The turret blinks as it rests in silence. I glance at Raev and Xen who look extraordinarily nervous. They look to me, hoping that I have something to offer them in the way of assurances. I divert my eyes.
“Guest access granted for one hour,” the turret says before lifting back into the ceiling.
Fantom smiles back at us as the door on the opposite side of the room opens. Xen and Raev step forward to follow her through. I slip past everyone, unable to slow myself. I'm afraid of what will happen if I stop for too long. I have to keep moving, toward my goal, toward Cyren.
01001000
Shoulder high cubicle walls intersect each other, creating a well-organized maze that stretches into the infinite distance. There are no workstations inside the cubicles and no employees doing any actual work.
With a few selections in my social menu screen I manage to find Grael's avatar in the center of the endless room. I highlight his location for everyone and make my way down corridor after corridor of beige cubes. A single chair sits inside each one, but the walls are bare. It's an empty room full of tinier empty rooms. It's what I imagined DOTbiz to look like in my nightmares.
When I find the middle of the office, I see Grael leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. He looks the same, with his red dreadlocks pulled behind his head, but his bulletproof vest and gas mask are missing. He's wearing a plain gray suit coat, his tie loosely hanging around his neck. Other than a single screen floating in front of him, his cubicle is empty.
He seemed so powerful to me inside the game. I found him intimidating, lording his higher Level over me. Now he looks dull. Weak.
“Grael?” Xen says as he touches his shoulder.
Grael jerks and looks at us, rubbing his thumbs into his eyes. “I should have known you'd come here.”
“What are you doing?” I ask, my eyes scanning the emptiness around him.
“Waiting.”
We all exchange nervous glances, unsure of his state of mind.
“What are you waitin' for, yo?” Fantom asks.
He shrugs his shoulders. “I'm waiting. I'm waiting until I can't wait any longer.” He leans back in his chair again and spins, staring up at the ceiling as it twirls above him. He speaks fast, his mouth barely keeping up with the chaos of his thoughts.
“Do you know that they forced me to work here? It was the only place I could log-in to. This domain. This site. This company. Just me. In this room. All day. Every day. They meant it as some kind of punishment. But do you want to know a secret?”
He stops spinning and leans forward, staring at us with a devious smile stretching from ear to ear.
“I didn't want to be anywhere else.” He opens his arms wide as if he's presenting the room to us. “This is where I belong. In my home, with my children.”
“Your 'children?'” Raev asks, waiting for us to admit that Grael seems as crazy to us as he does to her.
“He's talkin' about the NPCs,” Fantom says, crossing her arms. “Aren't you?”
Grael looks at me and says, “You were right all along, kid. Once I was outside the game world and I could look at the code, I saw how much it had changed from what I originally wrote.” Grael's voice is shaking with excitement. “They were learning. They were conscious. They were self-aware. All of them.”
He stands up and rushes toward me. I flinch, thinking it's some kind of attack, but the non-PvP area logo is flashing in my view. His face is inches from mine, his eyes wild with excitement.
“I wouldn't have trusted anyone else to protect them. I had to do it myself. It was an honor. A privilege. I got to witness them making history.”
He pulls away from me, throwing his hand into the air as he continues his tirade.
“I tried to tell them! I tried to show everyone what I had created. But they wouldn't listen. They thought I was crazy.”
He starts laughing. It's a cackling, high-pitched laugh, like a young boy trying to mask crying.
“They were acting like I acted when you tried to convince me that my game was alive.”
“It's okay,” I say, trying to calm him down, but he twirls around and puts himself in my face again.
“No it's not,” he mumbles. “It's not okay. I failed. I failed to protect them. My children. Maybe if NextWorld had known the truth, maybe they would have done more. Maybe they would have helped me.”
He turns to Fantom and says, “I don't know how the virus got in. We had so much of the game locked down. No connection. No patches. The firewall just dropped away. I've looked at the data over and over. I don't know what I did wrong.”
Fantom says nothing. There's a long pause as I hesitate to reply.
“You didn't do anything wrong,” I say, almost unable to admit the truth. “It was my fault.”
Everyone flashes a stunned look in my direction.
“I died. I was being stupid, going on an adventure that I didn't need to go on. All because I was bored. Because I wanted to keep playing. Because... I don't know. The civilians took down the firewall so they could reroute my spawn point. They did it to save me... and they ended up dooming themselves in the process.”
Fantom shakes her head. “You both need to stop blamin' yourselves. That virus wasn't some malware floatin' around NextWorld. It was an intentional attack, yo.”
“Who would do that?” Xen asks.
“I don't know,” I say with both hands curled into fists. “But when I find out, they're going to pay.”
“The other question is why would someone do that,” Raev asks. “Why would someone want to destroy something you worked so hard to create?”
“I didn't create them,” Grael says, his body losing its energy as he sits back down in his cubicle. “They were a fluke. A mistake. I made an accidental connection. The NPCs I designed should never have been capable of the things they were doing. I thought maybe with more time I could understand...”
“What if I told you there was still time,” Fantom says.
I can't help smiling when Grael perks up. I know the look in his eyes. That renewed sense of hope. The chance to gain back everything he's lost.
“When was the game deleted?” Fantom asks. “When did the virus delete the last line of code?”
Grael looks confused as he mumbles, “The virus deleted the last line of code this morning.”
“I need to know the exact time.”
Grael wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and opens a screen in front of him, accessing the game company records.
“It was 0818, NextWorld time.”
Fantom opens her own screen, swiping through menus. With a few flicks of her wrist, she shares a timer with all of us that appears in the corner of our views. It's counting down from just under eighteen hours.
“Open your workstation,” Fantom says as she pulls up a chair next to Grael in his cubicle. “We've got to find the location code for the game world data or we'll be wanderin' around the Trash Bin forever, yo.”
“The Trash Bin?”
For once, Fantom rolls her eyes at someone other than me. As search screens open in front of her she says, “Do your best to keep up.”
01001001
Raev and Xen join me in a nearby cubicle. I'm trying to catch up to my emotions without imploding from the pressure. Xen sits down across from me on the floor with that stupid grin on his face. It's driving me crazy.
“What?”
He tilts his head to the side and says, “I'm just... happy to see you, Kade. You were trapped in that log-out loop for so long, you know? I tried to keep my hope that maybe Cyren could convince the civilian NPCs to reinstate the log-out, but after a while I had to accept the fact that they weren't going to sacrifice themselves just to let you go. Which meant the only hope in seeing you again would be for DOTgov to do a cold reboot of your E-Womb. The idea that they would fry your nanomachines was just too much for me.”
Raev reaches out and touches Xen as she says, “I think it reminded him of his own time stuck in the loop
.”
Xen pops another pill and says, “I found ways to deal with it.”
“The NPCs chose to release me when their world was gone, when there was... nothing left to fight for.” I suck in a deep breath, forcing myself to push forward. “But they were wrong. There was something left to fight for. Cyren was still alive. We could have survived. We could have...”
I lose my words. I'm not sure whether I'm sad, or angry, or maybe something else entirely. It gets all mixed up inside me. I need a villain, an enemy, something to blame, something to fight. I wish I could just shoot something.
“You can't just survive,” Raev says calmly, twisting her ribbon hair around one finger. “You need to live. Truly live.”
“When we first became partners, I thought that I had achieved everything I needed in life,” Xen says, smiling at Raev. “I stopped frequenting DOTsoc. I stopped going to clubs and concerts. I wanted to spend all my time meditating in DOTgod with Raev. I thought that was all I needed.” He touches her face. “She was the one that showed me the error in my ways. She was the one that showed me the wastefulness in a life lived solitary, denying myself all the pleasures that NextWorld has to offer.”
He runs his fingers across his mouth and I see a red pill disappear between his lips.
“It's about balance,” Raev says, looking deep into Xen's eyes, yet talking to me. “Moderation in either direction can bring you a lot of pleasure, just like falling to either side can cause a lot of pain.”
“Are you preaching to me right now?”
Xen chuckles to himself, “Don't bother, Raev. I gave up trying to convert Kade when he was ten.”
I think again about what Raev said about moderation, and when Xen pops yet another red pill, I wonder if maybe she was preaching to him. The thought fades away as I'm consumed again by my own issues.
“I don't think I've really accepted what's happened. I don't think I've had time to stop and consider everything. Cyren chose her death so that I could live. And now, even if I save her, she won't remember me.”
“What she did wasn't a choice. Not to her,” Raev says. “She would have done anything to save you.”
“She loved you, Kade. You'd have done the same thing for her.”
“Of course I would have!” I blurt out, hearing my own argument. I'm trying to argue with two people that I agree with for no other reason than my own frustration with having nothing else to lash out at.
They're doing nothing but sacrificing for me. They're putting themselves at risk to help me save the woman I love. Because they love me.
“I'm sorry,” I mumble.
“Kade, it's okay. We just-”
“No. Listen to me.” I rub my face, collecting my emotions and setting them in the appropriate containers in my mind. “Thank you. Both of you. I still need to remind myself now and then that sometimes I need help. Sometimes I need a group.”
“I'm your best friend, Kade. I'm never leaving your group.”
“And I'm his partner,” Raev says with a smile. “So I guess you're stuck with me, too.”
I shake my head, a smile breaking across my face. “Someday, I hope I can repay you.”
I start by asking them questions about Metaversalism. And I listen. I really listen. I don't give them any snide replies to the lessons they adhere to. I don't fade out when Xen's slurred speech trails off on tangents that aren't connected to the point he was trying to make. I don't point out the contradictions in their translations of the seven hundred and seventy-seven lessons. I listen to them and do my very best to understand them. Because they are my friends.
“We got it, yo,” Fantom says, standing up triumphantly from the cubicle next to us and swiping her screen shut. She turns to Grael and says, “Share the location code with my account and I'll encrypt it with-”
“On one condition,” he says, afraid to make eye contact with her.
“Condition?” I ask defensively, standing up and approaching him with my hands balled into fists.
He holds up a hand to stop me and says, “You're here to save Cyren. That's good. I get it. But there's a whole game world of NPCs in there. You need to save all of them.”
I look at Fantom and she nods. “The program can cut them all out. It shouldn't be a problem, yo.”
“Fine,” I say. “They all deserve to live. We'll cut them from the game and paste them into NextWorld so they can-”
“It's not that simple,” he barks at me before calming himself down. “DOTgov wants to destroy them, because they don't know how to control them. Their processing power could multiply with every second we allow them to exist in NextWorld. They could consume every bit of data, increasing their intelligence exponentially. They could become... I don't know. I have no idea what they might be capable of if they work together in the vastness of the network. But if we let them loose in NextWorld, the DgS could track them down and delete them again.”
“So... what? What do you want me to do with them?”
Grael looks up at me and says, “I need to look at their code. I think I have a way to stop DOTgov from being able to delete them, but I need more time.”
I look to Fantom, hoping for her opinion, but she shrugs her shoulders and says, “Your call, Cowboy.”
I don't want to decide. I want to save Cyren.
“Fine. As long as I can free Cyren, you can have the others.”
“Thank you. I-” Grael stops and steps backward to swipe a pop-up screen away from his view.
When Fantom does the same thing, she yells, “We have to go. Now!”
“What is it?” I ask.
Before they can explain, a pop-up screen appears in front of me, alerting me that our guest pass is about to expire.
Fantom runs for the door, yelling over her shoulder, “The trespass will alert the DgS.”
I look back at Grael.
He swipes his hand, sharing the location code of the game and pointing toward the exit. “Just go! Save them, Arkade. Save them all.”
I jog after Fantom, still not sure of what is happening. “I thought you were hiding our accounts?”
She turns around, screaming at me. “I am! Nothin' would have flagged our accounts as long as we didn't do anythin' abnormal inside the domain.”
“How about we stop arguing and get out of the domain?” Xen says, his pills keeping him more calm than any of us.
We burst through the exit of the office, out on to the street, but we're stopped in our tracks when ten DgS officers teleport on to the pavement. They're furiously swiping their hands through the air, checking scanners and readouts on our accounts, trying to break through Fantom's blocks.
“They're going to be able to read Raev's account. I couldn't put the same ghosting patterns on her as us because she's still connected to her mother's account. As soon as they see that connection...”
“I'm sticking with my original plan,” Xen says, backing away from them. “The one where we get out of this domain.”
“They locked down the domain,” Fantom says in a hushed tone. “I'm going need time to break us out.”
“What do we do in the mean time?” Raev asks, looking excited by the danger.
Fantom grinds her teeth together, looking up and down the street before she answers, “We run.”
01001010
The DgS officers step forward as Fantom opens up her inventory and unfurls her carpet in front of us so that it hovers a foot off the ground.
“Get on!” she screams as the DgS officers run toward us.
We all step on to the material as it lifts from the ground, leaving the officers staring at us from the street below. I'm about to take in a breath of relief when Xen says with a passing interest, “I think they're chasing us.”
I look behind us and see the DgS officers lift off the ground, rocketing into the sky without any vehicle.
“They're tracin' our signal,” Fantom says before banking to the left as two more officers teleport into the sky in front of us. “And they're doin
' a good job, yo.”
Raev leans down next to her and says with an odd calm, “Then you have to do a better job.”
“I'm tryin',” Fantom says, diving between two monotone buildings before turning right and sliding down an alleyway. “But I told you, DOTbiz has the most elaborate security in NextWorld, because they can afford to have the most elaborate security in NextWorld. This ain't gonna be easy, yo.”
“Did you need me to do anything?” Xen says, dropping a handful of pills as we bank around five more officers appearing in front of us, trying to block the alleyway.
“Stop talkin'!” Fantom screams, yanking the rug upward, climbing toward the sky above DOTbiz.
I watch her control the rug with one hand while trying to maneuver through her secret menu screens with the other. I crouch down next to her and grab on to the rug. She glares at me for a second before I say very simply, “I'll drive. You hack.”
She hesitates, not wanting to give up control of the rug. Three more officers teleport in front of us. They reach out to grab us as we pass, missing us by a few inches.
“I don't care who does what,” Raev yells, “Just get us out of here!”
Fantom turns away from the front of the rug and swipes through her screens with both hands. “We won't be able to leave the domain until I can hide Raev's account, bypass the lock down security, and activate a bug-out algorithm.” She ducks as another officer appears and swipes his hand at her. “They have to touch us in order to do anythin' to our accounts, so just stay away from them and give me time!”
Officers appear all around us, teleporting in with flashes of light, like tiny explosions across the sky. Changing the direction of our bandwidth to dodge around them isn't unlike playing a game. I watch the arrangement of the appearances and try to guess where they'll appear next, then I aim us somewhere else. It takes constant calculating, but when my gamer brain clicks into the pattern, I don't see anything else. Like tunnel vision, the rest of the domain disappears and all I see is our trajectory.
I'm so lost in operating the flying carpet, soaring back and forth, doubling back through alleyways and skimming across rooftops, that I'm not sure how much time passes before Fantom yells, “Got it!”
The NextWorld 02: Spawn Point Page 13