He wanted to dream a man: he wanted to dream him with minute integrity and insert him into reality.

— Jorge Luis Borges, The circular ruins

“Who is he?”

The magician seemed genuinely curious as he watched through the window. They were inside a dome that couldn’t be seen from outside, a place full of flasks and old books and more modern-looking diagrams with abstruse graphs hanging from the walls. Or wall. There was only one wall, it being a dome and all.

“He’s a guy I helped. Now it’s his turn to help me, I guess,” Sarah replied, looking out as well. Maggot was still there, frozen in place, a swarm of assorted corpses hanging there too, motionless, all of them bathed by a golden light that came from nowhere. All around, the Void kept flashing, thundering, giving instant birth and death to half-formed creatures and machines that popped into existence through rips in the empty continuum. A hole of madness, a world of quirks and bugs. “And who are you?”

The magician turned around to face her.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “They call me the Great González, but that’s just a silly name they found in a children’s book. That much I know because it’s part of the information they gave me.”

“Who gave you this information?”

“The people who created me. They put me here to help them when they manage to enter the game. But they can’t, not yet. Maybe I can help you instead.”

Sarah fell silent for a few moments. Too much stuff was happening at the same time, and she wasn’t sure she fully understood the information she was being given.

“I need help, sure,” she said, “but why would you help me? You aren’t supposed to. I’m not the one who put you here. You don’t know me.”

“Oh, I do know you,” the Great González said. “In fact, Sarah, you are the only player whose identity I know. They have told me about you.”

“You are in contact with them, then? Can you send them a message for me?”

“Sadly, I can’t,” the magician said. “I can only receive information. They are blind about what happens inside the game. Like your friend Sumiko. They can tell you stuff, but they can’t see you at all. They don’t even know what’s happening here. That’s why they are trying to get in.”

“So why don’t they do it? They are hackers, right? They can do what I did.”

“They can’t, not easily. As soon as the Game Master knew they were here, they would be offed in no time. It would be suicide.”

Sarah stood pensive for a moment.

“But,” she objected, “the Game Master knows I’m here, and he hasn’t killed me.”

“Oh, sweet summer child,” the Great González said, with a smirk that was both sad and amused at the same time, “you should have realized this long ago. The only reason you’re still alive is because the Game Master wants you to be here. He wants you to stay here forever.”

* * *

It felt like an eternity, but surely just a handful of seconds passed as a chill ran down Sarah’s virtual spine (or was it the real one?) after hearing the Great González’s words. The Game Master wants me here, she couldn’t stop thinking. The Game Master wants me here forever. When she spoke again, her voice came out weak and fearful.

“So why... why is the Game Master doing this?”

“I will tell you what I know,” the Great González said. “Consider this the infodump. You may want to sit down.”

Sarah nodded and obeyed. The mage sat down too. The wall darkened and a series of pictures started appearing on it as he spoke. Photos, short clips of video relating to what he was saying.

“The Anderverse”, he began, “is the creation of Victor Anderen, owner of Digidream, the company making it. Anderen conceived the general idea of the multiworld game about ten years ago, when the VR technology had evolved enough for such a game to become feasible. About the same time, Victor Anderen was diagnosed with Macduff’s syndrome, a rare condition that renders the sufferer progressively unable to use their body, leaving their mind intact for a while, but attacking it in a second phase, making the brain deteriorate until the subject ends up becoming a vegetable. Death comes not long after that. The syndrome manifests initially with random muscle cramps, then with minor strokes, and then the degenerative process starts in full.”

“Oh my, that’s horrible.”

“Indeed. It is believed that the idea of building this version of the Anderverse in parallel occurred to him some time later,” the magician continued, “but in any case, development of the main game started about eight years ago, when he could secure the funding he would need for such a huge enterprise. Five years later, he started experiencing the first symptoms of the disease, and earlier this year he suffered his first stroke.”

“I remember that.”

“By that time, this version of the Anderverse was already planned. Victor Anderen knew that he had very little time to live, and he had set up something to avoid his fate. He set up a secret project to transfer his mind into a computer system, turning it into an AI.”

“Wh-what?”

“Most of the funds available for the game design and assets were secretly diverted to this secondary project, which was in fact primary for him. He knew the game wouldn’t be ready for a long time, but he devised a smart, albeit risky plan. Victor Anderen decided that he didn’t need to finish the game in order to inhabit it. He only needed it to work well enough for him to be transferred to the virtual reality, and then the AI would keep creating the gameworld and making adjustments from inside, while his mind was safely and progressively transferred.”

“What do you mean progressively?” Sarah asked, dumbstruck.

“The technology for this transfer has never been used before. It’s experimental, and it was developed by Anderen’s team with resources destined to the game,” the Great González explained. “For now, Victor exists here in a dual state: part of him is his own mind enclosed in the body that’s quickly decaying inside a tank in the Digidream building, and part of him is already an artificial intelligence controlling the game and almost all its aspects. The idea is that he will be fully transferred before he dies, which won’t take long in real life but could be a while in game time.”

“And this is why the game is unfinished. He will keep making adjustments to it until after he dies. Creating a universe to his own measure.”

“Exactly,” the magician responded.

The mage didn’t say it, but now she realized where she was. The Void was the representation of the parts of the game that were still being created and modified constantly by the AI. Scenarios, creatures, weapons, vehicles, all of it was in a continuous state of flux, and as the items were being generated and discarded, they appeared here briefly, only to disappear once the appropriate line of code sent them where they needed to be or straight up deleted them.

This was also what made the Worldjumper possible. The Ring of Realms worked by sending you to the Void, and then, from there, to any other of the realms in the Anderverse, through the open holes that existed in all of them. Once the game was finished (if it was ever finished), those holes would be closed and there wouldn’t be any chance to use the Ring. But for now, it was full of them.

A world in a constant state of creation. A world created according to the whims of a man.

“So Victor Anderen is the Game Master?”

“You bet he is.”

Sarah mulled it over. The story she was being told was fantastic, utterly unbelievable, but here, inside the Void, where hints of every fantastic thing were popping up all the time, she believed it. A man with plenty of money and power, but running out of time. A man helming the company where the most innovative virtual reality game was being made. What would a man like that do when facing impending death?

He would choose to be a god in a virtual world. A world designed to fit his dreams and ambitions.

And he had a special ambition.

Her.

That was the reason he had kidnapped her boyfriend. To get her to log into the game, and get trapped inside.

Victor Anderen had chosen her to be a part of his twisted fantasy world, forever.

“OK,” Sarah said, with sudden resolve. “How do we defeat him?”

“Can you fly?”

“No.”

“What a shame. Because you’ll need to fly.”

Fuck my life! I knew I should have chosen the fairy.

“Can you make me fly? You’re a magician after all.”

“Sadly, no,” the Great González said. “Bear in mind that I should not be here if it were for the Game Master. I can only provide resources that have been hacked into. And that is hard. Obviously, the people who put me here are much more interested in staying under the radar than in being very strong or able to fly. So the only way I can help you is by increasing your Stealth ability.”

Sarah frowned, but then her expression changed. “That’s not bad. Not bad at all,” she said finally.

“Very good.”

The magician made a complicated pass and a notification popped up in front of Sarah’s eyes.

+10000 Stealth

“Wow, that’s quite a bit of Stealth,” she commented.

“You’ve actually overflowed,” the magician said, “so it won’t ever go down. You don’t have to worry now about concentrating on it; you’ll be cloaked for as long as you like, and you’ll be able to deactivate it at will.”

“Thank you,” Sarah said. “Now how do I defeat the Game Master?”

“It might not be possible,” the Great González said thoughtfully. “His abilities will always be far superior to yours. But you can try to sever the link between him and the AI that is partially controlling the game. Maybe it’s too late and the AI is already in charge of everything, but if not, detaching him from it could make it possible for you to find a way to defeat him. Bear in mind that this detaching most probably means that you’ll be killing him. I mean the human part. At the very least, his mind will be irreparably damaged, having lost part of itself.”

Sarah shuddered at the thought. The reveal that Victor had kidnapped Mike and trapped her inside the game was revolting, but she didn’t know if she wanted to kill the man.

“Is there any other way?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you could try to talk to him, convince him to let you and your boyfriend go. That’s not likely to work.”

Sarah stood pensive for a few moments. Then she said, “Well, I’ll do what I have to do. Thank you so much for your help. It means so much to me.” She reminded herself that the Great González was just a computer program, not a real person, but she couldn’t help herself.

“There is a fortress in the sky,” the magician said, barely acknowledging her gratefulness. “That’s where you’ll find the Game Master. He calls it Inverness. If you could fly, you could go there right now, I guess. But it might be better to train a bit before going, anyway. He’s too powerful for you.”

“Oh, nevermind,” Sarah replied. “I need to make a stop first. If you’re so kind to unfreeze my friend, that is.”