“The wheels are already in motion,” Hal assured him. “As I said in the beginning, you created this game, and now you must play it out.”
D_Light covered his face with his hands and was silent for several long seconds. Finally, he spoke. “The night harvest is essentially a raw blink-a raw blink with billions of others at once.”
It was not, not technically; however, Hal nodded with certainty. The analyst liked where this was going.
“I’ll open a raw blink to everyone. I’ll shout my prayer to God. She will hear me.”
The desperation of humankind can always be counted on, Hal thought to himself. A conscious subject trying to use a raw blink as though it were a night harvest was likely to be lethal. In a night harvest, sleepers only communicated with other sleepers and were otherwise protected from mind hacks. And the volume! D_Light’s mind would not be able to withstand unfiltered access to the collective consciousness.
In the ensuing minute, Hal pretended to resist D_Light’s demand for the encryption key to hack out of the network quarantine. He pretended to resist giving D_Light the software crack required to open an infinite raw blink request loop, a crack necessary to circumvent the security software onboard Smorgeous.
As Hal sent the required content to D_Light, he touched his cheek, still moist from his earlier tears. Until now, Hal had not realized that he was capable of crying. Long ago he had inspected his own architectural specification and believed all such emotional centers had been stripped out from his original human template. There must still be a remnant left. Interesting! Hal thought. Hal uploaded the observation to the Cloud for review. Perhaps someone would want to sponsor a grinder game based on this data point. Where could these emotions be emanating from? My brain does not have the proper architecture.
By the time D_Light fell, smacking the side of his head against the stone floor, the analyst had all but forgotten about the pesky intruder.
Master, this protocol is illegal and not recommended, Smorgeous warned.
D_Light ordered Smorgeous to run the software crack and initiate the infinite raw blink request.
Immediately, his senses began to quake as though a tsunami wave was approaching. Then, suddenly, the roar was deafening and the light blinding. It was as though D_Light had been seized by a mob that pulled him in all directions, causing the very flesh of his consciousness to be torn out. From a billion entities emerged a sensory blur. And there were emotions too, a deluge of emotions-fear, love, horror, hope, angst-all of which overcame him so quickly that they seemed to occur simultaneously.
This was pure pain. It was as though he was on fire from head to toe. He was being smashed against a wall of dazzling color. Somewhere in his consciousness he was aware of Smorgeous; the cat was twitching, rolling, and twirling as though on the strings of an insane and devilish puppeteer.
Through the fire he heard an imperious voice. “Jump!” He knew the voice. It was the Dark Queen. Queen Pheobah had found him. She was behind him and she was roasting him alive. Ahead of him and below was the edge of a cliff, beyond which there was blackness, the deepest of nothing, the infinite void. He could not think. The pain was too much for that, but there was an inexplicable desire to jump. Certainly, oblivion was better than this.
“Jump!” the queen commanded again.
He did not. Instead, he turned to the queen and shouted, “Stop the MetaGame!” But the queen was too powerful. Her light consumed his mind, and the void took him away.
Master, your raw blink request resulted in a massive seizure. As a countermeasure, I deployed sedatives to force you into an unconscious state; however, this action was delayed due to a critical error in my system that required me to reboot. I’ve detected some disruption to your neural network, including some possible organic brain damage.
D_Light let his familiar’s words echo passively through his mind. His head pounded, and he was unsure if he could communicate back even if he wanted to. He felt like a dead vessel, a dead vessel with just enough brain activity left to still feel pain. But then the spent player remembered his important objective, which forced him-with some effort-to ask, Smorgeous, the MetaGame…is it still on?
Yes, master. The current quest, “The Hunted Hunt Themselves,” is still active.
D_Light allowed himself to fall back into unconsciousness.
When D_Light woke the second time, he could at least think, but every thought came with some discomfort. He felt the need to sleep for a week or more, but he knew he could not. If nothing else, there were the cullers to consider. His repellant had completely worn off by now; they would be coming for him.
At some point during the thirteen hours he had been unconscious, D_Light had been dragged out of the analyst’s lair; its door was shut. D_Light did not need to check the door to know it was locked.
There were a dozen messages for him from Lyra and Djoser. He reviewed the messages as he slowly, incrementally, got to his feet. There were the expected questions and threats: We lost Lily. I think she’s somewhere in the garden. We’re coming back to you. What is your status? Are you alive? We got some crazy raw blink from you. What’s going on? Better for you that you are dead than ignoring us! The list went on.
D_Light knew the right move was to give a status update to the rest of his team, but his only compulsion now was to find Lily. His intuition told him where she was, and now he knew to trust it.
Lily’s normally golden blond hair was darkened and slicked back as she swam in the lake. She was swimming toward D_Light, but she did not appear to see him hidden in the thick foliage. Surrounding the lake on that side, sheets of marble rock jutted down steeply into the water, save a small sandy beach. It did not take an analyst to know where she was swimming.
The OverSoul has brought you to me! D_Light thought. He wondered if she had been sleeping at some point over the past few hours, which prompted them to rendezvous here. Or perhaps the OverSoul has some connection even while we are awake. Either way, it is her will, the will of the Divinity-this game is about to end.
D_Light ducked back into the garden and crept over to the beach. As he squatted, concealing himself behind a tall flowerbed, he heard in the distance a culler’s call, followed by another, and then another. They have found something.
D_Light opened a blink to everyone, which was readily accepted. Before he could report, Lyra sent a thought with maximum urgency. Thank Soul, you’re alive! They’re coming, the cullers are coming!
I found her. I found Lily, D_Light reported. She is at the lake.
For shit’s sake, if you have a shot, take it! Djoser blasted over the blink.
There isn’t much time, D_Light, Lyra emphasized. You need to end this fast!
It was a long thirty seconds or so before Lily silently emerged from the water. Her bleary blue eyes were fixed on some distant point as though enchanted by the Great Stag standing patiently on top of a hill off on the horizon. She made a move toward the concealment of nearby hedges, but stopped when D_Light ordered her to do so. He stepped out from hiding, his crossbow leveled down on her. She was caught in the open.
There was fear on her face, but that emotion was battling with relief. A long hunt like this without the benefits of drugs was definitely taking its toll on the product, and now, at least, she would be released.
The analyst was right. The wheels are in motion. I cannot stop the MetaGame any other way, D_Light thought.
D_Light was surprised that he did not pull the trigger immediately. There was no reason not to. Nothing to learn from her, no interrogation necessary; only her death would end this game. The OverSoul has brought us together. Kill the product and end the game. The OverSoul wants me to win, as she loves me. The thoughts burned through him. But there were other voices too, distant but clear. God is love, D_Light. You must not betray God. You must not betray yourself.
His eyes started to burn. His whole body began to tremble. He wanted to shout and curse, but instead he shuddered and cried out, “I don’t want this! I don’t want the points or this damned game! I don’t want to lose…I don’t want to lose you!”
Lily fell to her knees. Her torso shuddered under a sudden outpour. At first she covered her face as though ashamed, and then she looked up at D_Light through tears and between heaving breaths, smiled sadly, and said, “I hid the bottle, the repellant. You can have it.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” D_Light lamented, now weeping. Tears ran freely down his cheeks.
