Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

tell from the sparkling
pixels and tiny pings that marked petty protocol violations. They all
wore bland shifts and coveralls like Mela and the boys.
    And these kids stood in a loose ring around Chem and Tod. The boys
crouched on the floor, clinging to each other.
    Mela ran forward. ’Get away from them!’
    Symat hurried after her. ’What kind of game is this?’
    ’No game,’ she called back. ’They are bloodsuckers. They are
trying to kill the boys.’
    ’Kill them? How do you kill a Virtual?’
    Mela didn’t answer. She waded into the attacking children,
grabbing them and pulling them aside. But there were too many of
them; they gathered around her and pushed her back, jeering.
    Symat ran forward, fists clenched. ’Back off.’
    One of the girls faced him. She was shorter than he was, with a
hard, cold face and her skin was waxy, almost translucent. She had
drifted a long way from her core programming, he realised. ’Whose
child are you?’
    ’I’m no child. I’m human.’
    The girl jeered and pointed at Chem. ’He thinks he’s human.’
    Symat swung a hand at her face. His fingers passed through her
pale flesh, scattering pixels. She flinched, shocked; that had
hurt.
    ’Do what I say,’ Symat said. ’Leave my friends alone.’
    The girl quickly recovered. ’You can’t order us around. And you
can’t hurt us.’
    ’But we can hurt you,’ said a sly-faced boy.
    ’Projections can’t hurt a human.’
    ’Oh, yes, we can,’ said the boy. ’We can come to you in the night.
We can hide in walls, in your clothes, even in your body, human.
You’ll never sleep again.’
    The girl said, ’You don’t have to be real to inflict pain. We’ve
learned that in the years we’ve been out here. We will haunt
you.’
    Chem was crying. ’Please, Symat, don’t let them hurt us.’
    Symat stood, hesitant. The out-of-control Virtuals’ threats filled
him with dread. And this wasn’t his fight; after all he hadn’t met
Mela and the boys before yesterday. But Mela’s eyes were on him. His
fists clenched again, he stepped forward. ’Leave them alone or -
’
    The girl ran at him, burst through his chest, and pushed her hands
through his skull so the insides of his eyeballs exploded with light.
’Or what? What will you do, human?’
    But the others didn’t follow her lead.
    ’Kiri,’ the sly boy said. ’Look at him.’
    The girl turned, looked at Symat - and then stepped back, her
mouth dropping.
    Symat found himself surrounded by a circle of staring children.
Even Mela and the boys were gazing at him wide-eyed. He saw that
their protocol respect was weakening; some of them drifted up from
the floor, and others tilted sideways, reaching impossible angles.
They were like floating spectres, not children. They began to
whisper, the strange, rapid speech he had heard from the boys in the
night; he heard them mutter that strange name again - ’the
Guardians’.
    And somehow Symat sensed the circle of scrutiny expanding beyond
the limited circle of these children. After all, he reminded himself,
these Virtuals were merely manifestations of the Mist, the cloud of
artificial sentience in which all of Mars was immersed - and suddenly
he was the centre of attention.
    He had no idea what was happening, but he ought to make use of it.
He raised his arms. ’Get away!’
    The strange children turned and fled, leaving the two boys weeping
on the ground.
    Mela and Symat ran to them. Mela hugged them. Chem looked up at
Symat, tears streaking down his face. ’Don’t leave me again, Symat.
Keep me safe until my parents come back for me. Oh, keep me
safe!’
    ’I promise,’ Symat said helplessly.
     
    They left the town and walked on, following the canal, ever
westward. The sun inched higher, showing more of its bloated red
belly, and the air grew steadily warmer. The water in the canal was
thick and sluggish now, and deep red-brown with sediment.
    Symat was walking out of the twilight band and into the hemisphere
of permanent daylight.
    The Virtuals followed. The boys, subdued, stayed closer to Symat
and Mela. They didn’t complain, though Symat could see they were
getting as hot and tired as he was. Their bodies apparently responded
appropriately to the weather, one bit of protocol they couldn’t
violate.
    ’So,’ he said to Mela. ’Bloodsuckers?’
    ’It’s what we call them. A lot of the kids are too young to
understand the truth.’
    ’Which is?…’
    The bloodsuckers had learned to steal something