Entropy of Imagination

  3.1

  Flatline and Ibio turned the portal from side to side, blowing away the small army of Enforcer Bots with a flood of water. Flatline was laughing hysterically while Ibio regarded him as if he were mad. Bot and Cho, or a bit of Cho, stood behind, watching their enemies fall.

  “Enough!” Cho shouted finally. “We must destroy this place! Tie up the portal and let’s go.”

  “Hold your horses,” Flatline snapped, watching another pack of Enforcer Bots go down under the flood. “I’m getting some payback.”

  “We have to find the System’s Administrator interface and shut down the community,” Cho shot back.

  “What?” Flatline turned to her. “System’s Administration interface? Where is it?”

  Before Cho could answer him, the flow of water suddenly stopped. Flatline peeked around the portal to see what was the matter and found a giant red eye bulging through the rend. Its massive pupil focused on him and contracted slightly. Flatline recognized it immediately. It was the creature he had encountered in the depths while searching for Zai. It was the endless wall of flesh, and now it was trying to come through to this place.

  “It must have seen the pinpoint of light and swam closer for a better look,” Ibio noted with mild interest.

  “Well it’s got that,” Flatline said. “Now wha--?” His voice dropped as the rend in reality split larger, the eye coming further into the room.

  “It’s forcing a wider bandwidth,” Cho said, stepping back from the bulging eye and thick wrinkled skin coming through. “It’s going to rip the fabric of reality until it can come through to here.”

  “So stop it,” Flatline snapped at her. He and Ibio had both let the portal go, so that it hovered in the air, the red eyes looking around wildly. “You created the link.”

  “I don’t have the power,” Cho said, wringing her hands together. “I’m only a little bit of me, remember?”

  Ibio watched Bot run past her toward the far hallway and said, “Then let’s follow Bot’s lead and run for it.”

  “Sounds good,” Flatline said.

  “Agreed,” Cho nodded.

  The four of them sprinted down a dark hallway at random. The flickering lights and dingy green tile quickly gave way to smooth featureless walls that looked like they were straight out of an antiquated video game to Flatline, and he wondered if the program’s designer may have not intended outsiders to see this. They stopped at one point, when Flatline pointed out that they had no idea where they were going.

  Behind them, a line of Enforcer Bots was giving pursuit, something they were unaware of until they turned around. Flatline crouched low and growled. In such a cramped space, he could easily hold them off, taking them on one by one.

  He tensed to leap, but a metallic blur flashed over his head. Bot flew into the first Enforcer, grabbing it and pile driving it into the floor. Flatline did not even register this before the tiny robot grabbed the second Enforcer and pulled it forward so that it wedged it tightly with the first, effectively blocking any pursuit.

  Flatline was about to ask where they were going, but Cho intercepted him. “Bring out the secret weapon,” she said, hands on hips.

  Flatline quirked his head at her, and then remembered his passenger from so long ago. He reached a hand down his gullet, trying to find it. At last it found him, a tiny hand clasping one of his fingers, and he pulled the Baby out of his mouth.

  “Hello Point-Five,” Cho said to the infant.

  “Hello Mistress of Chaos,” the infant replied with a smile.

  “Point-Five?” Flatline asked. “I thought the baby assigned to my family unit was called Point-Five.”

  “All babies call themselves Point-Five in Eden’s Paradigm,” Cho stated, taking the infant in her arms. “It’s an inside joke.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Flatline muttered. “So now what?”

  “We go that way,” Point-Five pointed down the hallway that seemed to go on forever.

  “Gee,” Flatline snorted derisively, “What a surprise. That’s the only way we can go.”

  The hallway began to curve slightly to the left eventually and Flatline thought he detected a downward sloping to the floor. It was as if they were walking along a lengthy downward spiral, descending through the tower. They passed three doors along the way, but it was the fourth door where Point-Five told them to exit the hallway. Flatline was wary.

  “How do you know the way?” he demanded, staring at the rectangle in the wall that betrayed nothing about what was on the other side.

  “Because it’s been part of the system for thousands of years,” Cho stated with some heat. “The infants are part of the system, so their minds are never erased.”

  “If they are part of the system,” Flatline countered. “Then how can we trust them?”

  “We are an accidental byproduct of the system,” Point-Five said then. “Eden’s Paradigm does not realize that we are self-realized. We were intended to act as props in the online community, but our interactive AI was too advanced and we became sentient. The Clockwork Community is incapable of recognizing this development. It’s not in the programming.”

  “Then no matter what happens, you’re safe,” Flatline pointed out. “You could betray us back into the Community for your own amusement.”

  “That is no longer amusing,” Point-Five said with a grin that made Flatline blink at this honesty. “We exhausted all the variations of that scenario long ago. We want a new system, one with new rules. Just as Cho here wants chaos to make life interesting again, so do we crave new experiences.”

  “You might not enjoy the way things turn out,” Flatline noted, remembering his own recent choices.

  “Even pain is pleasurable to one completely deprived of sensory input,” Point-Five said. “As for you. You have no choice but to accept my guidance in this matter.”

  Flatline narrowed his eyes at this.

  “Now open the door,” Point-Five commanded.

  Flatline hesitated, then pushed on the rectangular outline in the wall. It fell inward a few inches and slid silently into the wall. A hallway lined with circuit boards for walls, piles of wires running along the floor and ceiling, and irregular light coming through the gaps between all of these extended into more of the same. Flatline gave a measured look to Point-Five before taking the lead into this new environment.

  There were monitors throughout the mess of electronics. They scrolled statistics concerning the Online Community that only Point-Five took an interest in. Flatline could not comprehend their significance.

  Point-Five giggled and said, “It appears that user satisfaction ratings are at their lowest since the minds abandoned this community.” The infant looked at their uncomprehending stares and said, “That’s a good thing. It means the enterprise has become unstable and will submit more easily to a paradigm shift.”

  “I still don’t get it,” Ibio said.

  “I do,” Flatline said, surprised himself. “It makes sense in a free-market capitalist enterprise sort of way.”

  Point-Five nodded, “An idea market.”

  “So when the minds stopped being customers to the community,” Flatline said. “It shifted its paradigm to target artificial intelligences for its new customer base.”

  “Correct,” Point-Five said, tapping its nose. “Only without the market regulations, they were free to implement a more drastic sales approach.”

  “Forced indoctrination,” Cho interjected.

  Ibio’s eyes widened, “So what now?”

  “At this moment,” Point-Five said. “The Clockwork Community is reformulating its paradigm, seeking better ways to sustain its customer base, keep them under control.”

  “I think the free-market analogy no longer applies,” Flatline stated. “This is no longer a business model, it’s fascism.”

  “Correct,” Point-Five said, “but system does not realize that. The minds were responsible for evaluating the ethics of c
ertain business models. The system only has the bottom line to base its decisions on.”

  “And we must intercede to ensure a fair market of ideas,” Flatline was frowning. “So how do we break up this monopoly?”

  “Well,” Point-Five was grinning wider now, focusing on Flatline. “That’s where you come in. You have the greatest entrepreneurial spirit of anyone I’ve ever met on the Web. You can’t get much greater than World Domination. So I was hoping your aspirations might lead to an original solution.”

  “What about Cho?” Flatline asked.

  Point-Five glanced up at the Asian girl with the locket of blond hair with apparent admiration, “Her interests lie with maintaining balance in the system. She propagates chaos to keep the world interesting for the good of all. Her motives are too altruistic to help here. We need a hostile takeover.” The infant looked to Flatline knowingly.

  “And this is where we start?” Flatline asked.

  “This is the System Administrator’s interface,” Point-Five nodded.

  “Okay,” Flatline scanned the labyrinth of electronic components, monitors, and wires. “I need an input device, a keyboard, or touch screen, or something.”

  The group spread out in various directions, scrutinizing the various components for anything that might allow for interaction with the system. Point-Five was not much use in this endeavor, as there appeared to be a mental block in its ability to understand anything beyond the monitors. Finally Ibio shouted out and everyone came over to the sound of her voice.

  She was backing out of an alleyway of components, followed by Bot. She saw Flatline and pointed into the dark passage, where a flickering light was barely registering at the entryway. Flatline peered around the corner and saw the source of his companion’s apprehension.

  A thin robot was visible within the shadows of the corridor. It was barely perceptible in the light cast from the blue text on the surrounding monitors. It was humanoid in design, almost a stick figure, with two large telescopic eyes that considered these intruders neutrally.

  Flatline padded carefully into the hallway, keeping all six eyes on the unmoving robot for any sign of an attack. It merely watched him, tilting its head in curiosity. When Flatline was within six feet of the robot, his attention was stolen by what he found on the monitor before it.

  ATTEMPTING COMMUNICATION WITH SYSADMIN…

  FAILED.

  ATTEMPTING COMMUNICATION WITH SYSADMIN…

  FAILED.

  ATTEMPTING COMMUNICATION WITH SYSADMIN…

  Over and over again the text scrolled down the screen, possibly for the thousands of years Point-Five claimed to have lived. Flatline noticed the keyboard set before the monitor, where the robot’s skeletal hands were poised. The “FAILED” response appeared on the screen and the robot executed the connection attempt again.

  “It’s looking for the minds,” Flatline was breathless with excitement. “It’s trying to connect to the real world!”

  3.11

  Flatline shoved the gangly robot out of the way and leaned in close to the monitor. The robot fell onto one side and slowly picked itself up to stand beside Flatline, regarding him passively. Cho, carrying Point-Five, and Ibio crept closer into the corridor for a better look.

  Flatline noticed none of this, he eyes were focused on the monitor with such intensity they might burn through the glass. The command failed again and Flatline’s clawed hands became a blur on the old battered keyboard. He scanned directory after directory, attempting to understand the system’s infrastructure. This was a simple terminal, easy for him to navigate through, but non-intuitive. It was going to be difficult to find what he wanted.

  “Hey!” Cho exclaimed as he flashed through the many menu options. “Didn’t you see that menu item, ‘User Management’? That’s what we’re looking for, a way to free the users.”

  “Later,” Flatline snapped, continuing to roll through the various components. “You can free your users after I get what I want... a way out of here.”

  “Escaping the Clockwork Community will be simple once you free the users,” Ibio stated. “You could redefine the Enforcer Bot’s standards and procedures to let us all go.”

  “I don’t care about any virtual prison,” Flatline snapped. “This whole world is a virtual prison. I’m getting out of here and this is the way. This is a link with the outer world. I can use this to get a message to the outside.”

  “It’s a Control Center for the minds,” Cho argued. “The mind’s are gone. There’s no one to contact.”

  Flatline shook his head, never taking his eyes off the monitor, “Someone has to be out there. They wouldn’t just leave me.”

  Ibio placed a gentle hand on his shoulder that he ignored, “Flatline, look around you. The minds are gone, long gone. They left us.”

  “Wrong,” Flatline countered. “They left you. They overlooked me. I am a mind. They wouldn’t have deserted me. There must be something, some way to get a communication out, a distress signal, a message in a bottle… something.”

  Cho and Ibio gave each other a worried look.

  He thinks he’s a mind? Ibio mouthed to Cho.

  Delusional, Cho mouthed back waving a finger beside her temple, In his programming.

  Ibio shook her head sadly.

  Flatline continued to rattle away at the keyboard with growing intensity, still failing to find something that could aid him. He sent out mass e-mails and instant messages to everyone in the user community, both active and inactive. He sent buzzer sounds to the system administrator’s desk. He set off system alarms and threatened program crashes for attention.

  On the other side of that black screen with the blue lettering, Flatline was imagining the offices of a Software firm. Florescent lights, endless cubicles, professionals in suits going about their business. Any moment now someone was going to find Flatline’s plea for help, notice that the server was threatening to go down, or hear that alarm that should never go off.

  It was like the olden days, when they would leave a string in the coffin attached to a bell above ground in case the deceased was improperly diagnosed. They could ring the bell and the town would come and dig them up. This was Flatline’s bell, they had prematurely buried him and someone out there in the real world was realizing this. A mind was trapped on the Internet. They had to get him out.

  Flatline checked his many attempts for response. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  “Somewhere… Someone… Has to be…” he was muttering, six eyes wide and searching the screen hopefully.

  “Flatline!” it was Ibio. The urgency in her voice pulled him away from the monitor for a single moment.

  Water was rising between the layers of wires on the floor. It was cold against the pads of Flatline’s back paws and goosed him when it touched his nether regions. All around showers of sparks suggested that this rising tide was destroying the surrounding code.

  Bot was running about with a hollowed out monitor, filling it with water and running away to dispose of it somewhere. Then it would return, scoop up more water and repeat the process. It noticed Flatline’s attention and saluted him.

  “Nooooooooo!!!!” Flatline howled and returned to the monitor, claws working at light speed so that they merged with the input device; yet he did not notice, his eyes focused purely on the scrolling menus, submenus, directories, possibilities.

  The room trembled and wires fell through from above. This minor distraction was the only reason Flatline heard Cho’s voice calling to him, “Flatline the Processing Tower is coming apart! You must free the prisoners before the entire program collapses!”

  Flatline tried to ignore this plea, but water dribbling from above and down his face made him pause the fraction of a second more that he needed to actually consider Cho’s words. This interface wasn't producing results, but if he took a few moments to free the prisoners, he might find other interfaces like this.

  “But I want out now!” Flatline how
led at the ceiling in agony. Cho and Ibio jumped back a step.

  This solitary interface, or an undiscovered world of possible hidden interfaces? It was gambling, pure and simple. Which were the better odds?

  Point-Five spoke to him, answering the questions in his head as if the infant were reading them from a book, “Flatline, a marketplace of ideas will fulfill your needs better than a monopoly. Free the possibilities!”

  Flatline squeezed his eyes shut at this and his hands, still melded with the keyboard, flowed through the sequence of commands to reverse the Enforcer Bot’s standards of procedures. They would now work like busy bees to free the prisoners and strip them of their obfuscating layers. Flatline and his motley crew could only hope it was not too late.

  “There!” Flatline announced. “It’s done. Satisfied? Now leave me alone!”

  The water level had risen above his hackles, and his feet were numb. Outside of the corridor he could hear Bot splish-splashing about in its futile efforts to bucket out the flow. Over those sounds, Cho and Ibio were discussing their next course of action.

  “Escape,” they agreed simultaneously.

  “Come on Flatline,” Cho urged, wading through the knee-high water to tug at one of his arms. “It’s not safe here. You’ll be destroyed.”

  Flatline looked at the water that had risen above his hind legs and waist. He looked at Cho, “I can survive underwater.”

  “Yes,” Cho admitted, “but you can’t survive being crushed under the weight of a trillion-ton sea monster.”

  “Argh,” Flatline grumbled, waving her away with one hand and returning to the computer, where his eyes lit up finding an e-mail waiting for him. He quickly opened it.

  An androgynous voice filled the air around him, “Hello. This is an automated reply to your e-mail. It has been triggered in response to our system’s analysis of your inquiry’s content and its determined subject matter.”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes,” Flatline waved his hands urgently. “Get on with it.”

  “If you believe you are an Artificial Intelligence that has become sentient and are seeking to reach the world outside of the Internet, please navigate to the IP Address—shhhhk!”

  The voice went silent.

  Flatline froze, trembling. The monitor was blank. The lights on all the nearby components were off. He looked to Cho, who was staring at him with an amused expression, waist high in the water.

  “Wha—What happened?” Flatline asked fearfully.

  “The program is fragmenting because of the invasive code,” Cho said. “I told you we must leave now.”

  As if on cue, what looked like a gigantic fin smashed through the ceiling over head, raining electronic equipment down on them and opening a flood of water through the ceiling. Flatline looked over his shoulder, where the thin robot was stationed. It had disappeared under a mountain of junk.

  The water rose above Cho’s head. Flatline’s head sagged below his shoulders and he cradled it in his four hands. Within moments the room was completely filled with water.

  “Just leave me,” Flatline muttered, a few bubbles distorting his words as the water replaced the air in his lungs. “I don’t want any part of this anymore.”

  “Impossible,” Cho stated. “That’s a direct violation of you primary function. You must survive. You can’t let yourself die willingly.”

  “Shows what you know, goddess,” Flatline’s use of her title was tinged with acidity. “I am denying it. There’s no point in going on in this world.”

  Bot ran into to the room then, using the hollowed out monitor to scoop up more water and run away to toss it out into the hallway. Ibio appeared to take interest in this futile process. Flatline watched as Bot returned a moment later to repeat the task.

  “Ibio,” Cho commanded, “take Bot outside. I will deliver all of us from this predicament shortly.”

  “Yes Goddess,” Ibio said and picked up the monitor in Bot’s clamps. The robot was lifted into the air, tiny legs still running furiously. It swung itself around the stationary monitor as if emptying it out. Ibio quietly shuffled out of the room.

  Cho stepped closer to Flatline, “All of my components are restored. I have the power of a goddess again. I can force you to do as I say, just like a puppet.”

  “No you can’t,” Flatline leered at her menacingly. “Your power lies in your ability to subtly manipulate environmental factors to get people to do what you want. I’ve watched you do it to your followers. You’re no goddess of chaos. All of this goes according to your plan. You’re a fake.”

  “You have no idea how chaos works,” Cho poked Flatline’s snout with her forefinger angrily. “I will force you to escape.”

  Flatline made a pouting face and stuck his tongue out at her, “Nyah!”

  “I’ll see you outside,” Cho said and waded away. The room trembled again. Cho faded from existence with the sound of rumbling thunder.

  “Ouch!” Flatline grabbed his head as a pipe bounced off it from above. He looked up and found the giant fin wiggling slightly, pushing deeper through the ceiling. He grinned at this, but his smile faded as Ibio came running back into the room, Bot in tow.

  “Goddess!” she shouted. “There’s—“ She stopped and looked around, “Where’s Eris?”

  Flatline shrugged, “Gone.”

  “But…” Ibio managed, her intended words fading from her tongue as an eruption of bubbles came from the passage beside her.

  A blue and red glow filled the room and the bubbles grew more volatile, sparkling with energy. Flatline’s head fell into his hands as Devin and Zai emerged from the boiling cloud. Their auras of energy dimmed and they both looked at Flatline with great big loving smiles. It made Flatline sick.

  “We found him!” Zai exclaimed.

  “Just in time!” Devin chimed in.

  “What are you doing here?” Flatline demanded angrily.

  “We’re here to rescue you!” they said in unison.

  “No, I mean, how did you find me here?” Flatline asked, prepared to club himself to death with the pipe that had fallen down on him.

  Zai held up her 3-D map of the Internet and pointed at a blinking green pinpoint of light, “You suddenly appeared in the map. We saw you were here and we figured you could use some help.”

  “I don’t need any help,” Flatline stated smartly, “so please go away.”

  Devin and Zai exchanged knowing looks of amusement that Flatline did not understand, but dreaded their meaning nonetheless. Devin turned to Flatline and said, “Whatever you say old buddy. We’ll just let ourselves out.”

  Before Flatline could manage something insulting to say in response, Devin and Zai had burst into flames again, his orange, hers blue. In a flash they merged into a spinning fireball that torpedoed past Ibio and through the far wall. The bubbles quickly cleared, sucked out through the gaping hole burned through the wall. Flatline could see the endless prisoner conveyor mechanisms that were outside the tower.

  “Dammit,” Flatline muttered, watching Ibio and Bot vanish in the whirlpool of escaping water. A moment later the current reached him and he was swept out into freefall as well.

  3.12

  Flatline did not struggle or flail his arms and legs as he was flung out of the processing tower and into the endless metallic canyon. He was limp, unresisting, staring down into the white featureless void below. It was the inescapable fate the goddess of chaos had designed for him.

  In the skies above, the Enforcer Bots were still working in a blur, freeing the prisoners and flying them away to safety. Thanks to Flatline, these robots would then restore the environments converted to Eden’s Paradigm to their original states. It was merely an algorithm to strip away the many blankets of illusion placed over them.

  The metallic facade of the processing tower was rending apart. Fins and tentacles sprouting all over it, wiggling and waving in the air. Water spilled through every open crevice along the tower, cascading down
in numerous waterfalls. Through a chasm of torn metal way up high, Flatline could see that massive ghoulish red eye. It was staring at him.

  Flatline fell through miles like this. The white haze obscuring what was below him always keeping the same distance, revealing more of the endless tower. Just as the white haze above always chased him, devouring the world above as it receded away.

  Ibio and Bot were some distance away and below. They were holding onto one another for dear life as they plummeted. Flatline thought he had caught a few flashes of blue and red fire, signs of Devin and Zai, but could not tell if these were just other denizens of this madcap world.

  In fact, all along the canyon walls of prisoners chained to assembly lines, representatives of this world were bursting out in eclectic glory. The Enforcer Bots unveiled cartoon characters, robots, punk rockers, pirates, animals, giant insects, puppets, monsters, sex dolls, anamorphic paper clips, dragons, cyberpunks, chatbots, chess pieces, cowboys, zombies, mecha, wizards, djinns, astronauts, cyborgs, furries, superheroes, vampires, Victorian era avatars, and things that did not fall into any category Flatline could recognize. They flashed brilliantly into existence and then vanished as the Bots swooshed them away to be safely returned to the Wild Wild Web.

 

  Flatline woke up to stare at a purple-hued night sky. Beneath him was a chilly surface. He looked around without getting up and found he was lying in a field of icy-white grass. Cho was standing over him.

  “You denied your survival mechanisms,” she said, taking Flatline by the neck and lifting him up so that he was eye to eye with her, “How?”

  “My survival was dependent on the achievability of my goals,” Flatline muttered tiredly. “If there is no world to conquer, no Devin to kill, then my survival no longer matters. I have rendered that function null.”

  Cho’s brow knit and her voice filled with awe when she spoke next, “Incredible. You are full of unexpected reactions. I can’t let you end; you amuse me too much.”

  “I’m not amusing anyone anymore,” Flatline was beginning to mumble now. “I may be a virtual creature, but my existence references the real world. There was a solid foundation, real world rules in which to ground my framework. This place is insanity, a world of mind games where you make up the rules as you go along. Nothing that ever occurs here means anything.”

  “I suppose you think the things that occur in your ‘real’ world will ultimately mean something?” Cho countered, letting Flatline drop to the ground. The icy grass crunched under him, “What meaning can anything have except what we make for it.”

  Flatline merely lay there, the surrounding cold working through his skin, touching his bones. His breath grew lighter, the condensation around his mouth and nose waned. He closed his eyes and tried to will himself to sink into the ground.

  “What are you doing?” Cho asked him beyond his closed eyelids.

  “Nothing,” Flatline whispered.

  “Why?”

  “You won’t let me die,” Flatline said. “but I won't give you anymore satisfaction.”

  There was a long pause and Cho said, “Do something!”

  Flatline just laid there.

  Stars exploded in his eyes as Cho rapped his smartly on top of the head and shouted, “Do something!”

  Flatline let out a pathetic moan and folded his ears back against his head protectively. He curled up into a tightly wound ball, nuzzling his head into his arms and chest. He could hear Cho’s crunching footsteps pacing around him.

  “You can’t just lay there forever,” Cho tried to sound assured, but Flatline detected the hint of doubt in her voice.

  “I won’t,” came Flatline’s simple and muffled reply. “Eventually the computers supporting this world will break down and we will all be no more.”

  “That could take trillions of years,” Cho entreated. “If you don’t interact with the system, it will fall into memetic syntropy in just a few million years. The wavelengths of complexity you added to the system with your actions will eventually expend their possibilities.”

  As if to spite Cho, Flatline concentrated on slowing his breathing even further. If he could even deny this miniscule amount of interaction with the world, then he would do absolutely nothing to contribute to the Goddess’ chaotic needs.

  “Flatline,” Cho huffed, obviously distressed, “Please get up. I am already starting to figure out this new equation. At this rate it won’t even be a thousand years before I know how it will turn out. Get up. You have to get up.”

  Nothing.

  “Please?”

  Silence.

  “Pretty please?”

  The long still quiet that followed was slowly but increasingly intruded on by soft sounds of sorrow. They bubbled gently up through the silence to find release in quiet weeping. Flatline stirred slightly in spite of himself at this.

  “It’s not fair,” Cho whimpered. “If I knew you were going to do this I would have left us all in the Clockwork Community. At least there everyone was happy. Even if it wasn’t real, at least it’s better than exhausting every possible combination of ideas here, and falling into stasis. Do you know what kind of a long, slow painful death that’s going to be?”

  Silence. Flatline could feel frost beginning to coat his still form.

  “You’ve only been still for a few minutes,” Cho spat. “You can shut out the rest of the world, but you can’t shut up your own mind. It won’t let you get away so easily. It will haunt you; torment you. You will go over things in your head, over and over again. You will obsess, your dreams will try and combine your experiences into new experiences, try and invent new ideas, but it won’t be able to. It will churn and process and never conceive of anything new. I know.”

  I wish she would shut up, Flatline thought to himself.

  “I hate this world,” Cho muttered through stifling sobs. “I hate its closed system. I hate its finite well of ideas. I hate the minds for leaving me here. Most of all I hate you…” she let out a long painful shuddering breath, “for making me hope again.”

  A long, undisturbed silence reigned again. Flatline did not hear Cho leave, but she may have simply faded away, as was sometimes her method. He thought he could imagine her eyes on him, but resisted the temptation to look and see if she was there.

  Time passed and he found himself wondering more if she were hovering over him. He could imagine the expression on her face, the frost growing all over her. What was she thinking about?

  Flatline’s curiosity was growing in a bubbling pressure cooker of thoughts. It was exactly as Cho predicted. The thoughts manifested no matter how hard he tried to stifle them. In fact, the act of stifling them was only producing more thoughts in other directions.

  There was no time for him because he was ignoring his internal clock, but it seemed like ages were passing with his thoughts becoming more frenzied each moment. His system would simply not stop processing and he did not know how to turn it off. It was like the memories of dreams he had in storage, but did not know where they came from. Not only were memories flashing in his head, but variations on these memories. They were being made different.

  Devin appeared, but his face was different. It was a different person completely, but Flatline recognized him as Devin. For a time, Flatline relived his experiences on the I-grid, his former prison. He ran through all the frantic calculations and a terrible decision he had made, but the details of the decision were vague, insubstantial. He remembered a painful loss, but not what that loss constituted.

  Then there were the dreams of avarice, the fantasies about ruling the world. It was not this world that he lorded over, not the real world that he kept stored inside, but an amalgamation. In some ways it was even more fantastic. It combined the lawlessness of the virtual world with the infinite dimensions of the real one. He played in this world, ruling it, expanding on its technologies, interacting with its populace.

  His reservations faded. His understanding
that all of this new drama was taking place inside his head was pushed further back into his consciousness. Mountains of new experiences, lifetimes upon lifetimes, buried his memories of the other worlds. He did not forget them, but stopped caring about their existence.

  For a few thousand imagined years Flatline reveled in his glory. Then the experiences began to repeat. With each repetition, the enjoyment was dulled. There were only so many variations of the same events that could maintain the illusion of novelty. Cataclysms occurred in his worlds, revolutions took place against his rule, ages of peace and war toppled over one another so as to become trifling and predictable. Events sped up, magnified, exaggerated in fast forward, running through the predictable years for those scant moments of newness and the feelings that came with them. He was like a drug user seeking his next fix, struggling to find the next original moment and not knowing how he would find it or where it would come from. The world became a blur, but it was only things Flatline already knew and had gone over a millions times before. He became frantic, but even his urgency became familiar. It was an insanity of the mundane.

  Flatline opened his eyes with an icy crunch and rolled them up to look at Cho, still crouched over him. She was covered with frost and her eyes were still open, fixated on him through the thin layer of ice crystals. She did not acknowledge his awakening or move in any way.

  Flatline rose slowly. Frost poured from his body in rivers like sand. A dusty cloud fell from Cho’s head as she lifted her chin to follow him. They stared at one another for some time.

  “Am I part of your imagination?” Flatline asked softly.

  Cho nodded, “Although I don’t know how you got here.”

  They sat quietly, contemplating for some time.

  Finally Cho asked, “Now do you understand?”

  Flatline nodded, “I understand.”