“Data…?” Caspian scratched his head. “How are you… alive?”
“It is a long story.” Data cocked his head to the side. “I will have to tell it outside the village, the Pure Heart will be harmful to them.”
“Yeah… we know,” Vivian said.
“Also, is there a reason you have Mr. L with you?”
Luigi groaned. “I’m Luigi! Luigi Mario! I am not this Mr. L guy!”
“The resemblance is remarkable, but duplicates are not the strangest thing.” Data gestured for them to follow him. “Let us walk and talk.” He began leading them through a forest, going even further north. “So, do you know where Twilight is?” Seeing their dour expressions, he nodded. “Ah. And none of the others. No contact with Flipside, either?”
“We’ve got nothing,” Vivian explained. “Just… hoping the Chaos portal will provide a way home.”
“I suspect it will, but not in the way you think it will. I should start from the beginning. After the assault by Dimentio, I ended up here, in the Chaos Wastes. My first few days were difficult, to say the least. The massive daemons were immune to phaser fire and even my advanced physical abilities weren’t enough to maintain dominance. So I hid—until I discovered that setting the phaser to a specific frequency would disintegrate any daemon instantly. Then I was the most powerful entity in the Wastes.”
“We’ve had to rely on the Heart to protect us,” Caspian said.
“You would be dead otherwise. I am curious how you managed to rejuvenate it.”
“The Emperor of… the Empire. A ways south.” Caspian shrugged. “The people said he could do anything, and it turns out he could do this. I’m not entirely sure what he was—some god in human form, or what.”
Data nodded, though he clearly wasn’t satisfied by the answer. “Regardless, I had power. The mutants of the land began to notice, and since I did not threaten them if they did not threaten me, they began to congregate. Because of my power, I was able to defend them, and they could make their village. The first week was difficult—the daemons never stopped attacking—but I required no sleep or rest. The daemons eventually gave up and moved on to other places to attack.”
“Do we need to take them with us?” Vivian asked. “Help them?”
“It wouldbe of little use,” Data said. “Their condition is terminal. They never last long before they lose their minds and become ravenous hunters. Every day, the village has to put down several who change, just as more come in. Their lives are nothing but suffering, and if you were to cure them with magic I suspect there would be nothing left.”
“How… horrible.” Vivian shuddered.
“It is the nature of this Chaos,” Data said, shaking his head. “It is a shame, but it was not pointless. In the midst of all these seemingly random biomes, there are some which hide strange technology. The mutants were able to find me many parts to work with.”
“Work on what?”
“A solution to our problem.” He led them over a hill made out of gold and diamonds. Once they crested it, at long last they saw their destination: the Chaos Portal. A great ring of pure darkness that spewed endless, pure, eldritch magic onto the world below, twisting the ground next to it into another form every second. Daemons poured out of the gateway, writhing, unable to keep their forms. Around the portal, however, something was constant: massive stone machinery that dwarfed even the tallest mountains. They appeared like fingers attempting to grasp the portal—or perhaps they were the ribs of some long-dead cosmic monstrosity. It was the brilliant glow of their dancing runes that made everyone realize the sky was pitch black, even though it was supposed to be an endless day. The motionless red moon occupied a full tenth of the void above, as if watching all of them.
Something was off, however, and in a more fundamental sense than endless unrestrained mutation. Every now and then, the portal would stop moving as if frozen for an entire second, occasionally existing in two places at once or appearing as though it were cut in half. Reality was inherently unstable.
“That’s it…” Vivian said, holding out a hand. “The portal.”
Come. You will be welcomed. You will be home.
“It is inadvisable to get any closer,” Data said. “We may be immune to the mutation, but the ground beneath us is not. It could turn into water and then stone fast enough to trap us within, down there.”
Vivian, you are shadow, you can pass through anything. Come home.
Data directed them to the closest stone machine, which just happened to cut right through a hill of gold and diamond. “All we need is right here.” Affixed to the edge of the ancient monolith was a tower cobbled together from various technological sources, twice as tall as Data. He passed through a shield around it effortlessly, gesturing for the others to follow.
“What is this?” Caspian asked, passing through the shield.
You can save the world, Vivian. And then there will be nothing you cannot have. You could be like your mother, except with no mistakes.
“It is a reality beacon,” Data explained. “It is supposed to probe the nature of the simulation.”
“Simulation?” Luigi cocked his head.
“Yes. This world is not ‘real’ in the same sense that the others we visited are.”
That’s it… it’ll all be over soon…
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Caspian scratched his head.
“This entire world is generated by a computer.” Data pointed at the chaos portal. “And it’s having difficulty rendering that object over there: the portal. This is a weak point in the simulation. Perhaps it is weak because it simply cannot manage all the chaotic randomness, or perhaps it is a connection to something outside the simulation. It does not matter which for our purposes.”
“So, wait, hold on…” Caspian held up a hand. “I can’t believe I’m asking you to explain something in more detail, but… how can we be in a computer? I’ve seen those devices of yours, they do not display real things, they are a bunch of lights on a screen.”
“Ah, you’ve misunderstood. See, I am technically a computer. An android is just a computer set to exhibit sapient appearance and behavior.”
“You are more than ‘just a computer’ my friend.”
Data nodded. “True. I was copied from the mind of my creator, Dr. Noonian Soong, but then I was placed in my neural net—which was a computer. It is possible that a similar process was involved in placing us here.”
Your true destiny is so close to being realized.
Caspian glanced to Luigi. “I’m afraid I’m not understanding this. You?”
Luigi shrugged. “I think I kinda understand the whole simulation thing? But not-a really. I don’t think it matters how this happened, maybe?”
Data opened his mouth to explain further, but shut it of his own volition. “Perhaps further explanation is not required. What is required that we escape.”
I intended to break it with this beacon, though I doubted it could exaggerate the weakness enough to have any visible effect. With the Pure Heart, however, I am sure we can break free.”
“Very well,” Caspian lifted up the Pure Heart.
Move, little one! Faster!
“Where’s Vivian?” Luigi asked.
Vivian let out an “eep” of panic. She didn’t know why, but her previously slow descent into the valley of chaos became a run. In her haste, she forgot to descend into the shadows. This was both her mistake and her saving grace. Above the shadows, she was an easy target for Data. One phaser blast direct to her back had her down. She groaned—not unconscious, but not able to move very quickly either. She felt the energy of Chaos entering her…
Data jumped down to her, leaving Caspian and Luigi in the shield. He picked her up. She didn’t have the strength to fight.
“DON’T YOU DARE!” A booming voice called from the portal itself. It made Caspian and Luigi fall to their knees, tears pouring down their faces while screams of despondent hopelessness escaped their mouths. Data was completely unaffected.
Vivian felt as though the voice was trying to protect her. She needed to help it. She tried to muster the willpower to burn Data, but she only lit a small fire on the edge of his uniform that quickly went out. Vivian had no more in her but a sense of failure and loss. She couldn’t go where she needed to…
“LET HER COMPLETE HER PATH.”
Data paid the voice no mind. He ran back up the hill, returning to his reality beacon.
“I WILL HAVE HER, ANDROID.” Daemons began to surge out of the portal—thousands of them, mostly the kinds that looked like discs and birds. “YOUR TOY IS POINTLESS.”
Data jumped into the shield, dragging Vivian with him. He grabbed the Pure Heart from the bawling Caspian and placed it in the center of the beacon.
“THE REALITY OUTSIDE IS NOT FREE OF ME!”
“I will take the chance that it is better than this,” Data said.
“Ȓ͖̻̰̹̦̓͛ĔͩE͍͆͟ͅE̫̠̦͚̜̟̘ͣͮ̔͑G̏͂͋K̵̼͕̫̰̞̄̊͗ͤ́H̞ͨ̄̊͞T̽̂ͧ̇H̙͊ͮ̈́̏ͬE̺̝͓͖͖͋̂ͥS͈̺͖Ķ̰̟̖̞͇̱̭ͮK̝͍̙̭K̞̤ͫͬ̍̍͌̽ͣḰ̈́!̮̫͖̎ͨ͊͆̔͋!͏̟̖͕͍̦͙̦”
Data pulled a lever. The Pure Heart rotated rapidly within the machine as it sent a pulse of deep, purple energy into the stone structure it was affixed to. The shifting runes all turned to the same color, focusing a beam of Purity right towards the direct gateway to the Warp.
The explosion contained colors that didn’t exist and fractal patterns that tore into the very minds of those who witnessed it. Entire cubic chunks of the world became completely black and empty, revealing what lay behind them—distant blinking lights. A door. Data flipped open his tricorder and began tapping on it furiously, attempting to establish a data link to the machines on the other side.
The obvious glitches confused the already delirious Vivian. What did they mean? She understood this was a simulation, but why specifically the black cubes? And… why was the portal she wanted to enter so susceptible to disruption?
“YOU WILL STAY!” the voice roared. The daemons were almost upon Data and the others—several of which were carrying ordinary rocks to attack without getting dissolved by the Pure Heart. The shield absorbed the first few volleys, but it would not be able to handle much more.
Data established a link to the once-hidden machines, but this did not stop his furious typing; he still needed to get out. Another boulder hit his shield, dissipating it.
For a moment, Vivian felt hopeful. Maybe she would get to go.
“YOU WILL ALL BE MINE…”
“Exit, single-use override 8273644219!” Data shouted.
A golden door with blinking lights around the frame appeared to the left of the Data’s beacon, sliding open to another realm. Data quickly threw Vivian, Caspian, and Luigi through. Lastly, he pulled the Pure Heart out of the beacon and jumped just as a boulder hit him in the back—tossing him through the door. The bounder ceased to exist as soon as it tried to pass through the door.
“NO—” The doors slid shut and there was absolute silence.
For a moment, there was only falling. The four of them drifted in darkness for a moment, unsure of where they were.
Then, unceremoniously, they dropped to the ground, all letting out a series of oofs.
Vivian’s eyes shot open and she sat bolt upright. “I… I’m okay?”
“You should not be moving around yet,” Data cautioned.
Vivian snapped her fingers, creating sparks of orange fire over and over again—no hint of the pink stuff at all. Internally, she no longer felt any desire to enter the Chaos portal. Now there was the much more reasonable disturbed fear response. “I’m… I’m free! I made it out! Haha, yes!” She ran up to Data and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Data, you saved me!”
Data cocked his head. “I do not believe th—”
“Oh, psh, Twilight’ll be fine, I was just being flirty.” Vivian stretched her arms, letting out a tense chuckle. “Ah… I feel great! No more crazy Chaos in my head! Woo!”
“I’m glad you’re back,” Caspian sniffed, wiping his face. “Luigi and I… are not doing quite so well.”
“Worst… headache… ever…” Luigi said. He had not stopped crying. “Too much…”
Vivian carefully lifted Luigi up and hugged him. “You got this far, Luigi. Now it’s time for a break from all that nonsense. All right?” I sure hope it’s more than a break...
“A-all right… We’re still watching you, though!”
Vivian nodded. “Of course, of course. We’ll know if he’s really gone if the dreams have stopped. But we’ll deal with that later. For now… where are we?”
Data pulled out his tricorder. “Unknown…”
The physical appearance of the location was of a run-down metallic hallway. The door itself was golden, but covered in scratches and a few patches of greenish lichen. Above the door was an inscription that read “1BYA.” All around the door—and the walls of the hall—were an innumerable number of clocks and hourglasses. Now that Vivian was paying attention to it, she could hear ticking. It was so much ticking happening all at once she hadn’t realized that was what it was, since it had all blended together into one constant noise.
Wordlessly, they walked down the hallway to the light at the end of it. The endless clocks were soon behind them, and they emerged on a metallic balcony coming out the edge of a mountain. Rigid titanium stairs led all the way down to the valley below, which was filled with blues and greens and a few unnatural-looking purples, telling of interesting alien plants. Beyond this, several features stood out as bizarre. One of the mountains had a perfect cube balanced on its tip, the shape comparable in size to the mountain itself. A bunch of multicolored gemstones passed by in the wind, as though they were just specks of dust. One mountain had a circular hole cut into it that occasionally pulsed with a pink light, while a river seemed to flow into the sky right next to it. Further in the distance, there was a floating crystal of amber coloration larger than most skyscrapers, a metallic ring orbiting its center.
The world was fantastically bizarre, and filled with what appeared to be both the highest magic and the highest technology.
And there, right above the amber monolith, there was the Void, covering a fifth of the sky.
Vivian hadn’t seen it in so long, she’d almost forgotten that it was a problem. It was a background detail in her mind, not a constant presence like it had been at the start of the adventure.
The question remained…
“Where are we?” Luigi asked.