Chapter One

Chapter One

            Makoto was startled out of one of the deepest dreams he’d ever had by a sudden pounding on his bedroom door. Out of instinct, he closed his eyes and tried to reclaim it. He’d been living in the top room of a magnificent tower and something important to the fat of the tower and maybe the entire world had been about to happen. The sense of some critical moment about to come was still on him even though he was now awake enough to know who was at the door.

            “Makoto! Marielle! Get up and take your showers,” said his mother. She wasn’t exactly yelling but somehow the mere tone of her voice made his limbs twitch in an attempt at obedience. The dream was lost now, leaving only a nagging feeling that he had something important he still needed to do.

            On the other side of the curtain, Marielle made a sound that was something between a grunt and a groan. It did not sound enough like consent for their mother’s satisfaction.

            “I’m not having you go all week without showering. Come on while we still have power enough to work the pump.”

            Winter had come early this year and the sky outside Makoto’s little window was black and speckled with stars. No hint of grey shown over the mountains. His legs seemed to slide out from under the warm blankets on their own, dragging the rest of him along behind. He shuffled towards the door as fast as he could manage to stop himself falling backwards onto the bed. He pushed aside the old hanging bed sheet strung up to divide the attic into his half and Marielle’s. His mother was standing with her torso poking through the attic’s trap door.

            “Oh good, you’re up,” she said. “Get in the bathroom and don’t take too long. I’m going to need a chain to drag your sister out of bed.”

            In the light coming up from the hall below, Makoto could see Marielle was still just a lump under her covers. This did not surprise him much. Marielle had a stubborn streak and she hated mornings more than anything else in the world. Makoto maneuvered around his mother and fled from the scene of the inevitable battle.

            The bathroom was all ready warm and misty, either his father or older sister had just vacated it. Makoto turned on the water and only barely remembered to strip before climbing in. There he dozed under the hot dream until more pounding on the door roused him again.

            “Don’t use all the water,” said his father. The house had its own separate well but his father was always paranoid about their water supply anyway.

            “All right,” Makoto shouted back. He washed his hair as quickly as he could and clambered out. He’d forgotten to bring clothes so he put his pajamas back on.

            “Makoto!” It was his mother again.

            “Almost done!” He gave his teeth a perfunctory once over with a toothbrush and opened the door. Marielle was sitting with her back to the far wall hunched over her outfit for the day.

            “Your turn,” he told her. She only groaned at him and didn’t get up. Makoto decided to leave her to manage on her own and went to see about breakfast.

            The kitchen was the largest room in the house, twice the size of their living room, but so full of furniture no guest would have been able to tell. Makoto’s other sister, Chen, stood at the stove stirring a pot of instant oatmeal. She still had her short black hair pulled back into a ponytail the way she wore it for bed. This early in the morning her square face looked pale and her expression was blank and staring. Their father was sitting at their long dining table with a mug of coffee in front of him. Makoto took the seat across from him. He didn’t feel ambitious enough to make his own breakfast; he hoped someone would take pity on him and share.

            “Happy birthday,” said Ken. He turned a jovial smile on his youngest child that was too bright for the early hour.

            “Thanks,” mumbled Makoto.

            “I was thinking that it’s awfully cold to be out on a bike. I could give you a ride down in the truck if you wanted.”

            “I guess that would be good.” Makoto was used to riding his bike in all weather. His family lived on a farm on the side of a mountain far from the nearest towns. None of the buses ran routes anywhere near their home and both his parents were often busy. His father worked growing organic vegetables and ran a side business distilling beer, both occupations had come with the farm back when his parents had bought it before Makoto or any of his siblings had been born. His mother commuted into the city where she worked in the office of an eye doctor. This meant both family vehicles were always in use and left the kids reliant on either public transportation or their own feet. But it was cold and Makoto’s birthday and if his father felt the need to celebrate by taking a morning off to drop them at the bus stop Makoto wasn’t going to protest.

            “I don’t have class until 10,” said Chen. “I skip my study halls.”

            “You go in late and you’ll have to ride your bike all the way in and all the way back,” their father warned. Chen was eighteen but didn’t have a license to drive. She’d said she couldn’t be bothered to get one when she couldn’t afford to fuel a vehicle anyway, much to the annoyance of their mother who would have at least liked to send her errands when needed.

            “That’s fine,” said Chen. “Anything’s better than sitting around the school.” She removed the steaming glop from the stove and added extra milk from an almost empty jug.

            “Hey, save some of that for your mother.”

            “Yes,” said Anne coming into the kitchen. “I don’t want to have to resort to trying yogurt in my coffee again.”

            “No,” agreed her husband, “no one wants that again.”

            “Makoto, go put some clothes on, it’s getting late,” said Anne sounding harassed.

            “Dad said he’d drive us,” said Makoto.

            Anne frowned over this. “Waste of gas.”

            “Oh come on, it’s the kid’s birthday,” argued Ken.

            “They’ll be walking home after they get off the bus,” said Anne.

            “That’s fine,” Makoto cut in. “It’s all uphill from the bus stop anyway, it’s a pain on my bike.”

            “Fine, but you still need to put your clothes on. And make sure your sister is out of the bathroom.”

            The drive down the twisting mountain road was undertaken in the usual stifling silence. Ken Mori made conversation like a man who while not talkative by nature felt a moral obligation to attempt to make a meaningful connection with his offspring even if it was so early in the morning the sun was only just pinking the horizon.

            “Have you decided what you want for your birthdays?” he asked. Marielle and Makoto had their birthdays next to each other’s having been born a year and a day apart; for a day they would both be fourteen then Marielle would move ahead of him again. The family usually celebrated the two events together on a convenient weekend.

            “A primary net connection,” said Marielle without hesitation. Their father sighed and made no reply.

            “What do you want oh only son of mine?” asked Ken instead.

            “Dunno,” said Makoto. There were things he knew he needed, like socks, and given time he probably could have come up with a few things he actually wanted but he hated being put on the spot for anything. Besides, he always felt weird asking for things even when he was invited to.

            Marielle continued to make her case for a better internet connection that would allow her to play games online. Their father pointed out the objections he always made, that a connection had to be paid for every month and that Chen currently paid for their standard connection out of her own pocket. It was the sort of argument that could be had on auto-pilot and Makoto tuned them out. He was almost asleep again by the time they reached the bus stop and were cheerfully kicked out of the truck’s cab by their loving father.

            The weather had warmed a little by the time Makoto and Marielle were walking home. They reached the drive in front of their house while the sun still lingered on the mountain. Everyone else was gone. Chen was still in school doing her senior year class stuff. Their mother was either at work or the store. Usually their father would have been around but he’d driven to the capital to check on the progress of his application for a permit to install the solar paneling he’d purchased over a year ago, with the blackouts starting again the matter had become more urgent. Ken had started complaining over dinner that the electric company objected to anyone generating their own power and was sabotaging the application process. He’d go on about it at length even when Anne tried to assure him that all he was dealing with was the standard bureaucratic red-tape. Without the normal constant bickering, joking, grumbling exchange of siblings and parents the house felt dream-like in the surreal quiet.

            There was a large yellow envelope addressed to Makoto on the kitchen table sitting under a plate of chocolate muffins his mother had left him. One had frosting like a cupcake on which she had doodled an orange heart with his name inside across the top. She’d also left a note ordering him to cut up vegetables for dinner; Marielle was supposed to defrost and skin some chicken. Makoto took the frosted muffin but left the note where it was. Then he fished the package out from underneath.

            “What’d Lynnie send you?” asked Marielle, making the assumption that the envelope was a present from their oldest sister. She took two muffins without even glancing at the note from their mother.

            “It’s not from Lyn,” said Makoto. He’d made the same mistake at first but the letter he pulled out couldn’t have been anything written by his sister. It was printed on thick parchment with a shining logo across the top. The block of text that met his eyes was so unexpected it was impossible for him to read it. All he could do was stare at the stationary heading.

            “Junk mail?” asked Marielle. She lost interest in him and his packet and went to hunt through the fridge to see if there was any milk left.

            “I don’t… think so,” he answered. “I think it says I won something.”

            Marielle snorted. “Junk mail.”

            “No, it says I won a slot in a game beta or something because it’s my birthday.” This garnered some attention. Marielle gave up rooting through the contents of the fridge and came to read the letter over his shoulder. Makoto gave it to her and extracted the other objects from the yellow envelope. He pulled out a glossy booklet and a disc slid into his hand. He might not have recognized it except their parents kept a lot of old documents stored on CD. This one looked nicer than the ones his parents kept; those had mostly been labeled with masking tape and marker. The disc in his hand was shiny on one side and sported a black and white design on the other that reminded Makoto of bare trees branches silhouetted against a winter sky. The same word that had been printed across the top of the letter was entwined with the branching design. He stuck his finger through the hole in the center of the disc and spun it watching the way the black lines swirled together.

            “Do you think Oneiros is the name of the game or the company that made it?”

            “Neither,” said Marielle. She sounded distracted. “This is a Simulade company. Dad’s gonna kill you if he finds out you’re playing this.”

            “What?” asked Makoto. He tore his gaze away from the disc art to stare at his sister in surprise. “I didn’t sign up for anything bad. What are you talking about?”

            “I think I saw something about this on the news. It was just on the ticker, not an actual story, but it’s the sort of thing Dad hates.”

            “What is?”

            “Fake bodies, you idiot,” said Marielle. She looked up from the letter so she could roll her eyes at him. “They make them from artificial genomes, mostly so they can grow organs I think. But some labs make ones that they can move around like cyborgs. They’re called Simulades or maybe that’s just a brand name. Anyway, this one place wanted to make ones people could control just for fun.”

            “Oh. I thought they all ready had stuff like that.”

            “They did but it’s against the law now, has been for like 20 years, there’s even an international ban or something like that. This company must be operating from a country that isn’t part of the Council. They can do all sorts of stuff with a loophole like that.”

            Makoto struggled to sort through the information she had given him, distilling it down to what he saw as the essence of it. “So I’ve won something bad?”

            “Who knows, let’s go put that disc in and find out,” said Marielle. Without further ado, she snagged another muffin and headed for the stairs.

            “Wait!” Makoto called after her. The disc slipped in his hand and he almost dropped it. He had a sudden vivid recollection of his father yelling at him for playing with the CDs he’d found in Ken’s study and hugged the Oneiros disc to his chest, suddenly certain he was going to scratch it.

            “Wait for what?” asked Marielle from the top of the staircase.

            “I don’t think this is a good idea. It could be a scam and Mom wanted us to get stuff ready for dinner.” Makoto went to stand at the bottom of the stairs so he could look up at her.

            “She’s not going to be home until after 6:30, we can figure this out first.”

            “What if it is a scam?”

            “Then Chen can fix it. She downloads all sorts of crap; she knows how to get rid of stuff.”

            Makoto stood frozen on the bottom step torn between his doubts and curiosity. He’d at least made the argument for caution, not that this was likely to hold much weight with his parents if they found out. He bit his lip in hesitation then pounded up the stairs so fast his socks skidded on the wood. He thumped against the wall, unable to properly balance or catch himself with both hands full. Marielle didn’t even notice; she was all ready in Chen’s room.

            The house’s main screen was in the living room but the tacit understanding was that it belonged to Anne and Ken and anyone else who wanted to check the news or the weather. If any of the kids wanted to use the net they did it from Chen and Lyn’s room. Since Lyn had moved out the year before the various net related devices had expanded their territory to swallow up her half of the room entirely. Marielle was all ready ensconced on the ancient couch they’d commandeered from the living room years ago; it was puke green and lumpy but still better than the floor. She’d logged onto the net and was looking at him with impatience.

            “Do you think Mom’s going to yell at us for wasting power?” asked Makoto. It was a weak protest and he only made it because he was annoyed; his arm was still tingling where he’d smacked it.

            “Chen does it all the time,” said Marielle. “If something shows up on the account they’ll think it was her. It might as well be, she’s always on all night long.”

            Makoto gave up talking and crawled under Lyn’s old desk, which was layered with dust and tangled with cords, to find the disc driver. He found the box he was looking for and hit the eject button and blew into the hatch for good measure. Dust rose into the air so thick it made him gag. He shielded his mouth and nose as best he could with one arm and used the other to pop the disc in. Then he scrambled out again shaking his head to remove dust from his hair the way a dog shakes off water.

            “Grab a controller,” ordered Marielle. “They’re in the bottom desk drawer.”

            Makoto obeyed. He freed the least battered of their game controllers from the heap of things piled into the drawer. He was going to take a seat next to Marielle when he remembered the booklet. He turned a quick circle and saw that he’d stuck it on top of the desk before plunging into the depths. He grabbed it and flopped onto the couch which was too old to bounce under his weight and could only wheeze in complaint. The word “Oneiros” had appeared on the screen mounted over the desk. Just that word and no indication whether it was meant to be a title or a company. Underneath it a circular loading bar spun.

            “Loading,” said Marielle in disgust. “I hope our connection can handle this thing. I told Mom and Dad we needed a better one.”

            Makoto considered checking the booklet for system requirements but on further thought that seemed like too much work. He sat next to his sister, feeling her exasperation like a physical presence as they watched the load screen.

            “They really didn’t make any effort here did they,” she said.

            “Well the letter said it’s supposed to be a test.”

            “Still, you’d want a flashy logo or something to catch attention. Hey, I think we’re in.”

            The word “Oneiros” and the load sign had vanished leaving a blank screen. Makoto felt the same anticipation he did at this moment every time they played a new game.

            “I wish I’d known it was going to take forever to load,” complained Marielle.

            As if the game had heard her, a gray image appeared. Makoto leaned forward and squinted at the screen. He could make out a figure sitting on the floor of what looked to be a small empty room. A message in white appeared across the bottom of the picture informing them that the program couldn’t detect their controller.

            “What horrible graphics,” said Marielle sounding disappointed.

            “They aren’t graphics,” said Makoto. “If it’s a real body then we’ve got to be looking through a camera.”

            “Oh right, I forgot,” said Marielle. She leaned forward again. “But I still can’t see anything. Do you think we can change cameras? The angle here sucks and it’s too dark.”

            “I can’t do anything. See the error message?” Makoto waved the useless controller around to demonstrate.

            “Reset it,” said Marielle. She sounded confident as if there was no chance of it not working.

            Makoto turned the controller over. It was an old one that was meant to be held with two hands and possessed only rudimentary motion controls; a fact that was moot since the motion detector that had come with the system had never really worked in the first place. Eventually Makoto located the little black reset button and managed to press it with his fingernail. The green light on the top of the controller began to blink and went red for a moment then cleared as a connection was established. The reaction on screen was even more dramatic as light suddenly flooded into the bare room they’d been peering at.

            On the screen a box appeared once again blocking their view. It read: “Welcome: To play you must register.”

            Marielle climbed to her feet and went to fetch their sisters’ keyboard. It was easier to fill out forms on a full keyboard without having to cycle through symbols with a controller. This meant another struggle to get the devices to all acknowledge each others’ existence.

            “Did they give you an activation code or anything?” asked Marielle as she fiddled.

            Makoto put down the controller and opened his booklet. Across the first page was a long code printed in black on the grey background. “Oneiros” was written in large white print behind it. Below, where the legal stuff was usually packed in tight, there was a message printed in a font large enough to indicate that it was meant to be read. “Materials provide are to be used only by the registered recipient and no other persons. Registration of product must be completed upon receipt of materials. Failure to comply with registration requirements will result in termination of account.” That was all. There was no copyright information or even the standard warning against illicit redistribution. It was strange. Makoto scanned the message again and then began flipping through the pages.

            Marielle had gotten the keyboard communicating with the screen and tabbed experimentally making the topmost white box flash. Without bothering to ask, she snatched the booklet from Makoto’s hand and began to carefully key the digits and letters in while balancing the keyboard precariously across her knees.

            “I wonder how Chen does it. She types all the time. She must have somewhere to put this thing.”

            “Hey,” said Makoto. “They want my R.I.D. number.”

            “Do you know it?” asked Marielle without even looking up.

            “No.”

            Makoto didn’t bother to point out the obvious, which was just how angry their mother would be if she found out that he had typed that number into a net game. He could still remember how furious she’d been when a representative from the power company had asked for her R.I.D. to verify their account. She’d yelled at the poor guy until some other accommodation had been made. Anne hated the very idea of identification files and the only time she didn’t object to using the number was on government forms.

            “Dad will have it on file in the study. We can go look it up,” said Marielle. She finished entering his name, gender and birth date with an utter absence of concern that Makoto found annoying under the circumstances. He agreed with her on the subject of their parents’ generalized paranoia but something about the situation still gave him a nagging sense of worry.

            Their father’s “study” was a windowless room in the center of the house that had originally been intended as extra food storage. There wasn’t a lock on the door but only Ken ever went in. Makoto couldn’t remember ever having been told he needed to keep out, it was just something he had always known. Marielle and Makoto crept up to the door even though the house was empty except for them. They stood outside the entrance a moment, like agents hesitating before entering enemy territory. Then Marielle reached out and pushed the door open. Their father’s room was small and dark with only one overhead light that had to be turned on by an ancient pull cord. Makoto tripped over the rug as he entered. He lent on the battered green leather armchair for balance as he fumbled in the dark for the piece of string tied to the light’s switch. Eventually he managed it, filling the room with dim yellow light. The study was packed with books, CDs, souvenirs, photos, stereo equipment and old electronics. There was a crank radio so that Ken could listen to music and get the weather report even when the power was out. Anne and Ken followed weather reports the way other people followed drama series. There was a desk made out of dark wood crammed into a corner. Makoto went to rifle through it while Marielle directed her attention to the old filing cabinet in the opposite corner.

            Makoto made only a desultory search. Even though they were technically looking for his papers he still felt like he was snooping. Not that the light was bright enough to allow him to easily read anything he found. Makoto found a picture of his mother in the top drawer. She’d been a college student when it was taken. He squinted at it, feeling disoriented. The girl in the photo was recognizable but she looked more like Marielle than his mother with the same long brown hair, and the same straight and thin body shape. The person he was looking at was a stranger who only resembled two people he knew. He wondered if Marielle would look even more like their mom in five years.

            “I found it,” called his sister. She startled Makoto bad enough to make him jump. He shoved the old photograph back into the desk as if he’d been looking at something dirty. Marielle had a fat folder crammed full of papers clasped against her chest. She’d removed the envelope that had his birth certificate and R.I.D. card. Other papers were spilling onto the floor. Makoto saw an old school essay and a picture he’d painted back in first grade.

            “Why do they save all this stuff?” he asked.
            “Because they’re crazy, look at all the junk Dad has in here,” said Marielle. “Get something to write the number down on before I drop everything.”

            Makoto rooted through the desk again until he found a pen and a five year old receipt for pepper seeds that probably wouldn’t be missed. Marielle waved the envelope in his face, dropping more stuff with every move, until he took it. His R.I.D. was just a plastic card with the number and a bad copy of his infant thumb print printed on it. The real information was all tucked away in a government database somewhere, everything from his place of birth to a DNA sample. Again he felt a wave of unease but scribbled down the seven digits that guarded the secrets of his life anyway then put the card back in the envelope for Marielle to tuck into the folder.

            “Don’t drop it,” he warned.

            “It’s fine.” Marielle wadded papers back into the folder and jammed the whole thing into the filing cabinet. Makoto suspected she wasn’t being careful to put everything back where she’d gotten it from but knew he’d only get an argument if he said anything.

            Back upstairs, the screen saver had come up and controller had shut itself off. Makoto turned everything on and it took long seconds for the screen to go down. This prompted even more complaints from Marielle about their old equipment but eventually they were settled back on the couch. The registration window was filled out and then verified, a process that took a few more minutes of waiting.

            “I wish we’d known we were going to need that card when it was taking forever to load,” said Marielle.

            Makoto didn’t bother to reply. The load screen had gone away again and he could see the figure in the picture. He, Makoto was somehow certain the creature was a he, stood in the center of what looked to be a small empty concrete room. The camera was position near the top corner of the left side of the room so that they were looking down on the figure making it hard to see his face. This black hair that was neither curly nor straight but some messy state in between grew everywhere further obscuring his facial features. Makoto could tell that he had broad shoulders with long thick limbs and was clad in loose grey clothing but not much besides.

            “Maybe I can zoom in or something,” said Marielle. She began messing with the keyboard but was interrupted.

            “You have activated one of the Oneiroi. Congratulations,” popped up in a text box. “Before you can continue your journey you much choose a name.”

            Another box appeared and took longer to load than it should have. Marielle’s fears about their connection’s capacity were not ungrounded. This time the box had a picture and they were able to see the face of their Simulade for the first time. He had horns. They were small and almost the same pale color as his skin but they were nevertheless the first thing Makoto saw. The second thing was his eyes, which were a brown so dark they looked black, though this could have had something to do with the contrast to his paper white skin. His facial features were by themselves unremarkable and dominated by a nose that was both wide and slightly flattened. It was his expression that fascinated Makoto; it looked like blankness disguising rage.

            “I feel weird naming him like we just got a new puppy or something. Shouldn’t he all ready have a name?” asked Makoto.

            “I thought it meant pick out a user name for us,” said Marielle. “I guess it could have meant the Sim.”

            “We should pick out something that could work either way, just in case. I could use my Radman screen name.”

            “No, that one’s so stupid.”

            “No it’s not.”

            “Yes it is. It’s lame.”

            “I can call him whatever I want. I won and it’s my birthday.”

            “Don’t use something stupid; it’s embarrassing. Pick out a real name.”

            “What? Like Michael or Carl?”

            “No.”

            “We should give him an M name so he matches.”

            “Really, really no.”

            “I still like the name Carl.”

            “Do you think this thing has a profanity filter?”

            “Want to find out?”

            The lights flickered and the screen winked on and off, freezing as it tried to recover lost data.

            “Oh no,” said Marielle. “I didn’t hear anything about there being a black out tonight.”

            Makoto jumped to his feet and grabbed a battery powered lamp off the shelf above Chen’s bed. Somehow they’d spent so long trying to get logged in that the sun had gone down and if they lost the lights they’d be stumbling around in the dark. Chen’s room was difficult enough to walk through even when you could see.

            “We better go run water before Mom gets home,” he said.

            “I guess you’re right,” said Marielle. She gave the screen a long look then turned it off. “What do you think happens to a Sim when we log off, does it just sit there until we come back?”

            “I hadn’t thought of that,” answered Makoto. He gave the blank screen a glance as well. “It’ll probably be all right. I mean it’s the first level. It’s not like he’ll die if we don’t come back right away will he?” An uncomfortable silence ensued.

            It was broken by the sound of the front door slammed as their mother entered the house.

            “Hey you guys, did you cut up the vegetables for the soup? They just announced over the radio that there’ll be rolling blackouts for at least tonight and tomorrow. Come on, I need some help down here.”

            The two siblings exchanged a look of helpless consternation. Then they tromped down the stairs to the kitchen. There didn’t seem to be anything else to be done about it.