Across the virtual sea from the Island of the Uploaded, the main ferry terminal was packed with avatars shouting and waving banners.
As Jonah flew closer, he saw they were protesting the blockade of the Island. He touched down in their midst and they closed in around him, jostling him. A mean- eyed vulture thrust its beak right up to Jonah’s face and demanded to know if he was, ‘Millennial or Guardian?’
‘Matthew Granger killed my mother,’ said Jonah, bitterly. ‘What do you think?’
Clearly, this was the right answer. The avatars parted before him, and Jonah was able to reach the ferry terminal’s sliding doors.
The atmosphere inside the terminal couldn’t have been more different. As the doors slid together behind Jonah, they blocked out the sound of the protest completely. The air had a cool, almost sterile taste to it. There were plastic benches and electronic departure boards, the latter detailing the sailings of the day’s ‘death barges’. The next departure was in forty-five minutes.
There were several knots of people standing around the terminal: mourners gathered to say goodbye to cherished friends and family members. Some of them were weeping. Jonah could see the waiting death barge through the windows, and the sight of it made him shudder. It sat at the end of a long wooden jetty. It was sleek and black, and it flew a single flag: a white infinity symbol upon black.
As Jonah watched, a small group of mourners floated up to the barge. They took turns hugging and kissing an ancient, stooped blue frog, which finally turned away from them and half hopped, half shuffled up the boarding ramp. The mourners returned along the jetty and found a place at the waterside from which to wave loved ones away on their final voyage.
The man behind the blue frog avatar was probably lying on a comfortable couch in an Uploading centre. When the mourners returned to the real world, he would be gone, his corporeal body removed by the centre’s undertakers. At least they would know that, in the virtual world, his avatar lived on.
As Jonah had guessed, Matthew Granger hadn’t stopped the death barges from sailing, allowing the Island to collect more avatars and thus making his ownership of the Island all the more valuable. So he had left that single route to the Island open, confident in the knowledge that no one could survive the trip.
Jonah was gambling on the desperate hope that Granger was wrong.
He waited for another group to step outside, then tagged along behind them. Jonah felt conspicuous in his huge red dragon avatar. He hoped no one would notice him and ask awkward questions.
He floated as far along the jetty, as close to the death barge as he dared. He waited impatiently as the mourners said their last farewells to an ageing pixie whose glow was dimming. He watched as the pixie climbed the boarding ramp, to be greeted by a red dialogue balloon at the top. He couldn’t read what the pop-up said, but the pixie touched it with her finger, and it closed.
The pixie boarded the barge. Her mourners floated back along the jetty, passing by Jonah. He drew a few glances from them, as he had feared, but the mourners’ eyes held nothing but sympathy for him. Of course, it must have seemed to them as if Jonah was preparing to Upload himself alone.
He could guess what the red pop-up had said. The pixie’s avatar had been scanned and indexed, before she could set foot on board the barge. She had confirmed her agreement to the Uploading process, which would take place as she made her slow journey towards the Island. It couldn’t be stopped now, for her.
Jonah went back into the terminal. He needed time to think. He watched through the windows as more avatars boarded the barge. Its deck was filling up.
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?’