Halcyon System 3 Chapter 38

Alice is the smartest person I know.

Sora’s a genius.

And I’m willing to destroy the world if it means we can win.

The equation goes like this: if X is the number of different skills I need access to, and Y is the odds of something going wrong, then as X increases, Y approaches 100. X is my acceptable risk of things changing, and there’s no way to reduce it to acceptable limits.

I can get it down to three, though. The same sweet spot as the Truth Club, where people won’t talk, and they won’t mess things up. I ran the numbers a hundred, hundred times.

Heaven, Hell, Earth. Athos, Porthos, Aramis.

Claire, Sidney, Alice.

But sometimes, you need four.

◄▼►

Location Unknown, Location Unknown, Time Unknown

- - - - -

I open the side door.

Sora’s inside. “Did you do it?” she asks, closing her book on Renaissance architecture.

I stare at her for a second, then at the anomaly-lined walls. Of course she doesn’t know. How could she? I protected her like she was the keystone in my project. In a way, she was. Doctor Twitchy could have done it. But I couldn’t have trusted him.

No one else can.

“I did. It’s finished. Now we can begin again.” I offer her a hand, and she takes it. I pull her to her feet, and we walk to the gigantic bomb. It’s suspended in nothing, but since reality is…dead…there are no rules. It’s easy enough to simply step into the void and believe it won’t collapse. Physics doesn’t exist here anymore. Neither does time. “I need you to…”

“To accept an anomaly. You already told me.” Sora’s all business. I’m not sure what our friendship will look like after this—assuming ‘this’ works. But I didn’t conscript her. She volunteered to do what was needed. To become God, at least for an infinitesimally long moment. “It’s the one that was bonded with Alexander, right?”

“Right. We need you to start shaping reality again.”

The plan is simple. Alice ate every last scrap of knowledge a near-omniscient entity had on our reality. She has all of that information. And we have all the time in the world. Sora understands how things are put together. If she had the power to do it, even slowly, she could rebuild reality.

I don’t know if that’s the truth. The truth has ceased to have meaning with the death of Reality Zero. But I also don’t know if it’s a lie.

I choose to believe it, anyway.

Sora nods. “Alright.”

The first step is for Sora to bond with the green and blue sparks that became Alexander’s orbs of power. I warn her it might hurt, but she’s not worried about it. According to her, if reality’s gone, the concept of pain is just as gone as that of time or truth. Reality is whatever we believe it is. And she doesn’t want to believe in a reality where the bonding process hurts.

I still watch as she flinches, and as heat builds up inside of her. Both sparks seem to burrow through her skin and become part of her. She screams, shaking her arms and trying not to move. I want to reach out and comfort her, but there’s no comfort to be had. The pain fades suddenly, leaving Sora curled in a ball on the floor. She sits there for almost a minute. Then she stands and collapses into an armchair that wasn’t there before.

“Let’s get to work.”

◄▼►

Sora Ito sat behind her desk, a massive fish tank filled with every species she could imagine behind her. She’d wanted to be a marine biologist before she’d decided on architecture, and now that she had the ability to manifest her wishes into reality, it was simple enough to work while backed by lemon sharks and octopi. Her chair was perfect; every time she got uncomfortable, all she needed to do was imagine it a little differently, and reality conformed to her whims.

A girl could get used to this.

She was tempted—so tempted—to reshape reality with her modern cathedral at its center. She knew exactly what it would look like, how tall it would reach on its quest to touch the heavens. But that wasn’t the right move.

Alice was right. They needed to rebuild it exactly like it was.

Claire was right, too. If she tried to build everything at the speed she could work at now, she’d be working on this for aeons while Alice fed her information on the way the world should be.

They needed a cheat code.

So, instead of building a cathedral, Sora and Alice stood around a half-finished, egg-shaped structure. The person inside was little more than nerve endings and still-growing bones; Sora was good, but it took a lot of effort to manifest neurons and capillaries from nothing. But she was slowly rebuilding him, in all his shriveled, wrinkled glory.

Sora wasn’t an idiot, though. She hadn’t manifested a single smell.

Sidney’s body was gross enough right now as it was.

Claire insisted that they needed Sidney—not as a builder of the world, but as an assistant for the process. They could provide him with everything he needed, given time, and he could return that favor with the System now that Sora was bonded with the reality-bending sparks. So, instead of rebuilding SHOCKS Olympia, or her apartment—or even her own parents—Sora Ito was building a boy.

“A few centimeters taller in the legs,” Alice said. “Left leg is a fraction of a millimeter shorter than the other, and has an extra nerve ending behind the knee. His muscles are a little less toned. Even when he was alive, he wasn’t exactly an athlete. No, even less toned than that.”

In a way, it sucked to work with Alice. She knew everything, but she couldn’t do the job herself. All she could do was assist.

And as for Claire?

Claire had recused herself completely.

She sat, cross-legged, staring into the void. Sora knew something inside of Claire was crushing her, but even if she’d known how to comfort her friend, she wouldn’t have been able to. The process of rebuilding their reality took precedence over everything. Nothing else mattered. Not the storm in Claire’s head. Not Alice’s growing exhaustion—Sora glanced at her and willed it away, and Alice woke up again. Not even Sora’s grief for her family. First Sidney. Then the world.

And then, she could rest.

◄▼►

I have no idea how long it takes Sora to rebuild Sidney.

Weeks? Months? Time has no meaning here—not anymore.

I try to help, but there’s only so much I can do. Alice has all the memories. Sora has all the power of creation. And as for me? I’m mostly good for one thing, and I’ve already done it. They don’t need my help, and after an eternity or two, it’s clear that I’m only getting in the way.

So, while Sora and Alice work, I think about Alexander. How he had the power of a god at his fingertips, just like he wanted. All he had to do was change a few key concepts instead of limiting himself to physical reality. Sora’s already infinitely stronger than he ever was—she just needs more time to do things than he ever did.

It’s ironic. I think that’s right—Mrs. Lightsen’s English class was never my favorite. Alexander simply wasn’t flexible enough, mentally speaking. Sora, a fifteen-year-old girl, is. She’s going to succeed. That’s the truth.

Sidney’s finished. His body sits in a tank that’s identical to the one that used to sit in the JAMES Experimental Sector. All that’s left is to boot him up.

I finally stretch out and stop pondering the void. It’s been enlightening. I’ve learned a lot about reality from turning off my mind for…hours? Months? Decades? But it’s time to move forward to the third phase of our plan. So far, Sora is a god. But she’s not anywhere near powerful enough. This is the part I can’t trust Doctor Twitchy with—the reason I needed Sora. She’s the only one I trust.

She waves her hand, and a single server bank appears. Then she snaps, and it stretches infinitely into the void, weaving back and forth until it’s an impossible wall of electronics. “I removed the heat sink requirements, as suggested. They should be perfect for this.”

“Start him up,” Alice says.

I nod. “Bring him back.”

Sora touches Sidney’s forehead right in the center, and a spark—not one of her bonded anomalies, but an electrical spark—jumped from her hand to his head.

[Claire,] Sidney says, [I was dead.]

“And now you’re not. Can you run the system with this?” I ask.

[Yes. Yes, I can.]

I nod approvingly. “Wonderful. Sora needs as much power as you can give her, as quickly as you can give it to her. We’re about to start rebuilding reality, and I don’t want it to take too long.”

[Bringing her online now. I approve of your strategy,] Sidney says, and there’s a touch of British in his voice. [Sacrificing me twice was, in fact, the correct move. I would never have guessed that.]

“It was a risk, and it hasn’t paid off yet, James,] I say.

[But it will.]

“I hope so. I really, really do.” I shiver. The truth is that I don’t know if it will or not. Hope is the only thing I have, and it has to sustain me through this process.

But I have more of it than I did before.

◄▼►

Power. Overwhelming.

Unlimited.

Ultimate.

It had taken a long time—centuries, millennia, even with Sidney’s help. But now, Sora’s power didn’t stand at the edge of godhood anymore.

With a wave, she created galaxies. She pointed, and Alice’s thousand-word-per-second instructions became form. Her every whim could become reality, but her mind was bent toward only one simple goal: recreating the world.

Most of her efforts went into one tiny ball at the fringe of all her creations. Most of the rest was vague on purpose—uninhabited planets with thousand-mile-an-hour diamond storms, or air so hot it incinerated steel. Not melted it, but burned it to ash. It had to be perfect, but it didn’t have to be detailed. The nuances of a world like that didn’t matter. They didn’t have to be perfect to the molecule. She could fill those in later, so she painted in broad strokes.

Earth, though…

The Halcyon System had recorded everything. Sidney had given her the power to make everything real. And Alice had consumed it all, and was now regurgitating it like a lesson memorized for a test.

And Sidney was recording it all so Sora could go back and triple-check. She needed to, because every person on Earth was as complicated as Alpha Centauri. Every animal was a star, every plant a nebula. Sora struggled, even with her power. She couldn’t hold it all together. It was too much. She’d mess up, make a mistake—

A hand closed on her shoulder, and the woman she was in the middle of forming collapsed into a puddle of thought. Claire cleared her throat. “It’s time to take a break. You’ve done enough for today, Sora.”

“No, I haven’t. The work isn’t finished.”

“And it won’t be today. But the truth is that there will be tomorrow. And the next day. As long as you need to make reality whole.”

“I am tired,” Sora said, rubbing her chin.

Claire nodded and helped her up. The office chair disappeared as Sora stood. The desk vanished.

When Sora stumbled, a hand caught her. “Perfection is hard,” Alice said.

“I think it’s impossible,” Claire said. “It’s just a lie, and anyone who thinks they can be perfect is lying to herself.”

Sora closed her eyes. But instead of tensing up, Alice laughed. “Sometimes, the lie of perfection is safer than the truth of a flaw. Sometimes, there’s no other option except being perfect. It’s the only way to survive. But it’s not impossible, and it’s not a lie.”

“Bullshit,” Claire said.

Sora stared at her best friend for a minute. Then she nodded thoughtfully. “I think I agree with Alice, in a way. What I’m creating…it’ll be perfect. But it won’t be flawless. There’s a difference. Every time you brought up your truth at Truth Club, I always thought that it wasn’t that Alice was lying. It was that she was flawed. But she was—“

“The perfect sister. Trying to be exactly what I needed, and doing her best whenever she could.”

“Yeah, exactly.” Sora paused. She manifested a trio of beds and collapsed into one of them. “I won’t be perfect. I’ll let there be flaws. But not too many of them. If I’m going to build my cathedral out of all of reality, it has to be as close as I can get it.”

The first day ended after millennia of work.

◄▼►

It takes Sora many more days to decide everything is as perfect as she can make it. Endless days, the minutes stretching across centuries.

If the world was poetic, it would have taken three. Three days, because three is a number of power.

If it had followed my grandparents’ faith, it would have been six, with one day of rest before everything started.

But no, it’s taken eleven.

And Sora’s crafting the very last thing she needs to create. This time, Alice and I are both involved, because both of us have a stake in him.

Sora stares at us both as we explain who Dad was. “You’re sure? No changes? I can remove his interest in alcohol completely if you want, or make sure he has a job he can hold down.”

I glance at Alice. She glances back. And in that glance is all of our experience with trying to change the past. To save Mom. Unlike that reality, though, this time it’s actually possible. And that’s intoxicating in every way imaginable. We could fix Dad. Make him the man he should have been—a rock for both of us. Someone we can rely on—someone who would have offered to have Mom’s dress tailored to fit me, and who wouldn’t have brought a flask to Alice’s graduation.

It’s the most tempting thing I’ve ever encountered. But it would also be a lie, and Alice and I both know it. That Robert Pendleton wouldn’t understand why I look at him with a mix of fear, disgust, and pity. He’d only know that he’d done his best since Mom died. It wouldn’t be the Truth.

And we’re not bringing her back. That would be too much of a change, and none of the three of us knows what it would mess up. As few changes as possible. That’s the key.

The Dad who hadn’t wasted a decade being wasted wouldn’t understand the dynamics in our house, and Alice won’t stop wearing the Mom Alice mask. She can’t. It’s part of her truth, even if it’s a lie. They’d only have conflicts that he can’t understand, instead of the ones he will.

There’s another reason, too. If Dad is suddenly, magically a perfect parent, I’ll have to forgive him. And I can’t do that. Not until he’s earned it. He has to earn that first.

I know he can do it. But I need him to do it, not Sora.

“Yes, we’re sure,” Alice says. She squeezes my hand. “It has to be like this.”

“If you’re sure,” Sora says. Then she pauses. “There is one more thing…”

“What is it?” I ask.

“We’ve done it. The world is finished. I can make it start whenever we’re ready. But I can also take away these powers. I can rewrite anything. And I’m going to.” Sora says. “At least for me. I don’t want any of this. I never have. It’s too much for a fifteen-year-old. I want the Truth Club under the bleachers with you and Keith, and I won’t be able to have that if I know everything’s a lie. I want to go to school, get decent grades, and find my way to college somewhere near Quebec or Ontario. Maybe I’ll get married and have a kid or two. And I want to build my modern cathedral—not this one, but a real one.

“But most of all, I don’t want this responsibility. No one should have it. Definitely not me.” Sora shivers. “I’m done being God.”

“Me too,” Alice says. “I’ve never wanted this. Not once. It was something I needed to do to survive, but if you can, I’d like to go back to who I was before.”

“I can do that,” Sora says. She turns my way; her brown eyes pierce mine, and I can’t look away. “Claire, what about you? Do you want to go back?”

I close my eyes.

Yes. I want to. The last month has been hellish in every way imaginable. But…”Will I forget?”

“I think so,” Sora says. “If you remember, it’ll be like having the responsibility without the ability to carry it out. It’d be best if you forgot.”

“Then no. Someone has to remember.”

It’ll suck to lie to Sora every time the Truth Club meets. And it’ll suck

I think I’ve secured Reality Zero. I think I’ve removed Merge Prime’s entry point and keystone, and I think we’ve purged every memory of it from the Halcyon System’s database—save that it was destroyed and no longer exists. And I think we’ve made it impossible to attack again, even if they do find it.

But if we’re wrong…

If we’re wrong, Reality Zero will need a guardian angel. One that’s proven it’s willing to destroy worlds if it means saving hers.

One that the Halcyon System and Merge Prime—and anyone else who’s playing their game—have to respect, or fear. And, as I’ve shown, I am become death, destroyer of worlds. The end of everything. I’ve done what neither the System nor Merge Prime was able to. I’ve carved out a space on the board, then made it impossible for anyone else to take.

And I’ll do it again if I have to.

“If you’re sure,” Sora says.

“Yes. I’m sure. The world may still need me. I want one thing, though.” My void wings flare behind me. “Until my powers are needed, I want to be able to hide them myself. The wings and eye have to go—or at least be hidden.”

Alice stares at me. “You want to pretend, to wear a mask.”

Sora laughs. “Yeah, Claire, I can do that,” she says.

“Okay. Let’s see how we did,” I say.

Sora snaps her fingers, and reality.

Starts.

◄▼►