by Olga Werby
“Do you want me to stop that from falling into the lake?” she asks casually.
Ghost tries to stop it from sliding, but he is a tiny—relatively speaking—gray cat. It’s absurd. I’d rather it sunk into the depths, but…I sidestep him and put my foot on the thing. It stops sliding, but if I move, it will move.
Tell her to grab it, would you? I think to Ghost.
Pixie saunters over—her movements are feline even as a metal-clad dude—and looks inside the sarcophagus. “We can just pull her out of there,” she suggests.
I really don’t want to take my dead body with us. What are we going to do with it? Do we need it? I lift my foot slightly, the sarcophagus moves. I stomp down on it. It cracks like a windshield into millions of little diamonds but holds its shape. I can no longer see the body inside—that’s good, really good. Ghost jumps on top and uses his claws to pull away some of the broken glass. It comes off like ribbons.
“Step back,” Pixie tells Ghost. “I got it from here.” She bends over and pulls the slender dead girl out. The body comes out like a rag doll. I back up and let go, and the sarcophagus accelerates and sails spectacularly over the edge. It hits the water with a fabulous splash. Pixie drags the dead me out of sight. I assume Ghost made her do it out of some chivalrous consideration for my feelings. He is right. I really don’t want to examine it too closely.
“So, what now?” Pixie asks. As if I had any idea. They are the ones who know how to play these adventures. I am just here for the ride. Or to provide one.
We hear a sharp, almost melodious, cracking sound and feel the tower sway. I extend my wings to keep my equilibrium as the floor moves. Ghost jumps onto my back, finding his place between my shoulder blades. The tower sways harder. We can see large chunks of it falling into the water. If I shift my weight, I feel like the whole thing will collapse around and under us. I try not to move too much and just use my wings to counterbalance the structure’s movement like a seesaw. Pixie falls, rights herself, and tries to hoist the dead body on my back.
“Hurry, Pixie,” Ghost yells. I can feel his claws digging under my scales. He is scared.
Tell her to just get on my back, I tell him. I’ll carry the dead me with my claws.
The tower swings like a pendulum now—not a good thing for a structure made of glass. Ghost yells at Pixie. She climbs on my back and I flap and lift us up above the disintegrating tower. Our fate is no longer linked with the castle’s. I use my many eyes to get a sense of how the thing is tumbling down. It feels like it all happens in slow motion.
“Grab the princess,” Pixie screams at me.
I can see the pink tutu tumbling down toward the lake. It would be so easy to just let her go. I beat once, twice. We are above the destruction. Safe.
“Jude! Get it,” Ghost urges me on.
I lower my head and dive. Pixie screams. I make one of my eel heads keep an eye on her and Ghost. I would rather lose the dead thing than lose them. It’s no choice really. The dead thing hits the water. Ghost gasps—it’s a funny sound from a cat. And just before her pale legs disappear beneath the surface, I catch one of them and pull up. I didn’t mean to cut it so close.
I don’t look at the mess we left behind, at the center of the lake, although some of my eels do. But they are myopic, what can they really see? I don’t want to remember the broken glass castle. And I make sure I don’t look at the dead thing dangling over the dark water. The lake’s surface is no longer smooth—there are waves emanating from the center, licking the beach like big black angry tongues. I drop the body onto the sand then land a few feet away. Ghost and Pixie both jump off and hurry to look at the dead thing.
“Ah!” Ghost cries.
What? What is it? I don’t really want to examine the body too closely. Even if it is a version of me, it still gives me the shivers. I really don’t like it. It’s a bad dead thing. It’s not me.
Pixie’s voice is artificially calm and reasonable as she describes what she sees. When she is done, I have to look. The princess’s body—every inch of it—is covered with thousands of little crystal-shelled snails. I guess they attached to the body when it fell in the water.
What are they doing to it? I ask Ghost. But I can see that they are building. It’s slow at first, but it speeds up rapidly. I can’t look away. The snails are excreting a new glass sarcophagus around the dead body of my doppelgänger.
We stay until the snails finish their job. The new sarcophagus is identical to the one I smashed and let fall into the lake. What’s more, the waves on the lake are higher now, like a rising tide. Mere moments after the snails finish, the casket is surrounded by water; and the water keeps rising.
Climb back on, I tell Ghost. He does and Pixie follows. None of us want the snail-filled water to touch us. We saw what those things can do; we don’t want to be entombed.
I flap before it’s too late. I don’t want my toes to get wet; I am not interested in glass slippers. From a few feet up, we see the entire lake start to shift. The whole terrain slips, and the lake tries to establish a new equilibrium—a new local minimum, if you will. I have to fly higher and higher to keep us above the surface of the rising lake.
The lake spills and spills until the glass sarcophagus gets completely submerged. We can barely see a shimmer under the water. And those plants, the ones that were on the edge of the beach we stood on just moments ago, are gone. They are underwater, too. The lake expands and expands and shifts and moves until the sarcophagus is at its center again.
“Well, that was interesting,” Ghost says.
“What now?” Pixie asks.
“Maybe we should go visit the black castle up on the mountain? We haven’t done nearly enough damage to this adventure yet,” Ghost says. I like his hutzpah.
But when I try to leave, my snakes refuse to fly away. What gives? Am I not the dominant entity of our collective? I am pissed.
“Jude look!”
I look down where Ghost is pointing. We are still hovering over the sarcophagus. There are tiny bubbles raising to the surface and popping with sweet bell-like tones. Ding. Ding. Ding. I notice that anywhere a bubble pops, a rock surfaces. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. In short order, the foundation of a new glass castle is rising.
“Is that…” Pixie doesn’t finish.
“Yes,” Ghost says.
My rhythm app beats to the pulse of the castle-building music. I can’t help it. My wings flap in tempo with each ding, and the bubbles move in the air currents I create. The castle is rebuilding, but because I’m hovering over it, the design is not the same as before. There is a central indentation and three towers are rising around it—one right in front of my main head, and one on either side between my wings and my tail. Where my wings beat, there is space. It’s like I’m shaping this new castle layout with wing wind.
I flap harder, moving more air around, just to see what would happen. The three towers narrow as they grow. The more I flap, the more needle-like they become. Crystal spurs rise out of the dark water and converge on each of the needle towers, supporting them—the new flying buttresses. From above, it looks like a delicate glass birdcage. I go up a bit higher, to make sure that I don’t accidentally break the new towers…or get trapped by them. As I rise, the castle courtyard emerges out of the lake between the three towers. The glass sarcophagus extrudes in the center of the newly configured glass castle, like a dead bird in a crystal reliquary.
“That was cool,” Pixie says. “Should we fly down and destroy this one, too? There’s plenty of room for you to land down there.”
Well, that’s an idea. But I would rather not be anywhere near that dead thing.
“I think we should go check out those ruins over there, on the new shore,” Ghost says. He points to the place that used to be the center of the lake and is now glass rubble from the previous castle. I would much rather do that. I turn and take off for the mess we created. We can always return to the dead princess…if we have to.
&n
bsp; 22. Crystal Memory
Humans have had millions of years to sharpen their intuition about how things work. When a shoe drops, we don’t look for it up in the air. That would be stupid. But out here, in cyberspace, intuition betrays us all the time. Designers of cool adventures work to shatter our expectations, to confuse and amaze us. For each new generation of jaded teenagers, designers push things ever further, beyond our ability to predict what happens next. Whoever invents the best digital sutaffu wins.
I fly above the glass castle ruins for some time. There’s no need to hurry. Neither Ghost nor Pixie push me to land. We have had enough surprises for one day. Has it been only a day? I’m not hungry or tired. Well, I am tired of this adventure. I would much rather just sit in a meadow someplace and watch the magical butterflies make fractal patterns with their flight paths. I want to feel a touch of cyber yūgen—an elusive beauty of a man-made world that, in its drive to imitate reality, transcends it. I am so not into that dead princess stuff.
Not seeing anything out of the ordinary—well, at least not any more so than we’ve seen up to now—I make a decision to land. I settle away from the glass ruins. There is no reason to get too close. We have the whole now-exposed lakebed around us, with miles of the sharp sand in every direction. There’s no inclination to this beach plane—it’s flat. The terrain really did change shape. The lake flowed into a newly formed depression with the new glass castle at the center. Young trees sprout and start to take over the newly exposed land. Based on the rate of growth, we probably only have a few hours before the forest takes over and covers the ruins with dense vegetation.
“Dépaysement anyone?” Ghost asks.
“Toto, we are definitely not in Kansas anymore,” Pixie agrees as the trees literally march closer at a very un-botanical pace.
“We better hurry,” Ghost says and runs toward the nearest glass boulder.
“Wait up, specter boy wonder,” Pixie screams after him.
I’m in no hurry; I can get there in just a few flaps. But I stay close and keep watch. I feel it’s my job to protect them. I’m the big and powerful dragon here, even if Pixie is the one with a sword. It’s a pink sword, ’nuff said.
When Ghost gets close to one of the broken glass boulders, he slows down and carefully slips around it. He is no fool. When Pixie rushes past him, he swipes a paw at her to slow her down.
Easy there, Ghost. In my mind, I can speak in a normal volume inside voice—our communication is brain-to-brain, independent of distance. Well, at least this distance. You don’t want to scratch that pink armor of hers.
But Ghost ignores me and puts himself between the rocks and Pixie. “Look, Pixie. Look before you wade into something you’ll regret,” he tells her.
Now I have to look. I take a few steps and extend my neck. I can see well enough from this vantage point. The rocks that used to make up the glass castle are teeming with crystal snails. Like some bad meat full of maggots, the snails are hatching inside the rocks. The rocks quiver with snails, ready to burst at any moment. It’s like a bad horror movie.
Pixie jumps back. She looks freaked. “What is that?” she practically screams.
I want to scream too, but roaring is my only option. I look at my feet to make sure there are none of these snail-impregnated rocks anywhere near me. All the big boulders are farther away. But the smaller pieces nearby are also ready to release a swarm of hungry crystal snails. At least they seem hungry. They are consuming the boulders that just hours ago were being secreted from their bodies. It’s a whole nightmarish circle of life thing. I really hate it. Who designed this game? Who? Who finds these adventures fun? But perhaps we are the only players to relocate the lake and expose the glass castle builders to the elements? Is there a rulebook I can read? I know, I know—I’m not supposed to be the type of girl that reads instruction manuals, but in these circumstances…
The snails seem to be driven by two compulsions—to build and to eat. I don’t want to be eaten, and I don’t want to be entombed. I just want to get out of here. I stomp a few snails that are slithering my way. The sand is soft, and, rather than crushing them, I simply bury them. I jump around, trying to squish as many of the rest as I can. I start to get into the sick rhythm of it. It’s like I’m tap-dancing on all four paws (or do dragons have feet?). I can’t decide if my beat enhancement is helpful or not.
I hear but don’t see the crack-n-pop sound. Screams come next. I see Pixie swinging her sword around, trying to cut down a swarm of newly hatched crystal snails. It’s totally ineffective. Swords against snails? Snails win. There’re just so many of them, they flow around the metal unscathed. Ghost is retreating too. He jumps repeatedly high in the air, hair all puffed, back arched, claws out, eyes wild, trying to avoid coming into contact with the tiny glass-builders. He looks like a deranged bouncing cat ball.
“Run, Jude. Run,” Ghost yells at me. But I am a big bad dragon. I don’t run, I fly.
I pull up into the air and grab Pixie and Ghost in my claws. Pixie almost cuts my tail off swinging her sword. I’m sure it’s an accident. I fly us as far as the edge of the new encroaching forest line.
“We suck at this,” Ghost says. He stabs a dozen or so snail stowaways with his claws and flicks them into the distance—no point in taking chances.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” Pixie mutters. She sounds freaked, more so than before.
Ghost and I turn to examine her. There are a dozen places where her metal armor has been displaced by glass. But it’s her hand that is really scary—three out of her five fingers have been turned into crystals, and her wrist and arm up to the elbow are transparent. I can see the beating of her heart as the blood flows through the glass veins to nourish the last two remaining fingers of her hand.
“That’s bad,” Ghost states the obvious. I growl at him.
Ask her if it hurts, I tell him.
“Does that hurt?”
“I don’t know,” Pixie says. Her voice is several octaves higher than normal.
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t feel it!”
Ghost stretched out one paw and taps her hand gently with his claw. It sounds beautiful, like cut crystal.
“Careful! You might break it.” Pixie yanks it away from him.
“Did you feel that?” he asks.
“No! I told you—I can’t feel anything. It’s dead. Dead!”
“Okay—”
“Not okay!”
“I meant we will solve this. This is only an adventure. When we leave, you’ll go back to being as you were—the smart, hot-pink kitten.” Ghost says this as if it’s true. But I am not so sure. Something about all of this feels too real, like what we do here has real consequences outside of the game. I know it’s silly—we are inside a virtual adventure, somewhere in the middle of The Far Cinct, inside cyberspace. It shouldn’t matter. But it feels like it does. I can tell that Pixie has the same feeling about all of this.
“Just be careful with it,” she snaps at Ghost. “At least until we solve this stupid game. I don’t want to go around in cyberspace with one hand.” Well, at least we now all agree that this adventure is stupid.
What now? I ask Ghost. I bray at Pixie too, in a supportive way. She nods at me. I keep forgetting that in the real world, she must be about the same age as Doc—young, real young. How would I have handled something like this at her age? Poorly, that’s how. I extend my wings for a makeshift embrace. But Pixie jumps away from me, aghast. Sorry! I scream, but she doesn’t know it.
“I think Jude was just trying to give you a hug,” Ghost explains my awkwardness. Obviously, Pixie is worried for her arm and I come on like a giant clod! “She is sorry and will be more careful,” he adds, looking at me rather than Pixie. I bray. It’s all I can do.
“I know you meant well,” she says, staying away from me. “Now, what do we do now?”
That’s my question too. We both—well, in my case it’s all of my seven heads and all twenty of my s
nake-wings’ eyes—look at Ghost for answers. He’s been around longer. He is the oldest. He should know what to do.
“We try to solve the puzzles of this world,” he says with a shrug. It looks funny on a cat. But all human emotions and gestures look funny on cats. “At some point, I hope we catch up with Doc, Sleazy, and Slick. Hopefully they’re having better luck with it.”
I’m not so sure. Doc is smart. Very smart. But Ghost is even smarter and more experienced to boot. And look where we are.
“Okay, I have an idea,” Pixie says. At least one of us does. “This can’t be the first time the lake has moved, right? It was obviously designed to move. So, let’s look for other ruins. Maybe they won’t have snails.”
“Good idea,” Ghost agrees and climbs on my back.
I’m just a transport animal here. I feel grouchy about it—one of my necks, the one attached to my head, is a bit stiff—but really, I don’t mind. Pixie climbs up, holding her glass arm gingerly. I tell one of my heads to keep an eye on her the entire time. If she so much as shifts off balance, the head is to help stabilize her or catch her if she falls off. Pixie notices that I’m being protective of her; she gives my eel head a slight nod of approval. Good. I don’t want to have to fight her to save her life. She’s lousy with that pink sword of hers, a real menace. I could lose one of my heads.
I take off again and start to circle the lake’s new perimeter, staying just above the treetops for a better view of the grounds below. I assign navigation duties to my other eel heads, while the snakes and I keep a lookout—our vision is superior.
“Can you use your x-ray vision?” Ghost asks.
Of course! That would work well to see through thick vegetation. Moments later, I have multiple spectrum views of the land—my snakes see in color and I see in x-ray, right through the tree canopies and shrubs. There are animals down there! I see a bunny-like thing the size of a big armchair that hops around on six legs and a few teacup-sized antelopes with horns that grow flowers. So much design power went into this adventure. And most visitors won’t even know such wonders exist. I try to spy other Easter Eggs—the hidden gems inside a game for the tenacious explorers or those just plain lucky enough to find them. I see low flying snakes with three pairs of translucent wings, rainbow saber-toothed tigers, and the ubiquitous butterflies that leave their flight path webs through the forest and fractal patterns on the lake surface. If I had a small avatar, I would have fun down there, provided nothing ate me or turned me into a glass sculpture.