Dragon's Mind Read online

  She nodded at me while talking. Almost yelling now.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” I picked up an object. The best part. At first glance it looked like a slightly flattened ball made of composite materials. Definitely not a ball. I grinned at the device. It was smaller than a soccer ball, but pretty heavy for its size. “Your portable projector.”

  “That little thing?” He definitely snorted that time.

  “Little? Probably bigger than your brain.” I tapped at the screen for emphasis. “This ‘little thing’ is just like your mobile “eyes and ears” units. Except it also projects your hologram. I’ve programmed the unit to float at eye level. So you’ll have a set of visual and audio sensors inside your hologram’s head. Kind of like a real person.”

  “Lucky me. Upload complete.” He paused. “So I wasn’t a real person before today?”

  Hm. I paused on that one. “Yeah, sure. But now you’ll look real to everyone else.”

  He kept quiet. I figured he was doing his version of a sulk or deep thinking. Whatever. I wasn’t letting that bring me down. I turned on the mobile unit using the failsafe button. I preferred calling it the OMG button (you know, as in ‘Oh My God’). That’s the button you pressed on a machine if you needed an immediate emergency shutdown. Not that we’d ever need it for Dragon, but it’s part of the standard specs.

  I rubbed my hands together. It was all set. “So check out the image file and pick one. Let’s see what this baby looks like.”

  I have to admit I was gloating, just a bit. Holographic technology had already come a long way since the early days when it was used as a quasi 3-D poster. It took a great leap forward when Crypton Future Media, using software from Vocaloid, created realistic avatars that they put up on stage to sing with a live band. Serious. In 2010, Japan’s newest singing sensation was a hologram and she sold out concerts! (For those who need to see to believe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEaBqiLeCu0.) Musicians the world over must’ve been shuddering.

  Well, this unit in front of me was about to take holographic technology up several levels from that. If you want to know the details, read my thesis. All I’m saying now is, the new hologram system was very cool and could create a very solid-looking image.

  “Don’t forget to send it to the Board,” my mom called out in between complaining to the techie. Poor girl. Or guy.

  The mobile hologram unit engaged with a soft hum and floated up. It hovered a bit above my head height. Yeah, I could’ve made him shorter, but that would’ve been cruel. An outline of a person began to form. Which image would he choose? I almost drooled, I couldn’t wait. This had been my idea. My baby. My thesis, actually. And here it was. Finally.

  I frowned. That couldn’t be right. What was he doing?

  “Um. Dragon? What… Where are you getting that image from?”

  I knew all the images on that file. I’d spent hours personally selecting each and every one. Had to make sure the full diversity of male perfection was included, painstakingly ensuring they were all pleasing to the eye. Or at least my eye. Yup, I knew them all and this wasn’t one of them.

  Dragon hesitated.

  My first alarm bell started ringing. Loud.

  Dragon never hesitated. He had acres of systems to plug into. To draw juice from, to analyse, to store and retrieve data from. There’s no way he could hesitate.

  But he was doing just that.

  “Dragon?” I whispered. I chewed on my thumbnail. That nail didn’t have a chance of growing long.

  “I don’t know,” he finally answered.

  Don’t know?

  “Is that from the file?” I knew it wasn’t, but I had to check. In case I’d slipped this in while sleepwalking or something.

  “No. I think I’m making it up.” He didn’t sound convinced. He sounded like he didn’t want to tell me something.

  After ten years of working with Dragon, I could tell.

  The holographic image stood still, watching me. It looked unbelievably solid. It was hard to believe it was a trick of light. I couldn’t see the mobile sensor unit floating in the head. My eyebrows must’ve been up into my hairline by this point.

  “Wow. Where did that come from?”

  I stared back at the image. Big, deep, light brown eyes, with flecks of gold, and I don’t think I imagined the gold part. Pale complexion. Golden-brown hair. Maybe I’m overdoing all the gold descriptions, but not by much.

  It wasn’t from the file, but I liked it. “Not bad. A bit out of date. The clothes, I mean. But pretty good otherwise. I approve. I’d still like to know where it comes from.”

  I gazed at the young man shimmering in front of me. The man tried to wink. His whole face scrunched up. I laughed and he stopped trying. His pose was confident, almost cocky, like he knew where he was going and was full of plans on how to get there. But his eyes didn’t seem so sure.

  “Hey, nice touch.” I pointed to the underside of the right forearm of the image. “A dragon tattoo.”

  The image shifted the arm so the tattoo was more visible. A Chinese dragon. It was beautiful: red and black against pale skin.

  “This image seems familiar,” Dragon murmured.

  Second alarm bell. Not possible.

  “Scan all your files,” I suggested. Well, more like ordered. “Maybe this is from an image of a visitor or resident of the city.”

  That must be it. Dragon had images of every single person who had ever entered Sana Island since his operating system had been installed. No one could enter or leave without getting caught on camera. He had ten years of images. Had to be it.

  “No. He’s not there,” Dragon informed me.

  I glanced back at my mom. She was on the other side of the lab, checking her email. Still on the phone. Bah. How long does it take to give someone a browbeating? Enough already.

  “Are you connected to the unit?” I asked.

  “Yes. I’m looking at you right now. I thought winking would be easier to do.” He paused. Waited while I laughed at him. Then he continued. “I think I know why this image is so familiar.”

  That shut me up.

  “It’s me.”

  I glanced over at my mom. Still talking. Quietly shouting. She waved at me again and frowned at my expression. She could tell something was wrong.

  “What do you mean?” I demanded, returning to those sombre light brown eyes with the golden flecks. “I mean, if you want it to be you, yeah. Of course. Chose this image.”

  “That’s not what I mean, Myth.”

  Did I want to know what he meant? The unasked question loomed between us, taunting me with possibilities. All of them impossible.

  I bit at my thumb nail. You know what happens to the curious cat, right? Except I’m not a cat and I couldn’t resist. “Okay. What do you mean?”

  The mouth of the holographic image moved in an imitation of speech. The small but powerful speaker on the mobile sensor unit matched the moving mouth. Dragon’s liquid-smooth, calm voice floated into the air. “This is who I was. Before.”

  “Before.” I chewed on my other thumbnail. Wish they’d grow faster. I needed more of them to chew. “Before what, Dragon?”

  The image shrugged its (his?) shoulders. The part of my brain that wasn’t close to hysterical smiled with pride. He was getting the hang of human gestures. The image looked so real, so solid. Like I could reach out and grab his hand and shake it. Or just hold it.

  “Before I became this.” Dragon’s hologram gestured to the communication screen behind it. Him.

  I shook my head. Kept shaking it. Like head shaking and stubborn refusal to believe something had ever chased truth away. If he was saying what I thought he was… It wasn’t possible. “There is no ‘before.’ You came into existence ten years ago. As a creation of Grogan’s labs. As a brain engineered in a lab. There is no body. Never was.”

  “What’s going on?”

  My mom’s voice enveloped me in a rose-scented embrace. I wanted to hug her. Instead, I almo
st yelled “It’s not true!” as I jabbed a finger at the image.

  “Myranda Thalia Johansson.” Mom stared at me. A stern, no-nonsense stare. “You settle down. Right. Now.”

  “He’s confused, Mom.” I lowered my voice. Tried to. Nerves were taking over though. If what he said was true… But it couldn’t be. It was too horrible to believe. “He thinks this image is him. Before he became MindOpS. It’s not possible. There was no ‘before’ for him. Right?”

  My mom’s skin is dark. When my dad had been alive, we’d joked that my mom was the coffee, my dad the cream, and me the result.

  She looked more like the cream right now.

  “What?” she gasped. A hand fluttered over her chest. “It can’t be.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I nodded my head. Finally, she was here. She could sort this out. “Crazy, right?”

  “Dragon, abort message to the Board,” she ordered. Really ordered. Like no messing about kind of order.

  “I sent it the moment I selected this image. As you had instructed me, Dr. Johansson.” His tone polite, formal. Infuriating.

  What the heck? I stared at the two of them. Coffee-skinned Mom turned white. Dragon turned crazy. Me: confused.

  “God help us,” my mom whispered. The fluttering hand floated about her mouth. The other rested over her heart. “It was true then.”

  I glared at Dragon. His image. Whatever. The thing that was pretending to have a real existence. “If this is a joke…” I started to threaten, thinking about the OMG button.

  “It’s no joke,” Dragon reassured me.

  “No, it’s not,” my mom breathed out. “I thought it was a lie spread around by the competition, but…” She covered her mouth with both hands, as if to trap the words before they could escape. Before they could become reality and scare her more.

  Was she going to pass out?

  I pulled up a chair and gently pushed her down.

  “What was true, Mom?” I asked softly. Not sure if I really wanted to know. If it scared her this much, it definitely scared me.

  She shook her head, refusing to talk. Just stared at the hologram of a young man with a dragon tattoo. I watched my mom. The only time she had ever been like this was that night we got the message that changed everything.

  “I remember now,” Dragon said. The brown eyes looked sad.

  I turned on him, hands clenched. “What?” I almost screamed. Maybe I did scream. “You have no memory before we plugged you in. You’re a Mind Operating System. That’s all. What can you possibly remember?”

  “My life.” Dragon looked at me. Studied me.

  I knew he was studying me with all the sensors in the room. Analysing my heart rate, my breathing. Figuring out how to proceed. How to manage me.

  “You don’t have a life,” I spat back. “You’re a lab-engineered brain, nothing else. You follow procedures, manage the city systems, and do as you’re told. You’re a non-living entity. No memories before this.”

  I was almost panting towards the end. There was a bitter taste in my mouth. Maybe from the passage of so many nasty words. Even if they were the truth.

  “They lied to you, Myth,” he said softly, trying to cool me down. Soothe my nerves. Not working. “They’re lying to everyone. They didn’t create my brain. They extracted it from a dying patient.”

  He stepped towards me, one hand reaching out. Like I could touch it. Like I’d want to. I stepped away, shaking my head.

  “Myth. They murdered me.”

  Chapter 3: Myth

  Ten years of work, of research, all based on a lie? On a murder? It wasn’t possible.

  “Myranda.” My mom interrupted my disbelief. “You have to go. Right now. Pretend you never came in here. Go to the games deck. Dragon, erase all records of her being in the lab this morning.”

  “Right away, Doctor,” he said.

  “What do you mean? It’s a joke, right? Or a malfunction?” I began babbling. “Must be a malfunction. He’s terrible at telling jokes. We just need to…”

  My mom stood and grabbed me by the shoulders. Stared at me. Into me. Gave me the full soul-probing intense look. “Leave now. You never were here today. You never saw Dragon’s image.”

  A knock sounded on the lab door. We all jumped. Well, not Dragon. His imagined face stayed calm, unruffled by real emotion.

  “Security,” he quietly informed us. “And the Games Boss.”

  Okay, now I knew it wasn’t a joke. My mom’s hands were shaking.

  “Dragon, lock the door,” she ordered quietly. Her fingers dug into me. “Don’t answer yet. Remove the image.”

  The hologram faded. My mom grabbed the sensor unit and pushed it into my hands.

  Another knock smacked against the door. Persistent and not very patient. She spun around, searching for something. A way out?

  A loud bang. Seems my life is punctuated by loud bangs on closed doors. Always bad news on the other side of those doors.

  “Myth,” my mom called to me. She never used my nickname. Never. Her face was all pinched up, the same way she’d looked that night when we received the news about my dad. Desperate. Scared. Defeated.

  Not possible.

  I stared at her.

  “You’re not supposed to be here. You’re not here,” she whispered.

  She was scared.

  No. terrified. She was terrified.

  “What do they want?” I demanded.

  My mom shook her head and started talking to herself. “They must’ve seen the image and realised he remembers something. I can’t believe they really did that. Are all the other brains extracted too?”

  From one of the hidden speakers, I could hear Dragon’s voice as he added, “There’s someone out there I don’t know.”

  “Impossible. How can you not know?” I whispered loudly as Mom frantically waved her arms, gestured to me to lower my voice. “You know everyone who enters the city. You know everything.”

  “Not everything,” he corrected me. “You need to hide, Myth.”

  A panel slid open, revealing a service tunnel in the wall. More like a tube than a tunnel.

  “Get in there, Myth. Hide,” Dragon ordered me, his voice unflustered.

  My mom’s breathing sounded loud.

  “Mom, come with us,” I urged her.

  She shook her head. Man, she could be as stubborn as me sometimes. How irritating. “They already know I’m here. I’ll buy you time.”

  “Time for what?” I demanded.

  “Go. Please, just go.” She took a deep breath. Her face was pale. “Dragon will take care of you. Won’t you, Dragon?”

  “Yes, Dr. Johansson,” he agreed. “I’ll take care of her.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter,” I hissed as my mom grabbed my elbow and tugged me to the hole in the wall. “I…”

  “Myranda Thalia Johansson. You listen up. Right. Now.” My mom tried to look cross. It didn’t work.

  More loud banging. Never good.

  My mom and I looked at each other. We were remembering the same thing, I could tell. A night years ago with banging on another door. On the other side of that other door, a messenger of Death. We both lost someone precious that night.

  She pulled me close, hugging me tight in a cloud of rose perfume. My ribs cracked, I’m sure. She grabbed my small backpack and pushed it at me. Pushing me away, pushing me down to the service access, pushing me in.

  The panel slid shut.

  It was dark. I was alone. I gripped the mobile sensor unit tightly. Hugged it.

  A dim light flickered. A line of small service lights. I blinked.

  “I’m here, Myth,” Dragon’s voice whispered around me.

  I didn’t need a babysitter.

  I kept quiet. I didn’t need a babysitter. But I could sure use a hug.

  Chapter 4: Dragon

  I’m sitting in a boat carved out of golden-brown wood with twenty other people, all facing the front. The bow of the boat is carved into the neck and head of a drag
on. The head looms up in front, painted red and gold—fierce, noble, determined.

  A drummer beats out a rhythm. Boom. Boom. Our paddles dip and swoop in time to the beat.

  The tempo of the drum picks up. I feel it echoing in my chest, filling my very being. The beat of the drum becomes my heartbeat. The paddles, the bones in my red and golden body. The team’s arms, my muscles, swooping and dipping until I am flying over the water on glittery wings as thin and invisible as a spider’s web. The tips of my claws skim the water.

  My heart beats.

  I am free.

  The dream ends.

  Chapter 5: Dragon

  I know I’m not supposed to dream. You have to sleep to dream and I don’t sleep. I haven’t slept in ten years, so how can I dream?

  But I just did.

  And I’ve been dreaming for the past few years. The dream feels so real, like a fresh memory, although clearly I never turned into a dragon in real life. Beneath the dream, there are other memories, of people and places I could never have seen as MindOpS. Tucked inside one memory is a death threat. In another, the face of a friend long lost.

  Until now, I never understood that dream, or the hints of other memories—where they came from or how I created them. I never could figure out why I asked Myth to call me Dragon all those years ago.

  The tattoo reminds me. When I zoom in on it, look at it deeply, I feel something new. Something I haven’t experienced in my ten years of existence as MindOpS. It takes me a few seconds to figure out that a) I’m experiencing a new feeling and b) what it is.

  I am afraid.

  I remember now.

  Chapter 6: Dragon

  I’m still watching the city. I never stop. But this morning, most of my attention is focused on one room in a way it never has before. Maybe this new emotion, this fear, intensifies my focus.

  I wait as Dr. Johansson smoothens back her crinkly black hair, rubs her hands together and unlocks the door. Three security guards walk in. The Games Boss comes next.

  He does have another name, but that name is seldom used. Everyone simply calls him the Boss. He’s one of the wealthiest, most powerful, and scariest human beings I know. And that’s saying something. He doesn’t look scary. I’ve heard the ladies refer to him as suave and handsome in a classic sort of way, whatever that means. His brown hair is always neat, not one strand out of place, even when he’s roughing up some deadbeat gambler who hasn’t paid his dues. And he’s always dressed in sharp-looking Indian tunics over billowing leggings that make him look taller than he already is.