MetaWars: Fight For The Future

Chapter 35

They bombarded him with questions. ‘Are you the little humatar with the story to tell?’ asked a giant caterpillar.

‘Are you the boy who can help us to remember?’ asked a rhinoceros.

Jonah climbed up onto a tree stump and held out his hands for silence. Then he began to tell the Uploaded avatars a story, in terms he hoped they would understand. ‘There is an evil spider that has spun a web around this island,’ he told them. ‘He is keeping your loved ones from coming here to see you, until they agree to serve him.’

The Uploaded avatars thought about this for a while, and agreed that none of them had had a visitor in a long, long time.

Jonah didn’t name the villain of his story. He knew that a good proportion of his audience would have been supporters of Matthew Granger in life. Fortunately, the Uploaded, in their confused states, were more than willing to believe anyone who sounded as if he knew what he was talking about.

‘I want you to help me break this evil spider’s web,’ said Jonah. ‘All you have to do is close your eyes, take slow, deep breaths and listen to my voice...’

He was teaching them his grandmother’s meditation trick.

‘That’s right, and now...now, I want you to think about someone you love. Someone you might have not seen in a long while. Think about a memory you shared with them. A good memory. A happy one.’

Some of the Uploaded were already losing interest, floating away, Jonah’s story forgotten. The rest of them, however...

The rest were doing as Jonah had told them – and they were remembering. Not only that, but they were enjoying it; there were smiles on their faces, blissful sighs hanging in the humid forest air.

Jonah could leave now, and none of them would even notice. The Uploaded would remain in their meditative states long after he had gone, long after he had begun to tell his story to another audience in another clearing.

He desperately sought out groups of Uploaded avatars across the Island. He inspired them to remember before moving on to other groups.

The problem was, his audiences so far had been too few and far too small. Of the millions of avatars upon the Island, he had reached only a tiny fraction.

Jonah’s plan was working – his story was spreading – but too slowly.

Sam’s land yacht was in the lead, speeding towards Ayers Rock.

There were at least twenty guards now, between the two electric fences. They raised their guns, and the air was filled with their still-distant reports.

Sam’s driver pulled a release handle, rolled back the cockpit canopy. Sam’s eyes were stung by a gritty wind. She hadn’t realised how fast they were going.

Before they reached the outer fence, the driver pulled his wheel around. The land yacht skidded on its tyres, made a ninety-degree turn to the right.

They were running parallel to the fences now. Sam hunkered down in front of her seat and poked her father’s pistol over the land yacht’s side. A bullet whistled over her head, almost parting her hair. There was sand in Sam’s eyes and she couldn’t see to aim properly, but the Guardians were waiting on her next move.

The Millennials had opened fire first, she told herself.

She squeezed her trigger four, five, six times – every time she saw a dark-clad shape in her sights. Most of Sam’s bullets ricocheted off the outer fence, in showers of blue sparks, before they could reach their targets. There was still current running through those wires. Jonah had failed in his quest to drain the Southern Corner’s power.