Chapter Thirty-One: Water Damage

  The Santa Claus in the middle of the trio put down its trumpet and chortled. “Oh, well done,” it said.

  “Oh, fuck you,” I did not say. I thought it, though, and the System could read my mind.

  “Come now,” it said, with an absolutely creepy false cheer. It gestured at the scenery around us. “Didn’t I get it right? Isn’t this how you envisioned me?”

  “Oh, fuck you.” This time I did say it aloud.

  The System sighed. Ostentatiously, in my opinion. Everything around us began to fade away. I would have sworn it was sulky when it said, “Fine, fine.”

  The creepy Santa vanished, replaced by a more traditional version with rosy pink cheeks, round belly, jovial eyes. “This better?”

  “No,” I snapped.

  Santa Claus, non-creepy, rolled his eyes at me, immediately making him creepy. I mean, come on, no Santa Claus ever rolled his eyes at a former client. Customer? Patron? Whatever, Santa Claus just shouldn’t be rolling his eyes.

  I folded my arms across my chest. “Where is my dog?”

  “She’s having her own exit interview,” the System replied, melting into an image of my very first psychiatrist, Dr. Benton, wearing, if I was correct, the same pale blue, button-down, Oxford shirt with rolled-up sleeves as the real Dr. Benton had been wearing the day I left the hospital for the first time.

  “Exit interview?” I repeated, wincing.

  The surroundings were changing, too, the abyss turning into a hospital office. Not the nice type of office that the higher-ups had, with spacious desks and comfortable leather chairs, but the type the peons had. Cramped, overflowing with records, fluorescent lights humming overhead, hard plastic chairs that invited patients to get out fast instead of lingering.

  Okay, I’d been right all along. I was insane. Hallucinating. Locked up in some psych ward somewhere. This entire thing had just been some tremendously complicated hallucination/delusion.

  “Oh, no, I’m afraid not.” Dr. Benton melted away, transforming into my favorite therapist, Rosemary. She’d been a student, tremendously enthusiastic, working on getting hours for her license. I’d missed her when she graduated and moved on to bigger and better things. Well, or different things, anyway.

  The surroundings started changing again, too, the walls opening up, the fluorescence becoming warm, the desk disappearing.

  “Could you please stop doing that?” I closed my eyes again.

  These transformations had to be my brain playing tricks on me. I needed to pull out the strategies I’d learned over the years.

  Number one, ignore the voices. Okay, that was going to be hard.

  Number two, watch other people to test their reactions to the reality I perceived. Given that the only person here was a hallucination, that wasn’t going to work either.

  Number three, ground myself in physical reality. Sight, smell, sound, touch. I almost laughed at the irony of trying to ground myself in reality when reality kept shifting. But I clenched my hands into fists, digging my nails into the skin of my palms. It hurt, so that was a good sign. Obviously I couldn’t rely on any of my other senses.

  “All right, does this work for you?” The voice sounded vaguely familiar.

  I opened my eyes.

  I was standing in the doorway of a therapist’s office. It was bright, sunny, the walls painted a peaceful blue, with artwork covering them. The windows faced a small courtyard garden where hibiscus bloomed year-round in Miami's endless summer, their petals bright scarlet and orange. There was a desk in the far corner, where my therapist never sat, and in the center of the room, a couch, a coffee table, three cozy chairs.

  She was sitting in the chair at the end of the coffee table, the right spot, with steam rising from a mug of tea resting on the table before her.

  I knew it was mint tea.

  I knew the mug said, “Reality is stranger than we think it is.”

  For a moment, though, I couldn’t remember her name. She’d been therapist number three, maybe four. I’d seen her for six months or so, during a brief stint of time when I tried living in Miami. (Total fail. I wasn’t sure I exactly fit in anywhere, but I very definitely didn’t fit in in Miami.)

  Chelsea, that was her name. Older than the name implied, and almost as un-Miami as I was.

  I’d liked her a lot, but she’d been a little bit crazy herself.

  Great quality: I never felt broken when I was with her.

  Less-than-great quality: she asked me questions like “Have you considered that being highly sensitive isn't necessarily pathological?” and “What if the colors you see are real?”

  I stepped into the room.

  Chelsea gestured to the chair on her left. “I see I’m doing better. I apologize. I should have taken your current state into account.”

  “Where is my dog?” I asked evenly, ignoring the gesture.

  This wasn’t Chelsea. This was the System, somehow raiding my brain for memories.

  “As I said, she’s having her own exit interview. Allow me to see—” System Chelsea flipped open a file folder that had suddenly appeared on her lap. She traced one finger down a piece of paper inside it, exactly as if she were quickly skimming text. “All right, yes, she can join us. Although it is highly irregular. And do please allow her to make her own decisions when that time comes.”

  From behind me, Zelda trotted into the room, hopped onto the couch, curled into a tight ball, and gave a delicate yawn, tongue curling in the way of a tired dog. She blinked at me, licked at her fur half-heartedly, thumped her tail once, then closed her eyes and gave every indication of having gone to sleep.

  The System gestured at the open seat on the couch next to my sleeping dog. “May we begin? Time is passing.”

  I looked down at myself. My clothes were ripped and muddy, my jeans stiff from dried blood. Under any other circumstances, I would never have sat down on a clean couch. But since the couch was a hallucination, just like everything else in this room, did it really matter?

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Nothing in this room is a hallucination,” System Chelsea said calmly. “It’s a projection, a constructed reality developed to facilitate an exchange of information in an efficient manner. I myself am not the System, not even an avatar of the System. I’m an instance, created specifically to interact with you on an ongoing basis.”

  “An instance? Um…” I didn’t move from the doorway. I had no idea what she—it?—was talking about.

  “Not that sort of instance. Not a situation, but a single specific object created from a class.” She frowned, lines appearing between her brows. The real Chelsea had that expression every time I answered the question, “And how did you feel about that?” with a thought instead of an emotion.

  “It’s the right word,” System Chelsea continued. “But we may lack a proper shared conceptual framework. If you were religious, I would suggest you imagine an infinite God, separating tiny fragments of its energy from itself to serve as guardian angels.”

  I didn’t respond aloud, but System Chelsea rolled her eyes again, and said, “Fine, fine, almost infinite. Immense, if you prefer. And yes, a truly religious person would probably call that heresy. And no, I’m not actually a guardian angel. It’s a metaphor, not a job description. I’ll be providing information, not aid. My, you’re going to be a difficult one, aren’t you?”

  She clicked a pen that was in her hand, magically, and wrote something on the first page inside the file folder she was still holding. “Marginal viability, hmmph,” she murmured.

  I almost smiled. Instead, I entered the room and sat down on the couch, mud, blood, and all. “Information, huh?”

  “And rewards. Congratulations, incidentally, on your performance in the challenge scenario.” She closed the folder.

  “Performance,” I repeated the word after her. After it. “Were there people watching?”

  It was one of the theories Jack had mentioned, somewhere along the way. Based on his extensive research of all things System, in some versions of the story we were contestants in a multiversal reality show.

  If that was the case, I was not going to play. Fuck them. I’d rather die with dignity than be a rat in their maze.

  Although I did have the dogs to take care of, but… well, I’d figure that out once I knew more.

  System Chelsea grimaced. “No, although we are aware that some of your literature ascribed such motives to us. We did attempt to seed your cultural data flow with ideas that might be helpful, should forcible induction into the System become necessary. A little disaster preparation, if you will.”

  She paused, then added, “But the directions in which you took some of those ideas were all yours. Unfortunate, that, as somehow most of our early candidates for positions failed to recognize your species’ greatest strength.”

  “Opposable thumbs?” I suggested wryly.

  “Of course not.” Chelsea almost looked sad, enough that I wondered what the System was projecting, and why.

  “Humanity’s greatest strength is—should be—your ability to work together,” she continued. “Everything you have, everything you are, everything you’ve done, rests on that foundational truth. When you collaborate and cooperate, you create wonders. Sadly, that strength failed you in the end.”

  “We failed? We didn’t invade ourselves,” I said, slightly indignant. Whatever was happening out there in the real world—and apparently I no longer believed this was all in my head—wasn’t anything we had done.

  “Oh, but it is,” System Chelsea answered my thoughts again. “You’re complaining about water damage to the firefighters who put out the blaze burning down your house. The multiverse stepped in only when it was clear that the time for hope was over. And we will step in again, should it become clear that your species is incapable of helping itself. That would be, well, a bit unfortunate, so let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Which brings me to the reason you’re here today—”

  I put up my hand to stop her. “Let’s talk just a little bit more about what exactly you mean by unfortunate. Are we talking everyone-dies level unfortunate?”

  “No, no, not everyone. Should your species population decline to one million individuals, we will ensure that those remaining are provided with a safe haven, a place where your species will be protected in a carefully managed environment. Adequate food, shelter, medical care. All the basic needs would be met.”

  “Protected?” I asked. Her words were triggering memories of locked psych wards, compassionate nurses, drugs that made me feel like shit.

  Being protected by the System sounded a lot like being helpless.

  “A sanctuary planet. It would be monitored and some cultural activities would be permitted. Within acceptable parameters, of course. But individuals wouldn’t be allowed to participate in the multiverse on any meaningful level. No System access, no progression, no influence beyond your designated habitat. You’d be classified as a protected but non-contributing species.”

  “A zoo,” I said flatly. “You’re describing a zoo.”

  “I suggest preserve,” she said, exactly like the real Chelsea offering an alternative interpretation of my thinking patterns. “Think of it as… retirement.”

  “Species retirement.”

  “Yes.”

  She waited while I raged internally. I knew she could follow the exact spiraling of my thoughts, every nuance of horror, indignation, fear, every argument and rhetorical punch I wanted to deliver.

  None of them made it past my lips. And none of them inspired her to respond.

  Because there was no point, was there? She wasn’t the System, just a simulacrum of a piece of it, and I was just an ordinary human being. No one special. No one capable of defending humanity in the face of the apocalypse.

  “Wrong,” she said quietly.

  “Wrong?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what she meant.

  Her smile was surprisingly kind, but then Chelsea’s face always had been kind. “You’re a First Defender. You already have the title, and you’ll receive another for succeeding in the challenge scenario. It was one of the easier ones, but—”

  “That was easy?” I interrupted.

  “Oh, yes.” She nodded. “Level 2. Not the easiest, but definitely not hard mode. But… well, humanity’s not doing too well. I don’t know why so many of you decided to compete against one another instead of working together, but past difficulty Level 5 or so, there’s simply no way to succeed if you don’t cooperate. You can’t win without allies. There may be survivors, but they won’t finish their quests. Without the quest, they don’t get the title. And without the title, the rewards… well, there is a participation award for everyone who accepts the challenge. So they’ll get something out of it.”

  “Speaking of survivors,” I said, cutting in the moment she paused. I was interested in the rewards, too, of course. I’m not a saint. But it was clear she was going to tell me about that, eventually, and I wanted to know about Jack and Emma now.

  “Yes, yes.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Everyone survives on Level 2. Your fellow participants will all be returned safely to their starting places. Of course, well…” She shrugged, drawing her shoulders up unnaturally high. “I can’t attest to how long they’ll last after that.”

  Relief felt like too light a word for the way I felt. Relief belonged to not missing your bus, and this feeling was something else entirely. It meant I could let go of the memories of Jack dissolving into black goo, of Emma being eaten—eaten!—as not real.

  Not real.

  They were okay. Well, sort of okay. As okay as any of us were anyway. Almost without my volition, my hand moved to rest on Zelda’s back.

  We’d made it.

  But then I narrowed my eyes, half-glaring at System Chelsea. “They get rewards, too, right? Because we were a team. I couldn’t have finished the quest without them.”

  “Hmm.” System Chelsea opened the folder again and wrote something more on the page. “Your request will be taken into consideration.” She closed the folder again.

  It wasn’t a satisfying answer, but it was probably the best I could do.

  “Do you have further questions for me? Or may we move on to the reason I’m here talking to you today?”

  Did I have further questions? Only about a million of them. Jack’s info was purely speculative, and here was the System—or at least some version of it—willing to tell me the truth about the multiverse. Of course I had questions.

  “I should caution you,” System Chelsea said, a tiny smile playing around her lips. “Now that you’ve exited the rift scenario, time is proceeding as usual. Every minute spent here is a minute that passes on your world.”

  I stared at her. “Bear and Riley?”

  She glanced at a watch that abruptly appeared on her wrist. “You left them approximately eight minutes ago.”

  I snapped my fingers at her, a gesture that I considered deeply rude, and exactly what she—it—deserved. “Well, then let’s get on with it. Talk fast.”