Saga (15 page)

We understand! We have been saved by the personal attachment of this human to some particular individual or individuals already in Our grasp. She wants them cured so that she can then kill Us and not suffer the loss of that person. Fortunately human beings are not utilitarian about their moral decisions, but intensely personal and self-interested. She has just failed the majority of her people and all will suffer because she could not let go of someone close to her.

“No. Since you cannot kill Us without great loss to your people, you have nothing to bargain with. So, just do as We instruct.”

The chase for Michelotto is cold. We will have to begin a review of Our security; he is potentially the greater threat to Us now that this human has resolved not to strike.

We stare at each other. The pathetic figure We see reflected in her eyes embarrasses Us, and We straighten up, restoring Our regal demeanor. After a long time, which We would prefer to spend elsewhere, she drops the point of her rapier.

“True. I cannot say or do anything to make you change your mind. For now. But I will find something to bargain with.”

“We think not,” We reply coldly and sweep from the room, a model of pride and dignity. We instruct the lasers to attempt to destroy her once more. Just in case.

Normally clipping up
to Cindella was a joy, but now the opposite was true; it was unclipping from the dark world of Saga that brought Erik a sense of happiness and relief. Yet the pleasure of escaping from the sinister Dark Queen was tainted, even here, in his home village. For if what she had said was true, they were all in great danger. Was this why B.E. hadn’t been around all week? A growing fear had Erik hurry from his house along the cart path toward the home of his friend.

Even before Erik entered B.E.’s house, he knew something was wrong. Washing hung on the line, soaked through with the fine drizzle that had been drifting across the olive fields all morning. The white sheets had turned gray and were sagging heavily.

There was no answer to his knock at the door, so Erik lifted the latch and went inside. An odor of decay caused him to halt, and he winced involuntarily; something in the kitchen had gone off.

“B.E.?” Erik shouted. “Are you there?”

A glance into the front room showed the same disturbing signs of decay. Unwashed plates lay on the table; clothes were strewn on the arms and backs of the chairs. How long had they all been gone? Disheartened, Erik was about to leave and make his way home when he heard a noise from above him.

“B.E.?” he shouted again, and then made his way upstairs.

Erik approached B.E.’s room with some hesitation. The door was partly open, so he pushed it farther, in order to see. The window was shuttered and it was dark, but there was no doubt about the figure slouched over a table: it was B.E. The reason why he had not responded to Erik’s shouts was that he was clipped up to his console: ears, eyes, and hands. B.E. was hardly moving, his head resting on his arms, but sometimes he would mutter and his body would give a twitch.

With a slight feeling that entering the room was disrespectful, Erik nevertheless went in and tapped B.E. on the shoulder. When that elicited no response, he took B.E. by the upper arm and shook him, gently at first, then harder. A violent spasm brought B.E. erect and caused Erik to step back. But now B.E. was unclipping. Erik felt relieved, only to stiffen again as his gaze met the red, weeping eyes of his friend.

“Erik, it’s you. What day is it?”

“Day? You don’t know what day it is?”

“No. Just a minute. I have to go to the bathroom.” B.E. got up hurriedly and lurched unsteadily out of the room. As he did so, Erik was appalled to see how thin and emaciated B.E.’s body had become.

When B.E. returned, he looked a little refreshed, although his red-rimmed eyes shocked Erik every time they exchanged glances.

“What’s happening, B.E.? Where’s your family?”

“Gone to Hope to the public consoles. Sharing this one was driving us all crazy. Literally.”

“Look at you. You’re sick.”

“Yes, I am. You’ve no idea. I’m finished, Erik. The game, it’s destroying me, and I can’t stop.”

“So it’s true.” Erik moved and sat on the edge of an unmade bed, as disheartened as B.E.

“What’s true?”

“The new game. It is poisoning us.”

“Yes, it is the game. Saga.” B.E. looked at Erik, who just bowed his head. “I was enjoying myself at first, but then something happened. I found I couldn’t leave it alone. I’d wake up and the first thing that I wanted to do was clip up. I’d hate it when someone else was using the console, get really angry with them; really angry, like I wished they would just go away and leave me alone with it. When I realized the game was turning me into a horrible person, I tried to stop. I thought I was a strong person, but I’m not; I’m weak. The game won. I couldn’t stay away from it. My dreams were full of it. I’d find myself making excuses for clipping up, especially in the early hours when everyone was asleep. Have you ever truly, deeply, promised yourself something, then broken that promise?”

B.E. stared at Erik, and the pain on his face was visible. Erik shook his head.

“Well, I have, and it has shattered my self-belief. I’m not the B.E. you knew, Erik. I’m a wreck. I told myself, from the very bottom of my heart, I had to stop. But I didn’t stop. At one point, I took the console and was going to throw it out the window, but I couldn’t. Deep inside, I knew that I would then have to go to someone else’s, yours maybe, or maybe all the way to Hope. I caved in, Erik. I’m beaten. And now it’s destroying me but I can’t give it up.” B.E. was crying from his sore eyes. “My parents and my sister, it’s got them, too.”

“It’s not your fault.” Erik spoke softly, a tremble of fear in his voice. How powerful was the Dark Queen, that she could reduce B.E., the strongest, cockiest of his friends, to this?

“What do you mean?” B.E. flung himself on the bed, lying facedown beside Erik. He turned his head. “You know what’s causing this?”

“Yes. The people in the game. Some of them, maybe just one, the Dark Queen, have been poisoning us. To make us obey them.”

“Bloody vengeance! It’s working. I would do anything to make it stop. But that’s something, at least.”

“What?”

“My failure. It’s not just me, right? There are lots of us feeling this?”

“I think so, but we’d have to go to Hope to be sure. Bjorn and the others are fine, last I knew.”

“What does the Dark Queen want?”

“For us to reprogram the game. To make her children immortal.”

They sat for a while in silence, in the dark, Erik resting one hand on B.E.’s shoulder blade, trying, without words, to offer his support.

“But that’s crazy,” B.E. eventually muttered. “Why go to all this trouble? She could just have asked.”

“I know. But she doesn’t trust humans. She’s turning people like you into hostages, to make certain we will obey her.”

B.E. just shook his head in response.

“There’s something else that troubles me.” Erik glanced tentatively at B.E., this time ashamed of himself.

“Go on.”

“I think Saga might be real. I think that the people in it are not NPCs; they are all alive. Most of them don’t even know it’s a game. And if that’s true, I’ve done a terrible thing.”

“I know.”

“You know? You heard about it?”

“No. I just mean I did the same. You killed some of them, right?”

“Yes. A policeman. I stabbed him in the mouth.”

“You didn’t know, Erik. None of us knew.” This time it was B.E. who tried to console Erik. Both of them sat on the bed, looking down, wretched and unhappy.

“So, what shall we do?” Erik asked.

It seemed as though B.E. did not hear him, but then his friend drew a deep breath and sat up.

“We have to give the Dark Queen what she wants, quickly, before everything falls apart. Have you seen the state of our farm? Imagine what’s happening in the towns.”

“I agree. But I don’t trust her. She’s really creepy, like a giant beetle. I mean, of course we’ll do what she wants. But what if she then betrays us?”

“Why would she, if she gets what she wants?” B.E. was plaintive.

“I don’t know. I’m just saying I got a feeling she can’t be trusted. It was in her eyes; they were cold, and laughing at me. I was wondering what would happen if, instead of giving her what she wants, we organized with the other towns to remove Saga from the system right across the world. But it looks as if what she told me is true.”

“What’s that?” B.E. looked at Erik questioningly.

“She said that without the game, those whom she had poisoned would die.”

“Ya. It’s probably true. I’m heading that way now.” B.E. sighed. He glanced at his friend. “Tell me, Erik, you’re in there as Cindella, right? You didn’t need to create a new character when you first logged in?”

“Right. It said something about having the option to keep her because I’d completed Epic. Actually I nearly started a new character, but I have a soft spot for Cin. I’m glad I kept her; all my magic still works, and I think I’m immune to whatever it is the Dark Queen does to poison people. I’m sure she would have tried it on me by now.”

“You don’t feel the need to play all the time?”

“No. In fact, I feel so guilty about that policeman, I’ve pretty much stopped clipping up. It’s too real.”

“You’re so lucky. I’d give anything to trade places with you. . . . I don’t mean I want you where I am now. I wouldn’t wish this torture on anyone.”

B.E. lay down, his face a pale skull in dim light. Soon after, his eyes closed and his breathing slowed. Erik got up carefully and walked out of the room. Downstairs, he first of all got a fire going in the stove, then set about cleaning the kitchen and preparing some hot food for when B.E. woke up. At the same time, he felt a growing anxiety. He must go to Hope and make sure that everyone in the town who was not yet poisoned stayed away from Saga.

“No, I’m alive!”
Milan shouted, waking us all up.

Arnie’s spare room was dull gray with the light of a sun that was not yet up over the horizon. Pale faces peered blearily at Milan. Beyond our window, you could see the rim of a satellite dish on which the local finches liked to gather. They were singing, anticipating the dawn. But all else was still; not even the refuse carts were on the streets, nor could I hear the distant rumbles and sonorous horns of passing locomotives.

“Sorry, everyone. Go back to sleep. It was a nightmare.”

Athena sat up, reaching out of her sleeping bag to find her glasses. She held back her bangs to look at him. “What? What happened?”

“We were all in a hospital, lying inside those plastic tents for critically ill people. Then that Cindella character came past with a whole group of others. They were chatting. As they passed our beds, they flicked a switch and we died. One by one. The power went off, and we died. They weren’t even paying attention.” Milan was still half in the nightmare, and his face had a sickly tinge. He looked back at Athena. “I guess some of what you were saying got through to me.” She nodded.

For a while, no one said anything, and I closed my eyes again. I could never remember my own dreams, just fragments of sound and color, hints of subsiding emotional states and half-familiar scents.

There was a knock on the door.

“All up early today, I hope. We need to talk tactics.”

“Arnie? What time is it?” I shouted back, my irritation clear in the tone of my voice.

“I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that I’ve been up all night and it’s ready!”

If he wanted an enthusiastic response, he should have knocked in the middle of the afternoon.

“I’ll use the bathroom first.” Athena stretched. “I can’t see myself getting back to sleep.”

They stirred themselves, and, even though I turned over, wrapping myself in the hood of my sleeping bag, it was no good.

“Ghost, how can you sleep at a time like this?”

“Like what?” I muttered.

“Like, you know, this might not be real. It just keeps going around and around in my head. The walls, the floor. You, me. It’s all suddenly so insubstantial.” Knowing Milan as I did, I could tell he was genuinely struggling. Normally he was Mr. Affable, too into his role as the boarder hero of the punk scene to let any real feelings show. This was a new Milan, and he sincerely wanted me to respond. So I shook off the vestiges of sleep and woke up properly.

“Were you ever boarding and felt the world slow down?” I asked him. “So slow it ticks over, one instant at a time. And you can almost see what the effects of your moves will be, like ripples. You know, you are so pumped on adrenaline or something, that the world lets you pick your path even when it’s nearly an impossible one?”

“Not really. Maybe it seems a bit slower, sometimes.”

“Well, that’s how the world has always been for me, when I’m riding anyway. I’ve always felt that underneath, it’s not as . . . as continuous . . . it’s kinda lumpy and you can shape it. I’m not explaining myself very well. But the point is, nothing has changed, really. These walls are not going to go away. The physics of our world is exactly as it always has been. It’s just that there’s more going on out there than we ever imagined. Maybe there are many other universes out there.”

“So, why do I suddenly feel that life is pointless?”

“Do you?” I caught his eye.

“Yeah.” He meant it; I could see that. “And I feel angry, too.”

“Who at?”

“The Cindella people, I guess. It’s like, how dare they think they are playing a game with me in it?”

“That’s what Athena was saying last night when you were dancing. She just hated the idea she was in their game,” Nathan joined in.