MetaGame

by Sam Landstrom

  Lily’s soft features glowed in the warmth of the photoflowers’ light as she told D_Light about the god of her tribe, the Great Stag. According to legend, long ago when her people were first created, there was a magnificent stag that lived in their forest. He was a kind creature who could speak, and this stag taught the tribe of the Star Sisters and the tribe of the Sons how to gather fruit and hunt. There was abundant fruit, and the game was plentiful. But one day the queen of the Star Sisters and the king of the Sons decided that they no longer had a use for the stag.

  Using an imperious tone of voice, Lily quoted the characters of her story. “‘The stag’s pelt will make a fine blanket to warm me at night,’ said the queen. And the king said, ‘The stag’s head will make a fine trophy over my throne.’”

  Lily then told how a team of the best hunters from both the tribes brought down the mighty creature, and the queen got her pelt and the king got his trophy. But what they did not know was that the stag was the true life-bringer of the forest. With his breath he made the fruit grow and the game multiply. And so in his absence, the fruit rotted away and the game disappeared, and the people of the tribes began to starve.

  Lily tilted her head and lifted her brows. “And after many had perished, the stag was reborn and came back. The tribes begged the stag to save them, and he consented, but the tribes needed to pay for what they had done. Forever forward, every moon, one woman from the tribe of the Star Sisters and one man from the tribe of the Sons were selected to run, to be hunted as the Great Stag himself had been hunted. Some would return by the next moon, and some would not.”

  “That’s awful,” D_Light said. “Lily, you know that is a lie, I mean a myth, right?”

  “Yes, I know that,” she said. And then, more softly, she added, “I know that now.”

  “How does your tribe choose? Choose who is to be hunted, I mean?” D_Light asked.

  “Each tribe has an elder who chooses, although there are often volunteers.”

  “ Volunteers? Who would volunteer?” D_Light asked incredulously.

  “People who want a better life. People like me.” She smiled faintly and lowered her head. Looking at Lily sitting motionless on the lawn next to him, her sculpted legs drawn in tight, D_Light thought she appeared to be a statue herself, the photoflowers casting soft shadows in all the right places. She was a statue of innocence and virtue, a work of art from which he could not pull himself away.

  Following a long pause, Lily returned to her story. “Whenever one of us goes on a run, we are allowed to cast a stone with our mark into a jar. Every four years the elder reaches into the jar and pulls out a stone. If it is your stone, then the Great Stag will save you.”

  “A lotto,” D_Light whispered.

  She shrugged. “Yes, so the more often you run, the better your chances of salvation.”

  This D_Light understood. It was no different than the Game. The higher your lifetime score, the better your chances at becoming one of the chosen-one of the immortals. This one fact was the underlying current that influenced every action taken by every player every day in the Game. “Believe it or not, we’re not that much different, you and I,” he told her.

  Lily felt an inexplicable desire to tell D_Light all there was to know about her even though it went against everything she had been taught about humans. She wanted to go on to tell him how, after being chosen, she was no longer allowed to sleep in the same den as her sisters and daughters, that she had to sleep alone. She wanted to talk about how two nights after the lotto she had been awakened by the elder, who led her silently through the forest for hours until they reached a cave, which they proceeded to navigate for miles in the dark with only the light of a tiny lamp. She wanted to share the memory of emerging on the other side of the cave into a different world, one with marvelous trees and beautiful flowers, a paradise where she assumed the forgiving Stag would meet her and speak to her with kindness and love. And she wanted to reveal to D_Light her feelings of disillusion and despair when her god never came, how her only anchor was Todget, the one chosen from the tribe of the Sons, who led her away to her new life, a life much like the last-full of fear and events outside of her control.

  Lily wanted to share these things but didn’t. She didn’t tell D_Light how she had found work at the university as a test subject, how Professor SlippE who hired her did not mind that she was a demon because it meant she came cheap. She didn’t tell him that it was this professor who implanted her mind interface chip or how he conducted experiments on her that caused bizarre images and voices to crash into her psyche-some ideas created, others destroyed. It was then that she began to dream for the first time, began to imagine death as something other than eternal peace and darkness. Now death had become a curious and frightening unknown, and despite feeling that she could trust D_Light, she was not yet ready to fully reveal her feelings of alienation and vulnerability. There was so much in this new world that she still did not understand, including why it made her smile when she looked at this man at her side and he returned her gaze.

  Slowly, Lily lifted her eyes to the stars above. “So much space, so vast. It is so cold,” she said with a quiver in her voice.

  “They’re fake, just a projection on the invisible dome.”

  Lily laughed. “You must think I’m a fool, a ‘nOOb,’ as you call it. It’s not what they are, it’s what they represent.”

  “Well then, I suppose you could call it ‘vast,’ and space is certainly cold. But it is beautiful too. You could live a billion lifetimes and not fill up that space.”

  “And your OverSoul, your god, will give you that opportunity?” Lily asked. She fixed her eyes back on the statue.

  “For a billion lifetimes? Soul willing, yes.”

  “Maybe one lifetime lived well is enough.”

  D_Light repressed the urge to roll his eyes. It was the sort of thing sideliners and expired players said to make themselves feel better about dying, but he refrained from saying those things aloud. Lily was no coward. She was in a land of monumental complexity, a world that did not care for her one pin. Indeed, she was fodder for the petty desires of others, and yet she sat there serenely, gorgeous and resolute, and as he gazed at her near the statue, she too looked like a goddess-one stripped of all her power, perhaps, but not of her divinity.

  “It used to terrify me,” D_Light said. “That.” He pointed up into the starry night.

  Lily squinted as though looking for something specific. “When I was little,” D_Light said, “I slept by myself in a tiny, windowless room away from the other children. My bedroom was out on the roof of our nursery, and so on the clear nights I would gaze up at the stars before going to bed. I continued this routine until one night, as I lay in my bed…” D_Light paused because he was not sure how to explain. “As I lay in my bed, I felt infinity.” He looked into Lily’s eyes to see if he had already lost her, but she appeared focused and intrigued, so he continued. “I realized I was a speck in time, a time that went on forever without end. I felt like I was already gone and that my life, me, the person I was, my soul as it were, had no meaning on such a stage-in a universe without end.”

  Lily placed her hand atop D_Light’s, and the two returned their gaze upward to the stars.

  “It terrified me,” D_Light said, his eyes still fixed on the night sky. “It terrified me to be nothing.” Then he chuckled.

  “So I stopped looking up on my way to my bed, and I started sleeping with the light on.”

  Lily smiled at his solution. “I always slept near my sisters and daughters until that was no longer an option. Why did you sleep alone?” Lily asked softly.

  “My naga did not allow any of us to sleep together.” D_Light recited a hymn: “In the Game of Life, we all play alone.”

  “What a strange thing to say,” Lily declared. “I don’t think that is even true. Sure, we are born alone and we die alone, but as we live, we live together. It seems like the living is the important part.”

  D_L
ight did not bother to explain that the meaning of the hymn was more subtle than that. Sure, players gained by cooperating, at least as far as such relationships were beneficial, but in the end only individuals received salvation. One had to make one’s own way.

  “Anyway, it isn’t about whom I slept near,” D_Light said.

  “This fear was deeper than that. Maybe the distraction of others would have stopped me from realizing this truth-”

  “The truth of your oblivion?” Lily questioned.

  “Right.”

  “And you found solace in the OverSoul’s promise to make you timeless?”

  D_Light’s voice rose. “It’s more than a promise, more than a myth. I mean, you see them-the immortals. They walk among us. You ate dinner with one of them!”

  “Dr. Monsa? You want to be like him?” Lily asked.

  “Maybe not like him exactly,” D_Light replied, and they both laughed at this.

  The two fell silent for a short time. Smorgeous had observed where the servants kept the nectar wine and suggested D_Light acquire some for his company. The familiar reminded him that alcohol had, historically, served him well with the ladies. D_Light told his familiar to shut up.

  D_Light crossed his arms and rubbed his shoulders as though to keep warm, causing an undesirable slithering sound as his hands ran across the microlenses of his skinsuit, breaking the dense but pleasant silence. Lily looked over and put her arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. It was not the jerky, awkward, or hurried motion of someone making a sexual advance, the way Lyra had come on to him the night before. Sitting so closely, their bodies gently touching, he could feel the slow and steady rise and fall of her breath. He let his head tilt down and rest on her soft shoulder. She wrapped her arms around him tighter, and he could feel her heartbeat, which was steady and strong. It was hypnotic, and he allowed himself to listen for the longest while. In that moment, D_Light was feeling something that he had never before felt, and it was both exciting and terrifying at the same time.

  “Someday I would like to take you sailing,” he announced.

  “Sailing? Ah, I’ve seen the little white sails of the boats on the lake near our…near my old home.” She paused. “It looks very peaceful. Like birds in flight.”

  “Ha, everyone I know thinks it’s pointless-a waste of time.”

  Lily nestled her warm face into his chest. “I would go sailing with you, D.”

  “We could go anywhere, you know. I’d rent us an old-fashioned sloop, one with a cabin that we could sleep in. So many islands for us to anchor off of. We could just keep going and going.”

  Lily nodded.

  “We could take your nubber. We could train him to work the deck.”

  Lily laughed. “I don’t know what ‘working the deck’ is, but I’m sure he would look adorable doing it.”

  They both looked over at the nubber. It sat as though mimicking the humans; however, sitting forward was difficult for a pudgy bear, and so it rocked back and forth, always threatening to fall backward. When it noticed it had the humans’ attention, it crawled over and joined in the snuggling, which set off a series of coos and awws from everyone.

  Eventually, Lily spoke softly. “There is a lake nearby.”

  “Yeah, we’re sitting under a giant lake,” D_Light said.

  “Yes, but I mean another smaller lake, here, in the inner sanctum. BoBo showed it to me yesterday. If we have time tomorrow, would you like to go for a swim? You humans are all competitive, right? We could race, if you prefer.”

  Time. All this talk of infinite time and he suddenly felt like he did not have any to spare. Lily, apparently thinking along the same lines, asked, “Why haven’t they come for us? Come for me, I mean? They must know we’re here.”

  D_Light just turned his head, found her cheek, and kissed it. Her skin was warm and pliant to his lips.

  “Let’s take that swim now,” he said with a comforting smile.

  It was not long before the companions found a small lake that shimmered subtly under the soothing colors of nearby photoflowers. They swam, laughed, and raced to the point of exhaustion. Naked and entwined, they fell asleep atop a soft mound of moss as they dried in the warmth of the inner sanctum’s night air.

  D_Light awoke again to find PeePee staring at him with a blink request from Lyra, which he accepted. Good morning, Dee. Her thought signature was amused.

  This isn’t exactly what it looks like, D_Light stammered. We took a swim and then-

  Forget it. I think it’s great that you’re getting along so fabulously with all of your teammates. A real morale builder you are. Unnervingly, the ferret simulated Lyra’s laugh, and its little snout snapped open and shut as it did so.

  There was little D_Light could do but take her teasing in good humor. Lily awoke also and was predictably unhappy about yet another voyeur robot making her business its own.

  The rest of the day went on in a similar manner as the last. The girls whisked Lily away, and D_Light, Lyra, and Djoser went on their own excursion.

  First on the trio’s to-do list was to visit Amanda, who was recovering on a bed atop an immense boulder that overlooked much of the sunken English garden. With Lyra at the lead, they made their way up a set of stairs that snaked around the girth of the boulder. Once at the top, they could see a medical bot tending to the patient, along with a pink-bowed clone daughter of Dr. Monsa’s, presumably the only clone the group had not yet met. This girl did not introduce herself or pay the visitors any attention at all until Djoser, nearly shouting, demanded Amanda’s health status.

  The girl sighed and directed her attention to the visitors. “The damage to the product’s body was significant, as you can see by the number of skin grafts on her body, but she is making excellent progress in her recovery and is already walking.” Djoser caressed the white artificial skin that held his servant together. It was oily to the touch.

  The group would have chatted with Amanda, but concubine bodyguards were not conversationalists. She simply said that she hoped to be fully functional within a day or two. It only took a few minutes for D_Light and Lyra to become bored and want to move on, but Djoser lingered. After all, he had been away from his concubine for two nights now. Lyra and D_Light left him to her. Descending the stairs from the boulder, D_Light was not sure if he was disgusted or mildly impressed that the coddled nobleman was willing to perv with something in that state; he quickly realized that it was disgust. The clone would have stayed as well, perhaps for some research purpose, but Djoser insisted that she give them a few minutes alone.

  CHAPTER 31

  It would be three more days before the team would get their final quest, and yet in that brief space of time they had settled into somewhat of a comfortable routine in the inner sanctum. Each morning they would all meet for a decadent breakfast with whichever products and cloned daughters happened to be there at the time. Dr. Monsa himself was never present, however, as he found the early morning hours to be his most creative and he tended to use them for work. The clone girls ensured that the breakfast banter was never boring, for they loved to discuss their father’s fascinating inventions and make inquiries of the visitors, most notably of Lily and her life on the fringes of society. They seemingly could not get enough of the fair Star Sister, and D_Light understood the attraction. He often found himself staring at Lily and listening to her with the same wide-eyed curiosity of the girls.

  Once breakfast was over, the group would take a morning walk through Dr. Monsa’s magical gardens. Amanda, mostly healed from her injuries but still bearing scars and patches of new skin that had not yet seen the sun, would join them for these walks. Although they always set out together, beginning their walk with a discussion of the upcoming quest, the group inevitably ended up drifting apart. D_Light and Lily often lagged behind, engaged in a sort of playful teasing that irritated Lyra. Lyra and Djoser acted more stately in their exploration of the gardens, almost as though they were in the public eye, which was the exact opp
osite of the inner sanctum. Eventually, the nobles too would drift apart as Djoser would find himself in need of Amanda and a bit of privacy.

  To D_Light, the hours between breakfast and dinner during those several days of waiting were golden-carefree, lovely, and with Lily. Indeed, he enjoyed them so much that he often forgot that he was in the middle of an intensely competitive and dangerous MetaGame. He didn’t think about strategies, points, or the next quest. He didn’t agonize about past mistakes or future prospects. For once, he lived only in the present, and it felt good, even healing.

  D_Light and Lily spent a great deal of time taking swims in the lake and streams of the inner sanctum. At first, D_Light spent more time on the water in a borrowed boat than in the water swimming. Lily thought it tragic and taught D_Light several new strokes, including the butterfly. Cocky, thinking he had mastered this stroke, D_Light then challenged Lily to a race. To be sporting, she did the backstroke to his butterfly, but she still beat him, although not by much.

  D_Light and Lily also enjoyed passing the time by teaching the nubber, the clever prototype teddy bear, a whole host of tricks, one of which was to dance. Smorgeous made an excellent stereo for this activity. The familiar was encased in an organic shell capable of conducting sound, so he was essentially one good-sized speaker. D_Light even compromised on his personal policy against stupid gimmickry and had Smorgeous download some kitschy dance software, enabling the robot to flawlessly execute thousands of different dances. Lily had never seen a cat do this sort of thing and thought it hysterical. D_Light teased Lily about her impromptu “feeder fish dance” at the groksta a few days back and suggested it would be a good idea for all of them to learn a few of Smorgeous’s moves. The nubber joined in too, although it was so clumsy that it would bump between D_Light, Lily, and Smorgeous like a ping pong ball, occasionally knocking someone off balance. At one point, they all ended up on the manicured lawn in a silly, chortling heap.