follow the yellow brick road

 

 

 

 

 

It takes Joanne Klaski three days to follow the yellow brick road of dead Grid to N-Ridge, and during that time she encounters not one single golem. That fact in itself is spooky. Klaski is an easy target. She does not move fast. Although she is using the structured area that borders the dead zone to guide her, she's climbing through an extremely high region in the Grid because she's desperate for radio contact with . . .well, with anybody. The upper Grid is a place of storms and visual incoherence, and she's not a swift mover even at the best of times. Still: there are no golems to be seen.

Presumably they have all gone to destroy Major Galante's party. Not a cheery thought.

The Swatch works some of the time, but Galante's receiver is set to messaging only and Machine Front merely confirm Major Galante's orders that Klaski is to go to N-Ridge. The Swatch responds to queries about war status and golem movements with channel-clogging quantities of statistics that Klaski doesn't know how to interpret. As a lowly lieutenant, she doesn't qualify to have a Dante-equivalent in her Swatch, and without Dante's personality and higher-reasoning components. Machine Front is about as interactive as a brick wall. So Klaski doctors Gossamer religiously, charges her in the Grid, and asks her to fly. Gossamer cannot travel more than a few yards before pancaking onto the canopy or spiraling out of control.

You are wanting to give up. Piggybacking a good-as-dead soldier on a futile mission is a form of torture. It's all you can do to stay on the nex, and you only do it out of hope that one day Gossamer will be able to fly for real, leave Klaski behind, and . . . well, you don't really know what you will do then. You just know that you are slipping into a depression because you can't do anything for yourself.

Then Klaski comes to the crest of the ridge, finds a high, strong branch that isn't dangerously charged, and takes a look around.

You can hear a little rattle in Klaski's chest when she flattens herself and lets her weight go into the Grid. She lowers her belly against the branch and dangles her arms and legs, a would-be puma in the jungle. She sets her cheek down. The Grid is vibrating like a bass amp. The sound fills the spaces where Klaski's lumbar spine articulates. It sets the jelly of her flesh trembling.

When her head goes down on the branch, you can see what's up ahead.

There is the dead zone of the Grid, scoring the luminescence of the Grid like a slash made with a graphite pencil. It can be seen stretching away into the distance.

And just ahead, instead of terminating in wild Grid, it ends in a man-made wall.

'Oh God,' Klaski breathes. 'l hope you're not jerking me around here.'

The logic mines lie there in front of you: no well, no electricity, no tangle of visual confusion. Just a rough gray pit, slaggy and wasted. There is a retaining wall, looks like a mixture of barbed wire and Play-Doh, with orange and blue wires protruding at intervals where they connect to rusty towers in the exact shape of giant D batteries. The nearest of these oozes something black from its positive terminal and gives off a zingy, ionic odor. The Grid doesn't cross this wall.

Judging by the gross creatures that tend to come up out of the well, not to mention its nasty organic smell, you would expect the well to be all sumpy and sludgy after it was drained. You'd expect to find bones and colorful, maggoty lumps of half-digested things down there. And the mine-pit is nothing more or less than what's left after the Grid has been shorn away and the well drained. But there is nothing lifelike about the pit. It's ashen-gray, a tumbled rubblescape of irregular crevices and mounds, bereft of geometry and aesthetic continuity. It's ugly in a pointless kind of way.

There is some kind of pumping station on the other side of the pit. It consists of pipes and walkways and smokestacks, all cobbled together out of flimsy aluminum and plastic. It looks like something out of that Pink Floyd movie, the one you walked out of leaving Jim Szabo alone with a bucket of popcorn and a hard-on, the one where people went into meat grinders.

Various other buildings huddle in a rough circle around the sealed pit. But there is no activity across the wall at all. No dust, no noise, no flashing lights. No voices. And, to judge by Klaski's fruitless efforts to communicate with N-Ridge via Swatch, no signal, either.

Strange. You know Major Galante well enough to expect that, in the absence of a stockpile of logic bullets, her first priority would be to get the mines operational again in case the missing logic was never found and the work had to start over. But nothing moves here.

Major Galante is still incommunicado. Klaski calls X and informs them that the mines are silent. Eventually, Machine Front routes her to an actual person in the control tower. There is no image – too much interference – but, judging from the voice, Klaski is talking to a male.

'We're having the same problem,' he says. 'We lost contact two days ago.'

'How do I get in, then?'

'Do you see any golems on the inside? We can't pick up anything, but naturally golems don't show up on satellite.'

'None that I can see,' answered Klaski.

'OK, well, can you point your flier at it and send us pictures?'

So you find yourself being used as a kind of Polaroid camera, and you don't like it. Klaski holds you up and asks you to send the images. The control officer starts yakking monotonously, something about processing and analyzing the footage. Klaski breaks in.

'Listen, I need help. When are you going to send help?'

'There is no more human help to be sent. I'm sitting up here on a stack of hardware waiting for Major Galante to get the logic bullets, and I can't send her to the mines because we already know the logic isn't there. She's going on a sweep south of you.'

'That's crazy! She should come get me! I'm the one she wants.'

'Calm down, Lieutenant. You might have to sit tight for a while. All the fliers have been recalled for reprocessing for the Third Wave. However, we have a large contingent of new weaponry waiting at X.'

'How's that going to help me?'

'As soon as Major Galante has completed her mission, we can use MaxFacts to detonate the N-valley area specified by Captain Serge in her final orders. Once that's cleared of Grid we—'

Klaski is starting to panic. 'No! That detonation zone is where I am, you idiots! You have to tell Major Galante to come and get me now. She wouldn't listen to me. She's got it all wrong!'

She's panting and shouting into the Swatch. It's obvious that she isn't making her point to the control-tower guy, but she's too upset to speak slowly and clearly and in words of one syllable, as Control Tower Guy seems to require.

'I know it's no fun for you, Klaski. It isn't fun here at X, either, but count yourself lucky to be alive. Hang tight. We have only a handful of logic bullets we can use to prime the MFeels. We can't do anything big until Major Galante recovers the main stash or the mines produce a new batch. When the MFeels get into action, we can get control of any golem hot spots and get the remaining humans, yourself included, out. We have to take care of the big picture first.'

'Then come get me!' cries Klaski. 'I've got the logic bullets. I've got them. Send a damn stretch limo up here and get me!'

'I don't copy.'

'Yes, you do – I said, I've got the logic bullets.'

She drags out a logic bullet and shows it to the Swatch.

'Hold the line,' says the man tersely. He comes back only moments later. 'Machine analysis indicates your chances are better inside the mines. Get yourself into the perimeter asap. If you can't get their attention any other way, then use one of the breaches in the wall or blow your way in if necessary. We will dispatch Third Wave aerial support to you immediately.'

'Oh, what a relief,' Klaski sighs, shutting the Swatch. 'I thought he was never going to get it.'

People always talk to themselves.

'OK, come on, pick yourself up and let's do it. Just one more thing to do and then you'll be safe. I bet they have food in there, too.'

Getting across the fence to the pit doesn't look like it's going to be a big deal. There is at least one breach-point where the cement has been inexpertly repaired – when you check your flight files from Galante's assault you are able to orient yourself based on your recordings of where the wall was breached during the last mission you flew over N-Ridge. Klaski has a good boot-load of charges and Lewis programmed the timer back at X. Klaski monkeys her way to the nearest scrap of wall, plants four charges, hooks up the timer, and puts the second side of Synchronicity on her Walkman. She sets herself twenty minutes. Then she scoots. When she gets far enough away, she ties herself to a branch, just in case.

The explosion wipes out every sound except the slinking bass-line of 'Tea in the Sahara'. A jolt goes through the Grid and one of Klaski's bungee cords springs loose. It recoils and snaps her in the face, just missing her eye.

She doesn't cry. That's a big effort, and she wastes some more time there, pouting and hissing in self-pity. Crying would do her more good, but you figure that she's probably never been much good at crying without an audience.

She starts moving forward. The smoke has cleared and the heat from the blast has dissipated into the remains of the wall, the Grid, and the air itself.

Nothing stirs inside the perimeter.

Klaski climbs through the hole.

 

The place looks like a construction site on lunch break. There are diggers and cranes, dozers, backhoes, dumptrucks, you name it. They have been left at odd angles, some half-buried, others with doors open.

Every so often there's a burn scar. You remember these: they are the remnants of the personnel who served under Gonzalez. Klaski almost steps on one, then leaps back when she realizes what it is. She trips, falls backward, lands on her ass in the dust. There is something wrapped around her boots.

'What the—?'

She pulls off a strand of what looks like fishing line. 'What, is this place booby-trapped?'

She runs the Swatch and makes another futile attempt to reach the control-tower guy.

ALL LINES BUSY, says the Swatch. MAJOR MFEEL LANDING OPERATION IN PROGRESS. NO NON-ESSENTIAL COMMUNICATIONS PERMITTED.

'But this is essential!' Klaski rants, scrambling to her feet and untangling herself. She cups her hands around her mouth.

'Hello? Anybody home? Hello, HUMANS?'

Her voice echoes off the metal of the nearest building, a Quonset hut painted fluorescent orange and with cat's eyes embedded in the roof. Behind her, the Grid hums a warped echo.

She tugs the line, then starts to follow it. Soon it loops and crosses over another of the same, only to disappear under the dust and stones. Klaski moves with exaggerated care. She tiptoes towards the nearest piece of equipment, a crane. The access ladder has been melted into a lump, and she has to clamber up the crane's tread to reach the open door and then swing herself into the operator's seat. There is a set of noise-reducing headphones, a clipboard, and a computer printing outlet with a scroll of dusty paper spilling from it. The writing is faded but it looks like a blueprint. She punches up the MF com center.

'Hello?'

The lights are on.

'How do I reboot?' she mutters. You've heard Miles say the same thing, but you've never understood what it means. Klaski looks under the dash. That's when you see a fat bundle of the filaments, just like the one Klaski tripped over outside. It looks like a cross between the clear tubes they use in hospitals for Ivs and stuff, and fishing line. It's neatly bound together and coiled, and it seems to merge seamlessly with the structure of the crane.

When you look closely you can see pellets of something radiant shooting from the machines, through the tubes. Pulsing, but without a detectable pattern.

Klaski grunts and fiddles with things in the confined space. She bangs her head, curses, and starts to backout. Then she must see the filaments, too.

'That's weird,' she says, fingering them. 'When's that damned aerial getting here?'

She goes outside and squints into the sky. Nothing. Then she looks around at the nearby buildings. Besides the Quonset hut, there are a couple of sheds and some flattened tents that look as if they've been rolled over by Major Galante's convoy.

'Where's the actual mine?'

You know where it is. It's behind the Quonset hut, and there is a ramp going down into the earth. The doors were sealed last time you were up here.

The filaments are draped across the camp like spiderwebs, connecting pieces of machinery to each other and to the ground and buildings and perimeter walls. Some of the cables are so fine that they are only visible when the light shines behind them. Klaski picks her way across the open area of the compound and tiptoes into the Quonset hut. Her breathing is loud in the enclosed space, and her voice sounds sandy and loaded with treble.

'Hello? People? Yo!'

Stillness. There are offices in here, a lab at one end with its doors security-shielded, and a series of locked, environmentally controlled storage units. She goes to each unit and alters the pigmentation on the door until she can see through to the interior. Evidently there is nothing of interest until she reaches the fourth door.

Klaski recoils, backs up, then goes back for a longer look. Then she turns and walks away quickly. When she turns you see that the unit contains a steel table with a lumpy-looking body bag on it.

Klaski starts going through the offices, but she's nervous and random in her behavior. She rifles desks and spins computer monitors on their flexible necks, but she doesn't take the time to really find anything out. She has no method. Her breathing is accelerated; you can hear its hiss in the filters. She is panicking, as usual.

She finds some notes in Major Galante's handwriting scrawled with a red Bic pen. They're informal; almost personal. lt looks like Galante was drafting a memo to whoever was taking over from her at the mines. There are orders about security and wall-repair, and suggestions for how to organize the team and which machines to deploy underground, in order to get more logic bullets. In the last paragraph, all pretext of official speak goes out the window.

The mines don't look right to me. I don't think any of this equipment has been used recently, and I'm not even 100% convinced there are any logic bullets. There's no sign of metals extraction but there are indications of the Grid invading the camp. I'd like to seal this place down and get out. Watch yourselves, and keep an eye on coms equipment at all times. The Grid knows it can cripple us by sabotaging that.

Klaski shudders and looks around, rubbing her arms like she's chilly.

All you can think is how the body bag doesn't make sense. This isn't a war that features people's bodies being returned to their relatives draped in flags. In the First Wave, after it was clear what the well did to dead bodies, soldiers were put in grave balloons for later pickup; but inevitably logistics failures meant that those pickups couldn't be made, and some of the grave balloons eventually got tangled in the Grid and ended up in the well. So the current policy is on-the-spot incineration to prevent golem reproduction.

Major Galante wouldn't have been careless enough to leave a corpse lying around.

Klaski goes into the coms room but nothing is coming up on any of the scopes but noise. There are piles of printouts lying around; some of them seem to detail the takeover by Major Galante, while others are copies of correspondence with MF and the analyses that MF has done to predict the outcomes of various strategies in recovering the missing logic bullets. The numbers recommend that Galante leave behind only a small crew to reopen the mines and start getting more logic, which is supposedly what she did. MF was going to take care of everything else remotely.

But the crew are nowhere to be seen and the coms aren't working, and Galante's warnings to her successor seem to have done no good. The place has a deserted air. Creepy. There is a small refrigerator and the milk in it is sour. Klaski finds a plastic-wrapped ham sandwich and eats it. You don't want to think what it tastes like.

Klaski starts fiddling with controls but gets nowhere. She shouts into her Swatch.

'What am I supposed to do, stand out on the tarmac and wave my arms at the sky? Do you guys know what's going on up here? Where are the crew?'

No answer.

'Typical Grid. Interference. I have to get out of here.' There doesn't seem to be anything obviously wrong with the com system.

'I wonder if somebody retuned the satellite so it's pointing the wrong way.'

She starts looking at the direct radio links to see if she can pick up some signal there, but the power supply has failed. She drops to her knees and opens the console.

'Why can't I be like Lewis? I wish I could fix stuff.'

Filaments. Just like in the equipment outside. Transparent cabling lies in tangles and nested coils, invading the com system like a tumor in someone's guts.

Klaski leaps back, scrubbing her gloved hands on her battle-suited thighs.

'I need a com system. This is crazy. Where is everybody? What happened up here?'

Pause. Sound of Klaski breathing. You assume she is thinking.

'Come on, Goss, let's go. Let's go outside and see if we can fly you up like a flare.'

But she doesn't go straight out. She goes back to the refrigeration unit containing the body bag. She stands there. Checks the readouts.

The unit is still functioning. Klaski checks her suit filters anyway. 'It better not smell bad in there. Shouldn't have eaten that sandwich.'

She goes in.

On the steel table there is a green manila folder beside a bottle of spray disinfectant and a roll of breath mints with the brand name carefully blacked out.There is a post-it note on the folder.

 

Apparent indigene. When alive, specimen not picked up on photographic equipment. Photographs and autopsy notes by Dr. A. Gonzalez.

 

Paper-clipped to the rest of the notes are some Polaroids of a child's body. It looks flat and pathetic, and not immediately recognizable as one of the feral children Klaski was so scared of, although it's hard to imagine what else it might be.

Klaski looks at the black bag in silence. The zipper is partly open. She pulls on latex gloves, then puts one of her gloved hands over her mouth as she slips the zipper down a little more.

And a little more.

You can hear the zipper going down, but you can't see what's inside. There's a puff of air scented with plastic, and Klaski jumps back, letting out a gasp. She turns her body slightly and you see that the bag is empty. There was nothing in it but air, and the pressure of Klaski's hand has forced this out.

'It isn't here. It's frozen. Major Gonzalez sent it back to X for study.'

The words are spoken by a single voice, iterated from several mouths, and they come from the main work area of the Quonset hut. Gossamer's eyes count eight girls standing just outside the lab doorway, replicas of the Polaroid – but very much alive. They are loosely grouped just inside the door of the Quonset hut. Silhouetted in the Gridlight of the door itself is the outline of a golem in battle armor. You recognize the figure.

Klaski stands motionless for a couple of beats, still looking down at the empty body bag.

She turns. Sees them. And looks around in a panic. No escape. She can only go towards them, and they are blocking the door.

'I wasn't. . .1 didn't. . .'

'Arla Gonzalez killed me,' one of them says. 'She felt bad about it.'

The same sly smile spreads across all their faces. The words spread among them, passed like a hot potato.

'Not bad enough, though. Not bad enough to give me back to the well. Now I am broken. Forever. Machine Front has one of my bodies. Do you know what that means?'

'Um . . .not really.' Klaski smiles a nervous charm-school smile.

'Who wants to live with part of you missing? I have a hole in me now and it won't be healed until that body goes back into the Grid, or is destroyed. But Machine Front have taken it and will plunder its essence. And there's nothing I can do. I guess I got Arla into some trouble, after that. She wasn't strong, you know. Yes, you do know, don't you?'

Each sentence is spoken by a different girl; but they follow on seamlessly from one another, as if the speaker were a ventriloquist projecting her voice into different locations.

Klaski is shaking so hard that your vision jumps.

'We're trying to decide what to do with the place,' say the girls, gesturing around the interior of the abandoned hut as if they were talking about a house that needed renovation. Again, the commentary bounces from one body to the other. 'It has potential, don't you think? But what we could really use is another sample of Earth hardware. Something different from what we've already got. The cranes and backhoes were useful in helping decode the mechanical properties of the MaxFact, but if you've seen one of these machines, you've seen them all.'

They are eyeing Klaski acquisitively. Klaski proffers her Walkman.

'This is all I got. Seriously. Except breathing filters and you don't need those, right? And the Swatch is broken, trust me you don't want that.'

'Actually,' says a girl, 'l was looking at your cape.'

'My which? Oh!' Klaski's fingers grip Gossamer's edges and pull you closer around her shoulders. You've got one eye full on the girls now, and one looking out of Klaski's back. Confusing: like looking around a corner with a mirror.

'It's just a . . . it's damaged.' You can feel the tension in Klaski's body. You wonder if she's capable of fighting as ruthlessly on your behalf as she was when defending her own life. Probably not.

'Do you need help?' ask the girls. 'No, no, I'm fine. I'm just waiting . . . I'm OK, thanks.'

'Because we heard you talking to your people. They're sending some kind of transport for you.'

Klaski seems encouraged by this.

'Do you . . . do you know what happened to the other people who were up here? Did the . . . did the golems get them?'

'No, they went into the mine, looking for logic bullets.'

'Oh, uh . . .that's great. Well, I guess I'll go look for them, then. Do they, uh, do they know you're wandering around here?'

Klaski's shifting her weight from foot to foot, seeking escape. But it's no use. The battle-suited golem is still blocking the door.

'We waited until Major Galante left,' the girls tell Klaski, bouncing the words back and forth between them. 'Then we brought golems up through the mines and took control. We have linked the MaxFact to the logic mines, you see. It was a natural progression.'

You don't think Klaski is really taking this in. Why are the girls talking over her head? Are they talking to you?

'We started the golem attack in the hope that it would provoke the launch of a MaxFact, and it did. We had been preparing the capture of the missile for some time. But then Arla Gonzalez killed one of us and took the body, and she sent it to X for study. We think Machine Front have been trying to use our body to develop the logic drives in the Third Wave.'

'The logic that Gonzalez had,' Klaski said.

'Yes. She saved it so that she could negotiate with Machine Front. She knew they wanted her dead, because of her role in our death . .  .and life.'

'But what happened to the people? Major Galante left staff behind. Where is everybody? And what are all those tubes out there?'

'We brought Major Galante's staff down into the mines, and from there to the underlying structure. They won't be coming out.'

'Oh. Um. You sealed off the mine? With people inside?'

'It's not a Virginia coal mine. It's not like that at all. They aren't suffocating in there.'

No, you think. It's probably worse, whatever's happening to them.

'I bet you're just saying that,' Klaski says. 'And what about those wire-thingies? The fishing line?'

'The fishing line isn't for catching fish. It's for interpreting infor-mation. Dragging all that heavy machinery into the well wouldn't be practical. You see, you mine for logic and the Grid mines you. It's a two-way street. That's the nature of the Grid. It operates according to an acausal connecting principle.'

'A who?'

'It connects things, but not according to the paradigms you would recognize. You can only relate to cause and effect. Subject and object. The Grid doesn't work like that.'

'Um,' says Klaski. 'Do you think we could have this conversation outside? See, I'm expecting a lift any minute.'

She makes a whirlybird motion with her forefinger.

'Oh. Serge will be disappointed. She wanted us to take you down to the city.'

The golem standing in the doorway now steps inside and folds its arms across its chest. Klaski still doesn't recognize Serge. Maybe she's distracted by the fact that a group of battle-suited male golems are now walking through the outer door of the Quonset hut. Klaski startles, inhaling so sharply that the air shrieks in her throat. The golems take up positions at the other exits, leaving the main doors open. Outside, many more golems are visible. 'What city?'

'The city we made from the MaxFact and the logic mines. The synchronicity.'

'Haha, very cute. Here, you want it?' And she pulls her Walkman off her belt and holds it out. The girls cock their heads in unison. You feel Klaski's pulse thunder in her neck.

'I'll self-immolate,' Klaski threatens. 'Just like the others. You'd better stand back if you don't want to get blown away.'

And she gropes in her pockets for charges.

The nearest girl glances over her shoulder.

'Serge has some questions.'

'Don't talk to me about Serge. I'm not going in the well, just you forget it.'

'Are you coming with me or do you want to stay here with the golems?'

And the children turn and walk out the main door.

Klaski waits a couple of beats and then bolts after them.

'I'm coming, see, so tell them to keep their distance.'

The girls don't say anything. They flash the same smile over their collective shoulders, though. Serge falls in behind Klaski. Outside are many more golems. They all start to walk across the compound, heading for the mine shaft. Klaski looks up. You can see the sky; there is no sign of an aerial carrier of any stripe.

Klaski stops suddenly and grabs you by the edges. She untangles you from her battle armor. Then you feel yourself thrown in the air like pizza dough, and Gossamer's skin feels all electric and alive for the first time since Arla's crossbow bolt brought you down.

'Fly, Gossamer, fly! Get help! Go to X and tell them! I've got the you-know-whats! Tell them to come get me!'

Serge leaps forward and tries to grab you, but Klaski is too quick. Other golems move in on Klaski, too. She shrinks below you, waving her arms wildly from beneath a football-scrimmage of golems.

The air flows over you, drags you upward, and you are free. You float into a feeling of perfection.

It's just like old times. On high, you have the glory. You own the sky. Gossamer aches with the effort; even that is a kind of pleasure.

But there's more than poetry up here. The transmissions of Machine Front come banging into your ears again, reporting the arrival of the Third Wave, calling you back to X with all urgency.

Below, Klaski is allowed to get to her feet; but now golems mass around her and the girls, pushing them towards the mine, until all you can see is the crowd of them, big and dead and numerous, carrying along the smaller figures like a tide. They go behind the Quonset hut and open the doors of the mine with a squealing sound.Then they disappear into a hole in the ground.