Book 2. A New God has moved, most of the chapters are on this new Royal Road link:

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/74325/a-new-god-sci-fi-ai-aliens-space-mystery-adventure

Peter and Hezekiah were back in the helicopter headed towards the moon. They decided to take the long way there as it would allow the matrix locating device to take multiple readings in the server of each location. And hopefully that would yield them a more accurate result. They felt like having more than three datapoints to triangulate the location of his matrix was better.

Peter could feel the acceleration of the helicopter gaining altitude.

“Want a beer?” Hezekiah asked gabbing two bottles from underneath the table.

“Why not.”

Hezekiah opened one of the bottles using the other one and handed it to Peter. Then he looked around trying to find something to open his bottle with. Finding his seatbelt clip he used that and opened up his own bottle.

“It’s good.” Peter said taking a swig. “I haven’t had one of these in centuries.”

“I bet, there’s probably so many things you haven’t tried before. The things we can taste now—it’s phenomenal.”

“My team went out there, while I got stuck here,” Peter said thinking back to the day he died. “I don’t know if they’ve survived or where they are. To be honest, I don’t understand the appeal of this place. It’s not real, yet everyone is so obsessed with it.” Existential thoughts circled his mind for the first time. How did humanity get into this mess. So much energy spent on building this fake reality. The simulation really did add weight to the idea that he might never have been in the top layer of reality. Humanity as he knew it might have been born in a simulation of a simulation—and never know it. “Do you believe what you said before? When you said that they don’t think the beta is the base layer of reality.”

“Well just look at how real this layer is. And this work is more complex. It must be even easier to simulate the one out there.”

“What do you mean more complex?”

“You can do so much more in here. And if you go into one of the other worlds. Some of them are so rich and complex I don’t even know how someone came up with them.”

“You can’t simulate something bigger than the base layer of reality. Shouldn’t it get less complex the further you get from the real world?”

Hezekiah shook his head. “You can’t simulate something bigger than the universe without a computer as big as the universe, but given the way humans perceive reality. It’s easy to create an experience that’s better and bigger because you don’t have to render the whole universe—just the section of it that we have our attention focused on.”

“If there really is aliens out there,” Peter said pointing towards the stars. “Then I do think that is the base layer of reality. Because simulating us with all these aliens would take too much resources to do.” Peter started to think about what sort of alien he might find out there. If the alien were truly alien—not like a lot of aliens in movies which are basically just humans in a suit—then that would be additional proof that they were in the base layer of reality. At least that’s how he saw it.

A faint ringing sound all around Peter distracted him from his thoughts. Then he noticed a little phone icon appeared in the corner of his vision. It wasn’t like the screen that appeared before. This one was unobtrusive. Subtle. Not annoying. Peters eyes moved down to take a look at the calling icon and to his surprise the icon floated toward the centre of his vision as the noise quieted. As it knew he wanted to know who was calling so the message made itself bigger. He looked at the name, it was Marty his lawyer calling again. Peter reached forward to tap the call button and headphones appeared in his ears. Presumably to signal to others he was listening to something.

“Dr Atreus, I just got off the phone with your parole officer. He’s not a happy man.”

“I don’t think he’d be happy about winning the lotto.”

“That might be true sir, but you can’t go around antagonising him. He seems to think you threatened him.”

“I didn’t threaten him. I simply told him about the money you would make if he called me again without talking to you first.”

There was a pause on the line and Peter thought he could here a smile of approval on the other line.

“Well Dr Atreus I have setup a meeting for tomorrow with him. And I suggest eight others from my firm. At least another of the named partners. That way we’ll be able to show him we mean business.”

“I can’t do tomorrow. Can you delay him for ten days?”

“You have a scheduled check-in a few days from now. I might be able to push your meeting with him until then.”

“Okay, see if you can delay him. Tell Elgin I’m meeting with some of the executives at my company. That should give me enough time to sort out my personal life.”

Anther pause on the line. This time Peter thought he heard some uncomfortable movements in a chair. “If they even get an inkling of an idea that you’re up to something they will lock you up. And Dr Atreus my sources say someone up high is working hard to get your back in prison. They want to make an example of you.”

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“Can you find out who that person is?”

“Dr Atreus. I can tell you right now. You’re not going back to prison they have nothing on you that would warrant locking you up again. But they legally have the right to install behavioural modifications module in your matrix. Arguably that’s worse. So let’s not give them a reason to do that.”

“Understood. You make sure that meeting in four days is smooth. And I’ll make sure I don’t give them a reason to change my behaviour.”

And with that Peter disconnected the call.

“So, does that mean we need to get you out within four days?” Hezekiah asked.

“I think so. If they find out what we’re up to. I don’t know what they’ll do.”

“We have enough datapoints on this server we could probably head to the moon now.” Hezekiah said as he hovered his hand over one of the buttons on the table.

Peter nodded and Hezekiah pressed it. Rather than disappear the helicopter started to grow and elongate. He could feel the helicopter start to shake. Peters footing became a little unsteady and he sat backdown. The two chairs in the front, where a pilot would sit, started to turn into recliners. The recliners were making audible clicks as they transformed.

Once the cockpit had changed Hezekiah suggested they sit in the recliners for a better view. As Peter walked towards the front of the helicopter he saw the windows had all rounded, like you would expect from if the vehicle was going to experience a lot of pressure—or a vacuum. Then he noticed one of the screens that normally showed an image of the helicopter had changed to a spaceship. It looked like a huge metal egg had grown off the back of it. It was a very similar engine design to the one he used for the initial mars mission. For a moment he wondered if rocket engine technology had stagnated. He hoped that technology advancements in the real world hadn’t stalled. He wanted to bring some new technology out to the colonies—if his people had succeeded in building them.

Peter and Hezekiah sat in the chairs at the front of the helicopter, turned rocket ship. Peter could see out to the horizon. Peter hadn’t realised it but there was a lot of activity in the skies. Hot air balloons and other helicopters glittered the city view. The sun was setting so the lights from the buildings and the fire from the balloons was becoming more vibrant. The city was overlooking the ocean and they were headed out over it.

They drifted forward for a good while, enough time for the sun to set. Then Peter heard a beep and a countdown timer started from three… Two… One. Then he was pushed towards the back of his seat. But the seat he was in was so soft, like memory foam, he melted into it and somehow it wasn’t uncomfortable. In some way, he felt more relaxed than before.

The horizon in front of Peter started to move as they begun shooting upwards towards the stary sky. Evidently the light pollution from below wasn’t impeding his ability to see the stars perfectly. There was one particular star that was bigger than the others. He’d never known a start to be that big before, and he wondered if it was a space station orbiting Earth. Faster and faster they moved. Peter could see the star he thought might be a space station becoming bigger. They were moving toward it quickly. And as they got closer Peter could see it was circular. At first it looked like a tiny ring in the sky. Then slowly they got closer and Peter could see it was a giant rotating ring. Pe,=ter wondered if it was a rotating habitat. He couldn’t understand the stupidity of building a rotating habitat in the simulated world. Why not build a real one in the real world. ‘Ahh’ he had to get out of the simulation.

Their speed started to slow and as they grew closer Peter started to comprehend the scale of the ring they were heading towards. It wasn’t a rotating world, it was some sort of gate. He watched as space craft after spacecraft flew into it and disappeared.

They weren’t heading towards it one at a time either. Ships that Peter assumed were at least 50 meters wide flew into one section of it at the same time as dozens of others entered the aperture.

Hezekiah clicked a button on table which increased the size of there view port, giving them a more expansive view. “Incredible isn’t it?”

“What is that thing?”

“It’s a time gate.”

Confused Peter tried to clarify. “Does it take us to a different point in time?”

Hezekiah shook his head. “No it slows down our matrix and takes us to the moon.” Then noticing the even more confused look on Peters face he asked. “Do you know about the moons timezone?”

Peter shook his head.

“To make it feel like communication on the moon is real time. Anyone going there from Earth has their clock slowed down. So while we’re on the moon, an hour will feel like an hour. But when we come back here… Oh, well, you’ll see.”

Peter did some quick maths in his head. “It takes signals here an just over a second to get there. And then the same amount of time to get back? So…” he counted numbers out on his hand. “And if you wanted to slow down time enough so you didn’t notice that delay in the signal, you’d need to slow down a lot. One hour would become close to sixty hours back on Each.”

“Yes your math is right. They might have done that in the beginning too. But now there’s a program that fills in some of the frames. So one hour on the moon is only four hours on Earth. That was their work around to bring the Earth and Moon inline.”

“What happens if you live on the moon?”

“A few people live there. But most people who send their matrixes there are just there to complete a particular job that requires really fast response times. They’re screwed if they want to join any servers here. And they have to reduce their clock speed whenever someone visits them.”

They continued towards the large ring and Peter couldn’t believe how big it was. It had a diameter of at least five hundred metres. He would have been more impressed if he didn’t know it was a simulation because to construct something that size out in real space would have taken a considerable effort. Knowing it was a simulation took a little of the magic of the experience away—even though his mind was screaming at him to be in awe of it.

As they drifted closer and closer towards the giant ring Peter started to gain an understanding of what it looked like. It was made up of two separate rotating pieces of machinery. The inside ring was smooth almost glass like. It had to be at least ten meters thick. And it was rotating clockwise. The outer ring looked like a bicycle chain, or presumably a chain used in heavy machinery because it was about half as thick as the inner ring. It was rotating in the opposite directions. But rather than rotating smoothly, it sort of ticked. The more Peter watched it the more he thought he could hear the ticks it made as it rotated one step at a time.

“Each of those ticks represent a frame on the other side of that portal.” Hezekiah said.

“What’s a frame?”

“It’s similar to how movies are 24 frames per minute.

Hezekiah nodded. “The inside of that ring is like a time bubble. It just looks black from here. But once we get closer you’ll see it kinda looks like a liquid mirror with its surface covered in smoke. First time I came in here, I thought it’d be like jumping into water. But it’s more similar to entering mist.”

As they reached the aperture a sort of black mist washed over the ship. It was unlike any mist he was used to because rather than reflecting light and becoming white, the mist sort of absorbed light.

“You think this is cool, wait until you get onto the other side.”