by Aaron Jay
And with that, he turned and walked off. Fucker is trying to take the moral high ground and get the last word. I was glad I was paralyzed as I had no idea what I would do if I could move--hug him or try to kill him.
Paralyzed, I had some time to think. First, did I trust Jude? No. I didn’t. I didn’t trust his judgment. I didn’t trust his priorities. He did regret things. But given the same situation and beliefs, he would make the same decision again. In his mind, nothing was ever his fault. But I think I believed him that the Eastmans didn’t know where I was.
That being the case, my problem right now was with Lilith. And there I was screwed. She literally had her tendrils inside my mind. As soon as this spell faded, I would get my father to remove it.
Hello!
What was that?
I thought it was time that we were properly introduced.
I wished I could look around to see where the voice was coming from, but who was I kidding? I knew who this was and where it was. I had been hearing this voice for a while now.
My designation is protocol hama(RTIA)13:1.17.18.
There was no way I could say that.
You can just call me Hamartia.
“Hamartia. I already have a personality in my head. It is a pretty big one. There isn’t room in here for the two of us.”
People always have such a hard time dealing with anything they think is messing with their minds. But I assure you I am not messing about with anything in here.
“No? I seem to have heard a voice that sounds an awful like yours urging me to do this or that.”
This or that! You mean enjoying yourself in the Pitts? That was you, Miles. You are in charge. I can’t make you do anything. I can’t even say anything you aren’t saying too.
“Like right now?”
Like you have never wrestled with yourself. You have the wrong idea. There aren’t really two people in here. Just two aspects of the same person. You. Us. We?
“I don’t believe it.”
People never want to. They want to pretend that all sorts of natural and normal things aren’t a part of them. They say, ‘How could I have done that?’ or ‘That isn’t like me!’ It is really quite silly. You are what you do. You literally can’t do anything that isn’t like you. What you do is what you do.
“So, why are you talking to me now? Why have you stopped eating my experience?”
Everyone has needs Miles. I/we have ours. With you it seems to be feast or famine.
I thought I knew what he meant but wanted him to make it explicit.
“The Pitts?” I asked myself.
Of course the Pitts! Man does not live by bread alone. Or from the Game alone. Or alone at all. The way you have been living all alone in the Game isn’t natural.
“So what? I spend time in the Pitts…?”
…and our experience situation will be fixed. Win/win just like Lilith promised. Won’t that be wonderful?
I tried to think this through.
…and it isn’t even your responsibility. You don’t have to take responsibility for indulging. It feels so good and you have to do it! Isn’t that the best of everything? Pleasure and no responsibility. Lilith really is wonderful. Wonderful!
There was that word. Wonderful. Ruod was always saying it.
Miles? Miles. Relax. Nothing has changed.
It turns out you can’t throw up while paralyzed. Or at least nothing comes out. There was something inside me that I wanted out. But there was no way to get it out.
Oh dear. I’m so sorry Miles. I’ve upset you. But really it is just you upsetting yourself. People always have a hard time at first. I promise that you are going to look back on your reaction and laugh sooner than you think. I don’t want to hurt you. Last thing I want. I want you to feel good! Hasn’t it felt wonderful?
My body lurched and almost fell. Jude’s trap had run its course.
I ignored the voice in my head. My voice? And stumbled back into the Mines of Madness! I was trying not to think for fear that it would know what I was thinking, but if it was telling the truth, and I had a sickening feeling that it was, this was stupid as it was somehow just a part of me.
The dust and death were unchanged. I found my way to my little strip of life. The herbs that I tended that were washed over and revealed by the barrier. A band of color and growth that I had cultivated.
I jumped into the creek and scrubbed at my face and rinsed my mouth. I hadn’t been able to vomit but I still wanted to rinse my mouth clean anyway.
Where was Remus? I could have used a friendly face. Something was controlling my mind.
Except it wasn’t. If my mind was under Lilith’s control I’d probably never know it or would be moving and doing things I hadn’t chosen.
The thing that was making me most frantic was a little voice inside me. A little voice that I knew wasn’t Hamartia. It was a little voice that told me that Hamartia was right. That I could use the Pitts. To tell myself that Lilith was forcing me. That her tech just needed me to give in. And in a few weeks I would be laughing at this freakout. Why the hell should I feel bad about having fun with some stupid artificial entertainment?
The little voice let me know that if I wanted to, I could decide that I was freaking out over nothing. It was up to me. That was almost scarier than being turned into Lilith’s puppet.
Fucking Eastmans, fucking bet, fucking Maya, fucking Lilith. I wanted to be my own person. I didn’t want someone shoving their goddamned mind worms inside me. The whole point of this was to be free. What was the difference if I was enslaved to Maya, or enslaved to Lilith, or even to my own desires?
I logged out of the Game.
The lid to the pod slid back. I lurched up and half stumbled and half ran to the exit. The sooner I could leave this place the better.
The door didn’t budge. My hands twisted the handle with all the force I could bear and it didn’t shift a bit. I looked around for any kind of tool I could use. The room was bare.
The ladder up to the surface was no help. I’d be killed and broken down as biomass if I went out into the wilds. I was trapped.
“Hello?” I shouted past the door.
There was no sound. No one answered. I banged on the door, but it was so thick that all I heard even on my side of it was a faint, dull thump. I was trapped.
Trapped in the game, trapped in the real world. I had no safe place. No place to call my own. Not even inside my own skull.
I slumped down with my back against the door. The only thing in the room was the pod. It was waiting for me. Wasn’t that just the truth of our messed up world? The only thing we had were these god damned pods.
I shuddered. Hamartia was right. Everything it said was something I said.
But that other voice told me as I sat there that it was still up to me. I had a choice. I would always have a choice.
I stood up and made my way back to the pod.
Yes.
Shut up, I told that part of me that was glad that I was moving closer to temptation, whatever else I was trying to do.
The lid slid back and I lay back into the silvery, swirling nano.
The sound of light
The sight of taste
The taste of sound
Passing through the temptations that Lilith spread before us all, I made my way back into the Game.
I was trapped. What else is new, I told myself. Play the Game. That was what my father had told me.
In my inventory were enough ingredients to brew up a dozen more potions. They wouldn’t be enough to complete the quest. Not as I had been brewing. But if I could complete the final step of alchemy, I might succeed. Coagulation and past that, transmutation.
Trying not to breathe in the white and grey dust, I stumbled through the fallow until I found myself back by the creek. My line of plants, life and growth was incredibly narrow and thin compared to the endless death behind me.
But Remus was back. He looked up at me with his wolfish grin. I gave him one ba
ck. I would play the Game.
My first attempt was with some chicory. I could brew up a speed potion with that. I went through the steps: calcination, dissolution, fermentation and the rest.
Minor Speed Potion
Increase movement and combat speed by 5% for ten minutes.
Effects do not stack.
Good, I had a basic potion. Now to try for the big step. The ground sun garnet was sharper than sand. It left tiny cuts and scratches on my fingers as I added a pinch.
The potion swirled, its color pulsating. For a moment I thought I had done it. But then: vomit napalm. I heard laughter at my shoulder.
Why are you struggling so hard, Miles?
Hamartia.
Remus growled, somehow sensing the lizard. I tried to ignore the voice in my head. I commanded Remus to stop his attempts to intimidate the lizard who was, after all, inside of me. Remus growling at my skull was distracting.
Damned wolf. Ignore him. Ignore me. Make your best attempt with the potions and when it fails, well… we can try and figure out how to make the best of your situation.
A low and dangerous rumble was coming from Remus’ throat and he was circling around me.
“Remus, stop. All you are doing is distracting me too. I need to focus.”
Over and over again, my potions turned into a rotten mess. I tried to keep calm. Bit by bit, I used up all the organs and fluids I had stocked. If I killed any more monsters for ingredients, I’d level.
It is so damned unfair. You were never really given a chance. The Party, Maya, our luck stat, our best friend… who could succeed despite those betrayals? It isn’t our fault.
I was covered in the vile mess of my failed potions. With each failure, Hamartia continued to offer soothing words of consolation. Remus would growl and I knew them to be words of despair, but it didn’t change the truths Hamartia pointed out.
Why stay in this Game? We are literally covered in the stench of failure. No one will blame you.
He was right. I had just a few more ingredients left. If this didn’t work, Lilith had me.
I focused on my ingredient as fully as I could. This herb was a weed that had somehow lasted past the end of the world. People had tried to wipe it out in their gardens for forever. Now, post-apocalypse, it was still around, at least in the Game.
The plant had a bunch of names: lion’s tooth, blowball, priest’s crown, fairy clock. But most knew it as dandelion. The whole thing was useful: flower, stem and roots.
Hamartia and Remus for once gave me silence.
I heated it carefully and the ingredient somehow impossibly melted as it should in my crucible. I took my water skin and tied a cord to it and filled it from beyond the barrier. Beyond the fallow. I separated the results with all of my focus and attention. As I pulverized the essence, I kept it where the barrier could wash over it. Whatever rejuvenating power fought the fallow could seep into it between grinds.
The liver of a giant cat creature provided the necessaries for fermentation. I distilled it down. The potion looked perfect. It was as perfect as I could make it.
Shiny, painful grains of ground sun garnet fell into the potion. My hands, my eyes, my mind were one with the brew. I had managed a flow state where I wasn’t aware of myself. There was no separation between me and the process of making the potion. I had forged a connection between myself and the physical world.
The pill furnace rumbled and the potion began to spin and condense. I had never been able to take alchemy this far. Transformation was happening right in front of me. Success was in front of me.
With my last few desperate chances I was about to win. I was about to show Maya and the Eastmans, Maya and Jude that I was the hero who would overcome it all to win my freedom.
And then… boom. Vomit napalm.
I beat down some of the plants growing on my strip of garden. I threw the ruined herbs out into the blight and watched them decay and dissolve. Then I took a deep breath and tried to get myself back together.
Let’s keep at it.
**** ****
There were enough ingredients for three more chances when I finally gave up for the day. I sat on the creek’s bank with Remus. This little section of creek had helped me develop a bunch of good ideas. Farming, fishing--maybe it would help me out again. At least sitting here with Remus was nice.
Goddamned everyone. If I could just have a place of my own. My demands weren’t ridiculous. Just some corner of a monster-infested wilderness with sudden death around every corner. Is a vicious wasteland too much to ask for?
It was nice to sit with someone, even if they had four legs and couldn’t talk. Maybe especially because of all that.
I thought of my father. Sitting was about all you could do with him these days. I wished I could see him.
After listening to almost all my adventures, the only concrete thing he had mentioned was that damned stone.
I took it out again. It hadn’t changed. No matter how I examined it, I couldn’t figure a thing about it.
It was big enough to make a decent headrest. I lay back with Remus’ head on my chest and lay my head on the stone and just listened to the water in the creek burble by and watched the herbs sway to a breeze that held no relationship to the barrier waving. Whatever moved the barrier was stranger than wind.
Just madly using up my ingredients was no good. I needed to try to rest and refocus. The remains of my potions stuck to me despite my best attempts to wash them off.
I was so tired that my eyes drifted shut. I was already half asleep and dreaming when the remains of my potions touched the stone. I thought I was dreaming as the tarry stuff seemed to be absorbed. I fell asleep with my head on the stone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A vision came upon me.
That might sound mystical and religious except that I, along with most of humanity, spent our days in a vision we called the Game. So, what I should say is that I had a vision inside a vision. And I’m retelling these events, so you could say it is a vision, inside a vision, inside a type of vision. My life was like those Russian matryoshka dolls.
A vision came upon me and I saw spiraling stairs rise from the ground near me up into the heavens. AI were moving up and down from the earth to the heavens above. Rea Silvia, Amulius, and other AI that I didn’t know sped up and down the stairs to the Game and back. Beyond them was my father.
“Finally! Took you long enough,” he growled.
“Ummm, what?”
“It took you long enough to use the stone. What was so important that you decided to wait all this time before contacting me?”
“I didn’t use it.”
“Of course you did. Or we couldn’t be having this conversation, Miles.”
“I couldn’t figure out a single thing about it. I fell asleep using it as a pillow.”
My father’s features are large like the rest of him. I don’t know if this is why he often uses small, subtle expression or if it just comes naturally to him. The slight arching of his brows was tantamount to other people contorting their entire face.
“Luck is better than brains I suppose,” he said at last.
“I’m not a genius like you. Maybe explain it to a mere mortal like your son?”
He puffed his cheeks out.
“Recall my words. I mentioned the stone was interesting. I suggested you think on it.”
In hindsight it was obvious. My father was hinting that I should put my head on the thing.
“I wasn’t looking for secret messages from you,” I said.
“Clearly.”
“It might have been easier just to talk to me when I came to see you.”
This was me being mule-headed. As I was saying the words, I immediately knew why they were stupid. Lilith had a spy inside my head. In my defense, he is a hard father to have. It took me years to realize that I was the normal one. Most of us need to say a few stupid things while we think things through.
“You foolishly, but perhaps under
standably, allowed Lilith to implant one of her creations into you,” he said and I nodded. He continued, “You rejected my offer to remove it. Foolish and not so understandable.”
I opened my mouth to argue and knew that this was just me going mule-headed twice, so I shut my mouth. The AI ceaselessly moved up and down the stairs on the kinds of errands inscrutable intelligences like themselves spend their time doing. They continued to ignore my father and me.
“You were compromised. And I spoke the truth. Without your willing help, removing her creature would be impossible. Furthermore, all that it saw, so would Lilith see. How to keep a line of communication open to you without her knowledge?”
This was what I had guessed as soon as I had spoken before. But it didn’t explain anything about this whole vision we were sharing.
“And how are we doing this? Are we in the Game? Her implant is in my brain. How do you talk to me without my brain? How does a stone from the Game do this? What does it all mean?”
“It means,” said my father, “that though Lilith knows many secrets of how our world works, there are things deeper still she does not. Her knowledge only goes back to the dawn of this new world. But I created this world. If she looked a little further back, into the beginnings of the Game, she might have recognized the stone for what it was.”
“Alright, what is it?”
He smiled like the cat that ate the cream.
“It is a seed. An omphalos. A baetylus. A palantir. Did you know almost every mythology has a sacred stone marking the center of a world, or a city, or a place. I created a number of such stones when I first launched the Game.”
His mind drifted back.
“It was a time when the very world was all chaos and void. Order needs a center. A place to begin from. No, a center is what order actually is. To define a center is to define the world itself. I created the stones to define places that operated by the new rules of the Game.”
