Am I making choices?

Are my choices my own?

This decision is a doozy. Right at this moment she's choosing between worlds.

Does she stay here in this claustrophobic fish bowl, stashed away for what could be eternity in an office belonging to a junk hoarder? Does she stay here as some sort of prisoner or experiment – quite possibly of her own, insidious devising:

Do I stay here as Sara?

Or does she return to that other world; the world in ruins where Might makes Right and Might is dictated by clear mathematical operations. That other world where she possesses strange powers and purposes.

But what if I lose my memory again? What if I go back there and have to start all over?

Well, it's not like much of anything returned to her upon death, anyway. It's not like she's suddenly remembering everything she's forgotten now simply because she's in 'Heaven'.

She catches another glimpse of her reflection—Sara's reflection—staring back from the fishbowl inside which her head is stuck.

Maybe I don't want to remember.

Is that her greatest motivation here? Not being Sara? Ultimately is that more important than being Ava?

What if that's how this all started? What if I just didn't want to be Sara, anymore? This entire saga could just be a distraction. What seems like self-imprisonment could actually be an extreme form of escapism.

No, that's not it – this isn't a simple virtual reality simulation. There's something else going on here. Some mystery to be solved involving Bach and Javors and the wires in their brains.

So the question isn't really: which world do I want to live in?

It's more like: which world can answer my questions?

Wait. 'Resurrection Accepted'?

Did she do that? It wasn't deliberate, if so.

Am I making choices?

Are my choices my own?

Suddenly everything in the office is losing its material existence. Just like the other world – this place is built with math. The walls and the floor covered in computer parts—the window and the world outside—it all melts away in lines of rainbow-colored computer-text.

Rivers of shimmering numbers wash away the entire universe. And what remains is impenetrable blackness. The invention of zero—the abyss—it's the underlying basis of everything. She's careful not to stare into it for too long.

But she's floating now, free of the constricting pod, suspended in space by nothing at all. Or is it more than that?

Am I nothing, now?

Or everything?

She can't perceive of any body, anymore. No arms nor legs thrashing and flailing as she drifts through the endless void. But she does perceive something else, doesn't she?

There are other worlds in this abyss. Phantom worlds which are kept separate from one another by the thinnest of membranes. As though Ava is sealed within a single drop of rain in a hurricane and every adjacent drop is its own universe. Could she collide with one of those droplets and mistakenly enter an alternate reality?

She's gazes into the strange, new worlds:

Some are paradise: bright green grass on the banks of turquoise-blue lakes. Golden sunshine. Gentle people plowing fields, picking flowers, and smiling.

Like some sort of farming sim.

Other worlds are cruel and torturous. Cliched depictions of Hell with demons overseeing their human slaves in fiery pits. People in chains, breaking rocks in sulfur mines. Even here in this hollow abyss she swears she can feel the heat.

Diabolos ex machina, pops into her mind.

And then here comes the white vortex forming around her again. The clouds swirling, delivering her back to the fallen version of Earth she's come to know. That old familiar apocalyptic hellscape. Lightning crackling—sparking her back to life this time—making her feel more than a little bit like the monster animated on the Mad Scientist's slab.

Like Bach in Mom's lab after she butchered him. Or wait – is that my lab? And my butchery?

The vortex carries her and somewhere far below is the barn where her companions await her return from the afterlife – but she just has to have faith in the fact that it still exists because she can't actually see it yet. She can't actually see anything down there at the far opening of the vortex – it's just more abyss.

And then there is something blood red rushing up from the void below. It screams up at her and it's a huge red stone—not a ruby, exactly—not like any naturally-occurring stone she's ever seen. And it's not exactly any sort of synthetic jewel, either. It's more ethereal.

It's cut into a smooth, rounded dome like a holographic cabochon, semi-transparent and flickering intermittently. Humming and vibrating. And suddenly the stone fills her entire field of vision and studying it up close she sees there is some sort of writing scrolling past inside – but as she strains to read it something pulls at her mind:

It's trying to suck out her memories. Wipe her back to Level Zero. Will she respawn once more as a prisoner of Big Traffick? Will she play this entire loop over again? Or is it possible she'll be someone else, entirely?

She panics, struggling to twist away from the red jewel but it's impossible because she has no body. This is all still the afterlife, after all. This is still her version of Heaven.

But then:

And the red jewel suddenly drifts back down the vortex. A golden chain and medallion come and seal the cabochon in their setting. It's a necklace—and also some sort of device—with the bright red stone serving as a type of screen, covered in rows of cycling letters and numbers.

Is that a real item out there, somewhere in the world? Has it successfully sucked out her memories before?

Does it hold the answers?

She tries to follow after it—swimming in the void—but the vortex has other plans. Suddenly it's putting Earth back together down there. Instead of wreaking destruction, this time the divine tornado carefully reassembles the barn like a hobbyist constructing a miniature model.

And Ava's companions are all at once present again, along with their shock and panic. And so is Ava, laying there dead. Her own slack face; eyes open and lifeless.

And as she's sucked back into her body she hears herself still screaming.

For one final moment she exists within an all-consuming peace. A vision of the red necklace dances in her mind. Nothing can be wrong because everything is in order.

But when she actually opens her eyes the scene is utter chaos.

“Come on, Ellie.” It's Bach's voice and he's intense. “Come on, darlin'. Calm down.”

Ava rolls onto her side. Her head throbs – just like the first time she woke up. Just like that first day back on Big Traffick.

But this time she knows everyone. Knows who they are and knows where she is. And she knows Ellie is the one screaming. It was never her – it was Ellie.

Ava sits up and tries to make sense of everything going on around her. Something has gone wrong with the resurrection psionic. Terribly wrong. She sees Uri struggling to stand, drooling profusely, bright red blood oozing from his ears. Ostby tries to support him but Uri rips away, desperate to get to Ellie – yet still too weak to walk. He collapses face-first in the dirt.

And when Ava scans the area for Ellie she finds her spasming in the dirt. She's shrieking, bleeding from every facial orifice, arching her back, clawing at the dirt until her fingernails crack and snap off.

And she's screaming, “find my baby, Ava! Please find my baby!”

She's manipulating you, says the voice in her head.

Is that her voice? Is it Sara's?

Is there a difference?

What does she believe? Is any of this real? How can she be sad for Ellie—for any of them—when she's not even confident any of this is real?

When she's not sure if maybe it's all a game – or a trap.

The Simulcram Trap.

What if this—Ellie's awful condition, evidently inflicted in the course of saving Ava's life—is all just to make her feel guilty for being alive? To instill a sense of obligation in her.

To keep me fighting for this Godforsaken world. This lost cause.

But what if that other world—the clean world with the office—where she's somehow attached to Javors the rat and teenage Bach—what if that's not real, either?

If she accepts that someone out there is capable of creating this kind of virtual world—a place whose reality is this convincing—then couldn't they just as easily create the office space? And she had even less sensory input there. Seems like it'd be an even easier world to build.

If she accepts that one of these realities is false—and she has to make that choice—then how can she ever trust that either reality is authentic? The only option is to form her own narrative; her choices determining what sort of world she inhabits:

Quest Accepted: The Stolen Child

“No!” Uri sobs, reaching out for Ellie. But there's nothing anyone can do.

She kicks her heels against the dirt with such force that her shins crack. Ava flinches from the sound of it, like two rams colliding on a mountainside. And Ellie isn't done. She convulses ultra-violently, tearing at herself with her hands twisted into claws, shredding her flesh with her own broken fingernails. She's pulverizing herself with her psychic seizure; self-destructing. And then she jerks her head left and right and there's a terrible snap as her neck breaks.

And Ellie stops screaming. She just lays there, completely still and silent.

All of them, completely still and completely and utterly silent. A breeze whispers through the barn.

Bach sighs.

"I always hate this,"

He gently presses her eyelids closed.