I found I could feel sad. It was a distant, scratchy sensation, but there. Sprocket’s real name was Dylan, and he hadn’t been quite twelve when I joined the guild, and he’d grown from a funny, eager kid to a brash, faux-confident…kid, and even if he’d been in a politer phase, he hadn’t been strong at the lan parts of the game
Not wanting to grade the survival chances of all the people I’d ever known, I buried myself in a coat and went outside to the pale pastels of an unseasonably cold dawn.
The road felt soap bubble light beneath my feet, and I thought not about my guild, but all the people who had never played Dream Speed. Those who would most appreciate the fantasy of benevolent support offered by The Synergis were least likely to have had a steady internet connection, a GDG cowl, or even somewhere safe to sleep. They would all die now, gamers and non-gamers, all but the tiny percentage who would survive the fall, and the infinitesimally smaller number who, unknowing, had played for their lives and won.
Won.
Beating the System Challenge would have been the hollowest of victories. Just content to keep us occupied while the Cycogs observed how we behaved, making no difference to what happened next. Perhaps I felt so disconnected because I still couldn’t rid myself of the conviction that coming first would have made a difference, that there had existed some way to save us all, and I’d failed to find it. I hadn’t even yelled at Dio, or tried to change ter mind. Change the future, undo ter species' creation, sacrifice everything for the Bios of the past, instead of the ones te knew.
The world had grown lighter around me, but still had not thrown off shadow beneath the pearling sky. Ahead I could see the shape of my Oma’s house, and I wondered if I was walking there, for a moment of reconciliation that would be some sort of achievement to balance out devastation.
Where did Oma stand against the Cycog’s criteria? I would never associate her gruff resolution with polite, but her curt nods and grim reserve had at their core a system of stripped-back courtesy. I liked the idea of her striding regally through The Synergis. I walked past her house.
Overhead, white lines made truth of doom. Three, no four, arcing almost horizontal. More behind me. Dio hadn’t lied. Life as we know it ceases to be.
The sky was falling.
The road no longer felt like soap bubbles. Legs heavy, I crossed a stile onto what had once been my family’s farm, and followed the fence line to an old stone bench that had sat outside a shed that no longer existed.
I’d wanted to win. I’d been ready to save everyone. But Dream Speed was an MMO, designed to keep people occupied. There never had been a way to win. The point had simply been to play.
To be a Chocobo.
A canary.
To be saved.