We were all so high, it took a moment or two to come back to reality when the door to my room slid open, letting in harsh blue-white light from the hall outside and revealing the black, black silhouette of my mother standing there in the doorway, looking like one of those dark denizens she was always talking about. She let out a screech, half anger, half fear before leaping into the room amongst us. She started kicking out, kicking the walls, screaming about evil and denizens and lost souls and retribution and all manner of crazy things. The group was sitting around dazed and frightened of being kicked. I pulled myself together and told them to get out quickly. Alicia tried to pull me along with them, but I knew I had to face this thing out. I wouldn’t hit back, but I certainly wasn’t going to run. Not anymore.
When everyone had gone, I damped the walls and turned on the softlights.
Mom had started crying, kneeling on the floor, wringing her hands in her lap. ‘How could you Lyle?’ she whimpered, as if she’d caught me perforating the Plate skin or something.
‘How could you?’ I replied. ‘You had no right to do that. You know that.’
She looked up at me with red eyes. ‘But I have,’ she insisted. ‘Don’t you see? It’s for your own good, Lyle. You’re my son. I have to do what’s right for you. I have to help you. Please, let me help you.’
I shuddered. She looked pathetic huddled there, skinny and unhealthy. If anyone needed help, it was her. I could no longer be angry and squatted down beside her. ‘It’s just a game, Mom, remember? A learning game. It’s something all kids do. It’s how we learn about ourselves, how we face the things inside.’
She snorted thickly and swallowed, wiped her face. ‘No, Lyle. That’s the lie they told you. It’s a conditioning programme. It lets the denizens take you over. You must believe me.’
‘If there are any such things as denizens, then I’ve faced them out,’ I said gently. ‘I vaporised them, made them disappear. That’s the point of playing the games. It makes us strong.’ I tried to make her remember, but it was as if some part of her brain had shut down. She wasn’t really listening, caught on her own reality loop. A very narrow one.
She sniffed again and reached for my arms with wet hands. ‘Lyle,’ she said, very carefully. ‘I want you to come with me. Now. I think you’ll be able to speak to Him yourself if I’m with you. Let me prove to you that what I say is right.’
My first instinct was to pull away. Did she think me so stupid? Of course people had checked the whole thing out. Mindtravellers had not overlooked the fact there might be something in this Alien business. They’d found nothing. There was no evidence other than that existing within the imagination of the converts. An idea entered my head. Perhaps if I went along with her, I could show her how wrong she was, make the real Mom come back. Other people must have tried it, but I had to attempt it myself. ‘Where do you want me to go?’ I asked.
Her face lit up, banishing the pallor of ill-health and fatigue. She squeezed my hands. ‘Baby!’ she said, embracing me so I could feel all her ribs. She kissed my cheek. ‘To the Receiving Room. It’s not far.’ She drew me to my feet. I followed her.
The Receiving Room was a small recreation facility two halls down, annexed to one of the social meet apartments. She took me inside, to a place looking as if a freighter-load of insane primates had been let loose to mark it as their territory. Untidy slogans were daubed upon the walls, console monitors ripped out and disembowelled on the floor, a crude sculpture that looked like a manic foetus enshrined upon the top tier of a monitor rack, draped in circuitry. Anybody could tell that place was a temple to these people. There were a few others sitting down in there, rocking on the floor, singing little repetitive dumb lines to themselves, which would have looked like simple meditation but for their glazed, staring expressions and self-clutching hands. These were the Chosen Ones awaiting their vast, polygamous, alien partner and the doom of Africa Plate. It was a sobering sight. I wished my Dad was with me. Anyone. ‘Sit down,’ my mother whispered eagerly, patting the floor. I sank down warily beside her.
‘So what do I do?’ I asked.
‘Sshh!’ she cautioned, finger to lips. ‘You have to tell Him you believe in Him. Keep telling Him that. Say you know He’s so far above us, that we’re nothing. Say you’re His child and will obey.’
‘All that?’ I hissed, trying not to sound cynical. She gave me a glance
‘That’s just some of it,’ she said.
I sighed. There was only one way to check this thing out. Open up the higher neurocircuits like a receiver (this was a receiving room after all!) and see if I could pick anything up. I knew it could be dangerous because of any negative energy flying around. I know my limitations. In my own scenarios, I call the shots, but I have to be honest with myself, I’m only a kid and this was Big Stuff. I might not be able to handle it. These freaks could get into my head and cripple me. Make me like them. Could I take such a risk? I suppose, deep inside, there was a tiny suspicion it might all be legitimate, no matter what the mindtravellers said they’d deduced. We are encouraged to question things from the time we utter our first squawk in this reality. I had to find out for myself. I started the Breathing, and heard my mother say, ‘Don’t do that’, in a sharp undertone. ‘That’s not the way, Lyle.’
I can Breathe silently too. I did it that way.
There is blackness before my inner eye and then the central spark of my personal consciousness. I make it bloom. Enter it. Grow. Anything out there? Hello? Alien, are you there? Tune in. Forget the creepy humming outside of yourself. See with the inner eye. Learn.
I just enjoy myself for a few minutes tumbling around my personal playground, before getting down to business. Oh yes, yes, there is a black hole out there somewhere, and I have to go into that and find out what’s inside. I become DNA Alchemist because he’s older than me and less scared of things. He sweeps strongly up to the scary place and pops right through it. Now I can see. There is something in there; a massive, crawling thing. It’s lived there for a long time and it’s very hungry. It says, ‘You are mine!’ to everything, so jealous and grasping.
I say, ‘What will you give me?’
And it replies, ‘Freedom’
And I say ‘What’s the price?’
And it says, ‘Obedience.’
‘That’s not freedom,’ I say. ‘Why should I obey you?’
‘Because you’re dead if you don’t!’ the thing answers. ‘Get in line, kid. I run things around here. I made you.’
‘No. We made you,’ I say.
The thing ripples. It’s a cosmic shrug. ‘Whatever. If you insist. It’s still the same. I got the power around here. You’re nothing. I’ll never die.’ It begins to laugh and that’s when I know I have to get out quickly.
DNA Alchemist pulls himself out of that black hole. The thing in there doesn’t know what it is or why it was created. It’ll just keep gobbling up frightened souls forever. I realise it’s a necessary thing in a way, at least part of the natural disorder of our multiverse. That’s a fine deduction. It doesn’t help the situation on Africa Plate.
I opened my eyes to the Receiving Room and my mother was sitting there all breathless and clutching. ‘Did you hear?’ she whispered.
I stood up. ‘Yes,’ I said.
Her face fell when she saw my expression. ‘Well, why aren’t you happy then?’ she asked, confused.
I knew I could not reach her. She had helped revive that old god in there. She wanted what it could give. We were worlds apart. It was sad, but at least I understood more now. ‘I think,’ I said, ‘you should leave here soon, all of you. Find your paradise world and live there. If that’s what you want.’
I knew there’d be no shining ships coming to take them away, that it was all a delusion, but it was the waiting that was important to them. Only they couldn’t wait here. I didn’t know where they could wait. I’m only a kid. Like I said, some things are Big Stuff.
The people from Gaia came in their lumpy shi
ps and Alicia and I watched them from the fisheye in my Dad’s apartment; lumpy ships limned against the sundisc. There was a predictable flurry of jubilant panic from the Alien lovers who believed for several hours that their saviour and potential mate had come to whisk them away. It was a fantasy dispelled only when the Gaian people docked and came inside.
Dad came and hugged me, telling us not to go outside his apartment until he came back. Selene came to call for him. They went away, tight-lipped and pale.
Alicia took my hand. ‘Lyle, I have to see,’ she said quietly. ‘My Mom’s out there. It’ll only happen once. I have to see.’
‘OK, come on.’
We went out into the hall where the lichen-trees breathed softly and filled the air with vapour. I breathed deeply, resonating with the plants. They knew something was wrong too. Alicia and I followed our senses to where the trouble was. I don’t think my Dad really believed I’d stay put. That’s how I comforted myself.
It was sort of right and pre-ordained that the rest of our group should drift into our path. After all we lived inside each other’s heads three nights a week. We all linked arms and kept walking, not saying much but drawing strength from each other’s presence. We’d walked this path a hundred times in games. Now it was real and our experiences had prepared us for it. I did not have to be DNA Alchemist now, just myself. I realised I could integrate that aspect of my personality whenever I wanted to. It made me feel older and strong. I think all the others felt that way too.
We went to the Solarium near the main docking chambers. Everything was happening there. The Gaians stood looking uneasy in dark uniforms, arranged in lines. All of them carried weapons. It made us feel as cold as the metal they were made of. They looked like death. No wonder my Dad hadn’t wanted me to see that.
Then, the Alien lovers came yelling down corridors, running and waving their arms. They had decided, ultimately, that the black denizens had come for them and not their saviour after all. It was a chilling sight. They’d torn off piping to use as weapons. They brandished household knives. They sang the song of war.
We, the children crouched at the edge and watched, frozen, but not terrified. We were sad. We held onto each other and sang the song of wistful innocence.
The Gaians protected themselves with shields, and fired tranquillising sprays into the melee. They amplified their voices, calling for moderation. It had no effect. The Alien lovers, their rage dampened by the spray, milled in confusion, calling on their new god to aid them. Nothing happened. No flash of light. No divine protective aura.
Graham Seeds took control. We heard him shout. ‘Have faith! The cause is not lost! I’m getting a message! He will come for us outside. Not here. Not this pit of sin! Outside! We will be saved!’ He launched himself towards the docking airlocks, his comrades swarming behind him, singing out an eerie ululation of salvation. I’m glad I did not see my mother there.
It was all over very quickly after that. I can’t help feeling our people and the Gaians sort of let it happen that way for convenience’s sake. Perhaps I’m wrong. All the Alien lovers piled ecstatically into the great docking chamber and barricaded the door. Some were left on this side of it, clawing and screaming, but none of our relatives were among them. On the other side, Graham Seeds opened the airlock and all of them exploded out into airless space, like scraps of cloth filled with blood, into the waiting blackness of the Widebetween. It was horrible. We saw the debris tumbling past the Solarium windows. No Alien came to save them. They were not immune to the effects of the void. They just spun out and out, dead. I hope they did not suffer...
There, I’ve told you. It’s all past. The alien lovers who survived were taken back to Gaia. Nobody wanted to stop them. Oh, did you know? Selene is my stepmother now. Yes, I’m very happy. We’re all OK. It’s kind of quiet though, isn’t it? It’s left such a hole in our society with all those people gone. Grief? Yes, we had that. I absorbed it. Worries? No, none. Honestly.... Well, perhaps just one thing. You remember I told you about what was inside the black hole? Well, I know it’s still there. Waiting. I don’t think it’s true that once a god is no longer worshipped it disappears. Just a hunch. It knows we’re here now. Oh, yes, yes, I know it’s just a creation of our own brains, mankind’s own brains, but... We are safe, aren’t we?
So What’s Forever
‘So, what’s so different about it, huh? A game is a game is a game!’ Tally Ritter was in provocative mood. She shook out her long, golden hair, and waved the paper flyer under Brewster Corley’s nose, attempting to sparkle coyly.
Brewster sensed merely tawdriness. He took the paper from her purple-glazed claws with a fastidious finger and thumb.
‘Beyond reality,’ he read out loud.
‘So it says, so it says.’ Tally stretched, bored, scanning the club for familiar faces, finding none. ‘I hate this dump. Let’s go somewhere else.’
She and Brewsters had discovered the glo-color flyer on their table. Brewster had presumed some gamer had been distributing them around the club. Beyond Reality didn’t come cheap; 200 credits per Experience, as the promo grandly explained. Still, it didn’t stop him slipping the folded paper into his pocket as they left. He’d never been into that kind of thing really - dressing up, pretending to be something else - but had neatly fallen for the seductive wording of Beyond Reality’s creators. It was a tease; saying merely enough to whet the appetite, with just a suggestion of something not normally part of play in your regular role-playing game.
They hailed a hire-car and headed up town, Tally complaining about her pinching, spike-heeled shoes, patting her hair, pausing to glance out of the window and squeal at something or someone recognisable occasionally. Her teased hair had effectively taken control of the available space above neck-level, causing Brewster to sneeze and snap at her in irritation. Tally wrinkled her nose and grinned, and began to hum a popular tune, beating out the rhythm on her spangled, tissue-gauzed thighs.
Brewster was not really in the mood for her and was even less in the mood for Seltzers, the latest craze-club, where they were currently bound. He folded his arms and leaned back, conscious of the personal cloud hovering lightlessly over his head.
‘Oh, I want to dance!’ Tally enthused, frothing with weightless euphoria.
‘Wait until we get there, please.’ Brewster was sick of being bounced around on the seat as Tally got in some practice wriggles.
‘You’re such a glumdog tonight,’ she said to him, refusing to let his mood affect her.
Brewster sat alone at a side-table, morosely sipping expensive warm ale and peering into the laser-shot darkness. He could just make out Tally’s gunmetal silver dress on the dance floor, where pink and blue lights reeled drunkenly on waving arms above the dancers in a mass of cosmetic, curly cable. The music was so loud Brewster could feel his internal organs mimicking the beat. A head-ache had started. Oh to be home, he thought mournfully. But Tally was enjoying herself. He had enough sense of chivalry in him not to walk out and leave her to find her own way back, but the prospect of staying at Seltzers until the small hours and Tally had exhausted herself was unpalatable to say the least. It seemed that nearly all of her cackling cronies were here tonight too. Brewster was surprised he hadn’t been blinded by all the glitter and deafened by the din of their screamed greetings. They were politely referred to by the less demonstrative as a colourful bunch.
Brewster fumbled in his pocket for cigarettes and encountered the folded paper he’d picked up at the last club. He couldn’t even remember the name of the place now, but its entrance fee had stuck firmly in mind. Smiling humourlessly, he examined the flyer again. In this light, the paper looked stark white and the black letters leapt out at him with uncompromising vividness.
‘Beyond Reality!’
These words were larger than the rest and struck Brewster as being weirdly innocent and ingenuous. He grimaced and read on.
‘Live out your wildest fantasies! Your dreams come true! A game with a dif
ference! You can be your ultimate hero/ine! Not just an ordinary role-playing game, Beyond Reality becomes reality! Escape! Escape! Escape!’
Then there was a cautious box-number for interested parties to write to.
Brewster chuckled and folded the paper again. Then unfolded it to squint once more at the smallest print at the bottom.
‘Have you tried to have a Waking Dream yet?’ it said; the swift, needle thrust that guaranteed to hook. This must surely be illegal or a hoax to attract members to the game-club, Brewster thought. Waking Dream was a legend, a myth - at present. It was a newly whispered-of drug, the ultimate hallucinogen, whose effects were supposedly so powerful, awesome and unpredictable that government departments were already shrieking with hysterics before the stuff even hit the streets. There had been one or two scare stories in the tabloids - the usual nonsense: ‘Girl Eats Parent in Bizarre Drug Dream’ sort of stuff.