The infinity dungeon 196

Chapter 196

Michael slept in a cramped room on a bed of leaves. The bed was more comfortable than he thought leaves would ever be, but the room itself had given him a strong sense of claustrophobia. He had tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep, thoughts gravitating around a single topic like the raving of an obsessed lunatic.

A pane of glass usually has imperfections, reflections, and glares from the lights behind it, he thought. Glass gives you the sense that it’s there. Even thin glass offers the illusion of protection. Even while standing before a perfectly clear window at the 100th floor of a high-rise, a single glass pane was enough to prevent panic in most people.

Michael had shivered in the bed of leaves for a good hour before he managed to repel the image of space from his mind, but the dread had not diminished. He imagined the leaves of his bed turning transparent, then the walls dissolving and vanishing, the whole Seedship gone until it was just him and the dread of empty, cold space.

When the Tree-Alfyr had commanded the wall to turn transparent, there was been no sensation of safety. Not even the most perfect glass could ever feel so nonexistent. The leaves had been utterly invisible, making Michael feel like he was really outside. The image had burned itself into his mind, and even though he knew his room was deep in the bowels of the Seedship, everywhere he looked he saw flimsy walls that offered his mind no solace from the terror of space.

“To think I wanted to pioneer a new space program back on Earth…”

He would have liked for his fear to be irrational, but deep inside he knew it was not. He was on a failing spaceship, surrounded by billions of miles of death. He wondered if his next venture into space was going to be different, or if this experience had forever scarred him, making him deathly afraid of space. 

He remembered his old ideas of using shield magic in space. He revised his plans, making sure nobody ever thought about making the shields completely transparent. It would be utter lunacy. He wanted to know that something stood between him and the billions of miles of death, no matter how weak the illusion. A shield could fail at any time, glass could shatter into a million pieces, and he would be sucked into space perhaps more easily than if the leaf wall happened to break and lose cohesion.

The thing is, he liked the illusion of safety that seeing a barrier gave him. He didn’t care about the logic of the barrier itself. Perhaps one day, when he was strong enough to survive and wander in space the same way he moved freely in his Inner Space, perhaps that day would his irrational fear vanish. Or perhaps not, because space was… alien.

Sleep eventually came when he was too exhausted to stay awake. He opened his eyes to the cramped room several hours later, finding the green leaves strangely comforting now.

“How long did I sleep?”

“13 hours,” Icarus said.

Nobody had come to fetch him, not only because he had no duties to perform on the ship, but also because the Tree-Alfyr had explained that the normal cycles of wakefulness and sleep had been long abandoned. There was no need for them.

With most of the elves’ necessities being met by the ship’s automated systems, as long as everybody worked for a couple of hours each day there was no need to regulate the passage of time.

The concept of days had been long abolished so that the creeping dread of not seeing Eden grow any closer would be banished by the lack of concepts to actually process the fact. The only thing that still told the passage of time with unerring accuracy was entropy: the gradual but inevitable degradation of the ship and its systems. Long ago, the Tree-Alfyr had told Michael, there had been plenty of space for everyone.

Now, even he was forced to sleep in cramped rooms despite the elven population declining. Space was running out ever faster, with entire sections of the ship being evacuated every time the Corruption spread. Existing rooms had to be split into smaller rooms, with some elves even agreeing to sleep together to fight loneliness and despair.

“Michael,” Icarus said as Michael sat on the bed, trying to come up with a plan to end this challenge before his mental state plummeted and reached the lows of the rest of the elves. “The Tree-Alfyr wishes to meet you.”

“How do you know?”

“I managed to… interpret, somehow, the images the Seedship’s AI sent my way. They also contained directions. Shall I project them for you?”

Michael nodded. Following the highlighted path, he crossed half the length of the ship and reached the designated room. Never once did he see the outside, for there were no windows and the elves did not seem interested in seeing it. He felt a sort of kinship in their mutual fear of what existed outside, barely out of view, mere inches of biological matter away. Exposed to radiation, vacuum and time.

“They don’t like the sight of the stars,” the Tree-Alfyr explained. “Only I do. I like their lonely melancholy. At least, I used to. Which brings me to the reason I summoned you here.”

He was sitting at a long table of firm wood, with thin leaves sprouting here and there. At the other end of the long room, a stump served as Michael’s seat. Food was arrayed on the table, mountains of it. There was no meat, but many vegetable dishes and even more kinds of beverages. Some were fizzy, bubbling merrily and releasing little puffs of vapor. 

Then Michael’s eyes were drawn to a corner of the table. The leaves were brown and wilted, and underneath them he could see veins of viscous dark liquid pulsing and writhing. The Corruption.

“I keep it there as a reminder,” said the old elf. “Do not worry. It will not spread.”

After they ate, food more delicious than even the Fae feasts, the Tree-Alfyr asked softly: “Is it true, what you said yesterday?”

Michael nodded.

“And you have been sent here to complete a challenge. What do you think this challenge entails?”

“I don’t know.”

“You weren’t told?” the elf seemed surprised. He cupped his chin with a slender hand, pensive. “Then, for a challenge like this, there might very well be multiple outcomes considered as possible completions. For example–”

The Tree-Alfyr suddenly jumped over the table, knocking over the food and the drinks, moving towards Michael with never-seen-before energy and speed. He reached the stunned man, lunging for the Force Lance. The weapon had been resting on the ground close to Michael to allow him to eat, but in his impetus, the old elf had landed between Michael and the Lance, allowing him to reach it first.

The old elf inserted his hand inside, then pointed it at Michael.

“I’m going to have to ask you to stay where you are.”

Michael froze, palms towards the elf as he tried to look inconspicuous, while his mind spun in circles. How did it come to this?

“Why?” Michael asked. He readied his magic, but it was nothing more than parlor tricks in the face of the Force Lance.

“Why, you ask?” the Tree-Alfyr laughed, a manic laughter that had his eyes bulging out and spittle flying from his mouth. “This is mercy. MERCY! An ending like any other, better in fact than ALL the others. Put us out of our misery, end our suffering, deliver us from this torture! There is nothing left for us, NOTHING. I refuse to see the great elven race reduced to pawns of the Dungeon, forever struggling to reach an impossible Eden we will never reach, fighting against Corruption for all eternity. I accept that this is the end of us all, and I will spare YOU, son of man, from the guilt of having to pull the trigger. I shall end this, and complete the challenge for you. This mercy, which we are seeking, is also the end of an impossible challenge imposed upon you. The Dungeon loves this, you know? To teach you things through impossible ethical dilemmas. Except, there is no real lesson. You will end up broken and alone, a cynical existence at the end of time. Like its creator. Let this old man spare you the pain.”

As the Tree-Alfyr’s voice died, the elf pointed the weapon at the floor beneath them and pulled the trigger.