Diane Duane - Omnitopia Dawn

Table of Contents

DIANE DUANES
OMNITOPIA SERIES:

OMNITOPIA DAWN (#1)

Copyright 2010 by Diane Duane.

All Rights Reserved.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1517.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

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First Printing, August 2010

eISBN : 978-1-101-18909-2

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
MARCA REGISTRADA
HECHO EN U.S.A.

S.A.

http://us.penguingroup.com

For Erin Roberts
and all his erstwhile associates
at Electronic Arts / Origin
who showed me the ropes way back when

a cognizant original release september 22 2010

PROLOGUE

R IK MALIANI STEPPED OUT OF NOTHINGNESS into the narrow cobbled confines of Trokers Lane, overhung on each side by ancient half-timbered houses... and as his second step went squish, he realized hed just put his left foot down right in the middle of a turd.

He stood there for a moment looking down at his booted foot and the unsavory dinner-plate-sized object hed stepped into. It was blue. Rik stood on one foot, lifted the other one up and looked over his cloaked shoulder at the sole of it, sniffed. He immediately caught the unmistakable acrid whiff of griffin poop. Rik shook his head and smiled, impressed for about the hundredth time this week. Technology , he thought. Dont you love it when it works!

He went over to the curbstone in front of the nearest shuttered house and used it to scrape the griffin crap off, or at least as much of it as he could see in this light. Above Rik, between the raggedy-edged, mossy tiles of the hanging roofs, only a strip of indigo blue showed, for it was coming on toward evening in the City. The usual town smells floated through the air: roasting meat, rotting garbage, frying fish, woodsmoke, perfume, the multispecies sweat that the perfume couldnt cover... and, of course, ordure. The droppings of various animals, fabulous and otherwise, were something you just couldnt help but notice here, especially once you had the right hardware. In the face of numerous complaints about the problem, and the ever increasing traffic, the City had redoubled its claims that it was going to do something about the problem soon. But as for the magicians that the City kept hiring to do the job...

As he scraped the last of the stuff off his boot, Rik glanced up and around at the oriel windows of the old inward- leaning buildings, just to make sure that somebody wasnt about to enrich his game experienceand the crap quotient of the lanewayby emptying a chamber pot over his head. The word on the City newsfeeds had it that the present administration just couldnt keep wizards on the payroll long enough right now. But maybe this was understandable, since no magician worth his or her spells would waste time on a sanitation job when wizardry could be much better employedand better paidon one or another of the big campaigns that was running now. A huge and bloody war had just broken out in the Two Moons Macrocosm (now that the necessary threshold number of Moonies had finally responded to their invitations). Over in Pandora theyd just had a coup, and the deposed queen in question was busy recruiting an army as fast as she could. Dasheth Prime and LongAgo Three were also in the middle of rebellions or battles between major game guilds. And those were merely the conflicted game worlds Rik could think of off the top of his head: there might be ten or twenty others, Macrocosms he hadnt been following, that were either actively rumbling or getting ready to. With business so brisk and prospects so positive for a smart war wizard or combat mage, odds were even that Omnitopia City was going to have to find other ways to handle its garbage management besides magical ones. And since no one with a brain would willingly spend valuable game time picking up street crap by hand, Rik felt sure that until out-universe matters calmed down a little, the ordure was going to stay right where it was.

But none of these matters were really issues for Rik right now. And anyway, at the moment he wasnt Rik; he was Arnulf the Manyfaced, a paramage member of the Human League organization MediMages Without Frontiers, and he was on his way to Meruvelt to spend a little bit of hard-earned game gold on some new magian equipment in that Macrocosm, and to socialize with some folks he knew who also played and fought and healed there.

With his boot now cleaned to his satisfaction, Arnulf turned and strolled upward along the lane toward the light of the nearest cresset, which was stuck into a wattle-and-daub wall some twenty yards or so farther along. Up there, at the corner where Trokers Lane crossed the only slightly broader Shade Street, Arnulf paused and leaned against the wall for a moment, enjoying the feedback from the new RealFeel synesthetic sensory input system hed finally been able to afford. His wife Angela had protested a little at first about how much money hed spent on it, but hed taken some time to explain to hernot entirely untruthfullyhow having it would actually make it quicker and easier for him to play the game effectively. When she understood the difference it would make, Angela had rolled her eyes at Rik, not particularly fooled by the spin he was putting on it. But shed also stopped complaining.

Rik considered himself lucky that Angela genuinely didnt seem to mind all the time he spent in Omnitopia. It probably helped a lot that he brought home a little money from the game every month via his crafting of custom tools and accessories for other players who were interested in the medical side of magery. He thought Angela realized, too, that in Omnitopia he was able to do the socializing that the double shifts he frequently worked for the countrys second- biggest parcel carrier didnt leave him any other time for. I really do have it better than a lot of people, Arnulf thought, running a hand down the knotted, splintery surface of the half- timbering at the corner of the buildings that fronted on Shade Street. It was going to be a long time before he was bored by the fact that he could now actually feel the wood, smell the scents programmed into the air, even taste the virtual food. Though admittedly sometimes the tastes were a little weird, as that feature was very new and the game warned you when you added on the Extra Helping module that your flavors may vary. Rik didnt understand the mechanism that allowed him to receive touch and taste and smell information via his optic nervesbut, frankly, he didnt care. Omnitopia had been like another home to him for years. Now that he had the new hardware interface broken in, Omnitopia felt physically real as well as just looking that wayand as long as there were no long-term effects from the software spoofing his brain by way of his eyes, that was fine by him.

Arnulf glanced up and down Shade Street. It was empty, a little unusual for this time of day; but then it was getting on toward dinner-time in Omnitopia City, and a lot of transiting gamers in this part of town, historically more residential than commercial, would be heading for the pubs and taverns and cookshops, preparing to do a little business, make a little trouble, or just sit down and have a good time with their fellow Omnitopians. Arnulf considered the possibility of going down to Uncle Georges Flat Patty Place at the far end of Shade Street, or maybe Prince Dave Bongos over in Halflight, on the off chance that he might meet somebody there who would send a little more business his way. Uncle Georges in particular was well known as a place where medimages, midwives, herb doctors, and others interested in Arnulfs trade hung out before heading outworld. But no, he thought then. I want to get my hands on that new magia kit. And those league robes with the new sigils for the campaign next monthIve been talking about them for days. If I dont bring them home today, Angelas going to start giving me grief for being indecisive, or wasting time...