Ruth was gone.
Aliyah flailed, pinging the hivemind for her girlfriend’s location. Except Ruth’s rage floated up from the collective–
Dammit, Mom, I wanted to play!
Your strategies were suboptimal, dear.
That’s the point! I’m supposed to learn!
I’m supposed to teach you.
The only reason Ruth didn’t hurl the Nintendo DS across the tent was because she knew it had been Valentine’s.
“You OK?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” Ruth shook the Nintendo, abusing it because she couldn’t get at her Mom-construct. “I wanted to see… what you saw in this stuff.”
Aliyah felt half-truths rising up. Ruth had known Aliyah was exhausted, hadn’t wanted to steal her precious sleep…
But floating behind that was a deeper truth: she felt guilty over Valentine’s death. In driving Paul into choosing brute force over bureaucromancy, she’d made a lone ’mancer sacrifice herself to save them all.
This was Ruth’s fumbling attempt to preserve one of Valentine’s memories.
Aliyah hugged her.
“I know it’s broken,” Ruth said, so angry she couldn’t return Aliyah’s embrace. “I figured maybe I could play for a few moments before it rebooted. And…”
That explained Ruth’s fury. Ruth had sought Valentine’s memories of exploration, her ability to lose herself in the castle–
–and when she’d played, her Mom-construct had downloaded the knowledge from Aliyah’s brain to fill Ruth’s head full of winning strategies.
Ruth buried her head in her hands. “…Welcome to my childhood.”
That, Aliyah knew, was what made Ruth truly furious; her actual mother had killed herself, leaving her with a brittle Mom-construct who valued facts over feelings.
Aliyah’s father had cultivated her sense of wonder with beautiful magics before joining the hivemind; Ruth had never known mystery. Her Mom-construct had given her force-fed education, or panic.
“We could play together,” Aliyah offered.
“No.” Except secretly, Ruth said yes. Aliyah felt Ruth’s desperation to play a videogame with Aliyah, to tune into her joy.
Except Aliyah’s enthusiasm was entwined with fear. Playing videogames for fun triggered ’mancy, triggered flux, triggered death. She’d told Valentine videogamemancy was “baby stuff,” but Aliyah was pretty sure Aunt Valentine had known the truth:
Aliyah was terrified she’d kill again. And Ruth didn’t want to force her into those flashbacks.
“We could play together,” Aliyah insisted, taking the Nintendo. “I mean…”
Pressing the “start” button and watching Mario pop on-screen was like rebooting a part of her soul.
“You sure?” Ruth asked. But she knew: Aliyah wanted to grant Ruth the thrill of exploration, Ruth wanted Aliyah to get in touch with her childhood again.
More than that: now that Valentine was gone, Ruth wanted to know what had bonded her girlfriend and her aunt.
Aliyah called out to Unimancers from around the globe who had the spare cycles to play boundary guards. We’re gonna do my obsession, she told them. If you see me doing something impossible, stop me.
On one level, it was unnecessary; any time a Unimancer did something they’d once been obsessed with, other ’mancers were drawn to their enthusiasm like moths to a flame. Yet the crowds also muffled the obsessions, smothering other ’mancies with the low-grade pressure of now, you know that’s not possible whenever they strayed from normal human experience.
But Aliyah wanted maximum safety, so she called in spotters.
“Ready?” Aliyah asked.
Ruth squeezed her hand. “Let’s go.”
Aliyah raced towards the end in a full-on speed run, the kind of joyous fun you only got when you pushed yourself to your limit.
And she pushed herself to her limits, she realized; of all the people in the hivemind, she was the most skilled at Mario speed runs. Ruth cheered her on, surfing her enthusiasm as Aliyah did something no one else in the hivemind could do…
Then, in mid-Mario leap, the Nintendo rebooted.
No videogamemancy, the spotters chided.
I didn’t!
You did. Didn’t you feel that?
Aliyah exchanged glances with Ruth.
“…take this outside?” Ruth ventured.
“Yeah.”
They walked out; though it was dark, those fractures glowed like blacklight in the sun’s absence. Aliyah restarted, losing herself in another speed run, smashing through level 1…
The Nintendo rebooted.
The sky flickered.
“Do that again,” Ruth commanded.
Aliyah launched herself into another speed run – and the game rebooted within a few minutes.
So did the sky.
The hivemind woke at once, immense powers of statistical correlation brought to bear upon this problem.
Yet Aliyah knew.
She knew.
She ran to her father in the field.
“Valentine!” she cried, holding the Nintendo aloft. “Aunt Valentine! She’s alive!”
Mommy’s head snapped up.
“That’s impossible,” Paul said. “The buzzsects devoured her.”
“They did. They are. They’ve killed her every few minutes for a week.” She held the screen towards them expectantly until it rebooted. “There. She died again.”
“Aliyah,” Imani said slowly. “That makes no sense.”
Aliyah hugged the Nintendo to her chest, watching the game restart with a flare of videogamemancy, jubilant as she realized what that endless cycle truly meant.
“She’s reloading the game until she wins.”
Forty-Eight
“Run,” Valentine Says
Seven days ago…
* * *
As Valentine tumbled into the burning sky, buzzsects chewing her left arm to a stump, she contemplated the wisdom of her tactical decisions.
I saved Paul, she thought. But now an alien universe opened up to swallow her, and the buzzsects were the friendliest things swarming down to greet her; other, hungrier monstrosities were vomited up, beasts that made her pupil contract as her brain tried to shut out their sight.
She’d wanted a blaze of glory.
This was a meatgrinder.
“Get some, motherfucker!” she screamed – but that was pure bravado, mostly so Aliyah wouldn’t fall apart, because if Aliyah lost it then the Unimancers would lose it and somebody needed to fight these creepy motherfuckers. “I did my job! I protected the ones I loved! It doesn’t matter if I–”
But it did matter. She hadn’t protected anybody. Thousands of beasts erupted from the broach; the Thing would raze the Earth to get its rippling feelers on Paul. Buzzsects filled her mouth, ate her teeth, stole defiance from her tongue–
I can’t go out like a punk-ass bitch in his first multiplayer Halo game, she thought.
Her nasal cavities were strip-mined, her face reduced to a gurgling hole. They gnawed her eyes before burrowing into her skull…
Game over, man, she thought. Game over.
Then she thought:
Reload.
She had enough muscle memory left in her remaining hand to thumb the start button, selecting “Load” from the menu.
She summoned more willpower than she ever had before in her life.
She pressed the “X” button.
The world went black.
A white progress bar appeared, slowly filling as the world recreated itself – back to before the Unimancers had weaponized Paul, where she could talk them out of it–
The flux smashed into her like a hurricane. The universe’s core axioms hinged upon cause and effect – Valentine threatened to destroy physics by rewinding history.
Paul had once reversed time for entirely selfless reasons, giving himself up to the universe’s anger as a sacrifice. Valentine had never been that pure. Her good intentions were mixed with her
terror of being forgotten, of being incompetent…
The white progress bar wavered. It moved backwards, undoing all she’d done, dumping her back when the buzzsects had killed her.
I need to fight the demons! Valentine shrieked, furious. I’m trying to protect you, you stupid sonuvabitch!
But it was too much. Paul had told her that when he’d reversed time with his bureaucromancy, he’d felt that change ripple out to the galaxy’s edge – his faith undid events trillions of light years away.
Valentine didn’t have his conviction.
The progress bar rippled–
Smaller.
Valentine contracted her reload – a limited space, she thought. Just the sky above Bastogne. She struggled with time’s elasticity, pushing as far back as she could–
One and a half minutes.
One and a half minutes took everything she had.
She hooked herself deep into the fabric of space, memorizing where she’d been– the way her right leg had been sprawled out, the way her spine had arched as she fought the Thing’s inverted gravity, marking the position of those unthinkable monsters boiling out from the Thing’s throat.
She anchored a save point.
The progress bar inched forward again, and when it loaded it
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
“Get off!” she screamed, whipping her left arm aside as a swarm of buzzsects moved in to devour it. Flux flowed out of her, swirling into the save point; she’d accumulated a load of bad luck, but wouldn’t have to pay it just yet.
She looked down, hoping to see Paul; she saw nothing but that burning sky. The Thing had hauled her onto the demon dimensions’ doorstep.
She was the barrier they had to pass.
“You fucker!” she yelled at the Thing. “This time, I’m gonna–”
The buzzsects arced back around, consuming her left hand. She fired her remaining pistol at the buzzsects, but the videogame bullets filled them brimming with ’mancy; they chewed tunnels through her brain–
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
She kicked away from the buzzsects this time, switching from Bayonetta’s Scarborough Fair guns to her Shuraba katana–
They yanked the katana from her hands, unspooled her intestines.
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
The Kulshedra whip, that’s a distance weapon, it ought to–
She snapped a few buzzsects’ wings off before they chewed her skin off.
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
She tried every weapon Bayonetta had to offer – shooting them sideways, dodging until the larger monsters punched through, enticing the swarms to eat each other, launching herself straight at the Thing.
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
She died a hundred times, and somehow it was worse every time.
She trembled as she switched to Mortal Kombat’s Sub-Zero. This was no videogame death; she felt the pain as her body was eaten by buzzsects and shat out as unearthly fodder.
Fuck that. She shot an ice ball at the buzzsects. You’re Valentine DiGriz. Videogames are how you bleed off PTSD.
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
She’d learned to jerk her left arm away immediately after reload – but why hadn’t she reloaded from a more advantageous position? She always had to transition out of Bayonetta into whatever videogame she’d decided to try. She always flailed in mid-air, that off-balance shock never ending.
She missed feeling ground beneath her feet.
She missed seeing Paul and Aliyah below her.
She missed–
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
She was Contra now, her shoulders heavy with guns – and that exploded enough buzzsects to beat a path to the larger monsters. But those things had serrated tentacles, stepping through side-dimensions to
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
She was getting exhausted, she had no idea how long she’d been fighting, but
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
The save point darkened with each reload. How many times had she rebooted this pocket of hell? She felt it quivering, a catastrophic flux-load ready to detonate, increasing reload by reload.
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
When Paul had rewound time, he’d expected a meteor to flatten New York. She’d rewound time a thousand times, trying every way to beat these monsters and
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
Stupid Imani had made her memorize a list of videogames. She’d hated Imani so much for making her do that. Now she went down the list, using The Sims to buy a wall to bar off the larger monsters, channeling Pac-Man into mazes that funneled the monsters to her one at a time and she could tap an individual buzzsect to turn it into a Lemming the other buzzsects had to follow but
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
She was running out of games.
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
Or maybe she wasn’t; she was forgetting things. There were no beds; only the reload screen’s brief respite, a three-second pause before whipping your left arm out of the buzzsects’ way. And she
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
She longed for Robert’s violence, loving the way he’d punched her as they’d made love and how she’d punched him harder, that no-holds-barred grappling as they fought for domination and she’d always won but he’d never given in just to make her feel better, every night in bed was a victory for them both, and
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
She’d kill to feel Robert’s skin next to hers, that thick muscle under fat, digging her fingertips into his ribs to hear him wince, hurting each other so it felt so good when they finally made love, and
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
She didn’t make love, killing was all she could do, some of the darker monsters needed Pokeballs to hold them back, and the battles took longer but there were only three seconds of peace to imagine Robert before she yanked her left arm away and those fucking bugs the bugs were always to her left what would it be like to live when you didn’t have to keep whipping your arm
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
to
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
the
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
left
Valentine tumbled into the burning sky.
you can’t do this forever
The Thing croaked, the subsonic noise of tectonic plates shifting. She’d played the game forever and never gotten close to the Thing, its armies always stopped her, and oh God she’d never see Robert again.
“Try me.” Her voice was raw.
your flux
it’s fatal
“Fuck you!” Valentine screamed, atomizing buzzsect swarms with a cluster bomb, flinging a nanowire trap to cut some ciliabeasts in half–
you cannot beat me
even if you do
when you finish your flux will kill everything
“Not true,” Valentine lied, because it was true, she’d fought for days dying and dying and dying and every time she dumped more bad luck into the hopper it was enough to destroy a town enough to destroy a city enough to destroy
europe
“I will fight you to the end of the world, motherfucker,” Valentine hissed through clenched teeth, thinking of Robert, Robert safe in America, she couldn’t have built up enough flux to take out America?
you are the end of the world, the Thing said, and oh God Valentine knew that was true.
Forty-Nine
Cut the Cord
They met outside Bastogne, desperate to save Valentine.
“OK,” Paul said. “The one time I reversed time, I built up enough flux to obliterate Manhat
tan. So figure she’s got somewhere in that range. And… has anyone figured out how often that Nintendo’s been rebooting?”
Ruth’s eyeballs glowed as the collective transformed memories into hard data. “Assuming it’s linked to the sky, roughly between two and ten minutes per cycle. Though it’s been going longer as of late.”
Paul nodded in approval. “She’s lasting longer. She’s fighting smarter.”
Imani hunched over, as if the sky threatened to collapse on her. “Except how many reload cycles has she been through, Ruth?”
Ruth sucked in a deep breath. “We estimate two thousand.”
“So assuming a worst-case scenario of Manhattan, when she comes barreling out, she’ll–”
“Eradicate half of Germany. And that’s our best-case scenario. Because she’s dropping a catastrophic load of flux–”
“–right on the broach,” Paul finished.
“She won’t stop until she defeats what’s in there, or…” Aliyah couldn’t bring herself to say or she dies. “She can’t back down. It’s not in her nature.”
“But once she finishes, her flux will annihilate us.”
They cringed as the sky pulsed again.
“All right, Mr Tsabo.” The general sounded mildly perturbed, as though his flight had been delayed an hour. “What’s our plan?”
Paul stepped back. “You’re asking me to head this operation?”
“When Ms DiGriz breaks free and the havoc rains down, I want no chain-of-command delays. I’m delegating this to the smartest, nimblest person.”
Paul looked pointedly at Imani.
“We discussed that, dear.” She kissed him on the cheek. “But I’m not a ’mancer. I can’t sense magic. I can’t hook into the hivemind. The general and I will sketch out strategies – but when the time comes, you must make the call.”
Paul stared at the small army of Unimancers. “Remember when Aliyah was born?”
Imani covered a smirk. “The umbilical cord, right?”
Though Aliyah’s wild hair was tied back into a tight Unimancer’s hairdo, Paul was pleased to see her Please, Dad, don’t tell this story face remained as delightfully teenaged as ever.
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