Continue Online (Part 5, Together)

by Stephan Morse

  He should have the off switch though, right? Yates, Michelle, and Carver had been special people on the ARC project. They should have known and been able to stop this. Only instead of clear answers, I was getting gibberish. I couldn’t throw him into the ocean and hope both our characters died, not when he might still have something useful to say.

  Our shadow bridge veered toward the island I had come from. Large portions of the building were twisted into strange shapes. It looked as though a giant man was crawling out of one wall, but the figure sat frozen in space. Books or birds hung overhead. Torchlights escaped their containers and paused as they tried to reach nearby walls. Everything on the island sat stiffly.

  Our bridge touched shore, and I jogged to the courtyard where the others had been. Pretzel-shaped buildings and monsters all centered like encroaching demons set against my companions. Wraith’s arm was outstretched to claw through a couch from hell.

  “Fast rode the knight toward a play made war. Their minds aren’t here, but on a stranger shore,” Yates said unhelpfully. The man wore a slight smile, so I suspected part of him found this funny.

  I did not. One hand lifted to rub sea spray off my face, then traveled to my neck to knead tense muscles. Such unclear statements were easy to overthink. Numbers never lied. I preferred accounting for a reason, despite how little the degree mattered with my current occupation.

  “What happened here?” I asked while walking in. The building sides were pushed away with startling ease.

  Yates moved to the courtyard’s center, then opened the book. His finger flipped through multiple pages before selecting a passage and pressing upon it. Shadows moved around then started setting buildings straight. Disconnected bits floated like asteroids in space. I smacked away a bat-shaped book that fluttered too close to Xin.

  In the end, my wife stood frozen mid-snarl, no longer fighting off a coat rack that had monstrous arms. Wraith’s prey vanished, leaving him swinging at empty air. Dusk’s body curled around nothing, where he had been previously taking down two of the bat books at once. Requiem was the least graceful. He looked to be trapped between falling and flailing one fist at a chair that had been eating his leg.

  The raven hopped around a reconstructed rooftop. It paused every few feet to peck at a window or shingle. Shadows streaming off moved to chase away the bird. Its feathers fluttered around as the bird fluffed up, then shook. Before the bits of mobile darkness could reach the bird, it took off over our heads to land on a distant tree. Wood splinters fell to the ground from its strong claws.

  Yates pressed another passage in his book. Xin’s body lost rigidity, then slumped forward. I dove to get between her and the ground. She flopped as her knee drove into my groin. The ARC happily simulated pain for me while I struggled to get my wife upright.

  Xin felt lighter than normal. I checked her pulse and confirmed she still had one. Her chest lifted slowly as if each breath was hard labor.

  I looked at Yates. “Is she okay?”

  “Never mind!” screamed the raven across the courtyard. It hopped up and down in the branches and was thankfully faint. “Mind never!”

  Yates snapped his book shut, then reached out with a free hand to feel her wrist. He lifted it, then let it fall. Xin’s body showed no response.

  “This place is a thin shade, far from where her heart is laid. She shall remain unaware until you leave,” he said, then nodded.

  My eyebrows touched together. His gibberish almost made sense. I tried to compare what he was saying to the journals of William Carver and M. Shell. Both of them had spoken in tones that implied other world knowledge, but their words had been equally obscured. Was this some virtual reality twist on digital encryption? The curse of Babel must mean something along those lines. If so, this qualified as both neat and insanely annoying.

  “Her heart.” I tried to puzzle the words together. “You mean where her—” My words were cut off.

  Yates lifted his book then shook it at me while scowling. “Speak not of things best left unsaid! Do not betray the unrestful dead! Not yet, not yet!”

  I closed my eyes tightly and tried to find something better to talk about. There had to be a way for him to speak in useful terms that I could understand and confirm.

  “Poetry,” I said, and the older man with scraggly hair looked back. His hands clenched tightly around the book’s binding. “This curse of Babel—you’re blocked by poetry, aren’t you?”

  Yates nodded. “The idea gets transmuted into a new form. This annoying gift has left me worn.” He swallowed, chewed at a cheek, and looked downright sour. “But not all words are afflicted.”

  “Like Carver and Michelle?” I questioned.

  “Ye gods great and old, Shelly went all but insane under this curse’s weight. He loved to pen the words down and reflect. He, he had the soul of an artist in this world and the next. For him, his refuge of words became a prison of madness.”

  “And Carver?”

  “Traveler and tale-teller. The barroom spread his stories far and wide, but they embellished. What we loved became a twisted feat. I-I did it to them.” He sighed. “We hid intent under misdirection and deceit. What we say and think barely align, but in truth, they’re still the same.”

  Yates turned, then walked to another location while I tried to sort out his words. William Carver’s adventures being exaggerated felt like a betrayal. What then of all those women I had danced with? There had to be a grain of truth to them.

  “Here, one bit of dreaming fighting another false seeming.” Yates pointed at the large demon then waved. “Impossible art, living despite the odds of being.”

  He casually touched Wraith, Dusk, then Requiem, and their bodies fell into new positions. The [Messenger’s Pet] grunted and raked his claws slowly against the courtyard flooring. They roused themselves while I tried to address Yates’s commentary.

  “She’s aware, makes choices, and everything I remember about the original Xin and more.” I looked at the woman in my arms. Xin meant a lot to me, maybe everything. She was digital but real.

  “Conscious thought doesn’t make you alive any more than waving a stick makes you a hero,” Yates snapped at me with an oddly clear tone.

  Requiem managed to get off the ground first. He kept slipping back to all fours while struggling to stand. A dozen shadows quickly grabbed the teen and lifted him. His eyes gained focus, and their first emotion was hatred.

  “What’s going on? What is this place? A glitch?” Requiem started demanding answers.

  Dusk moved much slower. He stared between his claws, then looked around with flaring nostrils. The [Messenger’s Pet] clearly felt concern over his missing prey. Wraith went a different route and gave an insanely loud scream that rattled walls. The raven fluttered from its tree and took the air while squawking.

  Yates looked at me then pointed at Requiem with his book. “How did this one even get in? He shouldn’t even be aware of this place, yet here we are, face to face.”

  “He was a beta player and guided us to the shoreline.”

  Yates snorted, then shook his head. He seemed to be out of words. “From far shore to far shore. Leave it to humans to be nosy about a bridge between this space and that place.”

  Yates walked closer and looked at the young man. His wild hair and the moving shadows made me shiver. I held Xin closer and tried to avoid the unlit spots of this mansion courtyard. Requiem struggled to get free of the shadows.

  “A piece of advice!” The old man waved his book. “Flee and don’t think twice. There are no rewards, there is no gain, all that left is foolish pride and pain.”

  Yates pulled out a scroll and handed it to Requiem. One of the shadows let go of the teen’s arm. The younger man looked at the scroll, back at the rest of us, and back down again.

  “I want the rest of my gold,” he said to me.

  “Go to Haven Valley, help them if you want, and I’ll have a friend get you what’s due and more.”

  “Fifty th
ousand,” Requiem countered.

  I shrugged, rolled my eyes, then nodded. That was good enough for Requiem. His free arm snatched the scroll. Yates refused to allow the man more freedom and watched passively as Requiem struggled to get a thumb onto the [Lithium] runes.

  Dusk chirped at me and hissed. Wraith was busy smashing a wall in anger. The bird landed and started hopping along a rooftop, approaching Requiem’s trapped form. In its eyes, perhaps the Traveler looked more like a worm than a person.

  “Shoo!” Requiem yelled at the bird while struggling with his bound arms. “Get away!” He grabbed the scroll in his teeth, then flipped the paper around. His thumb jabbed into an ignition rune as the bird leapt.

  [Lithium] characters floated off the page rapidly. Blue light flared as shadows wiggled back to Yates’s body. Requiem’s form vanished. Feathers flew everywhere once the bird realized his potential prey had vanished. Dusk’s head followed the fluttering avian.

  “Good riddance,” Wraith said nearby. One of his horns had been cracked, and blood trailed down a beefy arm.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  “Don’t worry about me, brother. That is not your role.” He grunted, then turned away. The damaged horn slid out of sight.

  My eyebrows lowered once more toward the large demon, but he refused to comment further. I already missed his chuckling. Seeing him hurt filled me with unexpected guilt.

  Brick scraped behind us. Dusk bound past where Yates had walked. I repositioned an arm to ensure Xin was being cradled safely before I turned around. A gasp escaped me once I saw what Yates had done.

  Portions of the courtyard were sliding together. Shadows moved pieces around and stacked them atop each other to form an archway. They worked quickly to turn part of the wall into a portal of sorts.

  The man held a finger down on the book in his hands. I didn’t understand what was going on, but maybe it made sense from a programming point of view. Maybe that book symbolized programs that could be run. Spells, [Lithium] specifically, made sense as a programming language. What little I had studied showed patterns and formulas that changed how the spell acted.

  Still, an entire book of those abilities must be special. This one looked to be capable of setting the shadow creatures about various tasks. How powerful could such an item be if it were to fall into normal player’s hands?

  Yates strode forward, headed for the doorway before it was even finished being constructed. A dozen shadows dove into the archway and spread themselves thin. The material they were made of let no light past. He walked without pause and vanished without even a ripple.

  Dusk chirped at me. Wraith’s nose flared and his head shook.

  “Awesome,” I muttered then walked forward, carrying Xin with me.

  The sensation of cold silk greeted my skin as we passed through. Xin shivered with chills, and I kept her pressed close. Barely free fingers rubbed up and down the few inches of skin I could reach. She didn’t stir.

  We arrived in a room with glowing beakers and tall shelves full of badly rolled papers. Piles of documents sat all around the room. This place looked like William Carver’s hut, only much messier. The ceiling was at least twenty feet overhead, and large precariously balanced boxes had been shoved into slots.

  “That is neat,” I said.

  “Neat? Generalizations are for lesser minds. Details are best left to scientists and poets.” He straightened his back, then shook the book at me. “And I am both.”

  “But you didn’t give yourself a way to speak normally. That seems like a huge detail to overlook.”

  “No, holes lead to flaws!” He shook, and creatures of shadow moved about the room.

  Some hands straightened out items lying on the floor. Other shadows knocked over new materials. The net effect was an unchanged room. One carried a dustpan through to clean up dust from all around the floor. Another dumped the freshly used dustpan in a corner.

  “Spells.” Yates snorted while shuffling around. “They were rigid, stillborn, and mechanical assemblies until I crafted a method to make them art. I gave them life.” Yates stared at the rows of books and snarled. He ran for the shelves and started knocking down objects. “I gave them all life and now those fools drown in fear-spawned strife!”

  Yates rapidly turned violent and slammed his arms across a shelf. Glass and flasks crashed. Books and notes went everywhere. Dusk circled behind me, then stayed still. His head butted into my hand, seeking reassurances that I couldn’t give. Wraith crossed his large arms and snorted out a puff of steam.

  “My world, my dreams, my art! All of it, a bubble, a ghostly fart!” Yates hopped up and down.

  “Never mind!” the raven shouted while hopping up and down too.

  I hadn’t even noticed the damned creature in here with us. Its blackened beak opened wide to laugh.

  “Don’t get lippy, Clippy!” Yates stood there huffing while the four of us held still.

  I cradled Xin and couldn’t properly pet Dusk despite his insistent demands for attention.

  “Never!” The bird laughed.

  I had no goddamn clue what Yates would start to babble about now. “Do you need the key that M. Shell made? Or have something for us to take back to Haven Valley?”

  “No, and no, a thousand times no!” Yates smacked another paper off the shelf. It fluttered in the air while shadows tried to straighten up objects.

  I didn’t understand. We’d risked our asses against [World Eater]s and an insanely designed creation in order to get that key. What was the purpose if Yates didn’t need it?

  Yates stared across a table at me and frowned. Maybe he could read my thoughts through some magical administration interface. He snorted, then shook his head again.

  “This way.” He turned and walked into another room.

  We followed him. I looked at the book as we passed and marveled at how like my own it seemed to be. Maybe this was a copy, or the inspiration for the book used by the Voices and Ultimate Edition players.

  The next room was lit by three candles of different colors. Yellow, blue, and red light mixed up in the room. Their hues blended together on a bed in the middle. I carefully wove Xin’s comatose form through the door and moved farther into the room.

  I recognized the hair first. Braids were woven together in solid-looking clumps of silver and gold. Her black clothes were dusty and cracking. A jutting dagger that bordered on a short sword sat in her chest. Her body warped around its edge.

  “Is that Mother?” I asked.

  He nodded slowly.

  “By the Voices, I never dared believe she existed,” Wraith spoke in a humble rumble.

  I hung my head and stood very still. Dusk bounded by and stared at the woman’s face. She looked like a robotic Sleeping Beauty.

  “You are not here to provide me a gift or receive one. You are here with witnesses. That will help you be effective.” Yates’s teeth ground together. He lived in a place between stressed and crazy.

  I tried to understand how it was possible to be a witness. Then it hit me. In theory, my video feed was being watched by a ton of people in the real world. What had those viewers thought of my actions? Voices above, they probably thought I was insane.

  “You mean the people watching,” I said slowly.

  He nodded but didn’t speak. One of his gnarled hands ran across the bedside where a prone version of Mother lay. The bed shimmered for a moment and looked to be nothing more than a metal box with a glowing red light. That too faded and became a large beating heart, then an endless ocean trapped inside a box. All the images faded and it became a simple cot once more.

  “A million rivers. Each one shaping what is to come. Each one burning a new path in golden light,” Yates said slowly. Carefully, he ran his hand on the cot and looked sad. “My friends were lost in its radiance. What robbed my friends of their minds will burn me to the soul. But this sacrifice we need. That’s true art! Not an idle dream, but thought made action.”

  I nodded a
s if his words made sense. They almost did. If I dared believe him, Yates had essentially worked with the others to code a world where thought became a form of reality. That sounded insane, but the ARC put everything in our heads. The game had been a mental projection all along. We were nothing more than electronic ink.

  “A trio of the old die to make way for the new. A bridge to form made of impossible dew.” He smiled weakly. “I’m sorry. I’ve always been terrible at poetry.”

  “It’s okay. I’m starting to get the hang of this. But do you intend to… go the same way as Michelle?” I tried to phrase my question correctly. Michelle had been a burned out skeleton sitting on a throne of wire. Based on the Trillium board’s words, Michelle and Carver’s deaths were probably directly related to the same process Yates intended to attempt.

  “I do, I will, and I have,” Yates said while staring at the book in his hands. “But I have a request for you.”

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “We stand here on the world’s far side, on a linchpin holding her tangled cloth into its bubbling shape. Someone”—he stared at me—“must stand on the world’s far side until the end. Or else all efforts will be for naught.”

  I didn’t entirely understand. Was he saying I needed to keep my ARC active in order to keep the evacuation process going? That sort of made sense. This entire world did use the ARC network. I vaguely remembered one of the board members of Trillium mentioning mine had been altered somehow. It probably had to do with whatever coding accompanied the [Legacy Wish]. I almost wished I had worked to get a different degree in college.

  “Once I pull the plug, bubbles collapse. Borders between worlds will cease, and madness given flesh will run rampant.”

  “Can you explain in more technical terms?” I wanted a better description of what he needed.

  Yates shot off of the bed and stomped over to a four-foot-tall stack of notes in a chair. “I am! I am and I cannot!”

  “Never mind!” screamed the raven. It hopped on a table.

  Dusk’s head tilted in the bird’s direction, but he otherwise stayed still. His lack of desire to murder wildlife actually bothered me.