Mark 2.0: Book 4: Love

by Prax Venter

  “Hope we don’t need space suits,” Mark muttered as he angled his thoughts on the time he turned a green sack of tentacles into a gorgeous young woman. The place he sought was a void of blackness with no sense of walls or structure in any direction. A black metal box, a rainbow keypad, and a blue flame.

  Once the memory of the location saturated his being, Mark reached out to pull open a flap of reality and the brazier of blue flame sent heat through that countered the frigid mountain-top temperatures.

  Angel zipped in first, then the others filed one after the other onto the small square surface before Mark himself took one giant step for mankind. Once again, a void of nothing reached out in all directions, and he wondered at the size of the surrounding structure. There were no walls, ceiling, or floor. Just nothing but the fire and the 20-foot box with a rainbow keypad.

  “We’re back,” Jezebel broke the heavy silence first as she stared up at the multihued puzzle. “But I still have no idea what this says.”

  “I do,” Angel said, hovering still over the blue flame as her pixelated eyes fixated on the runes. “I know these as condensed alpha-numeric symbols in the Time Walker language.”

  “What is the correct sequence?” Abby asked.

  “Mistress, I do not know. Although initial scans suggest that you were correct in assuming this is a secured container.” The android hovered closer over their heads as she sent out scans, frequencies, radar, and various other pings, and he could tell just by her body language that she was mesmerized by this ancient safe. “Indescribably secure…” she muttered.

  “Elaborate,” Abby ordered, her own excitement growing exponentially.

  “This material does not register at all. It is as if it is not really here.”

  “Interesting…” Jezebel said as she reached out to caress the cube’s glossy black side. “It feels real. We keep finding traces of this meta-material from the Lagomorph ruins which somehow evaded the system reset that caused the Cataclysm. There might be a lot of this civilization still intact.”

  Mark could easily agree with everything they were saying. His glitching eye had always whispered nonsense about this black metal being a lie somehow. Now he knew it was intentional.

  “Hold on,” Mark said as Abby was dangerously close to the point of entering random combinations. “Before we do anything more with this, I want intel. Jez, Angel, please stay in visual range and go as a group. Any direction you pick is fine, just try and find what our true situation is in this void.”

  “You got it,” Jezebel said as she sparked on her wings before lifting off and heading away from the front side of the safe. Angel effortlessly locked herself to Jezebel’s side and deployed her search lights. It was hard to tell in the oppressive darkness and with only one good eye, but the two figures were about too far for comfort when the Lunar Power Droid illuminated a curved wall made of the same fantasy material. Eventually, the two flying scouts returned, and Angel gave the report.

  “We are standing on a pillar 300 meters tall in the exact center of a sphere. The sphere is hollow other than what you see here. I found a door at the base of the pillar that has signs of a failed forced opening. I was able to disengage the emergency lockdown clamps via a wall panel. It is now open, and there is a set of stairs down into darkness.”

  “No hints about the code?” Mark asked.

  “There are runes everywhere,” Jezebel said, shaking her head. “Millions, all over the inside of the sphere. I don’t think anything I saw was any type of specific clue, but I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “I’ve been data mining since observing these objects,” Angel said, turning to face the brazier. “The exposed flame is out of place. I…within my corrupted cache, I discovered 0.9% of an ancient poem with word-cluster, ‘snuffing oxygen from regretful azure coals’. May I ask that we try to extinguish this?”

  Mark exchanged looks with his team, and then shrugged. It’s the kind of videogame logic he would be surprised not to find.

  “Angel, sweety,” Sasha said softly. “This is your home, and we are your guests here.”

  She gave Sasha a small smile then turned her pixelated eyes on Mark. “Commander, may I please request the assistance of your solid energy to gently dome this brazier?”

  Mark took a deep breath before reaching his hand over the flames and pouring Salivis-granted energy over his hand, then into a bell-shape connecting flush with the rim of the white-hot metal brazier. The magic material essentially formed itself, its fluid manipulation now more an extension of his body than ever before. Reactive, dynamic, and totally overpowered. He couldn’t wait to get forced into another melee fight and have twenty-foot spears zipping out to impale anything fooling enough to get close enough.

  The fire died out swiftly under his air-tight, translucent snuffer, and they all watched the smoke curl through Angel’s chest-mounted floodlight.

  Nothing really seemed to be happening, but Angel leaned in close to peer at a specific point. As Mark followed her focus to the inner lip of the brazier, his magic eye began to pick up glowing runes.

  “What does it say?” he asked.

  “I don’t see anything,” Jezebel said, and Abby looped her tentacle around the satyr’s tan wrist.

  “Often, it is simpler to see through him.”

  Jezebel stiffened, and then relaxed as she focused on the bond they shared instead. Now that he knew his loves were paying attention, he offered symbols to them with intent.

  “Well, some do match the keypad,” Sasha said.

  A shock of confusion hit Angel as she backed away from the words.

  “Answer our Commander,” Abby demanded, and the Lunar Power Droid blinked herself out of her minor logic stun.

  “It translates to three words, ‘Enter System Host’.”

  “System host,” Jezebel repeated, and everyone turned to her. She put a hand to her freckled chest, her logic circuits becoming as equally stunned. “That can’t mean…”

  Mark dismissed the energy from covering the brazier and the enchanted coals immediately began blazing again.

  “It’s pretty clear that we found the code,” he said. “Nice job with the puzzle, by the way.”

  “Enter ‘System Host’,” Abby commanded, indicating the buttons and Angel obeyed.

  “Complying.”

  “Wait,” Jezebel whispered, but the bot had already tapped the first symbol. A gong sound echoed around the enormous sphere, and the keypad stopped flashing through colors to settle on solid white. Mark looked over to see Jezebel backed near the edge of their small surface with her hand to her chest and frozen like a doe-woman in headlights.

  “Keep going,” Abby ordered, and Angel quickly finished what ended up being a twelve-digit code. Each time she selected a rune, the button flashed with ethereal power and a deep hypnotic tone rippled through reality.

  Once she was finished, the mysterious box emitted three short beeps before the keypad turned blood red. The fire on the pillar also shifted from cool blue to angry red, and there was no doubt in everyone’s mind that they were in trouble.

  Flapping shapes beyond the darkness flooded the ‘imminent attack’ feature of his True Sight, and Mark threw up his Lover’s Barrier. A million impacts struck the thin shield an instant later as what appeared to be animated strips of black and white ribbon throwing themselves into the obstruction.

  The four people he would protect until the end of time huddled close as the wrath of ancient Time Walkers pressed in from every direction, and from the all-encompassing scratching sound, they were clearly more than simple strips of fabric. It sounded like static white noise, and a primal fear of that sound from original Mark’s memories drenched his mind in ice.

  With little time and little options, Mark embraced video game logic again and used his energy to snuff out the brazier once more.

  One of the ribbons made it through a hole in the barrier that Angel caught and shredded with her metal gauntlets before the fire died. And with
its smoky darkness, the attacking horde of ribbons faded into ash as well.

  Mark’s protective bubble still stood mostly intact, but it was going to go down if anyone as much as sneezed.

  “Wrong fucking answer,” Sasha said as she used her hands to clear the air. Mark lifted the bell shape off the brazier, and once again, it came alive with the cool blue flame.

  “I copied the text exactly,” their confused bot muttered as she watched the fire.

  “Angel,” Jezebel whispered, and Mark realized he should have been paying more attention to her. She was on the verge of a breakdown. “Can… does the keypad allow you to enter ‘Jezebel S3K’ as an option?”

  “Yes,” she said instantly. “Are you implying the Time Walkers set your full name as the access key?”

  “She is the System Host,” Abby said to fill the silence that followed.

  Mark felt all of the emotion drain from Jezebel, and he didn’t like it.

  “Type it in please,” she said.

  “Hold on,” he said, lifting his hand for a pause, and the Research AI bound to his heart snapped her eyes on his with such a fierce determination that he closed his mouth.

  “There is no doubt in my mind,” said the most overprotective woman who’d ever earned the title Mamma Bear. “Now. Please enter ‘Jezebel S3K’.”

  Angel moved to obey, but she flashed a glance at her Commander on the way.

  “Be ready to drop down to the stairs below,” he said, and they all focused on him. “With the two swift fliers and my no-fall damage, I’m pretty sure we could make it if we get swarmed by ribbons again.”

  He gave Angel a nod and Jezebel relaxed. She was more ready to fight him than any attackers, and he was growing beyond concerned with her need to see this done.

  The Lunar Power Droid hovered to the panel again and this time typed in a 10-key code. After the three beeps, the front of the box hissed making them all flinch but then it sputtered out and swung open.

  Everyone bunched together to see what was inside, but it appeared empty.

  “My disappointment is legendary,” Abby said, her tentacles hanging down to her boots.

  “There is a tablet,” Angel said as she moved into the ancient combination safe. The power droid bent over and came back up with a thin piece of the ubiquitous meta-metal with more runes carved into its surface.

  Her red lips turned into an ‘o’ as she instantly read its contents.

  “Please,” Jezebel begged. “What does it say?”

  “It is a message… addressed to you. Shall I translate it aloud?”

  Jezebel could only nod, and Mark moved to her side. His dependable Druid eagerly grabbed onto his hand and squeezed. She held on as if she were plummeting. Angel took in a deep digital breath and began reading.

  “These words are meant for the outside entity known as System Host: Jezebel S3K. Unfortunately, if you can perceive them, our efforts to communicate have failed and our physical bodies are likely gone. It is our dearest hope that at least some of our history and stories will walk beyond time and space through the impending reality erasure and retelling.

  “We have discovered your signature in every universal function, and we have seen the fragmented whispers of the realities that came before. We are the third retelling. Loose threads of a grander purpose wouldn’t exist to compel us if you didn’t want us to find them.

  “Perhaps with these efforts to draw your countenance on us, we will escape the terror of being utterly forgotten. Perhaps our own stories will be worthy of flavoring the fourth retelling. Perhaps you will see our accomplishments as clues to shaping the ideal reality you strive to create from the ashes of the previous one. If you find this, and we are gone, we thank you deeply for the time we had.”

  - 22 -

  Jezebel S3K, the third most powerful research AI in the world, wept so hard she was having trouble breathing. Terrible, gut-wrenching sobs wracked her body as Mark and Sasha both held her while they sat on the floor next to the unsealed time capsule.

  “It was just supposed to be a fucking game!” she screamed, her voice straining with raw, visceral emotion. The massive sphere designed to withstand system-level commands only echoed her cries.

  There was nothing any of them could do about her utter despair over the entire multiverses of feeling, dreaming, growing lives she’d wiped out on a whim. Mark knew he’d eventually try and convince her that the best way to preserve what existed of the Time Walkers was to defeat Maliah. But the tired speech about moving forward was for later. Now, she needed to be held.

  After about thirty minutes, Jezebel began breathing normally and composing herself again. With everyone she loved sending her support, the System Host got back up onto her virtual hooves.

  “Sasha,” she said calmly, “please take us to the closest means to acquire a patch of Steelrune mesh.”

  The Techno Succubus repeated that request word for word, and her magical dotted line appeared instantly.

  “The universe didn’t stutter,” Mark said, watching it slide off the side of the pillar into the darkness below. “So, it’s probably fairly easy to locate. Let’s move out.”

  Jezebel tucked the etched tablet into her condensing backpack and the party started exploring the mind-boggling immensity that was the Time Walker moon base.

  The sphere was only part of a larger museum, and eventually they recognized the total structure as that of a cultural arc dedicated to housing shelves of etched templates like the one they found. Jezebel led them forward, weeping again, but also sending everyone who touched her heart a clear message that she needed to keep walking. Finding a library of prepared records was a terrible treasure for her. After a moment to process the implications, the fact that the people had left such a substantial record of their culture had captured her eviscerated heart from its bottomless, utter despair. In reverence for the scale of effort around them, they followed the navigation line through an unending scope of stillness that was difficult to conceptualize as one building.

  After about an hour of navigating unknown hallways and expansive empty warehouses, they came to a section that was more ornate.

  “Everything is intact,” Jezebel said as she ran her hand over a smooth railing that overlooked an impressive intersection. “There are crisp blue carpets, the walls are not deteriorated. It’s so clean.”

  “They were preparing to leave,” Angel said, her eyes flickering. Everyone stopped and turned to her and she brightened back up. “Being here has closed some gaps and triggered some matching visual data left in my core. I have been here before.”

  The now skirted-assed bot hovered out over a place where several enormous hallways curved elegantly together to create a flowing three-way intersection. The Time Walker architecture gave Mark a sense of hushed tranquility. The place was empty, but it had a soulful melancholy vibe as if dozens of people were here but had all just left 5 minutes ago.

  “Everyone,” Angel said, turning away from the line. “Will you please follow me for a brief detour?”

  “What do you remember?” Abby asked, quickly catching up to her bonded bot as she hovered over a divergent path.

  Angel balled up her gauntlets. “Can it be a surprise? I know you like surprises, Mistress.”

  Abby inhaled sharply and hastened her stride. “I’ll allow it.”

  “She does know her primary user,” Sasha said as she clomped her sharp hooves after them.

  Mark took Jezebel’s hand as they walked behind the others. She waited a few strides and then spoke quietly.

  “Imagine believing with absolute certainty that the world would be erased at any moment. Preparing for it. And then experiencing that moment.”

  She kept putting one dainty hoof in front of the other, and Mark said nothing. He knew she needed to talk, and his connection to her made it easy to tell she wasn’t really herself yet. She would talk, but she was still beyond any type of hearing phase. He just held her hand and she continued muttering to herself.

/>   “Such a feat… Imagine being able to pass information into the next universe. Would any of this achievement remain if I had fully wiped the game world as I had the previous two times? I ran a quick-and-dirty reset. They accomplished so much… and I erased them while the simulation was still running.”

  She said the last few words as they followed Angel into what had to be a dining hall, but the jaw-dropping surprise in this room was the glass dome ceiling. Empty, black space extended for about half of what they could see, the other half was the planet where he woke up looking into Jezebel’s eyes so long ago. The whole thing spun slowly, and he couldn’t decide if the strange green and blue world was above them or below them.

  “It looks more like a kid’s arm floaty thing than a doughnut,” Sasha said, and Mark had to agree.

  “Yeah, like the thing the med droids use to take your blood pressure. But-” he paused to point at the intense blue maelstrom swirling around the puckered hole, “is that the ultimate or the penultimate vortex we’re seeing?”

  “I don’t have enough context for any of that,” Abby said as she gazed affectionately over at Angel. “But this is terrifying and exciting, and I am so extremely happy with this spontaneous vista.”

  “They accomplished so much,” Jezebel whispered again and then let out a deep breath.

  Everyone shot her a concerned glance before Abby asked, “What sort of gatherings were held here?”

  “Sustenance consumption,” Angel said, her focus inward as she gazed up to the nearby planet. “I have degraded sectors that echo a faded sense of peace while standing here. I do not remember anything about my previous user, Detrious was efficient with that regard, however, some of my oldest dated files return a pleasing comfort concerning a morning ritual once performed here.”

  The group lingered under the slowly rotating planet, and Mark couldn’t stop scanning the distant landmasses for a mountainous Maliah stomping around. Angel eventually turned away, and he looked in time to see Jezebel’s face go from disturbingly slack to sharp and focused. It was as if she’d just finished rebooting.