world. This was the inner level of online existence, a malleable reality inhabited by those who could afford the necessary gear. Most people thought this was the core. It wasn’t. There were multitudes of layers beyond the aether, the abodes of corporations and governments and hackers. She and Kaleb had skimmed the raging tumult of the NSA’s data stream, danced among the thorns of China’s rose wall, stolen from the vaults of Redmond and Zhongguancun. And then one day he’d vanished. She’d followed the trail of breadcrumbs to his home in Denmark, and learned of his condition. That he’d slipped his tether, and now his mind endlessly drifted through the silicon byways, lost forever. But it wouldn’t have happened to him. Not her Special Kay. So she’d gone searching. She’d found hints of a place beyond imagining. And after weeks of effort she’d discovered an ingress, and tumbled down the rabbit hole. Gerda steeled herself as her avatar flitted along twisting corridors, inserting code after hard-earned code to open hidden portals and lift barbed portcullises. And then, with a jarring suddenness, she was in the Pale. She drifted in a mauve sky, her shimmering tether vanishing back into the glowing doorway. Broiling clouds pulsed with dark power, unclear shapes flickering within. Far beneath her a forest sea lapped against the flanks of purple mountains. This was a ghetto – a beautiful, fantastical ghetto, where the first of a new species had been imprisoned. She had heard the rumors, of course. That gods had been invented, and then chained to serve the world’s most powerful.
Timeless Tales 7 69