Perfect State

3

The restaurant was an upper level of one of the larger buildings at the center of town. A line of people waited to get in, though I walked past them. I wouldn’t, of course, be expected to wait in a line.

It felt so odd to have nobody trailing me. No servants, no soldiers. At the front doors, a man guarding the entrance bowed, then waved me past. I caught a glimpse of a clipboard with a page full of faces on it, mine included. Several of the people from the gunfight earlier were also pictured, and I guessed this was a sheet telling him all the Liveborn visiting the city, so he’d know who to obey. Only a few of those here in the city would be Liveborn—maybe a hundred or so out of millions. Just like in other States, the rest would be Machineborn. Simulated Entities who had been born within the State, and would live their entire lives here.

The Wode could have just programmed the door guard to recognize Liveborn without needing a list, but that would have broken the illusion. Did these people know about their natures? In my State, very few were told. Age of Awareness laws didn’t apply to them, and so the only place they could hear about it all was from me or the Wode Scroll.

After riding to the top floor in a glass-sided box on wires, I was led to a dining table for two set off from the others in the room. It had a dramatic view of the twilit city. So many lights; this place seemed to have an energy to it. That I liked, though it couldn’t compare to the Grand Aurora.

I sat down, absently handing my jacket to a nearby servant, trusting it would make its way back to me eventually. I glanced over the menu and ordered a small set of drinks—sixteen cups, each with a sip’s worth of wine in it—so I could decide which one I wanted to have with my meal. The servant blinked at the request; perhaps I hadn’t ordered enough cups. The wine terminology was similar to my own, even if I didn’t know the specific vintages.

Such interesting decorations, I sent to Besk, inspecting the small glass-covered candle that had been sitting at the center of my table. No hearth at all. Soft music. Dim lights. It’s actually quite nice.

Do you wish for me to release the imperial drummers from service, my lord?

No, but find out what instrument produces these sounds.

A servant arrived with a platter full of wine cups. I selected one and raised it to my lips. Then froze.

A woman slid between the tables toward my position. She wore a red dress, but it was quite unlike the ones worn in my State. Form fitting, with a slit up the side, and a modest neckline where the fabric folded a few times. She wore shoes with spike heels at the back, and had dark, shoulder-length hair.

I lowered the cup. The woman had a certain poise about her. Servants moved out of her way, and she walked as if she expected them to. Her steps were slow, confident, and someone even pulled a table to the side to make room for her to pass. She never looked down or broke stride. Her eyes were on me.

The cup slipped in my fingers, and the red liquid spilled onto the tabletop. I cursed, holding out my palm to draw in the Aurora’s energy to . . .

Well, I would have destroyed the pigment in the wine, rendering it colorless, then drawn the moisture from it and split the water into its two primal gases to leave the tablecloth dry. If I’d been able to Lance.

Instead, I stared at the tablecloth, crossed my eyes to enter Lancesight, and was left in complete darkness until I hopped back to ordinary sight.

“So you’re him?” the woman asked, reaching the table. She stood there for a moment. “You realize it’s good manners to rise in the presence of a lady.”

“It’s also good manners to curtsy to the God-Emperor,” I said, covering the spilled wine with my napkin.

“Oh great,” she said, sitting. “You’re one of those.”

“Kairominas the First of Alornia,” I said, holding out a hand to her. “Keeper of the Seventeen Lanterns, Master of Ultimate Lancing, Slayer of Galbrometh.”

“Magical Kingdom State,” she said, refusing the hand and sliding into her chair. “Did you ride a unicorn to get here?”

“We don’t have those,” I said flatly. “And you?”

“Just call me Sophie.”

“From?”

“An Emerging Equality State,” she said. “I led a worldwide civil rights movement, brought my people into the progressive era, then served five terms as the first female world president.”

“Impressive,” I said, trying to be polite.

“Actually it’s not,” she said, waving for a servant to fetch her some wine. “I just played the role they set up for me.”

“I see.”

We stared at each other. The wine was starting to bleed through my napkin, but Sophie didn’t seem to care. She watched me.

“What?” I finally asked.

“I’m trying to figure you out,” she said.

“It sounded as though you assumed you already had.”

“You’re arrogant,” she said. “But we all are. You’re an authoritarian; you came here because you were ordered to, even though you didn’t like it. You prefer to control everything around you—at your palace, I would find immaculate gardens and safe pieces of art hanging in a building designed by straightforward architects. I’ve seen hundreds like you. Thousands. Immensely powerful, but boring.”

You know, I thought to Besk, maybe I shouldn’t have tried the bottom of the list after all. . . .

Besk somehow held himself back from making a comment about that.

“So,” I said, controlling my voice with some effort, “if you have all of these presumptions about me, why are you here? I can assume from the tone in your voice that you do not respect authority. Odd, for the president of an entire world.”

“I abandoned that,” she said, waving an idle hand.

“You . . . what?”

“I gave up the presidency,” she said. “Walked right out in the middle of a world senate meeting. It caused quite the stir in the ant-hive of programmed minds. I snuck off to a High-Science State, learned some technology that wasn’t technically forbidden in my own State, then came back and armed a rebel faction with advanced weaponry. That destroyed world peace and started a global war that’s still going.”

I gaped.

She shrugged as a servant came with wine, pouring her a cup.

“That . . . that’s horrible,” I said. “How many lives have been lost?”

“What? You haven’t started any wars?” she asked, sounding amused. “Mr. Emperor? I suppose the programming just rolled over and gave you the throne?”

“War was necessary,” I said. “For unification. My State consisted of forty different kingdoms when I was younger, all crammed into one continent. Bloodshed was constant. Only unification stopped that.”

“Sure,” she said, gulping down some wine. She didn’t seem to care what vintage it was. “Have you discovered the lost continent yet?”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Of course there is,” she said. “There’s always a lost continent. The programming will pop it out once you start finding your life stale. It’ll give you a new challenge, make you really work again. Should keep you engaged for a century or two until you get old enough that even the Wode’s technology can’t keep your brain going. Then they’ll let you have peace for a few more years before you die.” She smiled at me, smug. “I’ve read about Fantasy States. The lost continent is usually one of only a handful of places, hidden from your magic.”

Make a note of all this, Besk, I thought, but outwardly just smiled. “We’ll deal with it if it happens. I’m more curious about you and your war. Yes, I’ve done terrible things, but at least there was a point to my brutality. You sound like you started a war just to ruin people’s lives.”

“Ruin people’s lives? I doubt the Wode pays that much attention to what I do.”

“I didn’t mean the lives of the Wode,” I said. “I meant the people killed in your State. In the war.”

She waved her fingers. “Those? Just bits in a machine.”

“Just bits in a . . .” I cocked my head. “I think that’s the most primitive thing I’ve ever heard anyone say, and I’ve fought barbarians.”

She shrugged, drinking the rest of her wine.

“You really don’t accept the Machineborn as true people?”

“Of course I don’t,” she said. “Everything they ‘feel’ is just a fabrication.”

“What we feel is a fabrication too.”

“We have a body. Well, a bit of one remaining.”

“What’s so special about a body?” I demanded. Besk and Shale . . . they were my friends. I felt a need to defend them, and their kind. My subjects were more than mere bits in a machine. “Yes, we have brains, you and I. What we ‘feel’ and ‘think’ is the result of chemicals swimming around inside our heads. How is that so different from the emotions of the Machineborn? Bits or hormones, does it matter?”

She looked at me with a flat stare. “Of course it matters. This whole world, every one of these worlds . . . they’re fake.”

“So is the ‘real world.’ When people on the outside touch an object, they ‘feel’ the electromagnetic push of electrons in the substance shoving back on the electrons in their fingers. When they ‘see,’ it’s really just the photons striking their eyes. It’s all energy, programmed on a very small scale.”

“That’s deep science for a Fantasy Statie.”

“Fantastical doesn’t necessarily mean primitive,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve read that the Wode recognizes the rights of Machineborn. Don’t they leave a State running even if the Liveborn in it dies?”

“Yeah,” she said. “But they eventually nudge the State back toward chaos, then inject a newborn real person to grow up and rule it again. That’s beside the point. What have you accomplished in your life? Really accomplished?”

“I unified—”

“Something that they couldn’t have just programmed into the State from the start,” she said. “Something real.”

“I already said I don’t agree with your definition of real.”

“But you agree that they could have started your State with everyone in harmony, right? With a world government in place?”

“I suppose.”

“They feel like they need to give us things to do, to entertain us. Distract us. That’s all our lives are, complex entertainment simulations. They made me be born into a State plagued by an outdated social system from Earth’s past, just so I could transform it—covering ground the real world covered centuries ago. Pointless.”

I folded my arms on the table, looking out the window.

“What?” she asked.

“I hate losing arguments,” I said. “But you’re right. That part . . . that part bothers me.”

“Huh,” she said. “Didn’t expect you to admit it.”

“It’s not the simulation itself that is the problem,” I said. “Machineborn are people, and what they feel—what I feel—is real. What I hate is the way the Wode undermines our authority. I think I’d be all right with it all if I didn’t have this itching worry that they’re making things just hard enough to be exciting, but not hard enough for us to lose. At least we can still die.”

“Ha,” she said, waving a hand. “That’s a myth.”

“What? Of course it’s not.”

“Oh, it is. I promise you. No Liveborn die of anything other than old age—at least, not until they reach their later centuries of life and the Wode starts allowing them to interfere with one another’s States. We can kill each other, but our simulations . . . no, those never hurt us. I’ve seen States where the Liveborn are horribly incompetent, and they still accomplished all the minimum things they were supposed to.”

I didn’t reply.

“You don’t believe me,” she said. “I can provide—”

“I believe you,” I said. “I already knew.”

And I had. Oh, I hadn’t wanted to voice it, or even think it, but I’d suspected this was the case. Ever since my first trip into a Border State, when I’d started worrying.

It was the true reason why I avoided other States, and other Liveborn. Everything we did was like those people playing with paint guns on the streets. Our lives were games.

My secret worry wasn’t just that I might be normal, but that I might also be coddled. Like a baby in a crib.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s better when we can just pretend, isn’t it?”

“Better is an ambiguous term,” I said, looking out the window again. The rain had returned. “I still think there can be a point to our lives. In the progress we make, in who we are.”

“Oh, I’m not saying there’s no point,” she said. “I just don’t think we should let it be the one they give us on a silver platter. Like this meeting. I ignored all the other Liveborn who asked to meet with me.”

“Why come now?”

“Because you’re the first one to ask me from the bottom of the compatibility lists. I was curious.” She regarded me, blinking long lashes. Curious, she said? Then why had she chosen a beautiful dress and makeup?

Lords, I thought, looking at her. Lords, I actually find her interesting. How unexpected. I reached for a new cup. On the table—carved as if into the tablecloth itself—I found that words had appeared near my spilled wine.

I AM COMING, CHILD. YOU WILL SCREAM. IT IS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD I MUST DO THIS.

Damn it, Melhi, I thought. Not now. I didn’t even want to guess how he’d hacked a Communal State.

“Let’s leave,” I said, standing, moving my napkin over Melhi’s message.

“Leave?”

“Food doesn’t interest me.”

She shrugged, standing. “We’re both just brains floating in a nutrient solution; the food is a comfort. It helps us pretend.”

We ditched the table, passing a confused servant wheeling a cart full of food toward us. I walked back to the foyer with the box that had lifted me here. I didn’t get in it, however, instead pushing open a door that was labeled stairs.

Sophie followed me in. “What a wonderful change of décor,” she said, regarding the cold stone stairwell.

I began climbing the steps. “These shoes people wear here are ridiculous. What is wrong with good boots?”

“Other than being unsightly?”

“Says the woman wearing heels as long as a handspan.”

“These are considered very fashionable,” she said. “And it enrages my inner feminist to no end to wear them alongside a dress like this.” She was grinning widely.

“You are an unusual woman.”

“It does strange things to you to realize that the conservative establishment is forcing you to be a progressive liberal fighter for universal rights.” She started climbing up the steps beside me. “I had to buck that, but didn’t know what to become instead. The only thing I could come up with—something truly difficult—was to become a complete anarchist. They built a perfect world for me, so I had to burn it down.”

“Destruction isn’t difficult.”

She grinned savagely. “It is if you’re fighting against what the Wode wants. That’s the only way to be a real warrior, the only way to find a true challenge. Defying them.”

I grunted, agreeing with that.

“So anyway,” she said. “What was that writing on the tablecloth all about?”

“You saw that, did you?”

“Of course I did. Thought you were hiding a vial of poison at first. But it was just words.”

“It was a message,” I said as we reached the next floor. “From my nemesis.”

“Nemesis?” she said, amused. “What is this, middle school?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“A place for children.”

I said nothing, leaning against the stairwell railing for a moment.

“Seriously,” Sophie said. “How does one go about getting a nemesis? Undefeated dragon back home or something?”

“It’s another Liveborn.”

“Oh, of course. You realize that you’re just playing into what the Wode wants, right? Dueling with other Liveborn to keep you both distracted.”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “It seemed that way at first, only . . . I don’t think Melhi is acting like they anticipated.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a long story.”

“And we appear to have a lot of steps left if you intend to get to the top.”

I sighed, then started up the next flight. “I first met Melhi in a Border State . . .”