by Keith LaHue
"I don't work at that fuckin' shithole dump anymore. Understand? Just pile the garbage in the back. Make it a game. Try and hide it from me. I don't want to see that shit in my car again. Got it?" Karl was crying in pain. His father let him go, but not before saying that the kitchen looked okay. Now start on the downstairs bathroom. Karl sat on the back stoop for a long time. His dad had gone back inside. He cried for an hour, and then he got mad. He thought of how he was going to kill his father. He would kill him and let the little girl go. He would tell her to go to the police and tell them that he had killed his father and they could come to get him and put him in prison for the rest of his life.
An hour before dinner, Davey was looking at the model. But not touching. He took a picture of the Great Wall. He was going to show it to his dad soon. He just had to think of when would be a good time. There was something else wrong with the model. That bridge to nowhere, in part of the New York part. His dad had spent many hours with it, taking his time to make it just perfect. He said it had historical value. Davey wasn't sure just what that meant. It didn't lead to another part of New York. His dad had said that the only part of New York that mattered was Manhattan, so that was all he had built.
The bridge led in fact, to the old west part of the model, where the Grand Canyon was. Davey had often played Cowboys and Indians there, but not since the time he'd left his painted up army men there, and somehow they had moved. They'd been piled up in the Grand Canyon. He hadn't played with them since. There was something about that occurrence that made him uneasy, in the same way, that the Great Wall building itself bothered him too. Not enough to stop him from keeping track, but still, it was odd.
Now in the part of the model where the bridge met the old west, there were blue markings. Like a fine spray of dust. It started around the middle of the bridge and stopped a few inches into the old west. Like somebody had dragged a powder through there, leaving a trail. He knew there were people living there, but he didn't think they'd be able to do anything this big. He took a picture of it as well, in addition to the one he'd taken of the Great Wall. The Great Wall would be finished soon. He wasn't sure, but he thought that the terrain that the Great Wall snaked through had grown as well. How could that be? He flipped through the pictures on his phone. The terrain had grown. And that wasn't something that people of any size could do.
28
Caius wasn't comfortable looking through the telescope, it was Artimus' baby. Nevertheless, he looked, and once he had seen what Artimus had referred to, his emotions ran wild. There was a convergence of lay lines across some bridge in the Manhattan part of the construct. And they'd been disrupted by the passage of two of the Manhattan beings crossing. What this meant Caius wasn't exactly sure. He took his eye away from the eyepiece.
"What does this mean?" asked Caius.
"It means that there's going to be a disruption of the magical continuance in the greater world, not just ours. Whatever magic user cast this spell and then let it run without tending to it is patently irresponsible. They should know better."
"Are you saying that we'd be better off if none of us had gained awareness, and we're stuck in that awful loop, doing the same things over and over?"
"Point taken. No, I'm glad we are for the most part free, but the lack of a guiding hand does concern me. I don't know what the intent of the creator of this scenario, and all of the others was, but clearly, it's out of control. Those two shouldn't have been able to cross. When they did, the point of magical convergence upon which the creator's world existed was seriously fucked. Now the creator has a much bigger problem. Yesterday I pointed the telescope straight up, and then around. This entire world - the one we know of - is contained in some kind of wooden and mortar enclosure. One of the giants came down, but she was only concerned with some kind of machine in one part of the room not taken up by our world. She was putting clothes into it. So we're in a room. One of the giant’s rooms. But if I am correct, and the lay lines of the universe, and I mean the greater one, not just our world, have been disrupted, magic in their world is about to go to hell."
"So what should we do about it?"
"That I don't know. Our world had been unattended to for some time. Even if the Giants did suddenly appear, we'd have trouble communicating with them. We're infinitesimal to them. They'd need a microscope to see us. Talking to them is out of the question. And the limits of our environment make it impossible for us to do anything they'd really notice. Like, spell out some message in giant words. Assuming they speak our language."
"I think it's a safe bet they do. Unless they speak ancient Roman, we're speaking whatever they speak. It would be beyond their abilities to create us with the knowledge that they don't have."
"I'm sure you're right again. You do possess a great intellect, greater than mine. This disruption in the lay lines may prove to work to our advantage. It may make it easier to cross over from own world to the next."
"Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"I am not. It may create chaos in a world were order was - and will be again - the rule of the day. I suspect that the creator didn't intend for any of this to happen. I think that he or she created us as a by-product of the structures. He may not be aware we exist. And if he does, he's done a terrible job of monitoring us. If everything went according to the creator's plan, I doubt that there would be any needs or wants in this world. Our self-awareness is a mistake."
"One that will eventually be corrected."
"I believe so. I think in the long run, we'll be back to rats in a maze as some point." Artimus paused. "We can approach Manhattan from its west. We know that beyond Manhattan is the desert environment that the two from Manhattan crossed over into. How ironic it is that while they wanted to escape Manhattan, we want to enter it." He turned to Caius. "Are you in? Are you coming with me?"
"What about the river?"
"There's a bridge at the far north end of the Manhattan area. It's called the George Washington Bridge. I don't know why I know that, but I do. It stretches from the southernmost part of Rome to Manhattan."
"What else lies to our south?"
"The edge of the world, we'll need to be careful not to fall off." Artimus smiled at this thought. For beings currently caught in an existential conundrum, he found it amusing that death still scared them.
"I'm in."
The George Washington Bridge was only partially completed. It was the northernmost area that Dave and Davey had created, rather, planted the seeds of it, in order for it to grow. The last time Dave had looked at it, it was only half there. Now it spanned the fake Hudson and led directly into the Bronx. He hadn't created it either. With the disruption of the lay lines, New York, which Dave had considered finished, was growing again. Harlem had sprung up and was in danger of intruding on Paris.
Yankee stadium was there, as were the Yankees themselves. Being new, they still lacked self-awareness. They were content to play the visiting Red Sox every day, and like all days, they beat them. They were content, and since they knew of nothing else, they had no needs or wants beyond the next game.
Further south in the model was another story. Near the Brooklyn Bridge, which was in danger of actually reaching Brooklyn, chaos had erupted. Brooklyn itself was being created, and encroaching on the Old West. The Old West was one of the larger areas due to the nature of the landscape, but the divide between the new inhabitants (dull and stuck in their loops) and the old, who were now self-aware, was striking in contrast.
A protest had sprung up on Wall Street. None of Jimmy the Quick's former co-workers were even putting up with the pretense of work. Most of the inhabitants of Manhattan, save the new areas, knew that it was a sham. Restaurants emptied out. Newsstands carried only the same paper every day. The people were becoming aware that nothing was real, and that their very existences were questionable. The homeless did their part, as always, carrying signs that said the apocalypse was nigh, that sort of thing.
Circles of thinkers sprung up, t
hey gathered in the park. The drug dealers, along with their customers, had realized that none of what the dealers were selling, and the people were buying did anything. So they'd stopped. Getting high was about like eating. It just didn't matter. The thinkers, many of whom had suspected the truth even before the lay lines had been disturbed, were at the center of the new wave philosophers. Self-styled intellectuals that had come to the conclusion that absolutely nothing any one of them did or said mattered at all. They didn't matter. They knew they were artificial. Several of them had committed suicide, only to have their physical beings resurrected the following day. And while this didn't lead to depression, as that was a distinctly human emotion, it did act as a catalyst. Some of them were beginning to feel. This was something that none of them had experienced, it frightened some of them, and piqued the curiosity of others.
One of them had tried setting fire to one of the buildings. He'd gone to a gas station (where were the cabs?) and bought a five-gallon jug of gas. He'd returned home to his elegant brownstone in the west eighties, and doused the living room. He struck a match and dropped it. The smell of the gas, which just a minute ago had smelled like gas, became inert. The match went out as soon as it hit the floor.
He'd returned to one of the circles of thinkers in the park and told them of his findings. Now it was against the rules to try and tear up the city. The city was growing, pointed out one of the thinkers. Brooklyn was asserting itself, and Harlem was undergoing a growth spurt. Some of them had been to see the Yankees beat the Red Sox, and while it was the same game every day, it was something to do at least once. They all figured it would only be a matter of time before the awareness spread to the new parts of the city. The thinkers had been careful not to let on to the reality of the situation. It had unpredictable effects on the newcomers. It served no one to confuse and frighten the recent arrivals, who had sprung up out of the magic that had created them all.
So they had discovered magic. The thinkers were the first, but the news quickly spread. Some of them thought they could use magic to break out of this prison and become real. The cognoscenti among them knew this was impossible. So with the advent of the current line of thought that "nothing was real" the question arose that if nothing was real, what were they to do? If nothing they did mattered, then why do anything? Including sitting around and figuring out the situation.
In the Old West, Jimmy the Quick and Jerome (he now hated the name Dizzy, and out of respect, Jimmy had acquiesced and stopped calling him Dizzy), were standing on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. There was no sign of life anywhere. No snakes, insects, nothing. Had this area been created without life? Jimmy and Jerome had debated this, with Jerome insisting that life wasn't the word for it. They had been wandering the desert for three days straight, stopping only when the light went away, resuming when it came back. So Jerome had argued that they weren't truly alive. They had no need for food, or water, or even rest. They could continue on forever, and never need to slow down. They didn’t get sunburned in the muted light.
Jimmy supposed Jerome was correct, it rankled him just the same. He didn't like to think of himself as not alive. According to Jerome, they were some kind of artificially animated clay or something. Trying to prove him wrong, Jimmy took a knife and cut himself. They both watched in amazement as blood did flow and then stopped. Within a few minutes, the cut had closed, and Jimmy felt no different than he had before. So okay, neither one of them truly existed. This depressed Jimmy. He was in the throes of this emotion when it occurred to him: If I feel emotion, how can I not be alive?
He made this point to Jerome. Jerome looked at him and thought. He was right. If they had emotion, then didn't they have to have at least a modicum of life? He'd been pissed off when Jimmy the Quick had continued to call him Dizzy. Anger was an emotion too. It hurt his brain, if he had one, to think of this. He recalled Descartes, a part of which he had learned in school. "I think therefore I am" was the gist of the argument.
Wait a second. Jerome hadn't been able to remember ever having gone to school before. He was exceeding what he had previously been. But hadn't this been the case all along? Since becoming aware? If he and Jimmy hadn't begun to exceed their original design, for lack of a better term, they never would have gone through the painstaking task of crossing over into this section of the world. Jimmy must know this too. He turned to him. Jimmy was spacing out on the view.
"We are real," said Jerome.
"We've been over this. We don't eat, we don't piss, and we don't shit. We're not alive."
"'I think therefore I am', that was said by an ancient philosopher that I shouldn't be able to remember. But I do. I recall it from High School. A few days ago I didn't remember High School. Now I recall it, not clearly, but I suspect as time moves on, it'll come back to me." Jimmy looked lost in thought at the magnitude of this.
"I went to business school in New Jersey, which doesn't exist, at least not in this reality. I just remembered. I went to High School too, but I can't recall where."
"We're exceeding whatever we were. Whatever created us, a god, whatever, we're continuing to grow. We'll become more and more human - if that term applies to us - as we go along. Let's walk north. We're obviously not going to cross the Grand Canyon, though there is a way I'm sure. I've got a hunch we'll find out more of we walk along the rim of it, to the north."
"Okay, so we go north."
The two of them set out along the rim of the Grand Canyon. They walked for hours until the light was almost out. Far in the distance, the two of them spotted smoke rising on the horizon. There was no firewood to be found, and they both wondered what could be on fire in this vast wasteland.
Far to the north of Jimmy the Quick and Jerome, a tribe of Native Americans had made camp. They had been amongst the very first inhabitants of the construct. As such the majority of them had been self-aware long before the lay lines had shifted. When the lay lines had gone, they'd become one hundred percent enlightened.
The Chief was the first to understand that with this turn of events, the disruption in magic, he could now create fire. The dumbass creators hadn't thought to place any firewood in this most inhospitable terrain. The Indians were trying to find their way out of this world, they knew without a doubt that there was more to the world than this.
Over the past few weeks, they'd evolved. The turn of events would have pleased Jerome. The Indians now possessed rudimentary bodily functions. They'd had to dig latrines. The Chief, who had taken the name Tom (most of them had forgotten what their Indian names were) was trying to teach the others magic. He was the sole provider of food and water, and he needed help if they were all to survive this hostile environment. He understood that they were originally creations of some (?) being or thing he didn't know. But they had learned and grown. One need only to look at the sky to know that the world they were living in wasn't real. There was no sun. No moon, no stars at night. Tom had learned how to summon a variety of food from the quite thick ether that surrounded them.
It was a matter of controlling your will, he explained to Lucy and Walter. You just had to picture what you wanted, force all of your concentration on it, and soon it would appear. Both Lucy and Walter were like Tom, they'd been modestly aware before the lay lines had crashed, or whatever had happened to them. As Tom was the sole provider of food, and it took him a long time to come up with enough to feed the six or seven dozen of them. They'd camped next to a river. They all found it strange that there would be a river here, maybe something greater than they had created it for them. So Tom continued to teach as many as he could. Out of all of them, he thought it likely that he was the only one who knew that they had originally been simple beings, decidedly not human. And now they were becoming human. He knew that telling them this would only serve to upset them. They would continue to evolve until whomever or whatever had created them undid the powerful magic that had created them.
The magic that created them was only one part. No true life could be created b
y magic, only the illusion. So how has it come to be that they were now alive? If not alive, they were the closest approximation of life ever seen by one created via magic. There had to be an answer, and Tom felt certain that they would only find out by traversing from this segment of the construct into another one. He thought it possible that the other constructs were not as far along as they were, developmentally speaking. Still, he wanted to find out.
Tom had taught Lucy and Walter all he knew. He saw them across the camp, focusing their energy. His teaching hit pay dirt when out of nowhere a rather garishly iced cake appeared. He walked over to them.
"Congratulations. A cake, how novel. How did it come about? I'd have never thought of it."
"I was remembering my birthday. It's a far away memory, from someplace called Los Angeles. I don't know exactly where it came from. But here it is. Would you like a piece?"
"Not just yet. See if you can create another."
Lucy bore down and closed her eyes. She pictured the cake more easily now, having already created one. She was rewarded a moment later when "pop", another one appeared. She laughed at how easy it was.
"Good Lucy. Now make enough for everybody. Can't hog it," grinned Tom. "And yes, I would like a piece."
Later, Tom sat alone, having gorged himself on the cake. He thought that becoming human in a world that didn't do a good job of catering to humans would prove problematic. It never rained. How would they grow crops? He had an idea that magic would eventually leave them whenever the Mage's that had made this place got around to fixing them. What then? Would they go back to being the automitons they had started out as? The thought of not being wounded him. He above anything wanted to live. And he wanted these people he was with to live also.
There were others. That night while he slept, (now he truly slept), he dreamed of the others. Two of them would be here tomorrow; they were from a city called New York. They too were still in the process of becoming fully human. Or at least as human as they could be. In his dream, he was running with them, back to a place called Manhattan. It was one part of a bigger city. And that city was growing too. It would soon exceed what its creator had intended for it. The two that were coming tomorrow didn't know they were in the process of alive. But they could think, and as such, they were a part of the grand continuum that had been set in motion.
