Beautiful Wreck Read online

  “No, I wanted to talk to you,” I told her. “I have something to give you.” I drew the necklace out of my purse.

  Morgan stopped messing with my belt and looked briefly at the beads.

  “I see,” she said, “The attachments are wrong here and here.” She pointed at the metal parts, then set it aside. “I can work on it for you later.”

  Oh.

  I closed my eyes tight against a sudden sting.

  She told me to sit so she could do my hair. She had a newly-etched hair comb. While she brushed and twisted and yanked on my scalp, I kept my eyes closed against any tears that might come. I opened them once, to blink into a reading state. The irises closed, and I muttered “Steeplechase, Atlantic City.”

  Words came wafting by. New Jersey, United States, turn of 20th century. Steeplechase was one of several wooden piers that reached out over the Atlantic Ocean and housed entertainment venues and amusement rides. Opened August 1899. Destroyed three times …

  I flicked my eyes to make the history go by faster, to get to the early 2000s. But the dates ended. In 1932, a fire started by a 26,000-light advertising sign—

  “You can’t do it, you know.” Morgan’s cold finger on my spine startled me, and the words dropped away. “Right here.”

  She touched the nape of my neck.

  “Já, I know,” I said. “The raven.”

  I desperately wanted a tattoo—a stylized bird made of swirls and lines in darkest blue-black. I’d wanted it for a while and had asked Morgan to design it, but the arcs said nothing about ink in settlement Iceland. That kind of extensive ink wasn’t known in any Viking land, let alone on a woman. I imagined it would give me a fierceness and indifference that I craved. The bird’s beak would be open as if cawing up my spine, ready to bite into my hair, the only color a round amber eye. But it came down to a choice. Authenticity, or the raven?

  “Skyndi, Kona!” Jeff was there suddenly, standing at the door with a chipped coffee mug, showing off his amateur Old Norse. He knew how to say exactly three things. Besides Hurry, Woman, there was How do I undo this? and That was not my fault.

  I took the coffee from him, holding it far away from the red dress, and sipped carefully at it. “So late this morning,” he said, “and you didn’t even let me in last night.”

  He winked, like I knew he would, and the room lit up. Jeff was brilliant, his strawberry blond ponytail falling in messy strands over two layers of worn t-shirts. The headphones around his neck met at his throat like a Viking torc. I literally shook my head, astounded at myself for spending the night with the diary.

  It just wouldn’t have been right. Mine sleeps. I recalled the farm wife’s words. I knew Jeff was not mine and wouldn’t ever be.

  “Let’s go, seriously,” he said. “I need you on your knees, now.”

  He was teasing me. The sensation of rushing water as I entered the tank—his “quick impression of a shower”—was so powerful it had physically knocked me over more than once. I’d made a habit of kneeling at the heartstone to immerse.

  I waved at Morgan as Jeff dragged me out of the studio.

  “I won’t be around tonight,” she said, gesturing toward the necklace I’d made for her. “It’s turn-of-the-century night.”

  The turn of the century tugged at my thoughts. Oh. Right. Atlantic City.

  I’d meant to tell them both about those whipping skirts in the boardwalk light, and the wash of hats, brims atop every single person. It seemed wrong, the costumes far older than the Ultimate Fighting era. But Jeff had me by the hand, and we were gone down an ice cold corridor, swallowed by a cloud of steam from the vents.

  BEACHED

  I woke face down on a beach of black sand.

  My cheek pressed into moist, stinging grains, and the elements of the scene came to me slanted, the details building one by one. Pebbles and rocks of all sizes stretched as far as I could see, shimmering in a thousand shades of ebony and slate.

  Big boulders loomed over me, shaggy with seaweed in shades of rust and gray. Farther, two rock formations, taller than a building, knelt like gigantic trolls before a frothing sea. Sparks of white light bit at my eyes, and then a message glowed with the ambient temperature. 54.3 F. 12.4 c. My contacts. I’d forgotten to take them out before immersing. No coordinates found, they said, power sliding down toward nothing.

  Moisture from the beach must have seeped into my linen shift for a long time. It was bound tightly around my legs and stuck to me everywhere, miserable. A nasty wind came, and it whined and whipped at my hair and wool cloak.

  Dark closed like a flower over my eyes. I woke again, and it was the same.

  I counted pebbles, starting over and over as I failed. They were more bluish than black. Almost purple, some of them. A watery light played on them from high in the sky, but I couldn’t seem to roll over and look up to find the sun. A very faint sensation of its heat reached the back of my neck, tantalizing but nowhere near strong enough to make a dent in the prevailing cold.

  This wasn’t right. This wasn’t the heartstone. I didn’t know where I was.

  I tried to raise my head, but fell back to the sand. I couldn’t feel my arms, but I wiggled my fingers. I flexed one foot to find it was the same, frozen solid inside my heavy, clogged boot. I tried to recall the symptoms of hypothermia from a long-ago documentary. Labored movement, confusion, that was all I could recall. I dragged my arm up to where I could see my fingers. They were bluish and wrinkly like a crow’s claws. I considered their color against that of the sand. Fingers like skim milk against the darker blue of flint.

  A wave lapped my leg and jolted me awake. I scrambled, useless, limbs completely numb. My hands and feet moved like dumb blocks. All around me, boulders crouched patiently, furry with damp seaweed. Ragged, wet. Oh. It meant water would come here. This whole place would be submerged, and I would freeze in a minute. I’d drown.

  I struggled forward, away from the seeking waves. I tried to roll on my back and sit up, but crawling was the most I could do. I got one knee forward and then the other, dragging myself through volcanic sludge. It felt like a hundred pounds of dress and cloak dragging with me. The splendid red dress. It was saturated with muck.

  I drew myself far enough onto land to be sure I wouldn’t slide back in, and blessedly closed my eyes. Under the shushing of tide, there was a mournful, inhuman voice. The whale’s song sounded pretty, and I smiled into sleep.

  Two faces hovered over mine.

  Two men, but not techs from the lab, nor scholars who had the pale skin and organized hair of those who worked in clean seclusion. These faces were bronze from the sun and red from biting wind and cold. Both men had ash blond hair that hung over me in waves, with braids that fell from their temples.

  They were from the simulation. They were Vikings. I was still in the tank.

  “Chief,” one of them called in thunderous Old Norse. “She is awake.” His breath told of recently-eaten fish, a vivid and complex smell, disgusting but fresh, not the rank smell of old bad breath. Jeff had made a breakthrough in the design quality. I wondered at the glitch that was giving the man an odd accent, though. He’d spoken just a few words, but I knew inside and out what he was supposed to sound like. I’d designed it, and this wasn’t it. I had never heard the lyrical language spat so roughly before.

  He helped me to sit and held me up. My head swam and contacts struggled, sputtering. LX89.9scssXXZ998877zp. An attempt at temperatures, heights, a last gasp. The data faded, and there were four men. Four horses. One of the riders swung his leg over and dismounted with an elegant ease. I thought about the detail, and who among the geniuses at the lab had bothered to program such grace. The two men who hovered about me had called him Herra. Their chief, then. Their leader, the protector and commander of their clan. Or perhaps the word was slightly altered, used to mean simply boss, or—I smiled drowsily—perhaps like one might call a little boy “Hey, Chief.”

  Regardless, I hadn’t expected there to be one in tod
ay’s session.

  My two rescuers quickly gave way to him. In the damp sand, he knelt before me on one knee. He was no little boy. His forehead, the long straight line of his nose and high cheekbones reflected gold in the setting sun. Strong features were framed by hair of the deepest black, shot through with the blue of a crow. Drawn back on top, it fell in tangles and waves over his shoulders. His beard was trimmed close to the skin. Raven hair and eyebrows contrasted with shocking eyes like sunlit straw. They evaluated me. But behind the scientific and wolfish gaze there was a hint of something softer.

  In the next instant, hair and eyes were eclipsed by the scar. I drew a sharp breath. It was a birthmark. A massive one that darkened most of the left side of his face in shades of mud and blood and berries. Its edge was indistinct and fractal, like a coastline lapped with an angry tide. I followed the mark with my eyes as it continued down his throat and disappeared into his linen shirt. He seemed so real, I actually felt sorry for insulting him with my stare.

  He stood abruptly then, and with an economy of motion turned and mounted his horse.

  “Bring her home.” He said this without looking back, sure of being obeyed. His voice was quietly commanding, not warm, but I idly thought I would follow it anywhere. Something about it tugged at me. Again, the accent, the almost-not-right words. I knew the pronunciation conventions that historical linguists had agreed on, the options in cases where experts didn’t agree, and I knew for a fact what I had chosen for this sim. I’d heard all of six words since I woke up in the mud, but I could tell this was different, almost like a riff on the language that I knew in my sleep.

  I was lifted onto a horse and without thought I leaned back into the strong body sitting behind me. I had no idea who it was programmed to be, but it was warm.

  The animal turned in a tight circle, orienting behind the chief’s dark horse, and the animal’s warm, moving body beneath me was shocking. Dizzy and sick, I clutched at anything, a mane, surprisingly tough in my hands. I focused on the chief, directly in front of me. His hair was lush and black and tied with leather, and it stirred with the restless movements of his mount. He was balanced and at ease on the horse, his body moving in sync with the animal’s restless stamps. And I wondered who she was, the woman who’d programmed him. He was made with fascination and love. Did she intend to come into the tank and meet him herself? I rifled through my memory of the programming team and vaguely came up with a couple of faces, two women and one possible man, who might have the skill and passion. Then I let their faces swim by and out of my mind. So tired, so cold. I needed to lie down.

  The chief turned to look back at me. He smiled with one side of his mouth, so briefly I wasn’t sure I’d seen it.

  “Name?” he asked me.

  I dreamily blacked out.

  I WOKE ON A MOVING HORSE, AND I TENSED AND SCRABBLED at the dusty mane. A huge arm closed tighter around me. I’d always wanted to ride a horse, I thought wryly. The animal’s body was alien, the way it adjusted and shifted constantly. So wrong, feeling bones moving, alive under my thighs. The man’s beard brushed my temple, and the sky slid into a purple glow, replacing the sunset that had burned on the horizon at the beach.

  The beach. Yes, I remembered going into the tank for the test, and then there was ocean and black sand.

  In summer, there would be a night, but a short one. Maybe 20:00 when the sky turned like this. Except that I had never seen any sky like this—an epic wilderness of color and clouds, roiling, descending overhead.

  The tank created a tightly local environment. It wasn’t good enough yet to do anything like this, to carry me through a complex and far ranging landscape.

  Acid crawled up my throat. I couldn’t remember anything I’d been trained to do if a sim went wrong. I’d memorized and recited so many good ideas. My head was so sogged with water, though. Contacts sputtered to life and told me the ambient temp again. They shouldn’t be working in here. They didn’t work inside the tank.

  I was in here too long. I had to get out, tap out. I hadn’t even thought of trying to tap out!

  I reached with my right arm to tap on my left, right over my wrist. My fingers fluttered under the sleeve of my dress, entering the short sequence. Nothing.

  Cold uncurled in my gut, despite the heat of the nameless Viking who was holding me up. I tapped out again, expecting the unpleasant tingling that came with extraction. No response. Again. Nothing. The wind was scouring my bones, and either with the cold or the fear, I cried. No matter. Beyond the sounds of weather and hoofbeats, no one heard me.

  I whispered English words into the wind. “What is this?”

  A tank malfunction? If so, it was the most spectacular mistake in history. I could smell the horse’s hair and the leather of the bridle. Feel the rough surface of mane and the shifting of the big man behind me. I turned to watch a forest pass by, the twisted trunks of thousands of delicate trees, their coppery bark flaring with a last bit of light before they would be consumed by night. A single last tendril of brilliant orange was suddenly snuffed out by deep rust, the purple filling over all of it and lifting for a moment into pure electric blue.

  It would be an accidental quantum leap in technology and pure artistry. For this was art, magnificent in its fervent detail.

  It was the electric blue moment between day and night, and we picked up our pace. The chief was so beautiful, silhouetted against a darkening sky. He carried a torch now. The soft flame lit up the blue in his hair as it rose and fell with the gait of his horse.

  In the dark, we arrived somewhere. Frightened, numb from the horse, I couldn’t walk or speak. The big man carried me. I heard muttered phrases, men’s clipped words, women’s voices like a flock of practical birds. “Found,” I heard in the odd Old Norse, “almost drowned” and “make room.” I felt a wooden bench against my back, a wool blanket dragged up and over my clammy clothes and body. I was asked my name.

  “Jen,” I struggled to say. I was so, so tired, and my voice sounded small and hoarse.

  A woman was holding my hand. Her face was tough but curious. With her smooth palm she petted me. “Ginn,” she said.

  She was surrounded by the glow from a fire, and I looked beyond her to see more than a dozen faces, people crowding on benches that flanked a long room—so long I couldn’t see the end. It was the heartstone setting, but so much bigger than we’d designed it.

  The characters were different, too. Swirls of smoke singed my eyes and when I choked, tears blurred their faces, but I could still see detail. Fear and curiosity alighted on each face in a different way as they considered me. And each pair of eyes was illuminated with a rich inner history that brought them to this moment. This was no Jiu Jitsu sim, and they weren’t playing house.

  It felt real. Like I was really here, in Viking Iceland. But that wasn’t possible.

  None of this was. The vivid stink of fish and horse and smoke, the long stretch of fairytale forest under an epic sky that changed with the hours, a far-reaching landscape that deepened into night. None of this could happen in the tank. And so I wasn’t in it, was I? Even as my mind refused to consider it, some small part of my heart knew it was true.

  Iceland, circa 920

  I choked into consciousness, my lungs on fire. A wave of smell washed over and into me, the stink of fire and wood and bodies. The berth was dark, and the bench beneath me bit into my hips. I could just about stretch my toes to the opposite wall. Concealed behind a pair of thin curtains, I was alone. But I remembered a bony body tossing next to mine, someone yanking on the wool cloaks, the low sound of female voices. “Shhhh, go to sleep.”

  Now, a stack of folded blankets and sheepskins sat tidily against the wooden back wall, everyone gone but me. I pulled myself up to sit and lean into the corner. Strong smells made my eyes well up. I turned my head and pressed my cheek to the wood. These must be the scents of sap and bark, mixed with the familiar tang of metal from Morgan’s studio. Such small sips of air made my head throb.
r />   I sluggishly tapped out and nothing happened.

  My sleeve was different. A soft, fluffy underdress that wasn’t mine.

  Jeff said smell was the most basic of the senses in terms of primal response, behavior, memory. Basic scents were achievable in the tank, but subtle and complex smells were beyond current programming capabilities. This dress smelled like soap and bright, glacial water. The scent of this wall flushed my body so strongly and specifically, opening up dark and sensual in my gut. The smell of dirt brought back moments from this morning. Memories of anemic park grass between my fingers. The glimpse of sun through angry swirls of skirts already felt like a million years ago.

  This smell wasn’t emitted by the cold workings of a molecular generator. It was wood. I was in this world.

  I looked around, but didn’t find a place to vomit.

  Time still passed, which was impossible. The wrongness persisted—the vivid smells of birch and wool and sweat, the unknown characters and voices. The sound of words I didn’t design.

  Some dwindling piece of my heart still believed I could tap out, despite the fact that this world could never exist in the tank. And so I tried again, and then I shook and cried. I cried silently, my forehead pressing tight into my palms, mouth open. I cried for home, for Morgan and Jeff, for safety. For facts inside my eyes, my contacts showing me how I could choose words, define them.

  I cleared my eyes of tears and then blinked them on, but they didn’t respond. Nothing glowed or twitched, not one letter or fact. My dread became shapeless. The definition of the word itself and no more.

  Then the chief’s voice was there. Outside the curtain.

  He sat on the bench right outside and talked about a tool—a word for earth cutter. Another man spoke about how many, how sharp. The chief talked about how many walls, how far. Men’s thoughts and calculations. I sensed the heaviness of his body, so close I could feel the bench move when his hips shifted. I could have touched him, if I’d stretched out my arm.