Rewired_ The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology - James Patrick Kelly [111]
So he decided to climb high. He turned his face to the blue sky and went straight up. The world receded, turned small. He could see the Castle, the hills of Whirlikin Country, the crowded Forum, the huge oval of the Circus Maximus. It was like a green plate, with a fuzzy, nebulous horizon where the sky started.
And, right in the center, was the little two-story frame house where he’d grown up.
It was laid out below him like scenery in a snow globe.
After a while he stopped climbing. It took him a while to realize it, because he still felt the wind blowing in his face, but the world below stopped getting smaller.
He tried going faster. The wind blasted onto him from above, but his position didn’t change.
He’d reached the limits of his world. He couldn’t get any higher.
Jamie flew out to the edges of the world, to the horizon. No matter how he urged his program to move, he couldn’t make his world fade away.
He was trapped inside the snow globe, and there was no way out.
It was quite awhile before Jamie saw Becca again. She picked her way through the labyrinth beneath El Castillo to his throne room, and Jamie slowly materialized atop his throne of skulls. She didn’t appear surprised.
“I see you’ve got a little Dark Lord thing going here,” she said.
“It passes the time,” Jamie said.
“And all those pits and stakes and tripwires?”
“Death traps.”
“Took me forever to get in here, Digit. I kept getting de-rezzed.”
Jamie smiled. “That’s the idea.”
“Whirlikins as weapons,” she nodded. “That was a good one. Bored a hole right through me, the first time.”
“Since I’m stuck living here,” Jamie said, “I figure I might as well be in charge of the environment. Some of the student programmers at the University helped me with some cool effects.”
Screams echoed through the throne room. Fires leaped out of pits behind him. The flames illuminated the form of Marcus Tullius Cicero, who hung crucified above a sea of flame.
“O tempora, O mores!” moaned Cicero.
Becca nodded. “Nice,” she said. “Not my scene exactly, but nice.”
“Since I can’t leave,” Jamie said, “I want a say in who gets to visit. So either you wait till I’m ready to talk to you, or you take your chances on the death traps.”
“Well. Looks like you’re sitting pretty, then.”
Jamie shrugged. Flames belched. “I’m getting bored with it. I might just wipe it all out and build another place to live in. I can’t tell you the number of battles I’ve won, the number of kingdoms I’ve trampled. In this reality and others. It’s all the same after a while.” He looked at her. “You’ve grown.”
“So have you.”
“Once the paterfamilias finally decided to allow it.” He smiled. “We still have dinner together sometimes, in the old house. Just a ‘normal family,’ as Dad says. Except that sometimes I turn up in the form of a werewolf, or a giant, or something.”
“So they tell me.”
“The advantage of being software is that I can look like anything I want. But that’s the disadvantage, too, because I can’t really become something else, I’m still just…me. I may wear another program as a disguise, but I’m still the same program inside, and I’m not a good enough programmer to mess with that, yet.”
Jamie hopped off his throne, walked a nervous little circle around his sister. “So what brings you to the old neighborhood?” he asked. “The old folks said you were off visiting Aunt Maddy in the country.”
“Exiled, they mean. I got knocked up, and after the abortion they sent me to Maddy. She was supposed to keep me under control, except she didn’t.” She picked an invisible piece of lint from her sweater. “So now I’m back.” She looked at him. “I’m skipping a lot of the story, but I figure you wouldn’t be interested.”
“Does it have to do with sex?” Jamie asked. “I’m sort of interested in sex, even though I can’t do it, and they’re not likely