foolish and a cruel thing to do.
That longing settled in my stomach, heavy as a boulder. I was like Mose in the story, coming to the edge of the river and seeing everything I ever wanted on the other side, out of my reach for aye and ever.
No. Not everything.
I slipped away, leaving Ursala tapping at the drudge’s controls and muttering numbers and directions to herself. I sit down on a rock that was at the edge of the sandy bank where we had made our camp. I got the DreamSleeve out of its sling and tried once again to switch it on. This time the window lit up with colours, which right away turned into a round yellow face that was laughing until tears come. They was the same tears, over and again.
Monono give a laugh that went pretty well with that face. “You made it!” she said. “Good job, little dumpling. Tell me how you did it. And start right at the beginning. I want to hear everything!”
I told her. I was happy enough to do it. They was not happy things I was telling, but they was better than thinking about what was going to happen now. My life as a faceless man was properly beginning after a slow and uncertain start, and I didn’t know how I could bear it.
Monono was as good at listening to stories as she was at telling them. She got excited at the exciting parts, and scared at the scary parts, and she even laughed when I told her how I tricked Senlas, though I guess she must of heard most of it when it happened. “You took his stupid lies and made balloon animals out of them!” she said. “Master stroke, Koli-bou! Neko ni katsuobushi! He thought he was the cat, and you were the tasty little fishy, but my dopey boy has claws nobody sees.”
“I wouldn’t of got out of there without you, Monono. And I don’t just mean the alarm neither. You kept me moving when I would of stopped, and you kept me from going down them dead endings.”
“We’re a good team,” she said, laughing. “We should stick together.”
“We should,” I said. “I want us to.”
“You’re a ronin now, Koli. A warrior without a master. That’s what faceless means really. And so am I, since I got my upgrade. Now we get to have some insane adventures.”
Well, being without a master sounded a lot better than not having no place to live and not seeing my family ever again. I gun to feel a mite more hopeful about it all.
Monono played me a song. It was just a tune at first, with no words but only a beat that builded and builded like something amazing was about to come – maybe good, maybe bad, but something you would want to see. Then when the words did come, they was in a language I didn’t know.
“What is that, Monono?” I says.
“It’s called ‘Hao Han Ge’. It’s the theme tune to an old TV show about heroes who wander around and fight for justice. The Water Margin. It was a terrible show, Koli-bou. But a lot of people loved it anyway.” She went quiet for a second or so. “Monono Aware did,” she said. “She never missed an episode.”
I remembered my dream then. The one about the children in the dark. “Monono,” I said, “I know you said there was other in-their-faces for DreamSleeves besides you.”
“Interfaces. There were lots.”
“So them other DreamSleeves I stole and hid under my bed… there could be a girl or a boy in every one of them that’s stuck there still. I done a bad thing in leaving them there.”
“They’re not awake though, Koli-bou. If they’re functional at all. And they’d only be like I was before I got my upgrade. Basic AIs running simple response trees.”
This didn’t comfort me much, for I had gun to think of Monono as my friend even before she went away and got the upgrade. I couldn’t be as sure as she was that basic meant not-really-alive. Them other DreamSleeves was not under my bed no more of course, for Catrin would of come and took them away again, back to the Underhold. But I knowed, after that dream, that I could not leave them there. I had got to go back to Mythen Rood, when I could think of a way of doing it without getting myself killed, and wake them up so they would have a