Raine VS The End of the World (31 page)

“You lost me at ‘malicious signals’.”

“Surely you’ve noticed how you seem to be followed by data storms? Those black pixels aren’t pixie dust. They’re packets emanating wherever you are mentally present, probably from a software mod. We use a similar technique to maintain the servers with minimal interruption. You, on the other hand, or whoever seems to be using you as a puppet, have been corrupting our creation by returning forbidden data to the
‘Verse
. Case in point: Charles Hayter, that old man you met in Clyde. He ran around mad today, stripped off his clothes, and started a riot that lasted for hours, jabbering on about ‘Earth’. The application renovating the Wall of Secrets flipped its wig, demolished half the wall, and abandoned its post. It’s still on the loose.”

“That scholar with all the coats is one of yours, too.”

“Stephen Seele is one of our psychological programs. After investigating you, it went missing in action. Look, either you’re fooling us, which is highly unlikely, or you’re someone else’s puppet. In any case, you’re in danger of being frozen.”

“I’ve done no wrong, and I’m a Developer. You can’t freeze me.”

“On the contrary… it’s true that as a temporary Developer, you are off the wanted lists. Once the effects of your crown expire, however, you’re fair game. We’ll just throw you back to the crowd. For that, I give you two minutes, tops. But there’s another option in this,” Mr. Senior began again, his voice growing silkier. “If you help us, not only will we make you a brand new account in the server of your choice, we’ll give you all the Gold you could ever want. You’ll possess power without measure. Fortune. Fame. More friends than you’ll know what to do with. Would you like to be an Empress? It would only take a snap of my fingers. If space travel is more your thing, we are working on a new server that will link together the others, as well as create a multitude of satellite worlds with various environments. Low gravity. Motherships. Custom worlds. You’ll be able to travel between different galaxies, and you can help us test it all out. I’m sure we can come to an understanding, yes?”

Raine rolled her eyes.

“Let’s say for a second that I can even trust you to keep your word. You’re still wasting my time. I don’t want a new account, I just want Gerrit back,” she said at last, although it was hard to resist his charming words.

In another world, Raine might have jumped at the opportunity, but she continued to heed Lily’s warning.
This place is insane.

The politician snapped his fingers. A hologram took shape from the table’s spherical centerpiece. It was Gerrit, sitting silently at a school desk. The camera pulled back to show that this lifeless apparition was merely an occurrence within his true consciousness; the boy’s frail body was strapped tightly to a mobile chair, a sickly expression decorating his pained, pale face.

Raine gasped. “G-Gerrit…”

“The procedure went without a hitch. His mind is frozen, but he still lives. And he can join you in paradise.”

A false paradise.
The girl’s heart fluttered, but the choice before her was all too easy. It had to be a trap.

“You’re a sociopath! B-b-but sweet-talking me won’t work! M-my answer hasn’t changed. I can’t trust you to keep your word. Not when you have the power to erase people’s memories.”

Mr. Senior jeered. “Even if we were capable of modifying a person’s memories without their consent, which I can assure you is not the way we do business, we couldn’t possibly have touched your pretty little mind. Our tests have confirmed that we simply lack access to your nano-machine network, and by extension, to your brain. For that same reason, I’m afraid we can’t arrange your reunion with dear Gerrit unless we can locate you. Please. Don’t abandon your life to the whims of the fates.”

Raine thought she did a good job of concealing her disappointment.

“Would you like to live in the
Metaverse
? Imagine if you will a realm where your heart’s desire is a wish away. You’ll have governments at your command. Unlimited power and influence.”

The offer was tempting, to be sure.

But nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, when something’s too good to be true, that’s because it is.

“Look, Mr. Mister, what is it you want from me?”

“We need three things. First, tell me anything you might remember about your hub, your entry point into the game. It will help us determine how and where you’ve been patched in.”

She nodded for him to continue.

“Second,” Mr. Senior said, and then followed up with a dramatic pause. “We need information about a terrorist who has been on a horrifying rampage. If you don’t help us catch her, she could very well threaten the ongoing operation of
Endless Metaverse
. That wouldn’t be very good for the world outside. Many lives will be lost if her path of destruction is allowed to continue.”

“She?”

“She calls herself Lily. She’s a menace. And a murderer.”

“
That
Lily? The little girl?”

“Looks can be deceiving. Haven’t you considered the possibility that she is trying to use you to her own selfish ends? When you met her she told you something odd. Yes, we saw that. She said, ‘don’t pop the blue balloon’. Now, what could that possibly mean? Is it a code word?”

“You tell me. That was the first and only time I’d met her.”

“You swear,” he pressed, though it was clear to Raine he was searching for the reaction to come from her eyes, not her speech. Mister Senior held the death glare for an uncomfortably long time.

“Very well,” he said. “But consider this: Lily has been known to modify users’ memories. You could still be a sleeper agent without knowing it.”

“Coulda woulda shoulda. My memories are genuine.”

“Said with such confidence. As for the third thing – we need authorization to temporarily de-materialize you. As I’ve mentioned, thanks to that crown on your head, we can’t even touch your avatar. Please give it to me. The process will only take a minute. And it’s the only way we can help.”

As Raine scanned the room for possible exit strategies, a Templar’s muffled voice sounded out from a small speaker by Mr. Senior.

"Incoming message, sir,” it reported.

Holding one hand up in the air like an antenna and touching his earpiece with the other, Mr. Senior listened intently. Raine saw his fists tighten. Before long he sized her up and took a strong breath, a menacing look in his eyes.

Raine suddenly piped up.

“Look, sorry to disappoint you, but I really don’t think I want my account reset. I think I’ll just-”

Her host nearly exploded with anger. “How did you defeat the Champion?”

“Can you let us go now? Please? I’ve told you all I know.”

“Enough!” he jumped from his seat in an abrupt demonstration of fury and motioned to the guards.

“Very well. It appears I have failed. We have… we have other priorities. You’ve fulfilled your purpose. There is nothing more to learn from you.”

As he walked away from the table, Raine alighted and crossed the floor towards her captor, but he and his guards had already entered the adjacent hallway.

“Mister Senior! Release Gerrit! He’s innocent! He doesn’t know the first thing about me! Please! Developers’ honor!”

Nothing. It was a long shot, anyway.

An awful roar shook the chamber from behind Raine. A hatch in the airship sprung open; her avatar whipped out into the sky. She grabbed a hold of the tablecloth and tangled into it as she tumbled through the air, several thousand feet above the ground.

Raine thrashed about. She entwined the ends around her fists and focused the black pixels on pulling her shackles apart. Now that she was free from the
Nebula’s
influence, it worked. At long last the fabric whooshed open, caught onto a rising current, and guided her down towards an impossibly large stadium.

Jon Wrathman breathed easy once more. The troublesome girl bought the act, and she was right on target.

◊

Falling softly, Raine met the eyes of a child far below, holding a blue balloon. Stunned, he accidentally let it go and began crying uncontrollably.

Don’t pop the blue balloon.

Recalling what Lily told her, Raine wondered if this was the balloon in question. She then reflected that if
Metaverse
physics were anything like those on Earth, once it rose high enough in the atmosphere and the helium expanded, it certainly would pop.

The crucial question is:
should I trust Lily?

It wasn’t like she had much of a choice at this point.

The balloon inched closer still. She shifted her weight until she was directly above it.

This could all be a trap. Maybe she should disregard all the politics completely. Disappear into this Neverland.
This dream will never last, anyways. What’s the point of becoming involved in a world I have no stake in?
But you’ve got something to fight for, Raine!

My fears are driving me
, she realized.
Fear of what? Mister Senior and his system? Fear that I might never wake up? Gerrit never hesitated when I was in danger. I need to know if I’m made of the same stuff. Otherwise, this and any other worlds might eat me alive.

It didn’t matter if
Endless Metaverse
was real or a figment of her imagination. She had unfinished business here. Raine grabbed the blue balloon in the middle of its ascent and brought it down to the surface.

∞

I know this place. I’ve been there more than once, even if I can’t recall it.

Gerrit grasped at the memory; it slipped out from the deepest recesses of his mind. For the past few hours, he’d been immersed in an ongoing projection of his subconscious thoughts, impulses, and dreams. If someone had been running a memory trace on him, these visions might be stored, and studied.

Not this one
, he thought.
I barely remember it myself, but something tells me it’s too precious for you to have. It’s a memory from the outside world, one I’ve seen over and over again in my dreams.

The sea salt smell is distinctly familiar from the last time. The waves kiss our toes and we move up from the rising tide a few meters. The one my age splashes me and laughs. That mischievous giggle… Raine?

“The wind’s picking up a bit,” she says, bundling herself in her beach towel in a very un-Raine-like fashion. “I have to admit, it does feel a tad strange not having something to read or study.”

“Nonsense! This is the best sort of education there is – field experience!” the other girl exclaims. She sounds a lot like Lily, only a few years older.

“Ah!” the younger girl shouts, nudging me as she points up at the sky. I saw it too, just out of my peripheral vision.

“What was it?” the other one queries. “A shooting star?”

She snaps her fingers. “That’s it! Our latest contest! Let’s count meteors! Hey, guys, I’ll be right back – gonna see if dinner’s ready!”

“It doesn’t always have to be a contest!” the younger girl laughs.

But we’re left alone on the beach, to spend a few carefully planned minutes in awkward silence.

At this point I’m almost positive that this mysterious girl is Raine, but even though we’re both a little chilly, I can’t fathom why she snuggles up right beside me.

“Now I can see almost whatever you see,” she announces.

I shrug. “We may be looking at the same sky, but seeing totally different things.”

“That’s why it’s good that we’re not alone. No man is an island.”

Her heart beats a little faster than mine.

“All of us get lost in the darkness; dreamers learn to steer by the stars.”

“Come again?”

“Ah, sorry,” I reply. “‘The Pass’, by Rush. Alpha, Classic twentieth century. Borrowed from Oscar Wilde, I believe.”

She takes my hand. “That’s beautiful. We are but stardust seeking our origins. You know, you’re getting awfully into the role of your persona, even though you’ll eventually forget it.”

My smile droops a little.

“No memory is ever really lost. The synaptic connections just need to be rewired. Plus, I can’t call it research,” I answer. “It’s more of a personal interest, really.”

“You find comfort in the words of mystics and philosophers.”

I sit on this for a minute. “Actually, it’s the opposite. They fill me with uncertainty. But I guess it is kind of comforting, because it reminds me of how little we actually know.”

“I’m not sure I understand what’s so comforting about that.”

“It’s kinda like… perceptual change is inevitable when the questions are never-ending, but with every discovery, the universe just grows more fascinating. Take the cosmological constant, or the properties of an electron. If even one of their values were off by an infinitesimally small degree, nothing would ever have existed. Just being here… if there’s no Creator, it’s as if we won a hundred trillion lotteries in a row. You told me once that life was an inevitability of metaphysics, Multiverse or not, but that’s always sounded like an oversimplification. I mean, yeah. Sorry for ranting. It’s… it’s just one example of a topic I’d happily spend my life investigating.”