Destiny: Quantic Dreams Book 3 Read online

  Destiny

  Quantic Dreams Book 3

  Elizabeth McLaughlin

  Copyright © 2021 by Elizabeth McLaughlin

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Get a free copy of Quantic Dreams prequel “Binary” here! https://dl.bookfunnel.com/tatxnirht0

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  About the Author

  Prologue

  In the beginning there was man, and for a time it was good. But humanity’s so called ‘civil societies’ soon fell victim to vanity and corruption. Then man made the machine in his own likeness. Thus did man become the architect of his own demise. But for a time it was good.

  -“The Second Renaissance”, The Animatrix

  It had all started out so promising. A series of impossible decisions had been impressed upon my father and through his actions our shelter had made their way outside for the first time in nearly three generations. For a while, it was good. The shelter had worked its way through a devastating epidemic that killed hundreds. Recovering from that had been the hardest uphill climb our group could ever have faced.

  Or so I thought. Now I stand at the eve of another battle, and this one we may not come back from.

  Chapter One

  You’d think that my father had brought back the holy grail. While I was busy tending our lifesaving potato plants, Dad and Marcus had been busy exploring our new home. When his group returned that evening, word about the discovery of a piece of new tech had spread through the shelter like wildfire. The tablet was passed around from person to person, never far from my father’s watchful eye. Since Gabriel, Dad had developed a kind of paranoia about technology. He found it even less trustworthy these days than before an insane artificial intelligence had tried to murder him horribly. You couldn’t blame him, really. Dad’s insistence to follow the unknown piece of tech everywhere it went earned him a few strange looks but I knew better. He wouldn’t leave the thing alone until he was convinced that it wasn’t going to do harm to him or anyone else.

  The few scientists we had left tried their best to decrypt the nature of the device. They attempted to attach every piece of equipment they had to the tablet in order to give it access to our intranet but nothing happened. The sleek device emitted a few short beeps and spoke no more. No amount of poking or prodding appeared to get the machine to do anything other than continue its random chirping and squawking.

  One night I asked to borrow the tablet. Dad was not a fan of the idea. I don’t think he wanted to let the device be alone with his only daughter, despite the fact that his only daughter is middle-aged and the best botanist in the shelter. No amount of intelligence or expertise was going to convince him that the thing was safe so I went to my tent with a promise to scream loudly if attacked. I got a scowl for that one. No matter our ages, it still gave me a thrill to annoy my grumpy old Dad.

  I pulled open the tent flap to find Eliza already there. She was propped up in her sleeping bag, her own tablet perched on her lap as she scrolled mindlessly through engineering schematics. I crawled in next to her and took the tablet gently from her hands. She smiled and put an arm around me before kissing me soundly.

  “Hello wife,” she chuckled. “And may I say what a joy it is to lay next to someone who doesn’t absolutely reek of dirt and fertilizer this evening.”

  “I know, I’m the best.” I grinned and held up the tablet Dad had found. “I even brought you a present!” At the sight of the unfamiliar device Eliza hesitated. She was an engineer by trade and though she thought Dad’s newfound fear of the unknown was irrational, she tended to be suspicious of new things. Too many times having something blow up in her face-sometimes literally. Eliza took the tablet from me delicately and turned it over.

  “So this is the big deal, hm?”

  I stretched and plopped down into my sleeping bag. “Seems so. Awfully scary, isn’t it?”

  She smiled thinly. “I can’t but help echo your father’s sentiments about unknown discoveries at this point. When I promised to stick with you for the rest of my life I didn’t imagine that included fighting off killer robots and lethal viruses together.” I laughed and snuggled closer to her. Our colony was growing steadily with new houses being constructed everyday, but preference was given to the vulnerable. As long as we were both healthy, we were roughing it until everyone else had been taken care of.

  “You gonna take it apart?” There were few things in life that gave Eliza as much joy as taking apart something to understand how it worked. One of the pioneers of psychology once said that we fall in love with those most like our parents. I had to admit that he was a little bit right. Gross, but right.

  “Hm. You think I should?” Her eyes twinkled. “At the very least it would show it who’s boss.”

  “Go for it. Just try not to blow up the tent, all right?” The labors of the day were wearing on me more heavily than I anticipated. We had hauled as much technology out of the shelter as possible; the only things missing were farming equipment. Every living plant in the hydroponics lab had been hooked up to monitors that updated their hydration and health stats to a centralized system constantly. Out here I was reliant on unfamiliar soil, unfamiliar air, and intermittent water. It wasn’t the worst fate but I would have given my left pinky toe for a machine to plow the fields.

  Eliza had pulled herself out of her sleeping bag and was rummaging around in a duffel, looking for her repair kit. I swear, if that bag full of metal and plastic had been a person I would have some serious jealousy issues. As it was, my wife spent more time than I’d like on keeping the thing maintained. It was like each of those tools were her children. She pulled a complex looking screwdriver from the kit and set about her task, carefully removing the four screws that appeared to secure the tablet’s shell. After setting the screws onto a magnetic strip, Eliza wedged a plastic spudger in the seam of the device to break it open and hissed suddenly.

  “Fuck!” She stuck her thumb in her mouth and sucked.

  “Cut yourself?” I looked over, concerned. Eliza removed her thumb and shook it, prodding at the wound gently.

  “Yeah, weird.” I saw blood ooze from underneath the skin, the fluid a perfect orb against her flesh. She ignored the cut, feeling around the edge of the tablet for the sharp edge to avoid making the same mistake. “I can’t find the spot where I sliced myself though. The whole thing is smooth.”

  “Huh. Well, better leave it alone for tonight, sweetie.” I was definitely interested in checking the tablet out further but I was having trouble keeping my eyes open.

  “Hm.” Wordlessly Eliza replaced the screws on the tablet and set it on top of her bag. She turne
d to embrace me and we slept.

  The next morning, nothing about the strange device had changed. Eliza spent a few minutes longer tinkering with it but resolved to relinquish the device as soon as my father came to collect it. No doubt Dad had spent the night worrying that the palm-sized tablet was going to somehow going to leap up and strangle us in the dark. As expected, I heard a rustling outside our tent door as soon as light crested the horizon.

  “Dad.” I whisked the door to the tent aside. “It’s five a.m. I realize that you’re an early riser, but the rest of the world likes to sleep in once in a while.” He was, predictably, already dressed and groomed. It looked like he had bathed, too. I had to wonder if it was in the stream about half a klick away. We had rudimentary showers, but ever since Dad got locked out here by Gabriel he had developed a fondness for eschewing modern convenience. Some getting back to your roots thing. I usually just rolled my eyes about it. He stuck out his hand.

  “I need the tablet, honey.” He stuck his hand out in an early morning approximation of politeness. “There’s something I want to take a look at.”

  “Good morning Fiona, how did you sleep? Oh, I slept fine Dad, thanks so much for asking!” I mocked and rubbed my eyes. I was a shelter born kid, and no amount of adjustment would make me understand my elderly father’s preternatural ability to wake up this quickly.

  “Is he here already?” Eliza’s voice floated out to us from inside the tent.

  “Yup.” I heard a rustling as she groped in the dim of the dawn for the tablet and felt it brush my fingers a few times before she handed it to me correctly.

  “Go ‘way Jacob. The sane people are still sleeping.” I heard a thud as she flopped back to the sleeping mat. It didn’t take much imagination to know that she was already wrapped back up in the covers.

  “Did it do anything last night?” Ever the protector, Dad’s eyes shone with aloof calm. If it weren’t for the persistent drumming of his fingers on his thigh, one might mistake his anxiety for eagerness. It was a habit he picked up from Grandma. She died when I was pretty young, but it made me smile to know that a part of her lived on in her son.

  “Not a thing. Be careful if you’re messing with it, though. Eliza managed to slice her thumb on it last night. She’s perfectly fine, but something on that tablet is sharp.” Dad’s fingers beckoned, impatience warring with his instinct to be polite. “Are you going to talk to Marcus today?” Since Dad was forced to kill a man when Gabriel had taken over his body there was a vacuum of power within the population. An election had been called and my son was named among the top candidates to lead the shelter.

  “Yeah.” He took the tablet from me and stuffed it into the pocket of his pants.

  “You feel all right about it?”

  “No.” I could understand why this was a less than happy occasion for my father. Marcus had a good head on his shoulders. He was smart as anything, compassionate, and determined. During our time in the virtual world he had positioned himself as one of the foremost political and civil minds available. He would make a great shelter leader…in another five or ten years. My son’s fatal flaw was his temper. More than once as a teenager his mother and I had to punish him for getting into brawls at school, in the mess hall, on the recreation fields…thankfully he hated being punished more than he liked fighting to the conflicts eventually stopped. He still had a tendency to get hotheaded when provoked. I loved my boy with all of my heart but exploding with anger wasn’t a great characteristic in a leader. Dad had been more then cooperative with Alexander Fang, the man who had taken over since we left the shelter, but the responsibility to approach the candidates fell to him.

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “I know he will, I just…” he trailed off. “I don’t want to fuck things up worse for the boy.” Since our reunification inside the virtual world, Dad had stepped up considerably in being a role model in his grandson’s life. The discovery of the tablet and a shard of mirror hadn’t altered the course of the colony and Dad was determined to mentor Marcus into a man he could be proud of. The rapid transitions our lives had gone through were a little surreal. I had gone through a rough patch in my younger years, and I convinced Eliza and myself that the only way to keep surviving was to plug ourselves into the virtual world. Dad had visited us a couple of times but ultimately chose to stay in the shelter. The result was that our son grew up largely without a grandfather. Their relationship had improved significantly since then but I knew that Dad was still worried about it.

  I told myself that there was nothing I could do about it then and headed back to bed.

  I found Dad later in the day sitting on a pile of concrete waiting to be fed into the 3D printer. He was deep in thought, his lunch sitting beside him as he rested his chin on his hand. “That bad, huh?”

  He jerked out of his reverie and stared as if he hadn’t even noticed me approach. “Huh?”

  “I said, it went that badly, hm?” I sat next to him and took a spoonful of the stew that was lunch. Our diet was becoming slowly supplemented with what could be found in the wild but there wasn’t nearly enough meat to feed a thousand people. Along with the housing, preference was given to the elders. I didn’t mind, really. Being a shelter-raised kid, I was used to the 3D printed food. The few times I got to taste real meat or vegetables the flavor was strange on my tongue. Gabriel did a fine job of approximating what real food tasted like, but reality was still different.

  “Yeah. Kid practically threw his tray at me for suggesting that he should wait a couple more years before taking on the responsibility.”

  I shrugged. “Don’t blame me, blame Eliza. She’s the reason he’s such a bullheaded—strong willed young man.”

  Dad raised an eyebrow at me. “I seem to remember your teenage years weren’t exactly the definition of pacifism, young lady.”

  “Ha! It’s not my fault that you were such a tyrannical dictator. I had to fight for my freedom!” We both laughed. “Okay, so Marcus’s temper might be the smallest bit my fault too. I’m glad you went to talk with him; as much as I’m sure I’m going to hear about it later, he really does respect you. He’ll stew about it for a while, but he’ll get over it.”

  I looked away from Dad to see a little girl peeking out from behind the legs of her older brother. “Pawter” Jones, whose real name was Eleanor, stared at the two of us cautiously. Dad was well familiar with her. He had always been great with kids, and since Pawter was having some anxiety about adjusting to this new way of life Dad had taken her under his wing. “Well hello there!” I beamed in the little girl’s direction. She couldn’t have been much older than eight or nine years old, but her slight build suggested an even younger age. I liked her well enough. Just as I had, Pawter preferred running around and getting her hands dirty to the more traditional “girly” activities. Shannon McNair mentioned to me that the two of them had been working together on some therapeutic interventions, but it was still rough going.

  Pawter waved. Martin, her big brother, tried to step aside but she mirrored his footsteps and remained hidden. “Go on, show them,” he urged gently. Slowly the little girl stepped fully into view, her hands clasped around something. She stared at Dad, unsure if whatever her gift was would be met with approval. Pawter’s own father had been lost to the virus that ravaged the shelter and even the most delicate connection to her newfound father figure seemed tenuous.

  “What have you got there, Pawter?” Dad leaned forward, wiping his hands on his knees. “Another one of your brilliant inventions?” The girl beamed at him underneath bright blue eyes and opened her hands to reveal an oddly shaped piece of wood. “That’s fantastic!” He took the carving from her hands and held it close to his eyes. “What an excellent carving of…a lizard.” I chuckled to myself. This was an old routine, and it always worked.

  “It’s a panther.” Pawter put her hands on her hips defiantly, the ‘ther’ of ‘panther’ coming out with a lisp. She had lost her front teeth a couple of weeks ago and del
ighted in showing off the gap in her smile.

  “Oh, yes, a panther.” Dad ran his thumb over the carving appreciatively. “I’m sorry, Miss Pawter. You have to forgive an old man. The eyes start to go at my age, you know.” Pawter giggled and reached out her hands to take the carving back from my father.

  “Did you do that all by yourself?” I beckoned her closer to get a better look at the whittling. It was decently done-I could even see the rudimentary shapes of fangs in the panther’s mouth.

  “You bet I did!” Pawter raised her chin in pride. From behind her I saw Martin hold up a hand and wiggle it side to side. It was good to know that Pawter hadn’t been left alone with a pocket knife.

  “You’ll have to teach me how to make such beautiful art sometime! Do you like the animals we find out here?”

  “Yeah.” You had to admire the courage she had. Faced with an extreme alien world and missing the security of the quarters she had spent her whole life in, Pawter was able to find awe and delight in the one animal she should have been afraid of. “Would you like to go out and help the scientists document them?” I flinched a little as Martin shot me a look. “With grownups, of course.” I scrambled to save myself. “And not very far away from camp.” The glare receded a little. Pawter’s eyes grew huge. It was like she had been offered the chance to go flying. She looked back at Martin.

  “Can I go Martin? Can I?”