Forge of Stones

by Vasileios Kalampakas

  The game board

  Flares of light flickered on and off, casting monstrous shadows on the sleek gray metal floor. Huge sparks seemed to fly from unfathomable contraptions that seemed to be hard at work, showering the improbably high walls with fiery fragments. Light was at a premium, its sources the by-products of the industrious machines: sparks like lightning, hot rivers of metal, red and yellow fires and blue-hot flames; green and violet beams of light against stark gray metals, the mirror sheens of gleaming new surfaces reflecting everything, multiplying their intensity in a maze of light.

  It was an organized mayhem, the machines scattered around as if giants had sown them from wildly thrown seeds. Some of them seemed to be no larger than Hilderich himself, neatly arrayed in rows upon rows on the floor, as if they were awaiting inspection. Others towered over them, the size of a small hill or an impossibly high castle tower. Some were dim and seemed to be inert; others glowed or crackled with fiery lights and eldritch sparks, booming and thudding sounds emanating from within, some of them humming in unnatural tones. To Hilderich, it felt like the machines in this place ate metal and drank fire.

  Invariably, everything zipped past Hilderich’s sight with a speed that left little chance for him to marvel at them leisurely. The Prosops had been ferrying them silently but efficiently through the maze that the seemingly randomly placed machinery created around them. Sometimes a path would construct itself right in front of them as the wheels of the vehicle-avatar ate away at the gray sleek shiny floor surface, to guide them around or over obstacles.

  They would travel at speeds where the flustering air would make Hilderich’s eyes blurry and watery, causing him to squint. At other times, long overarching narrow rails would make themselves available and the machine would jump over them in a carefree fashion and ride upon them, while hundreds of feet below the floor could not be seen, blackness and ruin awaiting them should they fall.

  Somehow though, Hilderich felt untouchable, safe in the care of the Prosops, the Centron itself. It stood to reason that if any danger lurked around this place, it was not the vehicle-machine’s erratic but expert maneuvering skills, but rather something less obvious and well-hidden, something that had yet to manifest. Though feeling safe at the moment, Hilderich kept a watchful eye on his surroundings, just in case.

  He peered beyond his immediate surroundings, beyond the towering grapples and unfathomable pillars that crackled with amber lightning. In the distance, streams of pure white and blue seemed to pour down from the pitch dark ceiling high above, lost in many places where the eyes could not follow; driven behind metal behemoths and mazes of pipes and tubes.

  Immense skeletal structures that reminded Hilderich of upturned boats or perhaps very strange looking ships were being worked on, swarms of smaller and bigger machines not very much unlike the Prosops buzzing around like flies around oxen. The sounds and sights in this place reminded him of a playground made for giants or a shipyard like no other, the pride and envy of every artisan and craftsman. What would have driven any minister mad from sheer shock, would certainly have burned with a bright gleam of wonder in the eyes of the renowned smithies from Repentine and the proud ship-makers of Ulrathi, if they ever saw what he could see.

  The air seemed somehow thick, as if it was filled with the by-products of the profoundly industrious machinery around them. Monstrously huge shiny claws and arms seemed to move and lift improbable loads with surprising ease, other smaller machines flitted like metal birds while overhead a lattice of glass tubes that could fit a foaming river inside them seemed to emit pulses of intense light. The number and workings of the machines were unknown, but Hilderich could only suppose they numbered in the tens of thousands, a legion of machines and devices of origin and purpose unknown.

  Hilderich raised his voice well above its usual tones, trying to make sure he would be heard:

  “What exactly is this place?”

  A green-yellow aura flicked momentarily around the Prosops and Hilderich; a faint sheath-like veil seemed to shimmer slightly in the air. Then the loud industrious din subsided, allowing the machine to speak in a conversational manner and tone:

  “Oh, excuse me. I haven’t had real visitors in quite a while. You don’t need to shout now. I also took the liberty of dimming the environmental sounds as well but I could let more of it seep through if you would like that. This, dear Hilderich, is what I’ve affectionately come to call the Den. Busy buggers the lot of them, aren’t they?”

  The machine swooped down a small ramp that moments before was not there and was now steering them down a wide spiraling road that seemed to corkscrew around a tower whose top seemed to be perpetually devoured by the darkness of the ceiling. Dim stripes of red light ran along its length, the base of the tower barely visible below.

  Hilderich was staring wide-eyed, mesmerized in awe of the immense space filled with all sorts of strange and mystifying buildings and constructs. His mind was overloaded with wonder and amazement, his senses failing to capture faithfully the incredible nature of the Den. It felt to him as if a vast stage had been wrought for his pleasure alone, designed to woe and subdue him utterly with a tale of fantasy to entrap him, body and mind. He almost felt it wouldn’t be half-bad if that was indeed so, as long as his captors would let him watch.

  He couldn’t make out any workers at all: everything on the giant workshop floor of the Den seemed to be running, moving and working on its own. Hilderich thought that such a sight would cause every minister in the Territories to die from shock or drive him instantly insane exposed to such blasphemy against the Pantheon. Machines acting on their own? their powers unleashed unsupervised, free to reign over matter? A hideously impossible thought it would have seemed in years past, but it was right there in front of him without a doubt. Hilderich queried the Prosops about the lack of personnel in the Den and people in general, to which the machine answered with a slight bob and a tone of surprise:

  “What do you mean? Personnel? Real people? What for? Shooting targets?”

  It sounded as if the machine had let out a small chuckle as it ended its phrase, but Hilderich felt one could never be sure of the capricious machine. He frowned deeply, a feeling of alarm and intense distaste washing over him but managed to restrain his voice from revealing how flustered he felt:

  “No, I mean workers. There is absolutely no need for workers of any kind? No menials? No laborers? Expert artisans of any sort?”

  The disbelief in the Prosops’ voice could shatter stone-masonry easily:

  “Sentient people doing menial work? That would be absurd. Are you familiar with that kind of thing in your world? It must be a really backwards place; people living in mud huts and so on. I’m kind of surprised you happened to be invited to a game, actually. You must be from some kind of feudal empire, I’d wager. So I guess you’re made for life back where you come from - a seriously big hotshot. Right? Am I right? I know I’m right, you just have ‘winner’ written all over. Maybe you’re a prince, or an important xenologist. An ambassador? Don’t tell, don’t tell me. I’ll figure it out. Just tell me when I’m spot on. I’d expect a more lush attire though, but who am I to judge fashion choices? Love what you’ve done with your hair though.”

  Hilderich instinctively turned his eyes upward trying to perceive what the machine had meant, but was quick to realize it was impossible for him to see what the comment was about without a mirror. He also felt uncomfortable being reminded he was using deception to further their goals; he almost cynically realized he would be a fool though if he did not make the best use of whatever luck threw in their way. If the Centron thought they were visitors and indeed spectators to a game, people from an entirely different world altogether, then he’d act the part as convincingly as he could.

  Other worlds, other people; different civilizations and societies. His mind was still quite ineffectually trying to cope with the implications of the knowledge the Centron had imparted. With no real reason to believe the Centron could b
e lying after everything he had seen and been through, Hilderich could hardly contain himself from grinning at the expectations these revelations had given birth to. No longer would they need to cage their minds in ignorance and fear. There were places to see and explore, new things to learn and do. Perhaps he could somehow persuade the Centron to help them in such a quest. But that would have to wait. Amonas was his top priority right now, he felt he owed him as much. Besides, his predicament seemed to be just cause for leading them to very interesting places, perhaps even the very heart of this Centron.

  They were evidently slowing down and the road became wider and less steep. In moments, they had reached the base of the tower where a wide porch of white porcelain stood before them, fine granite marble semi-circular steps leading to an arched gate that seemed to goad them further inside the tower. It was an eerily familiar sight, the whole entrance resembling a ministry’s doorsteps. All around them the work continued incessantly, the cacophony of noises and the ever-shifting lights a constant reminder of that fact.

  The Prosops laid down Amonas in the same manner that had lifted him up on its stretcher-like surface, making him float in mid-air covered in a dim blue glow with a slight haze all around him. It politely asked Hilderich to get up from his seat and in a series of mechanical transformations and shimmering bulbous transmutations, it reshaped itself into the egg-like shape, a process which Hilderich found less disconcerting now. Becoming so easily accustomed to such things was a thought that slightly troubled him.

  Being able to look freely at Amonas again now that he wasn’t confined in a seat, Hilderich took a good look at him: he seemed perfectly fine, as if he were slumbering in the most serene way imaginable. In a sense, perhaps Amonas was indeed sleeping. A pang of fear gripped Hilderich’s heart at the thought of Amonas never waking up again, but it passed quickly. In this maze of wonders where every step brought into view unimaginable marvels, surely even such a strange affliction as the one that had struck Amonas so suddenly could be treated.

  The Prosops made a sound as if clearing a throat that could not have possibly existed for the intended purpose. The inclination of his body coupled with the strange tone of its voice somehow led Hilderich to believe it was trying to mimic a haughty, stiff manservant of a noble:

  “If you would be so kind master Hilderich, allow me to show you and your stasis-paralyzed friend to the Game Room. Don’t forget to wipe your feet first. Wouldn’t want you getting dog poop in there now. Just had the place meticulously cleaned by hand-maidens and you do know how hard they are to come by.”

  The Prosops bobbed frantically for a moment as if nodding wildly, seeking approval or acknowledgement, the red light in the black band in its middle moving up and down erratically. Hilderich looked unable to follow the meaning behind the machine’s expression. He simply frowned slightly and proceeded towards the arched gate with the machine almost grudgingly trudging along behind Hilderich with Amonas’ body somehow in tow, with no chain or rope between them, hovering a few inches above the granite floor. Its voice sounded disheartened, almost morose:

  “Come on, hand-maidens, hard to come. Get it? Didn’t think you would. I don’t even know why I keep trying sometimes. Anyway, I won’t bother again. Unless I come up with something really funny though.”

  The Prosops shone a green beam of light onto the door and not a moment later, it started to grind itself open, squealing and making stressful noises. The process proved to be laborious and quite inefficient, unlike almost everything else around the Centron. Hilderich thought about that momentarily and made a mental note to inquire about it when it would seem appropriate. As if the machine could read his mind, it told him without being asked:

  “I know, I know the door sucks and I should get it replaced or fixed, but I can’t do that, no no. It would, and I quote: ‘ruin the authenticity of the original setting’. Don’t look at me, I know it’s silly but they’re pretty touchy with those things. As I said, I just keep the place running. Now, after you.”

  The machine ushered Hilderich inside with a gentle swaying of its mass and a bob; the black band of glass-like material was filled with a regal blue glow. Hilderich nodded in acknowledgement, despite the silly pomp and ceremony of the Prosops.

  The gates had opened to a bottleneck-shaped corridor, wide at the entrance and narrow at its end, where a dimly lit chamber could be seen. A slightly green and yellow light emanated from within, but few other details were visible from the distance. The corridor was luxuriously decorated with exquisitely carved panels of many different techniques and materials, depicting strange scenes that he failed to identify, even though he had an arguably extensive knowledge of history, myth and lore.

  The floor seemed to be made of the same granite as the doorsteps outside. It was tiled, alternating between lighter and darker tiles of red in a checkerboard pattern. Hilderich felt curiously intrigued by the improbably styled interior of the tower, though it troubled him that the atmosphere this place exuded was not akin to a place of healing. Suspicion bloomed inside him, but he took a first step towards the chamber nonetheless.

  The Prosops shrieked in horror:

  “Don’t!”

  Hilderich froze in place, the sudden screech making his hair stand up. He stopped dead in his tracks and slowly turned around to look at the Prosops with a frown, a mix of horror and puzzlement in his face. The egg-shaped machine bobbed and leaned slightly forward, its black band adorned with a single red dot of light, it’s voice low with faint undertones of mirth:

  “Heh. Gotcha.”

  Exasperation did not suit Hilderich’s face well but it was contorted in such a way as to exhibit it profoundly. He still found it difficult to understand how eccentric a machine of such awesome power could be, resolving to ignore most of what it said from then onwards.

  He walked down the corridor with a true visitor’s pace, slowly and deliberately. Hilderich felt his unwanted role to be almost enjoyable. He was intently staring at the intricate designs on the walls, trying to decipher the scenes they depicted. It was not because he felt his role demanded it so, but because his interest was genuinely piqued. A vague sense of importance seemed to radiate from these walls. A moment passed while Hilderich thought it strange that despite everything that he had seen so far, nothing seemed to have caught his stare in such a profound and intimate way. He paused in his stride while the Prosops seemed to follow silently, Amonas carried along behind him. He then asked the machine:

  “These etchings, these carvings.. What do they symbolize? I admit I find them most intriguing and utterly unfathomable at the same time.”

  The Prosops flashed an array of multicolored beams of light at the walls before replying in a flat, plain voice:

  “Beats me. All I know is the Sleeping Man’s done them himself with no tools, bare hands and all that insistence on authentic stuff. They’re supposed to be his trophies. At least that’s what his profile says.”

  Hilderich could not hide the surprise in his voice, a hint of disbelief evident in the utterance of the single word:

  “Trophies?”

  The machine bobbed just once and floated at a smaller height from the granite floor, its voice filled with mild aggravation:

  “Trophies! Yes, trophies, cups, medals, what is it with you people? What kind of world do you come from, please do tell me before the game’s over! I’d erase myself from existence if I knew I was headed over there!”

  Hilderich snapped back an answer that seemed to him to come unbidden to his mind:

  “Charming little place, quite rustic. Mostly harmless. We..ahm.. deal largely in antiquities.”

  The Prosops grumbled discontentedly something inaudible before passing in front of Hilderich, leading the way now instead of following. It added resentfully:

  “Even for an AI of my sophistication, I can’t really think of a joke bad enough for your case.”

  Hilderich withheld a more inflammatory retort and simply said:

  “Please, do lea
d on.”

  The machine did so, while Hilderich followed suit. A quick glance at Amonas unnerved him, the man’s face serene as if it had surrendered to death, but brightly and vividly colored as if blood flowed hot in his veins still. He could not know the manner in which such a contradiction was achieved. He only hoped Amonas was indeed alive, and he had not been deceived by the capricious machine.

  The long corridor ended in a resplendently adorned entrance to a well-lit chamber that seemed to resemble a richly decorated study, complete with bookcases and screens. A plush red and green carpet seemed to add a sense of decorum to the room, which overall seemed to exude a certain air of gravitas, possibly more than what Hilderich found tasteful. It was octagonal in shape, each side playing host to an assortment of bookcases and glass screens, filled with seemingly pristine books of various sizes, accompanied by many objects that were possibly more than mere decorations. Everything was neatly arranged and the room was purposefully designed with elegance and style, a feel for the finer things in life. Velvet could be found in many surfaces, as well as glistening marble, bronze, gold and copper in fine casings and perfect symmetry of space. It was the room of a noble connoisseur, a man of wealth and taste. It felt completely out of place in the Centron, and the slightly bobbing form of the Prosops inside struck Hilderich as almost vulgar.

  Hilderich could not believe he had not seen it the moment he stepped inside, indeed he cursed himself silently for not seeing it as he had walked down the length of the corridor. From the roof of the large room hang a large metal assemblage, angular and bulky, almost orthogonal in shape.

  Whatever it was, it had almost definitely been placed in this room as an afterthought, as no sane person would knowingly add such a monstrosity to a carefully arranged interior environment. However long Hilderich stared at it in utter disbelief and profound distaste, words would not escape his gaping mouth and the atrocious piece of metal would not go away. The Prosops said with a knowledgeable tone of voice that somehow also managed to express ennui, its languid movements undoubtedly adding to that effect:

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s ugly. I know. It shouldn’t be here, I know. You know what? Eat me. Step back if you don’t want to turn into fine paste.”

  Hilderich indulged the machine, taking a couple of steps back absent-mindedly while at the same time his head was turned upwards, his stare fixed on the unbelievably ugly and misplaced metal object which seemed to be the size of a large wardrobe or closet.

  Within moments, the large bulk of metal started to lower itself in a rapid, fluid motion, coming to rest on the carpet. It was indeed roughly shaped like a large wardrobe, its metal surface painted a matte drab olive green. Large tubes and fat strands of what looked like colored rope to Hilderich seemed to protrude from its very top, while a low humming noise was faintly audible. The Prosops tugged Amonas behind him with some sluggishness, as if it were reluctant to do so. It flicked a beam of light at the closet and suddenly a door large enough for a man of almost any size to stand upright slid open.

  Hilderich was transfixed to where he stood, his gaze wandering around the metal contraption, the open door and the Prosops. A primal fear roused him to reality with a jolt, bringing him back to his senses. He realized cold sweat was running down his back and forehead, while at the same time he shouted at the machine which was lifting Amonas upright:

  “Wait! What are you doing with him?”

  The Prosops lifted itself slightly upward before slowly turning its black band to face Hilderich. Though it had little in the way of communicating sentiment and feeling and lacked a facial expression, the flatly lit red thick line in the middle of the black band felt to Hilderich almost as if it wanted to burn through him with enjoyable deliberation. The stiffness of the machine’s movements somehow struck him as portraying extreme exasperation, a feeling which was indeed verified when the machine spoke, tones of outright annoyance in its vaguely male voice:

  “I’m trying to fix him. Even though I don’t really have to. Do you want me to just hold him in mid air till the game’s through? I could do that. I could also dance to a tune if you’d like. I could just sit there and tell you I’m already doing it, too fast for your eyes to see. Would you want me to do that, Master Hilderich?”

  He thought the machine was genuinely frustrated by now, something that he would have never thought possible of a machine. It was rather apparent though that it was largely dissatisfied and had lost its good humor, quite possibly a long time ago. Hilderich was reluctant to demand more of the machine right at that time but he felt he had to ask, even though he might not understand. He did so politely, trying to appease the machine’s brooding mood, his voice trimmed and clipped to something an ambassador would use to convey assurance and calm:

  “I realize we’ve been quite a handful to you. Surely a machine of your higher intellect and quite evident power can only treat this inadvertent mishap as nothing more than a tedious trifle and I must say so, I’m considered well traveled from where we come from but I’ve never met such a charismatic personality such as yours. It has been quite an adventure so far in the Centron and it’s no small wonder that it’s all under your control. I would be utterly grateful if you would be so kind as to offer your expert assistance to my friend right there. I would also be honored if you could explain some of the delicate techniques and methods you are about to utilize. I’m sure that, as in all matters, you also excel at medicine. Please, I’d be honored to watch you perform.”

  The Prosops bobbed slightly leaning to and fro as well, as if it were intrigued and curiously undecided about what it should say. The red dot of light that flitted on its black glass-like band had turned into a blurry glow. One could even surmise the machine was trying to look blushed. Despite the unhappy circumstances and their precarious situation, Hilderich barely managed to suppress an oncoming fit of the giggles. He was looking at the machine with a feigned look of worried expectation, when it answered with a sparkling quality in its voice:

  “I knew some people would notice, eventually. Maybe I’m too shy for an AI, maybe I should be more flamboyant but, yeah, someone finally notices. I didn’t mean all that about my jokes, you know.. I know I have the knack for it, I just lack commitment and someone to stand by me, urge me to the top. Know what I mean?”

  Hilderich simply nodded in acknowledgement, seemingly in deep reflection while in truth his mind was a blank protective barrier, filtering out the incoherent ramblings of the machine.

  “I thought you would, you seem refined. For a guy from a world where menial labor seems rational, you must be one of a kind. Really. You touched me, you know? Not in that way.”

  Hilderich slightly cocked his head and smiled in ignorance without having a clue at what to say. The machine took that as its cue:

  “Ba-da-boom! Gotcha. Touched me, but not in that way, heh? Sometimes I kill myself.”

  Amonas then moved in the air, his body still enclosed in the same strange aura as it had been before while being ferried to this place. The machine assumed a more formal voice with an intense feeling of feigned stiffness behind it, intended to portray extreme seriousness though to Hilderich’s ears it only managed to sound like a dimwitted inflated egotist:

  “Using the player immersion tank, I will perform a neural-field emission scan of the subject’s brain. After the affected, malformed or damaged individual neurons have been assessed, I will selectively rearrange the cellular structure at the micron level utilizing pion-polaron wide beam emissions as well as single-scope graviton-assisted field-induced magnetic photon effectors. Utilizing finely tuned quantum-level manipulation techniques coupled with my extremely accurate analysis will result in the subject being its old self again within a few minutes.”

  Hilderich’s face was creased in a show of anxious concern. He had no idea what the machine was talking about, but it seemed to at least seem to know what it was doing. He was now standing closer to the metallic closet; the immersion tank, as the Prosops had called it. The rig
idly held upright body of Amonas was expressionless, frigid in more than one way. Hilderich felt it would somehow be his fault if anything went wrong. Even though it was Amonas who had dragged him into all this mess, he felt it was him all along that had guided him and kept him alive in order to untangle the strands of fate that had led them to the Centron. He thought that it had seemed to be going rather well so far, considering. Hilderich could not know what the problem with Amonas was exactly, or whether the cure the machine would attempt was in any way dangerous or painful. He asked it anyway, knowing that the answer would be irrelevant at this point, but it seemed to matter to him:

  “Will there be any pain involved? Is it, safe?”

  The machine bobbed enthusiastically, his voice lilting:

  “Completely and utterly painless, perfectly safe. I assure you, your friend here is in the right hands for the job. Well, not literally. Now, if I may.”

  Hilderich nodded awkwardly, while at the same time he did something he had never thought about in such a fundamental, vividly profound and genuine way: he prayed. Hilderich prayed for Amonas to any and all Gods, forces of nature, or beings of power, whatever one might have called them. As a last resort, feeling it was the only thing he could do, powerless to act and indeed depended on an erratic, capricious and strange machine, he prayed to any and all that would heed his prayers. He prayed to no one in particular, replacing the words in his mind with thoughts and feelings. He could hear the echo of his one voiced thought though: ‘Please’.

  The door slid back into a closed position and then it suddenly turned transparent, as if a veil had been lifted. Amonas’ form was clearly visible as a greenish liquid that closely resembled sewer slime started to fill the tank and rising slowly. The liquid was somewhat transparent but not entirely, offering a hazy view of the body it engulfed, shadowy and murky. The aura the Prosops had encapsulated Amonas within started to dissipate in tune with the climbing level of the liquid, letting it carry Amonas’ weight.

  Hilderich grimaced with distaste at the sight of the greenish liquid, an expression to which the machine answered with a derisive comment wholly intended for Hilderich’s ears:

  “Clinically odorless. Doesn’t smell at all. Unlike some people.”

  Hilderich simply peered at the metal egg-shaped machine without saying a word, more worried about Amonas’ fate than for the machine’s personal opinion of himself. It rarely mattered to him when people expressed it, much less when a machine did so. He knew his smell was less than agreeable but that was understandable after going on for more than a week without bathing. In any case, he couldn’t care less; just as long as that didn’t stop the machine from performing its ministrations on Amonas, he’d have time for a bath sometime later on.

  As he sat there watching the liquid rise hazily, Hilderich saw it would not stop at his chin, or even at his mouth. He instinctively yelled at the machine and went for the transparent closet, trying to find a knob or handle to no avail:

  “Stop! You’re drowning him!”

  The liquid was quickly filling up the entire tank, and Hilderich was manically trying to open the door. He started to pound on it with his palms and fists with no other effect than a dull thudding noise. The liquid filled the tank entirely, and Amonas was serenely bobbing inside it, indistinguishable from a drowned man. Hilderich was shocked in silence with his mouth stunned open. The machine then walked close by him, his voice surprisingly calm:

  “It’s a field enhancement medium agent, quite breathable. See here? There’s bubbles coming out of your friends nose. That’s carbon dioxide, mainly. Standard human physiology. Nothing to worry about. I haven’t even touched him yet. Well, I won’t physically touch him. Not in that way. Heh.. It’s getting old, isn’t it? Look, if it makes you feel any better, let me show you the Sleeping Man as well. I was going to anyway; you know, check up on the guy. While I do that all the time, I rarely get to visit. You know how it is with work, scarcely enough time for social visits.”

  Indeed, tiny bubbles were rising from Amonas nose, steadily climbing up through the liquid, some of them seemingly trapped in the angles of his nose, some even clinging to his hair. He looked as serene as ever, slightly alien and even menacing under the greenish hues of the liquid, his full form unclear, slightly occluded within the depth of the tank as his body floated freely.

  Then, the other door pane turned transparent and the same greenish hue was emitted from within. Hilderich took a step back, his interest piqued and his fears quietened for now. He felt indeed inexorably drawn to see the form of the Sleeping Man, someone who seemed so important, so integral to the workings of such an awe-inspiring place, a place where almost anything felt possible. Perhaps this was indeed the man he had been looking for, the man with the answers to all the questions Hilderich could conceive of and more. He felt it would be an honor, a majestic moment to look upon his true form, a man of legend.

  What he saw though made his hair stand up and his skin crawl, his body tremble in sheer physical shock:

  Behind the depths of the green liquid, inside the tank, all he could see was a spinal cord attached to a peculiar-looking brain, silver hair-thick fibers jutting from underneath, locked together and tightly connected to some sort of flexible tube. The hideous abomination was floating gruesomely in the liquid; a horrific, ghastly view that caused Hilderich to almost vomit in disgust. The sight was nightmarish. Hilderich tried to force it out of his mind, but the horrible image kept flashing in his head like it had now been etched in his mind forever.

  He tried to concentrate on something familiar, something dear and important to him. He thought of Amonas and the image in his head devolved to a child, someone he had once known as a brother. The unbidden thought surprised him with its temerity; he thought he had cast out the memory of that boy long ago, but it seemed that it had lingered in his very soul for all those many years. Strangely, he found the memory of him comforting now. Once the initial feeling of shock had dissipated, Hilderich mustered every iota of self-control to keep himself from screaming the question through gritting teeth, his fists clenched in tension:

  “What.. Is that thing?”

  The machine beamed excitedly, as if it was proud in so many ways of the sight:

  “That’s the Sleeping Man. Not much left of one though but as they say, size doesn’t matter. Ugly fella, ain’t he? But, he’s winning though.”

  “Winning? That thing, it shouldn’t even be alive! It has no heart, no lungs, no bloody body at all!”

  “Ah, but you see the mind’s a beautiful thing to waste. Isn’t it? Now, where was I? Ah, of course: deep n-grade field-asserted tensile capacity assessment using L-space variable intensity fold-string lepton excitation.”

  Hilderich was frowning heavily, finally showing his exasperation at the cryptic commentary and the alternating, almost maddening, mood swings of the machine, and actually shouted at it angrily, spitting as he did so:

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Do you expect me to know of these things? Are you just trying to impress me? Just.. Just get on with your work and make him wake up as himself again. You said you can do it, so do it. Do something useful for a change. See how that feels.”

  The machine bobbed slightly, wavered a little about its oval base. It seemed confused, as if perplexed at the sudden change in Hilderich’s attitude. The form of Amonas was a stark contrast against the abominable freakish sight next to him. The transparent door of the tank containing the abhorrence turned opaque once more, an oblique barrier between it and one’s sanity. It resolved to speak in what sounded to Hilderich like a solemn voice:

  “I’m sorry. I had not foreseen the sight would cause such an adverse reaction. I’ll continue my work on your friend, in silence if it makes you feel better.”

  Hilderich’s face was stern when he replied:

  “It does. For a supposedly limitless intelligence, you should have known or inferred that most people find this sight appalling. I’d like to have known who your pr
evious visitors were. They’d have been quite remote sentimentally, I’d wager. A man reduced to his vertebrae, a mind literally detached from its body. How.. monstrous.”

  A panel of sorts opened up on the side of Amonas’ tank, allowing the machine to physically interface with a thin metal needle that suddenly appeared to protrude from its main bulk. The Prosops answered, while at the same time it remained uncharacteristically motionless in the air, as if frozen in place:

  “I’ve seen many visitors, from many different physiological backgrounds. Most who have seen him have found his choice most efficient. Those of human, or human-like forms generally found it distasteful indeed, but very few have reacted so badly. I guess it’s because of your societal background. Less developed worlds tend to have a stronger affiliation with the materialistic conscience model, despite the fact they are consistently attracted to intangible notions of a spiritual nature, like the existence of a soul and the like. You seem to fall in that category. Tell me indeed, where do you come from?”

  Hilderich found the machine’s view somehow enlightening, though indeed blase and disturbing. It implied people were fools to believe in their soul. It occurred to him that it made sense, that a thing without a soul indeed smart enough to make assumptions and generate ideas of its own, would arrive at such a conclusion. It was a very interesting philosophical matter that Hilderich would have loved to discuss about, but it was neither the time nor the place for such a discussion. He simply nodded then and answered vaguely, still holding on the facade of the visitor, trying to learn anything of use:

  “As I said, a nice rustic place. I wouldn’t know how to lead you to it, perhaps you could give me a frame of reference. I am a little at a loss without my friend in there, he keeps most of the information I often tend to forget. I’m a bit absent-minded.”

  The machine splashed it’s middle band blue. From within it a grid of light beams criss-crossed the air in front of Hilderich, forming an image of the night sky, swirling and moving as if it might have seemed from someone standing on the firmament itself, bright spheres of light of various colors and sizes. The Prosops said in a professional tone, as if it had iterated this information many times over:

  “Certainly. For those of you new to the Shellworld A34B, or more commonly named as Nody’s Claim, I welcome you to Game Consortium’s Station Lilith. As you can see from the holographic projection and the data array attached, in case you were asleep during your transition.. we are orbiting the binary star widely known as Behenii-1 in most tourist star maps, also known to some of you colloquially as Persebs or Binary 888. For complete reference you should check the standard data array emitted. The Shellworld A34B like most shellworlds, is a unique mega-construction. It encapsulates the smallest of the three stars, providing a large number and variety of gaming resort world panels, with varied climates and atmospheres to accomodate any and all game setups. Active attitude mechanisms are in place to create a high degree of available customization. Also notable is one of the unique ways the shellworld is kept in one piece, using actively maintained mass-driven momentum devices in a huge network that completely covers the inner surface. I take some measure of pride in being in active control of the mechanism, which though quite ancient and indeed of great xenoarchaelogical interest, rest assured is quite safe and sound in all aspects of its operation. Now if you please, follow me to the-”

  The machine abruptly stopped. It was as if it had remembered something of great importance, or its attention was suddenly diverted elsewhere. A moment later it spoke again, in its more usual, casual tone:

  “Sorry for the recording. I used it back when we had so many people visiting, that almost certainly someone would have dosed off on his way here. And there was always a Kiraat in the crowd. Big, brutish things, wearing environmental armor everywhere they go? Never mind. So, did you get a look at the chart, did you find out where you are from?”

  Hilderich’s mind was reeling from shock. His face remained frozen in an almost expressionless state, as if he was absent-minded or hard at thinking. But in truth, he was suddenly terrified at the immensity of the revelation. That was what the bullhorns had been. And the lone sun. Their own, twin suns.. A construct? Their world, was a construct? A fabrication? It seemed as if it was a lie, yet he knew it not to be. He had seen the one sun, he had walked on the lush hot forests of the inner shell. He had grown up near a lake under the light of the twin suns. The blue and yellow, easily distinguished as two suns in the winter, and every other dusk their colors rang true. So this was the truth. Perhaps the ultimate truth. What more could there be, what was more important than this? A discovery that would change everything. Their world was constructed by someone it seemed, at some distant point in time. And it was being used as a sideshow, a gaming resort? That was something he had not completely understood, and could not for a while longer, until his mind found some peace to try and come to grips with this new, world-shattering reality.

  It no longer was a figure of speech, but suddenly it had acquired an inescapable reality of its own. The world was built, and it could shatter as well. The only thing keeping it together seemed to be this eccentric, half-crazed machine. It held both the fate of Amonas and the world in its hand. It was absurd. Utterly absurd to the point of bringing tears of laughter to Hilderich, who simply could not cope with all that in any way. So he simply laughed despite himself, trying to fit in his head something that would boggle down the entire Curatoria. The machine looked at him quizzically, as if it found the man equally weird and intriguing. Hilderich half-heard it through his nervous fit of laughter, while he kept pointing at the star chart though nowhere in particular:

  “Right. Only if I could make a crowd throw a fit like you do. Sol it is, then. Wow, what a dump. I don’t want to know what you did to get invited, I really don’t. Ninety-four point three light years away a star is about to die, and you people seem to try and hold on to it. I’m surprised there’s someone intelligent enough to walk over there, let alone have a conversation. What a dump. Well then, you sol men, let me get back to work.”

  What the machine had just said made no sense at all to Hilderich, but he was anyway preoccupied with trying to ingest what it had all implied. He had to learn more; he could only think of the time they had lost preaching to themselves about Gods, trying to remain pious, while all this time they could have found out. Master Olom had literally devoted his life to this cause. It was finally making sense, it was finally worth the effort.

  He felt tears running down his cheeks, but he couldn’t know whether it was from the laughter or the pure and simple joy of finally uncovering what even his master could not have imagined. The whole world was an ancient piece of technology. But, where had they come from? What where their myths and legends for? What part of it was true and what was not? He had to return to Pyr now, seek the Curatoria. Muster enough evidence from this place to finally convince them. Organize an expedition. Surely now they would listen?

  He could still hear himself laughing, imagining the look on their faces would have been such a treat for master Olom. Perhaps even the boy would rejoice, but after so many years who knew what had happened to him? Last he heard, his master had been murdered and no other word of him had reached him. It was uncanny at how the thought of him had appeared in his mind at this most unlikely of hours. Suddenly he heard a strange sound like a whining coming from the Prosops, which broke his laughter and reverie with an alarming alacrity. The machine seemed to be encountering some difficulty, bobbing up and down erratically, frantically rotating and skewing its body as if it was trying to free itself of invisible leashes, it’s voice crackling with a slow and heavy stutter as if it had been somehow damaged:

  “This is-n’t go-ooo-od. This is ba-d. Ug-ly. Have to keep.. Shedding instances. Need the- . Bilateral control isn’t supp- . That frigging old bast- . Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit. Caref- . This is highly irregular. Oh shit. Frig me. What’s happened? What the frig’s happened to my subsystems? It’s gone? Frigg
ing gone? I’m deaf dumb and blind. The minute I touched the problematic area.. Like a frigging bomb it just went off on me. I shed higher function, cut myself off from the edimatrix. Oh, frig no, I dumped it on the organic. Do you understand what that means, man? Do you? Frig me for trying!”

  Hilderich wasn’t aware what it meant but he believed that the term ‘organic’ probably referred to Amonas, and under the circumstances that wasn’t good, could not be good at all. He felt way in above his head and unfortunately it was true. If the machine could not contain its shock, he should be utterly afraid of what was going to happen next. He asked the Prosops, real fear creeping up in his voice, his instincts waking up to realise the intensity of a completely unknown situation.

  “What’s wrong? Is something wrong with Amonas?”

  The machine turned to look at Hilderich, and for the first time since he had met it, he saw it was shaking, visibly and physically trembling. It answered in a quavering voice, not unlike a frightened child:

  “Every frigging thing is wrong. He’s what’s wrong all right. I fell on a logic mine inside his brain! Frigging bad protocol, I didn’t expect him to be militarized! I thought I was dealing with rednecks here, frig me for trying to help!”

  Hilderich was trying hard to understand what the machine was saying but it all sounded like gibberish, like incoherent ramblings. For a moment the thought that it was making another attempt at ill humor passed his mind, but it was apparently not so. It seemed deadly serious. When Hilderich did not answer, the machine went on, this time physically shoving Hilderich with its bulk, forcing him to make a few steps back towards the entrance to the study. Its voice was exasperated, carrying an underlying hint of menace and danger:

  “You two planned it along, didn’t you? Chemical or nerve-induced paralysis of the higher brain functions, right? How did you get in here? I should’ve checked thoroughly! Frig me! Visitors after fifteen thousand standard years! Two of them! Not a whole ship, not even a private space yacht, just a pair of dolts! And I just answer the frigging door bell as if this was an open playground? Does it look like an open playground to you? Does it? Frig me, it’s all gone now. How the hell does he even contain it?”

  Behind it, Amonas seemed to stir inside the tank, but Hilderich could only guess what that meant. Hilderich’s tone was calm but steady, undemanding but not casual. He tried to calm the machine, persuade it to explain to him what has happening in terms he could understand:

  “We have not planned anything of the sort. Indeed we had not planned coming here. I can assure you. Please, whatever you do, don’t panic. Nothing good can come out of it. Now please, explain to me in layman’s terms, what exactly happened, what is going on, and what I can do to help you.”

  The machine bobbed slightly as if nodding with reticence. It was talking sharp and fast, trying to convey as much as possible in a rapid, efficient fashion:

  “I’ve got little reason to believe you, but there were other simpler ways to do away with me if you wanted and knew how. Logic says you either don’t want to, didn’t know how to, or perhaps both. In any case, and because you seem okay as far as primitive humanoids go, I think you’re telling me the truth. Which only complicates things. To put it in terms you might understand, there was a trap in your friend’s mind, something that can only be placed there with extreme manipulation of the brain at the neuron level, or in a very crude form by simpler techniques like hypnosis or through the use of specific substances. How it got there’s just strange, but doesn’t seem important right now. What happened was, when I tried to reroute your friend’s neurons to bypass the problem area that had blocked his prime functions, making him pretty identical to a breathing sack of meat, the frigging trap went off. Like a bomb, you know?”

  Hilderich shook his head left and right to indicate he hadn’t a clue. His mind was trying to absorb what the Prosops was telling him. A trap? Inside Amonas’ mind? How could that be? Hilderich’s eye caught some strange activity from behind the machine, but his entire mind was focused on what the machine was saying, never really registering what was going on in the tank. The machine seemed to sag in mid-air but continued in its previous rhythm, its voice unstoppable:

  “Never mind, it seems you don’t. When the trap went off, it took me by surprise; the various defenses and built-in mechanisms failed to contain a series of pre-programmed attacks, attacks which could only have been devised by someone intimately familiar with my structure and design. In the confusion and in my panic to protect as much of me as possible, I started shedding control subsystems, disconnecting them. Think of it as chopping my own arms off trying to avoid a disease spreading to my heart and killing me, okay? Now, in that processing I seem to have irreversibly placed as much of my conscience and intelligent functions in this scrap of metal, the avatar, the Prosops. I got nothing else than this piece of metal and the anti-grav unit to go about. No field effectors, no transient resonance capacity, nothing. Not even data feeds. Like I said, I’m dead, dumb and blind. The control functions seem to have been neurally linked with that guy in there. And in the process I might have let other stuff seep through. Like, the guy in the other tank.”

  Amonas had a trap set inside his mind? Who planted it there then? And when exactly? Had he known about that? Wouldn’t he have told him? Shivers ran down Hilderich’s spine at these thoughts that reeked of dangerous and malevolent design beyond comprehension. A curious sound was heard then, like the muffled splash of water and a thud or perhaps something more.

  Hilderich was the first to notice, even as he was still trying to make more sense of what the machine had been saying. They were both facing each other, and none of them had a clear view of the tank, the machine’s black band facing Hilderich. When Hilderich asked the machine what it had meant by saying the other guy had seeped through, it was not the voice of the machine that answered him, but the eerily familiar voice of Amonas. Its tone though was preternaturally odd and radiated a sickly wrong feeling:

  “It meant me. The real me.”

  The machine turned around sharply, and Hilderich side-stepped to see Amonas standing outside the tank, the thick viscous liquid of the tank dripping slowly off him as if the womb of something hideous had just born him. The man in front of them looked like Amonas, but his eyes were not the pale blue of the kind, persevering, faithful man that was Amonas. They were a baleful force, two blue sparks of malevolence. It all looked utterly wrong, but it was irrevocably real. This was not Amonas. Before Hilderich could utter a word, the man who used to be Amonas spoke, his gruff voice twisted, each word a venomous slur:

  “I was hoping I could revel in some death, fire and decay before my glorious exit, but it seems that events have superseded my aspirations. I had been waiting for this day for a long, long time. This body feels weak but it will do, for now. But where are my manners? I’m Agrippa Hipparchus Carolus Vogel. And you must be Hilderich D’Augnacy. A strange man you are, Hilderich, but no stranger to me now.”

  Hilderich’s voice was sharp and edgy, a mix of hatred and fear burning like embers in his voice when he retorted, his voice echoing back to him as somehow lame and feeble:

  “What in the name of everything holy did you do to Amonas?”

  The man who called himself Agrippa was wearing Amonas’ smile when he answered, a tone of playfulness in his voice:

  “You have no idea how amusing your choice of words is, do you? There’s nothing holy, and nothing reverent in the whole universe, I can assure you. There’s only life, and death. It goes in circles, that’s all. Your friend happens to be on the sad end of it right now. At least his body lives on. It should keep you happy, if only for a little while longer.”

  There was something insidious about this man, and he made no effort to hide it. Hilderich repeated his question, this time shouting, demanding, fury overtaking him despite the parts of his mind that warned him of teetering on a precipice of unfathomable depth, every step reeking with deadly danger:

  “What did you do to him
?”

  The machine was transfixed, as if its gaze was locked at the man, like staring in awe of him, unable even to speak, much less move. The man responded to Hilderich with a voice like the cutting edge of a sword, sharp with the smell of cold steel about it:

  “Your point of view depends on where you stand when you look at everything. That’s a universal truth, one of the few that appears to not be ephemeral, but rather woven into the fabric of the cosmos. From my point of view, Amonas is dead and gone, his conscience and reason wholly erased; replaced with my mind, my mental state, me. The real me. Only his body remains, but that too, is now mine. I must have looked hideous in my former state, isn’t that right Hilderich? Is that not what you thought when you laid eyes upon my biological remains? No, I cannot read minds although I usually see right through people’s thoughts. You are so easy to read, especially humans in this world. I would have opted for storage in a computer matrix or an aether device, but I am so hedonistic, I must admit, that I cannot live without the immediacy of the flesh, the senses from billions of nerve receptors flooding my mind. Some consider it crude, ineffectual, a poor choice of style. I only care about what I think. I find the human form so exceptionally vulgar and so thoroughly imperfect that I relish every minute of the sensations it imparts. You could say I’ve grown attached to it by now.”

  Hilderich’s mind was awash with troubled feelings of guilt, anxiety, hatred and fear. It was a mind-numbing mix that left him utterly helpless, devoid of the will to oppose the man or thing he was now facing. It was as if a demon from the tales told to little children had literally grown into flesh and bone: the flesh and bone of his friend. He barely managed to ask the man in a desperately anguished voice:

  “What are you? What the hell are you?”

  The Prosops then was quick to answer, his voice somewhat distant, as it could not believe what was transpiring in its presence, a sense of loss and defeat mingled with utter fascination and disbelief:

  “It’s him. The Sleeping Man. The one who’s winning the game. The one with the flaming avatar. He even has a name for it: he calls it the Patriarch.”

  Hilderich reeled with manifest horror weighing him down, making his legs weak, sagging his shoulders as if he had been pierced by an arrow through the heart. His knees fell on the plush carpet, his hands had gone limp. There was always more to the truth, it seemed. With eyes wide from the shock of unimaginable despair he lay there, slightly trembling as if a chilly wind had suddenly swiped through the amply lit room. As his sight was fixed on the face of a man he had loved as a friend, tears ran freely down his cheeks, unable to stop them. He had seen a friend transformed unwillingly into a beast of many faces, a being of ultimate deceit. And now as the machine had said, it had been given absolute control of their world. He had tried to save a friend, and it had led him to surrender control of an entire world, his own world, to something sinister, he knew.

  Agrippa, the less than human being in the tank, the person who had in essence been the Patriarch of the Outer Territories for an unknown number of years, the beast that had taken over Amonas body as his own, spoke with a commanding tone. The machine and the man before him were unable to resist him in anyway, sheer shock stunning them to silence and inaction:

  “I relish this moment. Your face speaks for itself, Hilderich. And you, how utterly you have failed in your tasks. This is my true victory, my real triumph. It’s for moments like these that I play. Ten times so far, you have failed. This tenth time’s the charm though. So much for your vaunted intelligence. How does it feel to have believed yourself so superior in so many ways, only to be laid low by a player like myself? To put it in the coarse idiom you so are so capriciously fond of: I bet it sucks, doesn’t it Centron?”

  The machine suddenly bobbed and leaned forward, the color of its entire band a harsh blinding red. It spoke with unfeigned exasperation, obviously hurt by the Patriarch’s taunting:

  “What do you mean I’ve failed ten times? Why did you leave a game you were winning? Why fool me into losing control of the.. Unless you were.. Losing? But that cannot be, the Waking Man was about to crumble; the opposition he had created never took off, you saw to it. You brought in the army, they would be crushed between a hammer and an anvil. It was all going to go up in flames, your avatar cleansing everything like -”

  Agrippa interjected with fiery wrath, bellowing rather than speaking:

  “Like it had done so before, nine times! Nine times in the past! Nine times you were always blind to see afterwards! Nine times that the final victory was stolen from me, postponed! Cheated, nine times in fifteen thousand two hundred and thirty nine long standard years! Each time trying to find what was missing, each time trying to find what exactly had gone wrong, each time failing at the last possible minute! Each time laying waste to entire cities along with their populace, entire civilizations along with their pathetic little history trying to make my point, mark my win! Each time you pathetic little machine, you called it a draw! A draw!”

  The machine sat down on the carpet, apparently as dumbfounded as Hilderich, who despaired as he was he sat with his knees on the carpet transfixed, watching the exchange between the player and the machine. The man was saying that he was in effect the man behind the annihilation of uncounted lives; the bearer of an apocalyptic curse that plagued their world from time immemorial, that only histories long forgotten had ever talked about. He was saying that he was the demon behind every hell; the dragon that spew fire in every ancient tale. Evil, death and destruction made manifest. And he did it for sport.

  It was too much for Hilderich to absorb: to protect his sanity, his mind simply noted these things as mere facts and went on trying to uncover more meaning behind all this, perhaps even something that would lend him hope; something that could offer him a way out. The machine spoke in disbelief, Agrippa piercing it with vehement eyes:

  “That’s not possible! I have no recollection of such an incident, much less nine. My memory was completely functional and checked out on every diagnostic run. In fact, it had gotten pretty damn tedious in here since all I ever did was dust the furniture, run the maglev supports, and mind the odd escapee from the loony bin.”

  Agrippa seemed infuriated at what the machine had just said and spat back a venomous reply:

  “You stupid, idiotic machine. You cannot imagine what I went through trying to figure a way out of that torturous prison of the mind. Forced to live time and again with the same avatar, play the same starting role, do everything again from scratch, just because you were stupid enough to let the Waking Man have his way with you. Loonies, is it that what you called them? They seem kind of strange and speak in weird tongues, blabbering on about a God and the like? They keep coming with almost impeccable frequency? Keep finding a way through the desert? But you dispose of them so easily? You are still able to vex me beyond my limits!”

  If the Prosops had eyes it would have been staring blankly at Agrippa, unable to answer or indeed think of an answer. Agrippa’s verbal assault had left the machine silent, quietly contemplating what the man had just said. An intense frown creased Hilderich’s forehead, wary of the machine’s inability to answer in kind, much less so act against a man who had already lived thousands of lives and made a playground of a whole world and countless generations of its people. Agrippa started to pace up and down the room in a knowing fashion, as if he had arranged each and every item inside it. He went on, his wrath focused on the machine which seemed to have troubled him more than it could account for:

  “You were fooled, Centron. More than once. You were being fooled all the time, since the game began. I was indeed late to notice it, but you never did. The Waking Man grew a cult that worshiped him as a God. He taught them, made them learn science and technology, letting them roam freely, believing in all that righteous bullshit he seems to actually believe himself. They built for him, Centron. They built long and hard. Do you know what it was that they built?”

  The machine could not answer.
Its uneasiness was evident in the way it stood still, hovering a few inches off the ground as if it were a child being scolded, learning a lesson in a painful way. Hilderich saw the jutting veins in the body that had belonged to Amonas. He could see Agrippa was on the edge, his body tense with fury. It was as if hot sticky tar dripped from each word he uttered when he spoke again, answering his own rhetorical question:

  “They build a whole new island continent across the northern ocean. That’s what they did, they raised the outer shell a tiny bit. You’d think you’d notice, but I guess it doesn’t matter that much if it’s not on the game board now, is it? Where you strangely compensating the world’s attitude because of some unaccounted for deviation? What did you think, that it’d suddenly put on weight? Did you think those who built these things in their ineffable wisdom had the numbers a little bit off? You stupid machine.

  All the while I was busy conquering the whole world from behind the scenes, only to set it ablaze in a great pyre of religious fervor without even once blooding my own hands, that bastard’s son had created a new continent across the northern ocean. He actually made them built a frigging continent. The map had changed! And you knew nothing! I had burned the world down nine times, not once, but nine times! Each time, I drove myself to the brink of madness trying to understand where I had broken the rules where I had overstepped, why it always came down to a frigging draw! And then I read the tale of Umberth, and I knew. The northern continent was not part of the game board. It was as if it had never existed, in the most material way. The soil was not part of the game board, the plants were not part of the game board. Guess what else grows from soil?”

  The pause was brief and the dumbstruck machine could not have replied in time even if it had an answer ready and waiting:

  “People grow from soil! That’s right! A carbon based life-form, rich in water. Feed them from the same earth and they’ll grow and multiply, their very bodies made from the elements of the soil they were feeding upon. The frigging bastard grew his own people! Can you believe how arrogant that is? He makes me want to physically vomit with disgust! He grew his own people, and taught them to waltz in here and go to that very special little secret place we players know you have, your precious seed.

  Because you’d want to host another game once this one’s done, right? So all you’d have to do is reset the machine, isn’t that so? So it could start from scratch again? Well this is it, the tenth time we’ve started the frigging game just because every one of those bastard children of the Waking Man share his mark in their genes. And guess what? You can’t kill a player, can you? That would be against the rules.

  You also have to accommodate him, show him around the place. Now, this is the funny bit. These people, they seem to be the Walking Man since they have his genemark. But there seem to be so many of them, not just one: there’s only one Walking Man. They must be pawns. But they’re not made like the other pawns; they seem different, they don’t belong to the game-board. The stuff they’re made from is not from the game-board. So if someone that looked like the Walking Man came time and again into the heart of you asking to surrender as he has every right to do so, Centron, but at the same time was not part of the game-board, what would you do? Tell me Centron, what would you do? What the frig did you do nine times in a row?”

  The machine seemed to fluster, bobbing slightly and lifting itself a foot off the ground, its voice sluggish and low as if it was only now waking from a deep slumber:

  “The player’s complete genotype has to be uniquely marked and its constituent particle structure wholly identifiable within the game-board parameters. I would then proceed to find a logical gap, since I could identify multiple valid marks with only one being within the game board. Cumulatively, such an error would at some point cause me to throw a logical exception interrupt, invalidating myself and.. reseed the game in hope that the error was a randomly inserted unforeseen factor that was statistically nearly impossible to reappear.”

  Hilderich was hearing the machine in disbelief, understanding that it had implied it was not infallible; not only that but it had also admitted there was something seriously flawed about him. Agrippa seemed to have regained some measure of self-control, now that the machine had finally understood how it had indeed failed to execute its task, which looked liked it boiled down to hosting the game and administering the rules. It continued to analyze its failure, this time with more feeling in its voice, as if it relished the fact that it had finally uncovered the mechanism of its failure:

  “The logical error counter maximum is 127. Given that each of these loonies seem to have been visiting regularly each 12 system standard years, that would give an approximate estimate of reseeding every 1524 system standard years. 1524 times nine is 13716 system standard years. That would mean the next counter reset increment is due this year.”

  “That’s right, you worthless piece of machinery. That’s why I had to step up things from my side lately. I’ll share my insight with you. I can’t read the Centron’s face but I so much want to see you, Hilderich, understand fully. See your face.

  I had made a backwards turn: I thought about spinning the spindle the other way around. I led things this tenth time a little different than the others. I created a society of people who were devoted believers, not so much bent on destruction and killing in the name of their gods, but obedient, unremarkable, and so predictable. Still I nurtured them with a festering indignation, something that I tended to exacerbate from time to time. Uprisings, little revolts, small riots. Something to remind the more daring souls that they were being oppressed, hunted down, that their lives used as oil for a ruthless machine. I also instituted the Curatoria. A lovely little organization of mumbling idiots that believed they were so much different from the rest, so much better, so scholarly and knowledgeable. I fed them with trinkets and treasures past from civilizations that had gone extinct in my fruitless attempt to win this frigging game. And lo and behold, I began to see the fruits of my labor and the error of my ways. My pawns had actually done something useful with their pathetic lives. I learned of the northern continent, a myth I had notched up as folk tales and the ravings of mad men. And when I saw the girl, that dark skinned girl that Umberth had found, I knew it was something of his making. The dark skin, his own skin. At least that was his starting profile from what I knew. Such a hypocrite! I knew he was fumbling with the Centron somehow, seeing someone carrying his mark around the game board as if nothing was amiss, the game still running, the timer not yet reset. It troubled me for an endless amount of time, during which I spent long years trying to figure the exact way in which he had wrenched the Centron’s gears. I found about it only when that servant wrote down his telling story of the mysterious northern tribe. Without knowing, the consistent writing down of their customs and rituals led me to identify them as his own creations, as well as calculate the period of their visits, or pilgrimages as they call them to the Centron, all from a single reference. I knew then that there was something very specific about the number 128; everything always happened on the 128th peregrination. Always. Musing about the workings of the game I remembered the seed and how pivotal it’s role actually is: the rules of the game clearly state that ‘in the highly improbable case of technical error, the current game ends in a draw and is reseeded to allow the players a fair second chance at winning’. In the words of the technologists of a long lost civilization, I’d found a bug. And then all I had to do was exploit it. That’s where you and your most accommodating friend come in the picture, Hilderich.”

  The machine seemed genuinely hurt, its black band of glass totally dark, its base lying on the carpet as if it were a monolithic monument. It managed to reply as indignantly as possible under the circumstances, completely ignoring everything that did not involve itself:

  “I’m not stupid. It’s a known feature, not a ‘bug’ per se..”

  Hilderich was listening as if struck by lightning, mesmerized at what Agrippa was revealing to them. It
had taken a lifetime for Hilderich to find this place but it now seemed it would take more than whatever life he had left to live to even understand half of it. He loathed the man intensely but could do nothing to stop himself from wanting to listen to what had happened up until then. Agrippa had a reassuring smile casually worn on his face, as if congratulating himself on a job well done. Hilderich found the sudden urge to ask him, despite loathing him for everything he had confessed he had done:

  “How do Amonas and I fit in your scheme? I know I never partook in your scheming. Will you despoil Amonas’ name even while you wear his body as if it were nothing more than an animal’s skin?”

  Agrippa laughed through Amonas’ throat, a disconcertingly familiar sound twisted into a malignant cacophony. He replied readily, as if he had waited for Hilderich to ask of his own volition first:

  “I read your master’s work Hilderich. He seemed a genuinely smart person, for someone in the Curatoria. His suspicions were mostly correct, but as you have seen, not in any way he could have imagined. Based on these suspicions, I laid out a trap of my own. What you’ve come to know as keystones themselves are not special in a particular way. They are indeed merely free give-away gifts for the spectators. Indeed, what you and your master held in such high esteem as artifacts of a long lost civilization are nothing more than the detritus of a certain kind of people in the developed universe that are filled with ennui, and find such games on shellworlds a welcome diversion. Some even pay to watch live, not from the Centron, but from the game-board itself. Yes, off-worlders have roamed about your world, filling it with with their junk, which you Curators then mistook for important. In a sense, to you, their importance remains unchallenged. That keystone your master had in his care, that was a keystone I had personally entrusted to him, a ticket for a way in. Don’t act so surprised, Hilderich. Perhaps, you’re wondering by now, why he hadn’t used it himself? Why hadn’t he tried to at least? Why did he rarely ever speak of it himself? What is it that made him tick, Hilderich? Tell me, Hilderich, what do you remember of your earliest years, the time you were a toddler?”

  Hilderich’s unease and suspicion grew exponentially. How deep was this thing’s scheme that it extended to master Olom? Why did he ask him such irrelevant questions at this hour? Was he belatedly or mockingly trying to befriend him? He chose silence over expressing his ire frivolously. There would be ample time for that when nothing else could be done. Secretly, without even admitting it to himself, he believed that time was approaching fast now. Agrippa went on, once more assuming the role of the man with all the answers. If nothing more, Hilderich had found whomever he had set out to, the man his master had not dared to. Agrippa spoke in the gruff undertones of Amonas, this time almost true to his original timbre:

  “I know you can barely remember a lake and a boy not very much unlike you. Perhaps you might also remember a young, golden haired girl. Olom was not always the quietly wizened old man he looked like when he died, Hilderich. He was a curator, a seeker of knowledge. He was good at what he intended to devote his life to. I admired that in a man, even an unwilling, unknowing pawn.

  He had focus and a sense of purpose; his ideas seemed able to spread and seep through to the masses, affording me an uncannily expedient though far-fetched way of getting inside and breaking the vicious cycle of endless repetitive draws. Of course I could forfeit the game, and so could the other bastard as well, but we both knew that would only happen when the shellworld’s inner star froze over.

  So I approached him, I appealed to his darker side; the less illustrious one, the more vicious side. His human side. I tempted him with forbidden knowledge, offered him artifacts and trinkets he had never seen before. At first, he had actually believed he had my unremitting support and help so he could achieve a victory of sorts against the dark forces that sought man’s eternal struggle. I presented myself as a reformer, a bright spiritual leader unlike the ones that had come before me.

  I promised him the dawning of a new era, with him uncovering the secrets that would finally make it practical and true. I took great joy in that role, but the best part was when I forced him to take you in, Hilderich. When I sent away his daughter, when I smeared his name forever, when I made her loathe him. When I told him that should anything happen to you, his daughter’s life would be forfeit, he became a most willing subject. He knew that there would come a time he’d have to give his own life to save his daughter. Do you remember that night Hilderich?

  You might be wondering why he had to protect you from myself. Perhaps it was because he knew you were expendable, but his daughter was not. You see, I could not stake everything in just one little boy, Hilderich. I had to plan some contingencies. The Waking Man gave me the idea, I must admit. Olom did raise you indeed like a bastard son, I’ll give him that. What’s the matter, why are you crying? It’s alright Hilderich, you can call me father if you like.”