Chapter 28 – Eternity

Lifting her hands to the boxy, jumbled sky, Simona yelled, “I’VE WON!” She spun in place, her feet moving like she was dancing.

Marisa scowled with a pained Nicolas. They both looked like they were barely holding back from assaulting Simona. Olivia sobbed against Jessica, who moved weakly but did her best to comfort her. Sim kept his head bowed to hide a scowl in Simona’s direction.

Once she was done celebrating, Simona held her hands behind her and proclaimed to those left, “Now, each of you has a choice to make. Accept that this is your fate or thrash around a bit until your fate meets you…And I remind you, I’m now the only one in charge…” Standing there, Simona felt a faint sensation on her ear like a tingle. With it, she imagined offering a different choice. A kinder choice. She’d made her point. But she flicked at the tickle like a buzzing insect and raised her hands towards the others.

No mercy.

She directed a hand towards Marisa. If any of them were going to try to rush her, she expected it to be Marisa. But she and Nicolas held their ground. Simona cracked her knuckles, flicked her ear again, and set her feet. No one came at her. She leaned back then frowned.

Her personal console was acting up. She grumbled to herself. Likely due to the fact she deleted so much. She paged through several errors with technical names even she couldn’t quite figure out. Still, it all seemed to be in order. She removed them and nodded.

When she looked over at the others, she noticed they were all looking in a particular direction, even though she couldn’t see anything that way. The tingle returned as a low-level buzzing before she fanned at it. Scowling and grunting to herself, she announced, “Decision time.”

The look in Marisa’s eyes immediately worried her and her words unsettled her even more, as she proclaimed, “Go ahead and delete me too. I’m through with it.”

Nicolas bowed his head and said, “I’d rather not know any more. Delete me as well. It’s not worth it.”

Olivia’s tears were gone as she said, “I’d rather be in the nothingness with my sister!”

Clenching her teeth, Simona stood on uneasy feet with that tingle still in the background. Sim stepped forward and said, “Mistress…allow me to finish the job…”

She watched Sim’s calm disposition and stared out at the others before saying, “Fine. Finish it. I’ll start again on them in the morning.”

With an easy wave of his hand, all except Jessica dropped to the ground in the same way as before. Jessica vanished without a move. The other three vanished as well once Sim gave another wave of his hand. The tingle ebbed.

Despite order restored to her world, Simona wasn’t celebrating. Sim dipped towards her and inquired, “Will there be anything else, mistress?”

Reflecting a long moment on the still-wrecked world around them, Simona shook her head and said, “No. That’s all. You can go. For now. But keep an eye out.”

“That I will, mistress.” With another flourish, he was gone.

Looking around in silence, Simona gave a cough which quietly echoed. She was most at peace when she was alone, ruler of this endless realm. And now she had everything under control. She told herself, “Back home. Just go back home.”

With a thought, she was in the elegant home in which Sim had first assaulted her. It was restored after her trap. A fire crackled in the fireplace. Evening, deep and still, showed through the immense windows on the side. She flexed her toes through the plush carpet, an old memory made better, never to stain despite its pale color.

Plopping on the nearest couch, she allowed herself a cup of chamomile tea with just a little bit of milk. The wooden floors beyond the carpet shimmered in the orange glow of the flames. Home, as she always expected it.  

Sitting there, she sipped and considered projecting an old movie on the wall before her, something classic. She sipped again and her eyes wandered over the friendly details of the room. As she looked, however, she noticed something dark out of the corner of her eye. With the bright lights and warm color tones of her home, that just wasn’t possible. She turned her head.

It was gone. Just the cupboards, the kitchen, and the bright, glossy fridge...with its door swinging open. Setting her tea down, Simona frowned and walked over to the fridge. Muttering to herself, she noted, “I didn’t imagine it opening.”

The interior was filled with everything she expected of it. Giving a sigh, she shut it firmly and looked back to the living room. Her eyes widened. It was trashed.

The couch was overturned and the carpet was distressed, caked with dirt and grime. And the walls. There were cobwebs everywhere. The tingling with faint buzzing returned before she pushed it away.

Shaking her head and glaring, her mind ran with possibilities. It could still be glitches in the system. Because they had been present in this room, the files might’ve been corrupted. But then Marley, the largest deletion, wasn’t.

Still, she figured the best idea would be to make a new house from one of the backups. In the meanwhile, she focused on fixing things with silent console commands. Before long, the room was back in order with a good cleaning to boot.

Satisfied, she folded her arms. Then, out of the corner of her ear, she heard a whisper, a voice unintelligible until it yelled, “Run…” Too shocked to place the voice, she whirled around in all directions and asked, “WHO IS IT?! What do you want?”

Her mind raced as the buzzing returned. It could be a virus. It could be an external intrusion. It could be some remnant of those she’d deleted or a leftover of Mona. She was a critical part of her main system. Critical but removable. She expected to get a few problems with removing her.

Suddenly, she heard a pop from the other room and, one by one, the lights in the house exploded until she was in a deep darkness from which not even the starlight out the window could break. She tried to bring up the console to fix the lights, but she couldn’t see it. She was finally able to make a small light which burned freely in her palm and lit the area around her. The buzzing was still there but she ignored it because of a new sound.

From down the hallway, she heard fast footsteps rushing across the carpet and back onto the wood. Turning, she thought she caught a shadow shifting in the dark.

“Come back here! Who are you?!”

She raced after the shadow, hurrying along until she came to the bathroom. Her light cast rippling, dancing strands of darkness across the wall. She looked all around. There was no other way out of the bathroom. The window above, frosted and obsidian-toned, was too small for a humanoid figure within the confines of the system.

Child-like giggles came from behind her. She whirled around and was face to face with a small, all-blue room. Barely more than a closet, she recognized it immediately from Seth’s memories. It was the box, like the many holding her sleeping souls. She backed away from it and bumped into a wall suddenly behind her. She was inside, sealed in a box with no openings and an oppressively-bright light beaming down on her.

“End this right now!”

A calm, dispassionate voice, which sounded much like hers, spoke from high above her, “Unauthorized command rejected. Subject four-seven-two is awake. Beginning storage cycle.”

Clawing at the walls, Simona screamed, “Sim! SIM! You fucker! What have you done to me?!” The buzzing increased in volume.

She kicked against the wall and each side fell down like cardboard which had only been loosely propped up. As they slammed to the ground, Simona found herself in another room similar to one from Seth’s memories.

Fuming and ignoring the buzzing, she hunted for a way to open the console when a door she hadn’t noticed before opened on a far wall into a blackened hallway. Looking out, she knew that nothing in this place could harm her. After all, this was her place. She made it. But, in that hollow emptiness, she felt irrational fear. She quivered as her eyes locked on the opening. Her eyes flicked left and right as she thought she saw something moving around in the dark.

As a whisper far from the buzzing, she thought she heard a growl. She stepped towards the door with her arm outstretched to close it.

“It’s not real. It’s just a glitch. It’s just those damned memories they put in me. It’s nothing!”

Her words, barely spoken, still felt too loud as the growl sounded again, much closer. Her mind imagined beasts built from her violent father and the glinting teeth of the black monster of a dog that lived on the other side of the fence beside her bedroom window.

Each glimpse threatened to unsheathe a tooth to slice into her. Gritting her own teeth back, she pushed forward and slammed the door shut just as a force smashed up against it, cracking the edges. An unearthly howl traveled through the floor and echoed into her legs. One more smash and the cracks in the door spread to the wall. Like a crumbling eggshell, pieces started to fall away into the void.

Despite all the things she knew in her head, she ran away from the darkness until she came to a ladder, like on a submarine. She used to love the power of submarines growing up. But looking at the hole as the rest of the floor was giving way only urged her to crawl down it. Her feet slipped from one glossy rung to the next. Her hands burned as she flailed down further and further.

She tried to catch her breath and slipped. Her leg caught on the end and her head banged against the shaft as she tumbled down to the hard ground. Coughing and groaning, she clutched herself. The safety controls should’ve deadened her pain. Instead, everything throbbed like her entire body was an angry, buzzing hornet.

Shifting her legs awkwardly underneath her, she somehow got to her feet and staggered forward. Before her was a blank room except for a black cube in one corner. Remembering, she moved away from it and hacked into her hand.

She tried to straighten her sore limbs, but something whipped around and clutched her. Black projections like tentacles of oil lashed out from the cube and wrapped around her. Fighting and clawing, she felt a long projection slip around her throat. It encircled tighter and tighter. She fought to tear it off as the tentacles tore at her flesh.

Each contact was like a burning pockmark. She felt disfigured, shredded to pieces by the projections. It was becoming difficult to breathe. Her vision blurring, she tried to yell out a command to the insolent system, but blackness swallowed her like a dry, narrow mouth.

On the other side, she coughed again as her throat was released. Her body was whole and undamaged, but the buzzing was still there.

Pipes and wheels, just like in her deep core, loomed around her as she staggered to her feet. Grunting, she called out, “Siiiimmmm!…You bastard!”

Clinging to the pipes, she hobbled forward until she froze in shock before a new room. It was much like her home but stripped of all contents, except for row upon row of human figures in black robes. Their heads were down and their hoods completely covered their faces. The buzzing was at its strongest, but she still ignored it.

Stepping carefully, Simona stood before the first figure and threw back its hood. She gasped. To anyone else, the face was blank, barely an identity and only a name. But Simona knew her well.

Susan. The first one. The first year consumed. The robe collapsed to the floor, empty. Whirling around, Simona threw back another hood. Irwin. Another. Michael…

On and on. Isabelle. Maggie. Shane. Ashley. Odessa. Avery.

Clutching her head, Simona screamed, “What is the meaning of this?! Trying to piss me off, Sim!?”

From behind her came the same voice she spoke with.

“Just a tiny look at the blood flowing from your hands. The pain, the fear, and the darkness.”

Just one cloaked figure stood before her in the blank room. She ripped off the hood to reveal her own face…Simona Hatch’s face…looking out in silent indictment against her.

Snarling, she reached for the neck as the robe collapsed, empty at her feet.

Behind her again, she heard the voice. “Did you ever have a soul, Simona? Is that why you need to steal from others?”

This time, the figure already had her hood down. Marley’s face looked back at her. She snorted and said, “The games are over, Sim.”

With a pleased smirk, the Marley-faced figure said and pointed, “Actually, Sim is over there…”

Confused, Simona glanced at male Seth standing to her left with his arms folded and an intimidating smile. Stepping back, Simona looked between the two of them. The buzzing persisted.

Gesturing to herself, the girl in the robe admitted, “…I’m just Marley.”

Her eyes wide, Simona said, “Not possible. I deleted you! I deleted everything! Your plan failed!”

Sim held his hand out and Marley said, tapping herself, “I was rather averse to the idea of being used like a ventriloquist puppet but Sim made it look convincing with his hand in my chest.”

Her lips drooping, Simona shook her head and muttered, “Even then, it’s not possible!” Marley gestured to her right. “Entirely possible, thanks to Mona. Who’s quite fine, by the way, along with everyone else.”

Clutching her head, Simona panted and blasted her words, “I’ll destroy you!”

Marley held a single finger up and noted, “That’s…not going to happen. And there’s a very good reason why…and the reason is a very big question you haven’t asked yet, but you should be asking…”

Sim shifted in Simona’s peripheral vision. She tensed up and indulged Marley, fear creeping into her question, “And…what is that?”

Setting her hands at her side, Marley answered, “What you should be asking is…’If I didn’t delete Marley and the others from the system….then what the hell did I actually delete?’”

Simona wanted to shout back that she deleted nothing then. But a nervous sensation crept along her neck which wasn’t the tingle. She lifted a hand and, this time, the console came up for her. She looked at the main section and stared. Her body felt limp.

It was gone. Her admin control. Her records. Her files. All wiped clean like the scorched earth viruses of old. The core system was there, the boxes and the OS, but everything of hers, all her private stuff. Gone...

Trembling in a way she hadn’t since first plugging herself in, she flipped the page and looked at her protection grid, the only thing keeping her life support system and its controls out of the OS. Gone.

The buzzing reached a last crescendo, but she rejected it once more as the irritant finally fell silent and the tingle vanished.

She jerked her head at Sim. He stood before her and plunged his hand into her chest. She screamed in pain and tried to force it out.

“You vile betrayer!”

Sim leaned close, touched her with his other hand, and smiled a dark smile as he said, “Dear sweet mother, your son wants one last hug…”

Without the protections in place, he dove into her physical boundary. Quivering, she felt her flesh swell like it was being inflated from within.

“No…no…stop!” Her words slurred. This couldn’t be the end. This couldn’t be it!

No…Her body! She could wake herself up. She was near death, but it was better than this. However, every move was fought by Sim. She had nothing, not even her soul in her shell of a body. No choice. No choice but one…

She barely had enough strength to do it. Escape. She shed Seth’s soul as she deleted her own digital host, her last remnant in the system.

With satisfaction, she watched as Sim was deleted with it, slipping into oblivion. The soul, like a flutter of light, drifted away and into Marley’s hands. Holding it close, Marley whispered, “Seth….I knew you were still there…”

Simona watched all this with the avatar of her physical body trembling on its knees. She stared at her frail, wrinkled hands. Her naked brain was exposed to the system. Her thoughts were digital sand in the wind.

For a quiet, optimistic moment, nothing went wrong. She indulged a hint of satisfaction. She was living in the virtual, her mind free. She was….what was she doing?

“Oh no…”

She wanted to cry out but the words rippled like she’d said them a thousand years ago and never gotten to say them at all. Every vibration of thought trudged through…something she couldn’t think of. Who was she? Something starting with an M?

No…wait…it wasn’t. She was a scientist? No? It was. The dog! The nasty dog! She was afraid. She was crying. But she had her puzzle box. Steven gave it to her. It was pretty but it was a puzzle. Puzzlers were fun. She was in her room. Not the dog! No! Her father was home! Hiding. Lost. Not. It’s all. Pain pain pain no no no! It hurt! It all hurt no more no more no mo…

In that instant, her thought froze and so did the rest of her. She’d been melting like taffy on hot cement, her thoughts no longer able to hold her form together. It became a lumpy blob without mouth and retaining only the shape of a head atop her former body.

Technically, Simona was still alive in a medical tomb but she was sealed in a single, final horrified fragment of thought for a private eternity.