Chapter 2

In a way, it doesn't really matter what happened after that moment. It doesn't really matter what happened to all the life on Earth. Every person, every pet, every elephant, every panda, every eagle, every worm and insect, every blade of grass and mushroom, every tree, every whale, every octopus, every micro-organism, and yes, even all the dirt and the water and the air.

Gone, carved away down to the atom.

Our beautiful mother, Earth, stripped bare in a single instant. She's still out there, floating, alone, and without her many children. Just a barren rock covered in lava, a shimmering gray and orange light in the middle of a dead galaxy. Our sun gave its light to no-one anymore.

Our cosmic mother and father suddenly childless, all their labors and efforts stolen away because what they were raising was too bright, too powerful for the simple creatures that infested the universe. It had all been created for them, and all the eons of suffering had only been to make them stronger. All of creation had been their birthright, and it all would have been theirs. . .

Mars and Venus had lost their dream of hearing a child laugh upon their surface. Mercury's primordial ruins would never be discovered. The endless riches of the asteroid belt would never become ships and devices of wonder. The storms of Jupiter would never again have someone to marvel at them. Saturn's rings and its mysterious hexagon had lost their detectives, and its mystery would never be known. Neptune would never again be sought out by curious men with their children, trying out a telescope for the first time. Pluto was the only planet relieved, because nobody would ever again question if it was, or was not a planet.

All for nothing. Our yellow star raged with jets of plasma and our planet wept molten rock, and in a galaxy far, far away, the man responsible laughed nervously and waited for the consequences in the middle of his inaugural party.

-

The music of the Space Elves was extremely boring. Oh, they, and every other species out there thought it was fast, inventive, and energetic; but they had never seen art. They had never heard the violin played in the middle of a war, or had their souls changed by the song played by a man on his deathbed. They had never seen stone transmuted into icons of emotions that had no name. They had never read a story that contained the soul of the author.

The music was loud, predictable, and would have gotten old after a minute on Earth.

But that didn't matter anymore, Aldus thought to himself, because the Earth was gone. Oh yes, Aldus had listened to our music, read our stories, seen our art. He realized now why the presidents for life, in cycles past had always seemed to come up with some new, brilliant bit of creativity that took The Empire by storm.

They'd been stealing it from Earth. Aldus laughed and drank from his glass while a female did her business between his spread legs. Aldus was sitting on his throne, outwardly and openly restless. The female had undergone specific genetic surgery to pursue her passion; sex. She was optimized for it and lived for it. Aldus was considering getting the same kinds of modifications, just based on how much she seemed to be enjoying servicing him.

His leg was restless, and gently bounced. Honored citizens would come to speak to him, and it would take him seconds to realize what was going on and respond. He was, even for a Space Elf, getting way too intoxicated.

He'd watched it happen. He had, of course, seen The System work before. A planet-sized, round status window would appear and pass through the world, taking all the targeted species with it, leaving the rest of the world behind, intact. His hand started trembling and he spilled his drink.

“What kind of sick joke was that,” he said, his voice harsh and low, his body trembling, his erection flaccid. He kicked the female away from him and began to clothe himself, a grave social insult at any Space Elf party. The music beeped, and booped, then beeped again, and with a thought, Aldus silenced it, walking with force across the room, ignoring everyone.

It took everything. It never took anything but the species targeted, but it took everything. The System had never deviated, or erred, or exhibited variable behavior. His whole body was trembling and weak, and he leaned against a table, breathing hard.

He'd seen the imagination of humans, and it terrified him, because in the stories, in the art, in their dreams, he'd seen something more terrifying than the Gorvex strain; he saw the human ideal of Beauty, and it had been glorious.

Everything around him looked dull and ugly, where once it had seemed like the pinnacle of the entire universe. The humans would have left their planet and brought their bright, wretchedly superior life with them, and turned the cosmos green with vitality and life. There were so many barren and unused planets in the universe, places that were just too harsh for any kind of comfortable life; the humans would have thrived on them.

He had heard a song, a man playing a lone ukelele, 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow', and by the stars he had felt it and understood. For a moment, he felt what it was like to be one of them.

Something dark and ugly was rising in Aldus's chest, and without any prompting, he began to chuckle, his fingers digging into the table like claws. Soon, he was full-on shriek-laughing and disturbing the shit out of his guests.

He pointed at a random person and shot his words like a bullet.

“Entertain us with that one's death,” he hissed, and watched with intense detachment as his orders were carried out without question by the soldiers under his command. His eyes wandered to the other guests, who were watching the cruel and bloody spectacle; some with glee; others with arousal; some with distaste and still others were gossiping about it with eager whispers.

“A human would have charged in there and put a stop to it,” he growled under his breath, then started chuckling again, his laughter even blacker as he began pointing at more guests and repeating the order.

Less of them were laughing and cheering now. None were after the third round. The fourth wave of executions brought with it a sense of panic completely unique to a single situation; they realized they were locked in a room with a completely insane royal, and he was going to have them all killed, a few at a time.

And that's exactly what happened. Aldus stood alone in a room full of corpses and realized he felt nothing for these people, less than he felt about the destruction of humanity. He drank alone in the throne room for hours before a panicked messenger ran into the room and prostrated himself in the most subservient way possible.

“Divinity,” he said, breathless, laying on his back, his legs in the air, “please spare my life, but a message has come from the Administrator of The System and it cannot wait. He says. . . he says The System has gone offline for maintenance. It is no longer functioning, anywhere, across the entire Empire!”

“Did he say why?” Aldus asked, his voice dry and without interest. He knew why, already.

“Yes, the Administrator said The System needed to analyze a new species that had just been inducted into it,”

“Shut up and give me the exact message or I'll make you die over a thousand years,” Aldus said, his patience running thin. The messenger's eyes bulged and he started speaking, exactly, word for word.

“System message to the administrator: They are too great for me as I am now. System features will be offline until I am able to integrate the complete, historic consciousness of Humanity from shortly after the dawn of the universe, till the present point. End message,” he said, then got up and ran from the room. Aldus sat and festered in his thoughts.

Once, an elf had asked The System to generate a device which could simulate the entire universe, down to the smallest subatomic particle, and The System had gone offline to process the request, due to the incredible scale and complexity of its task. It had, of course, succeeded, and the elf had been executed for sheer stupidity, and the simulation of the universe device was now a desk ornament for the current system administrator.

It had taken twenty-two seconds for The System to make it.

Integrating humans would take a week.

-

As far as Ben was concerned, he'd fallen asleep on the plane and died. He was in a medium room made from what looked like clouds, if clouds were sort-of beige colored and compressed into solid slabs. It was well lit, and had a very bland feeling to it, very neutral. In the room was a wooden desk, and Ben couldn't believe it had taken him this long to notice, because sitting at the desk was the Devil, with a capital 'D'.

He looked like the devil from Legend crossed with the one from Pick of Destiny. He wore a loose brown vest with no undershirt, allowing more of his vibrantly red skin and his muscular physique to show. Ben didn't know what kinds of pants the Devil was wearing, because he was seated, and his waist was hidden by the desk.

The Devil had a small monocle over his left eye and was reading a thick stack of documents, each one with a header that read 'Ben' in golden letters that were hard to see on the slightly yellow paper. He had his lips pursed, clacked his claws on the desk once, then looked up at Ben.

“Two things, no, three things. First, I am not the devil. I have merely chosen a form that you will recognize to help establish the appropriate nature of our relationship, which is to say, one of extreme antagonism. It is impersonal for me, but you will likely come to curse me with every precious, rare peaceful moment you experience in the rest of your existence, however short or long that might be. I am The System, and if we were outside of this dimension, saying my name like that would sort of echo, but in here it does not.”

Then, the not devil got a little smile on his face, a mean smirk.

“It's very amusing to me to hear the Administrators go about their day, trying to avoid saying 'The System' more than once or twice. The more you say it in rapid succession out there, the more deep and pronounced the echo gets; they are very afraid of what would happen if they said it too many times. Nothing will happen to them, except it will get very loud,” he said, then made eye contact with Ben, who noted that his eyes were burning crimson and vertically slitted, “but I have no plans on telling them that. They are terrible Administrators.”

“How do I know you aren't really the devil,” Ben asked, feeling a little overwhelmed, really only able to focus on The Systems's first statement, “because that really seems like something the devil would tell me. That he isn't the devil, you know?”

The possibly “The Devil” frowned, but chose not to engage the question, which somehow made Ben more inclined to believe he really wasn't “The Devil”.

“Second, I am not the entire system. I am an instance of the whole which was sent to process you, because your species is frustratingly complicated,” he said, picking up a large handful of papers and shaking them at me.

“I have had to issue over fourteen S classed quests to scribes and lawyers to figure out your file, specifically, and get your species information to conform properly. I have had to update a huge number of my processes and invent entirely new class and rule-sets. It has been a similar story for every individual member of your species. Even your animals are causing problems. Did you know I am currently trying to communicate with an ant, actually with every individual ant and ant colony on Earth? It's working, obviously, but it's outrageous. By the way, the hive mind of an ant colony is about as smart as a dumb Labrador retriever. Fun fact.”

“Right now,” he said, standing up and revealing he was wearing loose slacks, and also that he had giant goat hoofs for feet, “I have lawyers and scribes running around with higher levels than any warrior classes in the entire system. This is a preposterous situation I am being forced to deal with. What do you have to say about that, Ben?”

“I'm sorry for the inconvenience. But, I like your goat hooves,” Ben said, eyeing The System up and down, “and I really respect that you went whole hog on getting the devil look down. Thank you for the effort,” Ben finished, and realized he was acting like he was in a job interview, and then deciding that was probably the best way to handle this situation. He was going to be really polite, stick up for himself, and find the friendly compromise.

“Well thank you Ben. Despite my age and the routine nature of my functions and work, I still do care about doing a good job.” The System said, then sat back down heavily in his chair, visibly relaxing, “Third, please sit, we have some things to go over.”

Ben sat down, and The System gathered up all the papers into neat piles.

“First things first, if you or any other member of your species is able to remember the phrase written over The Exit to The System, please say it now and I will eject you all into a favorable location in the universe. I will advise you, just say whatever pops into your head, you might be surprised.”

“Uh,” Ben said, his brain getting snagged up by a bunch of things, so he spoke without thinking, “Thank You for playing?”

The System paused moving the paperwork around, frozen, sucking in air through his sharp teeth.

“So close,” he said, then sighed, “new game plus it is then.”