Prelude:

A scavenger's life is not an easy one. Miguel had been separated from his family for days now, his stock of food bars nearly gone. He scrambled ahead through the dry brush of the desolation, his hands and knees scraped and torn, scabbed and oozing from encounters with rock and thorn too numerous to count. He thought about turning back.

Back to what though? His brother, his mother were all that were left of the group that had set forth from their little town. They were older, stronger, and surely headed to the same place he was. Paradise.

It was only a legend, a myth left behind by those who came before, or, as he thought it through, those who left before. Surely they had found it, for not one of them returned. It had been another time of struggles, of starvation and violence, just like what he had left behind, and more than half of their small settlement had left, seeking a better life, his great-grandfather among them.

No, he thought, not a better life. A perfect life.

Miguel could hardly wait. There was something amazing, just over the horizon, he could feel it.

A howl echoed in the distance, cast around the scrubby hills and ravines, reminding him that he needed to be more concerned with what was behind him than fantasies of what lay ahead. It was joined by another, and then another. The wild dogs of the wastes that had separated him from his family had picked up his trail again, he feared. Most of his injuries had been gained during his first, frantic flight from their little camp, and since then, he had felt safe enough to rest several times, only to be forced into motion once again by the distant calls of the pack.

It was difficult to tell how close they were but his body reacted as if they were on his heels. Heart pounding, he picked up his pace, moving recklessly over loose rock in the dying light. He had escaped them before, and he would do it again. If only he had found water during the long day of travel, he would be in better condition, but his swollen tongue and cracked lips didn’t stop him from putting one foot in front of the other.

What did stop him was a steep bank, almost a cliff, where the walls of the ravine he was following had collapsed. He attempted to climb, grabbing at protrusions he could barely see now, and fell backward in a shower of gravel and fist-sized stones. He ignored the new pains in his hip and elbow in favor of a desperate rolling crab walk as still larger boulders began to tumble around him.

By the time it was over, he stood back some distance, coughing in the cloud of dust and patting himself down to reassure himself that his body was in one piece. Cold sweat trickled down his sides and carved channels on his encrusted face.

He picked up a chunk of rock and headed back the way he had come. Perhaps there was still time to backtrack before the dogs caught up to him. He ran, wagering time against safety, and lost when his foot caught on something and his thin body plunged into hardscrabble and thorns, scraping skin on grit and knocking his wind away. He lay there for a moment, and then another, trying to find the energy that had just fueled him.

When he did pull himself to one knee, he saw it, a single green eye reflecting what light there was, surrounded by a shaggy form that blended with the twilight.

He froze, realizing that he had dropped his rock when he fell. As best he could tell, the dog was a big one, probably weighing as much as he did. It stared at him, motionless, silent. Seconds passed. His scrapes burned and his legs quivered and he forced his breath shallow despite his spinning head, knowing that any movement on his part could trigger the last moments of his life.

The painful standoff stretched and he began to wonder if something was wrong with the animal, if it had the foaming disease or something similar eating away at its brain. It wasn’t growling or snuffling. Its body was as still as he hoped his was. There was only that one eye that let him know he wasn’t imagining terrors in the night. He wondered where the others were.

Then he heard it. Footsteps. A person was walking towards them. He wanted to warn them away, but his throat was closed, his mouth too dry to move. And though he knew it was wrong, some part of him hoped that, just perhaps, whoever was approaching might draw away the dog’s attention enough for him to escape.

“Boy,” came a voice. It sounded like he imagined his own might if he were forced to talk right then, if a bit lower, dry and raspy. The word was more identification than address, a comment on his existence. He remained silent, afraid that any response would break the stillness that had preserved him, then felt a wave of relief as the dog backed away, still utterly silent, its eye never leaving him.

In its place came a man. “Don’t be afraid,” the man said. There was more command than comfort in his voice. Miguel tried to make out his features, but there was only an outline against the dull red horizon, an outline soon joined by the dog and… others?

“Boy,” the man said again. “Would you like to become part of something bigger than yourself?”

Miguel’s heart couldn’t decide if it was going to leap from his chest from fear or excitement. Was this it? Would this man take him to the paradise he sought? What about his family?

In the end, he could only nod, a motion he had to repeat when the first attempt emerged as no more than a twitch.

“Very well,” said the man. He turned and began to walk away. Miguel didn’t know what to do, so he called out, his voice every bit as weak and raspy as he had feared.

“Who are you?”

The man stopped. “That is… a good question,” he said. With his back turned, Miguel could barely make out the words. “You may call me… Teacher.”

Chapter 1: Present

The information wars marked the end of the flowering of human renaissance. The very tools that enabled us to create new worlds undermined the reality of our own, as if reality were itself a limited resource, diluting as it flowed into newly opened spaces, an osmotic flow from greater to lesser concentration.

- Henry Choi, private writings

“Well of course there are gaps, my dear,” Marcus said. “Gaps and then some. There are still those who refuse to believe anything on there on general principal.”

It was an unsettling revelation, to say the least, and Lilijoy felt almost as if the solid ground beneath her was moving, as if she had been at sea for her entire life and only just realized.

“But it’s been so useful!” she exclaimed. “It’s… everything I… know?”

Marcus raised his cup and an eyebrow. “Well,” he ventured, “I didn’t say they were right. Truthfully, the people most skeptical of the internet archive tend to be none too bright, or rather, just smart enough to mistake a grain of truth for a beach. Most of what is on there was added well before the disinformation age.”

Lilijoy just sat back shaking her head. “Am I the only one who didn’t know this?”

With a faint smile, Marcus shrugged. “Of course not, but among those privileged enough to grow up with some kind of education, it’s a fact of life that no longer bears mentioning. Water is wet, the sky is brown, and you can’t trust the archive.”

Lilijoy had come to love the time she spent with the former alchemist. The last few weeks had been a time of deep introspection for her, brought on by her brush with… well, not death, exactly. A threshold of some kind. A selvage, a brush with an unraveling of all she held dear. It had forced her to confront a question she suspected was far beyond her small experience as a thinking being.

Should she remain human?

It was the kind of question that contained its own answer, a quintessentially human question, informed by the brief memories of the portion of her psyche that had transcended. To ask the question meant she wasn’t ready, and she had come to the realization that she barely understood what she was asking.

It had been Attaboy who had helped her the most in the days following. The traumatic events in the slums of Guayaquil had changed him in ways that were still unfolding. He had found a center, a new stability in the way he moved through the world that turned him from a well-meaning, well-loved irritation and distraction to a source of support. How much of his new maturity came from Atticus she didn’t know. In fact, she wasn’t sure there was a distinction any more.

She turned her thoughts back to the conversation. Staying in the moment and giving her full attention to one thing at a time had been one of her projects lately, as she realized that just because she could split her mind and focus six different ways didn’t mean that she should. She wasn’t very good at it. But Attaboy had made the point to her that if meaning was the true center of reality, ensuring that experiences were fully savored and that she was fully present in the moment might be a good way to go. It was very much a work in progress.

“So, tell me more about the disinformation age,” she said.

Marcus gave a brief chuckle. “It started when our ability to create disinformation outweighed our ability to perceive truth. Some would say that has always been the case, but among what passes for historians these days, we’ve agreed, disagreeably, I might add, that it was sometime in the first few decades of the twenty first century. From that point forward, the content and quality of the internet archive drops precipitously.”

Lilijoy remembered when she had been trying to research Henry and Gabrielle Choi. I guess that explains why I could barely find anything.

“It seems that most of the disputed content was filtered out somehow during the archiving process. No one knows if it was Guardian or some other group from before the Rise responsible for the archive’s modern form,” Marcus continued. Lilijoy always enjoyed turning him loose on a topic and listening to him talk. She had begun visiting him regularly out of a desire to forge stronger bonds with the people who were important to her, but she suspected he got almost as much out of their visits as she did.

It must be lonely at times, she thought, surrounded by people who already know what you do. I wish I could get him to teach at the Academy, or maybe somewhere like it. Somewhere people from all backgrounds could access.

She filed that idea away among other improbabilities, and contemplated the implications of what he was telling her. In a sense, the world had ended much sooner than she had realized, fracturing and dissolving into a thousand silos of incompatible fact as billions of humans across the Earth realized that they could only truly trust the evidence of their immediate senses.

This explained the many, often incompatible geoengineering attempts, the breakdown of public science and the horrific political fractures that toppled nation after nation. Of course, as she thought about it, she couldn’t verify that any of that had happened any more than those who had been alive at the time. Maybe Australia was just fine.

Marcus only knew what those who had been alive at the time told him, as he had been born after the Rise of Guardian. He told her of entire government agencies devoted to churning out propaganda indistinguishable from reality and similar agencies devoted to countering it. He spoke of an encryption arms race as quantum computing became more and more accessible. Armies were defeated, nations invaded and genocides perpetrated. Or were they?

Through it all, there were those who fought valiantly against the tsunami of fakery and fabrication, generating new methods and protocols to hold back the tide undermining consensus reality. Perhaps the internet archive was one of those efforts, perhaps not, but it did nothing to change the fact that entire generations grew up distrusting everything they couldn’t touch and passed that wisdom on at a nearly genetic level. She made a note to ask Attaboy about it soon. Atticus was born in 2056, and the memories Attaboy had inherited from him went up to 2075. Surely he would have insights.

What all of this meant for her personally was more difficult to understand. Her connection to the archive was profound; vast sections of it were cached within her, forming something close to a parallel long-term memory. It had shaped her thinking, her very being in a way. Now what was she to think?

She could console herself a bit in knowing that the vast majority of it was sound. Her own experiences had verified the data she drew upon time and time again. The gaps and holes in the archive had never been a secret either, so in the end she decided nothing had really changed. Every human mind contained errors, gaps and falsehoods; hers just had more, hopefully in reasonable proportion to truth.

All too soon, her time in Marcus’ English garden came to a close and she returned to the camp they had set up in a reasonably hospitable section of terrain near the headwaters of the Amazon River. As much as she had wanted to begin the expedition to Taos immediately, it was clear to all that they needed time to prepare. In theory, the airship could make the trip in a matter of days, but everyone in their little group understood that theory was a terrible basis for a journey of thousands of kilometers over hostile territory, water and ice.

Never mind that they had no idea what would await them at the other end. Glaciers didn’t form overnight, but it was entirely possible that over a hundred years of accumulated snowfall was doing a pretty good glacier impression in what had been the southwestern United States. They needed to prepare for weeks of survival in subzero temperatures, prepare for hostile interception by a variety of airships, drones, and other aircraft, and most of all, prepare for the unknown.

It seemed reasonable to wait until Lilijoy was completely healed, until Attaboy had made more progress with his skin bugs, and until Maria had a good enough grasp on her system to regulate her metabolism for the cold and generally take care of herself. What they were going to do about Mo, she wasn’t sure. His ability to forewarn them of danger could be valuable, though lately his gods had been relatively quiet, but even if the trip went smoothly, the cold would pose a huge threat to his already marginal health.

Since when have I started worrying about Mo’s health? she wondered.

Shrugging that aside, she consulted her Tao System status. Her cranium and rib cage were coming along nicely, as far as Stage Six went. She was doing her best to allow for flexibility and for her body’s continuing growth, but she felt that her most vital areas were well protected, unless another Rank Ten popped by to hack at her with a sword with an adaptive monomolecular edge. Pairing an instrument of such surpassing sharpness with superhuman strength seemed like massive overkill to her, and she could only imagine what a battle between two warriors of that level might look like. In some ways, she thought it might be as if they were hardly augmented at all, their technological advantages canceling out, a return to a simpler time where all that mattered was skill and the quality of one’s weapon.

She had a few projects running on the side to protect herself in a future encounter, but if she never had to face someone like that again, she wouldn’t be disappointed.

At least one good thing had come from their battle with the still unnamed member of the Walden Clan who had assaulted them. Attaboy had, somehow, had the presence of mind to retrieve a grisly trophy from the field of battle, probably in the process of taking the man’s sword. Though the evil bugs had dissolved much of the man’s head and upper torso by the time they broke down, his limbs remained intact, and Attaboy had removed a single finger.

Now, she had samples of nearly all the bugs she would need to remodel her entire body, to make her circulatory system robust and impenetrable, to replace her tendons, ligaments and muscles with flexible polymer chains a hundred times more powerful than the original biology. She had already started on her veins and arteries, experimenting with the fine, fibrous network of channels which put a greater premium on pressure and velocity than volume, almost like switching out traditional plumbing for pneumatic tubes which sent packets of nanomachines from place to place as needed.

The muscles would have to wait, for not only did she need to complete the process of reinforcing her skeletal structure to bear the vastly increased force of stronger muscles, she would also need to have a flawless circulatory system to feed them the energy they would need to function. She felt that she could adapt her existing wireless nervous system as she went, though she was still a bit worried about EMPs or other outside interference.

Maybe I could use fiber optics? Oh, well, another problem for future Lilijoy.

Present Lilijoy had enough on her plate, especially now that she was trying to remain present for all her activities. Taking time to fully immerse herself in cultivation rather than relegating it to a sub-system within her mind was slowing her down considerably, but it was time well spent, a way to retain her connection to her own growth and essential humanity. She hadn’t realized how much stress and self-alienation was occurring by changing herself so rapidly, not until she was forced to slow down and really consider the implications. What was the point of growing so fast, if the person at the end of the process was no longer recognizable to themselves? It was a form of subtle self destruction, she had decided, and continuity was a vital component to existence, only noticeable when it was lacking, like air or water.

Similarly, she was limiting herself to one world at a time whenever possible, though not strictly. Being in two places at once was useful at times, but it had also set her apart from her friends and companions in subtle and not so subtle ways. She wasn’t sure how much was her imagination, but since she had begun this experiment in self-nerfing she felt less alien, less alienated really, with both her Inside and Outside friends. The temptation to split her awareness was always there though, whenever she felt bored or frustrated in either world, but she had come to realize, through studying the whirling multidimensional representation of her essential self that comprised her soul vortex, that those emotions were a form of friction, resistance with which she could train her will. If she avoided them, she would be like someone ruined by wealth, slothful and indolent, spoiled by their own resources and weaker for it.

She opened her eyes to the week light filtering through the window panels of her tent. They had completed several provisioning runs to a variety of communities of sufficient size to have the kinds of supplies they needed. They kept a low profile, taking the airship most of the way at a low altitude, then completing the last few miles on foot. Lately, they had taken to splitting up, leaving some behind at the camp while the rest ventured in search of cold weather gear and anything else they thought might come in handy. This time, Lilijoy and Attaboy had stayed behind.

The tents had been a real find, made from a material, multiple materials really, that captured many types of ambient energy and turned it back into heat or light as required. They had been living in them for almost a week now, thankful they no longer needed to choose between the confines of the airship cabin and the rudimentary shelters they had created when they first chose their camp site.

Now, they only needed appropriate clothing. The area they were in could get quite cold, but nothing like what they expected to face in the far north, and they had been forced to place a custom order.

she sent to Nykka.

Nykka seemed the least affected by their collective near-death experience. Whatever armor she had built around herself growing up in Sinaloa had served her well, or perhaps it was simply another trauma added to a huge pile, a stone dropped onto a mountain. Lilijoy had been working closely with her to learn as much as she could about the Suenos System, which degraded very rapidly by design, leaving Nykka dependent on a regular supply. Fortunately, making enough to sustain her was not a huge burden.

Unfortunately, they had yet to find a way to modify the nanomachines so that they wouldn’t break down after three months or so. The little critters were designed with obsolescence in mind at a mechanical-molecular level, and neither of them had a deep enough understanding of the chemistry involved to make them more robust. According to Nykka, the entire Sinaloa Clan and its associates were in a similar predicament, though different versions of the system had different rates of decay, and the only person who held the secret was Doctor Quimea.

It was a diabolic method of social control, an entire society of addicts dependent on one person for their fix. Lilijoy couldn’t imagine the suffering that would unfold if something were to happen to Quimea. She felt quite sure that he hadn’t made arrangements to reveal the secret in the event of his untimely death. She wondered if the other clans knew, if they had plans to assassinate him and take out Sinaloa in one fell swoop.

They must be worried about Guardian’s reaction, she decided. Or maybe there are other factors I don’t know about. Quimea has had decades to strengthen his position; he probably has all kinds of mutually assured destruction strategies in place.

She wondered if what had happened to Marcus’ Caribe Clan wasn’t some kind of message or demonstration to the other clans. Quimea’s role in that was unclear, though Marcus held that his manipulations were the driving force behind the experiments that had prompted Guardian to annihilate the clan.

Thirty minutes later she stood on a small hill overlooking a plain of hardy scrub, watching the airship approach. There was no particular suspense in the moment, as she had confirmed that Magpie and Nykka had picked up their order without any trouble, and that Mo and Maria had enjoyed a day on the town. With that, the last of the supply runs was done. There was nothing stopping them from leaving tomorrow, if they wanted.

Nothing except Anda. She hadn’t seen the Maasai warrior in person since the attack, though they spent time together in virtual spaces and the Inside once in a while. He had spent the past weeks recovering from his injuries and repairing his relationship with Renaissance. She felt a bit like he also wanted a break from her, or at least the stress that seemed to follow her around like a cloud, and was taking advantage of the fact that there were others to carry the load. If that was the case, she could hardly blame him. He had his own life, and traveling back and forth across the continent with a thirteen-year-old had to get tiresome.

She just really wanted him to come to Taos with them. Ostensibly, this was because she hoped to find safer ways for him, and the others, to develop their systems, but if she was honest, it was also because she wouldn’t feel nearly as secure without him around. She could tinker with her emotions all she wanted, but Anda had been a constant for her since the beginning and it was hard to imagine the epic journey to come without him by her side. Somehow, all her escapades on the Inside didn’t count, whether it was because she was still partly Outside for many, or just because she had a bias toward her original reality, she couldn’t say.

The airship came to a stop, as much as an airship does when it isn’t tied down, waggling ever so slightly in a battle between the cold breeze flowing off the highlands and automated steering as it held position with the cabin a few feet from the ground. It had no fans as such, but the same kind of sonic wave-guide system some of the hovercars used. She could feel the dull pulse of the waves it created in her bones, some kind of infrasonic pseudo-solitons pushed out by flat nacelles mounted on the sides of the bulbous disc that contained the lifting gas.

She wasn’t forced to reckon with her current incomprehension of the technologies involved for long before the hatch popped open and Magpie jumped out. She waved when she saw Lilijoy.

“We brought back a present for you!” she announced as she loped easily across the rough terrain. Coming to a stop in front of Lilijoy, she continued, “Well, for all of us, really, but he wanted it to be a surprise for you.”

Her momentary confusion dissipated as she saw Anda lower himself from the hatch, wearing a large pack on his back. She couldn't stop a huge smile from spreading across her face.

Now we’re ready to go, she thought.

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