Artificial Absolutes (Jane Colt Book 1) Read online

  “You were cold. That’s not… I’m calling the hospital.” Devin reached for his slate.

  Sarah put her hand on his arm. Her grip was somehow light and firm and utterly unyielding. “No.”

  “Sarah, please, I—”

  “I said no.” Sarah’s grip hardened.

  Devin dropped the slate back into his pocket. He couldn’t force her. “I just want to make sure you’re okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Sarah’s expression softened. “There’s no reason for concern. A different girl might have screamed or fainted. The fact that I froze should come as no great surprise. It was only for a few seconds. I understand why you panicked, but I assure you, I’m fine.” She put her arms around his neck, leaned in, and kissed him. “Of course I’ll marry you.”

  Devin’s mind reeled. He couldn’t forget how stiff she’d been, how empty her eyes.

  Sarah put her hand on his face. “I love you, Devin. I said I would marry you. Doesn’t that make you happy?”

  She held up the ring. Devin automatically took it and placed it on the hand she gave him.

  Sarah regarded it and looked up with a warm smile. Her eyes had regained their usual vivacity, glimmering like the twin onyxes he knew so well. The woman of his dreams, the love of his life, agreed to marry him. Everything was perfect, so why the hell was he so edgy?

  Devin attempted a smile. “I’m sorry. I was worried about you.”

  “That’s sweet.” Sarah wrapped her arms around him in a close embrace and whispered, “We’re going to be so happy.”

  Devin wanted to believe it. Moments before, he would have. Disquiet lingered within him. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he felt she’d changed. The words that once would have sounded melodious seemed deliberate, the smiles calculated.

  Meanwhile, her demo track looped. Sarah kissed him again as the song approached its third verse:

  “Games of fate and games of choice

  “Twisted, tangled, intertwined,

  “Who is right, and what is real?

  “All shall fade within a mind.”

  Chapter 2

  Dreams, Screens, and Machines

  Jane stood alone in a void, unable to see anything but blackness and lines of gray symbols randomly streaking the air.

  “Oh, Pony, you’re always where you’re not supposed to be.”

  “Don’t call me Pony!” Jane looked around for her brother. He was the only one who called her by that nickname. “Devin, where are you?”

  Devin appeared on the other side of the lines. He looked as though he wanted to say something, but turned and walked away.

  Jane tried to follow. One of the lines widened, faded, and swallowed everything in a wash of white.

  A giant harp loomed over her, silhouetted against the blue-hot sun and surrounded by the stringy azure trees native to Zim’ska Re. Jane approached the harp curiously and plucked one of its platinum strings. It angrily beeped… beeped…

  The freaking alarm kept beeping.

  Jane reached up, feeling for the touchscreen by her bed, and banged it to stop the noise. “Shut up!”

  She blinked away the remnants of her dream. Dreams were nothing but random crap. She knew better than to think about what they meant. Her weary head ordered her to go back to sleep. Jane flopped over and face-planted onto her pillow. The image of her brother walking away from her filled her with a sudden sadness.

  “… And more now on the recent release from the Blue Diamond Technology Corporation. BD Tech has confirmed that the new starship model is called the Blue Damsel, and that the company will phase out the older Blue Tang models…”

  The numerous screens on the walls of Jane’s apartment flicked on to one of the news channels.

  She groaned into the pillow. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! I don’t wanna get up! I don’t wanna go to work!”

  “… In other news, BD Tech’s rival, Ocean Sky Corporation, has responded to critics who argue that its virtual reality gaming technology is addictive, saying there is no solid evidence to support that claim…”

  That’s what they always say. They’d dispute the existence of air if it harmed their corporate interests.

  Jane forced herself to get up and blearily wandered into the bathroom.

  Gotta agree with the critics on this one. If you can enter a world of your own making, why would you ever leave? Besides, why pay some company to take you to your fantasy world when you can just daydream?

  Jane was sure if she ever played a virtu-game, she’d end up one of those virtu-addicts who locked themselves in their mental worlds until they starved, unable to be rescued without permanent brain damage. With her tendency to get lost in her own head, she was an expert at escaping reality without technology. It was a useful skill, thanks to her soul-crushingly tedious job at Quasar.

  Ugh… What is my life! How did I end up so boring?

  She couldn’t even tell anyone how much she hated her work, since she couldn’t let it get back to the company’s top executive, also known as Dad. Simply doing as he said wasn’t enough. She had to like what he wanted for her.

  Poor, poor Victor Colt, with his two disappointing kids.

  Jane was supposed to have been the good one since, unlike her moody big brother, she’d never run with the wrong crowd or committed petty crimes. Up until university, she’d done everything right. Daddy’s sweet little angel.

  But then Daddy’s angel chose to study musical composition instead of bullshit.

  Somehow, the more automated the world around her became, the more logic-based and statistically modeled, the more Jane craved the simple, yet inexplicable things that made humans, well, human.

  That was shortly after Devin quit being such a hell-raiser. The next thing Jane knew, she was the black sheep for wanting to spend her life writing silly songs, and Devin the golden boy for going to business school and climbing the Quasar ladder.

  By the time Jane graduated from university about five months before, she’d given up on her pipe dream. The music industry was no less full of nonsense than any other, and she’d never exactly been a prodigy. She couldn’t stand the thought of facing rejection after rejection only to end up another pathetic wannabe. Perhaps she could charm or fight or even bribe her way in, but what would be left once it was over?

  Just another failed composer’s useless endeavor, destined to be lost in the abyss of mediocrity.

  Going back to the boring trade she’d spent four years avoiding had clearly been the rational choice. Daddy had been more than happy to give his little girl an entry-level position at Quasar. He often boasted about how his wise guidance and willingness to forgive steered both his prodigal offspring in the right direction, saving the legacy of the powerful Colt clan.

  Jane fantasized about what she might be doing if she did have the talent, the ambition, the confidence. She’d played variations on that theme many times in her head, each as thrilling as the last.

  “… has announced who will be performing at the inaugural ceremony for the recently elected President Nikolett Thean…”

  As she continued her morning routine, Jane tuned out the irritating screens and wandered back into her dream world…

  She stood center stage in the majestic auditorium of the Kyderan Presidential Palace, facing an orchestra of the galaxy’s most talented instrumentalists. The audience of politicians, celebrities, and other important people settled down and waited for her to begin.

  Jane raised her baton. As the orchestra played, she moved fluidly with the ebb and flow of the melody, allowing it to surge through her like a religious force. The orchestra looked to her for direction, but she wasn’t the one in control. The music had a will of its own, and it was her duty to follow it and bring it down to earth for everyone else to hear. The
auditorium was her temple, and the music was her god.

  Jane smiled as she pictured the possibilities. The audience of big shots would be thrilled, and the billions watching across the seven Kyderan planets would be caught in the allure of her brilliance. They would demand more. They would ask her to be the music director for the Interstellar Confederation’s annual ceremony, and the entire galaxy would hear her songs.

  Maybe she could make it happen for real, outside the dreamscape. Any fool with a connection to the Net—which was pretty much every fool alive—could broadcast his or her talents to an audience of trillions. Maybe if she composed a masterpiece and posted it, the Networld would fall in love with it. Maybe an industry bigwig would discover it. Maybe—

  Beeeeeeeeeep.

  Jane looked around, annoyed.

  Now what?

  She found her small, company-issued videophone in its usual spot on her desk. It lit up with a list of work assignments.

  You suck.

  Jane grabbed a hair tie from her drawer and swept her long, dark brown waves into a ponytail. The hair must have come from her mother’s side, since her father’s had been a light chestnut tint before becoming dusted with a distinguished shade of gray, but why was she the only one in the family with so much of it? Forget making it neat. She was basically invisible at work anyway, so she might as well let it poof out into its natural, fluffy form.

  “… and the infamous cybercriminal group known as the Collective has struck again, this time targeting Quasar Bank Corporation.”

  Jane looked at the nearest screen, interested since her company had been mentioned.

  “Quasar’s Netsite QuasarLive, which delivers real-time market data to millions of financial companies, was shut down for hours yesterday after a hack by the Collective caused it to deliver a long anti-greed statement to users in place of data.”

  Freaking yahoos.

  “Change channel.” Jane was in no mood to hear about the Collective’s holier-than-thou statements. “Channel twenty-five.”

  The screens flicked to the music channel. Jane blinked in disbelief. Sarah DeHaven, her brother’s perfect fiancée, filled the screen with her unearthly beauty in a wordless interlude of vocal fireworks. Seeing her up there, broadcast to that audience of trillions, flooded Jane with an intense combination of rage and sadness, both attributable to unspeakable jealousy.

  Why should Sarah get to follow her passion and live out her dream? Why should she get the holodrama ending to her saga while Jane was left with the story that no one told, the story that happened ten thousand times a day, the story she knew too well?

  I hate her.

  Jane grimaced as her conscience pricked her. She had no right to think that. Sarah was undeniably talented, and she deserved to succeed. She certainly looked the part. Lithe limbs, stunning features, golden complexion—Jane looked down at her own pale skin, envious of Sarah’s healthy hue.

  She wished she hadn’t hounded her brother to let her meet his girlfriend. Sarah’s long list of qualities—beauty, elegance, ambition—left Jane feeling like a disaster in comparison.

  Her first instinct had been that Sarah was a gold digger who wanted in on the Colt fortune. Why else would someone so perfect date her boring, toolish brother?

  Despite Jane’s resentments, Sarah proved too agreeable to hate. Her presence lit Devin’s face with the kind of genuine smile Jane rarely saw from him. Ultimately, that was what mattered. Jane begrudgingly accepted Sarah and kept her envy-fueled, not-so-nice thoughts to herself.

  Sarah’s simple, haunting melody came to an end. Jane liked to think she was as good a songwriter, even though it wasn’t true.

  I wish I could hate her.

  The video segued into Sarah’s biography, which reminded Jane that everything she wanted was possible, just not for her. She couldn’t stand it. “Change channel. Previous.”

  “… In other news, the Interstellar Confederation’s Fringe Resolution LF-Three-Twenty-One has once again stalled, this time by the delegation from Wiosper.”

  Jane wondered what right the Wiosper system had to express its opinion on anything. It was the galaxy’s nicest system, a sanctuary for the rich and the super rich. How dare they block a resolution that could help the needy Fringe systems, the ones outside the protection of the IC?

  Not that Jane cared much about politics. That morning, everything seemed to make her grumpy. It’s gonna be a bad day.

  She rummaged through her cluttered closet in search of her one pair of flat-bottomed shoes. I’ve gotta organize this place.

  Her apartment was chaotic and spartan at once, strewn with everyday items like clothes and cosmetics but lacking a single personal knickknack, even a family photo. She didn’t need Victor Colt’s sharp blue eyes and sternly lined face—proudly handsome and harder than steel when he wasn’t glad-handing fellow businessmen—constantly admonishing her. Or Elizabeth Lin-Colt’s powerful stare and firm mouth reminding her of her tragic loss. Jane still didn’t know exactly what had happened seven years ago to rob her of her mother.

  As for Devin, he always looked like a façade behind which the brother she’d known as a child disappeared. She’d never noticed how closely her brother resembled their father until after he’d donned it, for she sensed an agitated pensiveness about him she couldn’t imagine ever crossing Victor Colt’s perpetually confident visage. Devin seemed to be doing his best to become their father’s dark-eyed clone. Although he had everyone else fooled, Jane still perceived the remnants of that uncertainty behind the corporate illusion.

  Come to think of it, the resemblance paradox was true of Jane and her mother as well—same large, dark brown eyes. But whereas Elizabeth Lin-Colt’s gaze had been famously piercing, Jane’s made her look as if she was either dreaming or up to something. Which was often true.

  Jane finally found her shoes and slipped them on. She jumped up to grab her bag from the top shelf. It tumbled to the ground, spilling its contents. Among the office access cards and forgotten lipsticks lay a circular pendant engraved with the symbol of the Via faith: two stars, one transparent in the middle with solid rays and the other its inverse.

  Jane picked it up. The golden suns seemed to smile at her. She smiled back. Ironic, that an outspoken atheist such as herself owned one of those things. She wondered what caprice had made her accept it from her friend—or is he my boyfriend now?—Adam in the first place.

  “Keep it,” he’d said after she’d asked for a closer look at the symbol he always wore. “I want you to have it.”

  Jane had countered with every protest from “I can’t. It’s yours!” to “But I’m not Via,” culminating with, “This is part of your proselytizing scheme, isn’t it?”

  “I promise I’m not trying to convert you.” Since he’d seemed incapable of being anything but sincere, she knew he meant it. “It’s just that you seem to like it, and I thought it could bring you comfort the next time you’re feeling down.”

  Well, Adam, it’s working. You’re such a goody-goody. Why do I associate with you?

  She’d met Adam at the Via temple in the Silk Sector about two months ago after wandering into the stone rotunda in search of a choir to join. Ordinarily, she would never have been caught entering a religious establishment, but she was running out of options after several secular musical groups had turned her down.

  Jane accidentally arrived an hour before the open rehearsal and awkwardly waited by the pews. She heard a friendly voice.

  “Hi there. Are you lost?”

  A young man walked toward her. The white light of the sun streamed in from the large window at the back and almost silhouetted him, forming something of a halo. He was a bit taller than Jane, but not that tall by guy standards.

  Jane noticed his Via pendant and hoped it was a passing greeting. She was terrible wit
h people she disagreed with. “I’m waiting for the choir rehearsal.”

  “They’ll be here in about an hour. You’re not Via, are you?”

  “No, but the choir’s secular, right?”

  “It is. I’m Adam, by the way. I’m a first-year at the seminary.”

  Adam stopped in front of her. Jane was finally able to make out the details of his appearance. The halo effect was gone, yet there was still something angelic about his boyish face, light brown hair, and gentle eyes, which were a bright shade of green, reminiscent of peridot.

  Pretty boy. Maybe even prettier than me… Nah, I’m still prettier.

  Jane accepted the hand he extended. “I’m Jane. So…” She let go of his hand and flipped through her mind for topics of conversation, but she had nothing to say to the religious do-gooder. Nothing that won’t offend him. She leaned against a pew and examined the swirls carved into its back.

  Fortunately, he continued, “I was just setting up for an event the temple’s hosting this evening. It’s a memorial service to raise money for the victims of the asteroid strike on Uyfi. You should come. Some of the choir members are performing.”

  Jane traced a finger along the swirls. “Yeah, maybe.” Sorry, but I have no interest whatsoever in attending any charity event my dad’s not making me show up at.

  “I see. You think charity’s pointless, because most of the donated money goes to greedy middlemen.”

  Jane looked up with a start. “Are the Via psychic or something?” How’d he know what I was thinking?