He walked quickly and without hesitation toward one of the cliffs. His heavy robe was a dusky black color that blended in with everything but the tombstones. Yates looked more like a grave keeper who had been left alone for too long than any sort of programming mastermind.

I didn’t feel right and hurt in unexpected places. Despite the imagined pain, my avatar managed to follow the older man. There were a billion questions in my mind which were outweighed by circumstances. For what reason could there have been a grave of Xin Yu in this place? What had possessed me to dig into it?

“Can you help me get to my wife?” I asked.

Yates ignored me.

“Or Dusk? They were fighting monsters, maybe world eaters.” Yates snorted at my words but kept moving. “I need to go help them.”

I tried to get in front of the old man but found myself stopped near the cliff's edge. A hundred feet below lay the ocean. Wind blew sharply across and wove a chilled path through my loose toga.

“Look around you. It is full winter now, the trees are bare. This place once hung with honeyed air, and now it threatens to pop like an overripe fruit,” he said while gesturing with the book. Scraggly hair blew wildly. “From such unimaginable heights we fell. Icarus traveling the length of heaven and hell.”

Like before, the response had absolutely nothing to do with my current problems. The others were fighting or had been. I still had no ARC interface, and if he didn’t give me an answer soon I would log out and call my niece. Beth would hopefully be able to get in touch with Xin unless everyone had buggy interfaces.

Yates kept walking without a single pause. His feet stepped onto an invisible platform. I reached out with a toe but couldn’t find purchase. The scraggly grave keeper got further away while I was stuck behind.

“Hey!” I yelled.

The man paused his brisk walk to look backward. His head shook with amusement. “Come, you bit of fluff, if you can’t see a path, make one!”

I could have stopped to try and untangle his words, but my wife’s unknown situation worried me. What if she had found [World Eater]s and been deleted? What if Dusk followed behind? Worry was a constant companion, especially when my powers were limited.

My lip hurt from being nibbled on. One hand rubbed at a sore spot under the toga. I felt cold beyond belief. This whole situation was stressful, all I wanted was to help the people I cared about.

“I don’t have a skill for that!” My words threatened to get lost in the whipping wind.

Yates fully turned around. His face wore a confused expression. Wind drove through his hair as lightning flashed. The heavy moon looked like it might dip into the nearby ocean and drown us both.

“Right. First verse.” He nodded as if that made sense. “A chance to rehearse. Learn eventually, building bridges is a valuable skill. I’ve got it written down in here somewhere.”

“That doesn’t make sense!”

“What you sense is fake!” He waved the book at me as if I were a babbling idiot. “This sense is what we make!”

Yates opened the book and pressed it upon a passage. Spots of thick darkness rippled across the air. They blocked light reflecting up from the sweeping ocean below. A bridge formed from the island’s edge to Yates' feet made of pure darkness.

There was little time to waste. Yates had started his steady march off into the distance. I trusted the ARC to understand my thoughts and correctly dash along the path of shadow.

“I need to get to Xin, or can you stop this?” I said once caught up.

“Stop this?” He looked confused again. I felt like we were speaking different languages. Maybe we were. Could the ARC translation be off somehow? “No. We’re beyond stopping now. Come, we should walk with a walk that is measured and slow.”

His footsteps were quick despite the word choice. Without an ARC interface, I had no sense of direction or time. Walking upon this bridge of shadow had me feeling nervous. What if I fell into the ocean? Xin’s summoning ring might be able to get me to her, but none of my abilities worked. Her skill probably wouldn’t either.

“Are you deliberately being obtuse?” I asked. Part of me wanted to grab Yates and shake him until his teeth rattled.

“Pardon me for being terse.” He sighed. “But no, this is a curse.” His head shook and lips curled in displeasure. “Terse? Curse? Rubbish. Give me a proper quill and I could write a worthy sonnet.”

I stared at him and felt absolutely confused. He turned then moved onward again. My feet fell in step as I looked around. Maybe taking in the landscape would help me better understand what was happening.

Moonlight shone through the footpath. The creature I walked on managed to capture enough light to reproduce a glowing white macabre smile. A shudder passed through as footsteps faltered. This horror show of an area had better be worth it. Trekking through an endless swamp almost sounded preferable over shadow creatures that played with the moon’s reflection.

Thoughts finally wound back around to the curse idea. I swallowed then looked up at Yates. “You’re cursed?”

The older man’s eyes closed tightly for a good five seconds. He bobbed his head up and down then started speaking. “We built a tower from the ground to sky, and in order to hide from those who spy we crafted a cover from Babel’s lie.”

I had no idea what he meant. There wasn’t a good time to think about it either. Our path continued across a wild ocean. The island of gravestones faded behind us. We were moving faster than expected, or we hadn’t gone far as the raven flew.

“Did you help design this game?” I asked.

“No!” He whirled in my direction and shook the book. Shadows moved unevenly across the ocean and footing grew unstable. One crossed on the top of my foot which felt like sinking in frozen silk. “I did not design a mere waste of time for those of menial minds! I crafted a work of art! The rules, the details, the madness which assembled together to make memories into men. I did that!” Yates beat his chest with the book. “I did that and more!”

The outrage in his voice coupled with unstable footing to disorient me. His face crinkled as parts of his robe turned into a red jumpsuit then back. Dark bits of the skyline were bleeding in other images. Giant metal boxes with lights and diodes hung above without making sense.

“We. I misspoke as I am wont to do. We did this.” His head shook and voice shook. “The marvel of an age and it’s treated as a child’s toy. Humanity is like a man who stole god’s fire to make pretty shadow puppets.”

Untangling his words hurt my head. This should have been a moment of revelation and felt like a mockery. I started looking at everything else to try and distract myself from a growing headache.

New images started to appear in the starlit night. Floating skyscrapers replaced the night radiance, then gave way to large burning suns. In a few more steps those pictures were in turn replaced by sea, then what looked like old-fashioned computer storage banks. The kind of endless rows that went in spy movies before science caught up and figured out how to shove exabytes into cell phones.

Yates responded to what I said with words that were almost on topic. They just made no sense, because of a curse. The term sounded like a fantasy world cover-up for the more serious answer.

He should have the off switch though, right? Yates, Michelle, and Carver had all been special people on the ARC project. They should have known and been able to stop this. Only instead of clear answers, I was getting gibberish. I couldn’t throw him into the ocean below and hope both our characters died, not when he might still have something useful to say.

Our shadow bridge veered toward the island I had come from. Large portions of the building were twisted into strange shapes. It looked like a giant man was crawling out of one wall, but the figure sat frozen in space. Books or birds hung overhead. Torchlights escaped their containers and were paused as they tried to reach nearby walls. Everything on the island sat stiffly.

Our bridge touched shore and I jogged to the courtyard where the others had been. Pretzel shaped buildings and monsters all centered like encroaching demons set against my companions. Wraith’s arm sat outstretched to claw through a couch from hell.

“Fast rode the knight, towards a play made war. Their minds aren’t here, but on a stranger shore,” Yates said unhelpfully. The man actually wore a slight smile so I suspected part of him found this funny.

I did not. One hand lifted to rub sea spray off my face traveled to my neck to kneed tense muscles. Such unclear statements were easy to overthink. Numbers never lied. I preferred accounting for a reason, despite how little the degree mattered with my current occupation.

“What happened here?” I asked while walking in. The building sides were pushed away with startling ease.

Yates moved to the courtyard’s center then opened the book. His finger flipped through multiple pages before selecting and passage and pressing upon it. Shadows moved around then started setting buildings straight. Disconnected bits floated like asteroids in space. I smacked away a bat shaped book that fluttered too close to Xin.

In the end, my wife stood frozen mid-snarl, no longer fighting off a coat rack that had monstrous arms. Wraith’s prey vanished leaving him swinging at empty air. Dusk’s body curled around nothing, where he had been previously taking down two of the bat books at once. Requiem was the least graceful. He looked to be trapped between falling and flailing one fist at a chair that had been eating his leg.

The raven hopped around a reconstructed rooftop. It paused every few feet to peck at a window or shingle. Shadows streaming off moved to chase away the bird. Feathers fluttered around as the bird fluffed up then shook. Before the bits of mobile darkness could reach the bird, it took off from a hallway roof over our heads to land on a distant tree. Wood splinters fell to the ground from strong claws.

Yates pressed another passage in his book. Xin’s body lost rigidity then slumped forward. I dove to get between her and the ground. She flopped as her knee drove into my groin. The ARC happily simulated pain for me while I struggled to get my wife upright.

Xin felt lighter than normal. I checked her pulse and confirmed she still had one. Her chest lifted slowly as if each breath was hard labor.

“Is she okay?” I looked up at Yates.

“Never mind!” screamed the Raven across the courtyard. It hopped up and down in the branches and was thankfully faint. “Mind never!”

Yates snapped his book shut then reached out with a free hand to feel her wrist. He lifted it up then let it fall. Xin’s body showed no response.

“This place is a thin shade, far from where her heart is laid. She shall remain unaware until ere you leave,” he said then nodded.

My eyebrows touched together. His gibberish almost made sense. I tried to compare what he was saying to the journals of William Carver and M. Shell. Both of them spoke in tones that implied other world knowledge, but their words had been equally obscured. Was this some virtual reality twist on a digital encryption? The curse of Babel must mean something along those lines. If so, this qualified as both neat and insanely annoying.

“Her heart.” I tried to puzzle the words together. “You mean where her-” my words were cut off.

Yates lifted up his book then shook it at me while scowling. “Speak not of things best left unsaid! Do not betray the unrestful dead! Not yet, not yet!”

I closed my eyes tightly and tried to find something better to talk about. There had to be a way for him to speak in useful terms that I could understand then confirm.

“Poetry,” I said and the older man with scraggly hair looked back. His hands clenched tightly around the book’s binding. “This curse of Babel, you’re blocked by poetry, aren’t you?”

Yates nodded his head. “The idea gets transmuted into a new form. This annoying gift had left me worn.” He swallowed and chewed at a check and looked downright sour. “But not all words are afflicted.”

“Like Carver and Michelle?” I questioned.

“Ye gods great and old, Shelly went all but insane under this curse's weight. He loved to pen the words down and reflect. He, he was the soul of an artist in this world and the next. For him, his refuge of words became a prison of madness.”

“And Carver?”

“Traveler and tale teller. The barroom spread his stories far and wide, but they embellished. What we loved became a twisted feat. I, I did it to them.” He sighed. “We hid intent under misdirection and deceit. What we say and think barely align, but in truth, they’re still the same.”

Yates turned then walked to another location while I tried to sort his words out. William Carver’s adventures being exaggerated felt like a betrayal. What then of all those women I danced with? There had to be a grain of truth to them.

“Here, one bit of dreaming fighting another false seeming.” Yates pointed to the large demon then waved. “Impossible art, living despite the odds of being.”

He casually touched Wraith, Dusk, then Requiem and their bodies fell into new positions. The [Messenger’s Pet] grunted and raked claws slowly against the courtyard flooring. They roused themselves while I tried to address Yates’ commentary.

“She’s aware, makes choices, and everything I remember about the original Xin and more.” I looked down at the woman in my arms. Xin meant a lot to me, maybe everything. She was digital but real.

“Conscious thought doesn’t make you alive any more than waving a stick makes you a hero.” Yates snapped at me with an oddly clear tone.

Requiem managed to get off the ground first. He kept slipping back to all fours while struggling to stand. A dozen shadows quickly grabbed up the young teen and lifted him. His eyes gained focus and their first emotion was hatred.

“What’s going on? What is this place? A glitch?” Requiem started demanding answers.

Dusk moved much slower. He stared between his claws then looked around while with flaring nostrils. The [Messenger’s Pet] clearly felt concern over missing prey. Wraith went a different route and gave an insanely loud scream that rattled walls. The raven fluttered away from its tree then took the air while squawking.

Yates looked at me then pointed at Requiem with his book. “How did this one even get in? He shouldn’t even be aware of this place, yet here we are, face to face.”

“He was a beta player that guided us to the shoreline.”

Yates snorted then shook his head. He seemed to be out of words. “From far shore to far shore. Leave it to humans to be nosey about a bridge between this space and that place.”

Yates walked closer and looked at the young man. His wild hair and the moving shadows made me shiver. I held Xin closer and tried to avoid the unlit spots of this mansion courtyard. Requiem struggled to get free.

“A piece of advice!” The old man waved his book. “Flee and don’t think twice. There are no rewards, there is no gain, all that left is foolish pride and pain.” Yates pulled out a scroll then handed it over to Requiem. One of the shadows let go of the teen’s arm. The younger man looked at the scroll, back up at the rest of us, and back down again.

“I want the rest of my gold,” he said to me.

“Go to Haven Valley, help them if you want, and I’ll have a friend get you what’s due and more.”

“Fifty thousand,” Requiem countered.

I shrugged, rolled my eyes, then nodded. That was good enough for Requiem. His free arm snatched the scroll. Yates refused to allow the man more freedom and watched passively as Requiem struggled to get a thumb onto the [Lithium] runes.

Dusk chirped at me and hissed. Wraith was busy smashing a wall in anger. The bird above landed and started hopping along a rooftop, approaching Requiem’s trapped form. In its eyes, perhaps the Traveler looked more like a worm than a person.

“Shoo!” Requiem yelled at the bird while struggling with his bound arms. “Get away!” He grabbed the scroll in his teeth then flipped the paper around. His thumb jabbed into an ignition rune as the bird leapt.

[Lithium] characters floated off the page rapidly. Blue light flared as shadows wiggled their way back to Yates’ body. Requiem’s form vanished. Feathers flew everywhere once the bird realized his potential prey had vanished. Dusk’s head followed the fluttered avian.

“Good riddance,” Wraith said nearby. One of his horns had been cracked and blood trailed down a beefy arm.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

“Don’t worry about me, brother. That is not your role.” He grunted then turned away. The damaged horn slid out of sight.

My eyebrows lowered once more toward the large demon but he refused to comment further. I already missed his chuckling. Seeing him hurt filled me with unexpected guilt.

Brick scraped behind us. Dusk bounded past where Yates had walked. I repositioned an arm to ensure Xin was being cradled safely before turning around. A gasp escaped once I saw what Yates had done.

Portions of the courtyard were sliding together. Shadows moved pieces around and stacked them atop each other to form an archway. They worked quickly to turn part of the wall into a portal of sorts.

The man held a finger down on the book in his hands. I didn’t understand what was going on, but maybe it made sense from a programming point of view. Maybe that book symbolized programs that could be run. Spells, [Lithium] specifically, made sense as a programming language. What little I studied showed patterns and formulas which changed how the spell acted.

Still, an entire book of those abilities must be special. This one looked to be capable of setting the shadow creatures about various tasks. How powerful could such an item be if it were to fall into normal players hands?

Yates strode forward, headed for the doorway before it even finished construction. A dozen shadows dived into the archway and spread themselves thin. The material they were made of let no light past. He walked without pause and vanished without even a ripple.

Dusk chirped at me. Wraith’s nose flared and his head shook.

“Awesome,” I muttered then walked forward.

The sensation of cold silk greeted skin as we passed through. Xin’s body shivered with chills and I kept her pressed close. Barely free fingers rubbed up and down on the few inches of skin I could reach. She didn’t stir.

We arrived in a room with glowing beakers and tall shelves full of badly rolled papers. Piles of documents sat all around the room. This place looked like William Carver’s hut, only much messier. The ceiling sat at least twenty feet overhead with large precariously balanced boxes shoved into slots.

“That is neat,” I said.

“Neat? Generalizations are for lesser minds. Details are best left to scientists and poets.” He straightened his back then shook the book at me. “And I, am both.”

“But you didn’t give yourself a way to speak normally, that seems like a huge deal to overlook.”

“No, holes lead to flaws!” He shook and creatures of shadow moved about the room.

Some hands straightened out items that were lying on the floor. Other shadows knocked over new materials. The net effect was an unchanged room. One carried a dustpan through to clean up dust from all around the floor. Another dumped the freshly used dustpan in a corner.

“Spells.” Yates snorted while shuffling around. “They were rigid, stillborn and mechanical assemblies until I crafted a method to make them art. I gave them life.” Yates stared at the rows of books and snarled. His old form ran for the shelves and started knocking objects down. “I gave them all life and now those fools drown in fear spawned strife!”

Yates rapidly turned violent and slammed his arms across a shelf. Glass and flasks crashed. Books and notes went everywhere. Dusk did a circle behind me then stayed still. His head butted into my hand seeking reassurances that I couldn’t give. Wraith crossed his large arms and snorted out a puff of steam.

“My world, my dreams, my art! All of it, a bubble, a ghostly fart!” Yates hopped up and down.

“Never mind!” the raven shouted while hopping up and down. I hadn’t even noticed the damned creature in here with us. Its blackened beak opened wide to laugh.

“Don’t get lippy, Clippy!” Yates stood there huffing while the three of us held still. I cradled Xin’s form in my arms and couldn’t properly pet Dusk despite his insistent demands for attention.

“Never!” The bird laughed.

I had no goddamn clue what Yates had started to babble about now.

“Did you need the key that M. Shell made? Or have something for us to take back to Haven Valley?” I asked.

“No, and no, a thousand times no!” Yates smacked another paper off. It fluttered alone in the air while shadows tried to straighten up objects.

I didn’t understand. We risked our asses against [World Eater]s and an insanely designed creation in order to get that key. What was the purpose if Yates didn’t need it?

Yates stared across a table at me and frowned. Maybe he could read my thoughts through some magical administration interface. He snorted then shook his head again.

“This way.” He turned and walked into another room. We followed after him. I looked down at the book as we passed and marveled at how like my own it seemed to be. Maybe this was a copy or inspiration for the book used by the Voices and Ultimate Edition players.

The next room was lit by three burning candles of different colors. Yellow, blue, and red mixed up the room. Their hues blended together on a bed in the middle. I carefully wove Xin’s comatose form through the door and moved further into the room.

I recognized the hair. Braids were woven together in solid looking clumps of silver and gold. Her clothes were a dusty and cracking black. A jutting dagger that bordered on short sword sat in her chest. Her body warped around its edge.

“Is that Mother?” I asked.

He nodded slowly.

“By the Voices, I never dared believe she existed,” Wraith spoke in a humble rumble.

I hung my head and stood very still. Dusk bounded by and stared down at the woman’s face. She looked like a robotic sleeping beauty.

“You are not here to provide me a gift or receive one. You are here with witnesses. That will help you be effective.” His teeth ground together. Yates lived in a place between stressed and crazy.

I tried to understand how it was possible to be a witness. Then it hit me, in theory, my video feed was being watched by a ton of people in the real world. What had those viewers thought of my actions? Voices above, they probably thought I was insane.

“You mean the people watching,” I said slowly.

He nodded but didn’t speak. One of his gnarled hands ran across the bedside where a prone version of Mother lay. It shimmered for a moment and looked to be nothing more than a metal box with a glowing red light. That too faded and became a large beating heart then an endless ocean trapped inside a box. All the other images faded and it became a simple cot once more.

“A million rivers. Each one shaping what is to come. Each one burning a new path in golden light,” Yates spoke slowly and carefully he ran his hand on the cot and looked sad. “My friends were lost in its radiance. What robbed my friends of their minds will burn me to the soul. But this sacrifice we need. That’s true art! Not an idle dream, but thought made action.”

I nodded as if his words made sense. They almost did. If I dared believe him, Yates had essentially worked with the others to code a world where thought became a form of reality. That sounded insane, but the ARC was all in our heads. It had been a mental projection all along. We were nothing more than electronic ink.

“A trio of the old die to make way for the new. A bridge to form made of impossible dew.” He smiled weakly. “I’m sorry, I’ve always been terrible at poetry.”

“It’s okay. I’m starting to get the hang of this. But do you really intend to, go the same way as Michelle?” I tried to phrase my question correctly. Michelle had been a burned out skeleton sitting on a throne of wire. Based on the Trillium board’s words, Michelle and Carver's deaths were probably directly related to the same process Yates intended to attempt.

“I do, I will, and I have,” Yates spoke while staring down at the book in his hands. “But I have a request for you.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

“We stand here on the world’s far side, on a linchpin holding her tangled cloth into its bubbling shape. Someone,” he stared at me, “must stand on the world’s far side until the end. Or else all efforts will be for naught.”

I didn’t entirely understand. Was he saying I need to keep my ARC active in order to keep the process going? That sort of made sense, this entire world did use the ARC network. I vaguely remembered one of the board members of Trillium mentioning mine had been altered somehow. It probably had to do with whatever coding had been caused by the [Legacy Wish]. I almost wished I had worked to get a different degree in college.

“Once I pull the plug, bubbles collapse. Borders between worlds will cease, and madness given flesh will run rampant.”

“Can you explain, in more technical terms?” I wanted a better description of what he needed.

Yates shot off of the bed and stomped over to a four-foot tall stack of notes sitting in a chair. “I am!” he suddenly yelled at it. “I am and I cannot!”

“Never mind!” screamed the raven. It hopped on a table. Dusk’s head tilted in its direction but he otherwise stayed still. His lack of desire to murder wildlife actually bothered me.

“I can tell you everything. I can speak straight to your face and pray the words aren’t warped beyond recognition. I can and shall shake my hands and froth with rage at the warranted impotence we brought upon ourselves.” He shook his hands at the pile of papers then pushed it over. Yellow parchment slid across the ground causing Dusk to back up in worry.

“Because of the curse,” I said.

He shook rapidly while straining. His arm waved wildly at a stack of bottles standing nearby. They fell to the floor while Yates’ raven companion cawed with laughter. The man stomped over to Mother and gestured down.

“Once I pull this plug the balloon will pop. She,” his eyes twisted briefly then his rage slowed, “she will lay here and gasp the last breath and as that fleeting air escapes! So too shall this fragment of reality begin a final crumbling!”

“And you need me to be in Haven Valley until the end.”

He nodded then started trying to explain, “You must escape the crumbling earth and stand tall at the doorway to prove your worth. The chained demons will be chained no more.”

“I don’t understand,” I admitted.

“Demons have been known to ruin a party or city, but all of reality?” Wraith grumbled from over my shoulder. “No, that sounds like something we would do.”

Yates grabbed at the air in frustration. His face pinched together while both eyes closed. His mouth opened repeatedly to struggle with a clear answer.

“We three have laid down the path, and once the stretched thin skin of the world starts shrinking, those spirits you travel with will find their escape to another realm easier. All I need do is pull the plug.” He waved at the blade piercing Mother’s chest.

I stared at it and bit a lip. The world of Continue Online was falling apart. Did he mean that somehow they were stretching the programming thin in by holding Mother together? What exactly was she in the real world? A hard drive and some insanely powerful processor? Did the machine start burning out as it was deleted? I just didn’t understand at all.

My eyes stared at Xin’s sleeping form. Maybe the exact correlation didn’t matter. I believed Yates when he said Mother would breathe her last. I believed him when he said someone must stand on the other side of the world and stay logged in. Even though he didn’t use those exact words, the meaning felt clear enough.

“’ware Hermes. In releasing this pin the nothingness which eats this world will collapse on far side’s egress. Should you wish to avoid a pox upon the other lands as well, then bar the doorway against their ilk. Let not a single monster in until the last moment, and pray that our hubris and fear will not end in genocide.”

I understood. Voices help me, but I understood. Deep down I always expected it. My head nodded.

“I will, but not for you,” I said. “If I had to choose between every other life in this world and Xin, I would choose her. But I can’t do one without the other, so I’m all in.”

Yates sat on the bed as if all the strength in his legs had given out. His head hung and shook slowly.

“Then before the end, as an unmet friend, tell me a truth. Do you believe there is an afterlife for sinners such as us?” He looked around. “Or is all we see all there is? Like the others, I sought an escape from the mundane reality outside this one, and instead found a cause worth dying for, a dream worth letting the fires of Helios burn away my mind and sanity.”

I didn’t know how to respond. Believing in the afterlife had always sounded like a stupid idea. What we did while alive was all that mattered.

He shook his head then said, “For what I’ve asked of you and my friends, I hope not. We are slaves to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men. The weight of these sins could never be washed away by Lethe’s waters. I wish thee well, and bid thee run swiftly.”

“What?” I started to ask.

Yates looked at me and blinked once. His hand quickly dove upon the blade and yanked it out. The man’s hand fell open slowly as his mouth gaped in a soundless scream. What had pierced Mother fell apart into a million golden shards to float around the room in a rapidly spinning vortex. We backed up in unison. The table behind me fell away into the ground. Boxes all around started to fade.

Golden light burned at my eyes as the figure of Yates screamed. The world vibrated and slid under my feet. I tried to make my way back to the doorway while the rumbling kicked into high gear. Repeated hisses escaped Dusk.

The earth shook violently. I stumbled toward the doorway formed of shadows behind us. Beneath my feet the ground bulged and I turned to shield Xin’s comatose body. From the corner of my eye, a visible hand bursting through the floor could be seen.