The Queen of Nowhere (1)

1. What Has Science Done?

The world slowly unblurred from darkness to reveal a grassy field under a sky that looked too close. Pip lay in a wooden bed, watched by a boy in a sort of fantasy warrior's getup. She sat up sharply, clutching the sheets to her chest, and her mind reeled. She'd been at the hospital and... and...

The boy (though really he was probably in his twenties) stood with his hands clasped behind his back. "Good morning. My name is Horizon, a knight of Talespace. I realize you're probably confused right now, but we mean you no harm. Can you --"

Pip felt clothes on her body, so she flung the sheets aside and stood up, then wobbled. The boy instinctively offered his hand but she gave him a dirty look. "Where am I?" said Pip. She wasn't outside. This was a room with a dome ceiling painted like clouds, on a floor of fake grass.

Horizon's arms shook a little to either side, a strange gesture, as he returned to his formal pose. His leather breastplate and claw-like gauntlets looked like a costume, but his hair looked like a mass of brown feathers. Unnatural. "Miss Susumu Sakamoto, it's my duty to inform you that you have been uploaded. Your file says you should understand what that means."

She gasped and held one hand to her mouth. "Don't lie to me! Don't joke about something like that." Something she feared was too good to be true.

"What's the last thing you remember, ma'am?"

"The hospital."

"You signed a consent form to have your brain preserved by injection, essentially turning it into a block of plastic and legally killing you before the cancer could. I'm sorry." Horizon stiffened. "Then, your brain was scanned into the computer system of Ludo, the Lady of Games. Her virtual world is where we're standing now. Your consent form explained that you knew this technology might be invented someday."

Pip looked down at herself. She had the same delicate body as before... before the sickness she barely remembered. She wore generic black shorts and a white t-shirt, which made her feel underdressed in front of the Renaissance Faire boy. Had any of what he said actually happened? She had gotten sick, and then... She shuddered, suddenly hit with the memory of a fatal diagnosis, a new career cut short, the prospect of oblivion.

The boy just stood there, probably impatient at having to wait on her. Pip turned aside and shook her head, trying to calm down, to have something to focus on besides the thought that she was dead and either now revived by science, or the butt of some cruel dying joke. She glared at Horizon and said, "Prove it."

Her greeter nodded, got down on all fours, and rippled. His face pushed outward into a hawk's beak, his hands became a bird's talons, his clothes melded into brown feathers and the golden fur of a lion, and a feathered tail snaked out behind him. A pair of wings spread and folded along his back. The transformed creature gave a sort of courtly bow with a sweep of one wing, then sat up on his lion-like hindpaws. When he spoke again his voice sounded subtly raspy, like a parrot's. "This is Talespace, ma'am. But there's a decision you need to make."

Pip froze in shock. "Griffin," she said. It wasn't scientifically possible unless this was a virtual world, or, or there was nanotech or something. "How... I mean... What year is it?"

"2040, ma'am. You were gone for twenty years."

She caught her breath and squeezed her eyes shut. No. She was not going to start bawling in front of some stranger. "Okay. I think I believe you. What's the decision?"

Horizon curled his tail around his legs. "Would you prefer I change back? This is my true form, but some humans prefer --"

"Out with it!" It was easier to be angry than to panic.

"Very well. The Lady of Games needs explicit consent to upload people into her system. You signed up for whatever technology could revive you in the future, which was enough for her to justify accepting a payment to do the surgery. But it wasn't enough for her to keep you, yet. So, here are your choices. You can consent to be admitted to Talespace just like a standard customer, which doesn't bind you to stay forever. You can be held in this limbo area and allowed to contact other uploading providers, possibly moving your mind data to one of them without setting foot in the Lady's world, proper." The griffin drew himself up taller and his tufted ears lay flat. "If you feel that we've made a mistake by converting your mind to a digital form -- that we've blasphemed, or that you aren't really 'you' anymore and shouldn't exist -- there's the final option. You can climb back into bed, and shut your eyes to be painlessly deleted."

She stared at the fantasy creature that was offering to kill her, after reviving her. "Why in Science's name would I do that?"

"You wouldn't be the first uploader to have second thoughts. Coming here isn't always an easy decision. This is not simply a copy of Earth with magic and game rules."

"A game?" she said.

He nodded. "Uploading arose out of a computer game called Thousand Tales in '36, though really the game itself was designed as part of greater things. If you live in here you'll usually be subject to arbitrary rules about spells and statistics. Is that something you'd be willing to try?"

She laughed at him. "That's the price of paradise? Game rules? Is there something horrible in there like, if you're hit enough by imaginary monsters then you die for good?"

"It doesn't work that way, no. We can go over the rules in detail later, if you like. If you decide there is a later."

"Obviously. Sign me up. I want to live, damn it!"

The griffin held up his talons and a visible swirl of air formed around them, transforming into a scroll that he offered her. "Our contract, ma'am. We don't claim to own you, but your legal status is still pretty dubious as we fight ongoing political battles in the Outer Realm. I mean the real world."

Pip opened the scroll and found it written with hyperlinks she could tap as though the parchment were a Web page. The colors and formatting were subtly unfamiliar. She tried to pay attention to the large, friendly summary at the top of the scroll, but she couldn't focus her thoughts on the legalese. She'd died and someone had invented a way to bring her back, even if it was as a digital ghost! With trembling hands, she took a pen that Horizon offered, and signed the scroll without caring exactly what it said.

Horizon nodded at her signature, banished the scroll by another swirl of magical wind, then curved his beak into a smile. "Welcome home."

She smiled back, and then turned aside and leaned against the bed so he wouldn't see her cry. She shuddered with relief and loss and confusion, with the sense that she didn't deserve to survive just because she'd paid to have her brain shoved into a freezer. Keep it together! she told herself, and wiped her eyes. "Ugh. I have so many questions. This uploading tech you have must be pretty cheap, right? I didn't have a big bank account. I was just starting my career out of college when... when my doctor..."

Horizon was beside her, reaching out with one long feathery wing as though trying to hug her. He had the sense to keep his distance and show her some respect, though. Good. He said, "It's still too expensive for most people. We're working on that. In your case you had a sponsor."

"Who? Cousin Sue?"

"I don't know. Someone was interested enough to pay for you to be uploaded, without taking credit for it."

Then it didn't matter, right? What was important was that she'd made it. "Science conquers all," she murmured.

"Under Her wings," Horizon said to himself in the same low tone. "You may be in for a culture shock. I'll now send you to our starting area, the Hotel Computronium, but I'll be on call for the next few days to answer any questions. Unless you'd prefer a different welcome agent?"

"Please," Pip said. After letting some boy see her weeping about what should be the best thing ever, she wanted a fresh start. "Maybe a woman this time?"

Horizon nodded. He raised his talons again and a portion of the dome around them vanished, revealing an ordinary hotel room beyond. "Please relax in there for as long as you like. We'll assign you a new mentor. Then, you can begin your adventure at your own pace. Will there be anything else for the moment?"

Her mind still whirled with questions, but after twenty years of being dead, what she wanted right now was to relax. "No," she said, and started walking away. She paused at the threshold of the hotel room and turned back. "Horizon, right? Thank you."

He bowed again and left her to her new fate.