Mirror's Edge: A Novel

By Alex Passey

Rath has been on a downward spiral. And it’s not just him – the world is a polluted mess, corporate influence has replaced independent thought, and his fiancée has decided that Rath is no longer worth her time.

While Rath embraces his multiple vices, he never expected his next bender to land him in another world entirely. He finds himself in Sarah’s world —an untainted parallel universe to his own: a pristine woodland where every person is the absolute master of their domain, and where Rath’s AI chip isn’t dictating his every move.

The opportunity to change his life presents itself in permutations of reality, but Sarah wants nothing more than to follow Rath back to his world. As their mirror worlds collide, Rath teeters on the edge of oblivion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: At Bay Press
• Release date: Sep 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781988168845

Alex Passey

Alex Passey, novelist and poet, living in Winning. In addition to Mirror's Edge, he is also the author of the upcoming high fantasy book From Heart's Fire Forged.

Book preview

1

The alarm clock bleated like a cannibal rooster with a chicken bone caught in its throat. It crowed six times before the third blind slam of Rath’s fist finally broke its beak.

His head was throbbing. Or, was it spinning? Maybe pulsating. Like inside the head of a fat kid who had eaten way too much chocolate ice cream way too quickly, then hopped on a carousel, swirling until the kid got beaned in the head with a baseball thrown by a major league pitcher, knocking the kid off the carousel and sending him tumbling into an unfortunately placed noxious fast food grease trap which hadn’t been cleaned in months.

Not to say Rath was a stranger to mornings like this one. Or afternoons either, which he supposed this actually was. It was no rare occurrence for him to wake up in a state where any part of the world that wasn’t comprised of pillowy softness was simply an unacceptable place for his head to be. This kind of hangover was somewhere in the middle of Chernobyl bad and Three-Mile-Island mild, like a Fukushima hangover, maybe. Rath generally didn’t have much trouble coping with this level of nuclear disaster, but only on the days where he had the option of burying his face into his pillow and spending the day wavering on the borders of consciousness.

Unfortunately, this was not one of those days.

"Breathing and pulse rate indicators suggest you are falling back asleep, droned a polite voice in Rath’s head. Rath thought it sounded British, but any time he asked, the voice insisted it didn’t have a nationality. Circadian rhythm analysis suggests that you will quickly enter the REM state and will sleep for at least two more hours. Blood alcohol level suggests that it may be even longer."

Yup, Rath agreed, groggily, rolling onto his side so he faced away from the alarm clock. Time doesn’t exist if you can’t see it.

"Mr. Tillian has already issued you two formal warnings about tardiness. He will have grounds to terminate your employment."

Tillian isn’t going to do shit. Who cares, anyway?

"Your bank account contains insufficient funds to pay both your rent and tech charges if you do not receive your final paycheque for this month."

Yeah? Maybe if I don’t pay my tech bill, they’ll shut you off, and I won’t have to listen to your nagging ass anymore.

But, Rath did finally haul himself out of bed. He groaned like a man twice his age as he pulled himself up. He could remember when he used to be able to do this like it was nothing—out all night hitting the bottle, and anything else he could get his hands on, and getting up in the morning on two hours of sleep wouldn’t even faze him. He would even have a smile on his face when he left for work—though, usually, he was still drunk.

Rath was thirty years old now, though. At this age, a serious hangover could make a praying man out of an atheist. And, that’s just what Rath did as he searched around his war-zone bedroom floor for clean clothes. Rath sent out a prayer to any God who might be listening, asking if his work could burn down, or his boss get hit by a car, or maybe even that the whole city could be ravaged by an earthquake … not a big one … just enough for some infrastructure damage and major traffic fuck-ups. One or two dozen casualties, tops. Rath wasn’t a sadist, after all.

Rath paused to wait for tremors. No such luck.

The trick with praying is, you’ve got to realize that God is more of a small-favours kind of guy, Rath said aloud, as he finally found a pair of underwear that passed the smell test. He’s not Publisher’s Clearing House coming to knock on your door with a big cheque. God is the guy who points out a deep puddle to you at the last second before you plunge in up to your knee. If you want your prayers answered, you’ve got to send the kind of prayer that He specializes in. Dogs that ask for treats get fed, but dogs that ask for the moon are stuck howling.

After Rath slipped into his underwear, he dropped down on all fours and peeked underneath the bed. He cackled gleefully as he found that his second prayer had been answered. Rath snatched up the rolling bottle of cheap vodka, pouring the last of it down his throat.

He winced as his saliva mingled with the bitter booze. Vodka is the perfect hair of the dog, he said, sagely, despite the struggle to keep his tongue from fleeing his mouth. No one ever smells a few shots of it on your breath, if you wash it down with a mouthful of juice or something. I guess I should have prayed for some juice, too.

"Your terms of employment with Mr. Tillian include you not being under the influence of—" the voice in his head started to blather, completely unappreciative of Rath’s introspective words of wisdom.

Hey, when I want your opinion, I’ll Google it, Rath chuckled at himself. The booze was already putting some lustre back in the morning.

Rath went to grab a half-smoke from the ashtray on his bedside table, but he paused. Shouldn’t there be another body in his bed? Hazy as the night before might be, he distinctly remembered having company after coming home from the bar. But, all there was now was a tousled pile of sheets. How had she snuck out? That was awfully polite of her, giving him the bypass on the usual painful early morning small talk and compounding the agony of his hangover.

Rath scratched his head and began to mentally retrace his steps from last evening. The entire night was foggy, but the last thing that he could remember was a woman sitting on the edge of his bed and commenting on the row of books he kept on a shelf on the adjacent wall of his bedroom.

That’s a lot of books you’ve got there, she’d said, as she unzipped her knee-high boots. Not too many people kept collections of paperback books anymore, and no one expected somebody like Rath to be a collector. He could remember explaining that he’d been able to steal most of them from libraries when he was a kid, and they’d never been able to track him because he and his moms had moved around so much. But, he didn’t remember finishing the story beyond that.

It was the strangest thing; he had a fair memory of the rest of the night to that point, including the woman. He hadn’t even been particularly attracted to her when he saw her at the bar. She was skinny. Not Rath’s type at all. Mosquito-bite tits and an ass like a pancake. Her tangle of curly brown hair wasn’t exactly his cup of tea, either. The last thing you wanted while getting a blowjob was to look down and imagine a bunch of baby birds chirping up at you to feed them.

Rath had a theory about why people hooked up with people they would wake up to regret. He knew lots of people would assume that he had got so drunk last night that he’d somehow hallucinated that the broomstick-in-a-blouse had been hot enough to take home. People wake up in these scenarios and tell themselves it was all just the sorcery of liquor, beer goggles or whatever they want to call it.

That’s bullshit.

People don’t regret one-night stands because their standards are too low when they’re drunk. They wake up regretful because their standards are too high when they’re sober… or because society’s standards are too high. You wake up thinking, Oh shit, I went home with this loser; what is everybody going to think of me when they find out? The night before, you didn’t decide to go home with this person because you were suddenly attracted to them. You were always attracted to them, but, when you’re wasted, you just don’t give a damn what your friends or your parents or what society thinks. If people acted like their drunk selves all the time, there would be a lot less uptight bullshit about who was good enough to fuck whom. Liquor is massively responsible for the diversity of the gene pool. All everyone talks about are the lives that liquor ruins, but nobody gives credit for the lives that it creates.

You’re married? was the first thing Rath asked her, gesturing with his gin and tonic at her wedding ring.

She smiled at him.

Does it matter?

They shot the shit for a little while. Rath struggled to remember any of those details. He was pretty sure her name was Shelly or Sheila. Something that would go well with selling seashells by the seashore. In a short time, which would have been shocking to any happily married person, they were talking about where they were going to go after they left the bar.

It’s getting kind of late. This was actually a voice trigger Rath had set up to check with MOSES if he had any new messages. He wanted to see if he had any hotter prospects for the night before he committed to this one. He didn’t.

Late? Sheila giggled. It’s not even midnight. The bar doesn’t close for hours.

Yeah, true. Rath appraised the scarecrow that he was about to drill like an unlicensed dentist. Well, if this dump is really where you want to spend the rest of the night, paying six dollars for watered-down booze…

Hey, don’t be an asshole, objected the eavesdropping bartender.

Rath waved the guy off, whom he thought he’d tipped well enough to keep his mouth shut, but apparently not. Or, we could get out of here, head somewhere quieter.

What did you have in mind? Sheila was running her hand up Rath’s thigh, where it had been for the last half-hour or so.

How about we go back to your place? You said you didn’t live far from here. I could do things to you that would lower your neighbour’s property value.

Oh my god, you are the worst. Sheila laughed, giving him a playful shove. But, we can’t go to my house. I don’t know when my husband is coming home. How about your place?

Yeah, I guess.

Rath remembered them heading back to his place, and he remembered the bag of bones sitting down on the edge of his bed. She had started to take off her clothes and asked about his books … and that’s when his recollection abruptly ended. It wasn’t like the blurriness of a drunken haze, either. The rest of the night was just gone, almost like it was surgically removed. He had no recollection of having sex, the woman leaving, or of himself going to sleep.

Rath was a little disquieted by this. He grabbed the smoke from his bedside table and lit it, dragging deeply as he glanced about his room in hopes of spotting something that would trigger his memory.

Hey, Moe. That was the name of the computer he’d been talking to all morning. Actually, it was MOSES, which stood for Micro Organic Sensory Electrogram Synapse, but Rath would be damned if he was ever going to call the thing MOSES. What happened here last night?

"Your guest, Mrs. Tiffany Dawn-Jones, left the residence at twenty-two minutes after twelve o’clock this morning."

Yeah, how about before that?

"Your privacy settings do not allow me to gather data during such events. Would you like to alter your privacy settings?"

Hell, no. Well, if MOSES hadn’t been able to watch, that meant they’d probably had sex. Only probably, though. MOSES was set to look the other way anytime Rath’s biochem levels suggested that sex might be about to take place, and while the tech was good, it was far from perfect. There were still plenty of ways to fool it, and sometimes it just fooled itself.

Ah, shit. Rath jumped up, as he caught a sideways glance at his bedside clock. He took the last drag of his smoke and butted it before heading to the bathroom. What the hell was he doing sitting around here with his head in the clouds? He was going to be late for work. So what if he’d had a complete blackout? People talked about having them all the time. So what if he couldn’t remember having sex with one broad? It probably wasn’t even worth remembering, anyway.

Still, he pondered as he unzipped his pants and started pissing, why did it feel so much more severe than any other night he’d gotten wasted drunk? How could a night so fully disappear?

"Urinalysis complete. Recommend increased intake of all staple vitamins and protein. There is also an indication of a small amount of cocaine in your system. Ingestion of stimulant narcotics is in neglect of Dr. Martin’s warning. Continued violations will result in an increase in the cost of your health insurance premiums."

Yeah, yeah, Rath grumbled, as he shook off. Stick it up your ass.

"Would you like me to schedule a rectal examination for your next physical with Dr. Martin? The procedure is recommended for your age demographic."

Cheeky fucker.

Rath stepped away from the toilet to examine himself in the mirror. It had been a week since he shaved, and his face was thick with dark stubble. His short, dark brown hair was unruly and a bit matted, but, with his aloof brown eyes and solid build, he was the kind of guy who could get away with the unkempt look. A girl had once told him that he was homeless sexy. He hadn’t immediately understood what she meant until she suggested that they get homeless drunk and homeless fuck. It turned out this girl thought being homeless was one hell of a time.

Rath reached back and felt the barely noticeable microchip that was implanted where his spine met his brainstem, just under the skin. That was MOSES. Apparently, most people were barely aware of theirs, but Rath had a habit of picking at it. Sometimes he fantasized about removing it. He hated the thing just sitting there, reminding him of all the tiny nanobots floating around inside his body, analyzing his systems and transmitting back and forth with his MOSES chip like a secondary nervous system.

But, what kind of life would there be for him without it? He’d heard of people removing their chips, and not long after, many ended up paying to have them put back in. Rath had no desire to be one of those people who walked around incompatible with everything else in the world, to be one of the Macs.

He finished his rudimentary hygiene routine and headed out the door. He didn’t much care for the MOSES chip, but it was what kept him plugged into the world. And, like a fetus bound to its umbilical cord, there didn’t seem to be an alternative way of living without it.

2

Rath didn’t have time to check the news before he headed out, but he didn’t need to. On the walk to his car, he could immediately tell that it was a bad air-quality day. The acrid haze overhead was thin enough to see the vague outline of the sun, rays breaking through like rampways that toxic mutant angels might descend on to punish humanity for its sins.

But, even though the smog was relatively thin that day, the density of the chemical fog was not always the best indication of how bad the air might be to breathe. In his chest, a tightness would start to develop after being outside for too long, but, like most people, Rath could tell whether he needed his air filter in long before that.

As Rath cut a path across the parking lot toward his car, he plucked the filter from his jacket pocket. He tucked the horseshoe plastic bit up into his nostrils so it dangled there like a septum piercing, with a slightly bulbous ball hanging at the crux just above his lip. All things considered, the air filters weren’t so hideous. Punk rockers and metalheads and other non-fuck-givers had been walking around with much more obtrusive accessories hanging off their faces since nearly a century ago. The MOSES chip stapled into the back of his neck bugged Rath a hell of a lot more than the filter did.

Rath’s car was a decade-old sedan with more dings and dents than an angry drunk’s wife. He still got some dirty looks from people because it was a hybrid, but he wasn’t about to shell out for a fully electric vehicle to appease a bunch of self-righteous assholes who thought they could still save the environment. On the other side of the spectrum were the dicks who drove around in classic cars that have fully gas engines. He’d ridden in one once; a Corvette that an old friend had back in high school. Buddy had taken it out onto the highway and opened it right up. The speed was impressive. The fastest modern electric fell well short of the Corvette’s maximum.

But, it was the power and the sound that had really enthralled Rath; the roar of the combustion engine as the car devoured gasoline to thrust the car forward with the power of Hephaestus’s forge. Rath felt the raw force of the motor vibrating all through his body. He could barely imagine a time when the roads were just full of people zipping around in cars like that.

Rath lamented; it wasn’t at all like travelling the tame roads of today. He pulled his car door open, taking off his gun holster and laying it across the passenger seat before he sat down. The thing was uncomfortable as hell to drive with, and, truth be told, he had a fear of shifting the wrong way and accidentally setting the gun off. He didn’t even particularly like carrying the gun around at all, and definitely not the way some people walked around with theirs like it was a big secondary dick they got to wear outside their pants.

Rath had never needed his gun. Granted, there had been plenty of times he’d been stuck in a line at the grocery store behind some chatty asshole, and, in those moments, Rath fully understood how a gun might be a very useful tool.

He had never felt like he’d needed a gun for his own security, though. But everyone else in the world was walking around with one, at their hips or strapped across their chest or in their boot…every adult, and more than a couple kids, too. Rath would be damned if he was going to be the only one who didn’t have one. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

Rath settled his fingertips onto the small grooves that were at ten and two on the steering wheel. There was a slight sensation of heat as the tips were scanned, and a moment later, the dashboard computer screen blinked to life like a big green eye staring back at him.

"User Rath Bradbury verified. Trace levels of cocaine and blood alcohol of point zero four percent. Toxicology results acceptable. Recommended discontinuation of alcohol intake."

Rath blew out a sigh of relief. That had been close. Another hundredth of a percent and the car wouldn’t have started. He would have had to wait for two hours before it would let him try again, and by then he would have been unforgivably late.

He drove the car out of his building’s parking lot, and, after a couple quick turns, he was on the main thoroughfare: Verizon Street. It was just a bit past noon, so traffic was relatively light, which meant there were still quite a few cars on the road. Thankfully, they were all moving steadily with relatively mild gridlock. Rath had no idea how people put up with rush hour. Even as it was at this time of day, it took him nearly twenty minutes to cover the two miles to work. But during peak rush hours, anyone unlucky enough to live far from their job was more than likely to spend about two hours stuck in traffic. Politicians were always boasting that because of MOSES, traffic flow during this time in history was, by far, better than any other time in history, but Rath had his doubts. The image of a bunch of horse-drawn wagons stuck in gridlock back in the old frontier days just didn’t seem all that historically accurate in his head.

City life, on the whole, was oppressive, with half the people living in ungodly tall high-rises, with everyone neatly slotted away like documents in massive filing cabinets. Of course, if you made yourself enough cash, you could always move out to a little place in the suburbs, but by living out there, you just added another hour on to your daily commute in both directions. What you gained in space, you lost in time.

"The next intersection will be a red light. Prepare to stop."

Screw that, I can make it.

Rath pressed down on the gas to make the light. Predictably, the engine decelerated itself and applied the automatic brake. The car coasted and came to a stop at the crossing of Adidas Street, much to Rath’s disdain.

Damn.

Rath pounded down on the steering wheel. He could almost feel MOSES in his head, smugly grinning as it gave control of the vehicle back to Rath.

"Heed traffic warnings to avoid an increase to your driver’s license premiums." Rath could all too clearly imagine a stern parent wagging a lecturing finger.

Rath just grunted. While he waited at the intersection, he glanced over at a curvaceous red-headed woman strolling down the sidewalk. He didn’t know where she was going this early in the day, all decked out in a short black dress, but he would not mind finding out.

"Her Communalink profile is open, Rath, MOSES suggested to him as the car rolled back into motion. Would you like me to access it?"

Hell no. You know me better than that. I’m not going to generate media revenue for some piece of ass. Besides, what else do I need to know other than what I just saw?

"If you allow me to access her profile, I could tell you."

Forget it.

The annoying thing was that MOSES actually did know Rath well enough. MOSES knew him from his favourite hockey team right on down to a cellular level, so, of course, it knew that Rath always steadfastly refused to browse people’s media profiles. That didn’t stop MOSES from asking. Rath likely could have found out almost anything he wanted about the redhead by accessing her Communalink, from where she was walking to right now, to which movie she might be going to see, to what friend she might be going to meet, or to even what brand of tampon she might be on her way to pick up. Rath could find out anything about her. Anything. All those institutions, from voting preferences to religion, got advertising from her profile, and if she generated enough media traffic for them, it would generate a little revenue for her. The Corps advertisers liked to call it a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. Or parasitic, the way Rath saw it.

Rath knew the system well. It never failed. If his eyes lingered on a pretty girl, or he chuckled at something he overheard a stranger say, or he showed any sort of interest in anyone, MOSES would let him know if their profile was open to be viewed. It was a system that was entirely dependent on his willing involvement. If he didn’t visit the profiles, or ratify the advertisements, or market himself to the public, then he could go to bed telling himself he was doing his best to withdraw from the dizzying cycle of ego and profit. So, Rath withheld his participation any time he could.

Hey Moe, how about some music? Immediately the dashboard computer screen responded to his voice, pulling up its audio function. Throw on some metal.

MOSES picked a song at random and instantly the car was filled with the blaring noise of a drum machine giving birth to a Tasmanian devil through a broken subwoofer vagina. Rath didn’t know the band or the song, if you could call it that, but he was familiar enough with what he was hearing. It was some newer genre of industrial electro-metal with a garishly fast and distorted pace, guttural bestial vocals and piercing guitar sound that some people insisted had rhythm and melody, but god-damned if Rath could hear it.

Damn it, Moe! Rath shouted over the cacophony. Turn that crap off. Give me some old stuff.

MOSES obliged his request without quip or comment, and the intro guitar licks of Dragonforce’s Fury of the Storm came through the speakers. Rath knew that this would be considered slow dinosaur music by today’s standards.

The worst part about it was that MOSES knew that he hated new metal. Rath’s song selection always consisted of bands from decades earlier, and he knew that MOSES was more than sophisticated enough to figure out an appropriate algorithm for a playlist he would like. But MOSES, ever part of the system, insisted on the new commercial crap that the DJs played on the Corps radio stations, to generate traffic for new media that had more dollars behind it.

Music off. In truth, Rath didn’t even feel like listening to good music at that moment. The effects of the vodka he’d had earlier were starting to wear off, and his hangover was a devil tapping him on the shoulder, breathing a nauseating reminder in his face that they would have an appointment together very soon. The loud music didn’t help.

Rath had half a mind to tune into the news, instead. The sober tones of talk radio were much more soothing, but he had no interest in the content. He knew exactly what he would hear—something about fighting in the Middle East, refugees and migrants fleeing every corner of the world to every other corner in search of sanctuary that didn’t exist. Then, there are all the people trying to keep the refugees out of their country, even though all they did was complain about how awful it was living there, themselves. There would be something about the Macs, for sure, some murder or terrorist attack, like, maybe they’d kidnapped some more people to forcefully remove their MOSES chips, all under the guise of enforcing freedom with their usual awareness for irony.

Driving in silence was kind of nice, but MOSES never stayed quiet for long. It didn’t just suspect that every person craved constant stimulation—it insisted on it.

"Rath, you are running low on several essential grocery items: Toilet paper, Swanson’s frozen lasagna, Swanson’s frozen fettuccini Alfredo, light bulbs, and milk, all need to be restocked."

Yeah, thanks Moe, Rath rubbed his forehead to stem the headache that was budding there. Don’t know what I’d do without you…except I don’t drink milk. I haven’t bought milk in years, and I don’t anticipate entertaining—in the near future—any guests who might ask for milk. So, let’s skip the reminders about milk, OK?

MOSES didn’t reply, so Rath assumed it got the message.

Rath grumbled some curses as he pulled up to a red light, flexing his grip anxiously on the wheel. He just wanted to get to work so he could have another little drink to take the edge back off … just a taste to get him through his shift. He glanced out his side window at the Burger King on the corner. The big digital sign out front displayed the store’s logo for only a few seconds before flashing over to an ad for Kahlua.

Rath clamped his teeth together. It was always alcohol ads that were getting transmitted to him, even though he knew that they weren’t as prevalent for most people. Rath also realized that was likely because he always bought the same brand of smokes, the same brand of frozen dinners, the same brand of soap, basically the same brands of everything all the time. Everything except booze. That was where he liked his variety.

Make a note to pick up some Kahlua along with the vodka on the way home, Moe. Maybe a white Russian or six after work tonight isn’t such a bad idea.

Rath chuckled softly and shook his head. Set a reminder to pick up some milk, too.

3

Rath was glad to see the parking lot was mostly empty when he pulled in. It usually was this time of day, but sometimes there would be a function or a party, and the place would be packed when Rath arrived. Luckily, today was just a standard day where not too many people were looking to swarm a dive bar in the early afternoon. Rath was not at all in the mood to put up with a lot of customers today; at least, not until he could do something about his hangover.

The parking lot wasn’t entirely empty. Tillian’s car was there, of course. The boss’ car was a beat-up old puke-coloured piece of crap that was even older than Rath’s. Rath knew that the cheap old bastard would have bought something even older if he could have, but there weren’t any models older that would be compatible with his MOSES chip. It was also the last model that Ford ever made. Tillian loved the thing to death for some reason, and Rath couldn’t wait to see the look on his face the day it broke down for good. He’d almost gotten fired the time he told Tillian that Ford was an acronym for Fuckers Only Run Downhill.

The only other car in the lot was the antithesis of Tillian’s. It was a flashy red number with a foreign name that Rath was fairly sure couldn’t be pronounced with the human tongue, like it was named after a monster in an H.P. Lovecraft novel. The car had a sleek body and slightly protruding fins.

That gaudy car belonged to Sammy, and even though it cost probably two year’s worth of Rath’s salary, Sammy gave way less of a shit about it than Tillian did