All the time spent sword fighting meant that I was super fit now, but how can you be fitter when you are essentially software? Those sorts of things behaved normally for the most part – you couldn’t get overweight through eating lots of food, but you could get fitter through exercise although, it was of course completely unnecessary for health and wellbeing. Appendix, I need an appendix, a sequel would be more lucrative though, but why am I worrying about this now?

  Having reached the rope around my ankles, I held it, and then realised I had no plan as to what to do when I got there. What was I intending to do? The knots looked impenetrable, and that was without hanging upside down as an added complication. “Fuck,” I said.

  After a few minutes grabbing and pulling aimlessly at the rope, only succeeding in making the knots tighter, I decided I needed to think this out. How did I get here? Well, one option was that the guys who had been following us had somehow gotten in, captured me in my sleep found a barn, hung me upside down and just left me here. That didn’t seem particularly plausible, and it was much more likely I was a victim of Alex’s sadistic streak masquerading as ‘training’. Her approach was very much of the ‘teach-them-to-swim-by-throwing-them-in-and-hoping-they-don’t-drown’ school, so that was absolutely what I was facing here. She wanted me to learn ‘magic’ as she had described it, so that’s obviously what I needed to do. I had a vague memory of her saying that the more impossible it was the more difficult it was to conjure so I needed to start with something small and uncomplicated. But what? I stared at the beam holding my feet. The more I stared at it, the more I could see a hairline crack in it. It seemed to grow in front of my eyes, and I focused on it. Then, I started swinging again, or at least wobbling ungraciously. Very aware that I looked ridiculous staring intently at a beam while swinging upside down, I tried to block this from my mind by shutting my eyes and focusing on the idea of the beam breaking. Then I heard a loud crack as it must have split and as I opened my eyes I saw hay rushing towards my head. I landed headfirst and blacked out, the landing much harder than I had imagined from the look of the hay.

  I awoke in my bed with Alex staring down at me and smiling, “4 out of 10. Cracking the beam was nice work but then you died when you hit the ground. Fortunately, no permanent death here yet, so welcome back.”

  “You’re a very evil person,” I said, then closed my eyes again.

  I must have dozed off but when I awoke, I was back upside down in the same warehouse and the same beam. This time though instead of hay below me it was very sharp looking spikes. I imagined them turning into a bouncy castle, but it just wouldn’t work. Then, I thought if I swung enough when the beam cracked, I could flip over them and land clear, hopefully feet first. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Being impaled on spikes frigging stings. After my death and resurrection, the next time the spikes were back but they covered the entire floor of the warehouse. I needed a better plan.

  I could crack the beam with my mind fairly easily by this point, but when it came to landing, whatever I imagined just didn’t work. The difference between the two was huge though – an old beam breaking was easy to understand and process but spikes turning into inflatables was much less realistic. What I needed was a solution that only slightly broke the rules so I could sort of understand it. I reached into the tight back pocket of my jeans (yes, Alex had put me in my jeans and Zoe’s eagle t-shirt for the barn-based fun), and there was a knife there. I had imagined putting it in then forgetting that I had, I suddenly remembered it now, which seemed sort of plausible if I tried to forget that I remembered that it wasn’t there before. Okay, but that didn’t solve the problem of cutting the rope, and then plummeting to my death. I had just changed the death delivery device from cracked beam to knife. I needed a massive piece of random luck, and looking around the room, I noticed that there was a human-sized gap between some of the spikes just in front of me. If I could land there, I’d be golden. I slowly worked my way up my body folding myself over to reach the rope, testing the limits of my virtual flexibility. It hurt like hell, but I thought if I could hold the rope with one hand, I could cut with the other. Then, when my feet were free, I’d swing and land perfectly in the space.

  I slowly cut through the rope, each movement bringing me closer to the thought that this might not be one of my greatest ideas. Finally, the rope snapped, I hung on with my left hand and swung forward then let go…

  “Fuuuuuuuccckkkkkkkk,” I said as I looked down at my foot which had a large spike through it. I had overshot a smidge but had just about managed to stop myself by only impaling my foot. I hadn’t died this time out, and that had to count as an improvement. If it wasn’t for the incredible pain searing through me, I would have been pleased. Fuck it, I was pleased. I raised my hands above my head and cheered. Then, the warehouse disappeared. My foot was spike free and painless again, and I was standing in a completely white room with Alex in front of me.

  “You’d have died from blood loss, you know. But yes, slow death is an improvement on a quick one, you might have just about been able to shoot someone while I got away so that would have at least been useful.”

  “Thanks, teach. I’m overwhelmed by such praise. You do go over the top with the flattery sometimes.”

  “I know, I know, I’m super generous.” Around us our surroundings changed until we were standing in my room.

  “Now you can get out of here as soon as you turn the whole room blue.” Then, she disappeared in a ‘Poof!’ I soon learned to hate blue more than I ever thought was possible to hate a colour; it was hatred I usually only reserved for clowns and self-satisfied elevators.

  I had been living with normal earth physics for a very long time. There were obviously huge discrepancies from what had been real life for me before I became digital. There was no such thing as progress; the not-sleeping-thing had been particularly weird until they sorted it and being able to eat your own body weight and not get fat was highly counter intuitive. However, mentally accepting what was essentially ‘magic’ was challenging to do consciously. I realised obviously that it wasn’t magic at all, and we were all in a created reality that had a set of rules defined by someone. But, from the perspective of someone in the system, who had been here so long that she’d have great-great-great-great (okay, I have no idea how many ‘greats’) grandkids by now, trying to break the rules was uncomfortable to say the least. I somehow had to retrain myself to accept what was or wasn’t possible, but my mind (do I have mind? My consciousness?) wasn’t having it. So, for a very long time, I stared intensely at the walls of my room, imagining them changing colour. When that didn’t work, I looked down at my bed then tried taking the wall by surprise (yes, that sounds nuts, but you try staring at a wall for hours wishing it was a different colour). Then, I tried sleeping and just trying to remember the walls were blue. Waking to more fucking white, I got really angry. I ran at the wall and kicked it hard with my foot, and then, as I connected, the whole room turned blue. Everything was blue. The bed, the walls the ceiling, and then I looked down in horror at my hands. Yep, they were blue too. Alex materialised and smirked at me.

  “You look like a Smurf.”

  “Yeah fucking laugh it up.”

  “Just this once I’ll change you back.” She touched my hand, and I was back to my normal human tones. “It seems that anger and frustration work for you, we just need to manage it somehow so you can focus it without running at me in a rage.”

  And that’s what we did. I began to find that if I could mentally get incredibly pissed off with inanimate objects, I could change their colour. The elevator was particularly helpful in honing this ability, the smug bastard. After a few days practice, my room looked like a rainbow had vomited into it. The leap from this to the next step of changing one thing into another thing was much easier, almost like once I had accepted on a subconscious level that this was perfectly okay then changing a pen into a wardrobe, or a bed into a large pink stuffed teddy bear (even at my age I have my girly moments) was actually pretty easy. The next challenge however was changing myself into something else, and I had been trying and trying to replicate Alex’s big cat trick but so far to no success (I did manage to give myself stripes once when imagining being a tiger but that was about it).

  Then one morning I was eating breakfast in my room, and Alex poofed in. “I think it’s time to leave,” she said. “But I’m nowhere nearer changing myself into anything than I was weeks ago!” I exclaimed exasperated. “I know but you’ve learnt so much and all we need is that you know enough to know what you’re looking for so you can spot if the rules might be possible to manipulate, and that you are kick ass enough that if the time comes you have the abilities to make sharp exit. I just can’t stay here any longer, Madeline. I know that time moves slowly here and that we’ve not wasted any of it really, but not knowing what’s going on with my dad is eating me up. I can’t do this anymore.” This was a different side to Alex, perhaps it was the number of words she had squeezed into a sentence, but I saw another glimpse of the 15-year-old girl inside. I got up to give her a hug, but her glare stopped me in my tracks. “I’m not looking for sympathy, I just want to get going.”

  “Okay, so what are we going to do?”

  “Well, first of all, we need to test how much that you’ve learnt in here, you retain out there. So, we’re going to go and pick a fight.”

  “What sort of a fight?”

  “A big one.” And that’s all she would give me. She did say that once we got outside, she wanted us to both try and do something ‘magical’ to see if our rule breaking tricks worked out there, and if they did was it everywhere, or just in isolated areas? She said she’d tried a couple of times by popping out of the hideaway for a couple of minutes to experiment but wasn’t able to do anything but perhaps if we were outside for longer, we may be able to do more. I asked why I hadn’t been alone for months when she did this, as two minutes would have been, er, well loads of months. She said something about ‘equalizing’ before she left. I don’t know what that means exactly but I’m presuming she meant the time. We would need to be on constant alert to see if we could spot something, something that would let us know that we could manipulate the world around us.

  We spent the next few hours getting stuff ready - packing clothes, food, and weapons before Alex had a thought. “The clothes we’re both wearing, the food, the weapons are all created in the hideaway but when I’ve left before they always come with me, I think because they don’t break the rules of things that can exist out there.” A wicked smile formed on her face creating a twinkle in her eyes. “What do you have in mind?”, I said.

  “I think it’s time I had a new car.”

  Chapter 9

  “Of all the cars that we could have had, you went with a Hummer?”

  “We needed something rugged, I did think about a Porsche, but I thought strong with bullet proof glass is better than fast.”

  “Well, I can’t argue with adding bullet proof glass but aren’t we more than a bit conspicuous? A least you went for black, I guess.”

  “Er, yes, that’s probably a good point, we can always steal something less obvious if we need to, but they’ll be looking for my old shit bucket at the moment, and I don’t think they’d expect us to have one of these, so maybe ostentatious was the way to go, hiding in plain sight? That’s a thing, right?”

  We’d both subtly changed our appearance before leaving too, my long red hair was gone, and I now had a blonde pixie cut and my eyes were blue. Alex was a brunette with matching brown eyes. It had taken quite a few attempts on my part but was just about within my capabilities. Alex’s original plan had been to use hair dye and contact lenses, but she thought her car theory might work for us too. We weren’t sure if our appearance changes would stick when we went outside but they held up. I was also concerned that I wouldn’t be able to get my red hair and green eyes back when I wanted them, but I decided to put that to the back of my mind for now.

  “So where are we going?”, I asked.

  “When you’re this far away from prying eyes, there’s a decent choice of less than reputable places for us to choose from. There’s a bar not far from here that is probably just the ticket.”

  We drove for five minutes or so back through the forest before turning off down an almost not there dirt track. A few more minutes of this and then the trees opened up to a clearing. “Oh, good grief!” I sighed. The name of the bar was, ‘The Biker Gang’. Well, if you were going to pick a fight, then the most clichéd place you could find would be a biker bar with the most unimaginative name possible. It is remarkable how often I say that; creating Zeroworld was an endeavour that required a huge amount of imagination but it’s like people gave up when it came to the smaller details. Embracing cliché was very much a thing in Zeroworld, as you may be figuring out.

  The bar was a ramshackle wooden construction with a flashing red neon sign above the entrance. Amazingly, all of the letters were in working order. I was surprised at that given the state of the rest of the building. But the fact that they still worked was a reminder of where I was, and that generally speaking wear and tear is more forgiving in a virtual world. Also, I’m not sure we have termites or that wood rots so how the hell the rest of the building looked so bad I have no idea. Maybe it was supposed to? It would not have fit the name if the building was pristine and newly constructed. The walls looked like they’d been painted a few decades earlier very haphazardly, and then no one had concerned themselves with them again. If there was a colour it was vaguely ‘white’, although it had long since faded to grey mixed with brown. There was a big wooden door with two windows in it but apart from that I couldn’t see any other windows on the building at all.

  We’d parked up on the grass in front of the bar, owning the only non-two wheeled vehicle outside. There were about 25 or so motorbikes that looked expensive and well maintained in complete contrast to the building.

  “Come on,” Alex said then jumped out of the driver’s seat of the hummer and walked to the back. I joined her there and saw that she was reaching for two metal baseball bats. “I did think about using the swords, but I thought these were more appropriate.”

  “We’re just going to walk right in and beat them up??” I exclaimed.

  “Er yes, that’s the plan, it’s not like we can kill them or they us as far we know, the rules behave normally for everyone except those manipulating them, and we need to see how much we’ve retained.”

  “Alex, there are worse things they can do than kill us.”

  “Relax, it’ll be fine. Nothing to worry about.” Then she ran towards the bar, screaming, with the bat held above her head, and smashed through the door. I was a few steps behind her as I saw her bring it down on the head of the nearest guy to her. I would tell you what he looked like but, in my head, he was ‘biker number 1’. I know, I know bikers are people too, but these people decided to come somewhere that practically invited violence, and Alex was about to oblige. I had no choice but to run in after her.

  As I did, a glass sailed past me, narrowly missing my head, and smashing into the wall behind me with a noise that had my subconscious violently shaking my conscience into action. Thankfully, it seemed that not only had my training paid off in respect to knowing in theory how to fight but that I had also lost none of my fight capabilities. As a large biker ran toward me carrying a very impressive knife, I sidestepped his thrust and brought my bat in an upwards movement between his legs. As he doubled over in pain, I cracked the bat across the side of his head, and he lay there motionless on the floor. I thought about checking his pulse, but given all the talk about death being a plausible thing once more, I wondered if Alex was being more than a little cavalier. Either way, I had no time to consider this as two more bikers ran at me in a rage to avenge their colleague. I held the bat in both hands, one at each end, across my body then slammed it into them horizontally at the same time. It hit perfectly, and I watched blood pour from each of their noses. I was starting to enjoy myself, and looked over at Alex briefly to see the broadest of grins on her face. Another guy ran at me brandishing a knife. I blocked his hand with my left arm under his right, dropping my bat and then twisting to move his arm downwards as he’d been trying to stab up. Then, I punched him hard in the face with my other hand. I grabbed the knife out of his hand before he had time to react, and inserted it into his shoulder which seemed to be enough for him to lose heart. Seeing another guy in the distance, I picked up my bat where I’d dropped it and flew it spinning towards his head. It connected beautifully and he was down and out. The rest went down in a similar fashion, it was over very quickly and soon we were staring at a bar floor full of groaning bikers. We’d taken out 30 guys in under 10 minutes. “Yeesss. That. Was. Awesome,” Alex exclaimed, “And more importantly it’s worked for me better than before. I’m retaining everything. I remember most of my Japanese too, and that isn’t one of my 17. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

  I stood there amongst the groaning bikers looking and feeling very sheepish, not sure what to do. I couldn’t just make small talk (“How’s the weather been? Sorry for the gentle tap on your head”). I was relieved when Alex returned carrying a large bag. “For your trouble,” she said loudly, “There’s $10million in here, I’m sure you’ll forget about us for that. Don’t tell anyone about this, otherwise we’ll be back.” Even with Zeroworld’s perilous inflation rates, that was a tidy sum.

  We returned to the Hummer and Alex thought it prudent to drive a little way away from the bar in case any of them decided to try again with greater firepower. Once we parked up, I said, “So it looks like our field test was a success then?”

  “Yes, definitely. How do you feel, Madeline?”

  “Good, it was very much like fighting the AI people in the den, I just pretended I was there, but I didn’t seem to be any less, ahem, capable.”

 

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