The Fabric Of Reality (2 page)

Alesia planted her fists on her hips, glaring at the old man. “These older men are bachelors because they discard their wives like refuse in order to take young brides. They know society will condone their reprehensible behavior because of our faltering population growth. There is nothing civilized about the treatment of those cast-off women or us orphans. It’s barbaric, and the fact that the council condones it makes you all barbarians. If we’re truly dying as a people, we should die with dignity.”

“Out—out you go!” He hustled her out the door and locked it behind them. Councilman Bolivar turned up his nose and hobbled away, his cane clicking on the cobblestone every time he touched it down.

The thrumming sensation diminished greatly, but didn’t disappear completely. She found herself staring at the castle again.
If you’re really up there, why haven’t you come for me? You should have been here before the baron came calling. You’re not coming to rescue me, are you? I’m mad for ever believing that you would.

Alesia reentered the orphanage. Her mistress sat at the kitchen table, sipping tea, and spoke as she passed, but Alesia didn’t answer. The old woman wouldn’t dare punish her now and risk damaging the baron’s newly acquired property. She strutted to her bed, head held high, ignoring the glances of the younger girls.

Bonnie shot Alesia a sneer and strolled over to where she stood. “They all passed you by, didn’t they?
Even
Marco. That’s why you refused to speak to me last night. Got knocked down a notch, didn’t you?”

Alesia gave Bonnie a sideways glance. The cruel tone in her voice cut to the bone, but Alesia refused to be drawn into a useless argument. Bonnie was merely using Alesia’s misfortune to voice her own frustration. She’d be facing the same hopeless situation in another year. That horrible fate awaited them all.

“You’re always so arrogant, Alesia. What makes you think you’re better than the rest of us? I can only imagine the humiliation you faced at the ball, all dressed up in your shabby clothes, while the young bachelors turned up their noses at you and made their choices among beautiful, rich girls. I told you Marco couldn’t afford to purchase your debt. The salary of guard is barely enough for two people to live. Why did you waste your time trying to convince him to take you for his wife anyway? The stories of our salvation you’ve always told us are not true, are they? You knew we’d suffer the same fate as all the rest, didn’t you?”

Alesia pretended to ignore Bonnie, even as a knot began forming in her chest. It had become painfully obvious that her dreams and visions were a product of her own desperation. She needed to get away from everyone to contemplate her fate. The mistress had been loaning her out to help with weeding the Smith’s crops, and the baron had made her late. The hook where her work clothes should have been hanging was empty. She didn’t want to tend the fields in her good dress, but the alternative meant asking who had taken her clothes, which would inevitably lead to a fight, delaying her further. She glanced out the window and spotted some of the younger girls doing the wash and understood. Since she was all but bought by the baron, the mistress couldn’t make her work any longer. They had probably assumed that she wouldn’t go. She put on her best bonnet, the one she reserved for special occasions, and started toward the door, but turned back. She had only one possession that was of any value to her, a hand mirror said to have belonged to her mother. Alesia grabbed it up and stuck it into the pocket of her apron. The other girls weren’t thieves, but she had a feeling that if she left it, she’d never see it again.

Marco hadn’t even given her a glance at the ball. She had completely misjudged him. All the flirting and friendly conversations they had engaged in meant nothing. It’s true that paying off her debt would have been a struggle on a guard’s salary, but she could have found work and helped. Rehashing the events in her head wouldn’t change things. It was all done now, and there was no going back.

Bonnie stepped directly into Alesia’s path, blocking her exit, and poked her shoulder with an index finger. “Where’s your hero now? The one who will carry you away to live a life of love and happiness? You’re nothing but a foolish dreamer, making up your fantasy tales, raising our hopes.” Bonnie poked Alesia’s shoulder again, a little harder this time. “You said he was real. You said he would come for you before your debt was sold. You said there’d be heroes for all of us. You’re a liar, and you’ll suffer a life of loneliness, humiliation, and heartbreak, just like the rest of us. There are no heroes for the likes of us. We’re just worthless lumps of flesh, more mouths for society to feed, and no man could ever love us. Have you finally accepted that?” Bonnie poked Alesia a third time.

Alesia grasped the front of Bonnie’s dress, twisted it around her fist, and held it tightly under her chin. Bonnie’s eyes widened, and she struggled to keep her balance. Alesia hardened her gaze and drew Bonnie’s dress tighter. “If I’m not worthy of love, so be it, but I’ll make my own destiny. You’d be well advised to do the same. Don’t settle for what this life offers you. Go out and get what you want.”

She released Bonnie’s dress and rushed from the room to get away before her tears escaped. Everything Bonnie had said was true. There weren’t enough young men to go around. With no wealth to offer a potential mate, the prospect of any orphan girl living a happy life was grim. Alesia was determined that she would not be a baby-making machine for a man she didn’t love.

She hurried into the kitchen to pack a lunch. Her stomach had been too tied in knots for her to eat dinner after the selection ball and too full of butterflies to eat breakfast before the baron’s arrival. Sundown was still hours away. She’d need her strength for pulling weeds the rest of the day. She spread a cloth on the counter, placed a biscuit, tomato, and two raw carrots onto it, then tied the corners. As she grasped the handle to open the door, her mistress spoke up.

“He’ll be coming with full payment this evening. You had better be here, or you’ll have more trouble than you can handle. I’ve raised you for all these years, and I have a legal right to due compensation. Don’t think of running off. The baron will have alerted the guards, and they’ll have their eyes out for you. Any woman caught hiding you will be hanged as a thief. You know that, and so does everyone in the village. Keep it in mind. You’re a good girl. You wouldn’t want to endanger anyone by asking them to take you in.”

Alesia gritted her teeth but held her tongue. Lashing out now would serve no useful purpose and only delay her further.

“You have to accept your fate and make the best of it, like all of us. These are hard times we live in. We can’t have what we want. We must compromise in order to survive. The baron is old, he’ll probably be dead inside ten years, and you’ll be free. Bed him often enough and you might hurry him along. Perhaps your first child will be a son, and he’ll turn you loose out of gratitude.” The old woman cackled like a witch.

Alesia didn’t turn around. She merely pushed the door open and headed toward the Smith’s field.

Chapter Two

Gil awoke to a particularly loud boom and lay thinking about the woman from his dream while he waited to see if the warning alarm would sound. She was no one he knew. He couldn’t even see her face for the misty haze surrounding her, but the way she had felt in his arms was still fresh in his mind.

“Bloody bastards!”
You can never give me a moment’s peace. Not even long enough to finish a dream.

The Window in the corridor was pulsing with energy again, translating impulses from the Reality on the other side into tangible electromagnetic waves in Gil’s universe. He could feel it like static electricity making the hairs on his arms stand at attention. Every time the Window pulsed, it triggered the dream. It was as if someone was beaming a transmission through, directly into his mind.
A signal, a message, maybe it’s not a dream. Of course it’s a dream.

Red and green LEDs flashed on the Alternate-Reality Junction Locater sitting on his nightstand, indicating activity occurring in the Window. Gil glanced at the screen, but the data gave no clue about the nature of the energy pulses, just like always.
It has to be random fluctuations. No one is there.

The reality of being alone was always the most bitter during the middle of the night, not that he ever got to sleep through the night any longer. Solitude had taken on a whole new meaning since his colleagues had escaped. Living without a companion among a large community of friends had been difficult, but not hopeless. There were always possibilities. One particularly promising possibility was named Amanda. Had the escape gone according to plan, Gil knew for certain they’d be married by now. She professed her love for him in no uncertain terms on the eve before everyone slipped away, but that was more than a year ago, and he hadn’t seen her since.

The warning alarm didn’t sound, indicating that the protective Barrier Sphere system was functioning normally, keeping all threats out of the compound. Apparently, the attack hadn’t hit a vital area. His latest adjustment to the Emitter frequency still had his enemy off balance. They’d stumble upon a way to defeat his tweaks eventually, but for the moment he was safe.
If they knew anything about the weapon systems they co-opted, I’d already be dead.
Gil rolled over and adjusted his pillow but knew he’d never get back to sleep. After half an hour of tossing and turning, he climbed out of bed and got dressed.

Stupid no-fraternization rule. If I ever find you guys, I have some choice words for whoever came up with that. I wonder who Amanda married. I certainly wasn’t the only one who was interested. She probably got with—no. I have to stop torturing myself over things I can’t change.

The Window was still pulsing, calling to him like the faint voice of a desperate friend lost in the distance. He didn’t bother grabbing any of his instruments to take further readings. He knew from experience there was no point. Whatever was translating through the Window into his Reality had no discernible pattern or identifiable source. The disturbance it caused set off his detectors, but beyond that, it might as well have been the cries of a ghost. Gil stepped into the corridor outside the dorm rooms and sauntered along to the relative position that corresponded to the Window location. There was no visible component to the Window, but he could feel the pulsations. At least they registered in his mind as a physical sensation.

Could this really be a form of communication? If so, why were none of my colleagues able to feel it? And why does it always coordinate with the dream? Questions upon questions and never any answers.

Gil made his way outside. Cool night air filled his lungs, suddenly sharpening his senses, bringing him fully awake. The booming on the Barrier sounded somehow more ominous from outside the building and always managed to unnerve him, even though logically he knew the old stone structure couldn’t withstand a single hit. He strolled through gate in the compound wall and headed toward the Barrier Emitter Housing Facility. It was a ring-shaped metal building that ran all the way around the outside perimeter of the ancient fortress and the point from which the Barrier Sphere energy shield originated.

The night sky was alight with energy weapon fire, all directed at him. Bolts of every color in the spectrum rained down from orbital weapon platforms and blossomed into beautiful multicolored flowers as they impacted the Barrier. The United World Brotherhood had been pounding it with everything they could get their hands on for the five years since the world’s scientific community pulled off their rebellion, but so far the Barrier had held firm.

The Brotherhood had executed the bloodiest coup d’état the world had ever known in the name of returning humanity to a nontechnological age. The pacifist governments of the world had been unprepared to defend against the simultaneous global attacks and unwilling to meet them with military force, opting to negotiate a solution instead.

Once the previous world leaders had all been slaughtered, the Brotherhood began dismantling everything that used advanced technology. When Gil and his colleagues raised the Barrier around the fortress, the Brotherhood realized that they had no way to get inside without using technology.

Gil didn’t want to gloat but couldn’t help himself. The very people the Brotherhood despised were the people they needed in order to destroy him: scientists, engineers, intellectuals. With no clear concept of how the technology worked, the Brotherhood had struggled along using brute force in their attempt to break through. They had only just begun to have any real success, and that was only because he was the last man standing against them.

Long rows of electronic equipment stretched out for the entire length of the circular building. Access panels and Emitter array covers were strewn haphazardly around. It took too much time to remove and replace the covers every time he had to make a repair, so he had given up and cast them aside. The futility of maintaining the equipment had not escaped him. He was merely prolonging the inevitable, hoping for a miracle that he felt certain would never come. If his colleagues could have come back and rescued him, they would have done so by now. Amanda wouldn’t have let them abandon him to die, regardless of the cost. They were obviously unable to reestablish the Doorway back after it closed.

Gil strolled along, checking for weak Emitter Nodes and any other components that might have been stressed by the near-constant bombardment. After replacing a few parts, he made his way back inside to the control room to calibrate them.

Amanda’s picture greeted him when he got to his workstation. He plucked it from his desk and placed it face down on top of a file cabinet, then went back to work. He’d return it to its proper place later in the day, as he had a hundred times before, but he couldn’t bear to look at her for the moment. He had to occupy his mind with other things, or he’d begin wondering who she was taking to her bed at night and if they had a child yet. Gil slammed his keyboard drawer shut, grabbed his coffee cup, and pushed back from his desk. He drew the cup back, intending to smash his monitor with it, but took a deep breath instead.
It’s my favorite cup, no sense breaking it.
He set the cup back onto the desk, but his fingers stuck to the handle for an instant after he released it, sending it crashing to the floor.