The Silence Read online

  It’s hopeless. Game over. I should just take Jenny’s advice and stop struggling. In despair, I remember the simulation she showed me, the virtual world of green hills and meadows. I wish I could go back to that imaginary landscape. I wish I could see it one more time.

  I lose control of the surge, which is still whirling through my circuits. And a millisecond later, it explodes.

  • • •

  The surge doesn’t blow up my Quarter-bot. Instead, it clears all the jumbled data from my circuits and re-creates Jenny’s simulation.

  I’m in the virtual meadow again, surrounded by green hills. My avatar in the simulation is a boy in a wheelchair, a half-paralyzed seventeen-year-old with shriveled limbs and an emaciated face. That’s how I looked during my final months in my human body, when I was dying from muscular dystrophy. Jenny’s avatar stands twenty feet away. She’s still gorgeous in her red dress, but she’s not smiling anymore. She’s shaking her head and studying me.

  Well, well. Looks like you’re progressing faster than I thought. You don’t understand your new powers yet, but you’re starting to get a handle on them.

  She’s giving me more credit than I deserve. I didn’t reboot the simulation. The surge did it. It reorganized my Quarter-bot’s circuits and pushed Jenny’s software away from mine and returned both of us to the virtual world. It feels almost magical, as if the surge is a genie who granted my last wish. I know that sounds ridiculous, but maybe that’s how it works.

  It won’t do you any good, though. You’re still no match for me. Watch this.

  The girl in the red dress comes toward my wheelchair, her bare feet flattening the grass. As she takes her first step, she seems to grow a couple of inches taller. She grows a few more inches with her second and third steps, her avatar expanding steadily. Jenny is enlarging her image, like someone manipulating a picture with Photoshop software. With her fourth step, her growth accelerates, and the girl in the red dress suddenly looms over the meadow.

  Her bare feet are as big as station wagons, and her legs rise above them like giant redwoods. Her body blocks the sun, casting a shadow across the whole valley, and her dress flaps like a heavy tarp in the breeze. I tilt my head backward so I can see her face, which is at least ten feet across and two hundred feet above the ground. And yet she’s still beautiful. She looks down at me and grins in triumph. Her hair hangs in black curtains along both sides of her face.

  You’re not the only one with powers. Thanks to Sigma, I have some pretty good programming skills. Right now, for instance, I can turn this simulation into a battlefield. I can disable your software by destroying your avatar. And then I can rewrite your program.

  Her voice is unbearably loud. Although the sound is simulated, it feels as real as thunder. My avatar squirms in the wheelchair, pounded by the sonic vibrations. Jenny chuckles when she sees this, and her laughter is even worse than her words. It echoes against the virtual hills, making my circuits tremble.

  Sorry for laughing at you. You just look so pathetic. Let’s finish this right now, okay?

  The monstrous girl lifts her right foot. It hovers overhead, directly above my wheelchair. Then it descends, gathering speed as Jenny aims her heel at me.

  But in a virtual world, time and space are elastic. As my panic rises, the plummeting foot seems to slow. At the same time, another surge starts to build in my circuits. Fed by my fear, it rockets through my wires, accelerating to nearly the speed of light. It bursts into the simulation and knocks my avatar out of the wheelchair just as Jenny’s foot comes crashing down.

  The half-paralyzed Adam Armstrong tumbles across the grass. By the time he comes to rest, though, he’s no longer helpless. The boy’s arms and legs grow straight and strong, and his torso fills out until it’s as muscular as a football player’s. When he rises to his feet, he’s wearing a football helmet and a green-and-silver jersey with the name ARMSTRONG written across his broad shoulders.

  This is an avatar I created for myself before I became a Pioneer. Back in those days, I played virtual-reality games on my computer when I wanted to forget about my illness, and sometimes I fantasized that I was a normal, healthy teenager, a star quarterback for my high school football team. This fantasy stayed with me after I was transformed into software, and when I got the chance to design my own Pioneer robot, I made it tough and fast like a quarterback and called it my Quarter-bot. And now, in my moment of need, my circuits have retrieved this avatar from my memory files and turned it into something even fiercer.

  While Jenny’s avatar stares in disbelief, the quarterback doubles in size, then doubles again. In no time at all, I’m as big as her, more than two hundred feet tall. The virtual hills look like low, green mounds, none of them higher than my knees. Beyond the hilltops I can see the boundary of the simulated landscape, just a couple of miles away. Because this virtual-reality program simulates only a few square miles, there’s nothing beyond the boundary—no space, no time, no software. The edge of the simulation looks like a thin black ribbon above the horizon, encircling the whole virtual world. And as I stare at this ribbon of nothingness, I know what I need to do. If I can push Jenny’s avatar past the boundary, she’ll disappear from the simulation. She’ll have to retreat from my circuits, and then I can regain control of my Quarter-bot.

  Keeping my eyes on her, I go into a three-point stance. I bend forward at the waist and prop my left hand on the ground, like a football player ready to rush across the line of scrimmage. Jenny shakes her head again, her lips curled in an arrogant frown.

  You don’t give up, do you? It’s a little annoying.

  Jenny, it’s time for you to get off the field.

  Then I spring at her.

  The simulation almost crashes when our avatars collide. The quarterback’s shoulder slams into the giant girl’s stomach, and it’s like hitting a solid steel door. In my Quarter-bot’s circuits, where the real battle is taking place, my software clashes with Jenny’s, billions of signals trying to overwrite and override one another. The computational chaos batters the simulation, making the virtual ground shudder under my quarterback’s feet. At the same time, the wind rises to hurricane strength, and jagged cracks appear in the bright-blue sky.

  It’s hard to keep my balance on the rumbling meadow, but I lean my full weight against Jenny, pressing my shoulder into her avatar’s midsection and circling my arms around her waist. At first she stands her ground and swings her enormous fists at me, pounding my football helmet and jarring my skull. But after a couple of milliseconds she takes a step backward. I keep up the pressure, pushing her with all my might, and she backs up again. Then she wriggles out of my grasp and takes ten steps backward, retreating over one of the low, green mounds. She’s five hundred yards closer to the edge of the simulation.

  I race after her, leaping over the virtual hill and landing in another meadow with a seismic thump. I go into a two-point stance this time, bending my knees and raising my arms, ready to tackle Jenny’s avatar no matter which way she runs. She braces herself, narrowing her eyes at me, her red dress whipping violently in the wind. The arrogant expression on her simulated face is gone, replaced by a look of grim determination.

  You have no idea who you’re dealing with. No idea whatsoever.

  We don’t have to fight, Jenny. We can talk instead. Just transfer yourself back to your Jet-bot, all right? Then we can—

  I’m going to win this fight, and you know why? Because I’ve suffered more. Sigma already did the worst possible thing to me. Nothing can hurt me now.

  Okay, calm down for a second. Just—

  You hear me? NOTHING!

  The word roars out of her mouth and booms across the landscape, and a nanosecond later the simulation disintegrates. The virtual world breaks up into a hundred trillion pieces, tiny green and blue pixels that flow in vast waves across my circuits. It’s a flood of random data, released from the simulat
ion’s orderly algorithms and cascading so intensely through my wires that I feel like I’m choking. But after another billionth of a second, the waves of pixels arrange themselves in new patterns. Colored shapes emerge from the chaos—tall gray rectangles, black crisscrossing lines—and after a third nanosecond I recognize the new simulated landscape.

  It’s a city. The crisscrossing lines are streets; the tall gray rectangles are skyscrapers. First the software draws the outlines of the city blocks and buildings, and then it fills in the blank spaces, adding windows and spires to the skyscrapers and crowding the streets with cars and trucks and buses. The virtual city takes shape around Jenny, who’s leaning against a slender, tapered building, her huge shoulders propped against the tower’s twentieth floor, her bare feet stopping traffic in the intersection below. My avatar stands a block away from her, still crouched in a two-point stance, although now I’m not sure if I can get close enough to tackle her. My quarterback’s shoulders are wider than the street.

  One thing that hasn’t changed is the determination on Jenny’s face. Glaring at me, she steps behind the skyscraper, which is more than twice her height, and gives the building a powerful shove. The structure groans on its foundation, tilting away from her avatar. Then it tips over and falls in my direction, its spire aimed at my head.

  I jump out of the way as the skyscraper crashes to the street. The building shatters on impact, instantly turning into a pile of twisted steel and rubble. A thick cloud of dust rises from the debris, and the simulation reproduces the awful noises of disaster—a wailing mix of car horns and sirens and screams. Looking down, I see virtual citizens running away from the scene, flailing their simulated arms. I also see corpses in the rubble. Although I know this catastrophe is strictly imaginary, I still feel the shock and horror. My quarterback sways woozily on his cleats.

  That’s the moment Jenny chooses for her attack. Her avatar makes a supernatural leap, jumping far higher than the laws of physics would allow, vaulting over the skyscrapers. As the giant girl reaches the top of her arc, her dress changes color, shifting from red to orange. The folds in the fabric turn into irregular black stripes, and her face grows wider and rounder. Her eyes drift apart, and her nose elongates into a snout. Whiskers sprout from her cheeks, claws extend from her fingers, and a long furred tail uncurls from her rump. By the time she pounces on my quarterback she’s a gigantic Bengal tiger, with a body as long as a football field and teeth as big as goalposts.

  The beast slams into me and knocks me onto my back. It pins my torso to the ground with one of its front paws and swats my football helmet with the other, ripping it off my head. My quarterback is defenseless. The tiger’s snout is so close I can smell its rotten breath.

  Want to hear something funny, Adam? I missed you. I thought about you all the time when I was in Sigma’s cage.

  It isn’t funny. It’s probably the least funny thing I’ve ever heard.

  Well, it amused Sigma. The AI took a lot away from me, but it let me keep the feelings I had for you. Some of them, at least.

  The tiger’s tongue lolls between its sharp, curving teeth. It’s terrifying, but also hideously sad. I don’t know if I should curse Jenny or console her.

  If you really felt like that, you’d let me go. You wouldn’t change my software or force me to help you.

  The tiger shakes its huge head.

  This has to be done. When it’s all over, you’ll see I was right. I’m making the right choice for all of us.

  The beast opens its mouth wide, as if it’s yawning. Then it sinks its teeth into my neck.

  My circuits tighten as the pain rushes through me. Virtual blood spurts from my avatar’s arteries and splashes on the tiger’s snout. But the blood isn’t red—it’s a brilliant, glowing gold, so bright that it illuminates the whole simulated city. Thousands of gallons of golden blood flow out of me like a fountain and soak the fur of Jenny’s tiger.

  The beast recoils, leaping away from my avatar and scrambling over the pile of rubble on the street. My blood is molten, white-hot. It burns the tiger’s fur, chars its skin, and melts its flesh. The animal howls in agony. The golden liquid isn’t really blood. It’s another surge rushing through my circuits to attack Jenny’s software.

  The surge melts my quarterback too. I assume a new shape, an avatar of fire. My body combusts—my arms and legs turn into columns of flame, and my head transforms into a blazing torch. When I stand, I ignite the buildings and streets around me. Jenny’s blackened tiger cowers and howls again. Then it turns tail and flees across the burning city.

  She retreats toward the boundary of the simulation. I hurry after her, my new avatar taking immense strides and spreading the inferno. The fire jumps from building to building, sweeping across the city. Plumes of smoke rise into the simulated sky and blot out the virtual sun. The ground fractures under my scalding feet, and rivers of lava pour out of the cracks. The virtual world becomes an underworld, a simulated Hades.

  I didn’t intend to do this. Once again, the surge did it for me. I’ve become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

  I find Jenny near the simulation’s edge, the ribbon of nothingness that surrounds the virtual-reality program. Up close, the boundary appears as an enormous black wall. Jenny’s avatar lies on the sizzling ground at the base of the wall, the giant tiger reduced to a shapeless heap of ashes. Sprawled on top of the heap is a small human figure, a teenage girl of normal size, dressed in sneakers and jeans and a wool sweater. The girl is a cancer victim, thin and sickly and bald. This is what Jenny looked like before she became a Pioneer.

  I stride toward the ash heap. Jenny raises her head and stares at my new avatar, the fiery giant towering over her. She looks so tiny and miserable in her sooty clothes. But her ash-smeared face is still defiant. She frowns and furrows her brow, her bare scalp tensing.

  I hate you so much now. You know why?

  Jenny, I—

  Because you forgot about me. As soon as you thought I was dead, you put all your memories of me into long-term storage. You buried them.

  I shake my avatar’s torch-like head.

  You know that’s not true. You can see my memory files. I thought about you every—

  Yeah, maybe you felt guilty sometimes. But whenever those feelings popped up, you pushed them away. You couldn’t stand thinking about me.

  I’m telling you, that’s not—

  And you never went to see my parents to tell them what happened. How I died. My last moments. Didn’t you owe me at least that? I thought you were my friend.

  My wires cringe in shame. The thought of visiting Jenny’s parents had never even occurred to me.

  No, after I died, you went on with your Pioneering life. Hanging out with Marshall and Zia. Having long, emotional talks with Shannon and DeShawn. And meanwhile Sigma was dissecting my mind. Cutting out the best part of me.

  Suddenly I see what Jenny is trying to do. She thinks she can get me to lower my guard. She’s trying to make me feel sorry for her and halt my attack long enough for her to recover her strength. Then she’ll use my sympathy to defeat me.

  I won’t fall for it. I’m going to pick up Jenny’s avatar and hurl her out of the virtual world. I’m going to force her mind out of my Quarter-bot’s circuits and send her data back to the electronics in her Jet-bot.

  I stretch one of my flaming arms downward and wrap my golden fingers around her. Jenny’s sweater catches fire at my touch, but she doesn’t seem to feel any pain. She struggles to free herself, twisting inside my grip.

  You want to see what the AI did to me? You want to look at the scar?

  She claws at her burning sweater, which rips apart in her hands. Then she tears off the charred shirt underneath.

  Look at it, Adam! Sigma cut out my heart!

  There’s a hole in the center of Jenny’s chest. It’s about five inches wide, perfectly round and utterly b
lack. It’s blacker than the wall at the edge of the simulation. It’s a nothingness so cold and complete that I can’t stop myself from staring at it. It freezes my avatar and paralyzes my mind.

  The hole widens, its black rim eating into Jenny’s flesh. In less than a millionth of a second, it extends across her chest, cutting her body in two. But it doesn’t stop there. The black hole inflates like a balloon and engulfs Jenny’s neck and head and torso. Then it starts to devour my fiery hand.

  I try to pull my hand away from it, but I can’t move. All I can do is watch the void grow larger, gobbling the last pieces of Jenny and the flames at the end of my arm. It’s not painful in the ordinary sense—it’s much, much worse. I feel a horrible chill as the hole eats away at my avatar. In my electronics, a mind-numbing terror starts to circulate. It’s not a fear of death. Death seems trivial now, laughably unimportant. This is fear of annihilation, a prophecy of the end of the universe.

  The black hole keeps expanding. It douses my flames as it moves up my arm, consuming everything around it. I stare at the nothingness, and my avatar shudders and fades. I become a cinder at the edge of the void, a dead flake of ash. The terror overwhelms me. I can’t see anything else.

  Oh God! What’s happening?

  It’s what I told you. The big secret behind everything. I call it the Silence.

  Jenny’s voice seeps out of the hole. Her words stir the nothingness, making it roil and overflow. Black waves crash into my circuits and divide into billions of ice-cold torrents. They sluice into my wires, drowning my thoughts, annihilating everything they touch. And each river of darkness seems to have its own face, with knife-sharp teeth and obsidian eyes. They’re tearing my mind apart. They’re eating my soul.

  Those are the Sentinels. They guard the Silence. They’re coming after you, Adam.

  She’s right. The nothingness has a trillion guardians. They’re flooding my Quarter-bot, coursing through my wires. It’s a new kind of surge, and now I’m the target.