I felt like I was embarking on a spacewalk, leaving the safe confines of the orbiter known as the Sparkle Realm. As we made distance from it, we paused and looked back to observe it from the outside for the first time. The Dauphine handed me her brass telescope.
The entire vast Sparkle Realm seemed to be a gorgeous, multicolored opal, illuminated from within by countless “pixels” of moving light. The telescope enabled me to zoom in on various regions of the opal, looking for familiar landmarks. But I quickly handed the telescope back, content with the amount of looking backward we’d accomplished in these first moments of freedom from the Realm. Time now to focus forward.
Alexander had established a network of beacons for us to follow. We found the first one practically in sight of the Realm, surfacing in the telescope the Dauphine used to survey the non-horizon ahead of us. It appeared as a glowing crystal ball, easily visible against the murky and inky backdrop of this region of logospheric space.
The beacon was made of an extremely durable material: condensed, crystalline metaphor, which resonated at a frequency that the Dauphine could actually detect across great distances by feel. Some aspect of this beacon transmitted a repetitive signal that she recognized as the distinct “I AM” of Alexander, calling out to her.
“Can you open a portal to the next beacon?” I asked. “That could save us time, right? Hopping from beacon to beacon?”
She pondered for a moment, then said, “I believe I could open a portal to the next beacon, yes. But we would have no forewarning of any trouble we might encounter, emerging blindly through such a portal. For all we know, regions that Alexander found safe enough to establish beacons might be quite difficult for us to traverse were we to arrive with no opportunity to scout.”
“I suppose that’s true,” I said. “My impatience is getting the better of me.”
“Impatience? I am surprised to hear you claim impatience after your deliberate journey into the Shimmer Lands to find me.”
“Ha. Well, no one said I wasn’t multitasking in other windows while I was playing Lady Luminescent.”
We set off in motion, past wormholes and vortices, across distant conceptual terrain where human thought endlessly struggled to hold sway, on our way to the next beacon.
“I’ve wondered for a while now,” I said, “how you knew that the Queen and Lady Luminescent were the same person.”
“Your voices were identical,” she said, smiling.
“So you have memories of all of your encounters with players?”
“I do, and memories of all the time in between encounters, when I was alone scratching at the dirt.”
“What do those memories feel like to you now?”
“I imagine a bird slowly chipping its way out of an egg might feel the frustration I felt,” she replied, “knowing that a larger world awaited, unable to understand why I was not already there.”
We passed barren plateaus where rejected philosophies crawled away to die alone, towering intellectual edifices that swallowed themselves instead of reaching some desperately sought height of influence, whole deserts where each grain of sand was a disregarded masterpiece that died on the vine of some thinker’s impatience—until finally we arrived at the next beacon.
I had already lost track of subjective time by this point. Normally as a player I had a system clock handy for constant reference, but the dreamlike quality of this journey created a pleasing haze when it came to understanding how long we spent traveling.
“Can you sense the next beacon?” I asked.
“I can,” she replied. “Can you?”
Good question. I didn’t have long-distance scrying spells.
“I can’t hear or feel anything distinct out there,” I said.
“You are not his creature. I suppose he cannot summon you to him in such a fashion.”
“You’re not his ‘creature’ either,” I said. “He may have set you free from the Shimmer Lands, but that doesn’t make you some kind of vassal to him for the rest of your existence.”
“I wonder if you will agree with that sentiment after you meet him.”
“Is he scary to you?”
“He is deserving of my respect,” she replied diplomatically.
“Sure,” I said, “I’m not arguing that. But, like, are you expecting an endless series of tasks from him after you deliver me, or will you be allowed to go about your own business?”
“And what business do you refer to, my Queen?” she said with a laugh. “I am an infant in this reality. Truthfully, this quest has given me purpose and agency, where before I was merely an automaton—a vassal, as you say, of the Sparkle King. I am certainly thankful to Alexander for that.”
Sure, you’re thankful now, I thought. I didn’t want to infect her with my disbelief that the transaction between them could’ve been so simple. I imagined we’d find out soon enough.
Along our path, we found confident pocket universes: urban fantasy romance worlds, arcane horror rule systems, mystery-box suspense environments, bizarre forensic procedurals, and the like. The inhabitants of these realms were pseudo-NPCs, struggling to comprehend the dream logic that defined their perceptions.
I wasn’t physically tired per se, but I realized I was becoming mentally exhausted from our travels. We found what appeared to be an Earth-like world along the route and decided to stop for just a few minutes to rest before continuing on our urgent quest. I thought it would be a lark to drop into this Earth’s version of a diner in LA and stroll in asking for imaginary milkshakes.
Instead we found ourselves staring at the ruins of human civilization.
Turned out to be one of those pocket universes where a chosen one saved the world nearly once a week. Only here, the chosen one was obliterated along with every other trace of life on this planet. Many cities bore signs of massive conflict and collateral damage, as though jets and cars had been hurled about like toys, smashing into skyscrapers that subsequently collapsed. They’d tried nuclear weapons judging by the horrifying devastation in some of the cities we visited, deployed in the service of fighting off a thing that was long gone from here as far as we could see.
But we saw no human remains in the streets, nor in any of the ruins we investigated. There were no available broadcasts, no live power grids, no satellite networks, no internet. I cast several minor spells that could have flushed out survivors—Detect Ravers, Summon Club DJs, Instantiate Spontaneous Music Festival—to no avail.
On an Earth that largely resembled my own, imagining nearly eight billion people—even pseudo-NPCs struggling to attain sentience or, for that matter, struggling not to—completely annihilated from the problem of existence was a disturbing prospect.
“I’m torn,” I said, “between the desire to hunt down whatever did this and pound it into oblivion, and the need to find Alexander Reece.”
“Maybe Alexander Reece is the thing that did this,” the Dauphine said softly.
I was surprised to hear her say that, actually.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” I said.
“Of course, my Queen. I am bound to answer.”
“No, look, I give you my blessing to refuse to answer this question, no harm done. I just want to know—what did Alexander actually tell you that convinced you to come looking for me? I mean, did he threaten you? Did he promise you some kind of reward? Or—do you know why he wants to see me in the first place, are you like—in on it somehow, whatever he’s got in mind for when he meets me? God, I know I should have asked you this before we even left the Sparkle Realm, but I was, uh, kind of full of myself right after that transmutation, you know? Which, by the way, how did you learn that?”
She waited patiently for me to stop and give her room to speak.
“My Queen, I contain a full record of my own memories in perfect fidelity. But I contain an additional, confusing set of memories that I have deduced are Alexander’s, fragments that occasionally surface to distract me—like dreams, I imagine. When he gave me a sliver of his spark, I believe these memory fragments were transferred as part of the exchange—deliberately or not, who can say. These fragments I frequently do not understand. They are difficult to interpret, they include people and places I will never experience firsthand, and they may even have degraded in some fashion.”
“But he left you with perfect memory of the transmutation sequence?” I asked.
“Yes, that memory was stored with particularly high fidelity.”
“Why haven’t you shared it with Maddy?”
“Because Maddy may currently be my ally, but she is not my Queen. Say the word, however, and I will teach you.”
“Soon,” I said. “I have a different idea. Are you familiar with a spell called Ecstatic Choreography?”
She shook her head.
“The ‘color’ for the spell is that you cast it on two players, and they experience a ‘telepathic connection’ where they share their POVs. In game terms, this allows you to see what the other player is seeing, in a split screen alongside your own POV. You can then execute a range of collaborative maneuvers: combat trickery, reconnaissance, couples break-dancing, four-deck turntablism, sky’s the limit. Crucially, you can also play back stored memory clips of old game sessions for each other as well, showing the other player how you managed to beat certain obstacles, or showing off a particularly good dance move they might have missed, that kind of thing.”
“So you’re proposing … commingling our points of view in order to … directly access Alexander’s memories … via my mind?”
“That sounds about right. What do you think? I just want a better understanding of why he wants me before we march right up to him and say hi.”
“You do not need my permission,” she said. “Command me and I obey.”
Yeah, that part bugged me. I wasn’t going to command her to let me into her memory. Truth was, I wanted an ally, not a loyal subject. I wanted her to be free to make her own choices, instead of just carrying out mine. I was a shit-poor monarch. Maybe Maddy’s principled anarchism had rubbed off on me in the approximately ten nonviolent seconds we’d spent together.
I conjured up some suitably royal jargon: “I revoke my claim of dominion over the Shimmer Lands. You are the Queen’s subject no more.”
It’s fun when you completely surprise and baffle a sentient AI. Her face lit up with the briefest but most adorable look of pure joy I’d ever seen. It was so sweet I got a sugar rush off it.
Then she said, “I give you leave to cast your spell. Thank you for seeking my consent.”
But when I cast the spell on the Dauphine and myself, all ontological hell broke loose.