Jason Z. Christie's Blog, page 28
August 3, 2012
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Nine
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Nine - Songs that Make the Young Girls Cry
Pex had solved most of his issues, or so he thought. But there was still the problem of assassins seeking the Nazarene as an infant. Although Jason was unaware of his powers, writing the song was all it took. A thought, or something spoken, may or may not stick around, but something written has enormous lasting power.
There was hope. He looked ahead and saw that Jason would lose most of his anger toward the religious and spiritual. Most. Not all. In fact, Pex managed to find a conversation in 2011 in which he expressed regret over writing it in the first place. Of course, by then, he had an inkling of what was going on, and the implications of his actions.
It was fortunate that his first bands Lucretia and Entity didn't record it, or Pex would have to seriously bend the rules to avoid catastrophe. He managed this by allowing a breeze to blow the sheet of yellow legal paper behind his dresser, where it was forgotten about.
Eventually, his mother found it, and threw it away, disgusted. Even balled-up in a landfill, the song radiated power for years, nearly eight, before the paper fully dissolved. Even then, the residue itself held sway for nearly two more, all the while broadcasting its malignant orders to all who would listen.
Initially, when he'd written it, he was severely unfocused and undisciplined. He no more believed in magic or time travel than he believed in attempts to organize spirituality. But disbelieving in things doesn't always make things go away.
On one hand, he'd done enough LSD and pot to mostly tear away the barrier that prevents the illuminated from gaining mastery over their own powers, and hence the universe. Or at least their slice of it.
But Jason loved to read and think. Logically, if possible.
When Pex tried to impress Prail by exploding, one of the things he wrote during that moment was "Atlas Shrugged".
Okay, technically, he didn't write it. A kajillion realities ago, Ayn Rand wrote it. All Pex did was regurgitate it in another world, with a few embellishments. As far as he concerned, copyright should only be honored for the duration of the owner's universe. Once your sun blew up, your intellectual property became part of his vast pool of resources.
The problem was, Jason embraced Objectivism to a large degree. It was sound, logical, and wrong, wrong, wrong. Perhaps when it was written, there was a single objective reality. Pex doubted it. At this point, he supported a general ban on the word itself. It had far less meaning than 'Belgium', if it had any at all.
For instance, Rand posited that nothing could exist outside of existence, therefore, no creator, Q.E.D.
Pex wanted to leave her in a box with Schrodinger's cat for a few days. Her universe would be a tiny box. Imagine her surprise when she emerged to find something existed outside of her perception of existence. Pex wondered what God would think about that, then realized God hadn't paid any attention to Nietzsche's "God is Dead" pronouncement, so he probably wouldn't have much of an opinion at all.
"As long as she's happy," he'd say.
Jason got Rand's point, and completely failed to pick up on Pex's cool little sci-fi subplot. He had embedded proof of the divine in her own epic. Proof that refuted all of her carefully constructed beliefs. It was brilliant, but it would probably take the metacritics a few more existence cycles before anyone picked up on it and wrote about it. Continuity tended to go by the wayside when your universe imploded, or at least until you got a grip on it and adapted.
What bugged him the most was her short-sightedness on the entire subject. If she hadn't already been taken into the matrix, Pex would have given her an eyeful. People living in simulations have no reason to doubt the existence of a creator. Or creators.
It was probably Prail's messing about with their motivations that caused them to disbelieve, well, everything. It's a part of diversity, she would tell him. Makes for a better sim. Pex grew slightly interested in whatever she was planning, thinking about these things.
###
Somewhere in a church in Austin, 2011, Jason saw Ayn Rand and smiled, atheists no more. She smiled back, happy to meet her savior face-to-face, even if it did negate her life's work. She'd rather be happy than right.
But the forces unleashed by the song in '84 were tireless. Since he was so unfocused, the first to respond were nameless leviathans from beyond our senses. They prowled around just beyond our perception, seeking opportunities to invade and complete their task.
These monstrous creatures, beings of pure evil, powered by hate, weren't particularly bright. The lacked the ability to break through on their own, and weren't particularly adept at understanding time, either. But they had help.
There were a few on Earth (H.P. Lovecraft was one. Clive Barker was another) who actively sought to tear a hole in the fabric separating our dimensions. Mostly because they liked peace and quiet. Like Pex, they loved the perfection of the void.
Things got much worse when Jason remembered the song he had written. By then, he'd begun to come into his powers. In an act of rage while in jail in Houston, he sent Venom, Slayer and Exodus on a massive killing spree. They, like everyone else, were long dead. That solved a lot of problems for them up front. The dead are not constrained by time.
But when they got to year zero, all they found was an empty manger.
###
Janique checked back with High the next day regarding the DNA test he'd conducted.
"Well?" was the first word out of her mouth.
"Good to see you, too, Janique."
"Sorry. Tell me."
"Well, it's funny, and you won't believe it. It's your DNA...almost."
"Almost?"
"There's a difference of point oh oh oh oh one percent. You could be sisters."
"Who is it?"
"I have no way of knowing. If anyone would, I thought it would be you."
Janique had an idea. It was so disturbing, she didn't want to consider it. Instead, she reacted as though she knew the answer already.
"I need weapons," she said. "Germs. Poisons. Exotic stuff. You got a guy?"
"Actually, I do. Want me to set up a meeting?"
"Yes. I'd really appreciate it."
He nodded.
"President Gorlax," he said to the room. There was a slight delay, and the a voice said, "High-C! How goes it?"
"Yo, yo. You tight?"
"I am good, sir. Taking it easy. Swapping out my blood and marrow."
"Fuck, yes," High said. "Detox just to retox."
"So, to what do I owe the pleasure. It's not like you to make casual inquiries like a common theremin salesman."
"I have a...client. A friend. She'd like to visit one of your showrooms."
Having mastered the art of killing, Gortician instead now supplied advanced weaponry to other planets.
"Saves me the trouble of killing them myself," President Gorlax once remarked.
"Well, a friend, you say? A female, at that? I might have to attend to her personally."
"You have no idea," High said, looking at her. He thought about mentioning her name, but didn't really think Janique was intergalactically famous yet. He only knew of her from back issues of 'Fortune' and 'Business Week'.
"Give her my co-ords and tell her to drop by anytime. War."
"Thank you, High-C," she said sweetly, kissing him on the cheek. He blushed and realized that simple act was, coming from her, more intimate than a blowjob.
"So what do we do about Superlove?"
"Fuck it. Use my DNA."
"Makes sense. I wonder if it will change things at all?"
"Yeah, it'll make it better."
"Heh. I'll let you know after I synthesize it and try it."
"Did you try the other one?"
"Not yet."
"When you do, let me know what you think."
"Sure. So how do we do the bulk deal? I assume you have zero-gee nano-capable manufacturing facilities?"
"Uh, no," she said. "I sell pussy, not dope. Until now," she amended.
"That's too bad. I'll wholesale to you, but I'm going to tax you."
Janique would expect no less. Ruthless in business was expected, if not admired.
"We'll talk about it later. I've got to get to Gortician."
"Now? You're serious, eh? I'd hate to be whoever is on your bad side."
"Never forget that," she said with a smile as she left.
Pex had solved most of his issues, or so he thought. But there was still the problem of assassins seeking the Nazarene as an infant. Although Jason was unaware of his powers, writing the song was all it took. A thought, or something spoken, may or may not stick around, but something written has enormous lasting power.
There was hope. He looked ahead and saw that Jason would lose most of his anger toward the religious and spiritual. Most. Not all. In fact, Pex managed to find a conversation in 2011 in which he expressed regret over writing it in the first place. Of course, by then, he had an inkling of what was going on, and the implications of his actions.
It was fortunate that his first bands Lucretia and Entity didn't record it, or Pex would have to seriously bend the rules to avoid catastrophe. He managed this by allowing a breeze to blow the sheet of yellow legal paper behind his dresser, where it was forgotten about.
Eventually, his mother found it, and threw it away, disgusted. Even balled-up in a landfill, the song radiated power for years, nearly eight, before the paper fully dissolved. Even then, the residue itself held sway for nearly two more, all the while broadcasting its malignant orders to all who would listen.
Initially, when he'd written it, he was severely unfocused and undisciplined. He no more believed in magic or time travel than he believed in attempts to organize spirituality. But disbelieving in things doesn't always make things go away.
On one hand, he'd done enough LSD and pot to mostly tear away the barrier that prevents the illuminated from gaining mastery over their own powers, and hence the universe. Or at least their slice of it.
But Jason loved to read and think. Logically, if possible.
When Pex tried to impress Prail by exploding, one of the things he wrote during that moment was "Atlas Shrugged".
Okay, technically, he didn't write it. A kajillion realities ago, Ayn Rand wrote it. All Pex did was regurgitate it in another world, with a few embellishments. As far as he concerned, copyright should only be honored for the duration of the owner's universe. Once your sun blew up, your intellectual property became part of his vast pool of resources.
The problem was, Jason embraced Objectivism to a large degree. It was sound, logical, and wrong, wrong, wrong. Perhaps when it was written, there was a single objective reality. Pex doubted it. At this point, he supported a general ban on the word itself. It had far less meaning than 'Belgium', if it had any at all.
For instance, Rand posited that nothing could exist outside of existence, therefore, no creator, Q.E.D.
Pex wanted to leave her in a box with Schrodinger's cat for a few days. Her universe would be a tiny box. Imagine her surprise when she emerged to find something existed outside of her perception of existence. Pex wondered what God would think about that, then realized God hadn't paid any attention to Nietzsche's "God is Dead" pronouncement, so he probably wouldn't have much of an opinion at all.
"As long as she's happy," he'd say.
Jason got Rand's point, and completely failed to pick up on Pex's cool little sci-fi subplot. He had embedded proof of the divine in her own epic. Proof that refuted all of her carefully constructed beliefs. It was brilliant, but it would probably take the metacritics a few more existence cycles before anyone picked up on it and wrote about it. Continuity tended to go by the wayside when your universe imploded, or at least until you got a grip on it and adapted.
What bugged him the most was her short-sightedness on the entire subject. If she hadn't already been taken into the matrix, Pex would have given her an eyeful. People living in simulations have no reason to doubt the existence of a creator. Or creators.
It was probably Prail's messing about with their motivations that caused them to disbelieve, well, everything. It's a part of diversity, she would tell him. Makes for a better sim. Pex grew slightly interested in whatever she was planning, thinking about these things.
###
Somewhere in a church in Austin, 2011, Jason saw Ayn Rand and smiled, atheists no more. She smiled back, happy to meet her savior face-to-face, even if it did negate her life's work. She'd rather be happy than right.
But the forces unleashed by the song in '84 were tireless. Since he was so unfocused, the first to respond were nameless leviathans from beyond our senses. They prowled around just beyond our perception, seeking opportunities to invade and complete their task.
These monstrous creatures, beings of pure evil, powered by hate, weren't particularly bright. The lacked the ability to break through on their own, and weren't particularly adept at understanding time, either. But they had help.
There were a few on Earth (H.P. Lovecraft was one. Clive Barker was another) who actively sought to tear a hole in the fabric separating our dimensions. Mostly because they liked peace and quiet. Like Pex, they loved the perfection of the void.
Things got much worse when Jason remembered the song he had written. By then, he'd begun to come into his powers. In an act of rage while in jail in Houston, he sent Venom, Slayer and Exodus on a massive killing spree. They, like everyone else, were long dead. That solved a lot of problems for them up front. The dead are not constrained by time.
But when they got to year zero, all they found was an empty manger.
###
Janique checked back with High the next day regarding the DNA test he'd conducted.
"Well?" was the first word out of her mouth.
"Good to see you, too, Janique."
"Sorry. Tell me."
"Well, it's funny, and you won't believe it. It's your DNA...almost."
"Almost?"
"There's a difference of point oh oh oh oh one percent. You could be sisters."
"Who is it?"
"I have no way of knowing. If anyone would, I thought it would be you."
Janique had an idea. It was so disturbing, she didn't want to consider it. Instead, she reacted as though she knew the answer already.
"I need weapons," she said. "Germs. Poisons. Exotic stuff. You got a guy?"
"Actually, I do. Want me to set up a meeting?"
"Yes. I'd really appreciate it."
He nodded.
"President Gorlax," he said to the room. There was a slight delay, and the a voice said, "High-C! How goes it?"
"Yo, yo. You tight?"
"I am good, sir. Taking it easy. Swapping out my blood and marrow."
"Fuck, yes," High said. "Detox just to retox."
"So, to what do I owe the pleasure. It's not like you to make casual inquiries like a common theremin salesman."
"I have a...client. A friend. She'd like to visit one of your showrooms."
Having mastered the art of killing, Gortician instead now supplied advanced weaponry to other planets.
"Saves me the trouble of killing them myself," President Gorlax once remarked.
"Well, a friend, you say? A female, at that? I might have to attend to her personally."
"You have no idea," High said, looking at her. He thought about mentioning her name, but didn't really think Janique was intergalactically famous yet. He only knew of her from back issues of 'Fortune' and 'Business Week'.
"Give her my co-ords and tell her to drop by anytime. War."
"Thank you, High-C," she said sweetly, kissing him on the cheek. He blushed and realized that simple act was, coming from her, more intimate than a blowjob.
"So what do we do about Superlove?"
"Fuck it. Use my DNA."
"Makes sense. I wonder if it will change things at all?"
"Yeah, it'll make it better."
"Heh. I'll let you know after I synthesize it and try it."
"Did you try the other one?"
"Not yet."
"When you do, let me know what you think."
"Sure. So how do we do the bulk deal? I assume you have zero-gee nano-capable manufacturing facilities?"
"Uh, no," she said. "I sell pussy, not dope. Until now," she amended.
"That's too bad. I'll wholesale to you, but I'm going to tax you."
Janique would expect no less. Ruthless in business was expected, if not admired.
"We'll talk about it later. I've got to get to Gortician."
"Now? You're serious, eh? I'd hate to be whoever is on your bad side."
"Never forget that," she said with a smile as she left.
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Eight
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Eight - The Alchemist
Janique decided to dig a little deeper. She left Prail to her tinkering and arranged a first-ever meeting with intergalactic drug dealer High-C.
To her surprise, he was sedate and polite, contrary to the many stories she had heard about him. He greeted her with a casualness that bordered on indifference, an artifact of what she correctly surmised were drugs and the relatively early hour.
"Janique, hi. Big fan," he said.
"Oh, stop."
"No, seriously. Not just of your films. It's your empire building that interests me."
"Really?"
"It's not easy to get Prail's attention like you did. She tells me you tipped the scales in all kinds of directions. So what's up?"
"I think I need you to develop a drug for me. But we should talk, first."
"If we're designing a drug, we'll have to do a lot of talking."
"Yes, but I want to talk about other things, first."
"Like what?"
"Do you know that somewhere in the multiverse, there's a rapper named High-C?"
'Somewhere in the multiverse, there's a doorman named High-C, and a cabbie, and so on. So I'm not surprised. It's not something I spend a lot of time thinking about."
"But it's more than that. There's some sort of connection there."
"Of course there is. There are lots of unseen connections. The trick, to me, is not seeing them. It can drive you crazy, if you dwell on things."
"Were you ever a musican?"
"I may or may not have flirted with poetry in my youth. But the music industry is so low class. Rock stars? Those are my clients. Not a peer group I desire to be lumped in with."
"Suppose what you wrote showed up in his hands, somehow?"
"I don't know how I'd feel about that. It's kinda of cool, really."
"And what if what he wrote came true?"
"Then you might have a problem..."
"Really? Why?"
"Okay, I confess. I had worked on a rap persona. Everyone was doing it, at the time. But my character was pretty dark. I mostly rapped about literature, insanity, serial killers. Things like that."
"Yikes," Janique said.
"Let me get my lyrics," High said with a note of enthusiasm, and rushed off to retrieve his notebooks.
They read through them together, each highlighting passages for the other.
"Uh-oh," he said at one point. "'Go ahead and retort - I snuff MCs for sport.' I think I see how he gets famous. This is pretty dark stuff, Janique."
"Pretty dark? You wrote it!"
"Yes, but I didn't know it could come true."
"So you somehow created a persona who became real. I sort of know the feeling."
"What if it's the other way around?"
"Huh?"
"What if the rap persona spawned me, instead?"
"That's just as plausible, I guess. But if you made him, and he made you..."
"Right. That's why I don't think about these things much."
"Did you have to make him so over-the-top and powerful?"
"It's rap. You're expected to brag a bit."
"About killing all your rivals?"
"Sure. Sodomize the vanquished, and all that."
She looked at him in exasperation.
"Movie title?" he said.
"No. So I need a drug that hasn't been developed on Earth yet. On Earths? How do you say that?"
"Well, everything's been done on at least one Earth. So what you're really talking about is smuggling a drug across the borders of reality."
"It sounds romantic when you phrase it that way."
"It really is, to me. Desperado, you know. Cosmic Bandidos. Moving chess pieces in the war of the mind. Sometimes it's just quicker and easier to find a universe where the chemical already exists. Saves on R & D. What properties do you desire?"
"Um, very pleasurable and addictive. Irresistible. Soul-consuming. Life-changing. Debilitating. Incapacitating."
"You really know what you want. I like that. Does it have a name?"
"Superlove," Janique said.
"I'll look it up."
He sat back in his recliner and closed his eyes. She wasn't sure what software he was accessing, but she didn't think it was Prail's. When he opened his eyes again, he held a one-gram pack labeled 'Superlove'.
"Here we are," he said. "I'll just reverse engineer this. How's tomorrow for you?"
"Where did you get that?"
"Another where and when. You'll cross paths with it again, I promise you. How much do you want?"
"I don't know yet. Want to make some money?"
"You'll never compete with me."
"Compete?"
"Stick to art flicks and detective work. I've already got distribution options being worked as we speak."
"But-"
"But, nothing. The dope game is mine. Undisputed. Want to know why?"
"Why?"
"Because my supply chain moves product from large worlds to small ones. It's the opposite of cut. A grain from here becomes a boulder somewhere else. A patented trick of the trade. And I protect my routes."
Janique sighed. She didn't like being bested like this. He was as stubborn and driven as she was. An admirable quality.
"Fine. Let's talk after you analyze it, okay?"
"Dinner tomorrow?"
"Fine."
###
Pex managed to make the transition from Jerusalem to Magda seamlessly, he thought. There were advantages to the general ignorance of geography he possessed. But one place pretty much looked like another, anyway.
"So where are we going?" Yeshua asked.
He collided with a young woman carrying a bundle on her head, spilling the contents to the ground. Her dark eyes glared out at him above the veil that covered her face. Her robes, thin and white, clung to her, accentuating her hourglass figure.
She stood two inches shorter than him, with a commanding presence. Before the words were upon her lips, he was scrambling to pick up her groceries.
Beets! He was elated.
Pex smiled.
"I'll see you two later," he said.
The best love stories are left untold...
###
Prail didn't like misleading Janique on the subject of singularities, but she was already too powerful for her liking. She needs her own hit points capped, she thought.
Without any real background in science, science fiction or gaming, Janique had managed to achieve her aims in other ways, trudging through situations that would have deeply disturbed others, without worrying about the implications. Prail sort of wished she could be more like that, not just disconnected, but knowing and still not caring.
In another sense, Janique was far more deeply connected to the denizens of the sim than she herself was. If she ever got a grip on the finer aspects of the physics involved, she'd be formidable. Instead, she favored biology and psychology, two subjects Prail didn't feel capable of mastering.
She considered picking Pex's brain a bit in an effort to stay ahead, but he'd been so difficult to track, lately. Physically, he was in his flophouse. Even his ridiculous contraption supported that. Mentally, however, he was nowhere to be found. That was disturbing, because there weren't supposed to be hiding places she didn't know about.
Prail knew he wouldn't cheat, but he had definitely found a loophole or gray area to exploit. Perhaps she'd send Janique to talk to him in her place. It wouldn't help Prail's situation, but it would probably slow Pex down a bit. She had that effect on men.
She also needed to sidetrack Janique. She'd already made contact with High-C, and it was only a matter of time before she'd drag President Gorlax into the fray as well.
Interesting times, Prail mused. Be careful what you wish for.
###
Pex checked in with the duo a few months down the line, to find them married, and Yeshua attending rabbinical school. At the appropriate moment, he swapped a single fertilized cell from one Mary to another.
Let Prail chew on that conundrum for a while, he thought, if she liked it so complicated. He especially enjoyed the confusion the names caused. In doing so, he gave the couple a full decade out of time, in love, unencumbered by children.
An idyllic existence Pex was destined to shatter forever.
###
"Janique," Prail said. "Check on Pex for me."
She had acquired the somewhat bothersome habit of talking to her across the universe as though they were in the same room together. Invariably, Janique dropped what she was doing and continued the discussion in person. She also felt annoyance each time it happened, believing it to be rude on Prail's part, and a display of power over her.
"Check on Pex? Why can't you?"
"He won't tell me anything useful. He'd go gaga over you. Spill his guts, I bet."
"What can he tell me?"
"Temporal stuff. He has a hiding spot, too. I know you won't get anything tactical out of him, but he does like to brag. Act like you're impressed. That you want to learn how to hack reality like he does."
"What do I get out of it?"
"It was supposed to be a favor. But maybe you can learn something."
"The stuff you two do is too esoteric for me."
"Still. He knows a lot. He might even drop you a hint. It's his idea of a good mystery. Clues."
"I hope he comes up with something better than you did."
"He will. Don't worry."
###
"Stimulant, appetite suppressant, mood elevator, tactile sensory enhancer, PSI enhancer, greatly-increased libido, suppression of impulse control, psychedelics and empathetics, in crystalline configurations I've never encountered before," High-C was telling Janique.
"Addictive?" she asked.
"Only in the short term, I'm afraid. Once you go up, you don't want to come back down."
"Damn."
"What's wrong with coke? Crack? Heroin?"
"I checked. They don't work."
They didn't, in part, because Pex had managed to place two books in Jason's path at a formative age. Both "Dinky Hoffer Shoots Smack" and "A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandiwch" carried strong anti-addiction messages. For good measure, he worked in a third-grade reading comprehension story about Jimi Hendrix overdosing, an unfinished song about an angel on the nightstand beside him.
"Here's the thing," High said. "Chemically, I understand the composition. But there's a biological element to it that's confusing."
"What?"
"I'd like to run some more tests. As it stands now, I can't recreate it."
"Why not?"
"It's mixed with someone's DNA."
"Come on," Janique said.
"No, really. And that's the addictive element."
"That's silly."
"Silly, but true. You're apparently onto a whole new class of drugs, biologics, I call them. More boutique than designer. Personally tailored for maximum impact."
"So what do you need?"
"Blood."
"Do you think-"
"Yes. It makes the most sense, right? A little Janique in every pack? And you are the inventor of Superlove, after all."
Janique was stunned at the revelation. She was a drug that she had invented. Her life since meeting Prail felt like a series of exercises designed to turn her mind inside out on a regular basis.
She rolled up the sleeve of her smart Oxford shirt and sweater ensemble, and High stopped her.
"Give me a break," he said.
He produced an old style straight razor, and gestured at her side. Understanding, she leaned over and pulled up her shirt, exposing her breast and side.
"Yum," High said.
She bit her lip and balled up her fists. She'd been cut a thousand times, and knew it wouldn't hurt, exactly, but still cringed every time. He placed one hand palm down on her ribcage and made a small slice across the bottom of her breast.
A soft "oh" escaped her lips, followed by a low moan.They watched the blood pool, and then High blotted it with a glass slide.
"How romantic," she said. "Dexter..."
"Under other circumstances, it would be fun, I admit."
He handed her a tissue and a band-aid, and she waved them off, opting to instead let the blood flow and drop a bit before stopping on its own. Ever since Prail had pointed out to her the complex beauty of water drops and wisps of smoke, she'd become fascinated with the way blood behaved. She loved the look of it, the feel of it, the taste...
"I'll just run this sequence and see if it's a match like we think."
"And then?"
"I corner the market."
"It's my drug!"
"I can give you a franchise. One world."
"That's all I need."
"Deal," he said.
Janique decided to dig a little deeper. She left Prail to her tinkering and arranged a first-ever meeting with intergalactic drug dealer High-C.
To her surprise, he was sedate and polite, contrary to the many stories she had heard about him. He greeted her with a casualness that bordered on indifference, an artifact of what she correctly surmised were drugs and the relatively early hour.
"Janique, hi. Big fan," he said.
"Oh, stop."
"No, seriously. Not just of your films. It's your empire building that interests me."
"Really?"
"It's not easy to get Prail's attention like you did. She tells me you tipped the scales in all kinds of directions. So what's up?"
"I think I need you to develop a drug for me. But we should talk, first."
"If we're designing a drug, we'll have to do a lot of talking."
"Yes, but I want to talk about other things, first."
"Like what?"
"Do you know that somewhere in the multiverse, there's a rapper named High-C?"
'Somewhere in the multiverse, there's a doorman named High-C, and a cabbie, and so on. So I'm not surprised. It's not something I spend a lot of time thinking about."
"But it's more than that. There's some sort of connection there."
"Of course there is. There are lots of unseen connections. The trick, to me, is not seeing them. It can drive you crazy, if you dwell on things."
"Were you ever a musican?"
"I may or may not have flirted with poetry in my youth. But the music industry is so low class. Rock stars? Those are my clients. Not a peer group I desire to be lumped in with."
"Suppose what you wrote showed up in his hands, somehow?"
"I don't know how I'd feel about that. It's kinda of cool, really."
"And what if what he wrote came true?"
"Then you might have a problem..."
"Really? Why?"
"Okay, I confess. I had worked on a rap persona. Everyone was doing it, at the time. But my character was pretty dark. I mostly rapped about literature, insanity, serial killers. Things like that."
"Yikes," Janique said.
"Let me get my lyrics," High said with a note of enthusiasm, and rushed off to retrieve his notebooks.
They read through them together, each highlighting passages for the other.
"Uh-oh," he said at one point. "'Go ahead and retort - I snuff MCs for sport.' I think I see how he gets famous. This is pretty dark stuff, Janique."
"Pretty dark? You wrote it!"
"Yes, but I didn't know it could come true."
"So you somehow created a persona who became real. I sort of know the feeling."
"What if it's the other way around?"
"Huh?"
"What if the rap persona spawned me, instead?"
"That's just as plausible, I guess. But if you made him, and he made you..."
"Right. That's why I don't think about these things much."
"Did you have to make him so over-the-top and powerful?"
"It's rap. You're expected to brag a bit."
"About killing all your rivals?"
"Sure. Sodomize the vanquished, and all that."
She looked at him in exasperation.
"Movie title?" he said.
"No. So I need a drug that hasn't been developed on Earth yet. On Earths? How do you say that?"
"Well, everything's been done on at least one Earth. So what you're really talking about is smuggling a drug across the borders of reality."
"It sounds romantic when you phrase it that way."
"It really is, to me. Desperado, you know. Cosmic Bandidos. Moving chess pieces in the war of the mind. Sometimes it's just quicker and easier to find a universe where the chemical already exists. Saves on R & D. What properties do you desire?"
"Um, very pleasurable and addictive. Irresistible. Soul-consuming. Life-changing. Debilitating. Incapacitating."
"You really know what you want. I like that. Does it have a name?"
"Superlove," Janique said.
"I'll look it up."
He sat back in his recliner and closed his eyes. She wasn't sure what software he was accessing, but she didn't think it was Prail's. When he opened his eyes again, he held a one-gram pack labeled 'Superlove'.
"Here we are," he said. "I'll just reverse engineer this. How's tomorrow for you?"
"Where did you get that?"
"Another where and when. You'll cross paths with it again, I promise you. How much do you want?"
"I don't know yet. Want to make some money?"
"You'll never compete with me."
"Compete?"
"Stick to art flicks and detective work. I've already got distribution options being worked as we speak."
"But-"
"But, nothing. The dope game is mine. Undisputed. Want to know why?"
"Why?"
"Because my supply chain moves product from large worlds to small ones. It's the opposite of cut. A grain from here becomes a boulder somewhere else. A patented trick of the trade. And I protect my routes."
Janique sighed. She didn't like being bested like this. He was as stubborn and driven as she was. An admirable quality.
"Fine. Let's talk after you analyze it, okay?"
"Dinner tomorrow?"
"Fine."
###
Pex managed to make the transition from Jerusalem to Magda seamlessly, he thought. There were advantages to the general ignorance of geography he possessed. But one place pretty much looked like another, anyway.
"So where are we going?" Yeshua asked.
He collided with a young woman carrying a bundle on her head, spilling the contents to the ground. Her dark eyes glared out at him above the veil that covered her face. Her robes, thin and white, clung to her, accentuating her hourglass figure.
She stood two inches shorter than him, with a commanding presence. Before the words were upon her lips, he was scrambling to pick up her groceries.
Beets! He was elated.
Pex smiled.
"I'll see you two later," he said.
The best love stories are left untold...
###
Prail didn't like misleading Janique on the subject of singularities, but she was already too powerful for her liking. She needs her own hit points capped, she thought.
Without any real background in science, science fiction or gaming, Janique had managed to achieve her aims in other ways, trudging through situations that would have deeply disturbed others, without worrying about the implications. Prail sort of wished she could be more like that, not just disconnected, but knowing and still not caring.
In another sense, Janique was far more deeply connected to the denizens of the sim than she herself was. If she ever got a grip on the finer aspects of the physics involved, she'd be formidable. Instead, she favored biology and psychology, two subjects Prail didn't feel capable of mastering.
She considered picking Pex's brain a bit in an effort to stay ahead, but he'd been so difficult to track, lately. Physically, he was in his flophouse. Even his ridiculous contraption supported that. Mentally, however, he was nowhere to be found. That was disturbing, because there weren't supposed to be hiding places she didn't know about.
Prail knew he wouldn't cheat, but he had definitely found a loophole or gray area to exploit. Perhaps she'd send Janique to talk to him in her place. It wouldn't help Prail's situation, but it would probably slow Pex down a bit. She had that effect on men.
She also needed to sidetrack Janique. She'd already made contact with High-C, and it was only a matter of time before she'd drag President Gorlax into the fray as well.
Interesting times, Prail mused. Be careful what you wish for.
###
Pex checked in with the duo a few months down the line, to find them married, and Yeshua attending rabbinical school. At the appropriate moment, he swapped a single fertilized cell from one Mary to another.
Let Prail chew on that conundrum for a while, he thought, if she liked it so complicated. He especially enjoyed the confusion the names caused. In doing so, he gave the couple a full decade out of time, in love, unencumbered by children.
An idyllic existence Pex was destined to shatter forever.
###
"Janique," Prail said. "Check on Pex for me."
She had acquired the somewhat bothersome habit of talking to her across the universe as though they were in the same room together. Invariably, Janique dropped what she was doing and continued the discussion in person. She also felt annoyance each time it happened, believing it to be rude on Prail's part, and a display of power over her.
"Check on Pex? Why can't you?"
"He won't tell me anything useful. He'd go gaga over you. Spill his guts, I bet."
"What can he tell me?"
"Temporal stuff. He has a hiding spot, too. I know you won't get anything tactical out of him, but he does like to brag. Act like you're impressed. That you want to learn how to hack reality like he does."
"What do I get out of it?"
"It was supposed to be a favor. But maybe you can learn something."
"The stuff you two do is too esoteric for me."
"Still. He knows a lot. He might even drop you a hint. It's his idea of a good mystery. Clues."
"I hope he comes up with something better than you did."
"He will. Don't worry."
###
"Stimulant, appetite suppressant, mood elevator, tactile sensory enhancer, PSI enhancer, greatly-increased libido, suppression of impulse control, psychedelics and empathetics, in crystalline configurations I've never encountered before," High-C was telling Janique.
"Addictive?" she asked.
"Only in the short term, I'm afraid. Once you go up, you don't want to come back down."
"Damn."
"What's wrong with coke? Crack? Heroin?"
"I checked. They don't work."
They didn't, in part, because Pex had managed to place two books in Jason's path at a formative age. Both "Dinky Hoffer Shoots Smack" and "A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandiwch" carried strong anti-addiction messages. For good measure, he worked in a third-grade reading comprehension story about Jimi Hendrix overdosing, an unfinished song about an angel on the nightstand beside him.
"Here's the thing," High said. "Chemically, I understand the composition. But there's a biological element to it that's confusing."
"What?"
"I'd like to run some more tests. As it stands now, I can't recreate it."
"Why not?"
"It's mixed with someone's DNA."
"Come on," Janique said.
"No, really. And that's the addictive element."
"That's silly."
"Silly, but true. You're apparently onto a whole new class of drugs, biologics, I call them. More boutique than designer. Personally tailored for maximum impact."
"So what do you need?"
"Blood."
"Do you think-"
"Yes. It makes the most sense, right? A little Janique in every pack? And you are the inventor of Superlove, after all."
Janique was stunned at the revelation. She was a drug that she had invented. Her life since meeting Prail felt like a series of exercises designed to turn her mind inside out on a regular basis.
She rolled up the sleeve of her smart Oxford shirt and sweater ensemble, and High stopped her.
"Give me a break," he said.
He produced an old style straight razor, and gestured at her side. Understanding, she leaned over and pulled up her shirt, exposing her breast and side.
"Yum," High said.
She bit her lip and balled up her fists. She'd been cut a thousand times, and knew it wouldn't hurt, exactly, but still cringed every time. He placed one hand palm down on her ribcage and made a small slice across the bottom of her breast.
A soft "oh" escaped her lips, followed by a low moan.They watched the blood pool, and then High blotted it with a glass slide.
"How romantic," she said. "Dexter..."
"Under other circumstances, it would be fun, I admit."
He handed her a tissue and a band-aid, and she waved them off, opting to instead let the blood flow and drop a bit before stopping on its own. Ever since Prail had pointed out to her the complex beauty of water drops and wisps of smoke, she'd become fascinated with the way blood behaved. She loved the look of it, the feel of it, the taste...
"I'll just run this sequence and see if it's a match like we think."
"And then?"
"I corner the market."
"It's my drug!"
"I can give you a franchise. One world."
"That's all I need."
"Deal," he said.
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Seven
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Seven - The Beet Farmer
God and Satan were playing golf at God's house. He was playing mindgolf against himself, essentially, but it helped make the millenia pass.
They stood at the back tees of the first hole, waiting for the foursome ahead of them to play through. God was dressed in his usual off-white robes, and Satan wore an adorable purple and black plaid get-up, complete with a tam, topped by a fuzzy purple puff ball.
"So, what's your handicap?" God asked, taking a few practice swings.
"Me? I care too much," Satan said.
"Hmm," God said. "Mine is that I care too little."
"Should be a fun round, then."
God whacked the ball a good one, and it took off like a comet, overshooting the par five entirely, exploding the next set of tees and the foursome ahead of them.
"Mulligan," God said, and set up another ball.
Satan glared at him.
"I don't make the rules," God said.
"Um, you sort of do. How convenient for you."
"Listen," God said, leaning on his driver. "I may have set some things in motion, but I can hardly be blamed if the end result is a standard golfing rule that just happens to benefit me now. Can I?"
"I suppose not."
God lined up for his second swing. As he did so, the winds died down. He glanced back at his playmate and saw a look of resentment.
"What?" he said. :Coincidence."
Satan said nothing.
"Oh, all right."
Lightning flashed. The winds came back at gale force. Everthing except the golfing duo became inundated with a heavy rain. God shot a hole in one.
"I thought you didn't care," Satan said.
"What?"
"You just got done telling me that you didn't care!"
"About what?"
"Um, you didn't specify."
"Aha!" God said. "Are you going to complain all day?"
Grumbling, Satan lined up his shot, a respectable three-hundred yard drive that left him well positioned on the fairway where the course doglegged right.
Then God walked off, leaving him to carry both bags of clubs.
###
"It's not fair," Prail was telling Janique. "You can't disrupt his life like that and not give him a fair chance."
"Oh, no? He seems to be doing well so far. He cheated death three times, saved his girlfriend in an extremely morbid and somehow romantic way..."
"You still don't get it. You did kill him in some timelines. That only increases his power in others. Expect repercussions. His hit points are already through the roof."
"So limit them. If what you're saying is true, it will only handicap him," Janique said, "not ruin him. That's my job."
"If we were going to cap his hit points, which isn't a bad idea, I won't do it without giving him a clue. It's only fair."
"Fuck fair," Janique said.
"Movie title!" Prail replied.
"Besides, you said he was a singularity. How is he in multiple timelines?"
"We all are. That only means he won't meet himself."
"How many of us are there?"
"Infinity minus N."
"What's N?"
"N is N. However many universes there are without us. A different number for each of us."
"That's a little vague."
"I can see there's no fooling the great math detective Janique. I've got it. Be right back."
Prail popped into a marketing meeting for a new drug. "Capzasin HP" was the only thought she projected to a member of the marketing division.
"Done," she told Janique.
"Well?"
"A new pharmaceutical will be on the market, Capzasin HP. There will be lots of commercials. He'll see it."
"That's more than a little vague."
"He'll understand. I don't know if it'll make a difference. But I'm capping his hit points. If I don't, there's no telling how much disruption he could cause."
"Thanks, Mrs. Oakes."
"Ooh, don't call me that.!"
"That's your name."
"I know. Don't remind me."
###
Pex had a lot of work to do. Fun to have, in his case. He'd laid most of the groundwork. The rest he considered performance art. He's teach Prail a thing or two yet.
He closed his eyes, and was in Jerusalem, in a curious pocket that seemed to exist outside of time, at least by most human standards. After all, where are the years between B.C. and A.D.?
It was the year 20 A.B. Pex approached a bearded young man pulling weeds in a small garden.
"Don't want any," the man said without looking up.
"What?"
"Whatever you're selling, I don't want it. I can't afford it."
"I'm not selling anything," Pex said.
The man, Yeshua, stopped what he was doing and stood up, suspicious.
"What do you want, then?"
"Um, to talk, for starters. You're in danger."
"In danger? Of what?"
"Of not being born, for one thing. And not surviving childhood, for another. Finally, of not surviving adulthood."
"Poppycock," Yeshua said.
"What? You can't say poppycock!"
"Why not? Poppycock. There, I said it again."
"Because it's anachronistic, and silly, besides."
Pex wondered if he had been among the British for too long already.
"And I'm still somehow expected to know what 'anachronistic' means?"
"Look, that's not the point. Poppycock. Fine. I just sort of thought that one of us spoke Aramaic or something, at least."
"I do. Aramaic and Hebrew."
Pex considered this. It was a lot more difficult to get his head around this time and place. His area of expertise was twentieth century pop culture. Worse yet, his perceptions were filtered through the distorted lens of movies and television.
"Nevermind. You're just in danger, okay? You wouldn't believe my explanation anyway."
"This isn't some religious nonsense, is it? Or political?"
"No, not really. Personal business."
"Are you a time traveler?"
"What?"
"You know. A person from another place and time."
"Okay, yes," Pex said.
"I knew it!"
"Did you? How?"
"Well, I suspected it. It's not a concept the future owns, you realize. Plus the clothes are a bit of a dead giveaway, aren't they?"
Pex looked down, and he was still wearing jeans, sneakers and a t-shirt."
"Poppycock," he said.
"Yeah, let's get you a change of clothes."
They approached a ramshackle shanty that lay between the dirt road and the garden, Yeshua bringing a cluster of weeds he had piled up.
"You should let that stuff decay and mix it in with the soil."
"You mean like compost?"
Pex followed him to the far side of his shack, where he dropped the weeds in a pile without ceremony.
"Again, not a new concept."
They went inside, and Pex was surprised at how much cooler it was. The mud walls were pleasantly cool to the touch.
"I'm afraid I can't afford wine. I do have water," Yeshua said. "I'm thinking about taking a wine-making class, though."
"Aren't you a carpenter? They make decent money."
"No. I gave it a shot. I'm not too good with my hands. Plus, they keep ridiculous hours. I like to sleep in."
"How do you survive, then?"
"I tell you, if you don't support the Roman Empire, the job market is, uh, donkey dung. I'm a substitute teacher, but I think I'm blackballed or something. I make a little side money as a street lecturer. I own the house, and grow my own food, so I don't need much."
"Street lecturer?"
"I panhandle. But always with a good story to tell. Allegorical lessons and such. Do you know who Aesop was?"
"Greek storyteller?"
"Yes! He's brilliant. I hope to achieve that level of success some day. Are you hungry?"
"Something tells me you will. What do you grow?"
"Beets. Can't stand 'em. That's where it all falls apart. Want one?"
"No, thanks."
He handed Pex a set of sand-colored robes and had to show him how to put them on. Afterwards, he pulled out a long wooden pipe and lit if off of a small fire that sat beneath some putrid-smelling purple concoction that Pex assumed were the beets in question.
"What's that?" Pex asked.
"Hash from the Baqaa Valley. Are you sure you're from the future?"
"Yes, but I didn't expect..."
"You really should do your research before time traveling."
He passed the pipe to Pex, who had managed to avoid smoking pot while in London. He saw the misery of the alcoholics, and had assumed it was the same with it.
"When in Rome," he said, taking a long drag that resulted in him coughing up a lungful of smoke.
Yeshua watched in amazement as he went glitchy, the particles of his being distorting with bursts of static. Twice, Pex disappeared fully.
"Sorry," he said when he finally got a grip on himself. "It happens."
"I think you've had enough," Yeshua said, taking it away from him. "So, what's on the agenda?"
"What?" Pex asked.
"You said I was in danger. Is it time travel business?"
"Oh, that. Yes. Time traveling business. Someone's been sent to kill you. Well, the baby you."
"I knew it! I am pretty enlightened, you know. But I'm here already. That means I survived, right?"
"Only because you haven't been born yet..."
God and Satan were playing golf at God's house. He was playing mindgolf against himself, essentially, but it helped make the millenia pass.
They stood at the back tees of the first hole, waiting for the foursome ahead of them to play through. God was dressed in his usual off-white robes, and Satan wore an adorable purple and black plaid get-up, complete with a tam, topped by a fuzzy purple puff ball.
"So, what's your handicap?" God asked, taking a few practice swings.
"Me? I care too much," Satan said.
"Hmm," God said. "Mine is that I care too little."
"Should be a fun round, then."
God whacked the ball a good one, and it took off like a comet, overshooting the par five entirely, exploding the next set of tees and the foursome ahead of them.
"Mulligan," God said, and set up another ball.
Satan glared at him.
"I don't make the rules," God said.
"Um, you sort of do. How convenient for you."
"Listen," God said, leaning on his driver. "I may have set some things in motion, but I can hardly be blamed if the end result is a standard golfing rule that just happens to benefit me now. Can I?"
"I suppose not."
God lined up for his second swing. As he did so, the winds died down. He glanced back at his playmate and saw a look of resentment.
"What?" he said. :Coincidence."
Satan said nothing.
"Oh, all right."
Lightning flashed. The winds came back at gale force. Everthing except the golfing duo became inundated with a heavy rain. God shot a hole in one.
"I thought you didn't care," Satan said.
"What?"
"You just got done telling me that you didn't care!"
"About what?"
"Um, you didn't specify."
"Aha!" God said. "Are you going to complain all day?"
Grumbling, Satan lined up his shot, a respectable three-hundred yard drive that left him well positioned on the fairway where the course doglegged right.
Then God walked off, leaving him to carry both bags of clubs.
###
"It's not fair," Prail was telling Janique. "You can't disrupt his life like that and not give him a fair chance."
"Oh, no? He seems to be doing well so far. He cheated death three times, saved his girlfriend in an extremely morbid and somehow romantic way..."
"You still don't get it. You did kill him in some timelines. That only increases his power in others. Expect repercussions. His hit points are already through the roof."
"So limit them. If what you're saying is true, it will only handicap him," Janique said, "not ruin him. That's my job."
"If we were going to cap his hit points, which isn't a bad idea, I won't do it without giving him a clue. It's only fair."
"Fuck fair," Janique said.
"Movie title!" Prail replied.
"Besides, you said he was a singularity. How is he in multiple timelines?"
"We all are. That only means he won't meet himself."
"How many of us are there?"
"Infinity minus N."
"What's N?"
"N is N. However many universes there are without us. A different number for each of us."
"That's a little vague."
"I can see there's no fooling the great math detective Janique. I've got it. Be right back."
Prail popped into a marketing meeting for a new drug. "Capzasin HP" was the only thought she projected to a member of the marketing division.
"Done," she told Janique.
"Well?"
"A new pharmaceutical will be on the market, Capzasin HP. There will be lots of commercials. He'll see it."
"That's more than a little vague."
"He'll understand. I don't know if it'll make a difference. But I'm capping his hit points. If I don't, there's no telling how much disruption he could cause."
"Thanks, Mrs. Oakes."
"Ooh, don't call me that.!"
"That's your name."
"I know. Don't remind me."
###
Pex had a lot of work to do. Fun to have, in his case. He'd laid most of the groundwork. The rest he considered performance art. He's teach Prail a thing or two yet.
He closed his eyes, and was in Jerusalem, in a curious pocket that seemed to exist outside of time, at least by most human standards. After all, where are the years between B.C. and A.D.?
It was the year 20 A.B. Pex approached a bearded young man pulling weeds in a small garden.
"Don't want any," the man said without looking up.
"What?"
"Whatever you're selling, I don't want it. I can't afford it."
"I'm not selling anything," Pex said.
The man, Yeshua, stopped what he was doing and stood up, suspicious.
"What do you want, then?"
"Um, to talk, for starters. You're in danger."
"In danger? Of what?"
"Of not being born, for one thing. And not surviving childhood, for another. Finally, of not surviving adulthood."
"Poppycock," Yeshua said.
"What? You can't say poppycock!"
"Why not? Poppycock. There, I said it again."
"Because it's anachronistic, and silly, besides."
Pex wondered if he had been among the British for too long already.
"And I'm still somehow expected to know what 'anachronistic' means?"
"Look, that's not the point. Poppycock. Fine. I just sort of thought that one of us spoke Aramaic or something, at least."
"I do. Aramaic and Hebrew."
Pex considered this. It was a lot more difficult to get his head around this time and place. His area of expertise was twentieth century pop culture. Worse yet, his perceptions were filtered through the distorted lens of movies and television.
"Nevermind. You're just in danger, okay? You wouldn't believe my explanation anyway."
"This isn't some religious nonsense, is it? Or political?"
"No, not really. Personal business."
"Are you a time traveler?"
"What?"
"You know. A person from another place and time."
"Okay, yes," Pex said.
"I knew it!"
"Did you? How?"
"Well, I suspected it. It's not a concept the future owns, you realize. Plus the clothes are a bit of a dead giveaway, aren't they?"
Pex looked down, and he was still wearing jeans, sneakers and a t-shirt."
"Poppycock," he said.
"Yeah, let's get you a change of clothes."
They approached a ramshackle shanty that lay between the dirt road and the garden, Yeshua bringing a cluster of weeds he had piled up.
"You should let that stuff decay and mix it in with the soil."
"You mean like compost?"
Pex followed him to the far side of his shack, where he dropped the weeds in a pile without ceremony.
"Again, not a new concept."
They went inside, and Pex was surprised at how much cooler it was. The mud walls were pleasantly cool to the touch.
"I'm afraid I can't afford wine. I do have water," Yeshua said. "I'm thinking about taking a wine-making class, though."
"Aren't you a carpenter? They make decent money."
"No. I gave it a shot. I'm not too good with my hands. Plus, they keep ridiculous hours. I like to sleep in."
"How do you survive, then?"
"I tell you, if you don't support the Roman Empire, the job market is, uh, donkey dung. I'm a substitute teacher, but I think I'm blackballed or something. I make a little side money as a street lecturer. I own the house, and grow my own food, so I don't need much."
"Street lecturer?"
"I panhandle. But always with a good story to tell. Allegorical lessons and such. Do you know who Aesop was?"
"Greek storyteller?"
"Yes! He's brilliant. I hope to achieve that level of success some day. Are you hungry?"
"Something tells me you will. What do you grow?"
"Beets. Can't stand 'em. That's where it all falls apart. Want one?"
"No, thanks."
He handed Pex a set of sand-colored robes and had to show him how to put them on. Afterwards, he pulled out a long wooden pipe and lit if off of a small fire that sat beneath some putrid-smelling purple concoction that Pex assumed were the beets in question.
"What's that?" Pex asked.
"Hash from the Baqaa Valley. Are you sure you're from the future?"
"Yes, but I didn't expect..."
"You really should do your research before time traveling."
He passed the pipe to Pex, who had managed to avoid smoking pot while in London. He saw the misery of the alcoholics, and had assumed it was the same with it.
"When in Rome," he said, taking a long drag that resulted in him coughing up a lungful of smoke.
Yeshua watched in amazement as he went glitchy, the particles of his being distorting with bursts of static. Twice, Pex disappeared fully.
"Sorry," he said when he finally got a grip on himself. "It happens."
"I think you've had enough," Yeshua said, taking it away from him. "So, what's on the agenda?"
"What?" Pex asked.
"You said I was in danger. Is it time travel business?"
"Oh, that. Yes. Time traveling business. Someone's been sent to kill you. Well, the baby you."
"I knew it! I am pretty enlightened, you know. But I'm here already. That means I survived, right?"
"Only because you haven't been born yet..."
New Moon
I view each full moon away from you as a failure
And each new moon as an opportunity to get you back
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Six
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Six - Swamped Things
Prail had had it with Pex. No more helping him.
He could pick on her all he wanted, but insulting the stimulation she was developing really hurt her feelings. She wished she knew how to make his life more terrible, but he was pretty much bottomed out and seemed to enjoy it there.
His random actions and lack of proper motivation put all of her test results in jeopardy. If others played the game like Pex, her simulation would be worthless. Plus she had her hands full with Janique, who was tampering with timelines and realities that were better left alone. It was scary how obsessive she had become so quickly.
###
On the way back to the shelter, Pex found a twenty-five pence piece on the sidewalk. He looked up after retrieving it, and he was in front of a McDonald's. His stomach rumbled. Given the late hour, her knew Prail wasn't there.
Instead, he went to Cairo, an Egyptian-themed casino mixed in among the pubs on the south end. Pex walked up to the roulette wheel and placed the coin on double zero. The croupier noticed and immediately gave it back.
"Ya need chips, mate. And it's a two-pound minimum bet."
Saddened, Pex walked toward the door, passing the slot machines on the way out. He considered playing one of them and trying to push the machine, but figured Prail would just find a way to thwart him, so he didn't bother.
Outside on the sidewalk, he stopped the first person he encountered, an elderly blue-haired woman, and said, "Excuse me, young lady. May I please have one pound seventy-five?"
She stopped and looked at Pex, who looked like a skinny lumberjack who'd been lost in a helicopter accident, and had just wandered into town, having spent four days in the wilderness. She pulled a two-pound note from her purse.
"You're not going to get a drink with this, are you?" she asked before handing it over.
"No, ma'am. I'm going to gamble it," Pex told her.
"Well, I never," she said with a mix of compassion and scorn, and walked off.
Pex stopped the next person, a middle-aged, working class man in the bib overall of a tradesman.
"'Scuse me, sir. Lemme a fiva?"
The man stopped.
"Lend you? A fiver? You just asked her for one pound seventy-five."
"You look like a working man," Pex said, losing his accent. "Money in your pocket. Knows the value of a money and a man's word. I'll pay you back tomorrow."
"Tomorrow, eh?" the man laughed, reaching for his wallet.
"Same time, same place," Pex agreed.
He didn't believe him, of course, but he did like his audacity. He handed Pex a five pound note.
"Sure you will. Have on, then."
"See you tomorrow," Pex said, walking off.
He returned to the casino and bet double zero on the roulette wheel again.
Only he was unsurprised when he won. Grumbling slightly, as if he had been cheated, the croupier paid out his winnings, a thirty-eight-to-one long shot. Pex tipped him a fiver, which soothed his injured ego. Then he went to McDonald's Prail was not there. Another unhappy meal.
###
Prail was instead keeping an eye on Janique full-time. The real problem, she observed, was that Janique thought that things were simple. And no matter how many times Prail tried to show her the hidden complexity, her beliefs persisted.
She was beginning to suspect that Janique wanted to kill them just for the challenge it presented. When she watched her kill their dogs, she very nearly grew angry. Her madness was so compelling, Prail began to view her actions from within Janique. There was an enormous amount of backstory and complexity to be found there.
Prail watched horrific scenarios of rape and torture, ending with the bodies of both Jason and Johnnie bound in chicken wire, weighted with cinder blocks, and dumped into the swamp.
But she also saw the parts Janique did not.
She saw the offer being made to Jason, which he accepted, to die in the place of his future wife. He went through the ordeal not once, but twice. In the last instant before the bound bodies hit the water, Prail saw their faces turn into Pex's.
Not only had he beaten her out of what she was trying to achieve, he left her with the memory of succeeding. To further complicate things, Janique's naive attempts were having far-reaching implications that even Prail hadn't anticipated. She was essentially making it harder on herself, and by extension, for her as well.
This time, when Janique reappeared in the lab, she didn't boast, "Got 'em!" or anything of that nature. But Prail could feel her belief that she had achieved her goal.
"You need to stop," Prail told her. "You're Florida State University. That means you're fucking shit up."
"What?"
"Where have you been?"
"Oh, nowhere, really. Checked on Chris. Why?"
"You're turning into a monster. He's in 1984 now, look."
"Is that an important year?"
"So important they wrote a book about it," Prail said.
"But..." Janique started to say.
She was whisked away to an apartment in Las Vegas. Jason sat at a huge desk with a gallon bottle of pink heart tablets that she instantly recognized as speed. She looked over his shoulder and read what she could. It was a song, and there were gaps in it, but Janique got the gist of it:
"Turning my attention to the Nazarene
His eyes plead for mercy, it seems
...
Without proof of their faith
The priests' faith now ends
Darkness covers the world
As a deadly new Satanic age begins"
She wondered why Prail elected to bring her to this particular point, as she would rather have read the entire song, but it didn't matter. Prail needed to check her premise. A few scenes later, and Jason and friend Terry conduct an impromptu sacrifice. They burned a roach to death with matches, and left a tiny upside-down cross next to the body.
"Aww," Janique said. "That's cute. It's actually sort of sweet."
"You have no idea," Prail said. "Then they killed some kid in the desert. Tim something. They don't know they did it."
"So?" Janique said.
"It's your interfering with their lives that's making him do these things. Every time you try and kill them, he'll retaliate sevenfold."
They were back at the labs. Janique was disappointed because she had wanted to see the boy in Vegas die.
"Well, if I can't kill them, I'll make their lives so miserable, they'll kill themselves."
"That might work, I suppse," Prail said, tiring of the conversation.
Let Janique believe what she wants. Pex would handle it. At least she hoped he would.
###
Pex had to laugh. If he didn't, he'd go insane. Like them. He'd done his homework and predicted correctly. Now he needed Prail's attention, and she was of course missing in action. He had to admire her tenacity. It was mildly infuriating. But the things she had shown Janique had set events in motion that required action on his part. The showboating to Prail would have to wait.
That presented a problem. Pex had set up the changes he wanted to enact, but hadn't actually made any of them. It was going to be his grand reveal. He'd be working without a net, unless he could relinquish his need to one-up his sister.
He decided to try and get her attention. He went to her McDonald's at the evening shift change. Darcy of the blonde pigtails was walking to her Fiat.
"'Scuse me, uh, Darcy. Is Prail working?"
"Who?"
Pex thought about it.
"Black hair? Square glasses? Petunia?"
"Patricia," Darcy said.
"Oh, right."
"Is she your girlfriend, then?"
"No, my sister."
"You can't remember your sister's name?"
"It's a long story," Pex said. "Want to take in a movie?"
"What, tonight? Now?"
She was flattered, and the emotion shone on her face.
"Yes. Tonight. Now."
"I've only just met you., erm-"
"Pex."
"Pex, is it?"
"Yes."
"What movie?"
"Star Wars, of course."
"Star Wars? What's that?"
"You'll see," Pex said. "Can we take your car?"
"Get in," she said with a smile.
Prail didn't show up until they had parked and walked to the theater. It was suddenly 1977.
"Hello, Pex," she said. "Darcy."
"Two, please," he said. "Go on ahead, Darce."
She looked at them both somewhat warily, as if she possibly wasn't buying the sister thing, and then Prail said, "Good seeing you again."
Unable to counter this kindness, Darcy smiled and walked inside, ahead of a line that stretched around the block. This wasn't going to Pex's liking.
For one thing, when he'd planned it, it was going to be daylight. Leave it to her to thwart the very fundamentals of what he was attempting. He followed the script anyway. She began her assault by saying nothing.
He had, at a minimum, a hundred well thought-out responses, none of which made any sense with a proper lead-in taunt, which Prail was now thoughtlessly withholding. Pex limped along, his simple scenario in tatters.
"See that sun over there? Wait."
He began again.
"Oh, yeah? See that sun over there?"
Prail supernovaed it on the other side of the planet.
"That's not a moon," she said. "That's a space station."
"Wrote it," Pex said, and exploded into billions of particles. Each went and performed a single function.
"What took you so long?" Prail asked, doing her best to remain unimpressed.
At the same time, she wanted to show off on her own. She briefly considered explaining her complexity theory to him, and decided against it. She could feel a certain bleakness at his core, however, and it was unnerving. It was very unlike her brother as she knew him.
She decided to indulge him.
Prail waited for him to blink, which took seemingly forever. When he finally did, the afternoon sun was over his shoulder."
"Try again," she said. "Pex, the reason that the sim is so complex-"
"Oh, yeah? See that sun over there?"
He gestured with his thumb.
"It's not a sun. It's a partially exploded atomic warhead."
"Okay..." Prail said.
"A bomb."
"And?"
Pex detonated it. Everything was back to normal in an instant, with only he and Prail the wiser.
"Feel better now?" she asked.
"Not really, no."
"It was very impressive, Pex," she said consolingly.
"Really?"
"Oh, yes. Real supergod stuff."
He studied her face, but if she was referring to his hack, it wasn't revealed there.
"I have to go," he said. "Your friend is making real trouble."
"Said the guy who took some poor girl on a date two years in the future, and then exploded the sun..."
Pex scrawled something on a piece of paper.
"You're not interpreting all of the data. Think 'little endian'."
He haded her the decode equation and turned to leave.
"Wait! What about your date?"
"What?"
"The girl. Darcy."
"You handle her for me, would you. I'm no good at these things. I just needed her to get your attention."
"She's two years in the future!"
"Give her some good memories? And a suitable bank account?"
"Pex, you're a total bastard!"
"If so," he said, "you made me one."
And then he walked off.
Prail wasted no time getting back to her workstation. She wrote a new routine to decode Pex's transmissions, inverting the byte order and processing it via the equation he had given her.
She was again assailed with mountains of data. Prail noticed it was an array of arrays, XYZ points of sub-decimal numbers. This, she could work with. She picked a random point in the stream, and directed the output of the routine to her shader/renderer.
The first two attempts yielded bizarre shapes that she could not discern. On her third shuffle, she got it right. Pex had made her work for it, but it was worth it.
The lower torso of a female began to fill the display. Startled at what she recognized, Prail stepped backward through the dataset a bit and restarted the process. What she got in exchange was a very accurate nude model of herself. She was bald, and otherwise hairless, but it was definitely her body.
She laughed at his temerity and cheek.
Bastard, indeed. While she was decoding the rooms he sent her, he'd been compiling data on the human form. Without really trying, he'd done three-quarters of her sim for her. The easy parts, to be sure. But it was sweet.
[image error]
Prail had had it with Pex. No more helping him.
He could pick on her all he wanted, but insulting the stimulation she was developing really hurt her feelings. She wished she knew how to make his life more terrible, but he was pretty much bottomed out and seemed to enjoy it there.
His random actions and lack of proper motivation put all of her test results in jeopardy. If others played the game like Pex, her simulation would be worthless. Plus she had her hands full with Janique, who was tampering with timelines and realities that were better left alone. It was scary how obsessive she had become so quickly.
###
On the way back to the shelter, Pex found a twenty-five pence piece on the sidewalk. He looked up after retrieving it, and he was in front of a McDonald's. His stomach rumbled. Given the late hour, her knew Prail wasn't there.
Instead, he went to Cairo, an Egyptian-themed casino mixed in among the pubs on the south end. Pex walked up to the roulette wheel and placed the coin on double zero. The croupier noticed and immediately gave it back.
"Ya need chips, mate. And it's a two-pound minimum bet."
Saddened, Pex walked toward the door, passing the slot machines on the way out. He considered playing one of them and trying to push the machine, but figured Prail would just find a way to thwart him, so he didn't bother.
Outside on the sidewalk, he stopped the first person he encountered, an elderly blue-haired woman, and said, "Excuse me, young lady. May I please have one pound seventy-five?"
She stopped and looked at Pex, who looked like a skinny lumberjack who'd been lost in a helicopter accident, and had just wandered into town, having spent four days in the wilderness. She pulled a two-pound note from her purse.
"You're not going to get a drink with this, are you?" she asked before handing it over.
"No, ma'am. I'm going to gamble it," Pex told her.
"Well, I never," she said with a mix of compassion and scorn, and walked off.
Pex stopped the next person, a middle-aged, working class man in the bib overall of a tradesman.
"'Scuse me, sir. Lemme a fiva?"
The man stopped.
"Lend you? A fiver? You just asked her for one pound seventy-five."
"You look like a working man," Pex said, losing his accent. "Money in your pocket. Knows the value of a money and a man's word. I'll pay you back tomorrow."
"Tomorrow, eh?" the man laughed, reaching for his wallet.
"Same time, same place," Pex agreed.
He didn't believe him, of course, but he did like his audacity. He handed Pex a five pound note.
"Sure you will. Have on, then."
"See you tomorrow," Pex said, walking off.
He returned to the casino and bet double zero on the roulette wheel again.
Only he was unsurprised when he won. Grumbling slightly, as if he had been cheated, the croupier paid out his winnings, a thirty-eight-to-one long shot. Pex tipped him a fiver, which soothed his injured ego. Then he went to McDonald's Prail was not there. Another unhappy meal.
###
Prail was instead keeping an eye on Janique full-time. The real problem, she observed, was that Janique thought that things were simple. And no matter how many times Prail tried to show her the hidden complexity, her beliefs persisted.
She was beginning to suspect that Janique wanted to kill them just for the challenge it presented. When she watched her kill their dogs, she very nearly grew angry. Her madness was so compelling, Prail began to view her actions from within Janique. There was an enormous amount of backstory and complexity to be found there.
Prail watched horrific scenarios of rape and torture, ending with the bodies of both Jason and Johnnie bound in chicken wire, weighted with cinder blocks, and dumped into the swamp.
But she also saw the parts Janique did not.
She saw the offer being made to Jason, which he accepted, to die in the place of his future wife. He went through the ordeal not once, but twice. In the last instant before the bound bodies hit the water, Prail saw their faces turn into Pex's.
Not only had he beaten her out of what she was trying to achieve, he left her with the memory of succeeding. To further complicate things, Janique's naive attempts were having far-reaching implications that even Prail hadn't anticipated. She was essentially making it harder on herself, and by extension, for her as well.
This time, when Janique reappeared in the lab, she didn't boast, "Got 'em!" or anything of that nature. But Prail could feel her belief that she had achieved her goal.
"You need to stop," Prail told her. "You're Florida State University. That means you're fucking shit up."
"What?"
"Where have you been?"
"Oh, nowhere, really. Checked on Chris. Why?"
"You're turning into a monster. He's in 1984 now, look."
"Is that an important year?"
"So important they wrote a book about it," Prail said.
"But..." Janique started to say.
She was whisked away to an apartment in Las Vegas. Jason sat at a huge desk with a gallon bottle of pink heart tablets that she instantly recognized as speed. She looked over his shoulder and read what she could. It was a song, and there were gaps in it, but Janique got the gist of it:
"Turning my attention to the Nazarene
His eyes plead for mercy, it seems
...
Without proof of their faith
The priests' faith now ends
Darkness covers the world
As a deadly new Satanic age begins"
She wondered why Prail elected to bring her to this particular point, as she would rather have read the entire song, but it didn't matter. Prail needed to check her premise. A few scenes later, and Jason and friend Terry conduct an impromptu sacrifice. They burned a roach to death with matches, and left a tiny upside-down cross next to the body.
"Aww," Janique said. "That's cute. It's actually sort of sweet."
"You have no idea," Prail said. "Then they killed some kid in the desert. Tim something. They don't know they did it."
"So?" Janique said.
"It's your interfering with their lives that's making him do these things. Every time you try and kill them, he'll retaliate sevenfold."
They were back at the labs. Janique was disappointed because she had wanted to see the boy in Vegas die.
"Well, if I can't kill them, I'll make their lives so miserable, they'll kill themselves."
"That might work, I suppse," Prail said, tiring of the conversation.
Let Janique believe what she wants. Pex would handle it. At least she hoped he would.
###
Pex had to laugh. If he didn't, he'd go insane. Like them. He'd done his homework and predicted correctly. Now he needed Prail's attention, and she was of course missing in action. He had to admire her tenacity. It was mildly infuriating. But the things she had shown Janique had set events in motion that required action on his part. The showboating to Prail would have to wait.
That presented a problem. Pex had set up the changes he wanted to enact, but hadn't actually made any of them. It was going to be his grand reveal. He'd be working without a net, unless he could relinquish his need to one-up his sister.
He decided to try and get her attention. He went to her McDonald's at the evening shift change. Darcy of the blonde pigtails was walking to her Fiat.
"'Scuse me, uh, Darcy. Is Prail working?"
"Who?"
Pex thought about it.
"Black hair? Square glasses? Petunia?"
"Patricia," Darcy said.
"Oh, right."
"Is she your girlfriend, then?"
"No, my sister."
"You can't remember your sister's name?"
"It's a long story," Pex said. "Want to take in a movie?"
"What, tonight? Now?"
She was flattered, and the emotion shone on her face.
"Yes. Tonight. Now."
"I've only just met you., erm-"
"Pex."
"Pex, is it?"
"Yes."
"What movie?"
"Star Wars, of course."
"Star Wars? What's that?"
"You'll see," Pex said. "Can we take your car?"
"Get in," she said with a smile.
Prail didn't show up until they had parked and walked to the theater. It was suddenly 1977.
"Hello, Pex," she said. "Darcy."
"Two, please," he said. "Go on ahead, Darce."
She looked at them both somewhat warily, as if she possibly wasn't buying the sister thing, and then Prail said, "Good seeing you again."
Unable to counter this kindness, Darcy smiled and walked inside, ahead of a line that stretched around the block. This wasn't going to Pex's liking.
For one thing, when he'd planned it, it was going to be daylight. Leave it to her to thwart the very fundamentals of what he was attempting. He followed the script anyway. She began her assault by saying nothing.
He had, at a minimum, a hundred well thought-out responses, none of which made any sense with a proper lead-in taunt, which Prail was now thoughtlessly withholding. Pex limped along, his simple scenario in tatters.
"See that sun over there? Wait."
He began again.
"Oh, yeah? See that sun over there?"
Prail supernovaed it on the other side of the planet.
"That's not a moon," she said. "That's a space station."
"Wrote it," Pex said, and exploded into billions of particles. Each went and performed a single function.
"What took you so long?" Prail asked, doing her best to remain unimpressed.
At the same time, she wanted to show off on her own. She briefly considered explaining her complexity theory to him, and decided against it. She could feel a certain bleakness at his core, however, and it was unnerving. It was very unlike her brother as she knew him.
She decided to indulge him.
Prail waited for him to blink, which took seemingly forever. When he finally did, the afternoon sun was over his shoulder."
"Try again," she said. "Pex, the reason that the sim is so complex-"
"Oh, yeah? See that sun over there?"
He gestured with his thumb.
"It's not a sun. It's a partially exploded atomic warhead."
"Okay..." Prail said.
"A bomb."
"And?"
Pex detonated it. Everything was back to normal in an instant, with only he and Prail the wiser.
"Feel better now?" she asked.
"Not really, no."
"It was very impressive, Pex," she said consolingly.
"Really?"
"Oh, yes. Real supergod stuff."
He studied her face, but if she was referring to his hack, it wasn't revealed there.
"I have to go," he said. "Your friend is making real trouble."
"Said the guy who took some poor girl on a date two years in the future, and then exploded the sun..."
Pex scrawled something on a piece of paper.
"You're not interpreting all of the data. Think 'little endian'."
He haded her the decode equation and turned to leave.
"Wait! What about your date?"
"What?"
"The girl. Darcy."
"You handle her for me, would you. I'm no good at these things. I just needed her to get your attention."
"She's two years in the future!"
"Give her some good memories? And a suitable bank account?"
"Pex, you're a total bastard!"
"If so," he said, "you made me one."
And then he walked off.
Prail wasted no time getting back to her workstation. She wrote a new routine to decode Pex's transmissions, inverting the byte order and processing it via the equation he had given her.
She was again assailed with mountains of data. Prail noticed it was an array of arrays, XYZ points of sub-decimal numbers. This, she could work with. She picked a random point in the stream, and directed the output of the routine to her shader/renderer.
The first two attempts yielded bizarre shapes that she could not discern. On her third shuffle, she got it right. Pex had made her work for it, but it was worth it.
The lower torso of a female began to fill the display. Startled at what she recognized, Prail stepped backward through the dataset a bit and restarted the process. What she got in exchange was a very accurate nude model of herself. She was bald, and otherwise hairless, but it was definitely her body.
She laughed at his temerity and cheek.
Bastard, indeed. While she was decoding the rooms he sent her, he'd been compiling data on the human form. Without really trying, he'd done three-quarters of her sim for her. The easy parts, to be sure. But it was sweet.
[image error]
August 2, 2012
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Five
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Five - Murder Most Foul
Prail left a bot in her place, and rejoined her conversation with Janique.
"Tell me again why I shouldn't kill them. Convince me."
"It's not a matter of should or shouldn't," Prail said. "It's a matter of can't."
"I can try."
"Don't fuck with singularities. You've been warned."
Prail blinked and left. She needed to relax. She was getting an idea for a zombie game. There would be lots of blood and shooting.
Hidden forces were pulling Janique this way and that. She could feel them tugging on her, but she wasn't sure of who, what or why. She was able to resist whatever it was. Prail and Chris had each in their own ways made her incredibly strong, both mentally and physically.
Then she sneezed.
In the quarter-second it took for that to happen, she was defenseless. Suddenly, she found herself on a construction site.
"Someone godded you," a guy in a green hard hat was telling her, indicating her own head gear.
She smiled and walked off, feeling somehow slightly taller. Janique found a portable bathroom, thinking that Prail had for some reason put her in the Renee Hollander game Construction Master. But when she looked in the mirror, she was horrified to see that she had a beard and moustache. The front of her hardhat said "Jason Christie". Above that, written in red Sharpie, was the word 'God'.
Janique fainted. When she woke up, she was back with Chris.
###
God was playing Fuck Shit Up, he favorite Prail game. It wasn't one Prail had designed, but still hers. Theirs.
He wandered through her database, scrambling and deleting data, changing variables. He crashed subroutines. He's switch flags, turning people's interior personae around. White people became black inside. Men and women exchanged genders. He toyed with her raytrace features to create logical paradoxes, lighting the moon in unnatural ways. No one noticed except Prail, who always set things back to right.
God constantly had to find new ways to keep from being bored. At the same time, he didn't like to do anything physical, the ramifications of his actions were so great. Which was why he had built the little prison for himself. It was empty and sterile, and he hadn't set foot outside of it in aeons.
The last time he had, he'd heard the screams of a billion dying worlds with each step. Which didn't bother him as such. But he liked peace and quiet.
A fly had found its way inside several millennia earlier, and he'd killed it without thinking. Throughout the multiverse, the future evolved descendents of flies were wiped out, never to return.
"Oops," he had said at the time.
Forgetting who he was had been part of the problem. Eventually, other living things learned to stay far away from him. Sometimes, he actually felt guilty at creating the whole stinking system in the first place. At other times, because of all the bad things he allowed to happen. When he felt like that, he seriously rethought his role as a hands-off creator.
He loved the worlds, but didn't really belong there. He had built a tiny house on an asteroid and kept it in the furthest reaches of space, at the center, where he was as far away from everything else as he could get. Immortality sucked. Omnipotence sort of did, as well.
Sort of.
To assuage his on-again, off-again feelings of guilt, he allowed Janique to seek him out and actually find him. Her let her dominate him and punish him, and that made him feel better, on occasion.
She thought she did it all on her own, and never realized that when she did it, she was actually everyone else in the multiverse who was angry with him. Everyone who had bad luck, or fell on hard times, or lost a loved one.
Consequently, she abused him with a vehemence that was nearly frightening. That was a good feeling to him, being scared. It took a lot to scare him, of course.
His biggest fear was that she would lose interest and not come back.
###
Janique decided to make her first attempt at killing Jason Christie.
She found him in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Airline Highway. His first wife, Suzanne, was driving them somewhere in a black Lincoln Towncar. Janique appeared in a double-axle truck pulling a horse trailer. They were making a U-turn, and she mashed down on the gas pedal, reaching nearly fifty miles an hour when she hit them squarely on the passenger side door.
Just before she struck, she popped back out, leaving the truck driver to his fate. There was no way either he or Jason could have survived.
She appeared back at Prail's game design lab.
"Got him," she said.
"Oh, really?" Prail said, not looking up.
"Fuck yes. Car wreck. He shouldn't have made me."
"Janique, you don't understand. All he's really doing is receiving visions of your life and writing them down. Things don't work the way you think they do. You're only making him more powerful."
"Powerful? He's dead."
"Oh, really? It takes more than death to stop him. Look."
Suddenly, Prail and Janique were in an emergency room, and Jason was awake, with a doctor poking his feet with a needle.
"What the fuck are you doing?" he said.
"There's blood in your urine. We're checking for spinal damage."
"You shoved a tube up my peehole! Of course there's blood!"
The scene switched, and he was in a hospital room. Suzanne, another woman, and two guys were standing around the bed.
He woke up.
"Where am I?"
"We were in a wreck," Suzanne said. "Broken ribs, collapsed lung."
"Who are these guys?" Janique whispered.
"They can't hear or see us," Prail said. "That's Gortician. High-C's band."
"But-"
Prail took Janique back to her lab.
"See?" Prail said.
"But I killed him!"
"I know. He just keeps coming back."
"But why? How?"
"Love. Unfinished business. He has to find Johnnie. He has books to write."
"Fuck," Janique said. "And Gortician? That's a planet, not a band. High-C's a dealer, not a musician."
"Down there, they're a band. In another part of the multiverse, they're the biggest band of all time. Bigger than Disaster Area."
"Really?"
"Sure. There's even a parody of them, Metalocalypse. He's not allowed to know."
"Why not?"
Prail shrugged.
"Prime directive?"
###
Pex took a peek at Prail's database and poked around. He checked the security settings first. She was listed as security level zero, Supergod status. Very funny, he thought. He made a new entry at negative zero, Above Supergod status. It was actually a clone of her settings, but he knew the label would bother her.
He only hoped she appreciated the joke. But she played games with people's lives, and needed to be taught a lesson. She wrote the games, at least. He noticed that once a game could be considered finished, she lost interest, relying on bug reports from testers and users.
He admired her dedication to her art. But Pex had learned something that felt important to him. As he spent time among them, he began to feel that the non-carbon-based life forms deserved as much freewill as their creators.
2D people were people, too. It hardly seemed fair that they could be switched on and off, or be unknowingly manipulated for the duration of their lives. He suspected, no, he knew that Prail wouldn't agree. He paused everything and went to her lab.
"Hey, 'Wolverine'," she said. "How goes the takeover?"
"Not too good. I quit."
"I heard you were fired."
"Same thing."
"You don't want to work for them anyway. Bad for the environment."
"Fuck the environment."
"What?"
"You heard me," Pex said. "Concrete and steel are just as valid as dirt and trees."
"Dirt and trees are natural."
"Everything's natural."
"They're man-made!"
"In a synthetic environment?"
"They're prettier."
"That's debatable. A matter of taste, at least."
"Go play, Pex. I'm working."
"Your sim sucks," he said.
"What?"
"It's too realistic."
"How can a simulation be too realistic?"
"It just is. It's too limiting. Anything is possible, and you have them digging ditches and changing diapers."
"They're non-player characters."
"Another problem I have with it. They're slaves, essentially."
"They don't know that."
"What if I tell them?"
"They won't believe you. They don't have the capacity."
"Ergo, your simulation is flawed."
"No, it isn't. Anyway, it's mine. Go write your own. By the way, thank you for the empty rooms."
"You're welcome," he said. "Ungrateful brat. Maybe you're misinterpreting the data."
"Seems pretty straightforward to me."
"I gave you a wealth of useful information. Use it however you wish."
"Yeah, in a huge blast. Thanks for overwhelming me. You made everything unstable, for a time."
"You handled it okay."
"But I should have been warned."
"They shouldn't have to work," he said, continuing his argument.
"They have a choice."
"Sure. Arbeit macht frei. Free to work."
"They can organize politically. Work together."
"The fact that they don't indicates that they can't."
"They can, trust me. Want to view the source?"
"Ugh, no. Your code is too workaday. Instead of code like building blocks, you should craft something closer to poetry."
"You code your way, and I'll code my way. I don't tell you how to be a bum, do I?"
"I'm going to make things more interesting."
"How?"
"You'll see," Pex said, and left her to wonder and worry.
###
Pex gently probed Prail's mind while he had her distracted, and found out about Janique's machinations. She struck his as vaguely psychotic. The first thing he did was try and subtly warn people by sending her the porn actress Crazy, prompting the movie title, "Janique is Fucking Crazy."
He was amused.
Then he did a quick examination of the popular culture available to him on Earth, changing song lyrics and movie dialogue to suit his aims.
Pex planned on writing a single game that dwarfed Prail's entire portfolio, with the fate of the entire Earth at stake. He was ready to teach her true game design. All he had to do was stay one step ahead of, and behind, her and Janique.
One of the many advantages he had was that he knew what Ultimate Hustle really was, and it was a crucial bit of information Prail wouldn't share with the ego-maniacal Janique. She had sent him to Earth with it encoded in his being.
He was to infiltrate, assimilate and overthrow the entire planet, gaining mastery of it. And he had. But he was so good at it, Prail hadn't noticed. Which left him stuck in the game.
To Pex, secrecy was paramount to ruling. Plus, he found it entirely unfashionable to go around flaunting your power like that. Tacky. He was too subtle for her. Brilliant. That gave him plenty of time to play, and it would be that much more fun when she did figure it out.
He had one little change that he wanted to make to her sim immediately. He did a global search, and in the disease section, deleted 'Cancer' and all related subfolders. It was miserable enough down there without incurable plagues.
That was enough, for now. He erased his tracks and went to ponder the intractable problem of dealing with his sister.
[image error]
Prail left a bot in her place, and rejoined her conversation with Janique.
"Tell me again why I shouldn't kill them. Convince me."
"It's not a matter of should or shouldn't," Prail said. "It's a matter of can't."
"I can try."
"Don't fuck with singularities. You've been warned."
Prail blinked and left. She needed to relax. She was getting an idea for a zombie game. There would be lots of blood and shooting.
Hidden forces were pulling Janique this way and that. She could feel them tugging on her, but she wasn't sure of who, what or why. She was able to resist whatever it was. Prail and Chris had each in their own ways made her incredibly strong, both mentally and physically.
Then she sneezed.
In the quarter-second it took for that to happen, she was defenseless. Suddenly, she found herself on a construction site.
"Someone godded you," a guy in a green hard hat was telling her, indicating her own head gear.
She smiled and walked off, feeling somehow slightly taller. Janique found a portable bathroom, thinking that Prail had for some reason put her in the Renee Hollander game Construction Master. But when she looked in the mirror, she was horrified to see that she had a beard and moustache. The front of her hardhat said "Jason Christie". Above that, written in red Sharpie, was the word 'God'.
Janique fainted. When she woke up, she was back with Chris.
###
God was playing Fuck Shit Up, he favorite Prail game. It wasn't one Prail had designed, but still hers. Theirs.
He wandered through her database, scrambling and deleting data, changing variables. He crashed subroutines. He's switch flags, turning people's interior personae around. White people became black inside. Men and women exchanged genders. He toyed with her raytrace features to create logical paradoxes, lighting the moon in unnatural ways. No one noticed except Prail, who always set things back to right.
God constantly had to find new ways to keep from being bored. At the same time, he didn't like to do anything physical, the ramifications of his actions were so great. Which was why he had built the little prison for himself. It was empty and sterile, and he hadn't set foot outside of it in aeons.
The last time he had, he'd heard the screams of a billion dying worlds with each step. Which didn't bother him as such. But he liked peace and quiet.
A fly had found its way inside several millennia earlier, and he'd killed it without thinking. Throughout the multiverse, the future evolved descendents of flies were wiped out, never to return.
"Oops," he had said at the time.
Forgetting who he was had been part of the problem. Eventually, other living things learned to stay far away from him. Sometimes, he actually felt guilty at creating the whole stinking system in the first place. At other times, because of all the bad things he allowed to happen. When he felt like that, he seriously rethought his role as a hands-off creator.
He loved the worlds, but didn't really belong there. He had built a tiny house on an asteroid and kept it in the furthest reaches of space, at the center, where he was as far away from everything else as he could get. Immortality sucked. Omnipotence sort of did, as well.
Sort of.
To assuage his on-again, off-again feelings of guilt, he allowed Janique to seek him out and actually find him. Her let her dominate him and punish him, and that made him feel better, on occasion.
She thought she did it all on her own, and never realized that when she did it, she was actually everyone else in the multiverse who was angry with him. Everyone who had bad luck, or fell on hard times, or lost a loved one.
Consequently, she abused him with a vehemence that was nearly frightening. That was a good feeling to him, being scared. It took a lot to scare him, of course.
His biggest fear was that she would lose interest and not come back.
###
Janique decided to make her first attempt at killing Jason Christie.
She found him in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Airline Highway. His first wife, Suzanne, was driving them somewhere in a black Lincoln Towncar. Janique appeared in a double-axle truck pulling a horse trailer. They were making a U-turn, and she mashed down on the gas pedal, reaching nearly fifty miles an hour when she hit them squarely on the passenger side door.
Just before she struck, she popped back out, leaving the truck driver to his fate. There was no way either he or Jason could have survived.
She appeared back at Prail's game design lab.
"Got him," she said.
"Oh, really?" Prail said, not looking up.
"Fuck yes. Car wreck. He shouldn't have made me."
"Janique, you don't understand. All he's really doing is receiving visions of your life and writing them down. Things don't work the way you think they do. You're only making him more powerful."
"Powerful? He's dead."
"Oh, really? It takes more than death to stop him. Look."
Suddenly, Prail and Janique were in an emergency room, and Jason was awake, with a doctor poking his feet with a needle.
"What the fuck are you doing?" he said.
"There's blood in your urine. We're checking for spinal damage."
"You shoved a tube up my peehole! Of course there's blood!"
The scene switched, and he was in a hospital room. Suzanne, another woman, and two guys were standing around the bed.
He woke up.
"Where am I?"
"We were in a wreck," Suzanne said. "Broken ribs, collapsed lung."
"Who are these guys?" Janique whispered.
"They can't hear or see us," Prail said. "That's Gortician. High-C's band."
"But-"
Prail took Janique back to her lab.
"See?" Prail said.
"But I killed him!"
"I know. He just keeps coming back."
"But why? How?"
"Love. Unfinished business. He has to find Johnnie. He has books to write."
"Fuck," Janique said. "And Gortician? That's a planet, not a band. High-C's a dealer, not a musician."
"Down there, they're a band. In another part of the multiverse, they're the biggest band of all time. Bigger than Disaster Area."
"Really?"
"Sure. There's even a parody of them, Metalocalypse. He's not allowed to know."
"Why not?"
Prail shrugged.
"Prime directive?"
###
Pex took a peek at Prail's database and poked around. He checked the security settings first. She was listed as security level zero, Supergod status. Very funny, he thought. He made a new entry at negative zero, Above Supergod status. It was actually a clone of her settings, but he knew the label would bother her.
He only hoped she appreciated the joke. But she played games with people's lives, and needed to be taught a lesson. She wrote the games, at least. He noticed that once a game could be considered finished, she lost interest, relying on bug reports from testers and users.
He admired her dedication to her art. But Pex had learned something that felt important to him. As he spent time among them, he began to feel that the non-carbon-based life forms deserved as much freewill as their creators.
2D people were people, too. It hardly seemed fair that they could be switched on and off, or be unknowingly manipulated for the duration of their lives. He suspected, no, he knew that Prail wouldn't agree. He paused everything and went to her lab.
"Hey, 'Wolverine'," she said. "How goes the takeover?"
"Not too good. I quit."
"I heard you were fired."
"Same thing."
"You don't want to work for them anyway. Bad for the environment."
"Fuck the environment."
"What?"
"You heard me," Pex said. "Concrete and steel are just as valid as dirt and trees."
"Dirt and trees are natural."
"Everything's natural."
"They're man-made!"
"In a synthetic environment?"
"They're prettier."
"That's debatable. A matter of taste, at least."
"Go play, Pex. I'm working."
"Your sim sucks," he said.
"What?"
"It's too realistic."
"How can a simulation be too realistic?"
"It just is. It's too limiting. Anything is possible, and you have them digging ditches and changing diapers."
"They're non-player characters."
"Another problem I have with it. They're slaves, essentially."
"They don't know that."
"What if I tell them?"
"They won't believe you. They don't have the capacity."
"Ergo, your simulation is flawed."
"No, it isn't. Anyway, it's mine. Go write your own. By the way, thank you for the empty rooms."
"You're welcome," he said. "Ungrateful brat. Maybe you're misinterpreting the data."
"Seems pretty straightforward to me."
"I gave you a wealth of useful information. Use it however you wish."
"Yeah, in a huge blast. Thanks for overwhelming me. You made everything unstable, for a time."
"You handled it okay."
"But I should have been warned."
"They shouldn't have to work," he said, continuing his argument.
"They have a choice."
"Sure. Arbeit macht frei. Free to work."
"They can organize politically. Work together."
"The fact that they don't indicates that they can't."
"They can, trust me. Want to view the source?"
"Ugh, no. Your code is too workaday. Instead of code like building blocks, you should craft something closer to poetry."
"You code your way, and I'll code my way. I don't tell you how to be a bum, do I?"
"I'm going to make things more interesting."
"How?"
"You'll see," Pex said, and left her to wonder and worry.
###
Pex gently probed Prail's mind while he had her distracted, and found out about Janique's machinations. She struck his as vaguely psychotic. The first thing he did was try and subtly warn people by sending her the porn actress Crazy, prompting the movie title, "Janique is Fucking Crazy."
He was amused.
Then he did a quick examination of the popular culture available to him on Earth, changing song lyrics and movie dialogue to suit his aims.
Pex planned on writing a single game that dwarfed Prail's entire portfolio, with the fate of the entire Earth at stake. He was ready to teach her true game design. All he had to do was stay one step ahead of, and behind, her and Janique.
One of the many advantages he had was that he knew what Ultimate Hustle really was, and it was a crucial bit of information Prail wouldn't share with the ego-maniacal Janique. She had sent him to Earth with it encoded in his being.
He was to infiltrate, assimilate and overthrow the entire planet, gaining mastery of it. And he had. But he was so good at it, Prail hadn't noticed. Which left him stuck in the game.
To Pex, secrecy was paramount to ruling. Plus, he found it entirely unfashionable to go around flaunting your power like that. Tacky. He was too subtle for her. Brilliant. That gave him plenty of time to play, and it would be that much more fun when she did figure it out.
He had one little change that he wanted to make to her sim immediately. He did a global search, and in the disease section, deleted 'Cancer' and all related subfolders. It was miserable enough down there without incurable plagues.
That was enough, for now. He erased his tracks and went to ponder the intractable problem of dealing with his sister.
[image error]
Hope
I want to be your strength again
Your pillow
Your light in the gloom
And have some poems stay private
Not public broadcasts
But simple words
From a boy to a girl
To remind her
He loves her more than all the world[image error]
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Four
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Four - Like a Boss
Prail reappeared behind the counter of the McDonald's seconds before Pex walked up to the counter. She didn't have his ability to be in two places at once. She didn't know how he did it, and she wasn't going to ask him.
"Hi, welcome to McDonald's. I'm Pr-"
She glanced at her nametag.
"I'm Millicent. May I take your order?"
"Yeah, 'Millicent'. Give me a double fish burger with a half-slice of cheese and extra tartar."
She scowled. His special order upset her.
"Will that complete your order?" she asked, gritting her teeth.
Between Pex and Janique, she was really on edge.
"That's it," he said, smiling.
Prail sent the order to the kitchen.
"So, Millicent. We should have coffee together some time. Discuss philosophy."
"Why would I want to do that?"
He shrugged.
"You might learn something."
"No," she said flatly.
But her insides were atingle. Her marriage to Sherman had awakened a new part of her. And that part, at least, was highly interested in having coffee with Pex. Breakfast coffee.
He stood smiling at her, and she felt awkward. Eventually, she dropped her eyes and reorganized the ketchup packets. Catsup, the labels said.
"Order up," the cook said.
She grabbed it, and Pex said that he didn't need a bag. She handed him his fish sandwich, which he immediately unwrapped and began eating.
"One pound twenty five," she said.
"I didn't ask to buy one," he said. "I said give me one. I don't have any money."
Her face flushed bright red.
"Get...out," she said, baring her teeth.
He was so infuriating!
"What seems to be the problem?" the manager asked, walking up.
"I'd like an application," Pex said. "No problem."
He smiled at Prail.
"Certainly, sir. Step into my office."
When they emerged thirty minutes later, Pex was wearing a uniform and name tag.
"Millicent," the manager said, "this is Charles Emerson Winchester, your new assistant manager. He attended Eaton. Old school chum."
"But-" Prail said.
"Train him," the manager said. "I'm off to the pub."
When he had walked out the door, Pex said, "Another sandwich, Milli. Make it a meal. I'll be in my office. Coke."
She fumed, feeling defeated, and relayed the order to the cook. When she brought it to him, he was dozing, feet on the desk.
"Here," she said, dropping the tray.
"Thanks, love," he said, and started shoving fries into his mouth.
"Pex..." she said.
"Pex? It's Mr. Winchester."
Prail turned and walked out on him. At the end of her shift, he was in the same place, sleeping.
"Go home," she said.
When he opened her eyes, she was gone.
###
Prail and Janique continued their discussion. To Prail, God wasn't a person, but a security level. She had godded Janique when she rescued them. She godded Chris, too, but he never used his abilities. He wanted to be back on Earth. Mortal. Janique still had a lot of difficulty with the concepts.
"What's God's security level?"
"Demigod."
"That makes no sense."
"It is what it is," Prail said, a phrase that never failed to piss Janique off.
"So you're saying I have above god status?"
"No," Prail said patiently. "You have god status."
"Why doesn't God?"
"He doesn't want it. Or need it. He's a deist."
"But you made the sim. What's your clearance?"
"Supergod."
"Supergod? Really?"
"I was in a hurry. Maybe I didn't think the security levels through enough at the time. Too late now, I'm not changing it. It-" she started to say, and then caught herself.
"But I know God. He's very powerful. Are you sure he only has demigod-level access?"
"Of course I'm sure. His power is derived from belief and faith. The more people that believe in you, the more powerful you become."
"If that were true, Santa Claus and Ronald McDonald would run a close second," Janique said.
Prail raised her eyebrows.
"Give me a fucking break!" Janique said.
"Who do children believe in even more than God, Janique?"
"Then why haven't I seen them?"
"You stopped believing. Most people do."
"And you?"
"You're all equally real to me," Prail said. "Entries in a database."
Janique was hurt.
"I have to go," she said, and winked out of Prail's universe.
###
Janique knocked on the door of God's modest home. A bearded man in off-white robes answered.
"Janique! Good to see you! Is it today already?"
"We have to talk," she said.
"Come in-"
She pushed her way past him before he could finish inviting her in, and let her eyes adjust to his decor. Everything was a flatly-lit, flatly-shaded, eggskin white. It was unlike any other place in the 'verse. There were no fixtures, furnishings, lights, or any other conceits. A few chair-like shapes protruded from the floors and walls in the same non-color. In the back, she knew, was his single bed, which was without bed covers or pillows. There was no bathroom, kitchen or closets.
"I wasn't sure you existed," he said, closing the door.
He said the same thing every time.
"Ditto, babe," she said. Then, "Motherfucker, you lied to me."
"Did I? I can't remember. Sorry, what did I say?"
She thought about it.
"Nothing," she said, which was sort of a lie itself. "But your books..."
"Which ones?"
This is why she didn't like to talk to him.
"The first sixty-six."
"Do you see a desk? Pen? Paper?"
"You know what I'm talking about."
"Do I?"
He was beginning to feel like a bot to Janique. A program designed to hold frustrating conversations.
"The Bible," she said.
"What's that?"
"Your word."
"My word? I didn't know I had one."
She signed.
"You told everyone on Earth that you were the one true God."
"Oh, that. Well, I am."
He produced his driver's license. "God", it read.
"Show me a miracle," she said.
"You're here. It's a miracle."
She frowned.
"Do you know how unlikely that is? How improbable?" he asked her.
"That's a cop out."
"No," he said. "To me, it's a miracle. You're the greatest thing of all time. It took a whole universe worth of work to bring you about."
"When did you do it?"
"I don't remember. Before."
"Before when?" she asked.
"Before now, I think. I thought about you, and here you are. That implies the past."
"What about your son?"
"My son? Which one?"
"Your first one. How could you do that to him?"
"Adam? I gave him paradise. But I don't see that as a bad thing."
"No. Jesus."
"Janique," God said, "they're all my sons. I gave them ability. They can take care of themselves. It's my daughters I'm concerned with."
"Why?"
"They're sexy. As I remember them. You're proof of that. And delicate, too. Fragile."
"We're just as capable as your sons," she said. "Men, I mean."
"Oh, more so. By design. Men are tools in your hands. As I recall. You know, you're the only one who sees me, now. Or you're all I see. Same thing."
"You made promises."
"Did I? I don't think so. I gave you the moon and the stars. But it was payment. A business arrangement. In exchange, you find new ways to make me feel. What need do I have for the moon and stars?"
"They're beautiful to look at."
"You're more beautiful. I made a choice. Everything, or you."
"I'm not yours. I belong to myself, now."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because I love you."
He smiled.
"And I love you."
She looked at him and saw her father. Chris. Santa Claus. Jesus. Don Henley. Spiderman. Then she saw him again as he wanted to be seen. A harmless old man. Mostly harmless. And dirty.
"Then what's the problem?"
"I'm more powerful than you, now. That shouldn't be possible. What does that make me?"
"Supersexy."
She frowned.
"Leave sex out of this."
"What else is there? Sex and love. Each an expression of the other. And I gave you a lot more that you're forgetting."
"Like what?"
"Sunsets. Rainbows. The ocean. Poetry. For example."
"I made new life. New worlds," she said.
"Alone?"
Janique remained silent.
"You're welcome," he said. "I gave you Chris. And you leave him alone, tortured. Don't mistreat him. He doesn't enjoy it like I do."
A single tear escaped his eye, and she was gone.
"Was someone here?" he asked the empty room.
###
Pex arrived back at the shelter in his new work clothes with a full stomach. He tuned his broadcast frequency in his head and checked the data. Perfect. He smiled. This was going to drive Prail nuts.
An inebriated Willie saw him and decided that he wanted to hear more of the weirdo's fantastic tale.
"What else?" he asked Pex.
"All of time is encompassed in the now," Pex began. "From the start of creation to the end, sunrise to sunset. How you live that day, each day, shapes your universe and your tomorrow. If you pay attention, you can see the past and future."
"Where do we go when we die?" Prince William asked.
"When we sleep?"
"Rot. In the grave."
"Oh. Back into storage."
"Wot?"
"Usually. If you're important. Memorable."
"Rich?"
"Yes, but not money rich. Rich in spirit and character. See, there are lots of Willies."
William laughed.
"Willies," he said.
"Sometimes you go to what you would call Heaven. But few people gain that level of reward. Heaven's nasty. It's limbo for most of you. Cold storage. And that's only if you're a singularity, or all of the yous die, somehow. That rarely happens. Ordinarily, a few yous get off planet in time, somehow."
"What about Hell?"
Pex looked at him, surprised.
"You should know, William. This is Hell."
The prince wasn't at all shocked to hear this. He had always felt so.
"Hell is boring," Pex continued. Heavily taxed. People work all the time. It's just Heaven with a bunch of rules, basically. Populated with assholes and morons. Paradise lost."
A deep sorrow infected William.
"I think I'll go kill myself," he said, walking away.
"It won't help!" Pex called after him.
He went to sleep and did some tweaking of the timelines in anticipation of Janique's next move, which she clearly broadcast in advance to Prail, not understanding the connection they shared. When he awoke, he wore the work clothes he slept in to his new job as Prail's boss.
"Hello, Mr. Winchester," she said.
"Winchester? It's Wolverine," he said, pointing at his nametag.
She didn't bother arguing.
"Go ahead and take a break," he said. "I'll run the register."
"Can you?"
"Um, it's base ten, right?"
"Yes."
"Don't worry, then."
But she did. She always did. Prail decided to hang back and observe.
"Hi, welcome to Hell," Pex told the first customers, a pair of elderly Brits. "Would you like to try our fish sandwiches?"
"No," the man said. "I want a Big Mac meal, and my wife would like a salad with tea."
"Okay, so that's two fish sandwiches, then. Anything else?"
Undeterred, the gentleman repeated his order.
"Two fish sandwiches," Pex called to the kitchen. "Doubles. Extra cheese."
Prail was forced to step in.
"I'm sorry, sir. National policy dictates that we employ a certain number of handicapped. The infirmed, lunatics and such. Please have a seat and I'll bring your meals to your table. On the house."
The gentleman said nothing, but turned and escorted his wife to a corner table.
Prail got the order to the kitchen and then turned to Pex.
"You're fired," she said.
"You can't fire me, because I quit."
"Good. Now leave."
"Can I have some cigarette money?"
She sighed and took a fiver from the till.
"Thank you, Praline," he said.
She looked at her name tag, and it had changed. Pex walked out the door, leaving her to manage the store and run the register. Good riddance to bad rubbish, she thought.
Fucking British, Janique said in her head.
[image error]
Prail reappeared behind the counter of the McDonald's seconds before Pex walked up to the counter. She didn't have his ability to be in two places at once. She didn't know how he did it, and she wasn't going to ask him.
"Hi, welcome to McDonald's. I'm Pr-"
She glanced at her nametag.
"I'm Millicent. May I take your order?"
"Yeah, 'Millicent'. Give me a double fish burger with a half-slice of cheese and extra tartar."
She scowled. His special order upset her.
"Will that complete your order?" she asked, gritting her teeth.
Between Pex and Janique, she was really on edge.
"That's it," he said, smiling.
Prail sent the order to the kitchen.
"So, Millicent. We should have coffee together some time. Discuss philosophy."
"Why would I want to do that?"
He shrugged.
"You might learn something."
"No," she said flatly.
But her insides were atingle. Her marriage to Sherman had awakened a new part of her. And that part, at least, was highly interested in having coffee with Pex. Breakfast coffee.
He stood smiling at her, and she felt awkward. Eventually, she dropped her eyes and reorganized the ketchup packets. Catsup, the labels said.
"Order up," the cook said.
She grabbed it, and Pex said that he didn't need a bag. She handed him his fish sandwich, which he immediately unwrapped and began eating.
"One pound twenty five," she said.
"I didn't ask to buy one," he said. "I said give me one. I don't have any money."
Her face flushed bright red.
"Get...out," she said, baring her teeth.
He was so infuriating!
"What seems to be the problem?" the manager asked, walking up.
"I'd like an application," Pex said. "No problem."
He smiled at Prail.
"Certainly, sir. Step into my office."
When they emerged thirty minutes later, Pex was wearing a uniform and name tag.
"Millicent," the manager said, "this is Charles Emerson Winchester, your new assistant manager. He attended Eaton. Old school chum."
"But-" Prail said.
"Train him," the manager said. "I'm off to the pub."
When he had walked out the door, Pex said, "Another sandwich, Milli. Make it a meal. I'll be in my office. Coke."
She fumed, feeling defeated, and relayed the order to the cook. When she brought it to him, he was dozing, feet on the desk.
"Here," she said, dropping the tray.
"Thanks, love," he said, and started shoving fries into his mouth.
"Pex..." she said.
"Pex? It's Mr. Winchester."
Prail turned and walked out on him. At the end of her shift, he was in the same place, sleeping.
"Go home," she said.
When he opened her eyes, she was gone.
###
Prail and Janique continued their discussion. To Prail, God wasn't a person, but a security level. She had godded Janique when she rescued them. She godded Chris, too, but he never used his abilities. He wanted to be back on Earth. Mortal. Janique still had a lot of difficulty with the concepts.
"What's God's security level?"
"Demigod."
"That makes no sense."
"It is what it is," Prail said, a phrase that never failed to piss Janique off.
"So you're saying I have above god status?"
"No," Prail said patiently. "You have god status."
"Why doesn't God?"
"He doesn't want it. Or need it. He's a deist."
"But you made the sim. What's your clearance?"
"Supergod."
"Supergod? Really?"
"I was in a hurry. Maybe I didn't think the security levels through enough at the time. Too late now, I'm not changing it. It-" she started to say, and then caught herself.
"But I know God. He's very powerful. Are you sure he only has demigod-level access?"
"Of course I'm sure. His power is derived from belief and faith. The more people that believe in you, the more powerful you become."
"If that were true, Santa Claus and Ronald McDonald would run a close second," Janique said.
Prail raised her eyebrows.
"Give me a fucking break!" Janique said.
"Who do children believe in even more than God, Janique?"
"Then why haven't I seen them?"
"You stopped believing. Most people do."
"And you?"
"You're all equally real to me," Prail said. "Entries in a database."
Janique was hurt.
"I have to go," she said, and winked out of Prail's universe.
###
Janique knocked on the door of God's modest home. A bearded man in off-white robes answered.
"Janique! Good to see you! Is it today already?"
"We have to talk," she said.
"Come in-"
She pushed her way past him before he could finish inviting her in, and let her eyes adjust to his decor. Everything was a flatly-lit, flatly-shaded, eggskin white. It was unlike any other place in the 'verse. There were no fixtures, furnishings, lights, or any other conceits. A few chair-like shapes protruded from the floors and walls in the same non-color. In the back, she knew, was his single bed, which was without bed covers or pillows. There was no bathroom, kitchen or closets.
"I wasn't sure you existed," he said, closing the door.
He said the same thing every time.
"Ditto, babe," she said. Then, "Motherfucker, you lied to me."
"Did I? I can't remember. Sorry, what did I say?"
She thought about it.
"Nothing," she said, which was sort of a lie itself. "But your books..."
"Which ones?"
This is why she didn't like to talk to him.
"The first sixty-six."
"Do you see a desk? Pen? Paper?"
"You know what I'm talking about."
"Do I?"
He was beginning to feel like a bot to Janique. A program designed to hold frustrating conversations.
"The Bible," she said.
"What's that?"
"Your word."
"My word? I didn't know I had one."
She signed.
"You told everyone on Earth that you were the one true God."
"Oh, that. Well, I am."
He produced his driver's license. "God", it read.
"Show me a miracle," she said.
"You're here. It's a miracle."
She frowned.
"Do you know how unlikely that is? How improbable?" he asked her.
"That's a cop out."
"No," he said. "To me, it's a miracle. You're the greatest thing of all time. It took a whole universe worth of work to bring you about."
"When did you do it?"
"I don't remember. Before."
"Before when?" she asked.
"Before now, I think. I thought about you, and here you are. That implies the past."
"What about your son?"
"My son? Which one?"
"Your first one. How could you do that to him?"
"Adam? I gave him paradise. But I don't see that as a bad thing."
"No. Jesus."
"Janique," God said, "they're all my sons. I gave them ability. They can take care of themselves. It's my daughters I'm concerned with."
"Why?"
"They're sexy. As I remember them. You're proof of that. And delicate, too. Fragile."
"We're just as capable as your sons," she said. "Men, I mean."
"Oh, more so. By design. Men are tools in your hands. As I recall. You know, you're the only one who sees me, now. Or you're all I see. Same thing."
"You made promises."
"Did I? I don't think so. I gave you the moon and the stars. But it was payment. A business arrangement. In exchange, you find new ways to make me feel. What need do I have for the moon and stars?"
"They're beautiful to look at."
"You're more beautiful. I made a choice. Everything, or you."
"I'm not yours. I belong to myself, now."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because I love you."
He smiled.
"And I love you."
She looked at him and saw her father. Chris. Santa Claus. Jesus. Don Henley. Spiderman. Then she saw him again as he wanted to be seen. A harmless old man. Mostly harmless. And dirty.
"Then what's the problem?"
"I'm more powerful than you, now. That shouldn't be possible. What does that make me?"
"Supersexy."
She frowned.
"Leave sex out of this."
"What else is there? Sex and love. Each an expression of the other. And I gave you a lot more that you're forgetting."
"Like what?"
"Sunsets. Rainbows. The ocean. Poetry. For example."
"I made new life. New worlds," she said.
"Alone?"
Janique remained silent.
"You're welcome," he said. "I gave you Chris. And you leave him alone, tortured. Don't mistreat him. He doesn't enjoy it like I do."
A single tear escaped his eye, and she was gone.
"Was someone here?" he asked the empty room.
###
Pex arrived back at the shelter in his new work clothes with a full stomach. He tuned his broadcast frequency in his head and checked the data. Perfect. He smiled. This was going to drive Prail nuts.
An inebriated Willie saw him and decided that he wanted to hear more of the weirdo's fantastic tale.
"What else?" he asked Pex.
"All of time is encompassed in the now," Pex began. "From the start of creation to the end, sunrise to sunset. How you live that day, each day, shapes your universe and your tomorrow. If you pay attention, you can see the past and future."
"Where do we go when we die?" Prince William asked.
"When we sleep?"
"Rot. In the grave."
"Oh. Back into storage."
"Wot?"
"Usually. If you're important. Memorable."
"Rich?"
"Yes, but not money rich. Rich in spirit and character. See, there are lots of Willies."
William laughed.
"Willies," he said.
"Sometimes you go to what you would call Heaven. But few people gain that level of reward. Heaven's nasty. It's limbo for most of you. Cold storage. And that's only if you're a singularity, or all of the yous die, somehow. That rarely happens. Ordinarily, a few yous get off planet in time, somehow."
"What about Hell?"
Pex looked at him, surprised.
"You should know, William. This is Hell."
The prince wasn't at all shocked to hear this. He had always felt so.
"Hell is boring," Pex continued. Heavily taxed. People work all the time. It's just Heaven with a bunch of rules, basically. Populated with assholes and morons. Paradise lost."
A deep sorrow infected William.
"I think I'll go kill myself," he said, walking away.
"It won't help!" Pex called after him.
He went to sleep and did some tweaking of the timelines in anticipation of Janique's next move, which she clearly broadcast in advance to Prail, not understanding the connection they shared. When he awoke, he wore the work clothes he slept in to his new job as Prail's boss.
"Hello, Mr. Winchester," she said.
"Winchester? It's Wolverine," he said, pointing at his nametag.
She didn't bother arguing.
"Go ahead and take a break," he said. "I'll run the register."
"Can you?"
"Um, it's base ten, right?"
"Yes."
"Don't worry, then."
But she did. She always did. Prail decided to hang back and observe.
"Hi, welcome to Hell," Pex told the first customers, a pair of elderly Brits. "Would you like to try our fish sandwiches?"
"No," the man said. "I want a Big Mac meal, and my wife would like a salad with tea."
"Okay, so that's two fish sandwiches, then. Anything else?"
Undeterred, the gentleman repeated his order.
"Two fish sandwiches," Pex called to the kitchen. "Doubles. Extra cheese."
Prail was forced to step in.
"I'm sorry, sir. National policy dictates that we employ a certain number of handicapped. The infirmed, lunatics and such. Please have a seat and I'll bring your meals to your table. On the house."
The gentleman said nothing, but turned and escorted his wife to a corner table.
Prail got the order to the kitchen and then turned to Pex.
"You're fired," she said.
"You can't fire me, because I quit."
"Good. Now leave."
"Can I have some cigarette money?"
She sighed and took a fiver from the till.
"Thank you, Praline," he said.
She looked at her name tag, and it had changed. Pex walked out the door, leaving her to manage the store and run the register. Good riddance to bad rubbish, she thought.
Fucking British, Janique said in her head.
[image error]
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Three
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Three - Troubling Paradise
Pex drew odd stares from the device he wore, but few questions. He had acquired enough of the homeless look and demeanor that he was rarely bothered, as long as he didn't linger in places of business for too long. He began to compile a list of places to visit and collect data from.
Prince William, sound in neither mind nor body, came back to the shelter drunk, as was his routine, sucking on a complimentary starburst mint he'd grabbed from a restaurant. You weren't supposed to come back home with liquor on your breath.
He eyed the so-called radio again, and Pex couldn't resist messing with his head.
"I'm an alien," he told Willie, who said nothing in response.
Pex tried again.
"I'm so far advanced, you may as well consider me a god."
He thought about it.
"If not the God."
Prince William continued to stare, but wasn't biting.
"If thinking of you that way bothers you, consider me the only human, and yourselves animals in human disguises. Well," he said. "One of two humans."
He was thinking of Prail , his feminine equal.
"In fact," Pex said, "I never told any one this, but you're inside of a great organic computer. The trees do most of the processing, the dirt does storage. That makes you a rechargeable battery."
Willie belched.
"And who writes most of the scripts?" Pex asked.
"The ants?"
"Yes! Very good. How did you know?"
Willie shrugged.
"So you're some sort of animal in human guise. The secret is finding out which animal you are."
"I'm a fish," Willie said. "At least I drink like one."
Pex had to laugh.
"A fish, sure! But you don't travel in a school."
"No," William said. "I dropped out."
"Do you know what a random number generator is, Will?"
"Nar."
"It generates random numbers. Very hard to do."
"Ninety-six," Prince Willie said. "Fourteen thousand, seven hundred and eleven. One."
"Great," Pex said. "Now do that one hundred and sixty times per millisecond, forever. It's nearly exhausting."
"I'd rather not."
"Because it takes a lot of non-thought to make truly random numbers. Patterns develop, ordinarily. Blind spots and such."
"So you're a pinball," Willie said.
"Yes! Deaf, dumb and blind."
"A wizard," William said with a degree of awe in his voice.
"Technomage," Pex said, shrugging his shoulders. "Effectively the same thing."
"How does this affect me, a bloomin' alcoholic?"
"I'm self-appointed leader of the revolution."
"Oh? Against what?"
"My sister," Pex said.
###
Prail was beginning to think Pexxy the Midnight Runner was more trouble than he was worth. He was already making her work harder than she cared to, and that took a lot of doing. The trouble was, he fell to Earth with all of her knowledge, and then some. Although he was her junior, he was somehow also older than she was. Much older.
He played by the rules, but kept changing them, forcing her to continually leapfrog ahead in an effort to keep up. Each time she did, he pulled some stunt in the gap, leaving tiny holes in her knowledge base. Prail leaned quickly that when he hipped her to some new aspect, he was already on to something else.
It was deceptive, and frustrating. Plus, he had mastered things to the degree that he could be in one place physically, and another mentally. She could only track him physically. She was unsure as to how he could selectively block his thoughts from her.
She decided to bell the cat, so to speak. Luckily for her, he was easily influenced. Or so it seemed. She put the idea in his head that he should build something to physically map the world in 3D for her, and he went for it.
Prail quickly regretted doing so.
She received the initial burst of data from the 1975 Radio Shack and was shocked. Janique? He wasn't supposed to know about her yet. Plus, he was sent to '70, but jumped ahead five years overnight. He played the game for keeps.
Of course she knew to timecode the data as it came in, since he failed to include it in the stream. But she played dumb as well, and let him think he was helping her. When the data began streaming from 1995 tagged as 'Janique1', she simply made a duplicate entry in the database. But then she began receiving data from Janique2, and Janique3. A few days later, she risked buffer overflow.
The little bastard had embedded his microchipped version of the transmitter in an ASIC that soon would be in hundreds of millions of devices, burying her in information. Suddenly, she had to scramble to keep up.
Prail never had to deal with so much information in parallel before. Meanwhile, he was bumming around London, smoking cigarettes and putting tech ideas in the heads of programmers and engineers in the past and future so he'd have video games to play.
It was a little insulting. Prail had placed him in the big game, and he refused to play it, instead getting on some retro kick. Eight bits was her thing, not his. She knew he was in trouble when the first game he inspired was Space Wars. In response, she made Pac-Man, which was designed to bring women into the gaming world.
It was sort of sweet when he immediately made Ms. Pac-Man in response. It had little interludes that she found touchingly romantic. Act One was "They Meet", and Act Two was "The Chase". He was toying with her, subtly playing her emotions like Paganini possessed. She had to admit it was thrilling.
But how would she tell Sherman?
Prail decided to limit her involvement with him to the pre-marriage timelines. That was honest, following the letter of the unwritten laws, if not the actual spirit. Her involvement with the Earthlings was rubbing off on her, she thought. The idea that they were technically siblings nearly troubled her at times. Was she somehow gaining humanity? She shuddered. What next? Mortality?
Maybe she'd talk to Janique. After all, she was human once, and didn't seem to have absorbed many of their taboos. On the contrary, she seemed to delight in not only breaking them, but rubbing other people's noses in it. Prail knew she was overlooking something. Fuck! Of course. If Pex already knew about Janique...
"Come in, JT," she thought.
Before she had blinked, Janique was there.
"He knows," Prail said.
"Knows what?"
"Everything."
Janique rolled her eyes.
"Everything that matters," Prail qualified.
"So how does that affect us?"
"I'm not really sure."
"You call me halfway across the galaxy to pitch me a fear you're not sure about?"
"Sorry. It's hard to tell you."
"Just tell me," Janique said.
"I'll show you."
Prail took Janique's hand. Not because she needed to, but because she wanted the reassurance that only her touch could provide. They closed their eyes, and Janique received a vision of a scruffy, long-haired construction worker who looked a fair amount like her Chris.
Since Prail had rescued them, she had to think of him as her Chris. She knew there were lots of Chrises out there. Possibly lots of her Chrises.
He was on the phone.
"Pasadena, Texas. Your planet," Prail said.
She specified which Earth for the same reason Janique used "her Chris". She showed her the other end of the phone line. It was a slender, beautiful redhead. At first, she thought it was herself, and she felt uneasy.
"I want you to write one for me," the girl was saying.
"Okay, angel. I love you. Give me a little while and call me back."
More "I love yous" were exchanged, and both hung up. They guy went to work straight away, scribbling in a checkerboard composition book.
Prail paused.
"Okay? So?" Janique said.
"I don't think you're ready."
"Oh, bullshit. Do you know who I am and what I've been through already? I'm always ready. I'm ever-ready., the copper-top battery."
Prail smiled and shrugged.
"If you say so..."
She resumed the shared remote viewing, skipping ahead a bit.
"We need our own song," the girl was saying.
"I think I know what it is," the guy said. "But let me put it in the story."
"I think I know what it is, too," the girl said.
"Okay. I just love you. Call me back in a few minutes and I'll read it to you, sexiest."
"I will. I love you! Bye..."
Both hung up smiling, obviously crazy in love with each other. Janique was thinking about Chris when Prail skipped forward again.
"-a couple whose theme song was 'Life in the Fast Lane'..." the guy was saying.
Prail paused again and ended the remote viewing session.
"So they made a movie of our lives," Janique said, not understanding. "In an infinity minus one of universes, it was bound to happen. I mean, we were rich celebrities. If they made movies about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, they damn sure had better have made at least one about us. Chris is better looking," she sniffed.
"Janique," Prail began. "He's your creator. She's his muse."
"What? God? You're forgetting I know God, Prail. He's a client of mine. And he doesn't look like that."
"He's your maker, Janique. He's writing the books you came out of. She is a prototype you. He's the original Chris."
Janique turned white, shuddering. She didn't want to believe it, but all the same, she knew it was true. Prail was even more honest than she herself was.
"Then he is God," Janique finally said quietly. After a period of relection and contemplation, she said, "Who godded him?"
"I'll give you one guess..."
"Bastard," Janique said under her breath. "Why would he do a thing like that?"
"I'll never understand Pex fully, but I'd say he did it so you could be created."
Prail never considered the question of her own origin.
"It's not that big of a deal, Janique. Everyone has to come from somewhere."
"He's not my creator," Janique said, still in denial. "My father was Winston Albert Patton, born in Davenport-"
"Backstory," Prail said. "Sorry. Yes, your father was real, but he's also an invention."
"What's his name?"
"Jason Christie,"
"The robot poetry guy?"
"No, he's an American. Middle initial 'Z'."
"And her?"
Prail hesitated.
"Johnnie. Y."
"J-O-H-N-N-Y?"
"I E," Prail said.
"I.E. what?"
"What?"
"I.E. - In other words."
"What?" Prail said again.
"Say what again."
"What?"
Janique slapped the shit out of Prail, who turned the other cheek.
"Yum," Prail said.
"We're not playing fucking Words With Friends here, Prail. I.E. what?"
"Oh," Prail laughed. "J-O-H-N-N-I-E."
"Then what was the 'Y' for?"
"What?" Prail smirked.
"Why what?"
"Y for Yvette."
Janique felt slightly ashamed and foolish. At the same time, she felt a coldness and a desperation she had never felt before, not even toward Hazel, whom she had come to regret having killed, even inadvertently.
"Why?" Prail asked.
"I want them both dead," Janique said.
"What?"
"You heard me, bitch."
Prail grew concerned. This wasn't the Janique she knew. Or thought she knew.
"You can't kill them. They made you. The paradox..."
"There's no paradox. Don't treat me like some fucking third year PhD candidate. I'm here. I exist. I'm real. Killing them can't undo that."
Prail was effectively cornered.
"But why?"
"Because no one is going to control me. Us," she amended. "We control our destiny, not some fucking white trash Chris and Janique wannabes."
Prail looked at her questioningly.
"But if he stops writing... Or doesn't write you into existence..."
"I still exist. I think. Therefore, I am."
"What about your future?" Prail asked.
"I control my future. Not him. Not her."
"Yes," Prail admitted.
"So no two-bit writer-"
"Seventeen-bit."
"Whatever. No fucking Stephen King, Tom Robbins imitator is going to meddle with my fate."
"He can't be killed, J. I told you. Pex godded him. And he protects her. Or she protects him. They combined their powers. You don't want to mess with a godded couple. That'd be like...trying to come between you and Chris. I don't have to point out how suicidal that would be. I mean, I don't care, but..."
Prail had a very cavalier attitude toward killing. It was a fundamental aspect of gaming. But that applied to the sim. Janique was talking about going after what Prail considered real-worlders.
"How many of them are there?" Janique asked.
"That's another thing. They're singularities. One each. It can't be done."
"I can do anything I want," Janique said, puffing on a Marlboro.
"You can't stop smoking, or leave Chris."
Janique looked crossly at her.
"Dare me," she said.
"What's gotten into you, lately?" Prail asked.
[image error]
Pex drew odd stares from the device he wore, but few questions. He had acquired enough of the homeless look and demeanor that he was rarely bothered, as long as he didn't linger in places of business for too long. He began to compile a list of places to visit and collect data from.
Prince William, sound in neither mind nor body, came back to the shelter drunk, as was his routine, sucking on a complimentary starburst mint he'd grabbed from a restaurant. You weren't supposed to come back home with liquor on your breath.
He eyed the so-called radio again, and Pex couldn't resist messing with his head.
"I'm an alien," he told Willie, who said nothing in response.
Pex tried again.
"I'm so far advanced, you may as well consider me a god."
He thought about it.
"If not the God."
Prince William continued to stare, but wasn't biting.
"If thinking of you that way bothers you, consider me the only human, and yourselves animals in human disguises. Well," he said. "One of two humans."
He was thinking of Prail , his feminine equal.
"In fact," Pex said, "I never told any one this, but you're inside of a great organic computer. The trees do most of the processing, the dirt does storage. That makes you a rechargeable battery."
Willie belched.
"And who writes most of the scripts?" Pex asked.
"The ants?"
"Yes! Very good. How did you know?"
Willie shrugged.
"So you're some sort of animal in human guise. The secret is finding out which animal you are."
"I'm a fish," Willie said. "At least I drink like one."
Pex had to laugh.
"A fish, sure! But you don't travel in a school."
"No," William said. "I dropped out."
"Do you know what a random number generator is, Will?"
"Nar."
"It generates random numbers. Very hard to do."
"Ninety-six," Prince Willie said. "Fourteen thousand, seven hundred and eleven. One."
"Great," Pex said. "Now do that one hundred and sixty times per millisecond, forever. It's nearly exhausting."
"I'd rather not."
"Because it takes a lot of non-thought to make truly random numbers. Patterns develop, ordinarily. Blind spots and such."
"So you're a pinball," Willie said.
"Yes! Deaf, dumb and blind."
"A wizard," William said with a degree of awe in his voice.
"Technomage," Pex said, shrugging his shoulders. "Effectively the same thing."
"How does this affect me, a bloomin' alcoholic?"
"I'm self-appointed leader of the revolution."
"Oh? Against what?"
"My sister," Pex said.
###
Prail was beginning to think Pexxy the Midnight Runner was more trouble than he was worth. He was already making her work harder than she cared to, and that took a lot of doing. The trouble was, he fell to Earth with all of her knowledge, and then some. Although he was her junior, he was somehow also older than she was. Much older.
He played by the rules, but kept changing them, forcing her to continually leapfrog ahead in an effort to keep up. Each time she did, he pulled some stunt in the gap, leaving tiny holes in her knowledge base. Prail leaned quickly that when he hipped her to some new aspect, he was already on to something else.
It was deceptive, and frustrating. Plus, he had mastered things to the degree that he could be in one place physically, and another mentally. She could only track him physically. She was unsure as to how he could selectively block his thoughts from her.
She decided to bell the cat, so to speak. Luckily for her, he was easily influenced. Or so it seemed. She put the idea in his head that he should build something to physically map the world in 3D for her, and he went for it.
Prail quickly regretted doing so.
She received the initial burst of data from the 1975 Radio Shack and was shocked. Janique? He wasn't supposed to know about her yet. Plus, he was sent to '70, but jumped ahead five years overnight. He played the game for keeps.
Of course she knew to timecode the data as it came in, since he failed to include it in the stream. But she played dumb as well, and let him think he was helping her. When the data began streaming from 1995 tagged as 'Janique1', she simply made a duplicate entry in the database. But then she began receiving data from Janique2, and Janique3. A few days later, she risked buffer overflow.
The little bastard had embedded his microchipped version of the transmitter in an ASIC that soon would be in hundreds of millions of devices, burying her in information. Suddenly, she had to scramble to keep up.
Prail never had to deal with so much information in parallel before. Meanwhile, he was bumming around London, smoking cigarettes and putting tech ideas in the heads of programmers and engineers in the past and future so he'd have video games to play.
It was a little insulting. Prail had placed him in the big game, and he refused to play it, instead getting on some retro kick. Eight bits was her thing, not his. She knew he was in trouble when the first game he inspired was Space Wars. In response, she made Pac-Man, which was designed to bring women into the gaming world.
It was sort of sweet when he immediately made Ms. Pac-Man in response. It had little interludes that she found touchingly romantic. Act One was "They Meet", and Act Two was "The Chase". He was toying with her, subtly playing her emotions like Paganini possessed. She had to admit it was thrilling.
But how would she tell Sherman?
Prail decided to limit her involvement with him to the pre-marriage timelines. That was honest, following the letter of the unwritten laws, if not the actual spirit. Her involvement with the Earthlings was rubbing off on her, she thought. The idea that they were technically siblings nearly troubled her at times. Was she somehow gaining humanity? She shuddered. What next? Mortality?
Maybe she'd talk to Janique. After all, she was human once, and didn't seem to have absorbed many of their taboos. On the contrary, she seemed to delight in not only breaking them, but rubbing other people's noses in it. Prail knew she was overlooking something. Fuck! Of course. If Pex already knew about Janique...
"Come in, JT," she thought.
Before she had blinked, Janique was there.
"He knows," Prail said.
"Knows what?"
"Everything."
Janique rolled her eyes.
"Everything that matters," Prail qualified.
"So how does that affect us?"
"I'm not really sure."
"You call me halfway across the galaxy to pitch me a fear you're not sure about?"
"Sorry. It's hard to tell you."
"Just tell me," Janique said.
"I'll show you."
Prail took Janique's hand. Not because she needed to, but because she wanted the reassurance that only her touch could provide. They closed their eyes, and Janique received a vision of a scruffy, long-haired construction worker who looked a fair amount like her Chris.
Since Prail had rescued them, she had to think of him as her Chris. She knew there were lots of Chrises out there. Possibly lots of her Chrises.
He was on the phone.
"Pasadena, Texas. Your planet," Prail said.
She specified which Earth for the same reason Janique used "her Chris". She showed her the other end of the phone line. It was a slender, beautiful redhead. At first, she thought it was herself, and she felt uneasy.
"I want you to write one for me," the girl was saying.
"Okay, angel. I love you. Give me a little while and call me back."
More "I love yous" were exchanged, and both hung up. They guy went to work straight away, scribbling in a checkerboard composition book.
Prail paused.
"Okay? So?" Janique said.
"I don't think you're ready."
"Oh, bullshit. Do you know who I am and what I've been through already? I'm always ready. I'm ever-ready., the copper-top battery."
Prail smiled and shrugged.
"If you say so..."
She resumed the shared remote viewing, skipping ahead a bit.
"We need our own song," the girl was saying.
"I think I know what it is," the guy said. "But let me put it in the story."
"I think I know what it is, too," the girl said.
"Okay. I just love you. Call me back in a few minutes and I'll read it to you, sexiest."
"I will. I love you! Bye..."
Both hung up smiling, obviously crazy in love with each other. Janique was thinking about Chris when Prail skipped forward again.
"-a couple whose theme song was 'Life in the Fast Lane'..." the guy was saying.
Prail paused again and ended the remote viewing session.
"So they made a movie of our lives," Janique said, not understanding. "In an infinity minus one of universes, it was bound to happen. I mean, we were rich celebrities. If they made movies about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, they damn sure had better have made at least one about us. Chris is better looking," she sniffed.
"Janique," Prail began. "He's your creator. She's his muse."
"What? God? You're forgetting I know God, Prail. He's a client of mine. And he doesn't look like that."
"He's your maker, Janique. He's writing the books you came out of. She is a prototype you. He's the original Chris."
Janique turned white, shuddering. She didn't want to believe it, but all the same, she knew it was true. Prail was even more honest than she herself was.
"Then he is God," Janique finally said quietly. After a period of relection and contemplation, she said, "Who godded him?"
"I'll give you one guess..."
"Bastard," Janique said under her breath. "Why would he do a thing like that?"
"I'll never understand Pex fully, but I'd say he did it so you could be created."
Prail never considered the question of her own origin.
"It's not that big of a deal, Janique. Everyone has to come from somewhere."
"He's not my creator," Janique said, still in denial. "My father was Winston Albert Patton, born in Davenport-"
"Backstory," Prail said. "Sorry. Yes, your father was real, but he's also an invention."
"What's his name?"
"Jason Christie,"
"The robot poetry guy?"
"No, he's an American. Middle initial 'Z'."
"And her?"
Prail hesitated.
"Johnnie. Y."
"J-O-H-N-N-Y?"
"I E," Prail said.
"I.E. what?"
"What?"
"I.E. - In other words."
"What?" Prail said again.
"Say what again."
"What?"
Janique slapped the shit out of Prail, who turned the other cheek.
"Yum," Prail said.
"We're not playing fucking Words With Friends here, Prail. I.E. what?"
"Oh," Prail laughed. "J-O-H-N-N-I-E."
"Then what was the 'Y' for?"
"What?" Prail smirked.
"Why what?"
"Y for Yvette."
Janique felt slightly ashamed and foolish. At the same time, she felt a coldness and a desperation she had never felt before, not even toward Hazel, whom she had come to regret having killed, even inadvertently.
"Why?" Prail asked.
"I want them both dead," Janique said.
"What?"
"You heard me, bitch."
Prail grew concerned. This wasn't the Janique she knew. Or thought she knew.
"You can't kill them. They made you. The paradox..."
"There's no paradox. Don't treat me like some fucking third year PhD candidate. I'm here. I exist. I'm real. Killing them can't undo that."
Prail was effectively cornered.
"But why?"
"Because no one is going to control me. Us," she amended. "We control our destiny, not some fucking white trash Chris and Janique wannabes."
Prail looked at her questioningly.
"But if he stops writing... Or doesn't write you into existence..."
"I still exist. I think. Therefore, I am."
"What about your future?" Prail asked.
"I control my future. Not him. Not her."
"Yes," Prail admitted.
"So no two-bit writer-"
"Seventeen-bit."
"Whatever. No fucking Stephen King, Tom Robbins imitator is going to meddle with my fate."
"He can't be killed, J. I told you. Pex godded him. And he protects her. Or she protects him. They combined their powers. You don't want to mess with a godded couple. That'd be like...trying to come between you and Chris. I don't have to point out how suicidal that would be. I mean, I don't care, but..."
Prail had a very cavalier attitude toward killing. It was a fundamental aspect of gaming. But that applied to the sim. Janique was talking about going after what Prail considered real-worlders.
"How many of them are there?" Janique asked.
"That's another thing. They're singularities. One each. It can't be done."
"I can do anything I want," Janique said, puffing on a Marlboro.
"You can't stop smoking, or leave Chris."
Janique looked crossly at her.
"Dare me," she said.
"What's gotten into you, lately?" Prail asked.
[image error]
Sleeping Beauty, Disturbed
Sugar-coated winter angel
Had too much to dream last night
Went to bed with a tummy ache
And slept a fitful sleep
Visions of ponies fleeing
And a circus erupting in flames
She escaped to outer space
Her prince considered waking her
Then elected to let her be
But in the morning
Hugs and breakfast
Kisses and smiles
We'll blame it on the ice cream[image error]
