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World of Glass

  The Final Cycle, Book 1

  By Matt Dymerski

  Copyright © 2013 by Matt Dymerski

  Follow my work at MattDymerski.com.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: Somewhere Else

  Rolf

  Mjögen

  Elizabeth

  Ripples in the Sea

  Pressure

  The Hand

  The Lone Path

  293

  305

  Epilogue: Age's End

  The Tree of the Future

  About the Author

  Somewhere Else

  She leaned back in her autochair, gazing up at the ceiling's vast series of metallic angles and inlaid dull crimson tracers. Her eyes traced the purely functional design, following numerous wires, junctions, and relays… and she felt the sheer amount of time she spent idle in that room staring up at that hideous ceiling might just drive her mad.

  A rare beep interrupted her unhappy reverie.

  "What is it?" her counterpart asked, looking over from his own autochair and accompanying screens.

  She brought the large holographic viewscreen close, reading the error with some disbelief. She threw the profile his way.

  "What about it?" he asked, bouncing the info back to her screen. "Destroyed themselves three hundred years ago. It’s long done. Registered and sealed."

  She carefully examined the barren brown ball, letting out a small unbidden laugh of disbelief. "They're not dead."

  "Ridiculous. We've got a dead-swept probe report every fifty years."

  "I'm not surprised the other probes missed it. It looks like they're clinging to one coast line, here -" she traced the edge on the virtual globe. "I'll be damned. It's artificial."

  "What is?"

  "The coast line."

  His smirk faded. "What about the population trends - how long until they peter out?"

  "Never. They're growing."

  His expression turned slightly fearful. "How many?"

  "A billion."

  He glanced toward the door, grinding his teeth for a moment. "Damnit…"

  Her grin widened. "Isn’t it grand?"

  "Is there anyone else we can blame for this? That's a ton of missing data."

  She shook her head. "Did you look at the live feed? They've got everything we missed."

  "What do you mean?"

  "It's all on file, there on that planet. Our probe can easily access the network, there isn't even any security. Every moment of every lifetime is recorded and public in that place."

  "Sounds helpful, but that's not the standard way we analyze -"

  "But we can watch," she interrupted, almost bubbly at the prospect of something to break the endless repetition. "Not just lifeless summaries and statistics! Anything could have happened down there in the last three centuries. It looks like constant upheaval. Just from surface searches, I can already tell they've gone through almost every governmental and societal system. Isn't that the point of everything we're doing? This is a goldmine."

  "What government do they have now?" he asked, visibly considering keeping the discovery quiet - at least for the time being.

  She leaned over the arm of her chair, eyes bright. "Nothing."

  "Nothing? How -"

  "I don't know yet, but we can watch," she interrupted again. "And we can do the live-team's investigation ourselves, and if we get caught, we'll just say we were trying to help. If we report it as hosting life, they'll take it away from us. And then we'll be bored again. Move the probe closer, I want to hook in directly with their network. Engage the proper disguise, too, will you?"

  He pulled the globe over, tracing the planet's still-visible wounds. Against continental browns and oceanic silvers, the constructed coastline stood out as an uneven grey streak. A single scar among many, it ran cruelly pitiful and small.

  He could see how the other probes had missed it. "A billion people, in that tiny area?"

  His dismayed question hung in the air unanswered. She was already deep in the live feed, oblivious.

  Rolf

  He shot awake, full of fire and desperation, his arms raised against some imagined fatal attack.

  Snapping back to reality, he slowly relaxed his body, keeping his face out toward the passing water.

  The boat’s narrow metal edge remained as an imprint along his forearm. He gave the area a few furtive kneads, acutely aware of the sweat hovering above his eyes. Covering his action with a feigned repositioning, he wiped the drops away with a subtle movement.

  In the rushing water beneath his outstretched hand, the prow’s diverging patterns created the illusion of stationary rippling. He liked to imagine those waves expanding ever outward, spanning the glassy sea as they became vanishingly small, reaching shores far and unknown with the last of their energy.

  Below the Unsetting Sun, the northern horizon seemed an implacable line between smooth silver sea and vaulted azure sky. He peered at the distant contour of the world for as long as he could stand the brightness, envisioning remote deserts kept continually burning under that relentless star. The fabled northern deserts would be a hellish wasteland, but they would be free of people… and he sometimes imagined living there might almost be worth it.

  But that was unreachably far north, and the boat was heading west, and it only hurt to think about places he would never see.

  Blinking against the residual glare behind his eyelids, he finally turned and gazed around the small boat. None of the other three occupants had noticed his startled waking - or, more likely, none had cared.

  He saw them from a distance rather like the unreachable horizon.

  Atop an immense castle wall, built anxiously high and desperately thick, he considered the logistics of sallying forth into unfamiliar territory.

  He opened his mouth briefly, but then closed it again, turning his head slightly.

  Beside him, a lanky young man of similar age sat curved against the speed-born winds. One head taller - a head crowned with loose brown hair, but bearded with red, all fluttering wildly - he held his seat tight, braced uncomfortably against the wind. “At least we’ll be home soon,” he muttered. “It’ll be good to be back.”

  The dreamer ignored his own rising distress in favor of a sighted opportunity. “How is… your father?”

  His fellow traveler smiled back, surprised. “He’s well. Thanks for asking.”

  “Good,” he continued, darting his gaze around uncomfortably, unsure what to do with his face and mouth - but certain he had to keep facing his colleague for this sort of thing. “That’s good to hear… Og.”

  Smile curling with light-hearted suspicion, the named young man stroked his beard, carefully considering his next words. “Do you… want to come with us?”

  All of his emotions surged forward against the inside of his castle walls, shouting - clamoring, even - but he kept his heart rate steady, his face neutral. “I guess. That’s fine.”

  “Oh, come on,” complained the girl on the other side of Og, turning from her bored lean against the opposite edge of the boat. “Really?”

  “My father can use any Scientist he can get,” the red-bearded young man countered, his tone diplomatic and positive. “I’m sure you two can find different projects, Elizabeth.”

  She sighed and turned back to her idle study of the darker southern sky.

  The dreamer’s eyes remained open, but his true self slumped against the hastily shut gates of his castle, recovering from the terror of momentary vulnerability. While so distracted, his unattended eyes glanced back at the boatman of their own accord.

  Crouched at the steering mechanism, the weathered man shook his head with mirthful unspoken humor. It seemed that many newly minted Scientists played
out their last minute drama on the boat ride home.

  Turning away from the other passengers again, he focused on the western horizon ahead. The immense silver now bore a rapidly thickening grey line. He stared at that line, unable to resist reacting. As his heart rate spiked dangerously high, Og glanced over with some concern - but said nothing.

  It wasn’t real, not yet… not yet… he watched the growing grey, unable to avert his gaze, anticipating the single moment it all became his world again.

  The change started directly ahead.

  Riotous color surged across the rapidly approaching buildings, shooting out in both directions like a massive illusionary explosion. Data flooded his contacts, energizing his visual statistics, channeling into all his graphs and maps exactly the way he remembered. He had the strangest sensation that the cell hanging against his heart had suddenly grown heavier, somehow physically burdened by the sheer weight of the information pouring into it.

  Beside him, Og looked down, adjusting the virtual color of his loose shirt from student-green through various shades of professional-red. He settled on a favorite hue, murmuring with approval.

  Preferring not to stand out, the dreamer made no such change, keeping the synthetic material set to its natural grey. On the other side of the boat, Elizabeth also chose not to change to her colors, though for far different reasons.

  The three new Scientists kept their eyes ahead in anticipation, and - almost abruptly - unfinished pillars surged past, each topped by busy construction workers, each connected by a web of girders, finished stone, and heavy equipment searing brutally loud noise across their wind-numbed ears.

  Ahead of them, further pillars continued on into the fathomless gloom between water and stone,