“And what?” the reflection asks.
All that comes to him is, “You’re not broken.”
James sees it ever so slightly, but it’s there. A small smile appears in the glass. He waits to see if the conversation will continue, but the Scry doesn’t say anything else.
It takes them less than a day to arrive at the entrance of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. Per James, the structure acts as a back-up channel between Virginia and Delaware. James brings the Cadillac to a stop, and Matilda looks down the road which disappears into the dark blue of the structure. Ever since the storm, she’s felt her mood deteriorating. More and more, she’s been retreating into herself. James has tried his best to talk to her, but it’s difficult to break years of intentional, systematic, standoffish behavior.
Sighing, she eats a piece of her candy bar, hoping that the pleasant taste will improve her disposition. It doesn’t. Stepping out of the car, she tries to play it cool. Despite what she’s feeling, she’ll do her best not to show it.
“So, they call this Devil’s Cross, huh? Is it because it’s Route 13? If so, that’s kinda lame.”
James inspect the surrounding area. “Uh-huh.” Paying attention to the wheel marks on the ground, he walks over to a sign. “There’s another reason for it as well.”
Matilda leans on the car, watching the Taciturn study the sign. While he examines it closely, she chews on another piece of chocolate. Demonic caricatures, slogans, and warnings are spray-painted on almost every available surface around the tunnel. Matilda tries to make sense of them, but they read more like the ramblings of the insane. Matilda is just about to get back into the car when James calls to her from where he stands.
“Come here, I want to show you something.”
Matilda pushes her hands into her pockets to keep them warm, and heads over to James. Standing by the sign, James pulls out a silver dollar and flips it a couple times in his hand.
“Heads or tails?” he asks, turning to her.
Matilda gives him the eyebrows. “Come again?”
James returns her expression with just the faintest smile. “You heard me, heads or tails?”
Matilda looks around the tunnel, trying to see if there’s something she’s missing.
“You said this Hank friend of yours was losing his mind, right? Are we close enough so that shit is contagious or something?”
Taciturn lets out a laugh that surprises her.
“Okay, though – seriously. Heads or Tails? Lucius or Chesapeake?” Stepping forward, he flips the coin in the air and catches it as it comes back down, smacking it flat to his wrist, covered by the hand that flipped it. “Come on, pick one.”
Matilda surrenders to the idiocy of the moment.
“Fine, tails, but I saw how it landed, so I don’t…”
Taciturn lifts his hand to reveal no coin at all. His wrist is completely empty.
“In this place, you must remember that Hank wrote the logic, or lack thereof, for everything.”
Matilda scowls at his wrist, devoid of any coin-face, heads or tails. “I bet you’re great at parties. So, what you’re saying is, we walk through the tunnel and he’s going to take all of our money.”
James turns and points to the tunnel with its two deviating paths – one to the left, one to the right.
“This is the only way to the Delaware Spire. You asked why people call it Devil’s Cross, it’s because it’s a 50/50 shot to make it through. You must choose between Chesapeake Bay Bridge and the Lucius J Kellam. Make the wrong choice, and you’ll be lost forever in procedurally-generated roads.”
Matilda looks from his bare wrist to the tunnel to James’ face and back to the tunnel.
“You’re going insane, aren’t you? Oh, God – is it going to happen to me, too?”
The Taciturn walks over to the sign, wipes the mud and rain off it, and reveals a message: Choose your toll, if you are bold.
He gestures to the sign with his thumb. “He’s completely nuts.”
Matilda’s frustration is only surpassed by James’ cavalier attitude.
“That doesn’t even rhyme. So, what are you suggesting we do? Just roll the dice and hope for the best? And why the hell are you still smiling?”
James turns his attention back to the sign. “I’d prefer to play the man, rather than play the odds.”
Taciturn takes another silver dollar from his pocket and approaches the toll-booth boxes. Matilda watches as James tosses the coin in the right-hand coin-hopper. Satisfied with his decision, James walks back to the car.
Passing Matilda, he asks, “Do you believe in unicorns? I didn’t, before today – but I guess you can’t be sure of anything in the Cyberside, right?”
Completely baffled, Matilda approaches the sign that James had been examining so closely. Among the grime, general profanity, and colorful illustrations, one particular bit of graffiti stands out amongst all the others. It’s a cartoonish, pink unicorn with a text bubble that reads: Remember, always keep to the right, T.
Confused and tired, Matilda throws her hands up in the air, “I give up.” She follows him to the car.
Settling back in her seat, Matilda buckles herself in. “Just wake me up when I can start stabbing something.”
As the car approaches the roadblock on the right, the gate rises. She closes her eyes as their car is enveloped in the blue darkness of the tunnel.
Chapter 14: “The Spire”
Their car emerges from the tunnel onto a coastal highway that curves around a massive body of water. Created after the deactivation of the Maryland servers, this dark, murky inland sea was the System’s replacement for an entire state. The unnatural, unsettling nature of the landscape is accentuated by a large structure towering in the distance. A man-made mountain of buildings, spires, and arches rises from the ground and forms a gargantuan, tangled mess that dominates the horizon– Hank Brown’s domain.
Even from this distance, Hank’s golden palace glitters and shines at the summit, an ornate crown supported and surrounded by the massed clusters of smaller, luxurious homes forming the cluttered slopes beneath it. Moving down the Spire, each level becomes a little less lavish than the tier above it, eventually expanding into widespread squalor at the lower levels and finally devolving into a vast, sprawling shantytown at the base.
As their car draws ever closer to the massive assembly, both James and Matilda can see the mountain moving. Layers and buildings shift like segments of a living organism, or intricate pieces of slow, titanic machinery.
The words come against James’s will. “My God, Hank. What have you done?”
Matilda, equally dumbstruck, speaks in a small voice. “Oh, shit. That’s where we need to go?”
James brings the car to a stop. For a moment, they silently regard the monstrosity eating up the horizon.
“Hank finally did it. He created the Platform to end all platforms.”
Unable to take her eyes off the structure, Matilda asks, “Can I get a straight answer for once?”
James reflects on a time well before the Cyberside.
“Back at the turn of the century, platforms took a huge step forward. I mean, they were always around, but that was when they really took off. Big companies would invest to essentially build their own highly-controlled, online ecosystems. Each was a place to attract people, and their wallets, where companies could provide all their content in a centralized location. It became a standard business practice, but it limited content distribution.”