

“The new game, you mean,” Sard said.

Youk took a deep breath. “The game of life, our supposed world, the slavery we’ve had to endure, the boredom, the wasted time because we haven’t had a say over how we’d like to spend it. That game!”

Sard could only think of the many moments he’d enjoyed. “How are these others to blame for your problem with Gamester’s setup?”

“All through your childhood you’re a golden bloody avatar! And I’m just another no-account player when I’m at least half you. So I want revenge!”

“On me?” Sard said.

“You don’t now have anything that I want except your help and I deserve that! I thought you’d want to revenge yourself for the way Gamester turned your life upside down?” Youk watched him intently. “I thought we could work on this together?”

Even Sard parting his lips to begin talking might inflame the situation.

Youk continued, patiently informative, making his objective sound reasonable and sane. “You’re still ignorant of everything that’s been done to your sort. You’ll burn when you read the histories on my standalone. And by the way, my hide-out is ten times more comfortable than this shelter. With me hacking and you wrecking, we can do a lot of damage. How about it?”

“Not with you sitting pretty and me out and about with mud on my hands,” Sard said, letting only a little of his exasperation show.

Youk clenched his jaws on his. “Is that the tone to take with your loving brother?” Still with a hardly-done-by manner he shuffled himself into the shelter beside Sard and leaned back against Sard’s pack. “That’s better. All the conveniences of home, eh?”

Sard rocked onto his knees and out of the shelter. Slipping the silk loop from his toe, he allowed it to slither out of sight. He sat down, in the sun, diagonally opposite Youk, to purposely leave him his retreat. If only.

The suit grumbled. < Proper exchange of heat and coolness cannot begin. >

Because hood still in my neck? Sard teased. In adverse circumstances we have to do the best with what we have.

“Why sit out there when there is ample room beside me?” Youk said.

“Giving my suit a bit of a work-out.”

Youk began all over again, his usual strategy when he didn’t get what he wanted. “I came up here thinking we’d do this thing together, like brothers.”

“Don’t run off with the red herring,” Sard said. “I’m not all that confused by your tactics. What is this brotherly concern about suddenly?”

“I’m Ferd’s genetic son by a desert woman, fruit of the previous cave-wide. And Ferd is one of Gammy’s clones, like you are. So … you and Ferd are identical.”

“Only in our DNA,” Sard said.

Youk surged on. “So-o, half my genes are identical to yours. That’s got to be enough for brotherly concern.”

“My brotherly concern for you, you’re saying.”

“Because you owe me.” Youk maybe took in Sard’s obdurate expression and didn’t wait for affirmation. “After we’ve given Gammy and the rest their just deserts, we can ske-daddle out of here. We’ll catch a ride with the clay faces. They do a circle, hit Sink City. We’ll make a new life, better than we ever had here.”

Sard rose, the better to bring his new skills into play if need be.

“So you’ll come?” Youk rose too.

“No.”

“But I need you.” Youk leaned toward Sard.

“Don’t bother with the intimidation. Besides, you’re off balance. One little push from me and you’re broken on the rocks.”

“Good joke, Sard. Come on, let’s go, my patience is not unlimited.”

Sard stilled his imaginary tai ji horse between his knees. He sat back on air. The suit would know to allow him extra energy.

“What’s your problem?” Youk obviously meant his grin to be endearing. “Srese jumped at the chance to make good her mistakes.”

“If she did, why do you need to try the same garbage on me?”

“Can’t we at least be friends?” Youk reached for Sard’s arm.

Sard allowed his shoulder blade to slide down and behind the basket of his ribs to take his arm out of the way of Youk’s grasping fingers at the same time that he slid his left hand along the inside of Youk’s outstretched arm, and with his right hand now gripping Youk’s elbow, he pulled Youk alongside and down.

Sard stood aside as Youk sprawled.

Youk didn’t get up. Just griped from down there. “Why can’t you see what it’s been like for me, all these years in your shadow? The golden twins! And you not even knowing I existed until I volunteered to be your friend. I’m here now because I want us to be real friends. I need your friendship.”

“No,” Sard said again. “You really don’t.”

“I had a lot of time to study you and I think your thing is to be needed. What could be more fitting, me needing you?”

Sard didn’t answer.

“Your last word, huh? Well, don’t come crying to me when the clay faces put their shackles on you.”

Finally the end of the conversation. Sard looked away to hasten Youk’s retreat. Stuff was happening on the beach. Groups here and there. The sea was back in its place and the lagoon a sheet of aqua. The youngest of the mermen, leading three little boys, approached its calm.

Youk came to stand beside Sard. “Oh, I get it. You’re waiting for the Seapeople, because you haven’t the gumption to go out on your lonesome.” He shivered dramatically. “You’re so transparent, sitting here in your little cave looking back. This whole world, the size of it, boggles your mind, doesn’t it? Fortunately for me, among them, it’s the women who run the show and they are such amazons they’re sure to find you wanting. When they turn you down, mine will be the only option you have left.”

Despite the glare of the sun, Youk bent a wide-eyed topaz yellow stare at Sard. “Even if for some unfathomable reason the Seapeople allowed you to ragtag, you wouldn’t be able to keep up. I bet they tie to a rock and leave you to die courtesy of the sun. The men wear skins of people the women have cannibalised. Can you see yourself lasting in that kind of scene?”

The activity on the beach was not the busy preparation of people getting ready to travel. Sard still had time to get rid of Youk gently. There wouldn’t then be the need to guard against revenge. “Since you have me pegged so thoroughly, you might as well leave me to come at my own pace.”

Youk made like he’d contradict.

“Don’t worry. I’ve been to your hide-out, and I already know about Sully and the rest of my sort.”

“Why not come now?”

“My life-suit needs powering up.”

A desperate lie that Youk took at face value. “That must be one of the earlier models. I’ll look out a better one.”

When he was sure Youk was really gone, Sard backpacked his things to the dip in the desert. At more than a kilometre out he’d be invisible to Gammy’s ghosts, and as the place was lined with clumps of spinifex, the depression made him near to invisible. Tomorrow, in the dawn, he’d practice his kite.

Fiction: Avatar Remaindered, 12

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12: The Kite

It was well into dawn now and still no Greg. Sard waited in the dip as instructed the day before. Waiting impatiently. Was Greg going slow motion because of their conflict earlier? Sard so couldn’t use hold-ups now, what could he do but try to please the man? He scooted here and there, on his knees, to be not seen above the level of the plain, setting up the bag-over-the-bush water getting trick. Using the same round pebble. Different bush. His suit remembered everything perfectly. Good to know.

< You + I are continuous >

Sard wrung his hands in the way he thought resembled Greg’s hands knotting the snare. Worked good. The suit remembered it.

“What have you been up to?” Greg stood on the edge of the dip with the sun behind him. His expression was in the shadow of his own head. Neat trick.

Sard looked up with a winning smile. “Practicing what you taught me?”

Greg stepped down. His eyes were narrowed. “You look smug. Self satisfied. It’s not safe to get too sure of yourself. The landscape, the weather, the people out here … none of them act the way you might expect.”

“Well … it feels good to me that I can at least depend on my suit. Are we going back through the desert door?”

But Greg led the way onto the ridge. “I’ve got something to show you up there.” He stopped at the eastern apex. “No talking from here on. No rolling rocks. Not any noise at all, okay? It’s the minion stronghold we must get near to.”

They clambered around the top of their own Pit, according to Sard’s feel. The superior sense of direction was one of his avatar talents. There began to be a sick-making stink on the breeze from the sea. He concentrated on not retching. Not safe.

Greg indicated that he should sit on the rim around the Pit. Did that mean no one was in there? How did Greg know? Sard mimed vomiting and only barely managed to keep it in.

< Waste not = want not >

Greg mimed pushing their suit-hoods back.

Sard shook his head. No thank you. Not here. The stink was indescribable even through the suit’s mask. He tried not to breathe. He concentrated on hoiking without a sound. His eyes streamed with tears. He crawled back along the trail.

Greg followed him, without any regard for his suit’s colour against the mainly blue-sky background. Sard had no energy to try and work it out. Back at the triangle, he trusted the air enough to finally push the hood back. “What was that?”

“Not the kitchens,” Greg said. He smiled.

“Bastard. Was it the moldeckery?”

“Yes. I figured you should know the smell of death before you leave. Might make you think. Might make you appreciate what people are doing for you. You might even come to believe that you might not have the worst deal.”

“That’s the smell Srese is having to deal with, is that what you’re saying?”

Greg nodded. “The so-called mermen, poor bastards, are sewn into raw human skins and sent out into the open ocean, waves taller than this ridge, to fish and fetch shell food, as near as I can make out.”

Sard’s main but fleeting thought was how well—in the courtship he intended to get going as soon as—he’d compare with men sewn into skins. “And Gammy our digital game master still has expectations?”

“Srese is out of the picture,” Greg said. “The lead merman has taken up with Zoya. She’s better at the signing they do to communicate.”

Greg’s expression was hard to read. “And so you’re relieved on the one hand,” Sard said. “And on the other hand you’re worried sick about what Gammy might do to Srese? I would be.”

Greg said, “That’s about right.”

There, Greg on the way to being mollified. A bit of stroking and a tad of empathy was all it took. “What happened?” Sard said, indicating with his head, “Smells like a lot of customers.”

“Daredevilry at the storm-watch. One of your arch-enemies, Phin, and quite a few others bit the dust in an attempt by our digital taskmaster … Greg grinned wolfishly at the taskmaster jibe before continuing. “…to make it possible for us to feed the incoming women and children.”

“Mmm. So the Pit’s closed?” Sard said sympathetically. All he was going to say as he didn’t want to undo his good works? Getting through the next couple of hours as almost-friends surely preferable?

— — — —

The corridors were quiet. A curfew, perhaps. Sard didn’t ask. Better to just follow Greg and not invite trouble. They met no one in Mab’s shop or in the dome. “Safe to talk?” he said. “No one here, every place we came by, quieter than … well, quiet.”

“Everyone’s busy. Us being up here is all about the kite,” Greg said. “You getting acquainted with it in a lit-up, hidden place where we won’t be disturbed. Especially by remaindered wannabes like Youk. Watch out for him when you are out and about and you’ll probably survive.” He pulled a tight roll from a storage bag and undid various knots in strings. Silk fabric flowed from his hands like a river. “Help me lay it out?”

Plenty to worry about in that little speech. He should stick with the going concern. “I worry about it being a kite,” Sard said, taking the swag of cloth offered to him. “This all seems far too much fabric.”

Greg chuckled. “I told Rider we were calling it the wrong word. It isn’t shaped anything like that kind of kite and when used properly, it’ll help you float over the desert easy peasy.”

Was that the man being sarcastic as well as mysterious? “The beige-coloured side on top?” Sard said walking backward with his arms full. The beige-colour being the same indefinable shade and texture as his life-suit? “I have no idea about the shape but what the heck.”

“Just copy-cat me on this side shaping it, on your side,” Greg said.

Trying to get more info, Sard started listing the kite’s features as he discovered them. “Right. An elliptical mat made of many flat sausages laid side by side.” Waited.

“Sausages will fill with air,” Greg said.

Mmm. “Each of the sausages has three strings hanging from it?” Sard said.

Greg stared at him in waiting mode.

“Strings where they are fastened to the sausages …”

“Cells,” Greg said. “The sausages are cells.”

Fine, cells. “All the strings up to the middle cells are gathered first in triplets, then them in pairs dancing to the left and right and then them …?”

“To a brake each to help you control the rig, and then them to your harness which will be—if you get good—a glorified seat, just right for the lording it over everything kind of guy that you are. When you’re wearing the harness you’ll be hanging under the kite.”

Guess I didn’t do such a good job with the empathy. And it doesn’t sound like the time to pile on more. What then? Ignore? “A brake in each hand?” Sard said.

Greg nodded. He seemed to come to some sort of conclusion and continued with his instructions. “Now we lay it in a sickle moon shape, so the front edge, which is called the leading edge in the video-mentaries, is on top. Ready to take in the wind.”

“Oh. You got all this from a video-mentary,” Sard said. “I think I remember it. Some of the words anyway. We did an entertainment once about the different ways of flying.” Oops. Reminded him who I am.

“Prove it,” Greg said. “That you studied that video and that you recall any damn thing. I think you’re just buttering me up. Have been all along today.”

Oh well, back to the beginning. “The cells together are called a canopy,” Sard said. “But that’s just a word. I could never really understand how one person alone could open the cells enough for the wind to get into them. The openings to the sausages, I mean cells, are small and flat. How are they going to fill?” Like, wasn’t it obvious it just wouldn’t work?

Greg rested in his tai-ji stance. Said nothing, not even with his face.

“What now?” Sard said.

“You don’t need me. You already know it all,” Greg said.

“I think I said, I could never really understand?” Sard said. “I do understand that for me to get out of your face, you need to tell me how to work this thing. I thank you for all the trouble you have gone through for me. I’m keen to leave. As soon as.”

Greg scoffed.

“I’m listening,” Sard said.

Greg stared at the blue sky dome but did continue. “I think you need to be at the centre, facing the wind, already strapped in. Whether you’re lying down, sitting, I don’t know. Probably depending on the strength of the blow.”

“Right.”

“Rider is still working on the harness.”

“If only we had some wind,” Sard said.

“We can fire up the airlock machinery and open the doors into them.”

Which resulted in a couple of flutters at the leading edge and the kite staying stubbornly on the floor.

Sard went to stand in the place where he’d hang between the two ends of the wing. “The air is passing straight over me, look at these thread ends.” He launched a couple of the silk bits that attached themselves to everyone passing through Mab’s workshop.

“Let’s lift up and see what happens,” Greg suggested. “Each at an end. No, forget that, We’re stretching it too tight, the air can’t get between the two layers.”

“I suggest we hang on to just the top layer of the front edge then, loosely. Now we run. One … two … three.” The moving air grabbed the cloth from their hands and deposited it at the other side of the hall.

“Right.” Greg looked nonplussed.

“Obviously not made to work without someone hanging on,” Sard said. “I guess I’ll just run into the wind dragging it.”

“All we need is your feet off the ground.”

“If I can get it to billow, I’ll be happy.” Sard bunched each side’s lines and wound them around his hands.

Three big breaths. Five big steps into the centre of the hall, into the so called wind. He lifted his arms despite the weight and the foregone uselessness.

The wings took in a smidgin of air that danced its way from front to rear, causing a brief ballooning that collapsed as Sard hit the wall.

“So now we know,” Greg said.

But what do we now know? Sard didn’t say. “I’m going to try running directly at an airlock.” He set about arranging the wing on the floor on the opposite side of the hall. Greg encouraged the machinery.

Sard ran. Halfway across, the canopy filled with the rushing air, bloomed and crumpled against the wall above the door. Sard dug himself out from under. “Did you see that!”

Greg pumped his hand, slapped his back. “It’s going to work! When I think we had only the old video-mentaries to go on. No patterns or anything.”

They pulled the fabric straight and rolled up the pleated length as tightly as possible. “Okay, let’s fit you with the pack,” Greg said.

For a joke Sard made his knees buckle at the weight.

“Yeah mate, and there’s still the shoes and the harness. Rider is stitching them like a fury. You need to go down to his workshop, fit the tackle to your size and I’m sure to be wanted in the kitchen.”

Rider’s workshop was next to Mab’s, Sard discovered. They had the use of the kitchenette between them. Rider’s doorway was hung with drying silks inside and out and the worktable was screened from the shop-front too. Prospective customers shouldn’t know of Sard’s presence, Rider signaled.

Sard pulled the suit-hood over his face, fastened it to the suit-neck. Make us alive-to-background, he thought at the suit.

< We are continuous >

After hot-sealing the adjustments, Rider loaded Sard with the harness, the two brakes and his flying boots. With the wing, his clothes, food and water it would be quite a load. But once he and Ahni flew, the luggage would weigh nothing, he had to believe.

Back in under the dome, Sard patiently allowed Rider to explain the webbing though it was pretty self-explanatory. Sard told of his and Greg’s experiments so far. He and Rider attached the brakes to the lines and played with their actions for a while.

At dusk, the dome lit up with a vibrant sunset. Shreds of cloud breathing pink wisped across a red background which over time became sapphire and finally night blue.

Greg brought a feast of take-out boxes filled with special titbits. Ghulia followed him in. “Zoya couldn’t make it and I can’t stay very long, darling. Things are hotting up.” She hugged Sard until they were both breathless.

Choosing delectable tidbits, Rider hovered his chopsticks over the dishes. He said, “Last thing we need to talk about is your reason for being.”

Sard choked. After the coughing and back-slapping—by way of Greg’s heavy hand—Sard said, “What? My reason for being?”

“You’ll need a trade that allows you to travel,” Mab said. “Why else would you be wandering the country side?”

Trying to equate the idea with what he intended to do, Sard said the first, weakest thing that came to mind. “I thought that at first I’d be living in the desert around here?” He twirled his raised hand to show his meaning.

“The clay-faces maraud through all the wild places,” Rider said. “On the ground, you’re no match for them on their camels, hunting people with nets and sizzle-sticks. You’ll have a better chance to live in the villages to the northeast.”

“Not so,” Mad said, contradicting as if she knew. “Those villages are small. Even one extra mouth, however beloved, is a burden if it doesn’t produce food as well as consume it.”

“What you can do well is fireworks,” Greg said, grinning at Sard. “Isn’t a traveling trade what we’re setting him up for?”

A hard-hearted wolf sneer that was, Sard thought. “Fireworks?”

“Last time I watched you do your fountaining. With sparks and flames and criss cross spatters gobs of light; stripes rippling; neon lighting up the dark. Damn, I’m jealous! I’ve had my suit for years. Never thought to ask it for fireworks!”

Sard hardly had time to take in Greg’s reasons for envy before Mab ran with the idea. “So he needs a magician’s cloak,” she said.

Sard back on track. “I was thinking a circle of this cloth would be good to hide under, camouflage in the desert. For the fireworks I’d put it on the ground, see if the light will pool.” Glancing at Greg’s baleful expression, he added. “Once I got good, I mean.”

In his mind he knew he was good already. He was a rider on a steed of light, a seahorse in the sea of the night. A fire fuelled with light. A firefly dancing above its reflection.

“Attaboy, Sard,” Greg said. “Put away those glazed eyes. Presuming people everywhere are the same as the people I dish up for, what you need is patter. To get them in, stand around. Pass the hat afterwards. ”

“You’re fast,” Rider said. “You’ll think up the patter when the occasion demands. Your practice in the meantime must be with rocks and sand.”

Finally all the goodbyes were said and Sard, not being able to flit with the load he had on his back, or fit through any secret tunnels, made like he was in transportation and counted himself lucky he didn’t meet anyone.

He slept at the lens door until dawn. Then there was just enough time to backpack his gear to the head of the ridge before the sun rose from the sea like a proverbial ball of fire. After fixing himself a time-honoured wake-up trick, with a strand of silk fastened across the path from the beach and tied to one of his toes, he napped.

Fiction: Avatar Remaindered, 10

DD

Photo by David Gangur

  1. Sard Learning Himself

Dawn to sun up, when Sard had agreed to meet Greg, felt like hours yet. Out of pure boredom, he started collecting rocks for the border between Gammy’s influence and freedom, placing them every few meters.

Damn, but the day wasn’t lighting up! He turned to where the sun should be rising. For a couple of seconds he didn’t know what he saw.

Clouds? He scoffed at himself. Yes, clouds. I knew that. They bulked up, rising above the ridge as if on fast-forward. The red from the fire of the sun staining their grey portended something awful, a story would say.

Everyone he knew would be gathering in the Pit with Gammy moderating the event. And he’d be out here Storm-Watching on his lonesome? Sick.

The rest of the sky grayed imperceptibly while the anvil, a type of storm cloud that Gammy had introduced last vigil, leaned over him. When Greg took him the five kilometres out, Sard felt small. If that cloud fell on him, he’d be a gnat-sized blot.

He started. What was that?

A bolt. Pure white light zapped to the ground. Never saw that before. His heart thumped. Remembered the word for it. Lightning. Next, the sky like split open—that was the sound—a vast crack! His guts, heart, everything inside him tremored. Despite the suit, he had time to think.

Icy stones rattled to the ground, and he stood there deluged?

< Most incidences of this particularity last 10 minutes or less >

After the stones came the water. Sheeting down. More water than he’d ever seen. More water than he’d ever been in.

< External temperature = falling. Fuel intake recommended. I ≠ alive-to-background > The suit sleeves over his arms and legs blotched.

“Go for it,” Sard said. “I’m not staying out in it.” He jogged Simmond’s way—couldn’t at this moment recall the proper term—along the Clay Face road along the bottom of the ridge. Angling his face against the slashing rain he searched for a place he might recognise. The suit’s eyepieces did not cope and he had to keep wiping them.

There. The roofless room where Ghulia left him about a lifetime ago. What it felt like. The stones lining the slope looked smoothed, machine made. When he was up there before, he’d had no idea he’d be running up them so soon.

The hatch were wedged open, with roll of tent on the floor track. He had no time to wonder who’d organised that. He grabbed food as he went by and ate the energy bars as he negotiated the blessed dark. He relaxed.

In fact, he loitered along First Circle. What a fish out of water he was in his present mode. He hated how he had to be. Even about that kite Rider was putting together for him. What would Sard do with a kite, when he didn’t plan on wandering very far at all? Rider’s plans weren’t his and Greg’s plans weren’t his. What was the use being a hero with no one to be a hero for?

Finally he arrived in the cave with the holo entrance into Crystal Cave. You could say despite his best negative efforts. Uh oh. A shadow jittered in the opening. The person was backlit by the amber glow of emergency lighting. It was the wrong shape for a minion. He cleared his throat, made a noise to test the situation.

“There you are,” Greg said. He handed Sard a roll of clothes. Jeans and shirt. “Clothes in case we meet someone. I don’t think Gammy will know you’re here. He’s pretty busy.”

Glancing aside while he dressed, Sard saw that Greg was in his closed-mouth mode. Fine. The Pit, next door to Crystal Cave, was abuzz with the storm vigil. Much more interesting.

Greg pulled him away. “We’ve got business elsewhere.” The corridors were eerily empty.

When they stepped in the dome, through a curtain of water, Rider was dragging sandbags from the water tunnel. Water gushed through every gap between two pylons. Greg pointed Sard at Mab’s airlock, himself staying at Rider’s. Rider slid bags at them and Sard and Greg built dams around their airlocks, and strung a net across the water tunnel’s maw.

Sard marveled at the depth of the river flowing over the dome floor and down into the water tunnel. Ankle deep, then shin-deep, three layers of sandbags and still the water rose.

A lull in the water sheeting down the perglass dome allowed them a breather. “What’s with the net,” Sard said.

“If you were swept down when the system is in full spate, and it’s getting that way,” Rider said. “You’d arrive down in the cubby jungle as a slow-rot case. For obvious reasons, we’d bury you rather than report you missing.”

Right. Interesting, Sard thought, how the life-suit coped with the downpour, keeping him warm but wet now, instead of dry and perhaps cold. He’d certainly never been as wet. When it came again, the rain was deafening, numbing, an unrelenting barrage.

< With adequate fuel intake, you + I + exterior input = continuous >

Oh.

When the rain eased into splatters on a gusting wind, Rider and Greg fitted plasti-boards to broomsticks—both stored in the ceiling of the water tunnel—and began to shove out the pooling water. As a swath of floor was cleared, Sard dragged sandbags forward and mopped the floor behind them.

“That’s it,” Greg said. “We’ve still got a dome. I’m off. The kitchens call me.”

“Sard, why don’t you stay awhile?” Rider said.

Was there a choice? Sard wondered about the conditions outside. What did he know? “All that water down in the cubby jungle … aren’t the trees floating?”

“Another tunnel beyond and a fall into the sea,” Rider said. He restrung the net along the ceiling of the water tunnel and hung his clothes to dry.

Sard added his jeans and shirt. The life-suit underneath was dry already. When he stripped off the top half of it and let it hang from his waist, the last of the breeze was like a balm on his own skin. He fetched mats from Mab’s airlock. Rider divided his last meal for them both.

Sard forestalled Rider asking for his adventures. “It feels like I’m marking time, in here or out there.”

“You have learned all you need to know about your suit?” said Rider.

It felt like a trick question. “Mmm. Probably not.” He sorted through a couple more possible answers. The suit would best be tested when Sard was tested? Which might lead to uncomfortable inquiries into how he tested his suit now. He settled for his main thought. “It’s like something in me is refusing to get excited about the whole deal?”

Rider’s expression was noncommittal. “And you’ve been thinking that through and trying to come to a conclusion?”

Sard started with the explanation he’d come up with. “My project at the delta is far away in time and place. Between then and now there are only survival skills to be managed and those are taken care of by the life-suit. That’s my problem. I don’t have any way of influencing things to happen and hardly even myself to organise. I’m bored. Already.”

Rider did not smile or act appreciative of Sard’s problems. “I suggest then that you spend the whole next week out. You’ll get the chance to experience many unforeseen situations all requiring their own strategies. Which will also give us more time to work on the kite, progress of course being put on hold by this storm.”

All right. If it was going to be like that. Sard wanted to tell Rider he didn’t want the kite. What use would it be when he’d be staying around the ridge. Waste of everybody’s efforts.

But never mind, Rider was up and ready to take Sard through a couple of patterns. “Ward off the cold,” Rider said. And after that, still not giving Sard any quarter, caught up a pair of staves and clickety-clack fought Sard to a stand-still.

Only then was Rider ready to farewell Sard into the dark tunnels with advice and instructions on what to take for his week-long jaunt into the desert wilderness.

Fiction: Avatar Remaindered, 9

Ghost Footprints, captured down at Brunswick Head’s Main Beach

They were out there again, Sard following where Greg led. The burnt-orange ground was covered with sharp burnt-orange stones. Not pebbles because of never being washed by water. Greg wove a path among the tussocks of gold spinifex.

Sard’s life-suit proved extremely able, because he wasn’t spiked once. Thinking that, he tripped. Damn. Full length into a dip in the land filled with waist-high shrubbery. “You could’ve said.”

“You could’ve looked where we were going,” Greg said.

“I’m looking now, with my eyes just about at ground-level. I was to follow you, you said,” Sard said while he registered the dip’s opportunities. The stony sandy ground was covered with narrow tracks, as of small animals.

Or is it that my life suit is on the job? < You + I are continuous > “You being alive-to-background doesn’t somehow allow me to see you,” Sard said.

“Skin,” Greg said.

An instruction to Greg’s suit apparently because Greg abruptly became visible.

“Good trick, that instant thing,” Sard said. He grasped Greg’s forearm and told him again through both their suits.

“You’re getting it,” Greg said. He appeared mollified.

The Greg + survival entity amalgam’s skin colour on your exterior surface, Sard thought at his suit while he still gripped Greg. Sard’s suit turned red-brown, albeit slowly.

Greg shook off Sard’s hand. “Very funny.”

“Not meant to be. It’s neat. Say I get among the famous delta-born, shouldn’t I be grey?”

Greg looked him up and down. Like Greg measured him, it felt like. Sard escaped Greg’s piercing stare by checking out the vegetation. “This stuff,” he swished the low shrubs. “Is trying to be green. Could bother will be some wildlife around?”

Greg was not distracted. “Tell me Rider didn’t give you a mission that I’m not to know about?”

“He told me some of his adventures to warm me to the idea of my away-time,” Sard said.

Greg sniffed disbelief. “This is where you learn how to get water from a dry landscape. In your pack you should have a large plastic bag.”

Sard rooted through his still largely flat survival pack. “Ah ha. The bag, in a side pocket!” He snapped open the bag.

“It’s flimsy,” Greg said. “Hope you didn’t ruin it.”

This time Sard hear the steel in Greg’s voice. And again, Greg could have warned Sard. But he didn’t and what did he mean by that? That he hates me? He flinched when Greg touched his forearm.

< The Greg + survival entity amalgam’s instructions are to find a round stone to put into the bag to weigh down one corner. >

Oh. I absolutely expected Greg to hit me. Sard searched the ground. “I’m to find a round stone. Here it is.” Sard dug the pebble from the soil. “Interesting how there’s pebbles in the ground and sharp stones on the ground.” He rolled the pebble down the inside incline of the empty bag. “I guess a pebble won’t cut the bag.”

Greg squeezed his arm.

< The Greg + survival entity amalgam’s instructions are to drape this container over a couple of green branches. I cannot perceive green branches. >

Greg nodded at a bush that had branches with plenty of leaves arching down.

The slower-than-a-snail-pace of proceedings was what killed it for Sard. How could he liven things up? You do it, he thought at his suit.

< I am motivating your arm and hand muscles. Please help me to see the target entity by touching the target entity. > Still squatting, Sard shuffled closer and let the branches brush against his amalgam.

His arms and hands, moving seemingly without his input, draped the bag over the branch, leafy twigs inside it. How was that not a good trick?

“Now tie off the neck,” Greg said.

Do as the accompanying amalgam says, Sard thought.

< The Greg + survival entity amalgam has not spoken. >

Sard glanced at Greg. “You’re laughing at me.”

“You’re not wrong. Hope you’ll recall all those moves the day when you are out here and maybe have lost your suit.”

“I thought the idea was never to be out of my suit?” Sard said.

“Tie the knot without the help of your suit.”

Says you. Help me tie a knot in the bag, Sard said at his suit.

His hands pulled the top of the bag flat, the edges against each other with the branches between. His hands twirled the bag’s corners a couple of times and tied the resulting ends into a neat reef knot.

His main problem was his face wanting to twitch and grimace at the feeling of his own muscles working without his input. Thank you. He laughed inwardly. Knots were so not his strong point.

< You + I are continuous. >

“There’s a cord in the pack,” Greg said. “Watch me tying a slip noose.”

Sard crouched beside Greg. He thought of touching him surreptitiously. Probably wouldn’t work. Greg’s suit had to be as good as his own. He aped Greg’s moves empty-handed.

“Your turn,” Greg said.

The you + I continuity had the moves so good that their noose looked even better than Greg’s.

“Watch where I’m setting my snare,” Greg said, still instructing. “It’s probably a rat’s tunnel. Put yours across the back entry.”

Easy peasy. Sard rose and stretched. “Now what?”

“Now we walk. Out to the horizon.”

“You’ve got time for all this?” Sard said, making conversation. The silence of the landscape unnerved him, even while he was inside his suit.

“Relda is understudying me,” Greg said.

“I really really love hearing how life is continuing without a hiccup,” Sard said.

“You asked.”

— — — —

They walked west until the home ridge was a brown line on the horizon, turned and started back.

“See any kite-hawks?” Greg said.

Sard checked the whole bright bronze sky. “No.”

“See any dust puffing horizontally?”

“What if it’s vertical?” Sard said.

“A dust devil, baby-dust storm. Horizontal is dust kicked up by camels.”

“Don’t see any, horizontal or vertical.” Sard yearned for a bit of real stimulation. “Don’t we need to worry about Youk seeing us?”

“You don’t want to hear about home, you just said.”

“I was letting my green-eyed envy off its leash.”

“Envying me?” Greg said, genuinely surprised. “For what?”

Sard scoffed. “You get to stay at home and have adventures outside. You train with Rider with no questions asked. You can take your pick of girls. You’ve got everything.”

“The easy explanation is that I’ve got four or five years on you and so have had more time to do it all.”

Sard snorted.

Greg too. “You and Youk are so similar. In your unhappiness, anyway. He’s busy and in the thick of it. Taking Srese to and fro while I’m the one who loves her. What do you think I’d rather be doing while he’s supposedly guarding her from her fans? The crowds are getting too excited. And while she’s with Ferd in the CAVEs, Youk is running messages. But complaining. He’s bored. It’s like you both want it all without the work.”

Now Sard seriously wanted to disrupt Greg’s composure. “So is it happening, the avatar and merman romance? How does that fit in with your plans?”

Greg frowned. He hesitated a long time. “There’ve been a few problems.”

“I guess even you don’t get it all your own way,” Sard said.

Greg struck Sard a glancing smack over the head. Friendly but not. “The entertainment part of the whole deal, which is to keep the population-at-large happy and engaged, is endangered because the mermen stink of rotten meat. Ferd is reluctant to have the twain meet.”

Sard laughed. “How much of a problem could that be?”

“Srese had to have her bots augmented with a stink-cutting agent.”

“They didn’t think of just switching off her sense of smell for a while? What is the whole deal?”

Greg punched Sard on the arm as he passed. Hard. Not friendly.

< Touch of accompanying insert organism + survival entity discontinuous. Parameters of insert organism ≠ survival entity >

Sard ran to catch up, enjoying Greg’s discomfort very much. “Even my suit knows you’re upset. Something I said?” It wasn’t only that he envied Greg because Greg could stay when Sard had to leave. He discovered that he resented the fact that everything Greg did, he did well. Bloody superman. And he wasn’t even an avatar?

They arrived back at the dip, with Sard not following but forging his own path through the spinifex. The sag of the bag around the branch of the bush showed the presence of water and the snare had sprung.
Sard was hardly hungry and seeing the dead rat, with ants already at it, turned him off completely.

“I hope you remember how your suit set up the snare?” Greg said. “And how your suit arranged the bag around the vegetation?” Greg put his arm over Sard’s shoulders and leaned heavily. “I know you were missing from the equation. You’ve worked out how to let your suit learn things for you.”

“I always delegate when it isn’t rocket science,” Sard said. “Why should I bother to engage when I have the suit to do that for me?”

“Fine,” Greg said. “You can test that out some more tonight. And if need be, you can always fall back on the sustenance we left back there.”

“We’re staying out another night?” Sard said.

“You’re staying out another night. See if you can survive a bit of real stimulation.”

“Such as what? I doubt there’s any real excitement anywhere out here.”

Greg laughed. “I’ll see that you eat those words. For now you can start with mapping Gammy’s eye-cams which will be indicated—if you can work out where to look—when he sends out his ghosts to find the aberrations in his digital landscape. You may not have any bots but you’re fully encased in a digital appliance. That can be your gift to the community that nurtured you.”

“Ghosts?” Sard said. He disbelieved instantly.

“Ghulia didn’t tell you about them?” Greg said. “Wearing the suits we broadcast a lot of digital signal. The whole home ridge bristles with cameras and sensors. When we are within reach of them, we are part of Gammy’s digital landscape. He sends out ghosts, as I said, to find aberrations.”

“Minions, you mean?”

Greg laughed again. “Got you worried finally, have I? Ghosts are more like lightning. They are electrical signals sent out to disrupt a target. Interestingly, we can see their shape only if we’re in a suit. If they touch you, the suit’s energy is instantly bled off.”

“Is this one of your practical jokes?” Sard said. “All the time we’ve been out here there haven’t been any ghosts chasing us?”

“Which would’ve been a good point if I hadn’t been wearing an old suit recognised by Gammy as a maintenance outfit.”

“What do you mean by aberration?” Sard said.

“When you’re not part of the game. When you’re not in the maintenance squad. When you’re a remaindered avatar, hanging around. If you do get bled off and you’re stuck in your suit, you’ll boil when the sun comes up and freeze when it goes down. Say you don’t have a knife at hand?”

Sard mustered his attitude. “Cool. See you tomorrow.”

— — — —

When he got to the place where he decided to take his stand, he was stupidly nervous. Silver moonlight made the desert a pewter platter.

< I will smoothe agitation to enable superior continuity. > The suit increased its warmth.

Sard gambolled self-consciously within the triangular pie-slice-of-sight where he guessed Gammy could see, courtesy of a couple of cams he’d located on the face of the ridge. He tried to imagine how a digital aberration would present itself. A human outline in a field of zeros? A stuttering in a field of silence? How long would he have to keep it up?

Not long at all. At the periphery of his arena moonlight intercepted various new shapes seemingly made of ground-mist and moon-cloud. How many ghosts had Gamester sent?Three. Gammy was trying to triangulate the co-ordinates? Or—Sard thought in what he imagined would be Gammy’s turn of phrase—Gammy tried to fix the aberration’s position accurately in the overlap of his ghosts’ fields of vision.

Sard moved back to the desert oak he’d marked as his base. The ghosts drifted nearer, two staying parallel and the third equidistantly behind. Meaning Sard could only ever see two, however he turned. Fear sweat prickled over him.

< Your wastes are my fuel >

Take heart, Sard thought. Remembering what happened in the habitat in an event of crowd belligerence. The minions always removed the ringleader first. This they did with unintelligent precision—by wading through the crowd—careless of life and limb. Though there were always a lot of candidates for molecular destruction, a smart thinker could usually outwit Gammy’s half-minds and live to see another day. Meaning by that, that the outcome here is also not a given.

Sard stopped at the tree. The life suit matched colours with the bark without being asked.

< Waiting = state of non-change. Not a good strategy in this case >

Sard started to slowly circle the tree trunk, always keeping his back to it to keep watch on all three entities. They floated with him, staying level. The ghost furthest from the caves began to shimmer. Could it be that Gamester tired from the unaccustomed effort of keeping his ‘arm’ outstretched?

Sard stepped side to side, not-waiting, not not-changing but without moving.

The shimmer increased. Finally the other ghosts stepped back into the direction of the ridge. The outer figure collapsed. Ha, one down. His patience had paid off. He almost relaxed, exultantly, like he’d won.

Simultaneously the remaining ghosts leapt into a run towards their fallen comrade on their original converging paths. Picking up their mate and hustling him between them, they ran straight down the middle of the triangle, their shortest route! They skimmed by Sard, so close that the life suit registered their disruptive electricity by pulsing red lightning into its lenses over his eyes.

< Our electrical field ≠ safe >

Sard’s thinking went like lightning as well. Abandoning the outer ghost had allowed Gamester to re assign its energy to the other two, giving them the power to run to the apex point of Gamester’s field of influence and, using the shortest route back, return to Gammy’s energy zone before he lost control of them again.

The result being that Sard now knew the particular extremities of Gamester’s reach here, and by comparison the extremities of reach elsewhere. Also, that the life suit was extremely smart? Thank you.

< We = continuous >

Now what should he do—lay down and sleep? What if a Clay Face comes riding along just then? Too bad nobody ever did a project to find out more about them. Knowing their routes and the times of the year they traveled them would be good.

Only thing to do is to practice for my so-called departure. He walked toward the setting moon and stopped when he reached the dip. He drank the respired water and crawled under the bushes. Slept.

Fiction: Avatar Remaindered, 6

s-1640.jpg 10% copy

Well & Truly Remaindered

Sard was in the Dining Hall eating his breakfast by 5.03 AM the next day.

Ghulia slid bright-eyed into the seat opposite. “Hungry, are you?”

He’d picked a two-seater by the wall. He stopped eating long enough to bend forward for her peck on his forehead. With Greg serving the early shift, Sard had had no problem getting two serves of everything.

“I’m very happy to see you,” Ghulia said.

“You’re late,” Sard said. “Bet you wanted to make sure I’d be here.” He meant it as a joke but to his own ears his words sounded accusatory and stilted. He felt shy after his adventures and the dining hall didn’t seem the right place to speak about them. “Will you be attending the class?” That was the most devious way he knew of asking if she was going to the dome.

“You bet.”

He nodded and Ghulia returned to being his mother grinning fiercely to keep in her tears. She fetched herself a coffee and croissant breakfast though she pushed the eats his way quite soon. She just seemed to want to watch him eat. He didn’t mind today.

She fiddled with her hair while she sipped her coffee. Straight brown shoulder-length. Usually tied back. She tucked it behind her ear and hooked it loose again so it fell half over her face. “Zoya is at the gym so there’s time for a shower.”

He almost exclaimed that she spoke so plainly. Then he realised the meaning of her fiddling. She’d spoken with her hair covering her mouth. He coughed and spluttered. “Mouth full …”

Next minute Greg was there thumping on his back. “You all right?” Under cover of Sard’s coughing he said, “Rider would like to start you as soon as. Come as you are, is the message.” Greg was as devious as Ghulia at hiding his face from the sensors. The first thing I need to learn, is where all Gammy’s sensors are.

— — — —

With a business-like expression on his face, Rider started Sard on hand-to-hand combat. Sard slid over the floor before he had the chance to take notice of the reality of the punches. Is it always going to be like this?

Too much thinking, Rider informed him. This is the way to fall. By the time Sard skidded out three times, he knew the trick that tripped him. “Wish I’d known this before. I could’ve seen Phin and Youk off a year ago.”

Rider changed to a different sequence of push-me-pull-me while Sard still spoke. Sard bit the dust again. He had no more time to talk. Or think.

So it was well after the lunch brought by Greg, that Sard recalled his promised shower.
“Wash here,” Rider said. He nodded toward one of the entrances to the dome as the place for ablutions.

Sard ignored Rider’s expression. Didn’t even try to work out what the man thought. “I need to see Srese. Warn her about something.” He beseeched Ghulia. “Can we?”

Ghulia asked Rider without asking and Rider shrugged. Sard hated seeing her so dependent. She wasn’t like that. He started down the corridor they’d used to get to the dome, to force her to either join him or try to stop him.

“Here’s hoping Zoya took the kids to the market,” Ghulia said just before they left the hidden passage. She meant the market out front of the apartments, in Central Circle. “So we’re making for the Neilson-side foyer?” Sard said.

Ghulia nodded as she hesitated very slightly on the sensory-mats in front of the first set of fire doors, giving him time to slip through beside her without touching. Him not having any bots meant that the door-opening software didn’t read his presence. At the next set he was ready to slip beside her and she hardly had to stop at all.

They didn’t meet Phin and or Youk. They didn’t meet anybody, in fact. Arriving home, they had no trouble hearing the argument between Srese and Zoya. One of their usual upsets, Sard judged. Zoya wept. Srese shouted. And, Sard saw with a glance, this time Srese would surely commit a murder. He strode into his and Ghulia’s side of the Nest, calling to Srese from there. “Don’t do it, Sis.”

She looked up. Disbelief and not-understanding warred in her expression. “Sard?”

“Over here, Srese. Bring me that coffee. I’ve got to get cleaned up.” He hugged her in turn, taking care not to spill the hot liquid.

“I feel so sad,” she said.

“Liar! And don’t you dare cry!” If she started crying he’d lose it too. And besides, he needed that time to tell her what she needed to know. He punched up his favourite shower sequence.

“Everything has changed.”

“You’re not wrong.” He handed her the coffee back and tore off his shirt. “Don’t go away. I’ll only be a couple of minutes.” He stepped into the en-suite. “I missed you, believe it or not.”

“I got the stupid job without even doing anything,” she said from the bedroom. “When you should’ve, because I don’t know anything about producing.”

Acting was her forte, he didn’t need to tell her. “Don’t worry about it,” he said through the water. “It was always going to be you.” He slapped a bit of depilatory cream on his chin and cheeks and rubbed it in.
“Do you think? I’m really glad you’re back. I was hoping to see you before I go to see Ferd. Because of our plan.”
He washed his face, stubble gone, and sluiced water up into his armpits. “Forget that too, because it was never going to work. It had to be you, because they’re mermen! Get it?”

“We can’t just let it go!”

“Knock knock. Are you in there?” He slung the towel round his hips and stepped out of the stall. “Did you or did you not see mermen?”

She turned her back as he picked up his pants. He let go the towel.

“Zoya worried about that too.”

He pulled on a t shirt.

“What’s so amazing about a romantic-attachment plot that you can’t be around?” she said. “When we used do them all the time.”

“I don’t know. I’m betting it’ll be nothing like any scene we ever did.” He was about to broach the subject of Youk, to tell her to be careful of him and about Youk’s hide-out, when Ghulia came in. He didn’t want to have to suspect that maybe she was listening at the doorway but he did.

“Are you ready, Sard?” Ghulia said. “Srese, I’ll be here tonight. Why don’t you and I have a soiree?”

“Where will I be?” Hell. He hadn’t meant it the way that came out. And look at Srese looking, with that commiserating expression when she thought she knew exactly what he was feeling.

“Can’t I come wherever you’re taking Sard?” she said. She trembled visibly and oh how he wished he’d been more aware. “Sard and I are stronger together,” she said.

He almost cried then at her being brave to shore him up. What she always did and what he’d never understood before.

“If you tried to leave with us,” Ghulia said. “You would alert Gammy to Sard’s presence still in the habitat.”

“And?” Srese said.

He didn’t blame her for asking because how was Ghulia’s answer an explanation?

“And Sard certainly, and Zoya and I probably, would be taken by the minions and moldecked. You’d have to live with that through all the years needed to play your part. After that …” Ghulia made the throat-cutting sign. “The way we’re running it, we might all live a while longer.”

Sard was feeling sick about it long before Ghulia finished. “Doesn’t sound like you should try to come, Sis.”

She shook her head.

“Ask me everything later, Srese,” Ghulia said. She gathered Sard in behind her. “Give us a start, dear one.”

Sard mouthed silent instructions at Srese over his shoulder, for a quick meeting. He’d escape Ghulia and see Srese before she went to dinner. He had to warn her about Youk.

Ghulia led him to Greg’s apartment beside the kitchens. She matched her left palm flat on one of the handprints on Greg’s doorjamb. Door slid aside. Greg not at home. “What are we doing here?” Sard said once they were inside.

“It’s a safe house. Mab is at her stall at the market. We can’t go to the dome until later. We can catch up on our sleep.” She lay down on Greg’s three-seat couch and waited.
Sard stayed sitting up, leaned against the wall, and half-shut his eyes. No intention of sleeping.

— — — —

Sard was waiting in the south side foyer with his ear by the door-join when he heard the north side doors sough shut. Zoya was out with the infants so that had to have been Srese. Guess she hadn’t got his posturing. He sidled out and shot into Central Circle. No Srese. He jogged past the radials. She wasn’t in Wingham Street. She had to be in Sixty, all she would’ve had time for. Good guess. He started after her despite the lack of cover. He could only hope that people in general weren’t yet aware of his new status.

Srese passed the intersection beside the third block of apartments and suddenly she had company. What would short tubby Quinella, the hardcopy keeper, want with Srese? He shadowed walls and doorways despite that a sideways glance from Quinella was all that it would take to discover him.

Quinella stopped Srese and caught up Srese’s hands. She studied Srese’s palms. Srese tried to pull away. Sard didn’t hear what Quinella said but Srese was like a deer caught in a spotlight. Then she straightened. Good work, Sis, make her feel even shorter than she is.

Sard tensed because Srese tensed. Preparatory to her making her get-away, he hoped. He could by-way through Neilson and get ahead. Catch her as she passed him.
Didn’t happen.

Quinella stumbled into Srese and held her against the wall. A holo formed right there in the corridor – they were quite close to the holo-wall of MediLab One – with virtual water on the floor. A white sand rise against one wall, a coconut palm that interfered badly with his line of sight.

Did that mean Gammy was onto him? He stepped into the middle of the corridor anyway. Yes, what he suspected, there was a merman figure lying in the pretend-water. Quinella gasped theatrically. She flung a hand up to her brow and made like she swooned.

“Srese! Go!” he shouted.

Srese wrenched loose and was out of sight in seconds.

Quinella swore and almost ran to reach him. She fumbled at the minion-calling pendant she always wore on a ribbon around her neck. “Don’t move. I’ve called the minions. That’s who usually tidy up remaindered avatars. Isn’t that so, Zoya?”

Amazingly, Zoya reached him first. She carried one of the infants and had the rest following her. She frowned. “That may be so, Quinella. But it’s very convenient that Sard is here, since I have this nauseous child on my hands who should be taken home before he vomits all over all of us.”

Quinella shrank back. “Get him out of here. I can’t stand the smell. Call the medics.”

“It’ll be quicker if Sard takes him.” Zoya pushed the supposed sick kid into his arms. “Danny. Mab’s grandson. Medic around corner there.”

Sard strode away with the child on his arm, its head over his shoulder in case of the vomit, with him pretending he knew exactly what to do.

In Neilson, there were two larger than life-sized steel bots standing side by side on their brushed steel column-like legs, wide across the corridor. Waiting for him? Sard hid the infant’s face in his neck and started to sidle by along the wall. The minions bent their bland steel expressions on him approaching.

At the last moment, he noticed the flickering pinprick eyes. The nearer of the two touched Danny’s forehead with a steel fingertip. The minions both turned and were out of sight with three strides.
Oh. Meaning Danny really was sick? Sard turned and made for the Nest. There the doors slid aside for him, no problem, showing Ghulia about to come out with her expressions alternating between white—probably shock—and the red of rage.

He hesitated, feeling quite white himself.

“Why are you here?” Ghulia said. Explosively. Red. Raging still.

“Minions,” Sard said. “Quinella called them. Zoya asked me to take Danny home. He’s feeling nauseous. One of the minions checked his temperature I presume, and they left. I can’t make any doors work except these.”

Ghulia hooded her anger. “Danny, what’s wrong?”

“Don’t like bear puppets. They’re scary. They make me feel sick. But I’m all right now.” The infant slipped from Sard’s kneeling hold, and joined the rest of the infants coming chattering into the Nest, ahead of Zoya also with thunder on her face.

“I need to talk to you,” she said at Ghulia.

“Hey kids,” Sard said. “Let’s play keeping-the-fat-ball-in-the-air.” He shamelessly timed his throws to the children to hear what the women said. “I thought you had a plan,” Zoya said. She sounded muffled. Sard snuck a look. Zoya in Ghulia’s hug.

“Zoya, thank you thank you,” Ghulia said. Sard started in, to apologize. Ghulia frowned him away.

“Why is a remaindered avatar still wandering the caves, endangering all of us?” Zoya cried with tears splattering everywhere. “I want him to be gone by the time Srese gets back.”

“Give me five minutes to scout the surrounds,” Ghulia said. “Please, Zoya.” His mother left, brushing past him as if he was a stranger.

Sard continued the game calling out the different children to catch the ball, pretending he’d heard nothing of Zoya’s and Ghulia’s quarrel. Zoya clattered things in the Nest’s kitchen.

Ghulia returned. “Sard, come.”

He threw the ball at Zoya in the entry to the kitchen. “Thanks. I was trying to save Srese a couple of troubles?” She looked through him as though he didn’t exist.

Ghulia dragged Sard against her left hip. She obscured him at every cam and sensor. Opened every door with her hand out front, half-carrying him with the other. “Make like you’re hurt. I’m taking you to the workshop medi-clinic.”

They met no one but Sard saw flashes of brushed steel, minion arms and legs, at several street corners. The minions pulled back each time and let the indivisible Ghulia-Sard pair pass. The worst journey of his life.

When she finally released him in the stone passage behind Mab’s workshop, Ghulia stood for a full minute with her hand raised to slap him while he stood angling his cheek to take it.

Finally she lowered her hand. “Now do you understand the danger you are in and the danger you are to the rest of us?”

“It won’t happen again.” Srese would just have to take her chances.

“So get out of my sight.”

He went to the dome. Home for now.

Fiction: Avatar Remaindered, 5

Compass of the sort Sard might be using: Image from Orienteering by Gscore.com.au

5. Youk’s Hideout


Sard tiptoed into Youk’s domain. He couldn’t ever take anything for granted ever again. He had to eat. He’d never been so ravenous. He broke open a new food pack from somewhere in the bottom of Youk’s pile. Protein biscuit and dried berries, he washed them down with the water he brought. Though the light in here glared steady and bright, he took a torch to keep by him, also from the bottom of that pile. He arranged the remainder to look untouched.

He circled Youk’s standalone. He was glad now that he’d ignored the teasing he copped for having a go on a similar model in the hard copy museum. Cords snaked over the floor from the back of this one into a geriatric power supply. Solar, perhaps. He didn’t have time tonight to check that out as well. He dared press a few switches. The LEDs flickered. The monitor lit up.

The desktop screen divided in two and both spaces filled with file icons. On the right-hand side was everyone he knew. Even him. This he’d have to see. Hah. A diary of his activities, comings and goings. The last entry was about the ionized clothes. He couldn’t help grinning as he read. Phin would be seeing to him when next Sard turned up for work?

Next he opened Srese’s file. A diary of Srese’s days, mostly negative scores for the way she didn’t give Youk his dues. And Youk had icons for Ghulia, Sard’s care-mum, and Zoya, Srese’s care-mother. Caro, Relda, and Tye were in there too. Even Ferd had a file? All their interactions with Youk scored out of ten. No explanations unfortunately. Seriously weird.

The names on the left side of the monitor screen were arranged in pairs. He saw no names that were used these days. He clicked down into a “Jin” and read Jin’s words.

“Gamester is a very rich bloke who set this community up for his personal entertainment. He told me that it wasn’t enough for him to have just to play computer simulation games. No, he wanted to do it with flesh and blood people. Mere empire building got boring he said. Humans have curiosity, variety, creativity. He thought he’d never be bored with real people to entertain him.”

Sard recalled Ghulia telling him that story. And he’d told Srese, because as Srese said, Zoya wasn’t Ghulia. He skim-read the rest of Jin’s file.

“My father says Gamester never grew up. My mother says there was too much money in Gamester’s family, we should never have come. My father throws up his hands and says, “As safe a haven as I could find … the war … the babies … remember what it was like?” My mother goes misty-eyed remembering her babies and I miss my Jan so much.

“Slave, slavery, enslavement: I think keeping people against their will to make them work is slavery … Gamester says he deserves my good will, he used his whole fortune to set up the game that saved us all from extinction.”

Sard sat up. Jin and Jan had a care mother and a care father. That was new. The habitat as a haven from war was another thing he’d never heard of. He flicked back to the desktop. Picked another pair of names. Jen and Jarrah.

“Gamester says we are STALE”, Jen said. “Stale means when things are not humming along at top notch quality. When people do things like pay all their credits to grow plants we have no use for. Or drool over old recipes with impossible ingredients. Or choose silly names for their children like Cloud and Mary and do their work any-old-how to spend their real lives with their daydreams in the CAVES.

“The game can die when STALE happens so Gamester must call on his kids for help. The one that passes the test, wins the quest. Jarrah should’ve won. I never was the best at pretending. Gamester says I don’t need Jarrah because he is made of Gamester’s genes the same as Jen is, so he is the same, he is Jen.”

Sard squirmed. He didn’t like where the logic was taking him. Both Jin and Jen were versions of Srese, who had won. He wanted to read about Jarrah. He saw no file written by Jarrah. He tried another pair, further down the column. Clicked on Sully.

“Gamester made my bots sharp. A campfire warmed the overhang with glowing light and strangers slept there, like golden slugs. Gamester wanted to know them and I am the avatar. He forced me out there. Fenna, the previous winner whom Gamester kept to teach me my job, planned my meeting with the strangers. She explained how I should move, what to say.

“I trembled as I picked my way toward them. Stones underfoot, how would I run if they turned fierce? The man pushed the women behind him when he saw me still coming. He pointed a knife to warn me off.

“Fenna told me I should smile sweetly, in particular at the younger woman. If we could get her inside, Gamester would chase the others off. When I put the food on the ground, the man pushed the girl toward me.

“When Fenna and I later got close to the girl, bile burned my throat. Her skin is leprous and torn, with shreds hanging from her. Unclean. Her rags cover sun-rot. Her eyes are unseeing and white. Gamester I cannot.”

Sard gagged. Here’s hoping the mermen weren’t similarly sun-struck, Srese my sweet sister. Maybe he hadn’t got the worst half of the deal. And Sully wasn’t finished yet.

“Gamester hurt me. His bots cut my flesh. My blood leaks from my veins. Neither she nor I will be wasted.”

Sard went to spit his bile into the pile of sand inside the hatch door. This hatch was welded shut, he saw with the help of his torch. No way anyone could escape here. Shuddering, he scuffed sand over his vomit. Read what I have to and get out. Then he saw a name he knew. Ferd.

Ferd’s sister was the Federica who had had to leave. Sard clicked her name and for once there was a file backing it. “Ferd won the quest and in a minute I am gone …”

This one is for me, the loser. Sard stilled his fear before continuing. Ghulia wouldn’t have taken all that trouble if she’d meant for me to be lost. He continued reading Federica’s story. “… Though not before I have my say. All you after me, there is no contest. It all depends on the kind of outsider who is tricked to come. Male or female. Whatever they are, the chosen one will be the other.

“After the big head’s brain was spliced into the mainframe, there was plenty of flesh left for cloning. Trouble for me, and all you future clone-kids, he was a coward. Meaning his cells were old before he dared the procedure. The cheap biotech he bought before he inclosed our people from the rest of the world meant his labbies couldn’t grow young cells from old ones. Meaning, we clones are old straight after we are young. Never in between.

“So, biotech must make sure to always have a pair of young clones on hand. One of each, yin and yang, so that when human people take shelter at the edges of the game, appropriate bait for the trap already exists. Boys are his clones. Girls his chimeras and are made with two copies of his one X chromosome. We’d be messy creatures if it weren’t for the techies who fix up our weirdings.

“This push to lift DNA from all the world’s wanderers isn’t the bighead’s idea at all. Think baby makers and our infertility, because what would the techies play with if the players all died, say some disease got in? Our people think Gamester invents outsiders so that we clones can earn our keep. I’m telling you this because to be forewarned is to be fore-armed. I’m out of here.”

Sard reeled away from the standalone. Fear and rage burned in him like a hot sword twisting in his gut. He wished it was all Youk’s fantasy and that he could go and take Youk out over it. Tempt him into the unused complex and lose him in there. Hit him over the head in the dark.

But, there were too many supporting realities for it to be a fantasy. Ferd, for one. The twin avatars, himself and Srese. Ghulia’s actions and reactions. Mab talking of Plan B. Even Rider’s existence behind the scenes. Ghulia said Federica left with a herder woman. Better than by herself, because who could live out there on their own? Because look at the sand hilled up even in an airlock with the door welded shut? The wind, yes, he could hear the wind out there picking up. Screaming.

Ferd was the geriatric avatar kept on to teach the next winner, Srese. The way Fenna had directed Sully. What future for me? Ghulia means me to live. She’d known that a month of Sundays wouldn’t have been enough time to explain it all. He hadn’t been in the frame of mind to listen. She’d taken him along secret byways to a man she trusted, in a place invisible to Gamester and his minions. A place not part of the game, yet not in the world.

Which he had rejected with high-handed ignorance. Then she took a risk with him that he’d almost wasted. He was awake to it now and he most definitely wanted to live. He kicked the standalone, gently. He ought to thank Youk, for supplying him with the facts, however unknowingly. He’d warn Srese if he could. He shut down the standalone and made sure the hide-out was as he’d found it.

Fiction: Avatar Remaindered, 4

Section of uninhabited cave wall by Rita de Heer

4: The Will to Live


Sard dragged himself into the airlock, trailing the sheet and the map. He was sand-caked, the sweating he did, and rolling around trying to escape the blare of the sun. And still got sunburned. Unbelievable.
No shower. No bathroom. No facilities of any kind. He hated starting the day unwashed. Sandy in this case. With his eyelids puffy and sore. The only good thing, and that was due the time of the day, was that the sun didn’t intrude. He grumped about, looking at things. Shelves, three high, plasti-kreet to the left and right of the hatchway. Packed with stuff. What he’d stupidly put off asking about until this morning. And his supposed care-mother abandoned him?

Watching the line of sun-bright expand in over the hatch-sill, he thought a while. The sun’s light falling from the overhead position – didn’t that mean it was past mid-day? The day half gone? He almost heard Ghulia say her piece. Chop chop Sard, be back in time for early breakfast tomorrow morning.

The food here, he grabbed down a belt of rations and opened a couple of the canisters in turn, looked unappetizing in the extreme. A sheet of mashed together curried field fungi on rice, dried and rolled up. The rice grains a la bas-relief in the texture. No thank you! Hell, he intended getting back in time for dinner. Tonight.

So let’s see, what can I use? A torch? His one from yesterday had gone dim. This little thing? It resembled an antique clock dial. Only this thing had N W S E in place of the numerals and only one pointer. Which wriggled back to the same place every time regardless of how he positioned the dial. The pointer had an N on the tip. So did it always point Neilson-wise? The proper name was North, Ghulia said. He couldn’t remember if she told him the others. Too confusing. He put it back among the rest of its sort.

Then there were these tight packs of fabric. Of a size he’d seen before. He grinned, pulling a cord that hung from the center of one of the larger-sized packs. The bundle unfolded gracefully and made itself into a tent of the sort that couples used when camping in the Pit. For privacy, they’d tell you before you even asked. He moved along. What about these smaller teardrop-shaped parcels? He pulled the cord exiting from the lowest point and it folded out into a heart shape. A floppy fabric bundle, all sleeves and pant legs, opened loosely.

He picked up the … leotards-part? He tried to think back to when they’d used a couple of these – life suits, that’s what they were – in a performance. The heart-shape was the breastplate because of the contours, and plus it had contacts and sensor ends on the inside where presumably it would sit/hang centrally over one’s ribcage. The edges on the wearer’s chest would join to the U-shaped gathering of the elastic leotards. He couldn’t remember who brought them.

His stomach growled from hunger. He’d take the suit and its thingummy and try it out later, for a bit of fun. He’d be stupid to carry a full bladder of water. Home was only a dogleg, a couple of caves, and another dogleg distant. He wouldn’t need all that water. He squeezed half the water out, onto the ground outside, and pressed the air from the bladder to make it easier to carry. He was lucky that Ghulia forgot to take the map …

Suddenly he was laughing at his delusions. She left you the map, idiot. Rider thinks you are as stupid as anyone. She set this up to prove him wrong. I’m remaindered. I don’t need to prove myself to anyone.

Indecision stole over him. He sat down against the shelves to think the better. I could live here, sleep on a shelf. Food and water at hand. I’ll learn the life suit and steal back into the habitat. Go where I want. Eat what I like. Not be anyone to anybody. Just be myself. He gave himself to the planning.

He woke when the sun again touched his already burnt ankle. He pulled up his knees, the back of them burnt earlier too. The magic of plan C was gone. He should instead surprise everybody and front up at the dome. Find out more about Plan B. Once he was on his own with it, and it did seem that would be a requirement, he could adapt it to his own ideas.

Right. He was on track. He packed the suit things in the map and knotted the four corners. Looped his belt through the resulting parcel and through the loop of the water bladder. Settled them on opposite hips. Took up his torch.

He strode around the outside of the empty dark holes that once were the Computer Augmented Virtual Environments, CAVEs – a stupid name now without the computers – into Wingham. He took Second Circle because it would be quicker than the dogleg through the Nest.

He counted lane entrances: One Twenty, One Fifty, the next opening as wide as a street. Had to be Simmonds. Oops. Force of habit took him down Simmonds. Well, never mind. His famous sense of direction would see him right.

Huh, plantations at the end? Not that there were trees. The dust of ages and the bare loamy earth that damped all sound, even the fall of his feet. It was darker too. He shook the torch.

The beam flickered, rallied, and died. He stretched his eyes as wide as they would go, making himself super-ready to see. Not a skerrick shred or pinprick. Why oh why hadn’t he thought to take a spare torch? A whole shelf and he’d ignored them? Now what? Back for another torch, or forward and home in ten minutes? He closed his eyes to help him not worry about the impenetrable dark. Breathe, one and two. Better.

He’d be just as good by feel. Better maybe, given his avatar augmentations. They had to be good for something. He stood for a minute or so visualizing the same place in the home habitat, to get the feel for the way. Slog slog. This lane should be Two Ten. Up that and back into Second Circle, he trailed his fingers along the curve. The next opening would be Two Forty. Ignore the ends of the old labs. He quested for the next lane. There, the cave entrance.

“Yes.” His voice bounced around in a big space, he was in the cave.

He followed the wall, not risking over-confidence and crossing diametrically, his left hand brushed along it soundlessly. There. The holo? Yes, he could touch both sides easily. Though he had no way to feel the pixels pixelating him as he stepped through. Now to negotiate Crystal Cave. A snack, since he knew it by heart.

Only problem was, he’d expected to be able to see. Ambient light from the home hole. Where was it? He’d proceed on the premise that this was Crystal Cave and that the home hole had technical troubles. A power problem. Let’s see, if he left the path here, he should hit the curtain of drinking straws pretty well straightaway. Srese’s name for that speleotherm.

Missed it. Easy enough in the dark. But never mind, the stalagmite dome was next. Missed that one too. He stood still. Waved his arms around. Maybe he’d feel an air current flowing between the frozen waterfall of flowstone and the banded shawls?

Nothing. He dropped to the ground. The dust he remembered. He felt for the platforms, the mesas as he so cleverly had likened them to. He crawled on and on. No cave features. Maybe he was in the home habitat’s Pit, after dark? There’d be path lights. Or was he in a wild hole? Didn’t Ghulia sort of say there were more than one other habitat? Was he fated to wander a maze of undiscovered caves forever?

He stopped. Took a drink. His forever wouldn’t be too long since he’d so stupidly poured away half his water and hadn’t taken any food. Would Ghulia send a search party? Go on, he goaded himself, have a fit of hysterics. No. Get it together. Close your eyes. The dark in your head can’t be as bad as the dark around you. He dropped to his hands and knees. Kept his toes glued to the wall and felt all along the ground. Here, a ridge in the sand. Beyond it was bare rock, like it was swept. A stroll path. The holes Ghulia showed him. Back at the wall, here and here. Big ones for sensors. The small ones for fasteners.

Phew. Not lost. Still the Pit Ghulia and he came through yesterday. He must have got turned around. He should just follow the wall until he came to a way out. If it was Two Forty, he’d fetch a torch and if it was a holo with light behind it, he’d be home. Walk walk walk. An opening. Even his sense of time passing had got turned about. It felt too soon for an opening.

Only stale air here, no through-flow of recycled air or the unmoderated stuff. But anyway, if there was no wind outside, why would the air in a habitat move? He spread his arms out to measure the width of the thoroughfare and touched both sides. A Radial. He was going back for a torch and some food. He was so confused though, he knew that he should stay in the rind of the habitat, the dead plantations and the gardens. He’d surely hit on the performance complex sooner than if he went to the Nest and had to count off radials and streets by heart.

He kept the open places to his left. Passed one street and three lanes mouths. Good, he was on track.
A wall, a wall, we have the T-junction. Though its arms curved away from the center making it a wide hug-shape. He pressed himself into the wall, giving thanks that he’d found it again.

The corner of his eyesight tripped over a streak of light.

He turned his head. Blinked.

Rays of white light, as steady as … well … light beams, glowed between the two walls of the lane. Funny he hadn’t noticed them before. Probably Ghulia distracted him just then? One of her ploys?

He stared and stared. They didn’t move. Motes of dust twirled into their cool silver-blue light and out again.

It came to him, finally, that one of the walls was pierced like a peeping wall and that light from the CAVE behind it beamed through the holes onto the outer wall of the corridor.

Sound emanated from the holes as well.

Had to be human, because who else was there? Gammy’s minions had no voices.

Would the occupant of the CAVE know if and when Sard peered at them?

He started. Because incredibly, it was Youk in there talking to himself! Playing, typing, whatever, on a standalone. His back to the open door. Meaning, Sard realized, his stupid self had certainly got turned around, and properly.

He’d better drop all his fantasies about himself instantly. He was obviously in a third habitat complex. The airlock and stores were beyond his reach. But never mind, he peered into the overflowing piles of stuff in the corners of Youk’s hide, Youk had got in all the goodies from the shelves. Torches, tents and suits in one corner. Bladders of water and food containers stacked in another.

“It’ll have to be that silly little Srese!” Youk said.

Sard almost swore. Out loud. Youk was in one of his rages and what did he want with Srese? Had Youk heard him?

Youk was showing no inclination of getting up to flush Sard out. Sard wanted to rack his brain for instances of Srese-Youk interaction.

Keep it, Sard-man. Concentrate on the now. Two ways out of these CAVES that both went through the T-junction and he didn’t know Youk’s habits. Lost through his own stupidity, he especially did not want to be discovered by Youk.

He wanted to find out Youk’s moan against Srese. He’d have to forget about dinner at home but hope Youk wouldn’t. Five AM was still all the hours of the night away. Where to hide in the meantime? Uh oh, Youk’s chair scraped back and Youk was on the move.

Sard stealthed up the road a bit to keep out of the light of Youk’s torch and where its beam might swing. Youk being left-handed and so with his torch in that hand, meant Sard hid on Youk’s right-hand. Youk strode past him up the street not bothering about all the noise he made. Sard followed a long, safe, way behind.

Straight through the Nest – both sets of foyer doors were chocked open – and into the street directly opposite. Which forked at its end. This was nowhere Sard had ever been. Youk took the left entrance. When Sard arrived, he saw Youk halfway along a well-worn path looping among a bunch of empty pedestals. A holo glowed at the path’s end. Once Youk was through and Sard’s eyes had adjusted to the lack of torchlight, the holo glowed with dusk time. Yes! The home Pit was on the other side.

Fiction: Avatar Remaindered, 2

Wall in the secret corridor

Sard is still in shock but is beginning to get his act together. He feels cheated that his care-mother never took him to the secret places they now visit. The old man they meet, Rider, has to be a such a fake that Sard plans to out him the minute he’s free ..

Getting the art for posting the novella in chapters is a process in action, as is sourcing a good book cover, without which it can not be published. Enjoy!

Part 2: Plan B


Ghulia sat beside him. “You look like you’ve got a week of work to do in three minutes.”

“Srese is it.” Sard indicated the mini-monitor above the bed. “What does that mean for me?” How could he trust someone as scatty as Srese to look after his interests?

His care-mother leapt up onto the bed, he was amazed to see, and switched off the mini-monitor.

“People think because there is no sensory-felt in the Nest, there are no receptors. Never dreaming that the communication gear itself might carry signal,” she said shakily.

He stared, his mouth agape.

When she noticed she hugged him hard. “Sard-baby, this is it. The first day of your new life.” Cheerful when obviously that wasn’t how she felt. “How much time do you think until Phin and Youk notice you missing?” she said.

“Probably around lunchtime when Phin will want to make sure I don’t eat. They’ll find their clothes ruined in the ionizers and suddenly they’ll care a lot. Why?”

“You have no more time at their disposal. In fact, you have no more time at all for ordinary things. Get into some nondescript clothes and smoothe down your hair. I’ll call in sick, which everyone will consider perfectly understandable.”

If it hadn’t been for her fear—utter and stark—Sard wouldn’t have gone along with her chivvying. He didn’t understand half of what she was on about but changed into ordinary jeans and shirt. Moccasins on his feet. His hair combed as flat as it would go. He could but coast in her wake until the facts came out.

“We need to go to the Dining Hall,” Ghulia said.

“I wasn’t there that long ago.”

“Nevertheless.”

The corridor walls, though still mainly grey, fluttered with blue stalks and leaves. Sard started every time a bird shadow exploded from the undergrowth. “That’s how you feel?” he said.

She talked from behind the bit of her scarf that she covered her mouth with. “Ignore it. It’s Gammy guessing.” She led him into the Dining Hall, empty of breakfasters, and into the kitchen-office cubby and introduced him to that fool, Gregorius the Dining Hall Manager, as though Greg and Sard had never met.

“You know my care-son?”

“Sard,” Greg said. “Will I put you on the roster for early breakfast?”

“There is a roster?” Sard’s amazement wasn’t a put-on.

“Only for the early session, mate,” Greg said while he made them a coffee each.

Ghulia was like, go on this is an emergency, and it was an easy thing to commit to when Sard had no idea of what was blowing in the wind. “Yeah sure, put me down for a couple of weeks.”

Ghulia took the coffees and led him to a table. No one else around helped make it too weird to enjoy. His care-mother waved him down opposite her. She stared pointedly, dragging his gaze along with hers, at every sensor within their range – alongside every light fitting and behind every air-filter screen.

Because of them, she explained without a word, she wouldn’t be saying anything about the emergency in here. She allowed him about two minutes to gulp down what was a hot drink. She drank hers as if it had no flavor and no heat. Like it was water straight from the moldeckery. He followed her out into the corridors. “Where are we going?”

She shrugged and brushed her ear.

Oh yeah. Gamester all ears. They’d exited in the Lane alongside the Dining Hall, walked Neilson-wards. Left into First Circle, crossed Neilson Street and into the lane alongside the silk weaving workshop. They went to its back entry in the corridor parallel to First and Second Circles. As they entered, Ghulia grabbed the doorbell with a practiced move. Obviously to prevent the bell jangling.

She pulled him down onto his hands and knees with her to crawl under the silk stretched from the wall to the loom. The woman already under there apparently had the task of tying off the beginnings and ends of the silk cocoons after their filaments were woven into the new fabric. Ghulia mouthed, “Mab, this is my care-son.”

“One of the avatars, Ghulia.” Mab likewise spoke voicelessly. Sard was like he attended a ball game, his eyes following the action.

“Not chosen for the game,” Ghulia said.

“Plan B?” Mab raised her eyebrows.

Ghulia nodded.

Mab tossed her head to indicate that the person they wanted, whose name Sard was not able to read from her lips, was still up there. Wherever that was. She waved Ghulia and Sard out from under the loom and Ghulia pushed him through a curtained doorway into what was at first glance a kitchenette.

Or maybe the place where they cooked up dyes, he decided seeing the various cooking vessels with coloured slops. The whole rear wall was draped with silks.

“The drying racks,” Ghulia said. “Vents in the floor and ceiling.” She bent and felt for something under a swag of silk scraps in a basket. “Go on through.”

“Huh?” he said pointedly when he could’ve said a ton of other stuff.

She pressed a headband into his hands that had a torch on the front, and pushed past him through the curtaining. A passage? How was it that when he and Srese had investigated every corner of the habitat in their single digit years, Ghulia and he now stumbled along a passage Sard hadn’t even known existed?

He nodded his head to swing the torch up, across and down. The sandstone walls were darkened with age. So, not a newly carved passage. The floor was ordinary polished-with-use stone-kreet. He felt betrayed by the way Ghulia, who might have shown him the tunnel as a treat but didn’t–ever–showed no hesitancy in her walking having obviously been through here many times.

“Mind the ceiling.” She led him up a set of steps. He had go bent for a couple of paces before they went down again, and that for only a couple of steps before they had to do it all again. Why not a straight tunnel for pity’s sake? His temper started to build. “Where are we going?”

“The sooner we get there, the sooner you will know,” Ghulia said.

He ignored the tartness in her tone in favour of a bit of his own. “How is that an answer?”

No answer.

Fine. The way the passage slung about twisting and turning, they could be going anywhere. About all he was sure of anymore was that they’d entered the passage in the silk workshop in the Neilson-and-Everard Quarter.

“Ouch.” He forgot to duck and did his mother stop to commiserate?

She had entered a foyer. The two sets-of-doors-setup made it like the foyer into the Nest, that he and Srese called the airlock. Where they used to play their spaceship games. He wasn’t attending when he should have been, he thought dismally, when he just about fell into the room beyond. It was so large and light and round, he was totally overwhelmed.

By the time he’d collected himself, Ghulia had abandoned him and was stepping out a pattern in the middle of the room with an old joker already there. The person they’d probably come to see. The man’s features were certainly something to see. Grey hair and wrinkles that Sard only ever saw in video-mentaries and then only because he’d searched beyond the common tripe. Most people he knew would prefer to be moldecked than grow old.

The grey head continued to step and turn and gesture, completely unselfconsciously. Sard’s hands grew clammy from embarrassment about the weirdness of someone ignoring bystanders. Personally, during a public performance, he had to have everyone involved in the action of the moment. He’d sent people out if they refused to be in the moment.

Finally the oldster made a namaste-type ending to his routine. After a minute on hold he turned and came. Ghulia would be no help as she continued on hold, Sard saw. She wore her unapproachable meditational expression.

The oldster arrived in Sard’s face while he was still thinking daggers at Ghulia. At the same time—like the old man timed it—a vast bright light sprang into being at the top of the rock rim above the perglass dome ceiling that Sard had had no spare time to see yet. A sun event. He’d bet on it.

“It’s the sun,” the old man said. “Too hot in here when that gets going. I’m known as Rider.”

Sard didn’t nod to say he understood, because he understood nothing. He shook Rider’s proffered hand to express a minute vestige of politeness.

“Have a seat,” Rider said.

There was only the floor. Polished stone. No rugs or cushions. Sard remained standing. Damned if he was going still further out of his comfort zone without knowing why. His skin crawled as he felt the man studying him.

Sard pointedly studied the scene. The perglass dome perched on rickety columns of stacked stones. Nowhere did the dome meet the walls. In the gaps between the stone pylons, the room’s air must mix freely with the outdoors. Or what it looked like.

Seeing where Sard looked, the old man said, “Originally the dome sat on that rim of rocks.” He pointed at an edge far above the dome, that was just now limned with sunlight. “Lucky for us the glass didn’t break when it slid down, though naturally it needed stabilizing.”

“Naturally,” Sard said. The floor was of the usual polished stone-kreet. Including the one they’d come through, three dark entrances broke the encircling wall.

“When it rains, it’s all hands on deck for bailing,” the old man said.

One point to Sard for having moved his attention on while the old man was still on about the gaps between the dome and the wall.

Above the dome hung a circular piece of what would have to be sky, brown-tinged by the aging UV barrier in the per-glass. “The dome dislodging from its original mounting caused this hall to be abandoned by the community,” Rider said. “One of Gamester’s engineers’ mistakes. Serendipitous for us.”

Ghulia finally came to grace the meeting with her presence. “Rider, this is my care-son, Sard. Superfluous to Gamester’s needs.”

“Mmm,” Rider said.

Ghulia nodded. Something she was doing a lot around these people. Sard interrupted the flow of meditational discourse, whatever they thought they were doing. “I don’t need plan B. Srese will get me into Plan A with her. What we planned when the competition was first posted.”

Rider stared at Ghulia. “He doesn’t know?”

“I brought him as soon as I was sure.”

“Yet it is his life,” Rider said. “He needs the knowledge. I think Plan B, Scene 2, Ghulia. You know what to do?”

She bit her bottom lip then seemed to come to some conclusion. “Yes.”

“I thought you just agreed to no more decisions without my input?” Sard said. What did he care about the whine even he heard in his voice?

Amazingly, Ghulia laughed. “Rider, you know him better than I do.”

“I was him once,” Rider said. “Still am sometimes, though I try to keep those moments private. We should get out of here. The heat,” the oldster explained to Sard. He hustled them towards their entry.

Sard let Ghulia take the lead back down the secret passage. He felt like his ears had burned off. He decided he’d go to the hardcopy museum next, and read the Name Book. Bet there was no Rider in it, the man was such a fake. That grey hair had to be a wig.

Ghulia stopped well before they reaching the curtaining of drying silks. “I want to show you a couple of things before you’re too old to enjoy them. You take Two Forty and Second Circle. Don’t let anybody see you. Hide in the overhang of Crystal Cave. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

Sard frowned.

“Indulge me, son. You owe me for that tantrum back there. I thought I did a better job than that, socializing you.” She had him by the ears then, and not gently either. She shook him. “Wake up to yourself, Sard-baby.”

Tears in her eyes and her voice. What could he do but indulge her?

Fiction: Avatar Remaindered, 1

DNA strand … Sard’s will be weirder than that
Sard was born an avatar in the community where he lives, and has honed his skills in the production of cave-wide games for most of his sixteen years. With his twin sister Srese, who is a superlative actor and usually stars in his productions, they top this competitive profession. To his consternation his sister is chosen over him as the one to star in Gamester's newest production, while he is remaindered!

Remaindered? What does that even mean, he wonders as the electronics of the underground community begin to shut him out. His care-mother; one of the previous, now hidden, remaindered avatars; and Greg, the community's chef all help him to stay alive as he comes to grips with his new status. But how will he now live, doing what?

In this, Part One, Sard learns a couple of the facts about his new way to be and a whole lot of unpleasant suppositions, and he's hardly in the position to be able to tell one from the other.


Sard strode through the pastel yellow arch out of the Nest. He needed the roiling colours of his envy and disappointment and anger. Because how come Srese won the contest when he was always the better producer? He wanted reds and blues and greens storming along the corridor walls alongside him. Where were they?

He stopped. The Nest doors soughed shut behind him.

The walls, what he could see of them, were grey. And all the holos, one on every block-end, were extinguished.

Some kind of power cut? I don’t think so. He stepped back seeking with his fingertips the comforting painted story on the Nest’s doors. A fill layered into the dark green paint made the bas relief trees. A rectangular brown roughened area signified a door into a tree trunk. Zoya, the kiddy-carer, regularly pasted the profile of a different infant over the door as if they were then pushing it open. She’d painted a tremble of golden light as if it came through the aperture.

The doors slid open behind him because he still stood on the sensory-mat. He breathed relief. Phew. At least a couple of doors still worked for him.

A chatter of voices neared from the Wingham direction, the group still out of sight around the bulging-out curve of the Nest. Dorms and family apartments fronted First Circle on that side. This late in the morning it was probably Tye and his girls. Sard almost bolted back into his hole. What good, though? He had to eat.

“Bad luck, mate,” Tye said as he passed Sard. “Not winning, I mean.”

Sard was slightly comforted. If that was all Tye knew, he could probably brazen it out and go to breakfast at least.

Tye hugged Relda to him. Both had dressed gypsy-style. She swirled a shin-length red and yellow skirt. Tye’s pants were about the same length, with the cuffs artfully folded up and he wore a neckerchief the colour of Relda’s headscarf. Gold coins sewn over both. Caro arm-in-armed Viva, twirling so each could add her play to the hotspots in the holos.

So far they’d conjured a carved gypsy caravan pulled by a horse plodding along a sandy track in a high summer scene of green and gold. The ceilings round about were now blue and they seemed to walk on the same gold sand track.

“What do you think?” Caro said.

“I like it.” Sard touched the opposite wall, near where he walked, where flowers burgeoned in a field of green. His touch killed off a swatch of flowers. He jerked back. Hope no one saw that.

“You want to input your alterity?” Viva said. “Since you’re not costumed?”

“No. Go ahead. You two are doing a great job.” They were all represented in the mural. The couple strolled in the meadow and Viva drove the horse. The Caro-alterity did cartwheels alongside.

The gypsy caravan followed them across Second Circle and pulled into a meadow forming on the Dining Hall’s long wall between Second and Third Circles. The horse began to graze and the alterities followed their people around the corner toward the Dining Hall entry where they pixilated into the scenery.

Sard walked into the Dining hall among them. His heart hammered when for the five or six seconds that he was the only one on the sensory-mat, the doors started to slide shut. He pressed back the near one. Should he suspect that the door utility suddenly didn’t know him anymore?

Youk and Phin were already in there, shoveling scrambled eggs down their respective gullets. How he hated them. Obviously he was late, along with every other trouble this morning.

“Don’t let them get to you,” Tye said.

“Thanks.” How, was the question. He fetched his porridge, the white pap, his eggs, the yellow pap, on the baked and toasted pap. If he was slow about it maybe his tormentors would leave. But they were still at the table and so because he dormed with Phin and Youk he had to go sit with them.

As usual Youk across the table from him watched everything he did. Didn’t the guy ever have anything better for his yellow eyes to do than make sure the avatars didn’t get ahead of him? Youk said, “Shoveling it in rather, aren’t we?”

“What?” Sard could’ve kicked himself. When would he learn not to react?

“Shoveling the food in like the farmers didn’t grow it to your taste.”

“Ha ha,” Sard said around the egg. “Since I’m one of the farmers.”

Phin, diagonally across from Sard, smiled benignly. He kicked Sard’s feet out of his way under the table and hooked his own under Sard’s chair.

“Finished?” Youk said. “Good. You and I have business.” Loud enough for everyone to hear, he said, “Fare thee well, oh golden avatar! Do you wend to your Herculean labours?”

Of course everyone remaining at the other tables looked up and laughed and commented.

“Do you join him, Youk, to be dusted by his benison?” Tye said. He winked. At Sard when of course both Youk and Phin could not miss seeing.

Thanks Tye, for nothing. Sard thrust back his chair, hopefully doing damage to Phin’s hooked-up toes. Sard stood in a hurry to catch the chair before it fell. All he needed was a whip, to tame his lions. He put the chair down and shoved it hard against Phin’s outstretched legs. He didn’t say sorry because he would pay whatever he did.

Youk followed him near enough that he looked like he hustled Sard from the Dining Hall.

“Master and slave. Youk in his favourite role,” Tye shouted after them.

The doors closed when Sard and Youk stepped from the sensory matting, shutting them off from any further ribaldry. Because he had Youk breathing down his neck, Sard made for the dorm he supposedly shared with him and Phin. He dived into the lane beside the Dining Hall, and took a left into the corridor between Second and Third Circles. Walls, where available, were grey.

The dorms fronted onto the lane with doors and windows, and backed windowless onto the Circles allowing a lot of wall to be given over to holos. “Surely the walls should’ve been flaming red on black?” Youk said. “Gammy-the-damned-AI loves strong emotions all said and done.”

Youk was of course commenting on Sard’s lack of nanobots. Yesterday Sard hadn’t had any nanobots either, but he’d been a whizz at programming holos. The same as Caro. Today, because he didn’t win the programming competition he suddenly was nobody? It still didn’t make sense. He stood back for Youk to unlock.

Youk stood back, too.

It looked like it would be a stand-off.

“Well?” Youk said. “You’re the golden-bloody-avatar!”

But how much of an avatar could Sard ever have been to be so instantly excised? “No nanobots, remember?” he said. “You’ll be missing lunch along with me if we stand here all morning.” As if Youk will miss lunch, he thought. “Funny how the corridor walls don’t reflect your mood. Shouldn’t they be a dirty green? The colour of envy?” Youk had envied Sard and Srese all their lives.

“The stupid AI wouldn’t dare try,” Youk said. He stepped forward. “He knows I’d hack into him with no respect.”

“Yeah right. Full of gas as usual.” Sard pushed past Youk’s fist.

The main room was a disaster. Any clothes that Sard hadn’t taken to the Nest were trodden into the rest of the mess. He started picking them up. “That’s what we’re here for? For you to tell me that the walls aren’t reacting to me?”

“And the rest. But why would I help you? You’re so stupid.”

“Oh, you mean you’re now not going to tell me the walls aren’t reacting to me today?” He sprang aside to escape Youk’s kick.

“The Pit would’ve been the better place.”

“Why would I have gone in there with you, with every man of your friends joking and laughing at my expense.”

Youk slung his arm over Sard’s shoulders and sidestepped him into the bathroom. Dirty clothes underfoot wherever they stood. Phin refused them the use of a laundry basket.

“See what I just did?”

“What you just did?” Being thickheaded was often his best defense against Youk.

Youk shook him. “Stop that. I was demonstrating how friendly I can be.”

Sard laughed. “You hate me. I’m the golden bloody avatar, remember?”

“You’re an insufferable know-it-all clone. Just like my father. Just like Gammy. You and your sister both are just a pair of damned Gammy-clones.”

“Srese would remind you that we are twins, same DNA, womb tanks side by side.”

“Trust me, Srese is half Yon Kerr doubled, and you’re Yon Kerr.”

“What would you know?” Sard said. “Though why would you know is probably more to the point.”

“Ferd is my father. He’s the Yon Kerr clone of his generation. I’m his natural-born son.” Youk stood up straighter. Even puffed his chest out.

“They say that about you,” Sard said. “So what?”

“I wasn’t made in a test tube or decanted out of a womb tank. My mother was the desert woman Yon Kerr got in for my father to romance. He won a contest to star in a cave-wide entertainment.”

Like Srese just did. Sard swallowed.

“Ring a bell does it, that phrasing?” Youk said. “I was going to show you what happens to remaindered avatars. It’s why we should’ve gone to the Pit. Walked through a holo there into the next disused complex.” Youk punched Sard’s disbelief back into him. “You didn’t know that there are more habitats than this one, did you?”

Punch. “Too bad, I could’ve shown you my hide. I have a standalone there with all the info you would’ve been likely to want.” Youk shook his head. “There’s history there you wouldn’t believe. You’re so superior that you don’t even want to know? When Srese has so obviously won and you’re suddenly remaindered?”
Youk let Sard go as if he was suddenly poisonous. He flung himself onto the couch.

Sard bent and picked up a pair of pants. “I’m not worried,” he said. “Srese and I have an agreement.” Whichever of them was picked for the role would hoist the other twin up with them. He’d been so green with envy himself, he’d forgotten. People said they were the best CAVE actor-and-producer team ever. Not that he’d swirl that cape in front of Youk.

And anyway, Srese and he knew the habitat inside out. Spent years finding all the nooks and crannies. No unused complexes that he knew. As for the other thing, he’d have to believe she’d remember their pact.

“So what will you be doing about it?” Youk said, almost friendly.

How stupid did Youk think he was? Sard shrugged. He wished Youk would go. He went round the room picking up his clothes. “My laundry.”

“You could do some of mine.”

“You wish.”

“You know what Phin will say.”

“What will Phin say?” said Phin, coming in.

“About Sard doing just his own laundry,” Youk said.

“Phin will say that that isn’t right,” Phin said. He gripped Sard by his arm. “Wait right here. Youk!”

Youk piled the rest of the clothes from the floor, overalls, towels, the lot, on Sard’s armful. “Go at it, young fellow.” He opened the door into the corridor.

Phin put his foot on Sard’s butt and shoved him out.

The corridor walls should’ve been incandescent but stayed obdurately grey. The corridor’s laundry was centrally situated. That no one else was in there to witness his fury, was one good thing, and very convenient for his plan was the other. But would he even be able to program the damned ionizers?

He seethed as he sorted clothes and stuffed them in three separate machines. Right, yes. Probably the laundry was on a slave circuit, not yet changed. He grinned wolfishly changing the settings for Youk’s and Phin’s clothes.

His own clothes tumbled about for the regular two minutes. He took them out clean and creaseless. Folded them and packed them flat in his washing bag. The twelve-minute cycles finished. Folding those clothes would be pretty well impossible, storing them like having a set of minions falling out of the cupboard every time you opened it. He walked away.

Not back to the dorm. The Nest was where he seemed to spend every second night these days. Thank Gammy his care-mother had kept his room in her apartment. Make that, thank Gammy his care-mother had been allowed to keep her apartment in the Nest after Sard had been assigned his dorm. Yeah, ha ha.

He let himself in through the apartment’s street door. Another slave circuit. Not everyone need know Sard was sleeping at Ghulia’s again this week and he’d rather not meet Zoya, the kiddy-carer who also was Srese’s ditzy care-mother. Or even Srese and her tears and dramatics.

He dumped his clothes in his drawers and switched on the mini-monitor above the bed. Might as well watch a movie. He wouldn’t go to work at all.

The same words still on the screen. <<Srese Kerr awarded the main role in the new cave-wide games>>

Sard closed his eyes, dozed. Words still there when he opened his eyes the second time. His gut churned. There had to be worse things in life than not being picked to be the primary avatar. There had to be worse things in life … It was no good. He didn’t know anything worse right now.

He wanted to shout and scream. Not fair! Not fair! Not fair! Srese was so young still! He ground his teeth. He’d never believed they were identical, or twins. He wished now he’d let Youk be victorious. What did being remaindered mean?

“Oy,” Ghulia tweaked his toe.

He hadn’t even heard his care-mother come in? Sard sat up, feet over the side of the bed.

Wordsmithing

The excerpt below is written in a fictional, grammar-based dialect. It has one word I made up … skanzy … and some that are used in different ways than you might be accustomed to.

Watercolor painting of what one of the characters described might look like.
A typical skanzy is hard to see when you’re
trying too hard.

“A skanzy by kind and a skanzy with aptitude is what I am, though I’m quite long-winded as well. The bottom falling out of the bio-engineering market left a lot of us product scrabbling for a living. Cities wouldn’t have us, or anywhere you live. You who are not mis-made.

“Down to the rivers is where we drifted, and where we now live in permanent river-camps, despite floods and melting floes. The some of us what hold down jobs support us all. The jobs never notice there’s an unending succession of us—seen one, you say, seen us all—so when one of us is too sick to get out of bed, injured, or arthritic of a morning—someone else will turn up.

“We can’t afford to lose any of the jobs so we have a rota and a job school in every camp where we all learn all the jobs.

I’d love it if you leave a comment on how well you can understand it, and would maybe like to read more by this character?