No response.
He remembered his NetScreen, hurriedly clicked his EarCuff to flash it up. The green glow almost blinded him but revealed nothing in the darkness. He shut it off, realized it would be better for his eyes to be sharp and adjusted—the screen would only blunt his night vision.
Shuffling forward, arms before him, he headed toward where he thought the voice had come from. Only there was nothing. He walked and walked, sure he was going to smack into a wall at any second, but still nothing.
“Michael.”
He stopped. This time the voice sounded like it had come from above him. Michael froze, calmed his breathing, and waited, head tilted back to look up, searching the darkness. Finally, after a few seconds, he thought he saw a faint light hovering a hundred feet or so above him in the black, starless sky.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled as loudly as he could. “Sarah! Bryson!”
Nothing.
But that light was still there. It was faint, but it was there. He sat down on the ground and lowered his head. He had to think. Being cut off from the code was driving him nuts. Never in his life had he been forced to use a NetScreen to program within the Sleep, and he didn’t know if he’d be good at it. The code in the VirtNet was so different from back in the Wake. It was more visual and intuitive. But he had to try. He had to get up to that light. Somehow.
He brought his screen blazing to life and got to work.
It took an hour. Possibly the longest, most excruciating hour of his life. Sweating, concentrating, digging through endless lines of code, surrounded by that awful darkness and pressing silence. And what did he get for all that effort?
A ladder.
He ended up stealing it from a game he’d played long, long ago called Donkeys on Platforms. One of those games that was so outrageously silly that everyone fell in love with it. The player had to navigate an intricate maze of bridges and ramps and arches and landings, all of it complex and jumbled, barely rational, avoiding an endless array of traps and freaky creatures. All to find lost donkeys and bring them back home to a guy named Scooter.
Eventually Michael had gotten bored and programmed gigantic, gravity-defying ladders to beat the system. Now, as Jackson Porter, it wasn’t that hard to duplicate it.
One of those ladders now loomed above him, stretching into the darkness toward the light far above.
He started climbing.
The light in the distance got brighter as he ascended, its boundaries more defined. It was a cold light, almost blue, and it shone through an opening that appeared to be a perfect circle. He had to stop several times to adjust the programming of his ladder, make sure it led him in the right direction. Far below, it scraped along the floor as it moved at his will. The wonders of the Sleep, he marveled.
Up, up, up Michael went, always toward the light. He was sure someone wiser could come up with a really good philosophical parallel, but all he could think about was how sweaty his hands were and how much he missed his friends.
After a good thirty minutes of climbing the impossible ladder, he reached the edge of the light source. He stopped a few feet below and looked up to the fake sky—gray clouds cutting across the blue. He paused, took a final deep breath, and went the rest of the way, like a worker climbing from the sewers through an open manhole to a busy city street, hoping that nothing came by to swipe off his head.
Two rungs below the light, he stopped, so shocked by sound that at first he didn’t know what was happening. He’d become used to the silence, even in such a short time. What he heard now was distinct and familiar: the majestic, rolling swells of the ocean.
The ocean?
Intrigued, he bolted up the last few feet and carefully peered out the circular hole. His eyes had slowly adjusted to the glow of the light coming from above, but he still wasn’t prepared when he fully emerged. Blinded by the brilliance and deafened by the sound, he needed a few seconds to get his bearings. And when he did, his jaw dropped.