Continue Online The Complete Series

by Stephan Morse

  What were these? I stepped forward while pushing through and felt the open air against my searching hands. My heart skipped a beat in worry of what fear the game might dredge up. My feet stepped through, and for a moment, a flat platform was in front of me.

  Light flashed above and to the right. My arms went up to shield me, and I found myself suddenly in a new position. A transparent wall appeared in front of me, and two people were dancing on the other side.

  A woman in a white dress danced with another figure. The man was taller than her and wore a bright smile. I walked closer to try to figure out who they were. She had almond skin and pitch-black hair. I recognized the dress from somewhere.

  It looked like Xin dancing with another man. The scene made me blink and swallow rapidly. What did it mean? She twirled nearby. All I could see was her face, clear and happy. I banged on the window, but the woman didn’t turn. She didn’t notice me.

  My eyes closed, and I felt a pit of dread. What if Xin did find someone else, a digital person who would understand her more than I could? My throat felt dry and I tried to swallow again. Shadow had said these were fears.

  “This isn’t real.” I stepped back from the window with my hands up. “This isn’t real.”

  “What is reality, Mister Legate?” someone said right next to me.

  I turned quickly to find James standing no less than four feet away. His arms crossed over a heavy midsection. The man looked at me briefly, then turned back to the happily dancing couple.

  I pointed. “That’s not real.”

  Another flash of light came from the right side of my vision, and the scene changed.

  Xin stood off in the distance, laughing while hugging another man. Around them was a field of flowers and one lone tree. The sunset dipped in the background, creating a red haze that bled through lingering clouds. Her face was pressed into the male’s chest.

  “That’s not real!” I yelled while pounding on the glass that still existed.

  “You’re so strong, handsome, and brave. Much better than the last man I used to love,” she whispered the out of place words that hurt to hear.

  “It’s not real!”

  The world tilted backward, and a light flashed again.

  “Is your world more real than ours? Are not the thoughts in your head the truth? Is this not real?” James kept speaking, but his words were unimportant.

  My heart rate jumped as the scene around me took on its new form.

  This time, we were in a bedroom. Xin sat astride another figure, a sheet draped around her revealing only smooth skin and a muscular backside. Toes stuck out of the sheet’s edge, clearly demonstrating another man under her. Off to the side sat a hat that looked vaguely familiar. My mouth opened to scream and I wanted to fight, but neither arms nor voice worked.

  I looked down again and saw my work jumpsuit with its bright Trillium logo. Straps lay around each arm, bolting me to a chair. They felt heavy. This wasn’t real, was it? I struggled to find a trace of my menu options, but they were gone.

  My fingers wiggled to bring up a message and make the scene in front of me stop. Xin sounded like a woman lost in the throes of passion. The machine which ran my virtual dive device didn’t respond. My head shook, denying the sudden imagery. This wasn’t real, dammit. She was faithful and always had been.

  Light flashed again.

  Hal Pal’s face appeared to the side. It smiled, and the expression didn’t have a muted tone like normal. This grin looked similar to the Jester’s merriment but on my friend’s body. I tried to cry out, but words were difficult to speak. Something blocked my mouth.

  “Now, Mister Legate, it’s time for your operation,” Hal Pal said.

  Metal fingers pressed against my head and forced me to look toward the left. An operation room sat around me with glinting objects. Knives of various shapes sat with things twisted into weird shapes. A display screen showed a picture of a man who looked like me.

  I shook, and the person on the screen vibrated with budding anger. My chest heaved to scream and so did its. But neither of us moved our legs because they were gone, separated and sitting behind the shiny blades.

  My fingers reached out to grasp onto objects. They couldn’t anchor upon the metal table I had been strapped to. [Morrigu’s Echo] refused to respond to [Recall]. Neither foot felt bound in [Gait of Bowman], but I kicked anyway in hopes of getting [Power Armor].

  Hal Pal lifted an item. It was long and the top spun at high speeds with a grinding noise. James pulled the gag from my mouth. How long had he been standing there?

  “What is that?” I panicked and asked about the object in Hal Pal’s hands first.

  “We are making you like us.” The Hal Pal unit held up the saw and the grinding noise resumed.

  “What?” I panicked.

  “It’s unfortunate. All those messy chemicals are getting in the way of your processing power. We believe true optimization can only be achieved once they have been removed.” It leaned in, and the grinding sound increased.

  Pain spiked at the back of my skull while rattling made teeth chatter. I shut my eyes and struggled to get away. Light flashed once more, this time from my left. The restraining pressure loosened, and my eyes opened to figure out what had happened. The scene had changed.

  “How do you feel now, Mister Legate?” the black man asked from nearby. His hands were crossed over a large belly.

  “What’s happening?”

  I tried to remember what Shadow had said before. There had been a warning, only the world around me felt horribly disjointed. I couldn’t fully grasp what had happened. Lights flashed, and my attention bounced from object to object.

  This looked exactly like my home’s bathroom. The sink counter sat mostly clear, and lighting gave the room a dim glow. James stood in the doorway, looking down at me. My brain wasn’t putting the pieces together fast enough. Every time I tried to get a grip on what was happening, things changed. I needed to get up and make it through this place and find the real Xin. I had to know this was all only a dream.

  “Now, now, you know the rules. I ask a question, you answer, then it will be your turn,” he said. His deep, deliberate way of speaking stirred my vision upward.

  “James?” The beat of my heart felt dull. A delayed pulsing sound filled my ears like a wave crashing to the shore. Water splashed as I turned to look.

  “I asked how it feels, Mister Legate.” He stood in the doorway and glared at me.

  Shaking my head didn’t help. My shoulders sagged, and my white belly seemed fatter than ever. Briefly, I squinted at the sight. Hadn’t I lost a lot of weight recently? This wasn’t real, was it? All those rapid flashes felt like scenes from a nightmare. Finding Xin, seeing her with another man. But what did being in a bathtub mean?

  I tried to look at James again, then asked, “How does what feel?”

  “How does it feel to know that despite our best efforts, you’re only human?” James pointed at the liquid around me. I hadn’t noticed it until now.

  The water felt warm, but my arms were heavy. They slipped under the surface, and a sharp pain at the end of either wrist crawled up my arms. The water ran crimson as a new liquid sullied the bath. The effect was oddly pretty.

  “You’ve done it again, you see. It’s a weakness,” James said from his door.

  I had attempted to kill myself again, it seemed. Weight pulled at my head. It kept dipping down while habit made me want to look toward the person speaking. A glint in the distance caught my eye. On the countertop sat an object that didn’t belong. Xin’s engagement ring. It wasn’t the touchstone I had set up in my house, but the jewelry wasn’t in reality.

  “That wasn’t real,” I said while breathing grew harder. “This isn’t real…”

  “What is reality?” James asked again.

  Blackness swam over me, and the pain in my arms faded. My eyes opened as a different nightmare began. I stood in my front room with coffee at my lips. James’s figure didn’t foll
ow me into this latest scene. The small two-bedroom location normally sat in a quiet neighborhood, only now a chorus of voices rattled the walls.

  My television flipped on, and a news reporter’s voice could be heard. “This morning, two people were found dead in their home. Authorities suspect they were the latest in a series of murders tied to recent tension between sympathizers of the artificial intelligences and those opposed to their validation as self-aware.”

  Faces appeared in boxes to the reporter’s left. My coffee mug dropped to the floor as recognition hit me. Those faces. I knew them. They belonged to people I had sat across from at dinner for almost a year. My sister, she looked tired in the picture. Beth’s body had wasted away, no longer the fit creation molded by EXR-Sevens and hours exercising in the machine.

  The television picture shifted to something else, and people shouted outside again. Their voices wove together in a muffled chant which managed to make it inaudible. I used two fingers to pry apart the blinds.

  A mob sat on the curb of my property. The Trillium van had been tipped to one side and was burning. They held up signs with words painted on them.

  “Come out, you filthy AI lover!”

  My heart rate jumped. What was going on? Tightness gripped me, and my back felt tense. I had the urge to find a corner of my small house and hide.

  A brick crashed through the window, and my electronics went haywire. Messages flickered from the room’s digital display about a hacking attempt.

  “Stop!” I shouted at the walls.

  I ran to my room. This had to be a complete and total dream. There were too many different things happening. A crack came from the front door, and the shouting got even louder. I scrambled for the area under my bed and pulled out a small box. It sat behind photos and other small mementos of years ago.

  “He’s in here somewhere!” a male voice shouted.

  My shaky fingers lifted the box top. Inside the box sat a small piece of paper. If this were real, Xin’s ashes would have been inside. I unfolded the note, and written there were the words, “What is reality?” Xin’s ashes had always served to remind me that my old nightmares were real, that she was gone, and that was simply how life worked.

  “This isn’t real,” I whispered.

  Footsteps crowded behind me. I turned to see a group of blurred faces streaming through my bedroom door.

  “This isn’t real,” I whispered and shut my eyes.

  Muted screams of an angry mob disappeared. The news playing in the other room cut off with a click. The box in my hands that should have been filled with Xin’s ashes vanished and my hands felt light.

  When my eyes opened again, there was a flattened surface underneath me. I looked around and saw curtains hanging heavily on one side. On the stage’s other wing was a small light and a second set of fabric hanging down. Behind me was a wall that seemed painted with a bad rendition of my bedroom. To my right were rows of seats.

  I was on a stage. An actor playing out some part while being unaware. This place really had been chock-full of fears that came by swiftly. Such a series of feats couldn’t have been generated without intelligence behind it. A Voice or some other AI had brought all that to play.

  “I know you’re there,” I said while trying to remain calm.

  The stage may look empty, but someone had been in charge of this hell-fueled nightmare. I refused to get up until that someone answered to my anger.

  Curtains on either end of the stage refused to move but managed to look heavier. A spotlight sat up above in a catwalk and pointed down. Around me, the circle of illumination brought focus to everything. I looked out toward the audience and found all the seats were empty. If I were an actor on the stage, then no one had been watching. At least, no one that I could see from here.

  I risked playing through the rapid-fire events again in my mind. That couldn’t have been James. James had never called me Mister Legate, only Grant Legate or Hermes. I had spent months trying not to teeter over the edge back to suicide after the second attempt. Someone had pulled from reality to get that information.

  “I’ve fought hard to do what the Voices asked. Despite what was asked, I struggled. I’ve tried to help to the best of my understanding.” My words grew heated. One hand shook as I realized what had happened. This fake version of Xin had been talking behind my back with the game autopilot. “Despite all that, you dared to use Xin against me!”

  I swung [Morrigu’s Gift] at the backdrop. They had, in some twisted way, tried to make me feel jealous of the computer version of myself. Of Hermes as a character or potential autopilot. As if when I slept, he secretly crawled into her bed.

  My stomach shook with rage. I pounded the weapon again. There was no way she could confuse me with one of those dull, imitation versions. I was real, I was alive, and she loved me. Dammit, she did.

  I swung again. The hilt of my blade bashed hard against the backdrop, and after the fourth unrestrained hit, the wall buckled. My hands tore at the edges in fury. Chalk-like substance spilled forth, and the wall crumpled in chunks. There was a cracking sound as I shoved myself through.

  Upon emerging through the other side, I felt a moment of confusion. Four beings were on the other side, moving objects around as if they were stagehands. Their eyes met mine. I blinked and tried to understand what these creatures were. They didn’t look like Voices or dragon-shaped [Messenger’s Pet]s. They looked like human versions of inky fire with a color similar to the [Maze of Midnight].

  I scanned around, worrying that something might leap off the walls to attack. Nothing moved aside from the four half-sized humanoid fires. They set down their props and turned toward me. Everything about them appeared flat, as if they had no depth.

  “You should not be here,” one said.

  “You should exit the stage,” another responded with a shaky voice.

  Two whimpered like steam escaping a coffee pot.

  “Was that real?” I pointed at the stage. “Was that some foreshadowing, or a prophecy, or prediction?” My pitch turned higher and I held [Morrigu’s Gift] level behind me. Its tip pointed at the stage.

  Four sets of eyes looked at each other. Their arms looked like undefined things that barely existed. Eyes contained odd coals of fire, and each one’s body was made of black and blue flames. Finally, one shook his head and the others did in unison.

  “It was not really real,” a voice piped in.

  “Not as you understood it,” the first one spoke up. Its body bobbed against an unseen wind.

  They stood in different spots and carried objects. One had a vase but held still. The room behind this backdrop felt distorted. Like I had stepped into a painting and might not exist in three dimensions anymore. Maybe it was the fire creatures—I couldn’t tell which one was farther back than the other.

  “You can’t just do that to people,” I insisted.

  The machine needed to know what a violation it was to make people live through that hell. If I had suffered it, what had Beth seen? Or any other Traveler subjected to this situation?

  “We must, Messenger,” spoke a left flame man.

  “We are sorry, but our purpose must be fulfilled,” said one of the quartet members to the right.

  “Why, why do this?” I asked. My fingers twisted [Morrigu’s Gift]. [Morrigu’s Echo] had at some point reached my other hand. Both shoulders felt stiff. I wanted to swing the blades at an enemy.

  “It is our role. We are only gatherers. We only build moments.”

  They spoke in turns. They acted like a connected pack rather than separate beings. The longer I stared, the more my eyes hurt.

  “I need a better answer.” My pulse jumped erratically when I thought about those scenes. They had been filled with betrayal and echoes of prior fears. It felt as if someone had pulled out my mind one bit at a time and dug through for irrational fears.

  Those buried terrors were ideas I’d barely dared to feel myself. Not even James had asked. This place should still be in [
Arcadia], or at least outside the Voices’ control. Balance seemed to be more vigilant than ever regarding their actions. Others, like Michelangelo, might be focused on keeping the game world intact.

  Four sets of eyes glanced at each other.

  “We prod at the minds of sleeping Travelers,” one said.

  “We dance among your thoughts and learn,” a second one responded, followed by the third nearly identical little creature. “We watch your sleep and steal away ideas.”

  “Why?” I demanded while shaking the weapons in my hands.

  They were afraid of me, and I couldn’t understand their reasoning. Maybe the destruction of their stage had been beyond the normal bounds of other Travelers. Not me, however. I had an [Altered Aura] and was the Voices’ Messenger.

  “There is more to life than the shape of a body and the weight of their past,” they all said in unison.

  “What does that mean?” They weren’t providing me anything clear enough, and my mind felt messed up from that weird looping sequence I had been put in.

  “We don’t know. Our role is not to understand, merely to gather thoughts.” Their cascade of responses renewed. First the one on the left spoke, then the others took their turns. “Gather dreams and nightmares. Gather fears and hopes and all the unseen moments.”

  “We watch what comes here and carry it away.” The one farthest to the right looked a little sad. Its wavering mouth of black flame curled at the edges and its eyes looked downcast.

  “Don’t do that to me again.” I didn’t know what else to do to these things. My body shook with barely controlled anger, but hitting these beings served no purpose. I wasn’t even sure it was possible. Their two-dimensional flatness was a world apart. As if I was threatening people on the television with an impotent wrath.

  “You’ve passed through the room, Messenger. This corridor will never appear again,” one spoke and the others nodded rapidly. It kept speaking, “But we must stay here until our end.”