Raine VS The End of the World (25 page)

Passersby looked on in shock as the tide of battle turned in a flash: two rooftop archers stunned Gerrit with simultaneous crossbow bolts to the neck, shattering his enchanted muffler. A thief stole his magic-resistant buckler, and a magician paralyzed him while a blacksmith shattered the runes on his prized blades, leaving them in a shambles that crumbled to dust. Templars then slammed Gerrit up against a wall, took his remaining weapons and armor, and sliced him to pieces.

“Hey! Hey, that’s mine!” Gerrit yelled as he felt his aural self disconnect from his body. He was now a disembodied spirit, unable to move, watching helplessly from the sidelines. The boy hoped to be taken to another respawn point, but soon realized that he wasn’t going anywhere.

The world was disappearing. Surfaces peeled off the cheering hunters, the wire frames underneath clearly visible. Faces faded into fog. No one else seemed to notice that the sky had become a flat matte painting, and then a total blur. Completely confused and at a total loss for words, Gerrit’s eyes caught a Templar walking towards him, holding open a small box.

No. Not this. Anything but this.

They were going to take him out of the ‘
Verse
. It would surely be the deep freeze.

Gerrit tried to run. It was no use. The Templar opened the box. With a large ‘pop’, his sense of sound disappeared. He could no longer smell. Alone in the darkness, his body began to unravel like a broken tapestry; fingers disappeared into thin air, ghostly skin peeled off pixel by pixel. And then he lost his vision.

The boy awoke in a spinning kaleidoscope. Gerrit had no body to speak of, and what he thought of as his consciousness was flying towards a vortex on the far side of the tunnel. He perceived forward movement, but was unable to influence his trajectory. Nothing remained but fleeting moments of perception.

Oh, he’d heard the horror stories of men who’d gone mad, those brought back from the edge. The shimmering white vortex told him this was no ordinary loading point or respawn. Time was of the essence.

Gerrit tried to forget that he had no mouth. He recalled some of the
Metaverse’s
programming language. was one of the commands. The boy envisioned it in his head. Nothing. He concentrated, willing the words to materialize.

At long last, he forced out a yell. An empty, echoing yell, but still a yell nonetheless that he himself had created.

It went something like this:

“AAAaaaaaaaHRRARRGLEEEE!”

The vortex of nothingness took the echo, interpreted it as text, and sent it off into the ether.

Thinking quickly, Gerrit drew a deep, metaphorical breath of virtual air and screamed.

[NinjaMageKnight99]: “GERRIT TO REVOLUTION! REPEAT THIS IS GERRIT TO THE ANARCHISTS! NINJAMAGEKNIGHT99 DOWN!! SECURITY COMPROMISED! CHANGE ALL PASSWORDS!”

He repeated this message as many times as he could; he knew soon he would reach the end of the vortex and blank out entirely. His words rang off the walls of the blank hub, assimilated themselves into text, and squeezed out of the whirlpool, drawn to
Endless Metaverse
by the two-way Network signal, perhaps never to be intercepted.

Gerrit’s mind came to wonder and doubt at the last second. Was it desperation that drove him to seek out Raine, or was it blind hope? Was she the one they wanted after all? Had she been a tool to get him into the Developers’ hands, or was he simply Lily’s tool to keep Raine out of theirs? Either way, it was too late. It was always too late.

I guess I’ll die as I lived,
Gerrit reflected,
a fool without the first clue about anything.
He felt his spirit fade into cold darkness.

▬

General Lacie watched from a newly manned Ukrainian airstrip in Sector Twenty as her interceptors combed the barren landscape. Leaving their sluggish air fortresses far behind, Lacie had split the scouts into multiple groups. She’d be joining them shortly; the woman awaited only the signal beacon, which would resound once the asset’s whereabouts had been ascertained.

Puzzling many of her subordinates, the target wasn’t among Lily’s primary base camps, but it housed the body of one essential piece in her grand puzzle. She was getting the battle shakes, an instinctive sign that they were getting close. Functional drones had picked up multiple infrared signals in this area just days ago.

All their lives, the sisters had been experts in the field of war games. The attack will have been anticipated. Lacie mentally prepared herself to take lives, if needs be. These souls would be on Lily’s hands, for holding true to untested convictions that only asserted her own control over the known universe.

Diary from Attempt # 4

July 5, 1099 A.D.

11:15 BT

The Belladonna 5000

It is two days until the siege of Jerusalem is set to begin, and Lucille is in the middle of a very uncharacteristic nervous breakdown. With Lily butting heads with her the entire way, the poor thing’s well-laid plan is falling apart.

The Holy land is visible from our imaging equipment and through the thick glass below our feet in the lower observatory, and if we do nothing, over a hundred thousand will certainly be slaughtered, mostly innocent civilians at the hands of the invading western Crusaders, sent on the first of a centuries-long series of skirmishes to capture the city.

Lorelei sits quietly in the middle, arbitrating, while I play witness from the side. I am to offer my thoughts after each of my sisters has spoken their testimony.

“Please, Lily,” Lucy asks, tears falling from her face. “Rutger has calculated a ninety-two percent chance of success. We can put an end to all religious conflict on the planet. With one gesture, we can halt hundreds of years of murder and warfare between the Christians, Muslims, and Jews.”

“By enacting a lie,” Lily replied coldly. “A bold-faced lie that we are messengers sent from on high. And afterwards, we will need to do everything in our power to protect our secret indefinitely.”

In two days the Crusader armies, low on food and water, arrive at the city and begin their siege. In less than a week the gates will be breached. The Muslims and Jews inside will be massacred by the Crusaders, spurred by their undying belief that they were doing God’s will, all the while furthering the interests of their power-hungry rulers.

Lucy’s gambit was for us to warp over the city in the midst of the Crusaders’ march and claim that we were messengers of the One True God, sent to unite all peoples of Earth to face a coming crisis. Holographic multi-lingual messages, visible to all, would command utmost respect, and any dissenters would be silenced by the sheer spectacle of the situation. This singular act, visible to the Crusaders and to the defenders of Jerusalem, would be enough for us to draft a new gospel, that of Goddesses of the Moon respectful of all religious views and walks of life, ones who would not tolerate war and injustices among men.

“Then it will be up to us to shepherd the entire human race in matters of faith,” Lily counters. “Even with centuries’ worth of writings by mystics and messengers of peace at our disposal, none of us are qualified for such a position. Plus, centralizing that sort of power will only lead to more death and destruction.”

At this, Lorelei forcefully slams her gavel down.

“Captain!” she cries out, turning every head in the room. “If I may, I fully disagree with your assessment. The masses’ faith can be used as a tool for their survival. Centralizing power will help us to keep order on this chaotic planet.”

She looks down through the glass at Earth, a most dizzying affair. “If they wish to see their gods mete out justice, who are we to deny them their rapture?”

Dear Lucy grits her teeth. “Lorrie, thank you for your input and support, but Lily and I are currently addressing one another…”

“It’s okay,” Lily tells her, placing a hand on Lucy’s trembling shoulder. “I’d like to challenge her reasoning.”

Lorelei cracks her neck and knuckles. Lily scribbles out some notes before responding.

“Lorelei, let me address the very crux of this problem. First off, we are messengers, not Goddesses. Though capable of asserting influence over worldly affairs, we must only do so when it directly benefits the mission. The goal of uniting the planet under a single mega-dynasty in order to centralize power was what brought Earth to destruction in my parents’ original timeline. If we are to branch out beyond the stars, it must be a goal shared by human civilization as an emergent value of its people, not an act of manipulation by its elite rulers. It is not something we can impose through a deceitful seizure of power, or the entire purpose of directing the human race will be to our own ends.”

With that said, Lily gestures to Lorelei, who begins penning her counter-argument. To keep the conversation going, Lorrie looks to Lucy, notices that she is still preparing her thoughts, and then turns to me.

“Lacie, you’ve been awfully quiet. I’d like to hear what you have to say,” Lorelei states.

I seem to have attracted Lily’s gaze by this point as well. I’m silent. I know this is the ultimate privilege, but what right do I have to decide the fates of potential billions of human beings? The weight of the situation is too much for my shoulders.

“No comment,” I mutter.

“Does this mean you approve or object?” demands Lucy. “Come on, Cie. You know what’s
right.
”

Lily quickly puts her hand up, the unwelcome word having shown itself again.

“On the contrary, there’s no right or wrong answers here, Lacie,” Lily tells me. “We haven’t agreed to anything yet. We’re all just doing our best to brainstorm our next attempt.”

“You do not speak for me,” Lorelei proclaims, once again dominating the conversation. “I’ll begin. The united world in the Alpha timeline came into existence after centuries of warfare between empires, with many terrible deeds to spring from the aftermath of this battle. We’ve sat by as many conflicts have torn East and West alike. We four alone have the power to lead humanity out of its rut and end a vicious cycle. If we can stop this warring as fast as possible, I say we make our plans, calibrate our personal translation modules, and prep a nice big fireworks show for all the believers. We’ll have a completely controlled environment, Lily.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” the Captain intoned. “It’s not just the results that trouble me with regards to this plan, it’s the methodology. I simply do not think that we have earned the right to play God. Extra-terrestrials, possibly, but--”

“We’re already playing God,” Lucy quickly intercut. “Lily, I think we have a real chance.”

“Perhaps. But in doing so, we rob the people of theirs. Beneficium accipere libertatem est vendere,” Lily says, showing off her Latin. (To accept a favor is to sell one’s freedom.)

Lucy’s quick to reply. “Dulce bellum inexpertis.” (War is sweet to those who have never fought.) “Remember the Tao, Lily. Give evil nothing to oppose, and it will disappear by itself.”

“Ah, great, they’re pulling out the Latin
and
the Lao Tzu. Dammit, ‘Cie, say something!” Lorelei cries out. “This stalemate can’t go on.”

“Give me a freaking minute!” I retaliate.

Scrambling for an answer, I inspect my pitiful notes, and know how little they mean. Lucy had already crunched the numbers of lives lost in these collective conflicts. If we acted within the bounds of the
Time Keeper’s Oath
, surely centuries of bloodshed might be avoided, and technological advancements could be greatly accelerated. Lucy’s plan was effectively a game-winning scenario. With our technology, we could claim divine rights over all that was God’s and steer the entire course of Western civilization. Byzantine would never need to fall.

But who were we to decide who lives and who dies? Could this ruse not be done earlier in human history? Tens of thousands of Christians died from starvation and disease on their way to the siege. What of their lives? Must they, too, be sacrificed for this one defining triumph? And by that logic, why stand by while the Romans conquer Greece? What of the countless massacres thousands of years before? What of the wars in Persia, India, and China, or slavery in ancient Egypt? We could take this all the way back to ancient Sumeria, to the Stone Age, or even further, to the days when the
Homo sapiens
wiped out the
Neanderthals
. Yet, even considering that this might be among the most “ethical” instances to step in and change the course of modern history, the complex web of moral difficulties only got worse from there: Such interference would certainly affect the Mongol campaigns in the coming centuries. What then were we to do? Attempt to spread advanced philosophies, teachings, and sustainable living methods, perhaps. The Black Plague could be halted in its tracks. The Renaissance could come a few centuries early. But ever the fires might burn at the hearths of would-be empires, and ever we would have to meddle, dispensing justice in the names of the Goddesses. Perhaps inevitably, we will be no better than those who brainwashed the Crusaders into committing genocide.

I explained my misgivings with the current situation. My findings seemed to please Lily, anger Lorelei, and humble Lucille.

“I don’t understand,” Lucy said, once I had finished. “Wasn’t our goal to simply save the human race? I can see no more lateral solution to the problem than to bring the peoples of Earth together under our banner at this early phase.”