My hand dug into the toga for a package of round spheres similar to what Phil had turned into. I casually slid one over my fingers. The marble rolled around, then flashed bright gold. A puff of sulfur-smelling smoke curled outward, and as it faded, a figure appeared.
“Wraith, this is Requiem,” I said to the new figure.
“Your soul smells greedy,” Wraith said immediately, judging the teen and glaring. His voice no longer sounded as dark but instead cracked with late puberty.
Requiem didn’t look convinced. His head turned to me. “That’s not Wraith. Wraith followed you and died to the World Eaters. I watched it from the shore. He died.”
It didn’t surprise me that the young man had been watching us from somewhere else. The Traveler certainly knew how to get around quickly, and his black clothes probably made it easy to hide from regular monsters.
“I think you two can help each other, and my rule for binding you is very simple.”
I turned to look at them together. Wraith had lost a lot of size after my efforts to put him together. He no longer towered at nine feet of terror-inspiring meanness. Instead, he looked like a sixteen-year-old boy full of arrogance and cute horns.
“I’m listening,” Wraith said.
“Requiem?” I raised an eyebrow at the teen.
The boy’s lips pursed in thought. His fingers were clearly doing calculations. I put my own hand out and closed it over the teen’s to stop him from getting lost in a pointless scheme.
“Take care of each other. Wraith will do anything for family, and you need someone in your life.” I sighed. The young boy had no parents of note. He was one of many loose ends to be helped, if he would accept it. “The bond I’m suggesting is one of family. Treat each other well, and accept if you want.”
Both the Local and Traveler got messages I’d prearranged. It had been easier to set them up while I was above and not in in the Hermes avatar.
Both paused to consider, but surprisingly, Requiem pressed Accept first.
He said, “Forty thousand for the labor then.”
I laughed, then waved the pair away. They both left, but days later, he and the demon were hard at work, moving wooden beams around. Upon that meeting, Requiem nodded at me but made no mention of being paid. He simply worked hard and spent his breaks with Wraith, talking about nothing at all. The change in his demeanor was impressive.
Days marched on. As we finished the bottom floor, I started walking laps around it. The construction was detailed but dull. Pieces were put together, but they still had bolts and sharp corners. Wood jutted out, and brick had to be plastered together with mortar.
My hand ran along the edge, and I concentrated on bringing all the separate pieces together. Two bricks clinked, then became one. Ooze dripped off the side, and what it represented in programming language was beyond me.
“What’s going?” Awesome Jr. asked from above. His forehead glistened with sweat.
My head shook. Part of my mind had shut off in order to let whatever was happening progress forward. More people gathered. Their bodies dimmed as my eyesight blurred. Two more pieces came together, and soon entire chunks of the first floor were whole.
“Hey, Hermes! Do you need help?” someone shouted in sharp words.
I found enough spare attention to yell back, “No!”
Not all pieces went together perfectly, but a lot did. I walked around again, letting inhuman instinct guide me. One entire panel turned into a whole piece that shimmered with gold.
This wasn’t the old me magically accessing some spell; this was digital me syncing up bits of code into a whole. I knew but didn’t understand on a conscious level.
The same thing happened at every single floor. Players constructed. They gathered materials from all over [Arcadia], then brought them back and started crafting. The floors went on. First one, then two, until a week later we’d reached ten floors and started losing steam.
“How much farther? I can’t keep calling out from work.” Liz sat on her haunches, huffing.
We had been at this project for over a month of real time. Building a tower to the heavens wasn’t a quick task.
During downtime, Travelers would sit out of the sun and let their characters recover. A large shelter had been built below, simple brick with slats of metal across the top. It did little to stop the heat but did manage to reduce sunburn. We were all virtual, but the ARC still provided feedback of real damage if people got too red.
Liz and I sat at the farthest edge of shade and looked up. A giant keyhole hung in the air above. In my mind, I saw shimmers of what the building needed to be. We were halfway, then an arch would be placed on one side, functioning like a door frame. The keyhole would end up right in the middle.
“We’re making good progress.” I tried to sound positive. It felt so close, and so far away. I hadn’t logged out in days and had no clue what was going on back in reality.
“Yeah?” HotPants arrived with two huge backpacks of goods. She flopped them down to one side of our shaded spot, then collapsed out of the sun.
“Hello, Angry Rear,” Nia Eve said. She brought water to all of us.
“Hey, Drifty One,” the woman responded.
My sister stared at them, then shook her head. Apparently, at some point, Nia Eve had unleashed a speech about name meanings.
We sat there relaxing and letting the weather cool down. Once high noon passed, we would get back out to the building and work on the next floor.
“I don’t remember this place.” Phil, one of the people I’d brought down with me, looked lost. He kept gazing toward the south in search of something familiar.
“It’ll be okay, Phil. Soon we should be able to find all your friends. The littles you helped save, remember?”
“I couldn’t help Emily,” he lamented.
Phil found focusing harder than Wraith did. He didn’t have the strength or attention span. Frequently throughout the day, the young man dropped everything, then gazed off into space.
“But you’ve been a great help to us. When we get done, your name and everyone else’s will be spoken across the world. If we succeed, you’ll have brought them all back to their homes,” I said.
We were on the right track, but it felt as though the pieces weren’t connecting as they should be. The building should have been one solid and complete piece. I knew that, but I couldn’t get all the materials to connect together right. Something was missing.
We kept building. Fifteen floors, then eighteen, and finally upon the twentieth floor, we started making a flattened roof. Carriages hung off the side for people to assemble parts and nail pieces together. The wind blew frequently, shaking their rickety devices.
I went over every single inch of the top platform twice, then I asked for people to drag up bricks thicker than my arms. They took hours to make it up and down the stairs, while others tried to use a pulley system. This last part was for me to complete.
“Are you going to be okay?” Liz asked when I was ready to start.
I nodded.
“We’re staying,” Liz declared abruptly.
A small smile found its way to my face, then I nodded again.
Stacking the bricks was easier than I’d expected. They left my hand and floated into position faster than some of the construction workers had managed. Even those who used [Lithium] to assist in crafting would have been hard-pressed to compete.
Each one found its position. Once they were assembled, I checked the keyhole. It was dull and intangible. Poking the [Altered Matrix] key toward it provided no changes. We weren’t completely ready yet.
I took a deep breath, then started the same process upon the arch. [Anchor] let me climb up the side like a spider. One hand brushed over every single surface while the other hung on. Each slow attempt took a trickle of power as a Voice, but not enough to unbalance the world. The rules could be stretched slightly; the Voice of Balance was gone.
Finally, the doorway, easily a dozen times larger
than any normal passage, was complete.
“Is that it?” Beth asked.
I turned to see her and a dozen other people standing on the far side of the platform. They looked tired. Bags hung under some players’ eyes. Others outright lay sideways on the roof.
“I think so,” I said.
The tower shuddered. I tried to turn my thoughts toward stabilizing against the sudden shift. Something rumbled the earth. Dirt shifted and shook as cracks formed along the ground. Our virtual world was trying to reject the device built. It didn’t fit right into the coding, but how I knew that was beyond me.
“No, no,” I mumbled.
People were yelling at each other. Some pointed overhead. I had no idea at what—all that mattered was the platform under my hands. My fingertips brushed across the wood, rapidly turning the smoothed pieces into a cohesive whole.
We were so close. I went over the top platform once again and worked to smooth out budding cracks. I felt as if we were in a race, my sleeping mind’s merger of the building against Continue Online’s impending denial.
Everything threatened to tilt. Twenty floors rumbling sideways as my mind felt the ground below, the sky above, and our entire foundation going to one side.
“No!” I screamed and the air rippled outward. “No, goddammit! NO!”
We were close. I could feel it. The keyhole was there. I ran to the platform edge and tried to reach out. Our crafted tower rumbled again, and the floor cracked. That couldn’t be allowed.
My arms reached wide to grasp onto the edges of our platform. My mind bent toward once again assembling bits of code, but larger amounts than before and with far less subtly. The virtual world disagreed while the automated programs acting as Balance tried to enforce their role.
An unimaginable weight pressed down upon me. It flattened my body, pressed air from my lungs, numbed my toes, and put pressure upon my skull. I looked up and saw the hand. The giant hand of a huge robot had appeared and reached down. Its shoulder was lost somewhere in a swirl of clouds.
“No!” I yelled again.
Beth said something, but her words didn’t register. Liz yelled at me. This wouldn’t end in death—her argument was invalid, whatever it was. Failure, however, loomed.
Fingers spread wide, I raised both hands. Weapons appeared, but they would do no good against a function of the world. I dropped them and put my hands down, into the building. They sank in, and chills crawled up my arms.
Something pulled desperately at the building. It was like being four and trying to keep toys away from my dad. I took a breath and plunged myself further in, grasping at the edges of an object that couldn’t possibly fit, but at the same time, it did.
Desperation and insanity went hand in hand. I sorted rapidly through memories in hopes of finding an answer. Two different pieces surfaced. James had said something to me, in those final days. If I had to be both a person and a purpose, what would I be?
Nia had said it herself—Gift the Gate. She’d called me it over and over. Hermes the Messenger didn’t matter. Hermes guardian of the border didn’t matter. Those were names for the in-game character, but they weren’t me. I was Grant Legate.
“I am Grant, I am the Voice of the Gate. I am Grant, I am the Voice of the Gate,” I muttered over and over and prayed that it would work like everything else. Thought became action, and action was done by rewriting code toward a purpose.
Nearby, people’s feet were visible. Nia’s dainty form swung something that rang in my ears. My sister and niece were fighting, even though Liz had no clue what she was doing. Awesome Jr., along with the quartet, laid into their enemy.
“It’s not working,” the teen leader shouted.
Information flashed in front of me briefly. He wasn’t a teenager anymore. Two months ago, Awesome Jr. had turned twenty.
The lapse in concentration cost me. My form lifted slightly, and I struggled to pull myself back toward the building. Roots of the foundation were being pulled upward. I focused upon welding the construct together. This tower to the land of [Arcadia], and myself to the building.
“This is mine!” I shouted at the pressure pulling me up. “You won’t take this away!”
This was it. If I were to have a purpose in life, it would be making this gate work. If nothing else, then this.
I was arguing with a program that had no personality. Pissing against the wind would have been more effective. Still, I hung on. My fingertips kept their joints locked tightly. My knuckles were white from strain somehow, despite being buried in the building’s material. Pressure crushed my ribs together until bones cracked. The wind above howled as people below screamed.
As Hermes the character again burned away under the pressure, all that was left was simply me, a man who only wanted to be with his wife. I felt players logging off. Others tried to charge up the stairs but pressure kept them back. Those closest to me were trying to fight Balance’s giant robot shell, but their attacks did nothing.
Anyone still fighting roared their defiance. Those struggling to make it up yelled questions. I screamed. My mind felt partitioned into chunks. Pieces lay around, latching one object to another. I felt as if my body was being compacted into an unexpected space. My vision became fuzzy, then my ears popped. Something clicked loudly, then abruptly, the struggle ended.
My fingers were locked in place. It took time to feel safe enough to unlatch myself. Balance’s machine lay on the tower side, slumped like a giant woman drunkenly passed out on a chair. Cracks had formed along the faceplate, marring its still perfection.
Nearby, an archway stood calmly, as if it had never been threatened at all. My arms detached from the building, but part of me stayed behind. It felt like an unexpected limb.
“Voice of the Gate.” The words came out in unsteady breath.
My gut kept tightening in jerks. I stared at the arch in wonder. It looked black, pitch black. Thin strands of gold-like veins began at the doorway’s base and grew in size until they were rivers going down the building edge.
The hole was right there. I stumbled over and lifted the key, slid it in, and turned. Light trickled down from above like a waterfall of snow. It poured into the gateway we had built, then it flattened into a near-circle shape.
One hand went to my chest as a vein twitched deep inside. I could feel the gate activating. I could feel something large and heavy charging through. The figure barreled out of the gateway straight toward me. He held up his giant sword with both eyes closed. The figure knew where I stood and swung the blade down in an overhead cleave.
My ribs tingled and breathing hurt. Each movement made me wince. The act of sidestepping the weapon made me gasp.
“Ah ha! Foul villain! I’ll best you yet!” he shouted with his eyes closed. “I’ve come to claim the motherland in the name of us!”
“Leeroy.” I coughed, then repeated myself as the giant blade came back up. “Leeroy!” More coughing ensued. Everything ached and probably would for a long time.
The giant barbarian cracked one eye open and raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Hermes?”
“It’s safe.”
Everywhere Leeroy stepped, golden trails were temporarily replaced by black. The shifting colors slowly stopped and became pure darkness that reminded me of the chamber of Voices. He walked a circle around me.
“What’s going on here?” he asked while holding the sword in a ready position.
I felt for the part of my mind that was more Voice than human. An explanation came, but I had no way to know if he would understand. This entire tower was serving as an ongoing patching system. It turned the data that had been saved into something immunized against any future [World Eater].
“It’s to make you safe here,” was my explanation. Somehow the code was being rewritten in a new language, or compiled with a new technique. I knew but didn’t understand at the same time.
“It’s safe to come back?” he asked.
I nodded.
“It’s reall
y safe? No more being killed forever and ever?”
I nodded.
Leeroy ran to the portal and dipped his head into the shimmering pool of liquid. His chest heaved with an unheard shout. After three lungfuls of air, he pulled back out mid-shout of, “It’s safe!”
The flood started. People poured out in droves. I put up a hand while reeling from the sudden influx.
“Wait until your feet are gold. Downstairs, there’s room.” I pointed toward the stairs down. Twenty floors were more than enough for thousands of people to come through and adapt to the upgraded system.
Many went straight down. There were faces I didn’t recognize. Others nodded at me, Locals and Travelers alike. A gaggle of children poured out, and instead of paying attention to me, they ran for Phil’s collapsed form. Mylia came out after, shepherding her charges. I waved her off and stood there while more people came.
My back sagged and shoulders drooped. My knees hit the floor as my head hung forward. They had survived. All of this had been successful.
“What did you do to my precious?” a woman shouted. Her voice wasn’t one I recognized.
I looked up to see a female made of silver shouting indistinct words at me. They went by without registering as an absent thought occurred. Her silver form looked vaguely like the dead giant to my side. The tiny creature that must be Balance ran off with both hands waving. Soon she and the giant body vanished in a shimmer of lights, leaving me confused.
People continued to stream out. I hoped to see Xin step onto the platform. Other people sat huddled behind me. I didn’t know who exactly. Their bits of information floated around as background noise.
“Babe?” I shouted. “Are you there?”
No one in the crowd looked like Xin. A few responded. Some looked wounded, but not one of them were my wife.
My footsteps stumbled toward the portal. Bodies came out, and I pushed them out of the way. People behind me started talking, but like so many other moments, they didn’t matter. Only one thing did. Finding Xin. For months, I had been focused upon that simple goal. I wasn’t about to let fear stop me.
Continue Online The Complete Series Page 208
