Jade Zero
Harold Anton Kruger
October
2003 -January 2004
Jadreding bads n chatels, theory n practice Jade arrived in his demon travel agent like a snail with the brakes set cunningly on pear shaped rocket science always with a catch at the back to let the poor bastard out.
Catch Meatlock stared up at the cool wizard within a shadow of the proverbial doubt. What if the Jewel was muchly chatel by now? Here in theory the wizard was deaf to the angle of doubt which took the form of a silver crow perching on his cloak-swathed shoulder. Sounds familiar? Core cor caw? It’s a maldroid quasi guru, you fool.
“Conversation between Meatlock and the wizard”
“Theory I assume.” She brushes back a strand of long blond hair.
“Now is already” answered Snail facetiously.
“What else is there besides this total fantasy shengfin?” She glances at the light from the screen that has reflected off Snail’s grim and bony hair into the pupils of her eyes that nestled in her orbits like golf balls in the catcher’s greedy cotton picking mitts.
“Well, said Snail Pacemaker slowly as Ice thawing in the sun,” replied Snail sarcastically, we have sport on G, but that’s only the Jabbic rendering,”
“Oh” she smiles. Generous mouth, thick lips. Blunt thin. Skin dress.
CHAPTER TWO
The Detrag stopped suddenly in the sand while a long trail of very, very much smaller sand showed up above the more massive granules of reasonably pure quartz exactly where he had been. The large, maroon Apparent Demon gazed at one small cluster ring of brightly coloured tents. The man in the Detrag saw five tents. Four were green, one was red. He hits the catch at the back of the machine and lets the poor bastard out. The brightly coloured green tents were photosynthesizing like mad, since no, they were not simply dyed canvas or dead hessian. They were membranes of cyborg tissue. You really had to factor in the Complexity. Steam escaped from the vents of the Detrag. The desert was boiling hot. Demo Thartag leaps down to the viscous, curry coloured surface. He is completely swathed in jade feathers. He gazes into the cluster ring of half-living tents and spots a figure standing on the central camp ice. Demo moves forward, hawk features smiling like a chick praying in the Earthly temple of Myron for a reversal package with travel options to escape bloody hell.
Demo knows. He has seen images of them. Demo Tharag said it all;
“Womandroid.”
CHAPTER THREE Wamilia
Jade Zero?
Responding
Roger. Now find the name of Ard the wise
Can I flip from here?
If you tie off the last shunt and shift a Jewel Search, yes
Is there a catch?
Only on the poor…but I have no faith in Vivirel
Just let her out. Meatlock, I’m flipping.
Him? No, why he just struggle to get it down in barest note form und flom their…ok, your turn (Del). So what? Chaotic to patterned? Then what is all? You tell those witches Verbatim, Esc and Sysric. I can’t. I have no power in this. Just cannoted find this blood Jewel. You try, eloquent fool, the stages are already set beyond the zero. There’s a Tigertiger on the horizon, dew on the red and green membrane. Sparic? Sparic? Found it. Vedus. What? Name of the Wizard, Moron, he’s called Vedus. Thanks a lot. Vedus the Wizard has the blood Jewel, three rings, five necklaces and a Del…… You there? Tarak? Kerwon? The line was dead.
Sysric climbed the spiralling granite steps up to her drema del Crema. She wore green hose on her legs and a thick galling flack jacket (suspended between heaven and Earth). Sysric focussed on a malachite sconse. Her breathing digging laboured, her jet white hair plastered like silver across her delicate brow. She could feel the molecules of Andenosine triphosphate struggling to diffuse across the mitochondrial membranes in the muscles of her left leg. Her beaver skin boots dragged and grated on the raw granite like blocks of toughened edam hitting a road metal grid of great expectations but no practice. Her bodice was of spun gold, since she’d already flipped one Jarworld and had accumulated half a thratac of highly pure poverty. Her eyes were blue mist.
Sysric could hear this. , she added sarcastically. No one could hear. She was alone on the seemingly endless stair
Chapter four
Two men dressed in brown suede jeans were already drinking at a table in the blue-lit bar when Roger entered. He glanced at the large tank on the south wall. There was an octopus inside. He slid into an unoccupied chair just as Blondella, the barmaid, was pouring the blue wine. He nodded to Clive and Alistair, took as sip of the wine. "Where is Ard?"
"In my pocket," said Clive Shoot. His nose was slightly bulbous, his eyes were blue.
"What?"
Clive fished a white mouse from his top pocket. "Look, Ard came to Vee Are as a mouse." The mouse ran up his arm and back into the pocket
"Well, at least we are all here. Any closer to the detrag?" asked roger. His hair was black, eyes like chips of jade.
"Digging long haul," answered Clive. The head of a tiny rodent emerged from his top pocket, wiskery nose twitching. "Go up to the Uni," squeaked Ard.
"We checked the Uni for Android plants weeks ago," countered the Asian man, Sparic.
Time gradually waited as the conversation continued. Blodella wandered around the tables with jugs of beer and wine. The octopus writhed in its tank, more flexible than you imagine. Blue light shone down from the ceiling like the elect photons of God striking down on the wicked. Yet these were the good guys and they had a task to seek out and find the Evil in Vee Are. At least that was the idea.
On the way to the Uni Ard cowered in Clive's pocket. An Owl screeched from the tramlines. It was brown and white. "Fuplex major domo" muttered Ard.
"Consider the technology in a VR world," said Dr Kaursur in the lab. He smiled like a lopsided wolf. "Soon we have VR within VR, and thus the Jarworlds. Stand under the beams of green light, gentlemen, I'm sending you to Vivirel."
CHAPTER FIVE
Ludu cleared her throat with resounding irony. She was a womandroid and above human sarcasm.
"No," said Memish the android, "There is a danger of becoming too human. We have to infiltrate their world. We need to be undetectable, but we must remain objective in our study and one day solve the human problem."
The three machines were seated around a breakfast table. The salt shaker was actually a spy. It was recording the information for it's master, an intelligent building called Intbid 07. Other buildings of this kind had been discovered and burned down, So Intbid 07 had become sneaky. It called itself Ice and appeared in various Jarworlds as a man; at least this was one of it's fronts.
"What's on the screen?" asked Clutz, the third machine. She pointed at the wall and images swam into focus; a dim clearing surrounded by primitive huts. A cloaked wizard riding on a giant dog.
Vedus the Wizard dismounted his detrag in one smooth motion like a frog jumping into an ancient pond. He landed on the semi-frozen soil with a resounding ripple of auspiciousness and a kind of thumping sound as his leather boots bit the dust. He handed the reins to Catch Meatlock. The mismatched pair strode gradually to the excavation where the diggers were still at work singing simple songs about cold beer. The stone cairn had been exposed.
Vedus lifted off the last few rocks and found a dried corpse. Almost a mummy.
CHAPTER SIX
“Roger?” Clive turned around. There was Sparic.
“Sparic?” Roger frowned, glancing at Clive sideways. Roger was a scientific cynic. “Well flip a Jarworld, there’s nothing but open plains of ferns and old saurapod bones here. No storytellers for at least…”
“Roger,” said sparic. He wore the personality of a priest. “Look this way, and observe. Aristotle…”
“Don’t mention Aristotle. ..Oh.!” Roger turned. He saw a white picket fence. He saw a vast cliff-face of glowering dark brown and pink stone that glittered with flecks of mica. He saw distant mountains capped with snow. He saw a graveyard within the white picket fence, the individual graves scattered widely.
“Observing without an extant ideology indeed.”
“Jedrading. He was just a bad observer.”
“And you accept that on what? Faith? Was he cross-eyed? If he looked at that tombstone there would he observe an eye?”
“It’s a stone flower on the tombstone, but behind that it a totem pole with a raptor’s skull on …”
“In the centre of the flower. The eye rolled to focus upon our weary wrappings.”
“But why,” asked Clive slowly, “do we have all these dinosaur bones outside the graveyard?”
“Would they fit in the graves, brain-drain?”
“Now what Feyerabend really said was..”
“No more! He was a worse observer than Aristotle. It’s got nothing to do with the storyteller or the detrag.”
“Yes, but that eye…”
“The eye. It may have, er, seen us.”
“May? It was observed observing us.”
“According to whose theory of knowledge?”
“Now hang on …”
“Roger,” said sparic, “the tomb lid is …well I think I see it sort of …”
CHAPTER SEVEN Wamilia
“The first people were small and lived close to the ground, eating dark seeds by the first light of the Moon Spirit. “Lift your eyes from the ground and gaze upon my face. Without my light you would starve. Now I grow thin and hungry. Sacrifice some meat for me. The Detrag is far away.”
“We cannot,’ said Mog the Elder, ”since Gelada the baboon taught us how to eat we need to watch the Earth very closely. Our only meat is grubs, beetles and the occasional small rat. It is not enough to share. So we cannot gaze at your face.” Secretly he thought that gazing at the Moon spirit would send a person mad. But young Ard the Wise was not so sure. He lifted his face to gaze at the Moon spirit. Then he went mad and began to smash different rocks together.
Sharp flakes of flint fell at the feet of the first people. With these stone claws and teeth they could hunt larger animals. But Ard did not stop there. He continued to smash rocks together, and made showers of sparks. Many of these flew up and stuck in the sky, becoming the first stars. Some fell down into the dry grass and kindled the first fire. “That will come in handy,” said Ard the Wise.
“You can stop that hammering, Ard,” said Mog. “You’ve made your point.”
“Yes,” said Mog the Elder, “ once all this innovation has died down we can have some peace and return to the search for dark seeds.”
“Oh, not yet,” replied Ard, who was quite mad. He continued hammering. The heat from the fire softened ore and Ard hammered the first blades of metal.
Now the sound of the hammering travelled far and wide, attracting the Detrag. It was an allosaurus, and it approached the first people until it was stopped by the fire.
“Where have you been, Detrag?” asked the Moon spirit.
“I was roaming the Earth, but I am commanded here by the sounds and lights.”
“Who will hunt for me?” asked the Moon spirit, “I grow thin.”
“The first people now have blades for hunting,” said Ard.
“Most of the first people wish to live as peaceful vegetarians,” said Mog.
“Tell that to the occasional small rat,” replied Ard, “but now I can command the Detrag not to roam too far, and to hunt for us and the Moon spirit.””
Wamilia stopped talking and ran a hand through her long white hair. The firelight made a strange cratered mask of her face. “That is the end of the story. But the story has not ended, because our people sill go on, and the Detrag still hunts for us and the Moon spirit. This is our way of life.”
Chapter five.
I woke slowly from the drugged sleep of an utter, utter hypocrite.
Silence he said in a voiceless whisper
When the tomb opened
Sparic remembered this as he gazed at Wamilia’s face in the fire-light, the light that gleamed off the bone inner surface of warren.
Wamilia looked at Clive, then Roger. What did she know?
The Tomb had slowly opened after the flower-eye had inspected them for some time.
There was a hushed silence after the end of the story. Sparic found the myth quaint and ridiculous, but he was not from Vivirel himself, just a visitor.
Woke from the drugged sleep….
Wamilia looked at Sparic. He wanted to burrow into the ground like a tiny worm, but that was out of the question.
Warren was lined with dinosaur bones, as they found out when the “Indian” Long Tong led them inside. Warren was the electronic mind behind the flower-eye. Warren was the underground passages where the tribe lived. His thoughts became scrambled as he climbed down the ladder.
Now, if you diagram the senses you can draw neat circles like the map of Tiboria until you go out to the fuzzy edges of “Thought I saw something like a Quoll” and felt a bit like I heard a sound. Then the line is erratic and fractal, like the coast. Bother the dog. No dogs here. Once a Wizard rode on a giant dog and he called this his trag. De Trag was French for DEmon TRavel AGent.
Do you think you knuckleheads can handle all of that?
Jedrading Tiboria was the way he stood. The way he looked, his thin seamless clothing worn in the Detrag. He approaches the serene womandroid. Presently they began to talk without any quotation marks.
Auspicious greeting, I require a child.
Modal greeting. As long as you follow the protocol your wish is possible.
I have had no previous children, and do not know the correct protocol.
That is no problem. I will inform you. Firstly we converse, and get to know each other. Come closer to the central camp ice. It is cool. Later we will visit the red tent.
“The central camp ice flared and hissed, radiating cool beams through the hot afternoon air of the desert. It looked blue and translucent, but only at the onset. Once his perception had adjusted he saw the purple flanges. They talked about the third dimension of time and reciprocal arrangements.”
By the way, you can call me Wamillia. It has even been my name on occasions.
I will call you Wamillia. Is it time for the red tent?
Almost, but once inside you will need to initiate a seduction ritual. First I must instruct you.
“He gazed at the four green tents, wondering what was inside. The womandroid was nothing like his expectation. Reproduction on this planet was a complex process. An android would have to remove his stored semen from the womandroid in a later sexual act and then pass it on to a woman who would bear the child. Direct copulation with a woman would not be effective.”
Oh, something romantic about the colour of my eyes.
They are hazel, with streaks of blue, reminding me of the snow streaked across distant mountain peaks by the frigid winds of winter.
Now keep talking and lead me to the red tent.
Why is it red?
The membrane contains a pigment which traps green light and reflects red light.
“The couple move towards the tent while the man continued to talk about mountains and the frigid winds of winter. He cannot see the plot from here, since he lives on the apodictic level."
CHAPTER SIX
Snail? I think we lost the trail.
Heaps Jedrading.
What does that mean?
“Snail turned around to gaze at her.”
There could be a good reason. Where is that with?
Systic? She is the witch climbing the tower to meet Catch Meatlock.
But Catch is talking to the Wizard who arrived on a Canine Detrag with the Blood Jewel.
The phoenix jewel, more likely.
“He takes a step closer to the woman and reaches out with his hand.”
Birdsong? Go back a bit. That’s in the dinosaur graveyard on Tiboria. You know, the senses diagram.
“He touches her blond hair.”
Listen, it need not be Catch Meatlock on the tower, but can we locate the tower?
Not Vivirel, I’d think it must be at least five layers deep in nested virtual realities.
You love to spell it all out, you might be a witch or a womandroid.
“She glanced at the hand on her hair and gazed into his eyes.”
Snail, I think we’ve lost the trail.
Well, if Sparic hears birdsong at the moment the “Indian” Long Tong waves to them, all we can say is that Sparic happens to recall such a coincidence when he returns to the University. But how many birdsongs are there? There may be almost as many as there are birds.
Well some birds don’t exactly have a song, but I hear your point. It’s a beefy jerkin thing to say, but he can hear it again once they are all riding the Allosaurus Detrag to the first wall.
OK, I can do that. Before basalt wall. There, it’s a plover.
Turn a corner, a Fadrigoish phrase at ninety degrees.
“His eyes dropped first, then his hand.”
Meaning?
To enter the promised land for a right turn, to go insane for a left. Turn a corner.
Somehow I can’t work it all out.
“She reached to touch his elbow, seeking eye-contact.”
Well, this is only partway through the entire sequence and if we go for comparisons now…
I see what you mean, snail. Now Sparic hears the plover again, and it’s a haunted, mournful sound to his ears. Did Wamillia warn him or speak to him about it when they were in Warren?
I’m not sure, but it is the sort of thing she might do…
Why are you known as snail?
“He met her eyes for a tingling six seconds. He grasped her sleeve.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The beaver skin boots of Systic took a final step to the top of the tower. Archers shot from the battlements like yellow trees of kelp softening in the underwater breeze. Bodies lay strewn across the floor like logs at the mercy of evil woodcutters, liberally squewered with enemy arrows.
A dwarf with a full beard approached her.
“Hello, I’m ..ah …Thorgrim.” The dwarf had a funny expression.
“Really? Well I’m Jemima.”
“Welcome, Jemima to the defence of Bassic tower. I will equip you as an archer. Now if you peer through the mist you can see other towers. We think the one on the left is Grazillion, which is a virtual reality one peg down from our own. It flies the Grazillion flag; a red petal on a yellow field. The trouble is that it could be a Fadrigoish flag for Urlan Quebec, which is a VR peg up from us, not down. Directly before us is a tower that is either a total hologram or one manned by androids. We call it Mishmal and it flies no flag. All the towers move around, of course and we have trouble with fog, but Mishmal is drifting to the left. On the right we see two towers that mostly battle each other; Kora Timshel and Dradlalova. Dradlatova is usually out of bowshot, and according to our intelligence sources Kora Timshel think we are androids one peg up, so they don’t bother shooting at us. Our current policy is to shoot at Mishmal and sometimes at Grazillion, if they drift too close.”
“Is your name really thorgrim?”
“It might as well be. What does it matter? Here, I’ll get you a bow and a full quiver.” There was a dark glint from the Dwarf’s steel-grey eyes. “Now, our true mission is to work out who our true enemy is. So far it could be any one of those towers. We aim to take the centre and destroy our enemy. That is the aim of the game. Of course that involves working out what the other towers are so we don’t waste our arrows trying to kill virtual androids.. Come this way.”
The dwarf led “Jemima” to a long low armoury chamber. She knew that Thorgrim was the most legendary Dwarf warrior of all time. This dwarf was not even the captain of the tower. There could be several motives for using a different name in VR, but the name chosen could reveal more than it hid.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“What?” Tarak Kerwon stumbled out of the red tent into the glaring light of day. The intense sun was slightly blue. He thought of tangerine peel.
“You would find out sooner or later.” Wamillia’s voice was cool and tangy.
“Not a womandroid…?” he shook his perplexed head. All of a sudden a lot of things were not making sense. He imagined a tree being chopped down slowly with axes.
“No, I am a cyborg. My body is partly machine and partly true woman flesh. I’m not all womandroid, and for that reason I can bear your son ourself.” Her tone was precise and modulated. She imagined a squirrel storing up nuts for the coming winter.
He staggered across the sand. A wave of coolness from the camp ice hit him in the face
“A cyborg? No, no, this is all wrong. The old traditions cannot be broken. This sacred method of reproduction has gone on for over two thousand years…and you …you..” He imagined a flock of birds pulsating across a violet sky. He thought of a wolverine trotting across the snow.
Jade sat down heavily on the stone rim. She came out of the red tent wearing a long yellow wraparound. She walked to him, undulating across the sand.
“Our son will be very special.”
“No.”
“He will be a new breed of cyborg.” She adjusted the control under the rim and the camp-ice became a fountain of water. “And we will meet by the fountain again.”
“No,” he repeated, as if in denial, while thinking of beavers gnawing at the trunks of trees.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Let’s start from the verry beginning, “said Roger, turning to Clive,” We are both in Vivirel, I am roger and you are clive. But where is Alistair?
Then we would change names, “Clive replied.”
Ah, but all we did was to use the lower case, “explained roger.” (cicadas began to sing)
Well it sounds exactly the same, and if we go back to check …
Exactly, who would bother? “roger sighed.” (A squadron of geese flew overhead, honking)
Clive? “it was ard, his tiny nose twitching from clive’s top pocket. (a muffled explosion boomed on the horizon.)”
Don’t talk in that confusing way, ard, “clive replied. But he fished the mouse from his pocket and placed it on his shoulder.”
“roger scanned the horizon,” We are really after the Detrag, “he said,” and we don’t mean the guilt-droid taxi, either.
But Vivirel is not the verry beginning, anyway. Where is sparic?
Probably trapped by Wamillia by this stage, “Said clive.” (A freight train thundered by.)
Ah, gentlemen, this is not Vivirel. We are lost.
Anyway I know who would bother. The person who stops reading here and…
Reading?
CHAPTER NINE
A wiry hand like the claw of a bird grabbed Sparic by the wrist and dragged him into a side chamber of warren.
“When you hear the plover, that is the moment.”
“What’s a plover?”
“It’s a bird,” said the bird,” It has a mournful yet curiously warbling cry, sometimes mistaken for an alien creature not of Dalerth. “Now, what is your name, child?”
“I’m Sparic. Let go of my wrist.”
“Ah, Sparic Let Go Of My Rist, you remind me of a young man with a much shorter nickname. But he would be old as me by now. I used to pose as a cyborg who pretended to be a womandroid, but I was a woman all along,” said the bird.
“Just let go,” said Sparic.
“I could have told you quite a story, quite a long story indeed,” said the bird, “ so you won’t forget me. Not now. I am the plover, Wamillia.” She said, letting go of his wrist. “But at the moment you have scant notion about what is significant and what is necessary. Guess the name of that man. Was it Jade? Was id Kerwon, or was it Demo Thartag?”
“Demo Thartag,” replied Sparic. His eyes were hazel.
“How did you know?” asked the bird.
“I didn’t know, I guessed. Hey, your eyes look pale green in this light.”
“More than a guess,” said the bird.
“But now they look pale blue.”
“How did you know?”
“The name is well known, where I come from. Wow, that’s a pure midori colour now.”
“He had a nick name.”
“According to classical irridology you have arthritis. I can tell by the patches of you iris.”
“Well, you could have asked me, it’s not a secret,” said Wamillia.
CHAPTER TEN
Scroll Lock slipped over the battlements of the tower where the ivy grew lush and thick. She knew it was really just the mezzanine area of the Uni gym, so nothing bad could happen. The other towers were really just mock-ups in virtual reality. She nearly lost her grip as a crow cawed loudly and flapped through the fog over her left shoulder
“Wait a moment,” cried Alistair, “I’m not under the beam.”
“Oh,” replied Dr Kausar,” well it’s only a Demo run of Vivriel anyway, they should return in a tic. Do you know what this growth on the side of my nose really reminds me of?”
“That’s not very Important, I was supposed to go to Vivrel with them.”
“Oh it’s all forgotten by now, they must be deep in adventure. Well, why don’t you watch out for them as you probably intent to do anyway while I go and get my drug fix.?”
They turned a right hand corner and entered the realm of the speedways. There within the wall was an ancient series of ways, roads and tracks that were originally designed to travel the people at different speeds until they went insane (or reached the promised land). Nowadays the technology of power was lost, so the people would walk or run at different speeds to travel on the various frozen tracks. The three men in the story travel inside the wall and eventually go insane.
CHAPTER ELLEVEN
There is a certain mystery between reader and author. Together they participate in a reality which …oh, alright.
“Who said that?”
“I am me, who else could I be?”
“Then think this is Gueldorf, a planet in Vivirel when…”
“And we use different names, so you can’t understand identity that way … no, on purpose, that’s how it works.”
Snail changed channels and glanced at her empty seat. There was Clive, listening to a plover. He thinks it was, but we could have changed the who and why of the bird, too. In fact we might have to, just to make a point. OK, scrub all the point making.
Thick ivy towselled across the craggy walls of the tower, and Esc climbed down gingerly, a magical knife of iron in her left hand. She passed a…(did he say Gueldorf? That’s not in Vivirel.)
Snail plugged himself into the second frame and had a go at being Catch Meatlock. He had a conversation with the cool wizard, who was called Vedus and wore three rings and five necklaces. There was a chunky patterned ring on his left pinky called Myron. There was a delicate Celtic ring of gold on his right pinky called Sequa, and there was a silver ring with a yin/yang pattern on his right ring finger called Rashalika. For balance of power it was vital to wear the three rings on the correct fingers.
When the mummified corpse was exhumed from the grave mound, Vedus placed the blood jewel on it’s chest. Then he put a necklace of bone and teeth around it’s neck. A great pile of wood was stacked up all around the ancient corpse. The great bonfire was lit.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The detrag had dropped them by the vast black wall of basalt . Sparic watched the huge dinosaur lope away. An animoid taxi. Now they had to walk next to the wall in order to find an opening. Roger assured them that there were openings every so often. He spoke eloquently about the ecological experiment that was the wall. Various species were completely separated, especially the large ones. Smaller ones could migrate through the long tunnels.
There was a climbing plant that grew in patches up the wall, with blue and orange trumpet shaped flowers. Butterflies and humming-birds visited the flowers. Half an hour later they found an arched entrance to a large tunnel, and turned a corner.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tarak wandered the curry coloured sand.
“Because he wants to meet you,” said his detrag.
“Who?”
“The man they call Ice. He represents Inbid 07 or 09.”
“And if…”
“Hello Jade. My name is Ice. Come inside the tent.” The tent was green with chlorophyll. Kerwon could just imagine photosystems one and two, but while he did so the man was talking. Kerwon traced each individual reaction from when the first photon struck the antenna pigment, so the imagination took some time.
“And that is the gist of my story.”
“What is gist?”
“A form of corn that may be wheat, small sand of gristle used to fire up the first windmills.”
“But how do the windmills actually work?”
“The wind blows them and the grindstone rotates.”
“I have never seen a windmill.”
“Yes you have, you just didn’t recognise it. Windmills had never before been identified for you.”
Tarak paused and adjusted his coat of Jade feathers. He was only asking about windmills as a diversion, since he had missed the entire gist of the story. Anyway, what kind of a name was Ice? And he was only talking to Ice as a diversion, so he could forget about his disaster with the cyborg.
“What do the towers represent? I often dream about them.”
“They represent the ghosts of these five tents. They exist in a dream netherworld and are forever at war to express the suppressed anger of the tents.”
“You know I changed names to come here?”
“Jade Zero is only a nickname, we know that.”
“Ah, no, but I’m really Demo Thartag. Tarak Kerwon is a Hero in an adventure game I used to play as a kid. He’s a great Hero, and I pretend to be like him, but I’m really only Demo Thartag.”
“What will the child be named? Have you thought of that?”
“Is there no way to----.”
“No, there is not.”
“But a cyborg? It’s against the grain of---.”
“All we accept today used to be against the grain. Time can change almost anything.”
“But I assumed she was a genuine womandroid. It’s all too much.”
Ice began to laugh. He was an old man.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN FIVE
The figure dressed like a classic red Indian, feathers and all rose from the grave like a member of the undead. At the moment he waved Sparic hears the call of an unusual bird.
“Greetings! My name is Long Tong. Warren wants to meet you.”
Ard shuddered and remained deep in Clive’s pocket.
Sparic had a slightly confused mental moment in which he thought the bird had identified itself as a Long Tong. Then they were all walking towards the grave. The stone eye continued to watch them.
Tell me a sign, number six
I cannot, number three, my ice is breaking
Did the plover entice Jabbic rendering?
Jedrading the muchly chattle already
So there was a womandroid?
Sometimes in thratacs of gold
You know simon?
No
CHAPTER THIRTEEN SIX
The Gathering men trekked slowly homeward, their sacks full of gold tratacks. They had found the latest materialisation shrine an hour before sunset, and the liquid copper disk was now touching the eastern hills. The Gathering men were the lowest caste of society, so they had to do the physical work of collecting the gold. Later the gold was beaten into thin foil and the nobility used this as legal tender. Poor men like Usher and Humpstead had to trade with lumps and ingots of the heavy gold, known locally as thrataks, and spent most of their time scouring the land for materialisation shrines, which produced the stuff, and lugging great sacks of thrataks home.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN SEVEN
Tarak Kerwon had a dream. It was a strange and jumbled dream. He was in the middle of the wilderness. A flock of alien plovers adulated across the sky. He recalled an ad about digger’s beer. There were flowers made of stone. Then he was drinking the beer, sitting with friends around a huge bonfire that snapped and crackled. He heard a scrap of conversation about who was in the fire. He looked around. There was nothing but fire, and it felt quite warm. Where was his detrag? Then he stepped though the flames, filled with a sense of immense power. The people, some of them diggers, gazed at him in utter shock. Some muttered his name in the way that old fashioned people mutter, “Oh my God!” and “Jesus Christ”. His own name was something legendary. It had been a long time, and now he had come back.
“Tarak Kerwon!”
CHAPTER TWELVE ONE
The three machines gazed at the entertainment screen. It was not exactly breakfast time viewing. Heroes emerging from the funeral pyre and all of that dramatic stuff. They really wanted something like the all ads channel. The android reached for the salt shaker.
Clive was in the third layer of an impressive VR when he fell asleep and had a dream. The purpose of this dream was to open the defective cap and drain the engine oil from the malfunctional Detrag. Of course this made little sense, up front, thus it was a dream.
A small white mouse leapt out from Clive’s pocket and tried to cross the tram tracks. He thought of a new video wavelength for his wife, which was obviously a nonsense frequency.
“Why are you shaking that thing? It won’t submit.”
“To get the salt out. And who are you, really?”
Then a brown and tawny owl swooped on the white mouse. Clive screamed.
“You mean Wamillia was created for that role? I can’t accept it. There are patterns, but…”
“Oh, she was specially crafted. Why do you think the name Tarak Kerwon comes down to us? For millennia the machines had control of human reproduction. Wamilia and Kerwon mark the point of change, and if Demo Thartag had not found Wamillia you say…but someone had to. She was a cyborg crafted for the task. She was in a red tent. She was waiting for someone. Turns out to be Demo. Turns out the son is named Tarak Kerwon, the Hero of this age.”
“No, I just can’t accept it.”
And so the cyborgs took over.
“So we have multiple realities. We have identity issues. Over here a character searches for a ring. We have various interwoven plots and good Lord, is that the time?
(The first draft of Jade Zero ended here)