“You . . .” Johnny started to say. Stopped. He couldn’t wrap his mind around what he was trying to ask. He tried again. “You stopped . . . the Skidsphere?”
“Think of it as a holla on pause,” Betty said helpfully.
I can’t, his mind protested. A flutter of panic surged through his stripes as he glanced at Wobble, quietly humming to himself as he healed in the corner. Sweet snakes, what if they’re both insane?
“How?” Torg said, bringing Johnny back. His magenta skin had paled.
“How did I do it?” Betty asked. “Or: how could I do such a horrible thing?”
“Start with the first one,” Torg said levelly.
Betty swung an arm. “Look around. Everything you see is information. Those boxes whizzing by outside? Information. This booth?” She rapped a finger loudly off the booth’s surface. “Information. That storm you hid in, every line of golden light, the Vies, the Antis: everything’s a metaphor for some specific collection of data. Including the Skidsphere. Including the skids.”
“What am I a metaphor for?” Aaliyah whispered.
Instantly, Betty’s expression softened. “For a skid,” she said, smiling. “A good one.” She reached out and placed her hand on Aaliyah’s stripes, held it there, then looked back at Torg.
“If you know where to look and how to do it, you can manipulate the data. Theoretically, with the entire Thread. I’ve spent the last twenty years focusing on anything related to the Skidsphere. So I can protect it.” She glanced at Johnny, hesitated, then said: “Six months ago, something happened that scared the sugar out of me. So I came up with a last-chance scenario: if I thought the sphere was going critical, I’d put it in stasis to try and save it. After the Pipe and the quake that followed . . . I did it.”
No one had to ask what happened six months ago. Sitting at the back of the group, his scar bright against his silver skin, Albert steadfastly refused to look Johnny’s way.
“That’s horrible,” Bian protested, staring at Betty. “All those skids. It’s like they’re dead.”
“It is horrible, Bian,” Betty agreed. “And the worst part is: it might not work. The entire Thread is slowly breaking down. Putting the sphere into stasis should protect it from Vies, but if things keep breaking around it . . .” She took a deep breath. “Still, it should buy us some time to do what we have to do.”
“And what is that?” Johnny said, his stripes still spinning.
Betty grinned. “Save the Skidsphere. And not by keeping it in stasis. By repairing the damage that’s been done. Getting rid of any virus that crept in with the break. By making it whole and as healthy as anything inside the Thread can be.”
“And just how are you going to do that?”
“Actually, I was hoping you could help me.”
From the back, Albert groaned. “Great, you’re going to make him a vaping hero.”
“Actually, Albert, I was hoping to use you both.” Betty’s grin widened. “I’m afraid I need you boys to kiss and make up.”
Torg barked a laugh. “Yeah, good luck with that.”
“What about the rest of us?” Bian said, scowling.
“You’ll stay here. You should be safe. For what I have planned, I only need Johnny and Albert.”
Ouch, Johnny thought, watching Bian’s stripes darken. “We can help too,” she said, her voice cold, two eyes squarely on Betty. “We’re not invalids.” Then, realizing what she’d said, she sent a guilty glance towards the cells holding Brolin and Shabaz.
“I didn’t think you were.” Betty sighed. “I’m sorry, that was . . . I haven’t had a lot of experience recently talking with people. Except Wobble, of course.” From the corner, the machine looked up and waved a damaged arm. “You can help. Someone needs to watch over Brolin and Shabaz. Someone needs to care for the younger skids.”
“Hey,” Torres protested, bumping forward. “Whatever’s going on, I’m in!”
“Not this time, Torres,” Betty said gently.
Bian continued to glare. “And just how long are we supposed to sit here while the three of you go save the world?”
“Actually, it’s four. We’ll be taking Wobble.”
“Fine, whatever. How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Bian said, her voice rising. “So we’re just supposed to—”
“Stop it!” Johnny barked. Popping a Hasty-Arm, he held up a hand. “Everybody just . . . slow down for a minute. This is . . . this is . . .” He took a deep breath. “Look,” he said to Betty, “thanks for the vote of confidence. I don’t know what you think I . . . Albert and I . . . can do but, hey, great to think we can do it. But why do we need to? Why the hole do we have to fix the problem? That’s insane. Where’s GameCorps? It’s their job.”
“GameCorps only takes care of the Skidsphere, Johnny. The problem is bigger than that; what’s attacking the sphere comes from outside of the sphere. GameCorps can’t fix the Thread.”
“Then who takes care of the Thread?” Johnny cried, furious at not being able to understand a single vaping thing.
Betty had gone stock-still. “That,” she said softly, “is a very good question.”
“Where’s the Out There in all this?” Johnny demanded. “They exist, right?” His heart was pounding.
“Yes, Johnny, there is something beyond the Thread. Out there. And whatever they are, we’re pretty sure the Thread is their creation.”
Thank Crisp, Johnny thought, too emotionally charged to catch the irony. “So . . .” he said, drawing out the word, trying to calm down. “You said everything is information, we’re all information, fine. I don’t understand that at all, but I don’t need to. GameCorps takes care of the Skidsphere. The Skidsphere is part of the Thread. The Thread is broken, sick, whatever. If the Out There created the Thread, why aren’t they fixing it?”
Betty held his gaze for a long moment. They might have been alone in the room.
“I’ve spent most of the last twenty-five years trying to answer that question, Johnny. It’s the most important one you could ask. The Thread is huge—I can’t begin to explain how vast it is, how complex. Something, somewhere, invested a lot of effort in creating it. Whoever they were, they were obviously intelligent. Why would they let it break down? What possible reason could they have for letting it decay?”
A knot of ice began to settle inside Johnny’s stripes.
“There’s a few possibilities, but in the end . . . there’s only one that makes sense.”
“Vape me,” Torg whispered.
“Not possible,” Johnny spat. “It’s not possible.”
“I’m afraid it is,” Betty said. “The only reason something gets left to rot is because something left it to rot.” She waved a hand at her booth. “I’m sorry, Johnny. The hollas run, but no one is watching.”
“Not possible.” It came out as a snarl now. “You said it yourself—the highlights are still running!”
“Because GameCorps is still running.”
“GameCorps doesn’t watch the highlights!”
“No,” Betty sighed. “But they do run them.”
“But . . . but . . .” He was reaching, desperate. There’d been that nervous, empty feeling in the city of hollas, but this . . . “They gave me a name.”
“Did they?” Betty asked. “Johnny Drop. Was the announcement on the ’lights really the first time you heard that name?”
“Uh . . .” Johnny flinched with the memory: lying half-vaped on a ledge, his eye flapping in the wind, grinning as he thought about what he wanted to be named.
“You gave yourself your name,” Betty said.
“How? I never said it out loud.” When the others swung a stunned eye his way, he explained, “I thought it, though. After the race, I thought the name Johnny Drop.”
“And GameCorps read his mind?” Torres whispered. “Sweet.”
“It’s all just information,” Betty said. “I was called Betty Crisp because I used to say it all the time. It was my favourite expression: if something was right, it was crisp. I dreamed of having that name.” Her gaze swept the group. “We are our own program.”
“Nice,” Torres said. “I’m giving myself a second name.”
“Why don’t you get comfortable with the first, squid?” Torg drawled.
“All right, fine,” Johnny said, taking a long, ragged breath. “We name ourselves. That still doesn’t mean no one Out There is watching. I mean, why would the games continue if . . . ?” He threw his hands up, his stripes twisting with a dozen emotions at once.
The only emotion Betty showed was sympathy. “Because the Skidsphere is practically autonomous. It might be a small part of the Thread, but it’s a sophisticated one. It’s a self-sustaining, self-enclosed entertainment mem. The only one of its kind I’ve found. From what I gather, there was a time when it was incredibly popular.”
“But not now,” Bian said, glancing at Johnny. They all knew how much this mattered to him.
“Probably not. You need to understand, most of the Thread’s inactive, like that weather-mem you drove into. Other parts are stuck in a permanent loop, some decades long. That block of hollas you passed through? Most of those images happened years ago. In many cases, centuries. Maybe longer.”
“Vape me,” Torg whispered.
There was a long silence as they tried to absorb what they were being told. Betty gave it to them. Johnny found himself staring at one of the hollas hovering over Betty’s booth.
He had absolutely no idea what he was staring at.
“All right,” Bian said finally. “I don’t understand half of this but I guess we have to trust you. Not much choice. So, fine, we stay here. Polish our treads. Whatever. But before you go, there’s some things we need to take care of. You mentioned sugar. Do you have any, some of us are starving.”
“There’s no sugar here,” Betty said. “I used to synthesize it at my other safehouse, but I don’t have the equipment here.”
“Then how did you survive?”
“I don’t need it. None of us do.”
Bian stared at her. “Uh, I’m pretty sure I do.”
“No, you don’t,” Betty insisted. “Haven’t you been listening? Bian, what happens when a skid doesn’t get sugar? How would you even know—GameCorps keeps everyone stripes-up in sweet. You think they die? Who cares: You’ve been dying your whole life. You’ve all died dozens of times and survived. Once you hit Level Three, there’s only one hard death.”
“Five years,” Torg said quietly.
“Five vaping years,” Betty said, her voice dripping contempt. “It’s all programming. You’ve got control of every molecule in your body. You don’t . . . need . . . sugar.” Her eyes swung to each of them, then dipped. “But you don’t believe that . . . so of course you do.”
A beat of silence, then Aaliyah whispered: “I haven’t died a dozen times.”
“I haven’t even died once,” Torres added.
“Trust me, it’s overrated,” Torg said.
Bian and Betty continued to stare at each other. “Maybe it’s all programming,” Bian said flatly, “but we need sugar.”
“Well, you’re going to have to hold on without,” Betty sighed.
Bian glared at her for a moment more. “I’m going to check on Brolin and Shabaz.” Betty watched her cross the room, her expression somewhere between annoyed and amused.
Funny, but for the first time something Betty had said made sense to Johnny. He knew Bian was feeling it, obviously others were too, but Johnny hadn’t had a single hunger pang. Of course, that didn’t mean he was feeling good.
He turned to Torg. “Are you understanding any of this?”
The magenta-gold skid pursed his lips. “There’s a thread . . .” he said slowly.
Johnny laughed. Trust Torg to make him feel better. “All right,” he said, looking at Betty. “I guess I’ll figure all this out later. The Skidsphere comes first. You said you had a plan.” He grimaced and added, “Involving me and Albert?” He could have sworn he heard Albert snort.
A quirk played across Betty’s lips. “Well . . .”
Behind her, every holla went red. In the corner, Wobble’s head came up, his lenses spinning.
“Oh, kinks,” Betty groaned. “Oh no.” She zipped over to the booth, hollas flashing past her eyes.
“What . . .” Johnny started to say.
“Red Alert!” Wobble screamed. “Burgs in the tockhouse! The Ventari slipped the block!” Dozens of probes sprang from his body, spinning and whirring.
“Bian!” Betty yelled. “Get Brolin and Shabaz, we’re leaving. Torg?”
“On it,” the Nine said, moving to help Bian.
“Vies or Antis?” Albert said, staring at Betty’s hollas as if he could read their secrets. Unconsciously, he reached towards Torres.
“Antis.”
“I thought this place was safe from Antis,” Johnny said. “It’s a lost node, right?”
“It was,” Betty said grimly. “However, about an hour ago there was some fairly specific traffic.”
“Oh, crap,” Johnny said, his heart falling. “Us. We led them here.”
“Don’t,” Betty said, swiping a hand across the booth. Every holla shrunk and then dove into her stripe. “Don’t beat yourself up. You needed to get here, I needed you here. I was hoping you might arrive unnoticed, but hey, we got unlucky. No one said SecCore was completely stupid.”
“What’s SecCore?”
The voice seemed to come from everywhere. “DID YOU THINK YOU COULD ESCAPE ME FOREVER, BETTY CRISP?”
“That guy,” Betty muttered, pulling out from behind the booth.
Bian rolled up with Brolin. He looked better, but several spores still ebbed and flowed across his skin. Crisp Betty, Johnny thought.
“WE ARE COMING FOR YOU, LITTLE SKID.”
“Figured that out, jackhole,” Betty spat. Her pink stripe blazed. “Wobble, get ready.”
“Who’s the loud-mouth?” Torg asked casually, holding onto Shabaz.
“SecCore.” She popped a holla and examined it. “It runs the Antis.”
“But not the Vies?”
“Not the Vies.” Betty shuddered. “Nothing controls the Vies.” She swept the holla away and looked around. “Everyone stay tight. Move fast. Do everything I say.” She winked at Wobble. “You want to go shut that son-of-a-snake up?”
The machine winked back. “Pop the top, let’s show them the circus. The clackers should have stayed in the Hoag. Wobble.” His body rose off the ground and began to transform. Betty pointed at the ceiling. As she did, the surface flared bright gold then vanished.
Dropping from the sky above: Antis. Lots of them. We’re screwed, Johnny thought, as Wobble roared into the sky.
“Let’s move,” Betty said, leading them outside. Above their heads, Wobble began to single-handedly attack dozens of Antis, with dozens more falling in the distance. “Wobble,” Betty said calmly, “you have to draw and hold them here. I need time and they can’t see what we’re doing.”
“Affirmative,” came a voice over the com, as the sky filled with wheels-of-fire. “I-We bring the end.”
“I know you do,” Betty said softly, a quiet pride gracing her face. She looked at Johnny. “I never thought we’d leave here under fire. We were going to take a Thread Line, but we need to get someplace they won’t see us do it or there’s no point. Stay tight—”
An Anti dropped from the sky, right between Johnny and Torg.
Ah snakes, Johnny thought, moving even as he saw Torg do the same. He didn’t have time to warn Torg to stay clear. As it was, it didn’t matter.
He and Torg were too slow.
Quicker than Johnny could believe—quicker than he had ever moved—Betty surged forward, popping a Hasty-Arm as she did. In it, she held a long straight blade that glowed with golden light. “Rrraaggh!” she snarled, slashing into the Anti. The white knife peeled in two and vanished.
“Kinks,” she sniffed violently. “I hate doing that.” The Hasty-Arm popped back into her body, taking the golden beam with it.
“Vape me,” Torg said, staring at her. “You killed it.”
“Don’t be amazed and maybe you’ll figure out how to do it too.”
“What was that . . . that light thing?” Johnny breathed. He’d never seen a skid with a weapon before.
“Type of sword. I’ve learned a few tricks.” Betty grinned. “Stole a few, too.”
“Can I get one?” Torg asked.
Betty winked at him. “We’ll see.”
The battle above their heads continued to mount. Johnny had no idea how Wobble survived. The sky looked like a snow-globe.
To his amazement, the streets weren’t alive with creatures fleeing, trying to escape the carnage above. Instead, the traffic continued exactly as it had before. The zippy little boxes continued to zip from place to place, the lumbering hulks continued to lumber. Even more stunning, the flying traffic carried on, even where its path crossed the battle. Johnny watched, stunned, as a glowing yellow box disintegrated as it ran straight through one of Wobble’s fire-disks.
“What the hole’s wrong with these panzers?” he breathed, as they rushed through a crowded intersection.
“They’re automatic,” Betty said. “Every aspect of the Thread sees it differently. Those Antis probably don’t see Wobble the same way we do. And most of this clutter doesn’t see that battle at all.” Her trail-eye grew angry. “That’s one of the reasons the Thread gets broken. That transport won’t get where it was supposed to go and the system fails a little more.”
“THE TRAITOR IS FAILING, LITTLE SKID.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” Betty muttered. “Besides, the traitor only needs to hold on for a few more minutes.”
“Traitor?” Johnny said, glancing at Torg.
“Beats me.” The magenta skid’s stripes tilted. “Wobble?”
Why would Wobble be a traitor? Johnny thought as they darted into an alley. Betty stopped at a round door in the surface of the street. Dozens of glowing circlets, connected by lines of light, pulsed on the door’s surface.
“All right,” Betty said. “We’re going to change locations several times, very quickly in succession.” She looked apologetically at Brolin, hanging on Bian. “This probably won’t feel good for you.”
The wounded skid tried a game smile. “What does?”
“Good man,” Betty said. “There should be a number of these doors in succession. After the second or third transition, it’ll start grinding hard, but we’ve got to do at least half a dozen before I can look for a smoother run. Everyone stay together.” She glanced at the sky. “Wobble, we’re leaving. Drop in twenty.”
“Affirmative. Tell Ripley to blow the doors.”
“Stay together,” Betty said, letting an eye run over everyone. “Bian, take Brolin and Shabaz through first, it’ll give them a few seconds to rest between transits. Albert, will you follow, please? Johnny, you cover the rear with me.” Reaching down, she touched one of the circlets. It pulsed once. The door dissolved. “In you go,” she said to Bian.
The red-yellow skid did not look happy, but she took Brolin and Shabaz by the arm. The doorway flared gold when they jumped in.
“I SEE YOU RUN, LITTLE SKID. YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE.”
“You’d be surprised what might happen,” Betty snarled softly. The doorway flashed as skid after skid jumped through. To Johnny, she added, “One day, I’m going to pop that jackhole.”
Wobble came screeching down from the sky, folding back into his smallest form. “Jammed corsets and ground tremors,” he whirred. “The whole Uug-xhal fleet is right behind.” Half his body was smoking.
“That’s all right, Wobble,” Betty said. “You did great.” She patted his head as he dropped through the door. “You’re the baddest knife there is.”
“WE WILL FIND YOU, BETTY CRISP.”
The oldest skid in the universe flicked a contemptuous eye towards the heavens. “You do that,” she said. Then she gave Johnny a nudge and took them through the door.