Mountain of Black Glass Read Online Free PDF Page B

some kind of new model that were not simulation-specific?
    A thought struck him then, and even the smoldering warmth from the oven could not stop his skin pimpling with sudden chill.
    God help me, that describes Paul Jonas as well as it describes them. What makes me so sure I’m a real person?
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    T HE bright morning sun of Ithaca crept into almost every corner of the Wanderer’s house, rousting the usurped king from his bed by the oven not long after dawn. Paul had little urge to linger, in any case—knowing the kitchen women were virtual did not much soften their harsh words about his raggedness and dirtiness.
    Old Eurycleia, despite her workday already having reached full gallop as she saw to the demands of the suitors and the rest of the household, made sure that he received something to eat—she would have brought him far more than the chunk of bread and cup of heavily watered wine he accepted, but he saw no purpose in rousing envy or suspicion in the household. He found himself chewing the crusty bread with some pleasure, which made him wonder how his real body was being fed. Despite the frugal meal and his best efforts to be unobtrusive, several of the maids had already begun to whisper that they should have one or another of their favorites among Penelope’s suitors drive this filthy old man out of the house. Paul did not want to fight with any of the interlopers—even assuming he had been given the strength and stamina to outduel one of those strapping warriors, he was tired and depressed and wanted no part of any more struggles. In an effort to avoid controversy entirely he took his heel of bread and went out to walk on the headlands and think.

    Whatever else the creators of this simulation might have planned, Paul thought, they had done a very fine job of capturing the Mediterranean world’s astonishingly clear, bright light. Even early on this hot morning the rocks along the cliff seemed as crisply pale as new paper, the reflected glare so fierce that he could not stand too close to them. Even with the sun behind him, he had to shade his eyes.
    I’ve got to learn the rules of this thing, he thought as he watched the seagulls wheeling below him. Not Greece, but the whole network. I have to make sense of it or I’ll just wander forever. The other version of Vaala, the one that spoke first in my dream, then through the Neandertal child, said that I had to get to a black mountain.
    â€œIt reaches to the sky,” she had told him, “covers up the stars. . . . That is where all your answers are.” But when he had asked her how he could find it, she had answered, “I don’t know. But I might know, if you can find me.” And then the dream-version of Vaala had sent him here, to search for what seemed herself in another guise—but that was where the whole thing fell apart completely. How could she know . . . but not know? What could such a thing mean? Unless, as he had guessed the night before, she was neither normal person nor simulation, but something else. Perhaps she had meant that in different simulations she had access to different memories?
    But this Penelope version of her doesn’t seem to know anything at all, he thought sourly. She doesn’t even know she’s a version—doesn’t know that she’s the one who sent me here.
    He stooped and picked up a flat rock and skimmed it out into the stiff ocean breeze; it splashed long seconds later at the base of the rough cliffs. The wind shifted direction and jostled him a step nearer the precipice, still healthily distant from the edge but enough to make his groin tighten at the thought of the long fall.
    There’s so much I don’t know. Can I really die from something that happens here in a simulation? The golden harp told me that even though nothing was real, things could hurt or kill me. If this is all a simulation network, the message was right about the first part, so I