[Original Novel] Metal Fever 2: The Erasure of Asherah, Part 25

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“Life doesn’t need to be like this” I implored, cowering between two pillars, hoping to escape notice. “There is no meaningful difference between the red body coverings and the blue ones! One’s just #FF0000 and the other is #0000FF! Why don’t you slow down and think about what I’m saying, at least? Let’s talk our way through this. Perhaps an understanding can be arrived at.”

The sky voice boomed “Red team has the flag!” followed by a series of loud bangs. “What the fuck is this retard talking about” one of them asked. “He’s talking about our armor colors” the other explained. “I think he might be autismal or something.”

I asked if ‘autismal’ is my name. They laughed. “No, your name is Fart Tornado McFagballs.” I felt briefly awed at the realization that these must be the ancients who built the structure I found earlier, with the differently colored cubes. They must’ve created all of this!

But then why do they occupy themselves with such a fruitless endeavor? How could they possess the knowledge to create such a beautiful place, for no higher purpose than ritual violence? Is there some method to their madness that’s beyond my understanding?

“Is this...the ultimate reality?” I asked aloud. One of them replied “I guess so, if you like arena shooters. Not many people still play these. You gonna join a team or what? Wait, how did you even spawn without picking a team?” The person speaking then rounded a corner and spotted me.

“I see him now, he’s over here! Weird, he isn’t in the player list. You a hacker, bro? Do I need to report you?” I cried out in pain as many tiny solid projectiles lodged in my side. In a fit of panic I ran blindly for the nearest dark opening, a cave of some sort. What is a cave? There wasn’t any time to ruminate.

My feet made splashing noises as I ran through a fluid I recognized from the dream. Is there some connection? How I wish I wasn’t being chased by a madman, so I could study it more closely.

The fluid in the dream rippled, though. This fluid doesn’t ripple. There’s just a small burst of refractive round particles around each foot as it comes down through the fluid surface. What is this place? It can’t be what I saw in the dream. It’s...simpler.

Everything at once made sense after I fell through the floor. I found myself a ways below the ground level, looking up at a sort of hollow, partly transparent view of the world. I could see all of the other players, even through walls. My side still ached, but I no longer cared.

It’s simpler...because it’s just a representation. At last, the puzzle pieces came together! The vague, intuitive sense that I was being made to see a world which was only ever an expression of something abstract and fundamental, hidden from view. Hidden from the others as well, I’d wager.

“I’m...free. I’m free! I’ve escaped the bounds of this world. I see so clearly now. None of this is what it appears...no, pretends...to be. Those aren’t trees! They never were. Those aren’t clouds, either. The fluid I ran through...water? It’s called water, isn’t it. But it’s not actually water, just made to resemble it.”

There was a prolonged silence. Then one of the combatants asked if he could buy pot from me. “Hang on” another said, “I think he glitched through the ground over here. I can probs still get him with splash damage.”

He launched some sort of slowly blinking projectile which bounced along, then came to rest directly above me. It blinked faster and faster...until it burst. Blinding pain enveloped me. My vision slowly faded to black.

I woke up with a start, falling out of my computer chair, taking my jacket and the keyboard with me. The manager must’ve heard me fall because he called out in Chinese, asking if I was okay. I assured him I was fine. He next reminded me about the fines for damaging their equipment.

Breathing heavily, shirt soaked with sweat, I painstakingly picked myself up and set about cleaning up the mess I’d made. Visions of some sort of first person shooter type game ran through my mind. Fresh memories from the dream, fading as rapidly as they always do.

I showered to rinse off the sweat, noticing in the process that a good deal of my hair wound up matting the drain. Judging by the length, they came from my head. If I could choose, I’d much rather lose body hair, which this guy had an unsettling abundance of.

There was a pay per use booth for drying off which I recognized as the type placed outside of certain theme park rides. There’s a hexagonal chamber you step into, where six high powered jets of warm air dry you off in the span of ten seconds.

Not enough time for what it cost, as I emerged from the chamber still somewhat damp. Must be how they get you to pay for two turns. There was at least one of those airblade hand dryers, like you see in airports, just inside the doorway which I could use to finish the job. For free, unlike nearly everything else in this place.

I availed myself of the waist high, wall mounted appliance. Hoping to at least get a little more of the moisture off my hands...and my junk of course, which I eagerly dunked into the opening. I giggled as the rushing, mechanically vectored air spread my scrotum out like the cheeks of a fat man on a rollercoaster. “This must be what it feels like to have sex with a hurricane” I realized.

On my way back to my cubicle, the manager took notice of my conspicuously slimmer profile and the loose skin around my waist. “Oh you finally give birth to beautiful bouncing burger baby! Congratulation! But now you must become responsible father and ensure burger boy get into good school.”

I told him there’s such a thing as taking a joke too far, whereupon he frowned at me and pouted. “Also” I added over my shoulder, “babies don’t bounce if you drop them. Don’t ask how I know that.”

When I arrived at my cubicle, steam rising from my still-dripping hair, I immediately checked the dream monitor logs. Plenty of traffic...but all of it outbound. Come again...? How could that be? I double checked and confirmed it. Whatever was causing the dreams...came from me.

Internal, not external. Some sort of virus? Or perhaps the former owner of this body worked for one of those distributed render farms the old woman in the gas shelter told me about. That would explain all the weird, janky old computer graphics I half-remembered.

But the logs didn’t bear that out. If it were the case, I would expect to see periodic incoming fetch requests for completed frames, followed by delivered frames outbound at regular intervals. Instead the pattern of connections looked...exploratory.

Did I do this? I’ve heard of sleepwalking. Could I have somehow activated my interface while sleeping? My eyes were closed, but it’s supposed to know whether I’m conscious. Isn’t it? As I searched for any forum posts about similar experiences, I grew more and more paranoid.

What the hell is this thing? What’s causing these dreams? I thought I had a handle on what all is even possible for a hacker to inflict on another person, but this is a new one on me. If it’s even a hacker, I mean. But what else could it be?

No matter how I looked at the logs, there was no mistaking it. The searches originated from me. Some part of me, anyways. Maybe this body came with a stow-away program I don’t know about? Under the table, under the radar kind of stuff that wouldn’t show up in an interface diagnostic.

I had more immediate concerns however, as my move-in date for the apartment was finally at hand. Not that there’s much to move, one of the scant silver linings to be found in poverty. SeaCoin went up while I slept, such that I could afford to pick up an LED bulb, thermoelectric cooler and rice cooker on my way over.

There won’t be room for much else, but you can make all kinds of things in a rice cooker. Of course it wouldn’t fit in the bike’s paltry storage area, but I found I could balance it where my feet would normally go and keep it pinned between them as I rode.

There’s no such thing as a pickup truck in China. Why would anybody need one? I’ve seen dudes transporting loads on their ebikes stacked four, five, sometimes six feet high. It looks absurd but somehow it works, I have yet to see one of them topple over.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 26!}