The Rift In A Lunchable
As I step through the basement portal in Bytes N’ Chips, I think about everything that has happened since the first time I crossed this barrier. I was so desperate for an escape from my life and I’d lay money on that being the motivation for many of the permanent residents in the Rift.
People in the Earth dimension we all came from wouldn’t be able to comprehend the world of the Rift—their heads would explode. It’s not possible for normal humans to understand the gravity of my current situation, our world, or why contacting Taurus was so dangerous without knowing a bit about the Rift’s history.
So I’ll put it in a lunchable, as Taurus so eloquently phrased it.
The Rift is a pocket dimension; it started out as the Company’s private universe where their HQ and clone creation facilities were hidden from the public. They created and populated it with agents of their own creation, scientists, bureaucrats, and support personnel from the other side of the portal. It was a secret base of operations untouchable by their enemies or competitors.
How they accomplished all of this is unknown, but it was operating for many years before their success with the clones.
According to the whispers, Talia is some sort of vigilante and one of the first three human employees to be recruited without a scientific background. Prior to her Company job, she took it upon herself to research, find, and end pedophiles, animal abusers, and their ilk. She must have worked in the legal system on the other side, because she knew they wouldn’t face justice because of their wealth or fame. Legends say she met Taurus, who fell for her so deeply he brought her into this world.
Once she was employed by the Company, Talia invited a select group of her friends to join her here—Rhea, Phoebe, and Charlotte. They were given Taurus’ ‘brothers’ and at that moment, the Cabal was born. It wasn’t long before the Rift became an exclusive club and as the population grew, more clones were released to Cabal members. Some of their members moved to the Rift permanently, and some split their lives between both worlds.
I hadn’t yet received my invitation to become part of the world during this time; I didn’t come until much later, so I can’t speak to it with any definitive accuracy.
After the Conflict, invitations to come here hinged on knowing someone in the Cabal or getting ‘discovered’ in a rundown bar on the other side called Bytes ‘n Chips. I got invited after months of frequenting the place when on ‘geek trivia’ nights. Many evenings of discourse on shows and movies I love with regulars attracted the right eyes, and I got tapped.
I don’t want to get distracted with my story, though, so back to Rift history.
Eventually, the Cabal weren’t the only ones inviting people to come to the Rift. Regular folks who weren’t in the clique invited their discoveries. As the population expanded, the Cabal demanded the Company refuse to release clones to those not recommended by their members. Tensions rose as their edict created a mini-caste system in the Rift.
Donatella, a ‘discovery’ who had enchanted the Cabal into releasing Victor for her, decided this decree wasn’t fair. The new rules meant some townspeople had to sit on the sidelines and watch all the fun the Cabal and their mates had in public, but could never take part. Together with her mechanically inclined clone, Victor, Donatella created something new everyone could have: droids.
How did Donatella invent something as complex as a fully functioning, virtually indistinguishable, artificially intelligent droid?
It’s an important question, and the answer is simple, but not. The Rift has always had an enhancing quality its scientific ‘creation’ can’t explain. Given Taurus’ explanation tonight, I believe the Company splintered off a piece of a dimension where magick exists—that’s why living here amplifies ‘natural talents’. Every clone has a ‘built-in’ skill like telekinesis or artistry or languages, so it makes sense. What I didn’t mention previously is that the humans living here seem to reap similar benefits from exposure to the secret lands.
It’s easy to surmise the Company would want to keep that benefit under wraps; they haven’t figured out how to harness and monetize it yet.
There’s a lot of supposition about what happens at the Company. It’s generated a tome’s worth of folklore in the Resistance, but very little of it has been confirmed. We know there’s a training facility the clones go through where they discover their gifts. Once they graduate, the Company knows what their agents should specialize in and who to deploy in each situation.
What the hell they deploy for is what no one seems willing to talk about.
However, my theory is fairly easy to confirm if you”re paying attention. No one talks about how Talia’s blade skills grew to a lethal level when she moved here or how Dona’s hobby of tinkering became outright brilliance in engineering, Other humans have found skills—none of them realizing that it’s the Rift enhancing their talents—but I’ve long been watching the changes in folks with interest.
Regardless of how it came to be, Dona and Victor began creating hyperrealistic droids programmed as made-to-order companions for those not deemed ‘worthy’ of a clone by the Cabal. Their goal was to help with the inequality and growing resentment of the populace. They were even the original creators of Wilde when he wasn’t a ‘real boy.’
Even though their efforts made many people happy, it did not fix the problem. As humans are wont to do, the Cabal reacted by forming an even more rigid caste-based society. In their minds, only those with a clone were in the highest class; everyone else was a commoner. No one said that, but it was implicit in their behavior. Clashes that happened occasionally before became more frequent, and it was a constant source of discontent.
Thus, the Conflict began. No one can tell me what single event was the tipping point, but the stories say that Dona’s first droid, Caesar, started it. Between the influx of new people and droids, the exclusivity of the Cabal, and the anger of the masses, the droid owners revolted against the Cabal. The Conflict raged for months and there was destruction and chaos everywhere.
The two sides came to the table after the Battle of Blood and Steel because so many droids and clones were injured or killed.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that a droid owner named Sari defected to the Cabal’s side, taking all of their plans and documents with her. That betrayal meant the Resistance—as the droid owners called themselves—was crippled. As a reward for helping to win the war, Talia had the lab coats at the Company turn Wilde into a clone.
If anyone has ever worked out how that was possible in their head, I’ve never been told.
Based on Taurus’ explanation of their science, I might have the answer. They simply pulled him from a ribbon where Wilde was a clone, not a droid. The fairy tale everyone tells about a magick box and being transformed is rot. The lab coats replaced him and never told Sari. Her greatest wish was granted, and if that doesn’t showcase the public opinion of clones versus droids, I don’t know what else could.
The previous unrest didn’t disappear after the Conflict ended; it became whispers in back rooms of places like Bytes N’ Chips. Droid families still felt like second-class citizens. The caste system was still in place, and the Cabal ruled more viciously than ever. Everyone had to abide by their Draconian rules or get exiled from the Rift.
Fear became their new currency.
Dona and her friend, Michaela, were in the same boat as the other droid families. They frequented the bar to get away because being out of the purview of the Cabal was easier than suffering the feudalistic atmosphere in their home. I met them for the first time on a dark, stormy night when the bar was having a vampire slayer quiz game. We talked into the wee hours and bonded instantly.
They had no idea I was on the run from my past and ripe for recruitment.
Our friendship grew—particularly mine with Victor—and eventually, they took me behind the curtain. We stepped through the portal in the basement and within weeks, I moved from a split-world lifestyle to living in the Rift full time.
Don’t get me wrong; I know running away doesn’t fix everything.
But despite the social inequity, the Rift isn’t a terrible place to live. The Company has plenty of clones to help build dwellings and they have a quarter set up for obtaining normal day-to-day supplies. Most of our needs are supplied without people having to work and as long as you can stay here, you wouldn’t need a job at all. I’m sure there’s an underlying motive in their generosity, but for those of us living here, it’s a pretty sweet deal.
However, if the motive is some comprehensive study of how the Rift affects humans so they can monetize it… I’m about to put a big ass fly in their ointment. Magickally enhanced natural talents is one thing; turning into a bloody shifter is another box of chocolates. I’ll happily convey my other secret to them if Taurus sics the needle waving thugs on me after our chat, especially if it keeps me from becoming a lab rat.
I may not have exactly been a normal human to start with.
That brings me to how the new Resistance came about and to tell that tale, I have to back up again. I’m not going as far back as why I was running when I got here, but I need to explain why I’ve been pushing so hard to pin my transformation on their science. It has to do with things I’ve wondered about my entire life, but always been too scared to address.
If I’m truthful, I’ve always had a bit of intuition—what I’d call ‘kitchen magick’. In the Rift, I’ve felt that little bit of magick grow. I don’t use it, even in front of my family, because I’m worried about the cost of doing so. It could be dangerous and I don’t know how it works. Plus, I sure as fuck don’t need anything else to draw people to me. But I’ve always wondered if magick has fed my ability to lead, even on the other side. I can persuade people with little effort, and I can sense their emotions. Maybe I have magick, maybe I’m an empath, or maybe I’ve always been some weird human hybrid.
That sounds insane, which is why I’ve never said it out loud—not to a single soul.Who would believe me?
From the moment that I arrived, I felt the unhappiness of the ladies with droids. I could almost taste the resentment and anger. Dona created companions for me to ease my loneliness—my darling Hex, a punk rock prince, and Leo, my über wonderful culinary genius. Even though I loved them and adored spending time with Victor, I empathized with the pain of feeling of ‘less than’ while pretending everything was fun.
The Cabal made it very clear who they considered lesser in person and on the active community blog hub everyone used. You couldn’t avoid seeing tales of fun and clique-y bantering if you wanted to know what was happening in the Rift, and that made the divide between the groups widen by the day. As I watched my friends falter, I knew I had to help them.
Convincing my two closest friends, Michaela and Dona, to explore options for our people wasn’t hard. Michaela was adamantly against the structure of the Cabal Quarter and she was on board immediately. Dona resisted a little because she’d straddled both sides since both Victor and Caesar lived with her. But once I showed her all the sad posts from the droid families getting ignored, she finally gave in.
All we had to do was figure out how to create our own space in the Rift and keep the Cabal out of it.