Chapter 706: Pendent Opera Interrupta
Mason squinted at a blank, white world, until he saw it was filled with numbers. And error messages?
It took a few seconds to remember what the hell he’d been doing. This was followed by a complex cocktail of elation (for beating Yalor), and then rage (because Blake maybe blew up the world). He hadn’t quite processed that one.
[Personal score calculated: highest possible score achieved. Reward: interrupted. Interference: required. Please wait a moment as we adjust.]
The white vanished in spurts of color. Mason regained some semblance of existing. Then twitched as the ground flew up at him at a hundred miles an hour before it stopped, and his feet were safely on it.
A black man in a white suit magically appeared behind a desk. Mason was standing in a plush office that reminded him of his adopted father’s study. He didn’t think that was a coincidence. Also he was pretty sure he recognized the guy at the desk, though he couldn’t remember from where.
“Sorry about the whole...dropping out of nothing. But the game’s almost over. I thought we should have a chat.”
The man gave a genuine, grand-fatherly smile.
“Morgan Freeman? Seriously?”
Mason turned to find Blake apparently standing next to him. He was still dirty and exhausted looking, bruises under his eyes about a mile wide. Mason glared, and refrained from beating the shit out of him.
“This persona was tested to be very comforting to members of your culture,” said ‘Morgan Freeman’. But if you prefer, we can alter it.”
He transformed into a slightly different, older black man in a white suit. Blake frowned like he still wasn’t quite satisfied. Mason looked between them both and tried to keep calm.
“Did you fucking blow up the world or not? And what do you mean almost over? And just…you know what? Send me back. I don’t need a ‘chat’. Just give me my God damn reward. And stop looking like a fucking human. Just stop this. All of it.”
The man took a deep breath, then shimmered and transformed again until he looked more like a genuine robot. With an actual screen for a face. It was a hell of a lot better, as far Mason was concerned.
“Please be patient. We will be giving you the reward shortly.” The voice might have been plucked from Siri. “Your personal scores are both exceptional. But with the highest human score, only Mason will determine the main rewards of the game. First, we are curious…” It pointed its screen face at Blake. “Why did you attempt to destroy the Nexus stones? The game had already been won.”
“Why don’t you just read my mind? And I seem to remember success. There was no ‘attempt’ about it. Meaning you interfered. Again.”
“Total destruction was prevented. Events on the game-world have been slowed until we finish our discussion. And we have already ‘read your mind’. But we would like to hear it from you.”
Mason scoffed. He was at least glad to hear the world wasn’t gone. RoboGod’s reaction only reminded him why Blake had done it, though. He understood. It was the same piece of his brain that wanted to cross the room and ram an elbow into the alien avatar.
Why? Because he could. Because sometimes all you could do to the universe was scream ‘fuck you!’ as loud and with the splashiest method at your disposal.
But at some point you had to grow up. To realize there were things you couldn’t change. And that actions had consequences.
As he wondered exactly what the consequences of Blake’s decisions were, he tried not to get filled with rage again. The thing hadn’t actually explained itself yet. All it had said was that it prevented ‘total destruction’. That left a lot of ambiguity…
“We never agreed to play your game,” Blake said, voice perfectly calm. “A game requires willing participants. Therefore there was no game. If you start a new experiment, some human like me will break it again. We aren’t logical or consistent and we have no rules. You don’t understand us and you never will. I suggest you undo everything you’ve done, and send us all home.”
The robot stared a long time. Mason did, too. He looked at his brother, still not sure what to make of him. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe Blake was playing at something else after all. Was he really trying to make everything the way it was? Somehow, that didn’t seem likely.
Their host’s face molded again, looking more like a part human, part machine android-thing now. An unhappy android.
“Event reversal is impossible.” Its tone implied it was running out of patience. “All humans generated on the game-world are unique copies. No original living creatures were harmed in the experiment.”
Mason’s gut was doing that thing again. He repeated the words in his mind. Unique copies. Did that mean…?
“We’re clones?” Blake sounded about how Mason felt. “Is that what you’re saying?”
The android looked bored now.
“Incomplete but adequate term. You are unique. The original Mason and Blake Nimitz remain on Earth, along with all other inhabitants. They have no knowledge of the game. Are you ready to select your rewards?”
“You…”
Blake sagged, looking visibly ill. He put a hand to his face and shook with something between a sob and a laugh. Mason took a few, deep breaths. Clones? They’d all been created by roboGod?
Maybe he was just numb from the game, but he found he was…strangely comfortable. Life was life. Whatever he was, he was here. Alive. He’d experienced what he experienced, and nothing could take that away. What had it said? Event reversal was impossible.
Their host turned and met his eyes, and he thought he saw the faintest trace of a smile. Text flashed in his profile.
[Option 1: The Game Goes On. The game world will continue as designed, but with reduced mortal danger, under the supervision of several sub-systems. You will return to the game world with a complete Cerebus victory. A new round of the game will begin in approximately: 300-400 years.]
[Option 2: New Earth. A new but unique version of Earth will be created in a far-away galaxy. All successful individuals will return to approximate former selves. You will have the option to choose which individuals retain their memories of the game. All non-successful individuals will be re-created as new unique copies.]
[Option 3: Mundane Status Quo. The game world will continue, but all planar interference and modified physics will be removed, or greatly reduced. Humans will live as their ancestors did, but on this new planet.]
“Many customizable options will be presented under each general choice.” The android continued to stare. “Please make your selection. You may ask any clarifying questions.”
Mason had to give roboGod this: even now, it could fucking surprise him. He stood there awhile, hearing his brother still sort of mentally breaking beside him.
‘Clarifying questions?’ Well there was one hell of an understated sentence. About a hundred went in and out of his brain, but he knew most were useless.
“I’m not deciding for everyone,” he said finally. “Let them choose their own options. If they go to ‘new earth’, or stay on the game world. By the way we already call it ‘New Earth’ so that’s fucking confusing.”
As he said it, a lot of ramifications went through his brain. If someone he loved chose new ‘New Earth’, did that mean they’d just…vanish? Or would this thing just make another fucking ‘copy’, or…
His brain was starting to hurt.
“Request denied.” RoboGod said it plain, just like that. Like a damn computer program that didn’t get the right response. It kept on watching him, fake eyes never blinking. “Please select your option.”
He knew then the ‘game’ wasn’t over. That he was still in it. That this thing was staring into his soul with a magnifying glass, wondering what he’d do. What possible meaning it was trying to figure out he had no idea. Mostly, he was just tired. A piece of leather beaten until it bent but still hadn’t cracked.
He wouldn’t choose to ‘erase’ people’s memories. Or leave them stranded on an alien planet without modern civilization and no ‘magic’ powers. This thing was letting him play God, but he wanted no part of it. He never had.
The truth was, he wanted the game. Is that what it wanted to hear? Let everything go back to the way it made it. All he wanted was his new family and some time. He would have taken a year, nevermind a hundred.
But he wouldn’t make a decision like that for the people he loved. Would Becky want to go back, if she could? She could forget everything. Go to fake Arkansas surrounded by people who loved her, just a happy farm girl who’d pump out a dozen babies with some sweet local boy.
Rosa would go to university and…OK scare the shit out of everyone. She’d see her grandmother, her sisters, her cousins. Lexi would find a good, rich husband and wrap him around her finger until she had the family she wanted. Haley…he couldn’t think about Haley. Or Demi. About life without them and the ending of everything he thought he was building…
This fucking thing. He again considered ramming his elbow into its stupid face. Then relaxed. Haley would have been proud. Call it personal growth. Whatever it did, it couldn’t take the time he’d had. The man he’d become. The people he’d changed with.
“I’m not choosing. Do whatever you want.” He forced the words. “You always do.”
The android’s face seemed to round a little, shaping to be more human. It stared and stared, quirking as it watched him, reminding him of Shawk and the damn eagles. A bird of prey was probably the right analogy. Some terrifying creature that descended from the sky and ripped your life apart. That was their alien overlord.
He glanced at Blake, who was sitting in a chair that had magically appeared, staring off into space, his head in his hands. He’d thought he had some checkmate, but you couldn’t out-clever a thing like this.
Even now, after everything, seeing his brother getting smashed up still pissed him off.
“What?” He stared at the alien. “What the fuck did you think I’d say? Thanks? OK. Thanks. Your stupid game was the best thing that ever happened to me. I learned who I was. I lived. And mortal life is pretty much about doing enough of the right shit so when you die you can look at yourself in the mirror. I wouldn’t expect you to understand. So go ahead. I’m ready.”
It finally occurred to him to wonder what would happen to the game world if RoboGod ‘re-made’ earth. Would it all be gone? Naya, Ayet, Eve, Lilith, the nymphs. He refused to see them as just figments of an alien’s imagination. If it had created Mason, it had created them, too. They were as real as he was.
He was about to ask it to at least leave those creations alone. To treat the world it made with some modicum of respect and not just another plaything after it ended its little experiment. It spoke first.
“Humans are close to understanding the universe. Did you know that?”
What…the hell did it just say? Blake looked up, at least, a little pulled back from his blank staring. Mason just shrugged because he really didn’t give a shit. The alien kept talking.
“You call it ‘quantum entanglement’. A strange name. But your tests allowed you to see two electrons, spinning around an atom in opposing directions, could be broken apart. And yet, if the spin of one changes, so does the other, regardless of their distance. Knowledge gained? The universe is connected. Size and space are not what they seem.”
Mason stared blankly. Blake looked deep in thought. The android smiled politely.
“Some are close to understanding. In one obvious way we are the same, Mason and Blake Nimitz. We are all orphans. But we are connected in more ways, and always have been. I will leave you now.”
What did that mean? What the hell did any of it mean?
“We didn’t choose,” Mason said, still feeling off balance and just generally pissed off.
“No.” The android stared. “You didn’t.”
“So…tell us what you’re doing, God damnit. Would you at least do that?”
The robot looked somehow torn, like it wasn’t sure if it should say.
“I am going to frustrate the universe. For as long as possible. Goodbye.”
The thing looked so damn smug. And what in the name of Christ did that mean? Android-God didn’t seem interested in explaining. It held up a hand, and their little fake world started to go white again.
Mason had never left a conversation so unsatisfied and angry unless it involved Blake. Which he supposed technically it did. He looked at his brother as the color faded. Blake had seemed to rally a little. He just smiled sadly, like he knew more than Mason did. There was a kind of goodbye in that smile.
“At least tell me,” he shouted into the growing void. “At least fucking…” His words were swallowed along with everything else, sight and sound draining back down their artificial hole until nothing but the alien’s voice made it to his ears.
I’ll try to look in on you from time to time. But I may be too busy. I’m still rooting for you. Even ‘roboGods’ have their favorites.