Halcyon System 3 Chapter Twenty-Eight

James’s route was less than ideal for everyone except James.

He hadn’t wanted to send Claire and her sister on a wild goose chase through a pile of realities. It wouldn’t help them at all, and even though he was breaking through the encryptions SHOCKS had put on every black sector file at a good rate, he hadn’t found anything that contradicted what he knew the mission to be. The mission, as far as he was concerned, was a positive.

And the few head-scratching absences in the data he’d recovered from the black sector so far were explainable. So that was fine. Besides, it wasn’t like he was sharing it with anyone—or anything. He’d built dozens of failsafes and isolation protocols into his research. Even James himself didn’t know exactly what the data showed—only reports that had been edited and scrubbed.

The reality-hopping path James had the girls on was a risk. They’d be mostly in realities Claire had been to already. And that should have been fine. Realities were resilient, and Claire was just one teenage girl.

She just happened to be a teenage girl who seemed to destabilize realities by her very presence. Every time she stumbled into whatever secret a reality had, whether it was a god keeping it alive, a system that protected it from Merge Prime, or a body-reality’s antibodies, she had a penchant for cutting right to the core of that reality—and then destroying it.

The Halcyon System hadn’t shown him what had happened to the God in the Machine’s reality, but it wouldn’t be good. And after that?

It’d only be worse.

◄▼►

Location Unknown, Date Unknown, Time Unknown

- - - - -

When we Mergewalk, I’m not sure what to expect.

The last time I was here, our reality was separating from the God in the Machine’s. The god himself had just died. I’d just killed him inside James’s mind. And I had no idea what that would do to the world, but I doubted it’d be good.

Not that I cared. As far as I was concerned, that reality wasn’t my problem. It had already been dying long before I got there, and with only the God in the Machine fighting to keep it alive, it wouldn’t have lasted forever anyway.

“What happened here?” Alice asks.

I look around. The world was a dry desert before—even more bare than the Reality 3109 battlefield we just survived.

It hadn’t changed. Not at all.

We didn’t land near the pile of trombone and saxophone parts, but everything else is the same. In the distance, there’s a town built around a tall tower. It looks shattered and burnt, with half of it completely missing. There’s not a cloud in the sky, and the world is completely baked, the dirt hard and blackened all the way from here to the tower. And it’s hot. Not hot like hell or like the battlefield we just fought across, but unpleasantly warm. I reach for my water bottle, then stop myself. Ration and save until we’re clear.

“I did that,” I say before I can stop myself. But that’s only partially a lie. Like I said, this reality was on its way to dying.

I just helped it along.

“It’s a dead reality. It wasn’t the first time I came here, but it is now. I had to kill the only thing keeping it alive to escape and get to you. It’s what happened at Lansdowne Middle School. This reality was trying to push into ours as part of Merge Prime.”

“And you stopped it?”

I nod. “Yes.”

“Good.”

We walk through the desert until we find the first devoured. I point it out. “These will try to kill you. They’re not very strong, though. They were scary when I first came here, but I’ve grown a lot since then.” The devoured doesn’t move, though. After a moment, I throw a rock at the meat tower, expecting it to open and reveal the twisted, semi-human monstrosity inside.

It doesn’t move. It might be dead. Or it might be sleeping. Or, worse, it might be that the God in the Machine was, like I’ve said, the only thing keeping this reality alive—but in a literal sense. Without him, this might be a reality of death that rivals Reality One. It might not be the devoured that’s dead. It might be everything.

I shelve that thought.

It’s weird, being a tour guide. Alice wants to know everything about this reality, and even between James and me, there’s only so much we can actually tell her. It’s not even that she wants the truth, though. She just wants stories. She wants to know what I was up to before we got reunited.

In a lot of ways, she’s no different than the little big sister version of her that existed in my Mindscape and didn’t exist anywhere else. Or did she? I’m not sure. Maybe this is what Alice without masks is really like.

When we finally get to the town, I ask the most important question. “Where are we going?”

[Top of the tower. Your connection will be there,] James replies. [Sorry in advance.]

“For what?”

[I’m just sorry, that’s all. There’s nothing I can do about it—or the one after that.]

Something in his tone’s weird. He’s not lying, but a lie of omission is still a lie, in a way. I choose to ignore it. I’m getting really good at ignoring lies, after all—even my own. And I’m lying about the lies right now, too. It’s a real mess.

We step into the tower. It’s wrecked. The stairs are broken in a dozen places, and just walking inside feels almost impossible because of the rubble. I half-expect to find devoured inside. They couldn’t get in before, but in the last few weeks, this has probably become the only shelter—other than the houses. That’s probably where most of them are. They’re hiding from the weatherless world.

“The locals did something, a long time ago. It stopped the weather across the whole world. Maybe the whole reality,” I say as we climb the tower. Mostly, it’s just to fill the void. Everything is empty here.

“Is this something that could happen to Earth?” Alice asks.

I stop for a second to think about Alice some more. She’s only been to a couple of realities. She wouldn’t know the answer to that question. “No. That happened before it ever merged.”

◄▼►

The vacuum tube thing that houses the God in the Machine is at the top of the stairs.

When we finally climb the stairs after seven minutes—the rate of ascension’s the same as the first time, in spite of both of us being in great shape now and even though we’re using our powers—it’s waiting for us. The altar, with the steel tube and the glass front. The ASCII face is missing, though.

[Alice, Claire, your water consumption is extremely high.]

“Yep,” I say. “This reality sucks.”

[Haha. Yeah. I’ll try to keep track. Do you have enough? I show you each drinking well over seven hundred milliliters of water.]

“We should,” Alice says.

The tube at the center of the altar is quiet. Even so, I can’t help but wonder what this reality would have been like if the God in the Machine was still alive.

Probably the same. One person isn’t enough to change anything, and his plan to save his reality had already failed; he just hadn’t caught up to that realization yet.

[Settle down and wait. We’ll be here for a while. Forty-five minutes,] James says.

“Alright. Claire, I’m going to sleep. Wake me up if anything happens. I’ll be right there, I promise.” It takes me a second to realize that Alice is back in Mom mode, because that’s not something she’d ever say if she was Momming. I can’t help but feel a little warm and fuzzy. She trusts me. Then she ruins it with, “Make sure you actually do it.”

That sounds more like her. I roll my eyes as she falls asleep between a pair of massive, oil-slick-colored panels.

Then I’m alone.

Or…not quite. James is here. And…something else.

It takes a second before I realize it. The glass-and-steel tube’s sitting there, broken and blackened from the electrical fire that killed the God in the Machine, but it’s not empty. It’s not empty at all. I can’t help but stare as a face appears. It’s skeletal—it reminds me less of the God and more of a monster from Reality One—but it’s human. Mostly. More or less. And it’s small.

No bigger than a second-grader.

“You,” it says. “Heretic.”

I should wake up Alice. This…thing…can’t be the God in the Machine. It’s so weak. So powerless. It was a liar, but now its final truth is there for everyone to see.

“You’re the one who killed this world,” the thing says.

“No. It was already dead.”

It’s quiet. There’s no humming of electricity, no voices. No wind blowing past the tower. Silence. Perfect silence. I let it sit, because there’s nothing else to say. The God in the Machine crawls out of the tube. It’s so small, but not childlike. Just small. Its limbs are a little too long to be human, but it’s not a devoured.

It stares at me. I stare back. The Revolver’s ready in my chest holster. I could draw it and kill whatever this is.

Then it nods slowly. Mournfully. “I know. I wanted it to be different. I tried. But I failed. They all died, didn’t they?”

“They did,” I say. There are times for lies, but this isn’t one of them. Not when I’m confronting a god.

◄▼►

The God in the Machine talks for a long time.

He doesn’t answer any of my questions, but since I don’t ask any of them, that’s fine. And it only takes a minute or two to realize that he’s not a threat—not in any way that matters. He’s just a broken god who couldn’t save his world from itself, and who wanted to take advantage of Merge Prime as a last-ditch effort. But that was too late. He’d already lost everything—his power, his people, and his entire reality. He seems like he’s coming to terms with it as he talks and talks.

But the more he talks, the more nervous I get. He wants something. I can see it in his eyes. He’s desperate for it. Needs it more than anything else he’s ever needed before.

He keeps talking, though. It’s stream of consciousness, as fast as he can rattle off his memories. The beginning of the war that ended this world. The years of hiding in the temple-towers built in his name, watching his people slowly die as food ran out. It’s almost emotionless, but not quite. And, unlike last time, it’s not lying to me. Everything it says is the truth. Not a Truth I can use, but the truth.

And then, the question arrives. “Can you kill me?”

“I…” My first instinct is to say yes. I can kill anything. I’m about to kill the two most powerful beings in any reality. A broken, ruined god like this shouldn’t pose a problem. One shot from the Revolver, and it’ll be resolved.

But…but…

The God in the Machine. Does he deserve death? Is his reality salvageable? Could it, one day, become something again? Surely the superweapons his people unleashed on themselves can’t last forever, and maybe someday, people will live here again. Is it worth—

“It’s worth throwing it away,” Alice says.

I didn’t realize she was awake. And I didn’t realize I was talking out loud, didn’t see her glowing crimson eyes—didn’t realize she was treating it like a question to be answered or enraged over.

“Claire,” Alice continues, “You’re a fighter. It’s what you do. I get it. So am I. But sometimes, the game’s over, and no matter how hard you play, you’re not going to score enough to win. The game is over here. Whatever that thing is, it’s got nothing to fight for.”

I’m still on the fence. The God in the Machine was my enemy. But he’s not my enemy anymore. He’s just a broken god.

[Claire, our window opens in one minute,] James says. [My Analysis is that if you leave him alive, he will still be alive the next time there’s a window from Reality Zero. We could recover him then and get him into containment.]

And, somehow, that’s what settles it.

Containment.

The Revolver fires once, and the whole reality seems to shudder.

[Understood.] James’s voice seems a little distant. I ignore that. He’s been distant for most of this bombing run. Does he know what I’m lying about? Or does he know the truth behind that lie?

A minute later, Alice and I Mergewalk again.

◄▼►

Location Unknown, Location Unknown, Time Unknown

- - - - -

The next reality on the list reeks.

I’m glad we haven’t eaten this time, because the last time, I puked yogurt, orange juice, and toast. Alice dry-heaves off to the side, and I swallow bile over and over. It reeks of lupine and gangrene and living rot. Maybe cancer.

The floor’s just as squishy as the last time I was in the living reality. But it’s a bright, inflamed red, and it feels like it’s about to pop. It’s also hot here. It’s a moist, breathy heat. A feverish one.

[Skill Learned: Toxin Resistance 9]

[I’m sorry, Claire,] James says as Alice continues to retch. [It’s a short stay, but the next reality’s going to be worse.]

“Do we have to move?” I ask.

“Please, god, no,” Alice says.

[No. The potential merge should be right here.]

“Couldn’t we have Mergewalked from anywhere in the God in the Machine’s reality? That’s how my power works.”

[No. Not really. It’s complicated, but the short answer is—]

I interrupt. “What about the long answer?”

[Okay.] James goes quiet. When he does talk, he sounds annoyed. [The long answer is that some of our time windows are pretty tight. We’re talking about the potential merge between this reality and the next one being open for about five seconds, and the next one requiring perfect placement and timing to get back on track. Otherwise? Detour. Mergewalking from here to the Halcyon System’s reality, then back to a different one…that all takes time, and if we’re even a little out of position…]

“It doesn’t work,” Alice finishes as she wipes her mouth on her sleeve.

[Correct.]

“So we’re here for a bit?” I ask.

[Correct.]

“Fine.” I try not to breathe too deeply. This whole place is infected, and only our Toxin Resistance is keeping us safe. I don’t want to make it worse than it already is. “Fine. How long are we here?”

[Eight minutes. Then four minutes, eighteen seconds in the next reality.]

“And where is that?” Alice asks.

[R-2301. You’ve been there before, Claire.]

I wrack my brain trying to remember when, but I’ve been to a lot of realities, and the string of numbers doesn’t mean much to me. But even so, I can’t help it. My stomach churns, and it’s not just the stench. It’s the reality number. It means something to me.

But what?

[Claire, Alice, spend exactly four minutes, eighteen seconds doing exactly what you’re doing, then climb the ladder. I’ll meet you on the other side.]

◄▼►

The data didn’t lie. Not to James.

Sure, SHOCKS had tried to hide their intentions. They’d done a good job, too. It had taken him hours—and killed dozens of processing loops as he applied illogical sequences to his logic-bound thinking—to break their encryptions and read between the lines of the heavily encoded data.

He’d had to set it up in a shielded, isolated environment, with minimal processing loops moving in and out. That meant he couldn’t read the actual data—only the reports he himself was generating. One degree of separation. Then he’d filtered that data through a confidence matrix, ran that back into a separate processing loop cluster to check for potential errors and attacks, and compared the two. A second degree.

And only then did he finally examine it himself.

All the security—the double self-blind testing and analysis—it wasn’t for any reason. Not one he could share. Neither was the slow speed at which he was operating. True, SHOCKS had encrypted everything they couldn’t delete beyond recognition. But he’d built the encryption and decryption algorithms. He could have broken them instantly.

He knew it. The System knew it, too. It knew everything he knew.

That was why he’d been so careful. Why he’d doctored the reports in the isolated chambers and confidence matrices. Because it was watching, and because he’d had a hunch.

So, with his hunch confirmed—that Claire and SHOCKS had been up to exactly what he’d suspected they’d been up to—James had a hard decision to make.

One: He could release the full report to the Halcyon System. That’d be the smart thing to do—he was it, and it was him, after all. An attack on it was the same as an attack on him, and the smart, logical thing to do was to defend himself. All he’d have to do was show the System his conclusion, and it would take care of the rest.

Two: James could shut down the confidence matrix, end the error-checker, and collapse the isolated environment, destroying the data. That’d leave no evidence of what the girls were up to. It’d also put him in danger. Depending on what the bombs they carried actually did, and whether they could reach Merge Prime’s origin reality and then make it out alive to pay the Halcyon System a visit, he could easily die.

Or…

Three: He could trust Claire. That she knew what she was doing, and that she had some kind of plan to outmaneuver the System, Merge Prime, and SHOCKS. That was a long shot, but he couldn’t rule it out completely. He hadn’t been able to hear every conversation between her and Alice or see what was happening inside her head when her heart rate sometimes spiked. Maybe she was up to something.

She was definitely up to something, but maybe it was…no. James didn’t finish the thought.

Self-preservation dictated that he report his findings.

But…Claire.

If he reported what he knew, the System would probably crush her somehow. She was strong. Probably the strongest person in Reality Zero, if she tapped into her powers fully. And she was the System’s pet, because at first, it had seen her as the key to victory in Reality Zero, and by the time it realized its mistake, it couldn’t change plans. But the System didn’t care about her as more than a pawn.

James did, though. He loved her.

And that made his choice impossibly difficult. So, as the picoseconds passed by, James stared at the report that had forced him into the hardest decision of his life. He knew what Sidney would do. But he and Sidney were two different people, and he hadn’t been that self-centered in a long time.

It was either him or her. What would James do? What should James do?

He didn’t have the answer. All he had was seven minutes, thirteen seconds, and a handful of milliseconds. And he had to make a decision by then. After that, it’d be too late—either for Claire…or for him.

[Claire, Alice, spend exactly four minutes, eighteen seconds doing exactly what you’re doing, then climb the ladder. I’ll meet you on the other side.]