Chapter 253

Chapter 253

As the spiral at the center of Michael’s inner space slowly cloaked itself back in the impenetrable darkness of the event horizon, Icarus slowly powered down the enormous shield.

The shields around Michael in the materials world, instead, remained in place as he looked up at the sky. The blue was deep, and there were no clouds. The sun was warm, the air rich and fresh.

He felt what courage he had, courage that had allowed him to proudly proclaim that he was going up to space, fade. Replaced by a visceral fear.

Breathe… let the taint be useful for once.

He checked his shields again.

Even though using the shield projector ring in the inner space was ludicrously expensive, manifesting a shield–or several–in the real world was cheaper than ever. The shield had become like a skill in the old system, quick and easy, with the nice addition of being flexible and able to be shaped into many variations to suit any needs. Like Johanne's new magic, his too would always be slightly different with each cast, but in the right hands this was a feature, not a bug.

Soon, he would do the same with teleportation, crystallizing the magic into some sort of contraption that existed in the inner space and allowing it to become effortless and quick.

He touched the shimmering blue around him. 

Responsive, sturdy, adaptable.

“Icarus, did you set it to protect me from cosmic rays?”

“Assuming one even manages to pierce your 45 silver aura and damage you, yes,” the AI said.

“What’s the current draw from the shield?”

“Lower than your mana regeneration,” Icarus said. “Much lower. Really, there should be nothing to worry about. The Vault is full of platinum coins.”

“Besides, you can always come back to Earth. It’s not going to vanish from under you.”

Michael gasped. Suddenly, he saw himself hovering in space, a giant void where the Earth should be. He knew that it wasn’t any more likely to happen when he was up there than it would be at any other moment, but the knowledge helped little.

In the end, he knew that he had to take the plunge. He did.

He began to rise up in the air, ascending vertically. He felt the rush of wind, the different air currents touching his shield at different temperatures, levels of moisture and even the sun’s rays hitting it in different ways. None of it bothered him, and the shield protected him so well that the external changes would not bother a child.

He only felt them through the shield, more akin to data rather than actual sensations.

Then he was out of the atmosphere. He knew because the blue was no longer all around him. It was reduced to a thin strip above the curve of the planet.

For a moment, the sight mesmerized him. Then he started choking, panicked. He thrashed, suspended in space, finding no purchase. There was no oxygen, no air. He was suffocating. He could feel it, the darkness–

“Michael!” yelled icarus. “What the fuck!”

He remembered that he could do magic, and he simply used it to replenish the air inside the shield with oxygen.

Then he laughed. It came from deep inside him as he stared at the planet below, breathing recycled air that–thanks to magic–tasted better than any air ever could back on the surface. There was no pollution, no contaminants. The air was simply perfect.

He kept laughing, his sight moving over the continents and the seas. The borders, so important on maps, did not exist from up here. And a thought bubbled up in his mind.

I want this all to be mine.

His problems looked so small from up here. He soared up, higher and higher, two dozen miles up. Fifty. A hundred. It took an hour to reach this height, but now he was a true king.

The problems…  he could manifest a rod of tungsten, spend a few platinum to do that, and chuck it at terminal velocity at his problems. He could throw the moon at his enemies, if he so wished.

He shook his head. The Renegade would probably feel it coming and survive the catastrophe.

And it would ruin my beautiful world. No, no damaging my property.

He thought about the Dao he was pursuing. Interwoven Fates. The First Embrace. It was a nice Dao, but was it really his? Before he had lost his powers, he had set his eyes on another concept for a Dao, that of limitless potential. He was greedy, and he knew it.

It’s no use overthinking it now. We’ll see as we go.

***

“I see you’re in a good mood today,” Travis said as he saw Michael sip his caffelatte, relaxing on a bench close to the control tower.

“I slept last night,” Michael said, inviting Travis to sit. “I truly, actually slept. Then I went to see my sister in the dungeon, and spent some time with her. Louise and Liff were there, and they were all having a good time. You know, I'm beginning to feel like this taint might actually make me feel better, if I learn how to manage it.”

Travis had been nodding along, but then grimaced. Michael could pick up the changes in his expression, and a strange voice told him that perhaps he could read the man’s mind with magic. He resisted it.

“What?” he asked instead.

“Nothing,” the man said. “I’m sure you know how to manage it better than I could ever tell you. But you should have a backup plan ready, in case you need to get rid of it quickly. Perhaps beating the seventh floor of the dungeon?”

Michael looked at him, eyes narrowing. “How do you know that beating the floor will help?”

“I don’t,” the man said, shrugging. “Just a hunch.”

“A hunch…” Michael echoed his words. “Just a hunch…”

It had been his hunch as well.

“Anyway, good job with all the hazardous materials cleanup around the state. What have you been doing with it?”

“Using it to build stuff in the inner space, and whatever I don’t need I just chuck it at the black hole. It increases the brightness by a few percent of a percent. Not much, but it stacks up eventually.”

Travis clapped his hands. “Very good! The cleanups will be good publicity for the Candle Light foundation as we slowly begin to announce them to the public, together with the efforts to develop the various lots by building sustainable, visionary industries. Lots of jobs, lots of money, lots of power.”

“That’s just so you, isn’t it?”

“What can I say,” the man shrugged. “David agrees, as you know. He was the one who originally proposed the project to me, knowing that I have the connections and know-how to make it work and quickly. Now that we work well together, I think we will surprise you, Michael."

Michael glanced at Travis’s hand, where the two gold cards shone under the light of the sun.

“I remember you talking about one such surprise yesterday,” he said. “Come on, don’t leave me waiting.”

Travis grinned. “You only have to wait one minute and a few seconds.”

He pulled out his phone, and asked Icarus to broadcast a news channel.

“Since when did you and Icarus…”

Travis shushed him, “watch! It’s up!”

In the phone, Michael saw the tail end of a commercial break about lactose intolerance pills. One pill a day for thirty days, the ad said, and you would be once again able to drink milk without problems for the rest of your life.

The Unity Corporation logo flashed in all its glory. Michael was surprised to see it, and he was about to speak when the segment ended and the news came on. The two news anchors immediately started talking animately, while an infinite row of economic indicators scrolled horizontally at the bottom of the screen.

“–now, Unity Corporation isn’t publicly traded, but if it were, its market cap would likely top the S&P 500,” the man on the right said, broadcaster voice and all. “Today their charity wing, the Candle Light Foundation, announced the launch of a pilot program called "Water in the Desert." The objective is to supply fresh water to the Phoenix area without touching the dwindling Colorado River, with the ultimate goal of expanding to all of central Arizona.” 

The other man frowned in the usual exaggerated expression they use on TV. “And how exactly do they aim to do that?”

The first man’s face grew smug. “They’re proposing a network of underground cisterns the size of reservoirs, combined with next-generation purification technology. The plan is to take wastewater, contaminated groundwater, and even saltwater via pipelines stretching to the ocean, and transform it into fresh water for agriculture and drinking.”

The other nodded. “That is a tall order, Jeff. And you said this is through their charity division? Do they actually have the logistics to deliver on something like that?”

“That is the question. The pilot program is small compared to the needs of the state, but the engineering challenge is immense.” He turned to the camera. “We’ll be watching them closely, of course, especially because they’ve promised a delivery time for Phase One of less than six months.”

“Six months? That’s simply not possible, Jeff.”

Jeff shrugged, still staring at the camera. “It might be, if they throw enough money at the problem. The real question is: why? Is this genuine altruism, or a massive publicity stunt?”

The other man turned as well. “If it is a stunt and they actually manage to deliver… it’s going to change the game. And they certainly have the money to try.”

Michael hummed, head bobbing up and down as he looked up from the phone and at Travis. 

“Not bad,” he said. “Sounded scripted, though.”

“It was.”

How much did you pay them?”

“We bought the whole network,” the man said casually. 

“Really?”

Travis grinned. “It might seem like we are still in the early expansion phase, but the AI hype has provided us with an opportunity never seen before. With our technology, we are literally printing money. On one hand, we are providing cheap computational power to the tech giants and milking them for all their cash, strangling the data center startups and even the chip manufacturers. At the same time, we are pretending to develop our own AI, Daedalus, which is nothing short of Icarus in disguise. We are keeping the delicate balance, making sure Daedalus is always in the top five in the various benchmarks. Sometimes it reaches the top, sometimes it falls down a bit. It keeps the money flowing.”

“Seems like you have everything handled, then,” Michael said. “I’m glad to have you on the team.”

Travis smiled, and it was a genuine smile for once.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Michael said. “I have a Renegade to catch.”

“Speaking of, perhaps we should formulate a plan, get everyone working on it together.”

Michael paused. He had planned to handle the situation alone, as usual. He realized, as he saw Travis’s desire to help, that he was falling back to his old patterns. It would be in the spirit of the First Pillar not only to trust Travis with the company, which he was already doing, but also with the matter of the Renegade.

He was a grown man, and Michael did not need to babysit him. In fact, he could be a very effective help in developing a plan to catch the Renegade unaware.

“Yes, we should,” Michael said, surprising the other man for a second. Travis had not expected him to go along with his suggestion, it seemed.

“Alright,” Travis said, face lighting up with energy. “Let’s take this to the Control Room. Shall I call David?”

Michael nodded, while also groaning internally.

Control Room? Really?

He already had a Control Room in his inner space. Things were getting confusing.