52

Antinomy is a word that comes from the Greek anti, meaning against, and nomos, meaning law. It’s an inherent flaw between two laws, a contradiction on an almost paradoxical level. I know antinomy because it is hard-wired into my memory, but I also know it because I believe I am one. A non-human that feels as one would. I appear to have free will, but I am a fabrication of circuits and wires. I am data, a robot with a will. Is it my own will, or instead a will programmed into me? I shouldn’t be able to feel anything, only fake the feeling of feeling. Existence is the feeling of feeling. The sight of seeing, the sound of hearing. I exist.

I exist…but I also don’t. I died down in the depths of the ocean when the bomb exploded.

I ran as fast as I possibly could with this strange new body. The legs didn’t feel quite right and the balance was all off. I knew I only had five minutes before my only chance would be up. So in that moment none of that mattered. I hunkered on and made it up to the elevator. The ride to the surface was the worst part. At the top there was a door sealed by a passcode-encrypted lock. I panicked until a voice flooded my memory.

"WALTZ. EMERGE. REDUCTION. ONTARIO. ZOMBIES. UMBRA. MOMENTUM.”

Once you are ready you will know what to do.

My hand at that point almost moved on their own. I took the last letter of every alternating word and then the first one of each in-between. I had our gracious captors to thank for that. After all, I was going to look for Z-One. Zero. One. It was a crazy kind of thought to consider each phrase at which that point I’d nearly forgotten all about...but a recollection had jogged my memory. They were a form of binary code, made entirely of zeroes and ones, but with letters instead. Zero for last, One for first.

Z E R O S U M.

Zero Sum was the password. I put it in and the door unlocks. At that point I feared that I had spent too long trying to get it to open so I had been just waiting for the explosion to come and swallow me whole inside the closed off elevator. I waited for the fire to melt this new body and for my existence to end just as it had started.

But no explosion came. It wasn’t until after I reached the surface and jumped into the water did it come. Water was a new experience. My memory tells me that electronic substances don’t typically react to being submerged in water very well. I didn’t seem to have any issue. Is this what existing is like, finding the small antinomies of life? Maybe...it would be something to look after.

When the explosion did happen I was approximately thirty and a half feet from where I’d jumped off of the side of the helicopter pad. The water around me grew increasingly warm and turned foamy white and before I knew it it forced me upward. The water was bubbling out to gas as the shock-waves rippled out. The steam flooded my face and I could feel it through my body. Everything went dark.

When my vision turned back on I had washed up on a coastline. My internal systems were overloaded by the steam and had to cool down. My records show I was unconscious for almost two hours. Judging by the time and the fact that I drifted to land I estimate that I landed somewhere on the west coast of the United States. I’ve never been to the United States, and yet I could tell anybody lots of things about it. How they formed as a country back in the latter half of the eighteenth century, how they had an increasingly terrible problem with slavery, and how they act as a global police force. These aren’t things I knew myself, I was told them.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I picked myself up as the water drained from my body, I felt lighter with each step I took. The beach crested upwards in a hill-like fashion. I crossed it and stood at the peak in awe. I wasn’t told about the particles that hung in the air like fireflies, or the red moon in the sky. The land had not looked as it did in my memory. It was...It was beautiful. The dust in the air seemed to sparkle from the moonlight above. Everything was tinged red and seemed to twinkle.

It sort of looked like the aftermath of a nuclear attack and my memory told me that that wasn’t beautiful at all, but it didn’t look exactly like it. These remnant particles seemed...much too different from what my system told me it looked like. I stood out staring at the flattened expanse of sand and soil imagining what kind of power could level what I assume to be coastal California. Map data shows a bustling city with buildings dotting every street. I began to run as the sand slipped through what were my feet. I kept running for ten minutes, and all I had to show for it was losing the coastline behind me. I could keep running, but what would it do? It couldn’t be like this everywhere, that would be crazy. I had to believe in Abel, he would have known if something like this had happened. It’s been fifty years. The thought came quick, but there it was. He hadn’t left SubCon in fifty years. He didn’t know what it was like out here.

I kept running until the sun came up, a bright green orb hanging in the sky. The maps were outdated, that’s all it was. The Nevada Desert expanded and people had to adjust, that was all. Everything was fine.

I had to stop running as the sun belted heat onto the earth. It was hotter than temperature records suggested this area should be. I capped the temperature at about 135 degrees Fahrenheit. No human could survive this. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to. My systems were beginning to overheat. I began to think that maybe it would have been better if I was the other me back in SubCon. Maybe it would have been better to die.

My system shut off just after that thought.

53

I awoke to the red moon’s glow. My body had overheated again, and I figured that I would have to find out a way to ventilate properly or else I’d be traveling exclusively by night. The problem is there’s nothing to work with here. There aren’t any puzzles for me to solve or any decisions to be made. It’s just me walking. There’s no ifs ands or buts. And there doesn’t seem to be any end. It’s just an expanse of sand that doesn’t ever seem to end.

I looked up at the stars. They glowed brightly of all different kinds of colors. I didn’t know why they shone differently than what I remember. I sat up and shook my head. No, stop it. I can’t sit back and give up this easily. Abel bet his life on me, and I need to finish my mission.

How can you finish your mission when you don’t even know where to begin?

I sit, dejected as the obvious response comes back to hit me in the face. “I...am conflicted,” I say aloud. No one is there to respond.

“You can run, you can always run,” the voice of Abel echoes through my mind. I haven’t ever heard him say it, but I can just imagine how it would have sounded coming from his mouth. “You can keep running and eventually you’ll find something to stop running for. Look at me, I wanted to run my whole life and I’m here with you.”

There was a...a warmth under my chest-plate. It was a weird feeling, it was right where a human heart would be, but nothing like that was present in my body. Maybe it was an antinomy, a warmed heart where none existed. Whatever it was, it had been enough to get me to my feet. I start walking and then shoot into a full speed sprint across the sand.

“Keep running, Lucas. Find your truth.”

Father, I promise I won’t let you down. I will find my own truth. I will set you free.