After eating the remaining fruit (deciding that my fear of being poisoned was irrational enough if the Goddess needed me alive) and recovering Blacky from the claws of The Clerk, I went back to my room and sat on the bed.
I didn’t even have sheets. The light came from somewhere, but there were no lamps or windows to provide it. A dream-like scenario, that was what the whole place was, because, when you analyzed it, it lacked a lot of the little details that real things acquire out of necessity. Like, for example, lamps to illuminate them. Windows to let fresh air in. Algae to produce the oxygen I breathe. Fields for the food… forests for the… cardboard. You needed a sun to have a day and all those little things that, when added up, became incredibly distressing.
I got up from the bed and began to pace around, from side to side, up and down the room and the hall outside . I had always imagined heaven like a community of peaceful, content souls. But here I had a body, I had needs, I had dopamine-exploiting gamble mechanics at work, restricting my access to the cards I needed to survive. It wasn’t like the heaven I expected. That is, in the few times I had even entertained an idea of a heaven, of a life after the body ceases to function. For I liked to call myself agnostic, but, up to that day, I lived like a complete atheist. I had been mostly on autopilot until that moment, aiming for the mundane prospect of a meal, but, with the stomach full and time to myself, the dread was creeping up my spine. Run, said, the irrational part of me. Run and get lost down the halls until you find a way out, Mauro. Nude, if you will.
But no, there ought to be no escape. This place was bound by laws of absurd and magic, not logic and physics.
I manifested the Manual.
“Is the goddess dreaming this?”
I am not. I just suck at worldbuilding.
I demanifested the Manual. Walking up to a Borzoi statue, I caressed its back. It was tepid, not stone cold. Another mismatched detail.
I opened my collection and started passing the cards. The game was okay, but what was the point of it, even? If dying here would lead me to another hell, where dying would surely lead me to another and so on. If only death by starvation were not so tortuous, I could let me perish. Again and again and again and again. Like that Spugcialist combo that mad eme lose that last run against the Warden.
No point in wallowing in hopelessness, unless I decided to kill myself, and I was too much of a puss for that. I made my way back to the room and picked the still-perforated card of Blacky from the floor. Inside the moving illustration, you could see him stashing white bags that said CELULOSE in black letters, and some tools, mason trowels among them.
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“What are you doing?”
“Rebuilding my fucking house, what else?” he barked in an angry tone unbecoming of him.
“Can’t you just recreate the card like you recreate your body?”
“Yes, but that’s not honest, hard work.”
He went in and out of the image frame, bringing more materials for the reparations in. “I’ll leave you to it later. Now get out of the card.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to explore this place. I haven’t seen most of the rooms. The shop and the store cannot be the only two places of interest in here.”
“Most of the halls lead nowhere, and the prototypes wander the furthest depths of the halls. Going there is… strongly discommended by 9 out of 10 doctors.”
I manifested the Manual.
“Prototypes.”
There is no such thing as prototypes, Blacky is lying.
Very convincing, goddess, very convincing. “Prototypes, the truth.”
I am going to get angry if you keep insisting on collecting information about the things that don’t exist.
“Send nudes.”
The Manual poofed out of existence. “Blacky, what are the Prototypes?”
He hummed for a few seconds, and then squeezed out of his card.
Blacky shook his body, looked around, looked back at the card, yawned, and began panting.
“I take that you won’t tell me.”
“Beg your pardon, master. Those things stress me out to the point of becoming dumb.”
I caressed him in the head. Got my hand bit, but the teeth didn’t break the skin. I slapped Blacky. Blacky slapped me back. Finally, I crossed my arms. “Well, I am listening.”
“The Goddess experimented with an alternate way of progression. You would get a structure deck and battle several entities like The Warden or The Clerk in succession. With each victory, you would add new cards to it and what not. Pretty fun, I guess. The problem being that the goddess went a bit overboard with the intended roguelite aspect, and made it… severely roguelike. So if you go down the halls maybe you find some bone of the unfortunate testers.” He began wagging his tail. “Bone…”
“Are you telling me there are truly murderous robots out there?”
“And bones…”
His mind had been sidetracked irreversibly. Poor Blacky, I needed to consider euthanasia for this condition.
Then, I realized: didn’t I need to feed him?
“Blacky, what do you eat?”
“I have infinite kibble inside the card,” he stated, plainly. “No bones, though,” he stared taciturnly into the distance, as one who has lost the love of their life.
“Could you bring me some if I am about to starve?”
He shook his head. “It’s forbidden. But not like Yu-Gi-Oh’s Exodia where he is both The Forbidden and limited to one copy, but, like, forbidden forbidden forbidden. Extra forbidden.”
I caressed his head again, and this time, he did not try to maul me. Progress, everybody.
He nuzzled me a bit, and, after a minute or so of scratching my guide (who was a very good boy), it was time to ask for a favor.
“It’s cold on the bed. Could you sleep right next to me to act as a sort of improvised heater?”
“You want to cuddle?” the dog asked.
“No, just don’t fucking freeze.”
“I can help with that, yes, I will use your bed, yes,” he said, jumping in place with excitement.
And so we went to sleep, struggling to fit both of us into the bed, and I let myself snooze off to put an end to the first of my many days playing Deck of Dogs.