Winterland Read online

  “How do we get back?” Cole asked, looking up as the sky faded quickly to black and filled with way too many stars.

  “I don’t even know if we can,” Bryce said, his voice coming out shakier than he expected. From the adrenaline, he told himself, though he wasn't entirely convinced. “Right now I’d just like to know where we go from here.”

  The moon suddenly shone it's silver light down from high in the sky, as if someone had flicked a switch.

  “Let’s try that door.”

  Bryce turned around and saw a freestanding, wood-paneled door in the middle of the ice, where no door had been only moments ago. Shiny brass letters fastened with little brass screws read, “CTK.”

  Chapter 5

  So many strange things had happened in the last two days that he accepted the sudden appearance of the door without question. He skated to it, opened it and stepped through into what looked to him like a lawyer’s office, with dark wood panelling, shelves of leather-bound books and a set of curtains that presumably covered a window.

  Behind an expanse of teak a big, black leather chair framed a little man with neat white hair and an immaculate gray suit. With his hands clasped together on the desk he said, in a voice that managed to contain both a squeak and a rasp, “Welcome. Please take a seat.”

  As soon as Bryce took a step he noticed that his skates were gone, and when he sat down in a chair of chrome tubing and black leather his coat, gloves and hat were gone too.

  “No, it’s not magic,” the little man said, clasping and unclasping his own hands. “I know you’re nervous but I can explain everything, though I’m pretty sure you won’t like it.” His voice trailed off and he stared at his hands.

  “This I’ve got to hear.” Cole leaned back, crossing his legs and folding his hands across his stomach as though settling in to hear a long, tall story.

  Bryce shifted closer to the front of his seat and said, “Start explaining.”

  Before the little man could speak the phone rang so loud everyone jumped. The little man yanked the cord out of the phone but it rang again, and kept ringing until he smashed it into pieces on the corner of his desk. He dropped the remnants of phone into his waste basket, then started explaining. “You live in a virtual reality. A computer interfaces directly with your brain, directing what your senses tell you, in this case a mundane life in a generic small city.”

  To his surprise, even though he had nothing in his experience to account for it, Bryce understood all that. “Why are we living in a virtual reality?”

  The paper in the garbage can beside the desk burst into flame and started eating at the side of the desk.

  "Where's your fire extinguisher?" Cole interrupted.

  The little man pointed beside the door where Bryce saw a small fire extinguisher that had not been there before. Cole jumped up, grabbed it and doused the flames.

  The little man continued. “You are frozen in cryosleep, but cryosleep doesn’t completely shut down the brain’s activity. To preserve sanity a simulation is played into the sleeping minds at one tenth speed.”

  “Why are we in cryosleep?” Cole asked while Bryce was still thinking that being frozen explained why he always felt so cold.

  “You are colonists on a starship, but I’m afraid you’ll never reach your colony. There was sabotage from a high level at the very beginning, and time-delayed viruses caused damage that kept me from discovering the deception. A vector was altered to change the course at random, and the turn-around was canceled, so instead of flying to the targeted star system, the ship continued to accelerate deep into interstellar space, until only a fraction of the fuel was left. The ship can never decelerate.”

  On one level Bryce found the story too fantastic to believe, but on another level, deep inside, he knew it had to be true. He had always known about the starship, without being aware that he knew, which should have confused him but didn't. “So why didn’t I wonder about the long winter before.”

  “There are safety protocols that keep the sims from noticing any anomalies in their world, but I have some leeway in the programming. It's when I managed to override and get around those safety protocols that you started noticing things, and looking for more."

  A fire alarm bell began its insistent clangor and the little man almost jumped out of his seat.

  Annoyed, Bryce said, "Don't you have sprinklers out there that can handle that?"

  "Oh, yes, of course I do.” He relaxed back into his seat but he sat nearer the edge.

  “Wait a minute,” Cole said. “You changed the programming?"

  "No, I just worked around it."

  "Who the hell are you?”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, I thought you knew. I’m CTK, the Computer That Knows, or more accurately, the artificial intelligence living in the computer. This body you see is just a projection to facilitate talking to you."

  “And why do you want to talk to us?"

  “I need your help. The ship is irretrievably lost. I did what I could for as long as I could, but systems are beginning to fail. That’s why you’ve been through three years of uninterrupted winter."

  “Three years?" Bryce said. "That means the ship has travelled for thirty years.”

  “That's only since systems started failing. By the ship's clock we left Earth nearly one hundred twenty years ago, but because of our speed more than twice that has passed on Earth."

  While Bryce processed that information Cole spoke up. “So what you’re saying is that the ship is doomed and we’re all going to die?”

  The little man sat back in his chair, seemingly at a loss for words, but Bryce knew the computer was calculating every pause. “Essentially, yes.”

  Cole leaned forward. “So what do you expect from us?”

  “There are things I can do to prolong the life of the ship and ensure the cryo units and the simulation program keep functioning even if nothing else does, but I don’t have the authority to initiate them. I need permission from a colonist, and you two are the first colonists I’ve ever actually spoken to in person, so to speak.”

  “What took you so long?” Cole asked.

  “The contact protocols were lost to an aggressive virus, as was an alarming percentage of my intelligence. When colonists started dying I tried hundreds of ways to contact them, but you are my first real success."

  He broke off as the floor shook and the window rattled from what Bryce thought could only be some kind of explosion. He cocked his head, saw Cole doing the same, and this time he heard the explosion as well as felt it. It was followed by the crackle of muffled gunfire.

  "What the hell is going on out there?" Bryce demanded of the CTK.

  The little man held his hands up helplessly. Cole got up to open the door but the little man said, "No, no, no, don't go out there. The virus created a subroutine to prevent sleepers from contacting me and it will kill you."

  "Then let's find another way out of here, and fast," Cole said, stepping back from the door as bursts of gunfire, louder now, came more frequently. "It sounds like the defensive team is digging in for their last stand."

  "There is no other way out of here."

  "So make a door."

  "They'd only catch us."

  “Alpha Omega,” Bryce said for no reason he could think of.

  The little man said, “I hear and obey.”

  Bryce said, "Make us a trapdoor and take us down to a bomb shelter, something with thick walls and a solid door so they can't get through, at least long enough for us to talk."

  The CTK didn't speak. He just pulled on a big ring that hadn't been there before and raised a trapdoor beside his desk, revealing a narrow concrete shaft with a steel ladder bolted to one wall. They followed the CTK down, closing the trapdoor behind them, muffling the gunfire.

  "Make the trapdoor disappear up there."

  "What an excellent suggestion. I certainly miss my imagination."

  Bryce hoped he didn't miss it so much he couldn't function without it. "Ma
ke our shelter a command center," he said before he reached the bottom. "Something with reinforced walls so thick the virus can never get through, and with high-tech defenses so you can hold off the virus."

  "Consider it done."

  They reached the bottom, passed through a door that would have felt at home on a bank vault, and entered what looked like a doctor's waiting room. As it hissed closed behind them the CTK said, "We should be secure now. It is so much easier staying ahead of the virus with just a little human input to guide me."

  “That's all very wonderful," Cole said, "but why us?”

  The CTK sat down in one of the chairs and waited until they did the same. “You are two of the most senior officers remaining. Most of my attempts at communication failed completely, and when I did manage to contact senior officers in the simulation they went mad when they learned the nature of their existence, though I suspect the virus contributed to their reaction. I learned from experience and I’m regulating your emotions to keep you calm.”

  Being manipulated like that felt profoundly wrong to Bryce but it didn’t bother him, which, in a subtle way, bothered him. But the upside was an ability to understand concepts that should have been beyond him, and to grasp what the CTK was getting at.

  “I order you to do whatever is necessary to make life better for the sims. And forget about winter, everybody wants summer. People want to feel warm. Their bodies are really frozen in cryosleep so they always feel that cold in their bones. They want to forget it."

  "Indoor temperatures are maintained in the human comfort zone."

  "That's not enough. Subconsciously we're always cold so you have to recalibrate zero so you can overcompensate to make up for it."

  The little man looked inward, then nodded. “I can do that, it just never occurred to me."

  "What?" Cole exploded. "You mean I've been freezing my balls off for years because you were too stupid to figure out how to turn up the thermostat?"

  "It's more complicated than that, and I still have blind spots due to viral damage." The little man blushed. "Ahem. In fact, I could use your help in other areas too.”

  They talked for hours, telling the Computer That Knows what it didn't know, what it couldn't know, because it wasn't human.

  “Thank you so much. You two have what I lack; imagination. If I implement all the changes you've suggested, and I'm now authorized to do, all of you sims will have happy and healthy lives. The cryo units could last another hundred to a hundred and fifty years. I can boost the sim up to one third speed or slightly better, which is as fast as the frozen brains can assimilate, but it should give the sims the equivalent of a normal life span. ”

  “What about our children?” Bryce asked.

  “They are computer constructs, not as limited as the drivers and other bit players, but incomplete and unaware. When they aren’t interacting with a colonist they are dormant. When the last colonist dies there will no longer be any reason to run the program. I'll shut myself down and the ship will become a tomb."

  Bryce felt a stab of ineffable sadness at the image of thousands of frozen corpses hurtling eternally through empty space in a derelict spacecraft.

  The little man said, "It is time for you to return, but before you go I offer you a choice between knowledge and ignorance. Just remember, ignorance is bliss. This meeting, and the events leading up to it, will be remembered no better than a dream. I may need to contact you from time to time for advice but you needn’t remember that either.”

  "Ignorance sounds good to me,” Cole said.

  Bryce thought about it for nearly a minute before saying, "Me too.” He didn't want to remember that his daughter was only a program. “But how do we get back?”

  “Just climb that ladder," the CTK said, pointing to a ladder that hadn't been there before. "Your memories of recent events will fade over the next few minutes."

  Chapter 6

  While Bryce climbed the ladder his winter clothes returned, and they felt warmer than before. He pushed up the trapdoor and emerged into the meat locker at the store with Cole right behind him. When he closed the trapdoor it vanished without a trace, but he had expected nothing less.

  Cole said, “Let’s go tell the women.”

  When they emerged from the “Employees Only” door Winter said, “Couldn’t find anything, huh?”

  “Oh but we did," Bryce said. "We found answers to all of our questions, and solved the long winter problem.”

  “Already?”

  “What do you mean, already? How long were we gone?”

  She looked her watch. “About two minutes.”

  “It seemed like hours to us.”

  “That’s just dandy,” Crystal put in, “but what did you guys do?”

  Bryce and Cole looked at each other, four eyebrows rose and they both shrugged. “We don’t remember.”

  Crystal scowled. “Then how do you know you did anything?”

  Cole shrugged.

  Bryce noticed that both women had unzipped their coats. "Don't you feel warmer?"

  Both women nodded.

  "We don't remember what we did because we chose to forget. We know it’s better this way. You'll see, when summer comes.”

  Crystal rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, and when is that going to be?”

  Bryce counted in his head and the answer was right there. “Four months. Haven’t you heard? Old Man Winter has retired, the ice age is over. Global warming is making winters shorter and summers longer and hotter.”

  “Better break out the sunscreen,” Cole said with a grin.

  Bryce imagined spreading sunscreen on Winter's body and he grinned too.

  END

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