MetaWars: Fight For The Future

Chapter 33

He made a decision. He marched out through the sliding doors, pushed through the protesting avatars outside, ignoring their raucous chants. He slipped around the side of the terminal building. He found a place there, where he could reach the water without being seen. He lowered himself into it.

He hesitated before he let his head go under, remembering how he had almost drowned in Sydney Harbour. That had been in the real world, however. In the Metasphere, Jonah didn’t have to breathe. Not if he didn’t want to.

He used the dragon’s wings to propel himself underwater. He kept the foundations of the ferry terminal to his right, following them around until he saw a wooden strut ahead of him. Peering upwards, Jonah saw the slats of the boarding jetty above his head. The water under his wings almost buoyed him to the surface; he had to will himself to remain submerged.

He followed the jetty to its end, where a long, narrow shadow fell over him. The flat, black bottom of the death barge. Jonah glided beneath it, then surfaced.

He was at the far side of the barge. As he had hoped, it completely blocked him from sight of the mourners – and any inquisitive officials – at the terminal.

Jonah floated upwards, until his eyes were level with the barge’s flat deck. It was crowded with avatars by now, but most of them were looking back at the terminal, at the people and the places they were about to leave behind them. Jonah’s heart soared. This was actually going to work! He started to climb aboard...

...and then a red dialogue balloon popped up in front of his snout.

Warning, it said. You are about to Upload your avatar to the Metasphere.

                                                        This process cannot be undone.

                                                        Do you wish to proceed?

                                                        Y/N.

Frustrated, Jonah stabbed at the No button. The pop-up disappeared, but Jonah was pushed back a metre or so as if by invisible hands. He was hovering above the water. He thrust himself at the barge again, but the pop-up reappeared, and that same invisible force brought him to a gentle but sudden halt.

He tried to fly around the pop-up. It was like pushing himself into a huge, invisible pillow. He couldn’t make any headway.

He backed up a hundred metres, and the pop-up disappeared. Jonah lowered his head and flew at the barge with all the strength in his powerful wings. Once again, he was gently rebuffed; again, the dialogue balloon appeared in front of him, taunting him.

                                                        Do you wish to proceed? Y/N.

Jonah had known this might happen. He had had to try, though. He had had to try, because the alternative terrified him.

He remembered what Mr Chang had told him, in his temple. Yours is the only brain I have heard of that can store two avatars at once. He remembered what had happened when Bradbury had tried to search his brain. The program had been unable to index both the avatars – Jonah’s father’s and his own – that were stored there right now. It had failed for that reason.

Jonah was counting on the belief that the Uploading program would only be able to latch onto one avatar.

                                                        Do you wish to proceed? Y/N.

They were taking up the boarding ramp. Jonah had to decide. Could he do this or not? Sam was counting on him to reach the Island, he thought. And the Guardians, and Kala’s people... He thought about his dad, how Jason Delacroix had put his life on the line for the Guardians’ cause. He felt he owed it to his dad to be as brave.

He reached out a trembling claw and brushed the Yes button. The dialogue in the pop-up changed. Indexing... it said, and there was a green progress bar.

Then the pop-up disappeared, along with the force that had been holding him back. And Jonah stepped aboard the barge, with a desperate prayer that in so doing he hadn’t just committed suicide.

He didn’t feel any different.

How would he know, he wondered, if he was being

Uploaded, if his mind was being drawn out of his real- world body one memory at a time? He would start to feel confused, he supposed, like his grandmother.

Jonah tested himself. He picked a memory at random: a trip to the beach with his mum and dad, when he was a kid. A real-world beach. It had rained all day. The water had been filthy. They had sworn only to holiday in the Metasphere, after that. It all came back to Jonah, crystal clear. A special day. A memory of being loved.

He felt light-headed. He had to sit down on a bench. He had a sensation of metal fingers sifting through his brain. He told himself it was only his imagination.

Standing at the stern of the barge, a cloaked ferryman pushed off with a long pole.

The avatars on board exchanged final waves and blown kisses with those on land as the boat drifted slowly away from them. Soft music was playing from somewhere.

Jonah concentrated as hard as he could, tried to hold on to himself. His dizziness only worsened. It felt as if those fingers had stopped sifting now and had started to pull, squeeze, tear instead.

Pain lanced through Jonah’s head, and he gasped and doubled over. There were tears in his eyes, a sick feeling in his stomach, and he feared he had made a dreadful mistake. He could feel information being ripped from his brain and he tried to hold onto his own thoughts, dreams and memories with a grip that made him weak.

At least he would be with his grandmother, he thought. They could live in their Uploaded memories and be confused together.

Just as Jonah was about to succumb, the pain suddenly disappeared.

Was that it? Is it over? he wondered. He opened one eye, tentatively. He saw a red pop-up, but his vision was too blurry to read it. He blinked twice and looked again.

Unknown Error, said the pop-up.

                                                        Avatar code sequence not recognised.

                                                        Uploading process discontinued.

                                                         Please contact a System Administrator.

Relief flooded through Jonah’s body. His dangerous gamble had paid off. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand, waved the pop-up away, pushed himself to his feet. He hesitated. He looked down at himself, at his two hands.

Hands, not claws.

He tried to flex his wing muscles, but couldn’t feel them any more. He was a dragon no longer. Jonah was back in his old avatar, his humatar. He looked like himself again. It must have been the Uploading program, he realised. It had separated his dad’s avatar from his own, taken the dragon but left the human- form behind.

Jonah searched his mind for his father’s memories. He found only a distant echo of them, like a fingerprint on the back of his skull. He felt bereft. He had never wanted those memories in the first place, but now... Now he knew he would miss them.

A question occurred to him. If his dad’s avatar wasn’t inside him any more, then what had happened to it? Where was it? Then he heard a voice.

‘Jonah? Son? Is that you?’