3.8 Revelations

Seeing that room again was like peering through a window into the past. There was a little wardrobe in that office, but Grennel was still wearing his green velvet. He was either very attached to that outfit or very unattached to common decency. “Not joining the celebrations, professor?” Silven called through the choking odour.

The pale academic rushed to the window and grinned. “Oh, just plodding along with my research and hiding from those beastly and corrupt Silverlink soldiers who have unearthed undeniable evidence that I have blood on my hands. A typical night’s work, for the past year or so.”

Silven wasted no more time. He looked dead into the professor’s earnest face and said, “Damage poisons and slowing poisons overwrite each other. Get bit by a spider, turn green, and slip away. But hit a tarantula next, and you’re slow and blue. Instead.”

Grennel frowned. Then, he hummed. Then, he grinned. “Hmmm, basic biology. Poisons in the bloodstream should mix without inhibiting each other. And no intake of one could instantly eliminate all traces of the other throughout the body and eradicate its effects. Alright, you can come in.”

Silven blinked. Somehow, he still hadn’t been expecting that. He edged a tentative hand straight through the open window, as all normal hands and open windows should behave, and clambered in. Then, he saw the tottering towers of boxes and creased parchments piled high against the outer wall and uttered a cry of disgust. “Professor! Have you been concealing this clutter all this time? As dean of this establishment, I verbally warn you, with this verbal warning. I am also compelled to remind you there exists a twice-weekly failed research note furnace collection, every Tuesday and Friday.” He blinked again and grimaced. “That came worryingly naturally. I forget I’m on the verge of uncovering shocking revelations about our existence. My apologies, sir; carry on.”

Grennel waved a hand at the rubbish. “I apologise too. And not just because I have failed to open up to the bin men in case a guard were to slip in and give me just punishment for my crimes. I apologise for the little exercise with the window. I wanted to let you in all along. It’s just not how it works.”

Silven eyed the window latch grimly. “It’s how it should work. Little exercise? I gallivanted up and down the republic for far too long seeking out titbits for your ‘work’. Was it worth it?”

Grennel nodded warily. “As a designated quest giver, it is imperative I demand something related to my needs when presented with a request for help or access from the fulcrum. And as my research had recently moved from the intricacies of the song of red communal sparrows towards the great truth of our universe, allowed by my freedoms as a centrepiece, I had to request something a little out of the ordinary. A little wrong. Any questions so far?”

“Yeah,” said Silven. “You needed something for your needs. You’ve been in here alone all this time. Wouldn’t a shard of toilet pottery have sufficed?”

Grennel looked dead into his eyes. “We do not use the toilet. Or eat, or sleep, when the fulcrum is not present. Centrepieces simply enter a state of what I call standby existence, carrying out tasks relevant to the fulcrum only until he or she approaches again, as triggered by the aforementioned Elsenberg purpose principle. The pawns, so to speak, shut down altogether. So there’s your answer.”

“I better sit down,” replied Silven. He saw a half-empty bottle of port on the desk and finished the shoddy work instead. He stood for a long time before he spoke again. “So... I’m a fulcrum?”

Grennel gasped in exasperation. “You’re the fulcrum.”

“And my friends? Olgy?”

“Centrepieces.”

“And the difference?”

Grennel cast a disappointed eye over the portless bottle. “Centrepieces have some freedom from the rigorous script of existence. They are capable of thought, and intuition, and action. But with one critical limitation. They are bound to their relationship with the fulcrum. Whether to antagonise or comply, is determined by the course laid by the fulcrum.”

Silven’s hands began to tremble. He already knew the answer before he had spoken the question. It all made sense. But he needed to hear it for it to be real. “And the fulcrum’s course?”

“Is free to determine everything.”

Everything. It was such a big concept. It included everything. Finally, Silven did sit down.

The professor casually dabbed a scented ointment on his armpits, and waited for his theory to sink in.

Instead, Silven’s oh-so-free mind tried to dodge it. “So tell me about the pawns.”

Grennel scoffed and waved away the nonsense. “They don’t matter. The people are just there for performance. They spring to life to give your actions meaning. Then they are taken out of play and await the next.”

Silven sat rigid in his chair. He looked out at the grounds of the academy with a sense of boiling dread. “But my company. My public services. My Silverviews and IMs, and the heating! Only when I’m there?”

“To the pawns, yes. The world adjusts to always raise a challenge. Think of the guilds that have risen alongside Silverlink.”

Silven frowned. “Ambard’s jewellery. Findigrist plaques. They are no competition.”

“You’re missing the point. They’ve rose all the same. As I said, the world adjusts to challenge as best it can. And those companies are in direct competition.”

Silven slumped in his chair. Waves of confusion and pain fluttered around his aching head. “Trinkets. It’s all just trinkets to them. My people.”

Grennel moved a little closer, but his voice was cold and clinical. “Yes. They pick up those plaques and Silverviews alike, and look at them when you’re there. They chatter away across IM and across rooms alike. Meaninglessly.”

“So it’s all pointless,” mumbled Silven. His eyes were unfocused, his words monotone. Everything to nothing. His life was worthless. “It means nothing.”

“That’s not what I said. To the pawns, yes. To the centrepieces, and you, no.”

Silven sat up again. He’d had too much port and too much information. The room was swimming around him. His mind was wandering. “So that’s why it’s been so easy. Elsenberg purpose principle. I think what I want and I get it. Because I’m the fulcrum.” There was silence. He focused back on Grennel. The professor’s hands were clapped over his eyes, and he was shaking. “Professor?”

The professor burst. “Gods be damned! It is the curse of a man of learning to be plagued by the proliferation of idiotic misinterpretations of simple theorems!”

“Errr, what?”

“Just listen to what’s said, and don’t be so stupid!”

Grennel lowered himself until he was eye to eye with his guest. “Objectives of a magical nature will only reveal themselves to the fulcrum when they cross an expectation threshold. Not ‘objects and situations will magically appear when the fulcrum crosses a desire threshold.’ Please tell me you haven’t been living your life by that nonsense?”

“But you said-”

“A fulcrum is the centre around which events turn. You can determine where and how, but do not provide the power. Let me demonstrate.” He tapped Silven on the shoulder and beckoned him to rise. He waggled a finger at the door leading off into the shadowy wing. “What do you wish to be beyond that door, oh mighty fulcrum?”

Silven hesitated. He thought of his desperate quest for meaning. He thought of his friends. “A crowd of people, all eating ice-cream and playing games and talking to people across the country and enjoying themselves. Genuinely enjoying themselves.” He paused. “And the mercenary, Dasat.”

Grennel motioned silently. Silven moved to the door and unhooked the latch. He knew he shouldn’t hope, but couldn’t help it. The warm glow of excitement was spreading slowly to his fingertips. When it reached his nails, he opened the door.

Nothing but shadows, and, in Silven’s humble opinion, a not particularly well done still life of an apple on a plate. He shut the door.

Grennel spoke quickly and deliberately. “And while you were sulking, I happened to message a valuable ally who will aid you in choosing your destiny after all this is explained. He should be at the door this very moment.”

“Is it Elsenberg?” Silven said.

Grennel sighed sadly. “He was a centrepiece too. But he turned into a ferret last Thursday and roams the skirting boards of number eight Swampback Lane yet, despite our best efforts. Anyway, go on.” Silven opened the door.

A hooded figure stood poised to exit the gloom. Silven stepped aside and gasped as the brother walked into the light and shook Grennel’s hand. He turned to his king and looked him up and down with piercing black eyes. “Your Majesty. We meet more peacefully than last, I hope. I was too busy escaping an avalanche of baddies to finish you off then. Perhaps I was right not to.”

Silven gasped. “Brother Whateverborn! I mean – tell me, what is your true name?”

The man looked confused. “Brother Whateverborn.” His eyes flashed. “You weren’t meaning to insult me, were you?”

“No, no,” hurried Silven. “I just thought you might have a first name, that’s all.”

“I do. Brother.” Silven thought it best to say no more. “Since the Battle To End It All, in which I had hoped to put a stop to the rise of the Glitch, I have led the life of an exile. With the Cathedral of Dust brought back into republican hands, I thought it best to pursue more direct and effective measures towards the eternal fight. And then, my old friend says he had you. The most direct approach of all.”

“Enough of that!” snapped Grennel. “Later. What I really want to drive home is this – if you take just one message from this conservation, it should be to have enough respect for your intellectual superiors to actually heed their words. There are enough ridiculous rumours and pseudoscientific gossip flying around without the king himself spreading more. Science may be taking hold, but it’s still in a delicate position within this rapidly-changing society.”

Silven paused. “I think there may be other messages I should take home too.”

Grennel mumbled. “Maybe. Anyway, where were we?”

“I think you’ve made it abundantly clear that I cannot think my way to victory.”

Grennel’s eyes gleamed. “Ah, yes. This world may be your sandbox, but who shaped the box? Who carted the sand in, and put the little picket-fence around the edge with the little house rules sign telling you to have fun but remember you can’t do this and that?”

Flashes of inspiration carved their way through Silven’s bewilderment like a thunderstorm. “The stranger in the tavern. The mice. The Black Shadow. The assassins.”

Grennel grinned smugly. “Right on one account. The voice, and the soldiers, they’re all just sandcastles, part of the play area. But those mice... I have reason to suspect that they are the real power here. The outside force.”

Silven nodded slowly. “Yes. And the mages.” He was starting to feel queasily disconnected from the room.

“Here we come to the meat of the meal,” continued Grennel firmly. “The mice are not of this world. They blend in, as much as a critter in a top hat can , but they determine the bones of the reality you shape. They set the plots in motion, and steer you into the traps and trials, and observe in glee as you... flail about. It’s their entertainment.”

Sudden understanding flooded Silven’s heart, and he sat down again. “Guys, guys, I think I get it.” He took a shuddering breath. “It can’t be true, and yet it makes so much sense. This world, us, all we’ve done.... it’s not real.” He leaned closer to his companions, his voice barely above a whisper. “We’re just a storybook.”

Grennel glanced sideways at Whateverborn. Whateverborn looked slyly at Silven’s pale, earnest face. They both broke down into roars of laughter. “How could we be in a book, you stupid man?” managed Grennel. “Time stands still in a book. It’s already written. There’s no freedom. We’re in a game, you idiot.”

Silven looked blank. Whateverborn sniggered again.

“You know, a game? Like chess or draughts, but far more complicated. They have technology well beyond the wildest dreams of this humble academy. But my research all points to it. The way everything’s connected... we’re all pieces on a kingdom-sized gameboard. They set the rules, and we follow them, and they call us out for cheats and nudge us in the right direction when we disobey. A new step in gaming, I suppose. They don’t move us themselves. Semi-passive play, I call it.”

Silven looked back at the mice. Always watching, always popping up and giving unwanted advice, and goading him into new powers when he really didn’t want them. That is, until he shut them out. “But if that’s true, then I’ve been cheating for a long time.”

Grennel nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, and that’s why we’re where we’re at. What a tongue-twister. You see, I was simplifying things when I said you’ve got complete freedom. They want the game to end somewhere. They have fun watching how you choose to go about it, but they know how it ends. They built the sandbox, remember.”

Silven shivered. “The Three Toes Tavern.” It was a name he had not uttered in quite some time.

Brother Whateverborn joined the conversation. “That’s just the start. The powers that be have a delicate balance to strike. Make you a mere drone, and you’ll follow the line too rigidly. Give you too much free thought, and you’ll take flight almost immediately. That’s what they’ve done. They’ve been struggling to control you ever since.”

“As they did with all of us,” added Grennel. “They made me a scholar, and gave me the power to find patterns of my own. Ever since, I’ve been working to uncover the rules of play. And all your companions. They’ve enabled you to gather an army of supporters to twist from their grasp, where Olgred and the rest could have been used to push you back on track.”

Suddenly, Silven was furious. Not at the whole game thing- that was rather too much to think about at this point - but at the tastes of those evil creatures. “So that’s why I’ve dealt with death and destruction at every turn? They think my way’s boring? All that power, and they want blood and guts? I’ll give them blood and guts!”

Grennel held up his hands. “Easy. That may prove difficult, now that most have left the arena. And don’t tar them all with the same brush. In fact, it’s the peaceful ones that have left us in this mess.”

“What do you mean?”

Grennel sat down opposite the visitor. Finally, his expression was one of compassion. “I note that you haven’t come to me with ideas for some time. What caused the change?”

Silven bristled. “Any abnormalities I have witnessed since the start of my businesses may have compromised company targets if disclosed. They’re too close to classified material.”

“I see.” Grennel nodded. “But not the poison information?”

Silven shook his head. “No... that was before... I think.” He shook his head vigorously. “I don’t know where it came from. But as soon as I defeated that Bloodthirsty character, it came back.”

Grennel waggled a smug finger. “No. I’m making an educated guess and proposing a possible solution. That thought came back when you removed a mouse from play? I thought so. My efforts lead me to believe that they have some abilities to directly influence the course of the game in dire need. They watch all the centrepieces as well as you, and monitor for signs of abnormal thought. When I stumbled upon the nature of the world, they knew they had made a mistake in granting us too much free thought. And if the fulcrum himself were to join forces, and we all became self-aware...” Grennel shrugged. “A bit late for that speculation now, I suppose. But they endeavoured to cut off that road. The Corril murder I suspect to be part of the original sandbox. I was always meant to do that. But they knew the rules that they themselves had set – I had to ask for something useful to my research. All they had to do to stop this conversation from ever happening, and keep the game on track, was to stop you giving me an answer.” Grennel drew in a long, thoughtful breath. “I imagine you learned of the spider poison a long time ago, before you ever suspected anything was wrong. That gave them the chance to remove it from your thoughts. A touch of a paw, the brush of a whisker... any physical interaction would have done.”

Silven shuddered and thought of the mousey conversations of yore. “They blocked the evidence,” he cried in horror.

“Yes,” Grennel pressed. “And hoped that that would be that. I like the word that. Anyway, the show was supposed to go on. All those big fights and betrayals and romances they probably had built for you were waiting, but your desire for freedom and doing good got in the way. Some grumbled and departed long ago; others have dropped off steadily as your cheating went on. But others tried to adapt the very universe itself.” He glanced over at the hooded brother. “I think this is more your territory now.”

Whateverborn grunted. “I’m of the Fellowship of the Glitch, as you well know, but I am also a centrepiece. I was obviously supposed to try to murder you or lead you through a secret tunnel or something, before you changed the course of this fantasy. That has allowed me to correspond with Grennel about all this for some time. I’ve worked out a few things about the world since then for myself. The most important thing goes back to the fellowship itself. Have you ever played one of those more abysmal boardgames with ten thousand pieces and a rule book the size of an encyclopaedia?” Silven nodded cautiously. He had invented all those himself. “Good. Then you’ll know how sometimes things get confused. One rule seems to contradict another. You find a loophole where you can win battles against entire armies with one small piece and a poorly-worded spell card. Some of the numbers in attack tables might have been missed off by a lazy scribe. Sometimes, things just don’t work.”

“And their game is the same,” finished Silven. It was not a question.

“Yes. Here, it’s known as the Glitch, for reasons unknown. My brothers and I have been created to hunt down and destroy it wherever it raises its beastly head. But the rules themselves we cannot heal, and it will go on forever unless the higher powers solve it.” He shook his head in despair. “Yet they have gone the other way. It started as the odd inconsistency. A disappearing merchant, an archer who can shoot through walls, and lost memories. Can you remember your beginnings, Silven?”

Silven shook his head. In his escape from Fort Deathrot, the mice had asked him to finalise decisions he had not made. Whateverborn seemed satisfied. “The spider poison is a new one on us, but that’s a very minor thing too. What troubles us now is the plague.”

“But why has it gotten worse?”

Grennel looked troubled. He could hardly meet Silven’s eye. “The mice that have remained up to this point started to look at the board in different ways. They liked your ideas, Your Majesty. Yes, the pawns looked like they were enjoying their trinkets, but the players started to meddle. What if they could make your visions a reality? Maybe they could make what many thought a dull game a rather interesting experiment. And the only way to do that was to generate more thinkers. They’ve been promoting more and more of your people to free thought and full life. And with it has come the challenges of fitting your hopes and dreams into the rule book. Unrestricted instant travel, long-distance messaging, unlimited resources, plot changes, vast networks of people and groups...”

“But sadly, we have reason to believe most of these players are uneducated spoiled brats with no hope of changing the sandbox,” finished Whateverborn. “They’ve tried, alright, and created a tangled rats’-nest of gibberish that the world can’t follow. And so the plague has spread.”

“And I am its creator.” Silven sunk in his chair. Everything he had ever done had been simplified to this lecture about some kids messing around in a game. And to learn that he himself was the mastermind of its decline was just the icing on the hairball.

Grennel laid a hand on his shoulder. “I think you’ve known something of this for some time. Which brings me back to my original point about your disappearance. A mind as bright as yours cannot have failed to see the intrinsic ties between the rise of your utopia and the rise of the plague. Maybe you’ve pushed it aside, tried to help in your own way, but I suspect that is why you have failed to report anything of it back to me. You knew, but were afraid to hear it.”

Silven was afraid that Grennel might be right. He hoped he would never know.

Whateverborn hastened on. “Yet you are also the world’s saviour. Without these ideas, the mice would have flipped the board long ago. You’ve kept their interest for so long, and made our lives all the happier for it. So keep that in mind too.”

Silven dreaded what was to come. “But now?”

“But now we have come to the crossroads once and for all. Finally giving up on improving the world, most of the mice turned back to the game’s roots. The natural resistances of the sandbox were failing to stop you, so they developed greater ambitions. They would place another fulcrum, a more malleable one, put a stop to your fiddling once and for all, and try to untangle the damage they had done. Then, they could go about their little plots and quests with their new champion.”

“The Bloodthirsty,” said Silven simply. “The end of my story. They even took matters into their own hands. They burned Overwall.”

“Apart from it wasn’t the end,” the brother reminded him. “You won, remember? Just a shame that most of the players have got bored and gone home. The board hasn’t been flipped, but it’s almost time for it to be folded away.”

“Mouse sightings have plummeted in recent days,” warned Grennel. “This game seems hardly worth playing now to most. At any second, I fear we may just.... not be.”

Silven writhed in silent torment. He didn’t know whether to feel important or worthless or heroic or villainous. In the end, he settled on a hodgepodge of everything. “So, it’s just a question of what’s first - I get turned into pate by some super-monster conjured from the depths of hell, we all turn into toucans and flap away into the purple sunset, or we just fizzle out into nothing. Sounds like fun, gentlemen. Place your bets.”

“Or we get the happy ending,” added Grennel carefully. “The true ending.”