The Grind

by Dante Doom

  “That was very unpleasant,” Ten-Thirty said as it emerged from the water and flailed around some, apparently getting its bearings. “And I am not alive; I am a Machina.”

  “Of course, you’re alive,” Timon replied with a smile. “Well, alive as you can be in the Grind.”

  Ten-Thirty continued to grumble at being swallowed by the angler, and didn’t bother answering.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Savannah and Timon both let out a sigh of relief as 225,560/1,500,000 hovered over Timon’s head.

  The water faded away, as well, leaving Ten-Thirty lying on the ground. Savannah climbed down from the outcropping where she’d been perched and shined her light around to illuminate the area. Without all the water in place, they looked to be in some sort of tank. Lifting her arm up, she looked up toward where they’d jumped down from, but without a very long rope and someone at the top, there was no way they could get out that way. Shaking her head, she caught her breath as her light caught a small stairwell leading even deeper underground.

  “Where do you think that goes?” Timon asked as they reached Ten-Thirty.

  “By my calculations, I would assume that it goes deeper into the ground,” Ten-Thirty replied.

  “Gee, that was helpful,” Savannah said as she walked over to the stairs. Had the Aspect been trying to lead them here? It was still impossible to tell if Kireen was malicious or helpful. Whatever the creature’s motivation was, though, this stairwell appeared to be the only way out.

  “Well, let’s go,” Savannah said. “We don’t have time to waste.”

  “Yeah, let’s get it over with already,” Timon said. “I’m getting tired of fighting against gigantic monsters that are near impossible to beat.”

  “I dunno—that was kind of easier than I anticipated,” Savannah answered.

  “Says the woman with one of the strongest guns in the game,” Timon replied.

  Savannah looked at the rifle in her hands and grinned. “Yeah, it is coming in handy. Between this gun and the shield, I’m starting to become a real force to be reckoned with.”

  “It’s a shame you won’t be in the game for much longer,” Timon said.

  “Yeah, I’m never going back into the Grind after I get my rank. Never, never, never. I’ve spent the equivalent of years in this place. I can’t take it anymore.”

  “You really don’t care for this? I think it’s kind of fun—you know, except for all of the intrigue and surprise boss fights,” Timon said.

  “Don’t ever do fun things for a job, or you’ll grow to hate it,” Savannah replied. “Trust me on that one.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Timon said.

  They walked in nervous silence, continuing down the stairwell. No one knew what was awaiting them down there.

  Their footsteps echoed as they descended into a strange-looking laboratory. There were rows upon rows of shelves housing bottles full of green liquid. Long counter-height tables ran down the center of the room with liquids bubbling away on Bunsen burners. The hum and whir of machines broke apart the silence from the stairwell, making the room seem loud in comparison. Its interior was spacious, wide enough to fit a dozen or more people inside with each working on their own experiments.

  “What is this place?” Timon asked. He walked over to one of the tables and poked at a green bottle.

  “Some kind of lab,” Savannah answered. “Interesting.” She looked at the wall to her right. Hundreds of scribblings were carved into the stone wall, many of them incoherent. They were regular numbers, but with letters in between them. Some had lines over them and others had strange crosses next to them, but none of the markings made sense to her. “Like the ravings of a madman.”

  “Oh, is it?” said a high-pitched male voice from behind a large blue tube. A short man, wearing a lab coat and thick goggles, stood between two of the tubes. There’d been so much in the room for them to take in, he’d simply blended in—none of them had noticed him till he spoke.

  “Who are you?” Savannah demanded as she brandished her weapon. Timon and Ten-Thirty also aimed their guns at the man.

  “Goodness! Please, put your weapons down, I mean no harm to any of you!” the man replied. “Besides, if you hit the wrong thing in here, you could destroy the entire mountain.”

  “I’m not lowering my gun until you answer the question,” Savannah responded. Her heart was pounding and her fingers were trembling. Being in the Grind for a very long time could have deleterious effects on a person’s mind due to their mental aging—there was no telling what this man would do, or who he was. While someone could spend decades inside the game, their physical brain wouldn’t quite understand what was happening, and would start to deteriorate as an effect of the constant Grind. Usually, Wild Cards would have the leave the game every now and then, for some reason or another, but those who never left would end up much worse off.

  Hold-outs were different, however. They were the kind of people who for some reason wouldn’t or couldn’t log out of the Grind. Their minds would deteriorate slowly over time, and their reasoning abilities would diminish in kind. The strange words on the wall here seemed to indicate that this man might very well be a Hold-out. If that was the case, he could be a real danger to them; Savannah had only met a single Hold-out in the past, and the memory still gave her nightmares.

  “My name is Alcius,” the man said. “Okay? I am of no threat, so please, put the guns down; they make me nervous.”

  “What does all of that writing mean?” Savannah demanded of him, raising her gun a little higher. Her finger was over the trigger and she felt the impulse to just shoot. The incoherent ramblings of the woman who had attacked her years ago still echoed in her ears.

  “Those?” Alcius asked as he pointed to the wall. “Those are math equations, ma’am.”

  “Math equations?” Savannah repeated. “Those words don’t make any sense.”

  Timon lowered his gun and looked sheepishly to Savannah. “Uh, Savannah, math is when you add numbers together. You know, one plus one?”

  “That doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen,” Savannah shot back, gesturing to the wall.

  “I recognize that one,” Timon said as he pointed to one of the scribblings. “It’s the equation for gravity.”

  “Yes, very good!” Alcius said. “See, ma’am? There is nothing to fear from my writing.”

  Savannah slowly lowered her gun. A heat came over her face as she realized how confused Timon and Alcius looked. “I’ve… I mean, I never went to school…” she mumbled.

  “It’s okay,” Timon said as he patted her on the shoulder. “It’s not like you had a lot of time while working on a farm.”

  “By my summations, these equations are the backbone of this game,” Ten-Thirty said as it walked up to examine the wall. “How fascinating.”

  “Yes, fascinating is the right word!” Alcius gushed as he slowly emerged from between the tubes. “These equations are extremely important. They are the only thing that will save us!”

  “Save us?” Savannah repeated. “From what?”

  “Aren’t you a silly person?” Alcius asked with a chuckle. He looked at Timon. “Surely, you know what I’m talking about, right?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Timon said. “Save us from what?”

  “The plague! Don’t you watch the news? People dropping like flies! In here, time moves slowly. In here, we’ve had time to figure it out!”

  “Watch the news? I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Timon replied. He glanced at Savannah, and she felt a shiver run down her spine. Maybe he was a Hold-out who simply hid his madness better than others.

  “What? Do you two live under a rock?” Alcius asked, staring at them askance. “We’re all dying. I’m dying right now, but time moves slow enough in here for us to figure out how to make a cure. A cure!”

  Savannah glanced at Timon again. She leaned in slowly. “Is… no…”

  “What?” Timon asked.

&
nbsp; “Is he from the World Before?”

  “That’s impossible. That was so long ago, his body would be dead by now,” Timon whispered.

  “Sir, what year is it?” Savannah asked.

  “Hard to tell,” Alcius said, “with the way time moves in here, but I would assume that it’s maybe 2028? It would have to be 2029, at the least.”

  “That’s not how our calendar works at all,” Savannah whispered to Timon. “This can’t be real.”

  “So, then, I assume Kireen sent you?” Alcius asked as he brushed past them and walked over to a trio of bottles sitting on one of the tables. He began to pour liquid into various beakers, stopping only to measure amounts visually.

  “Kireen? You know her?” Savannah asked.

  “Of course, her team is supposed to be working on the…” he trailed off. Alcius stood motionless then, muttering to himself in some unintelligible language.

  Savannah took a deep breath. This man was certainly insane. She inched away from the madman, noting that Timon looked perturbed, as well. Ten-Thirty was still reading the calculations on the wall and paid no mind to anything that was happening.

  “Oh, I apologize,” Alcius said. “I just remembered that I’m a dead man.”

  “What?” Savannah and Timon asked in unison.

  “It’s strange how consciousness works, but… my body is dead, I now remember, and whatever you are talking to isn’t particularly… alive? I don’t know,” Alcius replied. He looked up from the table. “You appear frightened. I assure you I am of no threat. Who exactly are you?”

  “I’m Savannah, and this is Timon—we’re looking for one of the access hatches.”

  “I mean, why are you in this world?” Alcius asked. “What could you possibly be looking for? I suppose that, if you’re here, then it means the cure worked. Right? You survived?”

  “Whatever happened, it happened a long time ago,” Timon said. “There was some kind of catastrophe, but yes, humanity survived.”

  “That’s good, good to know, although I think I’ve been told that before,” Alcius mumbled, his voice trailing off again. He grabbed a few of the beakers and then dropped them on the ground, shattering them. “It’s hard to remember. I’m not like the others. They… they changed entirely. Forgot who they were. They took on powers and identities. Some malicious, some silly, but… they forgot.”

  “Who?”

  “Kireen, Dorman, Emi, the team… we were here to solve the plague. To save humanity. We worked for as long as we could, but then it all came tumbling down,” Alcius said sadly, his eyes still on the beakers before him. “Our bodies died. The team lost their minds and became… apparitions of some sort. Echoes, really, but still part of their former selves. I suppose I am like that, as well, but what are you to do about it?”

  “So, you mean to tell me that you were alive before the plague?” Timon asked.

  Standing up straight, Alcius threw his shoulders back and pointed to his chest. “I was one of the top scientists working at the Citadel! We built this whole thing for two reasons,” Alcius said as he walked over to the equations on the wall. “The first was so that we would have time to figure out how to make a cure. The time dilation was perfect, but… I can’t really say what happened. I know that, at one point, I could leave this world, but now I can’t.”

  “And, what was the second reason you built this place?” Savannah prodded.

  “To rebuild! Millions were dying by the week,” Alcius said as he swept his hands wide. “The disease started out small, but it grew rapidly. At first, we thought we could contain it, but… well, that was a fool’s assumption on our part. No, in the end, we realized that mankind would be eradicated unless we did something. In the hope that there would be some survivors, the top minds of the world united to create this! All of our knowledge, the combined understanding of thousands of years of human civilization, loaded into one gigantic simulation.”

  “This is a library?” Timon asked.

  “Yes! It is a library, a college, a place of learning,” Alcius replied as he walked over to pods in an alcove of the room that they only now noticed. “We built these things to save our progress, but the programming was corrupt. We built it too quickly, and while it worked, we had a problem… with viruses. No computer program can avoid them, I suppose.”

  “The Virals…” Savannah mumbled. “Those are viruses?”

  “Oh yes, and they are highly destructive. They have altered this world in ways you could never imagine,” Alcius replied. “So, we came up with a plan. We’d assign point values and create ranks for participants. Those who destroyed the most Virals would go up in rank, and they’d be allowed access to different areas in the game. It was a way to ensure those who came into this world kept it safe from the damaging effects of Virals, as you just called them. That was Grei’s job; he did a fantastic job gamifying this whole place! We were all quite impressed, I can tell you.”

  “So, the ranks… they aren’t meant for the real world?” Savannah asked.

  “Goodness, no! What would you even do with them?” Alcius chuckled. “We named the ranks after the medieval titles of the olden days. That was Kireen, I remember; she loved the whole idea of lords and ladies with knights running around protecting everyone!”

  Savannah glanced at Timon. They both wore shocked expressions on their faces. “And, uh, why can there only be one King?” she offered.

  “Oh yes, he’s the server administrator; the King was supposed to be the one to take care of everything inside the game. Not the easiest job, but if you wanted it, you really had to work for it. That would ensure that lazy slobs didn’t end up in charge of our system. The King or Queen was supposed to keep the Citadel in good shape, so that the survivors could learn all sorts of wondrous things.”

  “What? What sorts of things can we learn here?” Timon asked.

  Alcius shook his head. “We built a tutorial, a long time ago. Didn’t you see it when you first connected in?”

  “No,” Savannah replied. “We don’t see anything like that.”

  “So, if you don’t know what this place is for… why are you here?” Alcius asked, giving them an odd look. “Surely, there is no purpose to being here if humanity survived! You should have been able to extract everything necessary and gone on your merry way. The Citadel is not a toy, and shouldn’t be treated as such,” he lectured them.

  Timon leaned over to Savannah. “I don’t think he needs to know the truth about what we use this place for; he seems unstable. It might send him over the edge.”

  “We’re exploring,” Savannah said simply. “Humanity isn’t doing as well as you would hope.”

  “That is a shame. Well, you won’t find anything of interest out here. This mountain was built for the purpose of doing simple routine maintenance on the Citadel. If you want to learn, you’ll have to go to the College of Colossus, but the doors are locked unless you have a certain amount of points. If you want to use our information, you have to be willing to help keep this place free of viruses! Everyone does their part,” he added absent-mindedly, his focus back on his beakers.

  “Of course, of course,” Savannah said with a forced smile. Her entire worldview was starting to crumble. She couldn’t even begin to fathom what this man was talking about. The Grind was an ancient institution, meant to select one’s place in the world. Right? All of this talk about giving knowledge to humanity so they could prosper… what could it possibly mean? It was true that she couldn’t imagine what the World Before looked like, though the stories talked about incredible things that made life easier and safer, but nothing she’d heard had hinted at what this man seemed to be saying about the Grind’s function.

  “We are searching for a maintenance hatch,” Ten-Thirty said once it finished studying the wall. “Would you direct us to one?”

  “Ah, of course,” Alcius said. He pointed to a ladder on the opposite side of the room, near more of the tubes. “That should take you up into the Observatory.” He frown
ed. “I feel like I’ve spoken about this before. Many times… it’s hard to keep track. Would you do me a favor?”

  “What is it?” Timon asked gently.

  “You can extract all of the data once you reach the highest level at the College of Colossus. It will be transferred to your pods, as a way to back things up. From there, you can plug it into a regular computer and you’ll be able to gain access to anything that you need. This place doesn’t need to continue functioning—with each passing hour, it continues to break down. I don’t know if I’m a soul or not, or if I’m some automaton that is dimly self-aware, but I do know this… I am not meant to continue being alive,” Alcius said quietly, that sadness he’d shown them earlier coming over him again, so that he suddenly seemed even older, even more desperate. “Turn off the Citadel once you get the data backed up. Please. Even if it’s only for a minute, it will… it will set me free. It will set all of us free,” he added, “and perhaps a purge will clean up the code so that the damn tutorial works again.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Savannah and Timon were deathly silent as they climbed up the ladder. There were so many things that she wanted to say, but she wasn’t sure where to start. Timon had wanted to ask more questions, and Savannah didn’t really blame him, but Alcius had grown very confused and reintroduced himself to them soon after he’d made that last plea. His mind seemed to be stuck in some kind of loop. Every now and then, Alcius would have a brief lapse of sanity and the two would get more answers, but eventually the Aspect had ceased being coherent entirely.

  Finally, Timon broke the silence. “What the hell is this all about?”

  “I don’t know,” Savannah returned, continuing to climb ahead of him. “Is it true? I mean, the guy was crazy, right? Or… this whole thing is meant to teach us stuff?”