Thread War Read online

  Advance Praise for Thread War

  “The Skids was special. In the sequel, Thread War, Keeling raises the stakes, but don’t be fooled. Brilliant imagination? That hold-onto-your-seat action? There’s that, yet so much more here. This story and these characters will fill your heart and grab your mind. This isn’t just a present-day outstanding adventure. It’s a future classic to treasure. True words.”

  —Julie E. Czerneda, author of the Clan Chronicles

  Praise for The Skids

  “Like The Princess Bride, this book has everything—love, grief, envy, revenge, monsters, heroism, battles, self-sacrifice, sports, and shopping. It does not matter that the characters exist inside a computer game and look like bowling balls on tank treads; the reader’s empathy engages immediately, and the story grips to the end. Along the way, we see an imaginative realization of a virtual multiverse from the inside, and an alien culture that is both poignant and credible. The Skids is truly a tale for the 21st-century young.”

  —Sunburst Award Jury

  “Wow! Just wow! It’s not as it is described on the back cover: “Part Hunger Games, part Ready Player One . . .” It is something new. It is something fresh and original and it’s the kind of fiction that will be used in the future for reference. When you’ll read ‘Book (insert name here) is The Skids meets The Matrix,’ then you’ll know I’m right. It is the kind of story other stories are based on, not the other way around. I don’t want to reveal plot or concept; I usually don’t like it when others do it. And it’s hard to write of The Skids without revealing anything and ruining future readers’ experience. But what I can still say—it’s a superbly conceived new world with its own glossary of terms, unique culture and reality, and yet it’s a thrill ride. It’s tense and it’s fast, and it’s complex. You’ll love it! Teen or adult, you won’t be able to let it go. And then you’ll talk about it with your friends and colleagues, and they’ll love it. And it will spread like a plague. A benefic one, mind you.”

  —Costi Gurgu, author of Recipearium

  “I loved this book. It’s been a while since I’ve found SF that was so fresh, appealing, and original. Well done and highly recommended. Can’t wait for the sequel!”

  —Julie E. Czerneda, author of the Clan Chronicles

  “The main characters—Johnny, Torg, Albert, Bian, Betty Crisp, and Wobble—are interesting and about as well-rounded as they can be, considering they are inhuman simulations in a world of games and information. . . . The Skids is definitely an action-driven novel, which is exhilarating. . . .”

  —CM: Canadian Review of Materials

  “Fantastic read! The world came immediately to life, and what a world it was! Each of the places you are taken are so perfectly drawn like pictures coming to life in your head, and the characters! The characters are shaped with the perfect complexity of being absolutely human while not knowing that the human world exists. It deals with fantastic themes of loss, life, purpose, technology, the future, and the immutability of the ever-ticking clock. It’s like if The Matrix and The Hunger Games had a video game baby! So awesome! A really wonderful journey into a world perfectly pictured. I wish I could go back there for the first time all over again. I would highly recommend this book to a friend.”

  —Amazon Customer 5-star review

  “Wonderful ride! Fell in love with the Skids and the Wobble! Was with them in their journey through good and bad. Can’t wait to reunite with them when the sequel is published! Soon I hope! This NEEDS to be a movie and Mr. Keeling should be the screenwriter!!”

  —Amazon Customer 5-star review

  “This is a really creative book, like a cross between The Hunger Games, a road trip movie and a pinball game. The author creates this entire world of the ‘Skids’—what can only be described as living pinballs with eyes who compete in races and are being watched by something ‘out there’—with its own lingo (being ‘vaped’) and architecture. There are hints about the true nature of the world of the Skids but the author never gives too much away, just enough to keep you wondering. It’s an impressive feat for a first novel, expect more from Keeling. I can see it appealing to early teens, pre-teens . . . and probably also their parents (my generation!).”

  —Amazon Customer 5-star review

  FIRST EDITION

  Thread War © 2017 by Ian Donald Keeling

  Cover artwork © 2017 by Erik Mohr

  Cover design & interior by © 2017 by Jared Shapiro

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Distributed in Canada by

  Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited

  195 Allstate Parkway

  Markham, Ontario L3R 4T8

  Phone: (905) 477-9700

  e-mail: [email protected]

  Distributed in the U.S. by

  Consortium Book Sales & Distribution

  34 Thirteenth Avenue, NE, Suite 101

  Minneapolis, MN 55413

  Phone: (612) 746-2600

  e-mail: [email protected]

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication available upon request

  Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-1-77148-432-9 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-77148-433-6 (ebook)

  CHITEEN

  An imprint of ChiZine Publications

  Peterborough, Canada

  www.chizinepub.com

  [email protected]

  Edited by Samantha Beiko

  Proofread by Leigh Teetzel

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

  Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.

  For my mother, Theresa Keeling, who, for so many reasons, is the reason I’m here.

  PROLOGUE

  The jungle was a contradiction.

  Alive with sound, the trees were filled with hoots and trills and howls, underscored by the drip, drip, drip from rain that had fallen an hour before. In the distance, a roll of thunder. And yet nothing moved. The thick heat pounded the jungle into stillness; thick, green trees engulfed by thick, green leaves, dead still in the heat. Even the late afternoon light had a squat, solid quality.

  Then one of the leaves moved.

  “They’re not coming this way.” And what had been just another unmoving plant unfolded into a man.

  “You’re sure?” the woman with him asked, looking back into the valley as she rose to her feet. She cracked her neck and shifted the rifle in her hands.

  “Their line ain’t straight, but they’re definitely heading east.”

  “What’s east?”

  The man stretched his arms. “No clue. Might be an ammo dump.” He looked around. “Hell of a lot more than there is out here.” He shook his head. “What the hell is he doing?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Shifting the heads-up display on her sunglades, she rubbed at the skin around the socket of her missing eye, then shrugged. “Come on, trail’s back here.”

  For the next hour, the soldiers made their way through the jungle, ignoring the heat. “Those guys might not be travelling in a straight line,” the man murmured, “but Chief sure the hell is.”

  “Yeah,” the woman replied, studying the ground. “It’s like he didn’t care if he was followed.”

  “He could have just told us where he was going.”

  “Would have made my day easier. I can’t remember him ever—hold up.”

  Even to the untrained eye, the small clearing had been disturbed. The gras
s was crushed flat, and there were several visible footprints. “Spent some time here,” the man said, scanning the clearing.

  “Yeah.” The woman stepped forward, slowly and deliberately. Ten minutes later, she looked at her partner in confusion. “There’s no exit. Trail stops here.”

  “Extraction?”

  “Not a chance. Look at the treetops, nothing’s been near them. It’s like he was here for a while, then . . . just disappeared.”

  The man stared as a drop of water slowly rolled down a broad green leaf. A shiver ran down his spine. “Even Chief can’t do that.”

  “Yeah.”

  They examined the clearing again, then conducted an outward sweep of the surrounding area. Finally, they came back to the centre of the clearing. “Nothing,” the woman sighed. “Let’s get the hell out of here. You sure that troop we saw cleared the area?”

  “Just because I can’t find the Chief, it doesn’t mean—”

  “Yeah, yeah—relax, I’m just tired.” She activated her com. “Ranncon Eight, this is Peck and Templeton, requesting lift at eighty-eight four three.”

  Twenty minutes later a small craft came sliding over the canopy. Clipping themselves onto droplines, the two soldiers rose into the craft.

  “Where the hell have you been?” the officer waiting for them barked as they strapped into a seat and the craft streaked back the way it came.

  “Looking for Chief,” the woman said, her single eye scanning the treetops.

  “Find him?”

  “Nope.” The woman glanced at her partner.

  “Well, don’t worry about it, whatever the Chief’s doing, I’m sure it’s part of his plan.”

  “Yeah,” the woman said, staring at the jungle, unmoving in the heat.

  It was still unmoving two hours later, long after the transport had gone, when it began to rain. For an hour the green rattled in the downpour, then the storm passed on, and the jungle went back to its contradiction of noise and stillness.

  Two hours after the rain, a spot of black appeared in the centre of the green, and began to grow.

  CHAPTER ONE

  SLAM!

  “Again.”

  SLAM!

  “Again.”

  SLAM!

  “Again,” Johnny Drop said, as he watched the pile of panzers and squids moan their way back onto their treads. They rolled back to the starting line for the crash pads. The safeties were still set, but at least this group was hitting the pads with some authority now. The yellow-beige Level One on the end had a lot of potential. She’d get her second stripe soon.

  Johnny let an eye drift, taking in the Combine. Slide Rock filled the massive centre bowl of the training facility, pounding off the walls. Everywhere, Level One and Two skids practiced the skills they needed in the game, desperate to get to the point where they could control their molecules and survive being evaporated. Skids on spin-mats spun, skids on treadmills tread, skids on weave drills weaved.

  Next to the crash pads, skids bounced back and forth between pedals designed to bang them around safely. Nothing like what they’d face on Tilt or the Spinners, Johnny thought with a grin, but it was a start. On the pressure pads, two huge blocks not-so-gently squeezed skids between them, getting the panzers ready for the more deadly versions in Tunnel. Skids violently rotated on gyroscopes, while others sat stock-still and tried to track multiple targets in the vision tests. Some panzers worked in empty spaces, absorbing and popping their Hasty-Arms, one of the skills needed to take a skid from Level One to Two.

  Dozens of skids worked the row of crash pads, many of them glancing nervously over at the group under Johnny. Despite his willingness to help and their desperation to get better, the majority still wouldn’t seek his assistance.

  He didn’t blame them: it was weird.

  “Again,” he barked, keeping one eye on his trainees even as he let the other two wander. It was a subtle reminder to any skid watching that they needed to split their vision and focus on multiple things at once. He grinned—there was a Level One trying the gyroscopes for the first time who was still looking at everything with all three of her eyes. She’d be puking sugar before long.

  He’d been here, in the Combine, every day since they’d returned from the Thread to find a world reset to the moment they’d left. Except no Albert, Torg, Bian, or any of the others who’d fallen out from the Skidsphere with them to discover a world so much larger and more frightening then they’d ever dreamed. Only Johnny and Shabaz had returned, with Johnny now a Level Ten and Shabaz an Eight.

  Although even that was in question. For the first week, Johnny had at least tried to play the games, coming to the Combine only in his off hours. But it had become clear very quickly that Johnny and Shabaz were beyond the games. He remembered vividly the day they destroyed Tag Box: Johnny and Shabaz in the centre of the carnage, every other skid vaped, with half the time left on the timer. They’d looked at each other and left the game. Johnny hadn’t been back since. Shabaz had, but not in the same way.

  Tag Box had also made Johnny realize he’d moved beyond the games in other ways too: he couldn’t vape skids any more. He hated doing it, even with skids over Level Three who he knew would come back. And the first time he vaped a Two after he’d returned, he’d gone out to the woods for a day and broken down, crying the entire time. Since that day, Johnny had been in the Combine continuously, helping any skid who asked.

  And the amazing thing was that he wasn’t the only one.

  “Crisp Betty, Akash,” a snarl came from nearby, “stop tickling it and hit the damn thing.”

  Suppressing a smile, Johnny let one eye drift towards the far side of the crash pads, where a solitary white skid with four red stripes was helping a solitary mint-green skid with two lemon stripes. Although, ‘helping,’ might have been highly dependent on your point of view.

  “I am hitting it, Onna,” the squid protested, visibly exhausted. “Give me some credit, the safeties are off.”

  The senior skid rolled over and bumped the squid’s treads, hard. Harder than Johnny would have. “They’ve been off for two hours. And you’ve hit it with the same gas the last six attempts. I said: hit it full.”

  “If I do, I could die.”

  Onna swung a second eye. Somehow she made it loom over the other skid; Johnny was going to have to learn how she did that. “Or you might never die again.” She grinned. “At least ’til you’re five.”

  The squid they’d started calling Akash grimaced. “Easy for you to say,” he grumbled. “You’ve got your name. Mine’s just pretend.”

  Onna’s gaze narrowed. Then she sniffed and swung her whole body, rolling away. “Keep hitting the pad that soft and it’ll stay pretend.” She didn’t even bother trailing an eye.

  Ouch, Johnny thought, suppressing another smile as a horrified expression spread across the squid’s face. It was obvious he had a crush on Onna. It was equally obvious that the squid called Akash was on the verge of Level Three and had potential to do a lot more, otherwise Onna wouldn’t have bothered to give him so much time.

  Well, maybe that last part’s not so obvious, Johnny thought, watching the Two’s face. For a second, Johnny thought Onna had gone too far. The poor kid looked crushed.

  Then another expression settled into the squid’s stripes and he rolled back to the start, slowly but with purpose. He sat there a minute, staring at the pad. An eye flickered in Onna’s direction. Then he geared up and tread.

  SLAM!!!!

  Everyone on the pads turned and looked as the impact echoed through the Combine. The mint body compressed and the two stripes appeared to shatter. Johnny thought it was done; the squid really had hit it too hard.

  Then the stripes reformed and the body returned to something resembling round. Almost round. The poor kid looked like he might throw up.

  “Crisp Betty,” one of the panzers working with Johnny breathed.

  “About vaping time,” Onna’s voice cut through the chatter of the Combine. Johnn
y was going to have to figure out how she did that too. When a shaky eye swung in her direction, she added, “Nice work, squid.” What might have been a smile.

  Slowly, the mint green body settled into its three lemon stripes. “I’m not a squid. I’m Akash.” He grinned.

  Onna sniffed and rolled away. “We’ll see, squid.” Definitely a smile.

  Of the many things that had happened since their return, Onna might have been Johnny’s biggest surprise. She was the first skid he’d ever helped; he smiled at the memory of her freaking out when she’d realized who was talking to her in the Combine. He’d been thrilled when she’d made Three, relieved that she would at least survive until her fifth birthday. He’d expected her to do well.

  What he had not expected was for her to return to the Combine one week after she’d left.

  He’d been helping a group on the pressure blocks when she’d rolled down the ramp, obviously nervous. He’d watched her sit at the bottom of the ramp, staring at the Combine like it was a foreign country. Then her stripes had flared once and she’d rolled over to the grease pads and started barking orders.

  She was a lot more tough love and manipulation than Johnny, which wasn’t a bad thing—they complimented each other. She got results sometimes when Johnny didn’t. And she was only a Level Four, moving up rapidly from Three. She remembered even more than he did what it was like to be a squid.

  And she wasn’t the only one helping. Shev—the first skid to ever actually ask Johnny for assistance—had shown up a week ago, eyes bowed and uncertain until Johnny had pointed him in the right direction. Right now, he was across the centre court, working with the panzers at the tracking station.

  Only three of them so far, but they were getting results. Since Johnny had begun training skids, more and more Ones had made it to Two, and more and more Twos had made it to Three. There was a record number of Threes and Fours in the games now; Johnny and Shabaz had been tracking the numbers and there were already seven hundred skids over Three. Given that the numbers had historically been around five hundred, it was an amazing increase.