Broken Pixels (Broken Realms, #4)

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 12Stepping though the two large industrial doors at the end of the hall, Mara was taken aback by the rough-hewn walls of the cavern through which they had entered. She had almost forgotten they were not in an office building aboveground. Holding her phone in front of her, she pointed to the left when Ping and Sam emerged through the door. Following Cam’s texted instructions, she led them past the large freight elevator they had used to descend to the repository and toward a wide rectangular opening tunneled from another rocky wall. Their footfalls echoed as they crossed the paved ground. For some reason, Mara kept thinking the sounds would give them away—as if they were sneaking out of the complex without permission.

She pointed to a small plaque labeled Railcar Platform and under her breath said, “Looks like it’s through here.”

“Why are you whispering? Cam already told you that we were free to go where we want. It’s not like we’re stealing a car or something,” Sam said. He hiked Mara’s book bag onto his shoulder and added, “Why am I still carrying your luggage?”

She ignored the question as they passed into the opening, which sloped downward. It was wide and steep enough to seem more like a ramp than a hall. Its low ceiling was cut stone, but gray tiles lined the walls, and the ground continued to be asphalt. Gravity pulled them forward, making their steps jerky as they attempted to maintain their pace and balance. After one hundred feet, the slope lessened, and the passageway ended.

They found themselves standing on a raised platform next to a track with a single silver rail running down its center. The rail emerged from a circular opening in the rock wall to the left, ran past the platform and disappeared into another tunnel on the right. It seemed to be a small subway station but without advertisements or adornments on the walls other than tube lighting mounted above the passageway through which they had entered.

“The effort it took to hollow this out and build these facilities is almost unimaginable,” Ping said.

“I don’t see what’s so remarkable. It’s just a monorail and a tunnel,” Sam said.

“Yes, however, this is but one of what must be thousands of such facilities all over this world. Remember, everyone alive is stored underground, and facilities like this must dot the globe. It’s remarkable.”

“I suppose survival is a powerful incentive to build,” Mara said.

They felt a soft vibration run through the platform. A second later, a soft hissing wind blew from the tunnel to the left, and a single car, shaped like a giant antihistamine capsule lying on its side, slid up to the platform. Its walls were translucent, and a warm light glowed from within. Two narrow doors at the leading end of the craft parted and disappeared into its walls.

“That looks different than I expected,” Mara said. She approached the side of the vehicle and walked toward the open doors. Instead of entering, she leaned over the edge of the platform and eyed the single rail. The bottom of the capsule hovered over the rail with an almost imperceptible bobbing motion. “Must be magnets of some kind, unless they’ve gotten into a kind of antigravity technology.”

Ping joined her and looked over her shoulder. “I suppose their needs would dictate a unique course of technological development from that in our realm. It could very well be some antigravity technology. Fascinating.”

“It looks like a giant radioactive suppository,” Sam said.

“That may be, but it’s our only way to get where we’re going, so come on in,” Mara said. She stepped through the doors and found four plastic seats mounted to each side of the vehicle. Ping took a seat beside her, and Sam sat across the aisle, facing her. As soon as they were seated, the doors on the capsule closed, and the capsule slid away from the platform and into the tunnel.

Mara could not tell if the tunnel wall was smooth rock or some type of concrete, but, every fifty feet or so, a band of light along its circumference would whip by, each band coming faster than the last as the capsule accelerated. After a couple minutes, the pulsing of the bands steadied into an almost-hypnotic visual rhythm. Once she became accustomed to the environment, Mara looked at her brother, and, for the first time, noticed his T-shirt and rolled her eyes.

Pointing to it, she said, “You had to wear that shirt, didn’t you?”

Sam looked at his chest. “What?” Emblazoned on his chest was an illustration of a blue robot punching a red one, whose head had popped up on an impossibly long neck. It was captioned Rock ’em, Sock ’em Robots! He looked up with a grin. “I didn’t know I would be visiting Robot World when I got dressed this morning. But it is pretty cool, huh?”

Ping chuckled and said, “It’s unlikely anyone from this realm would take offense. After all, they consider themselves human just like us.”

As she shook her head, her phone vibrated. On the screen was a new message from Cam: The tracking signal from my cranium continues to transmit from downtown. News streams are not reporting any more explosions or fires in the area, but you must be careful once you arrive. There have been reports of roving gangs of looters and vandals. You should arrive in about ten minutes.

After reading the message aloud, Mara tapped her phone’s screen several times to see if she could access anything online. A part of her hoped that the device could tap into this Sig-net in the same way it connects to the Internet at home. Nothing. The icon at the top of the screen showed no connections, and the browser screen was blank. She looked up, sighed and said, “Cam was right about one thing. We are deaf and blind with no connection to this world at all. Whatever this Sig-net is, it isn’t compatible with my phone.”

“Perhaps you should rely less on technology and more on metaphysics,” Ping said.

“Meaning what?” Mara asked.

“Remember the antique radio we worked with in the warehouse when you were first discovering your abilities?”

“The old Philco 90. Yes, I remember it. You tricked me into thinking the empty casing was a radio that needed repair.”

“And what happened during that particular exercise?”

“After I imagined I repaired it, you convinced me to use the radio to call Buddy’s cell phone. I was actually able to talk to him for a few minutes through the radio—or rather through the wooden box that once housed a radio. What’s your point?”

Sam rolled his eyes and snorted but didn’t say anything.

Ping glanced at him and smiled. Turning to Mara, he said, “If you can send a cell phone signal from an empty wooden box, don’t you think you could find a way to receive a signal from this Sig-net of theirs?”

Mara held up her phone and said, “With this?” She looked doubtful.

“Why bother with a device at all?” Ping asked.

“How would I even begin to do something like that?”

“Well, how did you do it with the radio?” Sam asked.

Mara thought back to the time in the warehouse with Ping and remembered how he had tricked her into imagining the repair of the radio, the process she would go through to assess it. After she got it to receive a couple radio stations, Ping had suggested she do something “out of the box.” He asked her to place the call to Buddy. And it had worked.

“I visualized the signal going from the radio to the cell tower and then to Buddy’s phone, in my mind—and it worked,” she said.

“Perhaps that is what you should do now. I imagine it would be advantageous not to have to wait for texted instructions from Cam, if we find ourselves in a bind after we arrive downtown,” Ping said. “Why don’t you close your eyes and attempt visualization, as you did previously?”

“Exactly what should I be visualizing? I don’t even understand the basic technology involved in this Sig-net. What am I tapping into?”

“Don’t think of it as a technical exercise. Reach out to Cam and make contact with him, simply imagine speaking with him. If you are successful, perhaps he can provide you with some pointers about how to better integrate with the system.”

“I suppose it couldn’t hurt to try,” she said.

She closed her eyes and lowered her head. In her mind’s eye, she brought up an image of Cam. At first it was just his head and face—as he was most of the time she knew him. Then came the holographic image of his entire body, as it appeared at the repository about an hour ago. Now he stood in darkness, his expression blank, looking past where Mara imagined herself standing. She didn’t get the impression that he was ignoring her but looking through her, as if she were invisible. He couldn’t see her.

She called out to him, and he c****d his head. A look of confusion crossed his face. He slowly turned, scanning with both ears and eyes, like people do when they think they heard something but aren’t sure.

“Cam, I’m right here. Can you see me?” Mara said.

He continued to look through her, but he asked uncertainly, “Mara? Is that really you?”

“Yes! I’m right here in front of you. Can you see me?”

Cam blinked several times and shook his head. His gaze locked onto her. “How are you doing this?”

“Have I tapped into the Sig-net the way you do?” she asked.

“You’re reaching me via the Sig-net, but you are doing it wrong. Why are we standing in this dark room, and why am I getting visual and audio representations of you—and me for that matter?” he asked.

“I’m visualizing talking to you. This is how I imagine it would be to communicate with you, how it would be to use the Sig-net.”

“This is not how it works at all. Unlike the Internet in your realm, Sig-net is much more intuitive. It’s more analogous to a psychic connection than a digital one. Things are thought-driven—and we don’t send pictures of ourselves to each other all the time, certainly not live streaming ones like this. I’m uncertain exactly how you are accomplishing this.”

“Don’t worry about it. Show me how you used it to do things, like arrange transportation and access the news streams.”

“I just think it, and it happens. It’s like when you want to open a bottle of ketchup. You don’t have to have a live visual concept of it running in your brain to get your hand to twist the cap. You just do it.”

“So I just think it.” Mara looked upward, as if considering a perplexing problem. In the air above their heads appeared a list of glowing text, scrolling downward like a browser page. “Like that? That’s the news stream?”

Cam looked up and shook his head. “No, that’s a webpage. Don’t read the news, experience it.” He reached up and touched one of the items in the list.

The surrounding blackness was gone, and they now stood in the center of a city street, smoke rolling over them. Shattering glass startled them. They jumped, turned around and saw two men crawling into a jewelry store through its now-broken window.

“Where are we?” Mara asked.

Cam looked toward the street corner and said, “Market Street, downtown. Not far from where you are headed in the railcar. Those two men stole half a million dollars in jewels a little over an hour ago. They’ve been identified and warrants have been issued for their arrest.”

“Are we actually here?” Mara slowly circled around. She stood on the white dashed line in the middle of the street.

Cam shook his head. “What you might call virtual reality. People rarely access information this way, but, if you want to see something firsthand, this is how you do it.”

“How do you know what’s happening? How do you know about the two men and their crime?” she asked.

“New knowledge is transferred directly to our cores with the news stream. Think about what you are seeing. What do you know about it?” Cam asked.

Mara c****d her head and pondered it. “The warrant for the men is a mental health warrant, not a criminal one. They are believed to be under the influence of something called Euphoria. Euphoria?”

“An illicit substance of some kind? I’m not sure from the report.”

“A drug? A drug that makes people rob jewelry stores?” Mara asked.

“Don’t get wrapped up in the details of this particular piece of news. The point is that you access information from Sig-net by thought. If you want to communicate with someone or something, think it. You don’t have to visualize it. Others may find it alarming and shut you out. Just think of it as a psychic connection, if that makes it easier for you.”

“Whatever works. So how do I get out of here?” Mara asked.

“Think about it,” Cam said.

A moment later Mara found herself staring at her brother, who looked exasperated.

“What?” she asked. “What’s wrong with you?”

“We arrived like ten minutes ago, and we’ve been sitting here waiting for you to come out of your trance,” he said.

Ping patted Sam’s arm and asked Mara, “Were you successful in making contact with Cam?”

“Yes, I didn’t realize that I would be required to develop telepathy to interact with a bunch of robots.”

Ping looked taken aback. “I beg your pardon?”

Just then something occurred to her. It was almost like she had an idea, a sudden insight into something. She wrinkled her brows.

“Are you all right?” Ping asked.

She thumped the side of her head with the ball of her hand, as if getting water out of her ears. “I think Cam just sent a message into my head. Weird. He says something just exploded at the dispensary, and his head is being moved. We’ve got to get going.”

Mara stood up and led them from the railcar onto the platform of the tiny subterranean station. It looked exactly like the one where their journey had begun. She pointed toward the inclining tunnel ahead and said, “Cam says this is the station for the downtown repository and there’s an elevator through here.”