Broken Pixels (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 4) (30 page)

Before the crowd, Abby stood in a tight black jumpsuit that reminded Mara of something an air force pilot might wear. Not the sort of thing Mara’s high school friend would normally be caught dead in. Also Abby’s face—which has been badly distorted the last time they had seen each other—seemed to be repaired with no signs of scarring. Although, at the moment, that familiar face was contorted with intensity as Abby stood over a kneeling woman, grasping the sides of her head, shaking it like a basketball she was about to dribble.

“All you have to do is believe!” Abby screamed at the woman. “It’s not something I can do for you. The light comes from inside you, just like it came from Adam!”

Abby shook the woman harder and then flung her aside in disgust. The woman crawled away in shame.

“Who is Adam?” Mara asked under her breath, not really expecting an answer.

Cam, who had slid in next to her alongside the column, pointed to the left of the risers and said, “I think that might be him.”

Mara’s gaze shifted to where Cam pointed. There stood a tall sandy-haired man of about thirty-five in a blue polo shirt and chinos. Ordinary looking enough, except he
shimmered
.

On stage Abby called to the audience, “Who is ready to be the light?”

Nearly everyone in the crowd raised their hands, and Abby pointed to a twentysomething girl in the front row who quickly bounded to the risers next to Abby.

Mara’s gaze slid to the shining man in the chinos. To Cam she whispered, “I think I can see through him, but he looks a little more substantial than the holograms I saw of you at the repository.”

“That is
not
a person. It must be some kind of high-resolution projection of a man. She might be conning these people into believing they can become some kind of being of light, but it’s just not feasible.”

“I don’t know—” Mara said. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to examine the man more closely. He definitely had a translucent quality. She could just make out the dark edge of the risers behind the man through his khaki-covered legs. A subtle iridescent ripple flowed through his body. She had no other way to describe it—the man shimmered. After staring at him for several seconds, Mara came to a conclusion.
The shimmer was his pulse, as if photons circulated through him instead of blood
.

The audience chanted, “Be the light!” and Mara looked to the center of the stage, where the young woman now knelt in front of Abby.

“Are you ready to be the light?” Abby asked, cupping the woman’s chin in her hands.

The woman nodded and said, “Yes! I believe. I know that I can be the light.” Her eyes rolled up, and her head fell back. Her body tensed, but her limbs hung limp at her sides. As if some external force lifted her by her sternum, she rose in the air, her feet dangling loosely beneath her. Hovering beside Abby, she looked like a puppet whose master had yet to pull its strings.

The crowd fell into its quiet, urgent chant.
Be the light. Be the light
.

An expression of shock crossed the woman’s face, and she lifted her arms. As her hands came together over her torso, a giant tear ripped through her chest, releasing a burst of light that spread through her body, consuming it like a forest in a wildfire. She turned molten, roiled in the air like lava in water, formless and oozing. Curling in on itself, the mass took on a decidedly
fetal
shape, and it shimmered and grew.

Mara gasped and held on to Cam’s arm.
It’s like watching a time-lapsed video of the gestation of a baby
.

From embryo to infant, to toddler then child, the young woman returned to maturity in a manner of seconds, glowing and floating before the adoring chanting crowd. The light of her body collapsed in on itself and exploded in a blinding burst that caused Mara and everyone looking on to wince, momentarily closing their eyes.

Mara blinked away the spots in her eyes and focused on the stage once again. There stood the young woman, shimmering and smiling, her arms raised above her head in celebration.

“I am light!” she said.

Next to the column, looking out over the atrium, Cam grasped the railing they crouched behind, and Mara noted that his tight grip turned his knuckles white.
How can fingers that contain no blood do that? What would happen if they were made of light? Would they glow brighter?
Cam’s distressed expression pushed the random thought from Mara’s mind.

“Are you okay?” Mara asked.

Without looking away from the scene below them, Cam said, “How is she doing that to them? Is it some kind of trick?”

“I don’t think that Abby is actually doing this to them.” When Cam opened his mouth to dispute the point, Mara raised a hand and said, “I’m not saying she didn’t make it possible, set the stage for it to happen. But I don’t believe Abby has the ability to turn someone with a synthetic body into someone with a body made of light.”

“Then how do you explain what we just saw?”

Mara nodded toward her childhood friend. “She got them to believe that they could do it to themselves. That’s why she needed to change their coding. She wasn’t causing an addiction or even making everyone feel euphoric. Those were just side effects of what she was doing. She needed to get them to
believe
to make this transition happen.”

“People don’t turn into living lamps just because they believe they can,” Cam said.

“Don’t dismiss this out of hand. You of all people should realize that reality is more complicated than it seems. You’ve actually crossed over into an alternate version of reality,” Mara said.

“What’s that have to do with anything?”

“Everything. This reality, your world, is simply a reflection of the knowledge, experience and beliefs of the people who live here. The difference between my world and yours is how we perceive it. We actually shape our realities with our beliefs—and Abby is attempting to reshape this reality by altering the beliefs of the people who live here.”

“More metaphysics?”

“Exactly.” Mara waved a finger indicating the world around them. “This realm, all realms, are simply projections of our beliefs. Sam described it once as the pixels you look at in the interface of a computer program. It’s how we interact with the consciousness that comprises reality, but it’s actually just a facade. It’s just perception.”

“If that’s true, what’s the point of it all?”

“I’m not sure this is the place to get into that. Suffice it to say that the universe is figuring out what it wants reality to look like, so it’s trying a bit of everything in each of the realms to see what’s best.”

“You’re saying existence is a grand experiment?”

“Yes, and Abby is rigging the whole thing to come out the way she wants,” Mara said.

“So how does turning people into light help her rig the universe?” he asked.

“I wish I knew the answer to that one.”

Below, the shimmering man and woman moved to center stage with Abby standing next to them, holding up their arms victorious, like they had just won a boxing match. The crowd became boisterous, waving their shiny purple diodes, chanting
Be the light! Be the light!

Abby shook her head and said, “No. You no longer need a shiny piece of plastic to see the light. We are moving beyond that. Cast aside the past. Cast aside the feeble light and bathe in the brilliance of belief!”

The crowd flung their diodes toward the risers, where they fell over Abby and the couple, like sparkling rice at a wedding. Mara noticed the twinkling lights bounced off Abby’s frame but seemed to pass through the two people of light.
They really are nothing but photons
.

Holding out her arms to the crowd, Abby made a calming gesture, and the celebratory noise hushed, as if smothered with a pillow. Smiling like a Baptist preacher on Sunday morning, she stepped forward and said, “Adam and Megan have blazed the path to the light, and now they are prepared to share their experience with you. But remember, the light must come from you. You must believe—believe that you too can be the light!”

The whispered, urgent chanting started up again, as the crowds raised their arms in the air.
Maybe Sam was right. It looks like she’s starting a religion down there
.

Abby turned and encouraged Adam and Megan to step to the edge of the risers in front of the crowd while she slid behind them. The couple closed their eyes and tilted their heads upward. Their shimmering intensified, a quickened pulse. Light spilled from them, like the morning sun streaming through a window. Bands of radiance warmed the faces of the awestruck crowd.

Mara felt Cam stiffen next to her. She turned to him and asked, “What’s the matter?”

“They are doing something,” he said without looking at her.

“I can see that, but what exactly are they doing?”

He shook his head and grimaced as if a high-pitched sound hurt his ears. “The Sig-net. They are using the Sig-net to show those people how to transfigure themselves into light. No, that’s not right.” His eyes narrowed in concentration. “It’s not just the Sig-net. They are using the signal to send the memory, but that light they are emitting is carrying the experience, how they felt, the ecstasy of the transition to light.”

“It will make it easier and faster for them to develop their belief and make the transition,” Mara said.

“Exactly.”

Three bursts of light rose from the crowd, followed by a dozen more. Bodies were hovering in the air, being ripped open and consumed by light. Cries of excitement almost drowned out the chanting as more bodies exploded into brilliance. It was getting difficult to see into the blazing miasma of writhing forms below. Dozens of glowing shapes were gestating. Mara could no longer see anyone not caught up in the metamorphosis.

“We’ve got to stop this! We’re not just talking about a handful of people now,” Cam said, a look of panic sweeping over his face. “Your friend could do this to everyone all over the world.”

“We’ve got to find out
why
she’s doing this,” Mara said.

“
Why
doesn’t matter anymore,” Cam said. “Whatever her reasons, she cannot be allowed to do this to people.”

Discordant voices—not in sync with the diminishing chorus below—caught Mara’s attention. Squinting into the blinding crowd, she could not isolate where the voices came from. Abby stood on stage, waving her arms like a conductor, leading the chant of
Be the light
! No one else down there seemed to be talking. The words
second floor next to the eastern column
cut through the background noise. Mara glanced up, across the atrium to the open third floor. Looking directly at her and Cam were two men in blue uniforms, one of them with his hand to his ear, speaking into the air.

“Oh, jeez,” Mara said.

She looked at the risers on the ground floor, and her gaze fell on Abby, whose head was cocked, as if she were listening to something, even though she continued to chant. She stared directly at Mara.

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” Mara said. She grabbed Cam’s arm to pull him away from the railing, but he didn’t move. “Don’t just stand there! Move!”

“I can’t,” Cam said, his eyes wide with confusion. “Something’s got a hold of me.”

She glanced at the first floor. Abby had her hand extended in the air as if reaching for something. Making a grasping motion with her fingers, she yanked her arm over her shoulder—and Cam flew over the railing into the open air above the still-morphing crowd.

Mara gasped and froze Time.

Cam dangled motionless in the air in mid-tumble, his feet sticking up in the air, slightly higher than his torso, which was twisted with both arms reaching out to the left side of his body. Abby grinned and pointed at him with a finger on her left hand. An arc of lightning leapt from the tip and struck Cam’s midsection. A burst of sparks exploded from him and poured down on the crowd below.

Mara cringed and leaned over the railing, extending her own hand.

“Uh-uh, dude,” Abby said, her black eyes blazing. “I’ll cook him like a pig on a spit before you can strike me.”

“Let him go!” Mara said.

“If you want him, you’ll have to come down and get him.” She scanned the mass of shifting bodies in front of her and added, “Come on down. I’ve got some new friends I’d like you to meet. We won’t harm you. I promise.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s Cam and these misguided people who’ve bought into this weird cult you’ve started.”

Abby burst out laughing, deep and hearty. After composing herself, she gazed at Mara with all seriousness and said, “I’m not building a cult, Mara. This is my army.”

After descending the stairs two at a time and jogging across the hall, Mara entered the atrium to find that most of the people there were now made of light. A couple stragglers were still in the process of changing, but their glowing gestations seemed to be nearing completion. As Mara stepped into the open area, the crowd parted, creating an aisle between her and the risers at the front of the open room where Abby stood between the shimmering couple, Adam and Megan. Mara glanced up. Cam still hung motionless above their heads.

“See?” Abby asked. She stepped from the riser onto the floor. “We’ll just have a chat. Now, will you release your friend, or should I just eliminate him from this scenario altogether?” She raised an arm toward him.

Mara released Time and tried to will Cam to appear next to her.

She wasn’t fast enough. He disappeared in a burst of light and reappeared in another, standing with a confused expression next to Abby. “Nice try,” she said. She made a mocking gesture of brushing at Cam’s shirt, which had a large powder burn in the center, then rested a hand on his shoulder. Cam winced.

Alarmed, Mara said, “I won’t let you hurt him.”

“Just a taste of what I gave that Chinese baker-slash-dragon of yours the last time we met. Don’t worry. I’m very familiar with the melting temperature of our synthetic friends,” Abby said.

Images of Ping being cooked inside out on the roof of the gadget store in Portland flashed in her head. She dismissed the memory and said, “Considering the pain and torture you have put these people through, I’m sure you know a great deal about how to hurt them.”