Raine VS The End of the World (52 page)

Although the place was completely alien, something within Ricard recognized it. The desert air felt more real. His padded body had weight. And he was older than he’d imagined. Much older. This was a waking nightmare.

“I think they did it,” one of the younger employees said. “I think the rebels broke the
Metaverse.
”

“No,” Ricard countered. “That’s not possible. This has to be a mistake!”

He ran back inside and retraced his steps to the office. It had no windows, no decoration, and no implements. Just computers, desks, machines for dispensing water and food, some cots in the corner, and two ventilation fans. Ricard pulled the
M-Gear
back over his head. He looked into the communal bathroom’s mirror, trying to ignore his acne-covered, unshaven mug. Pressing all manner of buttons on the device did nothing. He tried it again and again.

“This isn’t possible! Where are you, Mister Senior?!” he screamed, smashing the mirror to bits with the helmet. He needed to snap out of this somehow. Get back to the hub. He banged his head on the remaining shards of glass.

Five people burst in and restrained him.

Half a mile out from a modest midland village in Kenya, two children ran to their father, who’d stopped in the middle of the road by a large metal tower on his way home from the fields. Their mother leaned crying on the large acacia tree that’d been there for generations. Local men who worked the night shift had just been freed from the infernal
Gears
that warped them into emotionless robots, to much confusion from the helmets’ maintenance droids. Could it be that the
Metaverse
was finally over?

Along the dirt path, Thaddius marveled at the sky. The winds here were more real than any he had felt in recent memory. Distant airborne wind turbines danced like great kites.

Just ten minutes ago, he’d been chanting with his brothers in the monastery, having taken a ceremonial drink of rice wine. The storm was in motion. They could all feel it. In a flash, his body began to unravel. The floor, and then the scale-lined walls, disappeared. His companions, seated in a circle, exchanged hopeful glances. Within seconds, the world he knew was no more, and he nearly tripped over his feet in mid-stride as he became conscious of himself once again.

I know my true name
, he thought. He had heard it while meditating.
Kafil
.

Reminiscences of this place itched at the back of his mind. And the man knew at once that yes, at long last, this was home.

Kafil embraced his son and daughter, danced with them. Though he did not currently remember either with any clarity, their smiles told him all he needed to know. Fragments combined, paradoxes manifested, truths unearthed. The precious memories would return, even if the lost time would not. In the meantime, there was a lot of catching up to do.

Thank you, Raine
,
he thought, opening his palms, closing his eyes, and drinking in the reality of the world around him. He could not have been more blessed.

Mrs. Zoot was asleep in a hammock in the back room of her antique toy store in Pagoda when it happened. She had thought the bizarre factory all a part of some strange recurring dream, and kept working, oblivious to the fact that everyone around her had stopped. It was only when another woman, dressed in better attire than the other employees, stopped her hand and spoke in a strange language that she realized something was amiss. For one, she could understand what she was saying.

“Jae Won, are you all right?”

Mrs. Zoot blinked twice at the name.

“Who is Jae Won?” she asked, her words surprisingly coming out in the same odd language, although she thought she knew the answer.

“You are.”

The woman then stood up on a chair to address the confused faces around the floor.

“Everyone, please stay calm. Remove those
M-Gears
. You won’t need them anymore. The news channels say that
Endless Metaverse
has been shut down.”

Dozens of her co-workers screamed in shock and protest. Others looked at one another, perhaps in disbelief, perhaps seeking someone they knew to share in their surprise. Jae Won just looked down at her workstation; her job was to install microchips inside the
M-Gears
. Then, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the shiny production line model, she inspected her face and was staggered to see that she was thirty years younger than she had expected. That, at least, was a nice touch.

Now to find my absent-minded husband. Hopefully he’s on the same continent.

In the midst of defending the doors to the keep where the guild was hoarding their spoils, Jolly Peter heard a rumbling that originated from no known weapon in the
Metaverse
. Lance exchanged a glance with the dwarf.

“What’s going on?” the Guild Leader asked.

Peter managed an uninterested expression as he tossed a tomahawk at an advancing shapeshifter.

He never saw whether the attack connected.

In the midst of the Australian outback, Peter awoke in a cozy underground chamber with sandstone walls.

His reflection stared back from a mirror across the room – the brown face of a kid no older than thirteen. He took off the heavy headgear that weighed his neck down, and noted with shocked surprise that his fully-spec’d out Enchanted Mithril Gear had gone missing.

As soon as he planted his feet on the ground, the shifting weight of his body told Peter that his senses here were stronger.

Could this be the world outside of the ‘Verse?

He walked up the stairs carved into the earth and shielded his eyes from the setting sun’s glare. Many children were emerging from an opal mineshaft.

“Glen!” another child called.

Without knowing why, he spun his head in the direction of the voice. A young girl approached and took his hands, beaming.

“So, how was it?”

“How was… what?”

“The
Metaverse!
You were so excited to try it out,” she said worriedly. “You can’t mean that you don’t remember signing up.”

“I… don’t,” he said. “Where am I?”

Her eyes widened.

“Coober Pedy, stupid! You’re looking at me as if I’m a stranger.”

“I’m sorry,” he replied, sadly. “But you are… familiar.”

The girl slapped him in the face. He would never know how much she had doted on the zombified boy, cooked and cleaned for him, worrying every waking moment that the dangerous working conditions in the old opal mines might end in a catastrophic collapse.

“What was that for?”

“That’s for forgetting your best friend. The one and only person who’s cared for you all this time. It was the longest two years of my life!”

She then gave him a long embrace.

“And that’s for coming back. Come on, let’s look for my parents. Dad’s monitoring the pirate radio stations. The EDC’s taking the fight to
Neo Eden!
Every
EM
user in Europe is going to war!”

Whatever that meant, Glen melted at the warmth of human contact, something he couldn’t remember feeling ever before. This world looked empty, but its wonders enraptured the gathering crowds. The air had texture, and this girl’s hair smelled terrific. Everything here was alive, bursting with energy.

Gerrit told him this day would come. He’d never listened, but now he almost wished he had. Hopefully his bro did okay for himself, too, wherever he was. Luck willing, he’d also be in the care of a loving girl, far from war or fighting of any kind.

Charles Hayter had no idea what hit him. One minute, he was lying down on a beach towel in his usual spot in
Clyde’s
Crystal Park, shuffling the poker deck with friends (unbeknownst to him, he’d just had his memory modified to expunge the Raine ‘virus’). The next, he was marching in step by the coast, somehow tethered to the midst of a platoon of soldiers. The man pegged it for a dream, since he didn’t seem to be in control of his body. Yet, it soon became apparent that this was all too real. His back straightened out as best it could under the heavy equipment, and his tired eyes stuck upon the devastation in the shimmering city beyond the far-off walls.

Inside, smoke rose from isolated battlefields as scores of androids filed into the city, entering through holes in the pulsing force field that covered the metropolis like a fishbowl. Outside, soldiers self-organized into formations and camps. Those eating munched in unison on some unidentifiable slop. From another gate, city folk chaotically filed out, civilians, with and without chrome headgear, all making for the ocean. Pulsing shots fired, one for each refugee crossing Charles’ vision, followed by cries and the sounds of bodies falling onto the sand. For what reason, he could not tell, lacking the ability to turn his head.

He tried quietly, then loudly, to resist, to wake himself from this hellish vision that appeared to go on for hours. This could be no dream; at least, that is what his five senses were telling him, but his body had a will of its own.

Charles closed his eyes; a menu popped up before the red of his eyelids.

“
Helmet Defense Protocol
engaged. To run Alternate Vision program, look left. To remain conscious of actions, look right.”

Even though he had no recollection of the distinction between reality and fantasy, deep in his gut, Charles recognized without a doubt which world was real and which one was a fabrication.

So, he had a choice. To be put back into another simulation, or to continue blindly into a violent battle… neither option was appealing, but only one of them would give him a chance to physically override this terrible machine controlling his body.

He kept on and fought the puppet strings with all his will.

∩

“As I’m sure you recall, our Warp Initiator creates dual artificial wormholes in dynamic SpaceTime, allowing us to slingshot off natural wormholes or the rims of black holes, even at the edges of the universe, to arrive with precision either earlier or later than we left. To achieve this level of exactitude, Rutger and my parents mapped the known dimensions out in terms of spacetime over energy dispersal. Because Earth is constantly traveling at ridiculous speeds through the galaxy and our triple reference beacons from the Triassic, the early Cenozoic, and the End of the World are limited in range, it’s essential that temporal calculations to any given destination be triple-checked for accuracy--”

Trapped on the sunken sofa watching Lily and Rutger attempt to explain the dreary workings of their orbiting home, Lorelei had given up on mentally inputting any exit codes. Clasping her Eternity Knot pendant, she used every ounce of energy to will her past self to alter the memory, to break free of its shackles.

I refuse to repeat the past. I refuse to mentally relive our failures again. Let me return.

The fates of every life form in the universe hinge on my power. I’m not about to trip at the finish line.

With a forceful cry, the Young Lorelei in her mind’s eye snapped. She leapt from the couch, grabbed Lillian, pulled her in a headlock, and ran to the emergency escape hatch. Lacie and Lucy ran after them in abject confusion, but to no avail. The memory loop having been broken, they vanished like specters.

Lorelei swung open the door and the duo shot out into deep space. The sensation of simulated death flung her from the entrapping vision.

Screaming like she’d never done before, Queen Lorelei pulled against hundreds of pounds of restraints.

Dr. Marco stood calmly over the operating table. Upon being forcibly ejected from
Endless Metaverse
with the destruction of the source code, Lorelei’s nano-machines had been horribly corrupted. The cybernetic implants she fine-tuned united in rebellion against her body, echoing the dwindling loyalty of her followers.

The Queen twitched in paranoid uncertainty, even as her most trusted operatives scrambled to save her.

“Let me go!” she ordered. “My people need me!”

“No, my Queen, your anesthetic has run out. We need to shut down your machine implements. They’ve been highly corrupted. You’ve gone into cardiac arrest. We’re trying to save your life.”

“Fools! You can’t take my brain away! I refuse to become as pathetic as you mortals!” she yelled. “What’s going on out there? Where’s Lily?”

“Don’t worry, ma’am,” he said, dismissing her. She was immensely vulnerable; a simple modification could ensure that she abdicate her throne, or worse, be arrested into a coma. “You are unwell. There is a minor insurgency. General Beech is carrying out your orders – it will all be over in a few hours.”

“No!” she howled. “The plan’s been compromised! I command you! Release me right this instant!”

Dr. Marco nodded to the nurse, who administered the anesthetic.

Did I catch that little bastard smiling? He
wants
me incapacitated! Get up, Lorelei!

The Queen went limp, unable to move or speak. She struggled to keep herself conscious, and failed.