Part Three: God of Ink
Welcome to the penultimate chapter of Year of Hell.
The Great Lie – Part Three
God of Ink
Cali D’Kara
Creation
Shiawassee County, Michigan
July 20, 2023, 8:45am
Cali watched Blake enter the kitchen, looking groggy. He had been up most of the night and barely noticed the furry bundle in Cali’s arms.
“How many cats live here?” Cali asked. “I woke up to find this guy sleeping on my leg.”
A white cat with grey splotches on his fur yawned and pressed the top of his head against Cali’s chest.
“Three.” Blake replied. “That’s Elwood. Jake is the black one. Murphy is hiding from you. He’s the one you nearly killed when you showed up yesterday. I think he’s under a rug, so watch your step.”
Blake brewed some green tea and served Cali a large slice of watermelon for breakfast, which she devoured voraciously. Looking up, Cali saw Blake giving her a curious look.
“I never wrote you as a glutton.” Blake said. “Why do you keep eating like it’s the last meal on Earth?”
“Well technically, I’ve never eaten before, have I?” Cali replied. Then she went back to savoring the many wondrous flavors in her mouth.
“Right… well that’s on me.” Blake admitted. “I’ve got my tea now, so I’m gonna start working.”
Blake had moved his own computer into J.D.’s office. (Blake’s bedroom was still a wreck from yesterday) The Vultaum Reality Perforator was sitting on a pillow atop a coffee table. A pair of oven mitts were next to it. Blake instructed Cali not to touch it with her bare hands. Also on the coffee table were hundreds of papers, both printed documents and handwritten notes.
“The entirety of Grand Theft Stellaris, Year of Hell, and all of my worldbuilding notes.” Blake explained. “I think I have a way to send you back, but I need to double and triple check everything to make sure we’re staying within the rules I laid out.”
“But you said this idea is basically cheating.” J.D. cut in. “You said and I quote ‘if this works, it’ll be the magnum opus of lazy writing and deus ex machina abuse.’ Or something like that.”
“Shut up, dad!” Blake said. “I just wanna send Cali home, and I’m sure she wants to go home too, right? Dak and Persefoni the others are probably worried sick about her.”
Cali started to reply, to give Blake some backup, but she hesitated.
“Uh… Blake,” Cali said slowly. “I looked at those stories you wrote about me last night.”
Blake suddenly gave Cali his full attention. He had a resigned look on his face.
“Oh.” He said. “Well, if you think less of me now, I can’t hold it against you.”
Cali folded her arms. Her anger threatened to boil over.
“That’s it? Not going to gloat about what you did to me? Or Moka? I thought you liked making your characters miserable. Your readers really seemed to get a kick out of our misery.” Cali said. “Go on, I’m waiting.”
“This time yesterday, you weren’t real.” Blake replied. “I never imagined I would have to justify myself to you.”
“Moka was real. Dak is real.” Cali protested, poking a finger into Blake’s chest. “I fell from the sky and crashed into a river in the Badlands. That felt pretty real. I once felt the Galactic Emperor breath down my neck. Didn’t feel all that fake to me.”
“Those people and experiences were real to you, I’ll give you that.” Blake replied. “But to me, you were, up until yesterday afternoon, a line of code in a computer game. I was uncaring then, I care now. I really don’t know what else to say.”
Cali pointed at Blake’s computer.
“Show me.” She demanded. “Show me the game.”
Blake powered on his computer and launched Stellaris. Cali found she could not take her eyes off the screen as the main menu appeared. Blake quickly explained the game:
“Stellaris is a grand strategy game.” He said. “It allows the player to design, build, and rule over their own interstellar empire.”
“So you designed the State of Alaria.” Cali said.
“Correct.” Blake replied. “Look at the empire creator here. I decided what the Alari people would look like, their names, their traits. Then I set up the planet Alaria itself. Next I did your people’s ethics, civics, and government type.”
“Our sacred democracy.” Cali gasped.
“Actually, your people started out as Fanatic Pacifists.” Blake said. “Fanatic Egalitarianism came later. Once an empire is designed, then we move on to the Galaxy Generator. We input our settings like so and… are you okay?”
Cali was clenching Blake’s desk with both hands, she was trying to take all of this in, but it was getting overwhelming.
“Your computer looks so… so primitive compared to what I’m used to.” Cali breathed. “But you can just… generate whole galaxies? Trillions upon trillions of life-forms, just like that?”
“Stellaris… abstracts a few things.” Blake replied. “If you want, I’ll let you play the game while I work on writing a solution for the Perforator.”
“Writing?” Cali repeated.
“My written words caused this problem.” Blake said. “My words should get you home.”
He picked up his laptop and sat in one of the office chairs. Cali looked back at his computer. After hesitating for a moment, she grabbed the mouse and clicked “start game.”
Cali lost track of time very quickly. She barely had time to marvel at Alaria, her beautiful Homeworld, on the screen before she remembered what Blake had said. The objective was to build an interstellar empire. She dispatched science ships into the void. The first time Cali saw the galaxy map, she almost panicked. Not only was Alaria located in a different place that what she’d always known, the galaxy itself was shaped differently.
As Cali explored more of the galaxy, she found the need to build another science ship and hire a scientist. When she opened the leader menu, she gasped so loudly that Blake stopped typing and looked up.
“B’Eren.” Cali said, pointing at one of the scientists for hire.
“Oh, yeah.” Blake said, looking at the screen. “He does look like he could be a family member of Van. That’s one of the reasons it’s so easy to write stories about Stellairs. All of the leaders and characters who show up have really simple backstories that leave lots of room for writers like me to fill in the blanks.”
Over the next few hours, Cali had one of the most surreal experiences of her life. She played Stellaris at the highest speed setting, able to keep up thanks to her brain implant. Pausing only to eat, drink, use the bathroom, or pet one of the cats, Cali focused hard on the game, trying to understand it. She wanted to know exactly where she had been when Blake found her, to understand just how her life had somehow played out in this simulation.
Finally, after almost six hours of gameplay…
“Holy shit, that’s me.” Cali breathed.
“Knew that was gonna happen.” Blake said, sitting up from his laptop. “Lemme see… aha! You’re an Envoy in this game.”
“How?” Cali asked. “I don’t have any diplomatic experience?”
“Leaders are generated randomly from one game to the next. In the game I pulled you from, you were an Admiral.” Blake answered.
“How did I go from being an Admiral to… to me?”
Blake pointed down at the printed copies of Grand Theft Stellaris and Year of Hell.
“Because I wrote you that way. You are an engineering nerd who ran away from home to escape a forced marriage. You traded your aristocratic upbringing for a life of adventure. You found love with another tech nerd and a passion for the planet Arcadia and its people. That is the Cali D’Kara from Grand Theft Stellaris and Year of Hell. The Envoy character you’re looking at on the screen right now? That’s just the block of clay you started out as, forgive the metaphor.”
Cali leaned back in her seat.
“Do all of the characters in your stories start out this way?”
“No.” Blake replied casually. “Back in the old days of the Stormbreaker Universe, I made a lot of my characters from scratch.”
Cali closed the game and opened a web browser. She listened to Blake tapping away at his laptop for a moment, then her curiosity got the best of her. She searched for Blake’s online username ‘Macavity116’ and soon found the Stormbreaker Universe.
Here, Cali’s brain implant and upgraded eyes did her a great service. She was able to read all ten books in the series at high speed. She even “borrowed” one of Blake’s email accounts and used it to create a profile on the Paradox Interactive Forums, allowing her to read the stories locked away in “registered users only” parts of the site.
Taking in all of the comments and reviews along the way. She paused once while reading The Stormbreakers to say:
“You really had an effect on some of these people. A user named ‘Skirmisher’ says you made them cry. Another user proclaimed you their ‘favorite sci-fi writer.' Also, the users ‘Andreas Everaerts’ and ‘Family Tree Enthusiast’ seem to be the same person.”
“I know that.” Blake said. Cali did not need infrared vision to see how hot his ears were getting. “Just, lemme write this DM. I need to run something by HistoryDude."
Cali continued speed-reading. After about two hours, she reached the end of The Last Heroes. Cali let out a short sob. Blake looked up again.
“Are you okay?”
Once again, an avalanche of unprompted emotions crashed through Cali’s mind. She was being overwhelmed by everything she had to take in. She struggled to find something to say.
She already had a low opinion of her creator. He was a self-professed lazy writer. He was careless in the creation of her own world. He enjoyed not only the suffering of the characters he made, but he reveled in sharing their misery with others. But… there was a nagging feeling in the back of Cali’s mind, one deep concern that had not been addressed yet.
“You loved them.” She said. “The heroes of the Stormbreaker Universe. The man you named after yourself, he’s been a part of the story since you are a small child. So was his lover, Chihiro. Mira, Toa Mami, Jericho, Whetu, Akira, Inez, all of them. You put your soul into those people.”
Blake closed his laptop and leaned forward.
“You’re right. The characters of the Stormbreaker Universe mean a lot to me. I won’t deny it if you say I love them.”
“If that’s so…” Cali said, her voice starting to quake… “Then, why didn’t I see their Galaxy when you showed me the saved games in Stellaris? I saw the Empire of Atlantis, the Sutharian Order, the Alari Alliance, and the Kingdom of Andaria. Where’s the Galaxy Jericho saved!?”
Blake raised his eyebrow in exactly the same way his fictional counterpart would.
“That Galaxy was deleted a while ago. I wanna say, last January… so yeah. About seven months ago.”
Cali’s heart missed a beat. She felt as though the air around her was suddenly very cold.
“Deleted.” She breathed. “It… it’s gone?”
The revitalized landscapes of Aoraki, the great cities and legendary battlefields of Earth, the unending majesty of the Shining Hinterlands, the deep mysteries of Balcora, the glorious skies of Hiigara, the Karos Graveyard and the Great Wastelands, the Unnamed Mountain, Archer’s Canyon, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the multispecies metropolis of Rotorua… all gone.
To say nothing of the people. Cassandra Espinosa came to mind… was her freedom really so short-lived? To escape from a lifetime of terror and misery only to be snuffed out by a keystroke so thoughtlessly…
Cali’s mind was racing. Her heart was pounding out of her chest.
“You… deleted a whole galaxy!?”
Cali could see a new expression coming over Blake’s face. Perhaps he suddenly understood the way Cali was interpreting his words, but she did not know for certain. All she saw was Blake’s eyes suddenly going wide.
This changed everything. Cali was looking at Blake in a whole new light now. He was a mass murderer! Cali’s mind flickered back to the ten stories Blake had spent five years of his life working on. He had built a vibrant universe full of life and personality, crafted characters and settings with so much love and care, and then… and then…
“You monster!” Cali screamed.
“Hold on!” Blake said. “You’re thinking about this wrong!”
Cali’s implants had already gone into combat mode. She was backing away, toward the door, when her scans of the room found something. There was a weapon in of the drawers of Blake’s desk! She lunged for it!
“You’re fucking kidding me!” Blake yelled. He realized where Cali was going and jumped.
Cali was faster. She seized the drawer, tore it open, and withdrew a handgun from inside. It was small, painted black and orange. She also got the magazine next to it, but by that time, Blake had reached her.
Cali’s previous scans proved accurate. Blake really was recovering from an illness. By the time he got to her, she could see the expression of pain in his face already. Guessing she had an advantage, Cali put her shoulder to Blake’s chest and gave him a shove. Then, a pit of surprise opened in Cali’s stomach as Blake suddenly turned the tables on her. In two fluid movements, he grabbed Cali’s right hand, bending her arm forcefully at the elbow and wrist. Pain shot up Cali’s arm as she was twisted around and, a moment later, she was disarmed.
Blake shoved the magazine into his pocket, holding his pistol by the barrel.
“Really!?” He panted. “What were you gonna do? This thing is a pellet gun, for dealing with wild animals, you know, cause I live in Michigan!”
Cali did not reply. She was still in fight-or-flight mode. She scrambled out of the room running past a confused J.D. before bursting out of the house entirely.
The sun… the real sun, was nothing like the one above Alaria. The air was hot and muggy and nearly overwhelmed her for a moment. Then she started to run. Cali could see she was in some kind of residential neighborhood with moderately sized wooden houses all around. However, she only travelled a few hundred feet before she suddenly found herself surrounded by trees.
“What?” Cali panted.
She had run out of the neighborhood and into a nearby forest. She turned around and went back the way she came, this time following the road instead of crossing it.
Paying attention to road signs and context clues from the neighboring terrain, Cali quickly realized that Blake Robinson lived in a very small rural town, located somewhere in the interior of Michigan. She recognized the name. Several characters from Blake’s earlier stories were Michiganders. Looking around, Cali realized the region was nowhere near as “wild” and “untamed” as it was depicted in The Last Heroes. Blake’s hometown was depicted as a ruin in that book, yet here, it was alive with people.
As Cali walked aimlessly past a large elementary school, a local called out to her:
“Hey! The festival was last month! What’s with the costume?”
Cali ignored him. She walked past the school, using what little she remembered from The Last Heroes to guide her way. She found a downhill slope and followed it across town, knowing it would take her to a river. Once she found it, Cali spotted the place she was looking for:
The library.
Cali had no idea why she wanted to find it after running away from Blake’s house. Perhaps it was just the final confirmation she needed. To see an actual location from a Macavity116 story with her own eyes.
The public library was depicted as the site of a great battle involving the Stormbreakers, the Emerald Avatar, and the False Jericho in The Last Heroes. When she saw it, Cali briefly expected to find some kind of evidence of the conflict. Perhaps a monument or scorch marks on the pavement.
But no… of course not. Cali was foolish for thinking this way, even for a moment. She chastised herself. No false god had ever waged war on the library grounds, because the event she read about never happened. The Stormbreakers weren’t real. Neither was the Emerald Avatar or False Jericho. What did it matter if their Galaxy was deleted?
Cali walked onto a bridge that crossed the Shiawassee River and leaned on the guardrail, looking down at the shallow water below.
She thought back to that game of Stellaris she played earlier today. Using her brain implant, she did the math quickly.
A typical game of Stellaris would last for about 500 years. Some 20 generations of Alari would live during that timespan. But she knew in her own galaxy, there were long-lived species like the Blorg and Andari. Theoretically, it was possible for someone who was “alive” when the galaxy was created could still be around when it died.
Again… the thought of “being deleted” came to the forefront of Cali’s mind. Blake was trying so hard to return Cali to her own galaxy. To her file in the computer. Someday, that file would be deleted, or corrupted. Or perhaps the drive holding it may fail. No matter what, this place, the real world, would outlive Cali’s galaxy by untold billions of years. If Cali was so unfortunate, she could live to witness the moment her universe was silenced forever. A sense of existential fear was building up in Cali’s heart.
Did she really want to go home?
A red car pulled off the road and parked in a driveway. Blake and J.D. emerged and spotted Cali. They waved, but did not approach. The three looked at each other for a few minutes, then Cali slowly started to walk toward Blake and J.D. Blake raised his hands to chest height.
“I know you’re frightened.” Blake said. “Honestly, once I thought about it, the way you reacted makes sense.”
“How’d you know I was here?” Cali asked.
“You read The Last Heroes.” Blake said. “I guessed you’d try to go to one of the Michigan locales from The Last Heroes, to see if anything from that story was real. The Shiawassee Library was just the closest one. I really didn’t expect you to just walk all the way to Detroit or Muskegon or Alpena.”
“You knew?” Cali asked. “I honestly thought you didn’t notice.”
“You hit the ‘dislike’ button on Chapter 34. I got a notification.” Blake said. “Come on, let’s go home. You can tell me exactly what you don’t like about that chapter over dinner.”
Cali hesitated.
“You’re not going to delete my galaxy, are you?” She blurted out.
“No, I’m not.” Blake replied. “But you’re also looking at this whole thing from the wrong point of view. Like I said. We’ll get dinner, and I’ll explain.”
The Great Lie – Part Three
God of Ink
Cali D’Kara
Creation
Shiawassee County, Michigan
July 20, 2023, 8:45am
Cali watched Blake enter the kitchen, looking groggy. He had been up most of the night and barely noticed the furry bundle in Cali’s arms.
“How many cats live here?” Cali asked. “I woke up to find this guy sleeping on my leg.”
A white cat with grey splotches on his fur yawned and pressed the top of his head against Cali’s chest.
“Three.” Blake replied. “That’s Elwood. Jake is the black one. Murphy is hiding from you. He’s the one you nearly killed when you showed up yesterday. I think he’s under a rug, so watch your step.”
Blake brewed some green tea and served Cali a large slice of watermelon for breakfast, which she devoured voraciously. Looking up, Cali saw Blake giving her a curious look.
“I never wrote you as a glutton.” Blake said. “Why do you keep eating like it’s the last meal on Earth?”
“Well technically, I’ve never eaten before, have I?” Cali replied. Then she went back to savoring the many wondrous flavors in her mouth.
“Right… well that’s on me.” Blake admitted. “I’ve got my tea now, so I’m gonna start working.”
Blake had moved his own computer into J.D.’s office. (Blake’s bedroom was still a wreck from yesterday) The Vultaum Reality Perforator was sitting on a pillow atop a coffee table. A pair of oven mitts were next to it. Blake instructed Cali not to touch it with her bare hands. Also on the coffee table were hundreds of papers, both printed documents and handwritten notes.
“The entirety of Grand Theft Stellaris, Year of Hell, and all of my worldbuilding notes.” Blake explained. “I think I have a way to send you back, but I need to double and triple check everything to make sure we’re staying within the rules I laid out.”
“But you said this idea is basically cheating.” J.D. cut in. “You said and I quote ‘if this works, it’ll be the magnum opus of lazy writing and deus ex machina abuse.’ Or something like that.”
“Shut up, dad!” Blake said. “I just wanna send Cali home, and I’m sure she wants to go home too, right? Dak and Persefoni the others are probably worried sick about her.”
Cali started to reply, to give Blake some backup, but she hesitated.
“Uh… Blake,” Cali said slowly. “I looked at those stories you wrote about me last night.”
Blake suddenly gave Cali his full attention. He had a resigned look on his face.
“Oh.” He said. “Well, if you think less of me now, I can’t hold it against you.”
Cali folded her arms. Her anger threatened to boil over.
“That’s it? Not going to gloat about what you did to me? Or Moka? I thought you liked making your characters miserable. Your readers really seemed to get a kick out of our misery.” Cali said. “Go on, I’m waiting.”
“This time yesterday, you weren’t real.” Blake replied. “I never imagined I would have to justify myself to you.”
“Moka was real. Dak is real.” Cali protested, poking a finger into Blake’s chest. “I fell from the sky and crashed into a river in the Badlands. That felt pretty real. I once felt the Galactic Emperor breath down my neck. Didn’t feel all that fake to me.”
“Those people and experiences were real to you, I’ll give you that.” Blake replied. “But to me, you were, up until yesterday afternoon, a line of code in a computer game. I was uncaring then, I care now. I really don’t know what else to say.”
Cali pointed at Blake’s computer.
“Show me.” She demanded. “Show me the game.”
Blake powered on his computer and launched Stellaris. Cali found she could not take her eyes off the screen as the main menu appeared. Blake quickly explained the game:
“Stellaris is a grand strategy game.” He said. “It allows the player to design, build, and rule over their own interstellar empire.”
“So you designed the State of Alaria.” Cali said.
“Correct.” Blake replied. “Look at the empire creator here. I decided what the Alari people would look like, their names, their traits. Then I set up the planet Alaria itself. Next I did your people’s ethics, civics, and government type.”
“Our sacred democracy.” Cali gasped.
“Actually, your people started out as Fanatic Pacifists.” Blake said. “Fanatic Egalitarianism came later. Once an empire is designed, then we move on to the Galaxy Generator. We input our settings like so and… are you okay?”
Cali was clenching Blake’s desk with both hands, she was trying to take all of this in, but it was getting overwhelming.
“Your computer looks so… so primitive compared to what I’m used to.” Cali breathed. “But you can just… generate whole galaxies? Trillions upon trillions of life-forms, just like that?”
“Stellaris… abstracts a few things.” Blake replied. “If you want, I’ll let you play the game while I work on writing a solution for the Perforator.”
“Writing?” Cali repeated.
“My written words caused this problem.” Blake said. “My words should get you home.”
He picked up his laptop and sat in one of the office chairs. Cali looked back at his computer. After hesitating for a moment, she grabbed the mouse and clicked “start game.”
Cali lost track of time very quickly. She barely had time to marvel at Alaria, her beautiful Homeworld, on the screen before she remembered what Blake had said. The objective was to build an interstellar empire. She dispatched science ships into the void. The first time Cali saw the galaxy map, she almost panicked. Not only was Alaria located in a different place that what she’d always known, the galaxy itself was shaped differently.
As Cali explored more of the galaxy, she found the need to build another science ship and hire a scientist. When she opened the leader menu, she gasped so loudly that Blake stopped typing and looked up.
“B’Eren.” Cali said, pointing at one of the scientists for hire.
“Oh, yeah.” Blake said, looking at the screen. “He does look like he could be a family member of Van. That’s one of the reasons it’s so easy to write stories about Stellairs. All of the leaders and characters who show up have really simple backstories that leave lots of room for writers like me to fill in the blanks.”
Over the next few hours, Cali had one of the most surreal experiences of her life. She played Stellaris at the highest speed setting, able to keep up thanks to her brain implant. Pausing only to eat, drink, use the bathroom, or pet one of the cats, Cali focused hard on the game, trying to understand it. She wanted to know exactly where she had been when Blake found her, to understand just how her life had somehow played out in this simulation.
Finally, after almost six hours of gameplay…
“Holy shit, that’s me.” Cali breathed.
“Knew that was gonna happen.” Blake said, sitting up from his laptop. “Lemme see… aha! You’re an Envoy in this game.”
“How?” Cali asked. “I don’t have any diplomatic experience?”
“Leaders are generated randomly from one game to the next. In the game I pulled you from, you were an Admiral.” Blake answered.
“How did I go from being an Admiral to… to me?”
Blake pointed down at the printed copies of Grand Theft Stellaris and Year of Hell.
“Because I wrote you that way. You are an engineering nerd who ran away from home to escape a forced marriage. You traded your aristocratic upbringing for a life of adventure. You found love with another tech nerd and a passion for the planet Arcadia and its people. That is the Cali D’Kara from Grand Theft Stellaris and Year of Hell. The Envoy character you’re looking at on the screen right now? That’s just the block of clay you started out as, forgive the metaphor.”
Cali leaned back in her seat.
“Do all of the characters in your stories start out this way?”
“No.” Blake replied casually. “Back in the old days of the Stormbreaker Universe, I made a lot of my characters from scratch.”
Cali closed the game and opened a web browser. She listened to Blake tapping away at his laptop for a moment, then her curiosity got the best of her. She searched for Blake’s online username ‘Macavity116’ and soon found the Stormbreaker Universe.
Here, Cali’s brain implant and upgraded eyes did her a great service. She was able to read all ten books in the series at high speed. She even “borrowed” one of Blake’s email accounts and used it to create a profile on the Paradox Interactive Forums, allowing her to read the stories locked away in “registered users only” parts of the site.
Taking in all of the comments and reviews along the way. She paused once while reading The Stormbreakers to say:
“You really had an effect on some of these people. A user named ‘Skirmisher’ says you made them cry. Another user proclaimed you their ‘favorite sci-fi writer.' Also, the users ‘Andreas Everaerts’ and ‘Family Tree Enthusiast’ seem to be the same person.”
“I know that.” Blake said. Cali did not need infrared vision to see how hot his ears were getting. “Just, lemme write this DM. I need to run something by HistoryDude."
Cali continued speed-reading. After about two hours, she reached the end of The Last Heroes. Cali let out a short sob. Blake looked up again.
“Are you okay?”
Once again, an avalanche of unprompted emotions crashed through Cali’s mind. She was being overwhelmed by everything she had to take in. She struggled to find something to say.
She already had a low opinion of her creator. He was a self-professed lazy writer. He was careless in the creation of her own world. He enjoyed not only the suffering of the characters he made, but he reveled in sharing their misery with others. But… there was a nagging feeling in the back of Cali’s mind, one deep concern that had not been addressed yet.
“You loved them.” She said. “The heroes of the Stormbreaker Universe. The man you named after yourself, he’s been a part of the story since you are a small child. So was his lover, Chihiro. Mira, Toa Mami, Jericho, Whetu, Akira, Inez, all of them. You put your soul into those people.”
Blake closed his laptop and leaned forward.
“You’re right. The characters of the Stormbreaker Universe mean a lot to me. I won’t deny it if you say I love them.”
“If that’s so…” Cali said, her voice starting to quake… “Then, why didn’t I see their Galaxy when you showed me the saved games in Stellaris? I saw the Empire of Atlantis, the Sutharian Order, the Alari Alliance, and the Kingdom of Andaria. Where’s the Galaxy Jericho saved!?”
Blake raised his eyebrow in exactly the same way his fictional counterpart would.
“That Galaxy was deleted a while ago. I wanna say, last January… so yeah. About seven months ago.”
Cali’s heart missed a beat. She felt as though the air around her was suddenly very cold.
“Deleted.” She breathed. “It… it’s gone?”
The revitalized landscapes of Aoraki, the great cities and legendary battlefields of Earth, the unending majesty of the Shining Hinterlands, the deep mysteries of Balcora, the glorious skies of Hiigara, the Karos Graveyard and the Great Wastelands, the Unnamed Mountain, Archer’s Canyon, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the multispecies metropolis of Rotorua… all gone.
To say nothing of the people. Cassandra Espinosa came to mind… was her freedom really so short-lived? To escape from a lifetime of terror and misery only to be snuffed out by a keystroke so thoughtlessly…
Cali’s mind was racing. Her heart was pounding out of her chest.
“You… deleted a whole galaxy!?”
Cali could see a new expression coming over Blake’s face. Perhaps he suddenly understood the way Cali was interpreting his words, but she did not know for certain. All she saw was Blake’s eyes suddenly going wide.
This changed everything. Cali was looking at Blake in a whole new light now. He was a mass murderer! Cali’s mind flickered back to the ten stories Blake had spent five years of his life working on. He had built a vibrant universe full of life and personality, crafted characters and settings with so much love and care, and then… and then…
“You monster!” Cali screamed.
“Hold on!” Blake said. “You’re thinking about this wrong!”
Cali’s implants had already gone into combat mode. She was backing away, toward the door, when her scans of the room found something. There was a weapon in of the drawers of Blake’s desk! She lunged for it!
“You’re fucking kidding me!” Blake yelled. He realized where Cali was going and jumped.
Cali was faster. She seized the drawer, tore it open, and withdrew a handgun from inside. It was small, painted black and orange. She also got the magazine next to it, but by that time, Blake had reached her.
Cali’s previous scans proved accurate. Blake really was recovering from an illness. By the time he got to her, she could see the expression of pain in his face already. Guessing she had an advantage, Cali put her shoulder to Blake’s chest and gave him a shove. Then, a pit of surprise opened in Cali’s stomach as Blake suddenly turned the tables on her. In two fluid movements, he grabbed Cali’s right hand, bending her arm forcefully at the elbow and wrist. Pain shot up Cali’s arm as she was twisted around and, a moment later, she was disarmed.
Blake shoved the magazine into his pocket, holding his pistol by the barrel.
“Really!?” He panted. “What were you gonna do? This thing is a pellet gun, for dealing with wild animals, you know, cause I live in Michigan!”
Cali did not reply. She was still in fight-or-flight mode. She scrambled out of the room running past a confused J.D. before bursting out of the house entirely.
The sun… the real sun, was nothing like the one above Alaria. The air was hot and muggy and nearly overwhelmed her for a moment. Then she started to run. Cali could see she was in some kind of residential neighborhood with moderately sized wooden houses all around. However, she only travelled a few hundred feet before she suddenly found herself surrounded by trees.
“What?” Cali panted.
She had run out of the neighborhood and into a nearby forest. She turned around and went back the way she came, this time following the road instead of crossing it.
Paying attention to road signs and context clues from the neighboring terrain, Cali quickly realized that Blake Robinson lived in a very small rural town, located somewhere in the interior of Michigan. She recognized the name. Several characters from Blake’s earlier stories were Michiganders. Looking around, Cali realized the region was nowhere near as “wild” and “untamed” as it was depicted in The Last Heroes. Blake’s hometown was depicted as a ruin in that book, yet here, it was alive with people.
As Cali walked aimlessly past a large elementary school, a local called out to her:
“Hey! The festival was last month! What’s with the costume?”
Cali ignored him. She walked past the school, using what little she remembered from The Last Heroes to guide her way. She found a downhill slope and followed it across town, knowing it would take her to a river. Once she found it, Cali spotted the place she was looking for:
The library.
Cali had no idea why she wanted to find it after running away from Blake’s house. Perhaps it was just the final confirmation she needed. To see an actual location from a Macavity116 story with her own eyes.
The public library was depicted as the site of a great battle involving the Stormbreakers, the Emerald Avatar, and the False Jericho in The Last Heroes. When she saw it, Cali briefly expected to find some kind of evidence of the conflict. Perhaps a monument or scorch marks on the pavement.
But no… of course not. Cali was foolish for thinking this way, even for a moment. She chastised herself. No false god had ever waged war on the library grounds, because the event she read about never happened. The Stormbreakers weren’t real. Neither was the Emerald Avatar or False Jericho. What did it matter if their Galaxy was deleted?
Cali walked onto a bridge that crossed the Shiawassee River and leaned on the guardrail, looking down at the shallow water below.
She thought back to that game of Stellaris she played earlier today. Using her brain implant, she did the math quickly.
A typical game of Stellaris would last for about 500 years. Some 20 generations of Alari would live during that timespan. But she knew in her own galaxy, there were long-lived species like the Blorg and Andari. Theoretically, it was possible for someone who was “alive” when the galaxy was created could still be around when it died.
Again… the thought of “being deleted” came to the forefront of Cali’s mind. Blake was trying so hard to return Cali to her own galaxy. To her file in the computer. Someday, that file would be deleted, or corrupted. Or perhaps the drive holding it may fail. No matter what, this place, the real world, would outlive Cali’s galaxy by untold billions of years. If Cali was so unfortunate, she could live to witness the moment her universe was silenced forever. A sense of existential fear was building up in Cali’s heart.
Did she really want to go home?
A red car pulled off the road and parked in a driveway. Blake and J.D. emerged and spotted Cali. They waved, but did not approach. The three looked at each other for a few minutes, then Cali slowly started to walk toward Blake and J.D. Blake raised his hands to chest height.
“I know you’re frightened.” Blake said. “Honestly, once I thought about it, the way you reacted makes sense.”
“How’d you know I was here?” Cali asked.
“You read The Last Heroes.” Blake said. “I guessed you’d try to go to one of the Michigan locales from The Last Heroes, to see if anything from that story was real. The Shiawassee Library was just the closest one. I really didn’t expect you to just walk all the way to Detroit or Muskegon or Alpena.”
“You knew?” Cali asked. “I honestly thought you didn’t notice.”
“You hit the ‘dislike’ button on Chapter 34. I got a notification.” Blake said. “Come on, let’s go home. You can tell me exactly what you don’t like about that chapter over dinner.”
Cali hesitated.
“You’re not going to delete my galaxy, are you?” She blurted out.
“No, I’m not.” Blake replied. “But you’re also looking at this whole thing from the wrong point of view. Like I said. We’ll get dinner, and I’ll explain.”
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