Spheres of Influence-eARC by Ryk E Spoor Read Free Book Online Page B

VISUALIZATION NOW IS MORE CLEAR. The deep pseudo-voice of Ariane’s Mentor echoed through all of their connections and was reproduced in the speakers in the room. SHE WAS, THEN, THE PERSONAL CREATION—THE IDEALIZED SELF-INSERT—OF ONE OF THE HYPERION DESIGNERS.
    “Personal creation of…” Simon said, and broke off, understanding suddenly written across his face. “Oh. Oh, my.”
    “The top woman at Hyperion, Maria Condette Gambino,” DuQuesne confirmed. “Insisted on it, and as she was one of the main driving personalities in the…project, she got her way.”
    Ariane nodded; as a veteran of many a simgame, she was intimately familiar with the basic concept. Heck, I’ve done it a time or two myself when I was younger. “But what made her so unstable compared with, say, you? Or Wu, for that matter?”
    DuQuesne snorted. “A lot of the Hyperions weren’t stable enough to keep their heads when they found out that the worlds they were in weren’t real. Herc just went catatonic, Gilbert went insane, Sherlock…” he trailed off, shook his head. “But for her, it was a lot worse. Take me, for instance: at base, I was an attempt to make an idealized hero from the works of one of the beloved founding fathers of science fiction. Wu may have retreated, but at least he knew he was an attempt to make a demigod real. Same for most of the others. Maria-Susanna found out that she didn’t even belong in the ‘universe’ she lived in—that she was some woman’s way of living out a fantasy vicariously.”
    She saw Simon blanch. “ Kami …”
    The realization didn’t quite hit her that hard, but even so she felt a sudden terrible empathy; she imagined the moment of discovery, the realization that not only was everything around you a lie, but that you yourself were a lie within the lie, something that didn’t belong and never had. She shuddered because as swiftly as the ache of empathy came, it was replaced with the gut-level realization of the depth of mad fury that must have followed.
    “How horrid,” Simon murmured at last. “But you said she started to break with the discovery…”
    “…and she finished breaking when the man she’d been tailored for got himself killed heroically, defending his world just as anyone would have expected him to do, with head held high and a grin and “I don’t believe in no-win scenarios.” She was made for him. He was the literal reason for her existence, and unlike the rest of us—made to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune—she wasn’t designed to cope with that kind of loss.” Ariane saw slow tears of understanding flowing down Wu Kung’s cheeks, soaking the delicate fur. “The first person she murdered was her own creator. The discovery of the Arena… I haven’t got any idea what it’s got going through her head, but I’m damn sure it’s nothing good.”
    “I can imagine a few possibilities, Marc,” Saul Maginot said grimly, “and every one of them looks worse than the last. Thank God we have you, at least, and Wu. But now I’m very worried about the other people you left in the Arena.”
    “So am I,” DuQuesne said, “but my first guess is that whatever she’s after isn’t going to be served by hurting anyone in the small group of humans already present. She’s going to have to learn the ropes. No, the main danger is the one she’s always presented: that she can convince just about anyone of just about anything and turn people against each other just as well as she used to hold people together.”
    The look of pained grief on Wu Kung’s face was enough to pierce her to the heart. “All right, Marc—I guess that just makes our departure that much more urgent. As one of the five top Hyperions…does that make her your equal?”
    “You’d better believe it. She’s basically my equal in every single way. I outmass her, and I’m a hell of a lot more sane than she is, but otherwise she can match me in any damn contest, for love,