D_Light tilted his chin up as Smorgeous confirmed that D_Light had indeed made that prayer soon after he fragged Fael. It was only a week ago, although it felt like another life. “It was my destiny to know, to find out about night harvesting?” D_Light asked.
“I wouldn’t call it destiny. I would call it opportunity. The OverSoul is the most powerful entity in human history, but she cannot control fate absolutely.” Hal’s patience was wearing thin.
“But why not just send me straight to Dr. Monsa? Why did Lily need to be involved?”
“You are not the only sentient being served by the OverSoul, D_Light,” the analyst sneered. “My father had a prayer to fulfill too. The demon girl is for him, for reasons not specified in his harvest log.”
“Lily’s coming here was the doctor’s prayer?” D_Light was puzzled even more.
“I said you would have to think, not simply repeat everything I say!” Hal’s voice cracked. “Yes, it was his prayer. Why else would the demon follow a fool like you? Given that my father is interested in her, I suspect she is smarter than that. In her harvest she complied, and in her waking time…No doubt she felt compelled. Intuition, as you humans call it. Although she did not consciously know it, she was being drawn to him.”
“And that was why we got the quest to become demons. Otherwise we would have turned her in. She hitched a ride with us…Dr. Monsa’s prayer hitched a ride on my own,” D_Light murmured.
For the first time, D_Light saw the slightest smile appear on the analyst’s face. “Indeed, efficiency is core to the Game.”
“And this quest, where we hunt down and kill Lily-whose prayer is being answered now?”
CHAPTER 34
When you want something with all of your soul, the entire universe will conspire to procure it.
Hal took as much care as he could stand in answering D_Light’s question. From the harvesting logs it was clear that Djoser and Lyra were the main drivers of the most recent quest. They each had their own emotional reasons-lust and envy, respectively. However, their main motivation was simple logic. Lily was designed to be hunted, and hunting her was consistent with the theme of the MetaGame. Hal decided to tell D_Light this, but he also added a lie.
“Djoser, Lyra, and… you created this quest,” Hal answered.
“No! No, that’s not true!” D_Light sputtered.
“The OverSoul knows us better than we know ourselves,” Hal recited the hymn.
“I have to stop it! I don’t want this!”
“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.