Douglas Adams appeared in front of me, again. Did anyone else see him? I looked over at Sara and she looked back at me with a question in her eyes. We both nodded. Ok, so we all saw it.

"Well look at all of you, knocking on the door of the gods. Or I suppose God, depending on your particular persuasion. Which of you will be going through first?"

John pushed his way to the front of us, "I will."

Douglas’ eyebrow rose, “Oh? Well then, go ahead.”

John stood in front of the door frame. He put his hands on the rock wall between the frame. Nothing happened. John looked back over at Douglas, “How do I…”

An embarrassed look came over Douglas’ face. "Oh, silly me, you can’t open a door without a key!”

From the center of the room rose a pillar of stone, just as smooth as the walls. On the pillar appeared a ball of swirling light. It looked like a bowling ball made of energy.

As if on queue, Douglas said, “Behold, the bowling ball of power!”

Noa’s eyebrows furled, “Really, that is what they call it?”

The comment shook Douglas out of his grandstanding, “What? Oh, no it’s just the name that fit best with what you were all thinking.”

John looked at Douglas, "Well? What do I do?"

The smile melted off Douglas' face, "You only need to be strong enough to take it."

John glared at Douglas a moment longer, and then marched right up to the sphere, and grabbed the ball.

At first nothing happened. It looked as though John and the ball froze in time. A minute later time seemed to restart. Energy from the ball shot John back against a wall. Despite his strength, we heard audible snaps of bones and John coughed out blood.

I let out one barking laugh. I should not have. He hate emanated from his eyes. He looked around wildly, and then fixed his eyes on O. John walked over to him and grabbed O around the neck.

John looked back at me with a terrible smile on his face, "You think that was funny? How about this, I snap your friend's throat."

The smile vanished from my face.

John continued, "You are going to figure out how to open up that portal, or I kill O here."

Eyal moved lightning fast, his blurred movements almost too fast to see. He raced up on John a threw a punch at his face. John shifted O's face to take the hit. John took O’s now bleeding face and smashed it against Eyal.

Eyal prepared to attack again, but John nodded his head, “You move like a snail.” Eyal dropped his arms from his previous fighting stance and stepped back.

John looked back at me, "You have 60 seconds to figure it out, or I kill your friends, starting with this one." He shook O's body from the neck.

I looked into John’s eyes one last time. I saw madness in his eyes. I hurried over to the sphere.

I attempted to analyze the sphere, but nothing came back. I thought about trying to materialize gloves or enclose it in a box. Something told me that it wasn’t a test of how clever someone could be. So I touched it and found my hands slid right off its surface. That isn’t what happened to John. It felt like, well, like nothing. Like you couldn't touch it. I had a feeling this wasn't physical at all. Could this be pure code? If so, how do you show you are stronger than something that has no physical form?

"Times up." John said.

I went to yell, "No!"

Before I finished the word, John snapped O's neck. The body fell to the floor. Rage took over. I went for John, but he effortlessly dodged my lunge and in the same movement grabbed Noa.

"60 more seconds James."

I looked back at the sphere. I had an idea. I looked back over at the others, probably for the last time. If the sphere did to me what it did to John, I didn’t think my body would take that level of damage. I looked at Noa.

I pulled the ball of energy into my inventory.

John's eyes went wide. He looked over at Douglas, "Was that it?" he asked, half crazed.

"Oh yes, that was all it took. Just put the thing in your inventory. How ingenious."

For a second John thought he might be serious. When he realized it had been a joke, he looked back over at me, angrier than ever, "30 seconds James."

I closed my eyes and put the sphere onto by lab table. The swirling ball looked the same on the table as it had in the real world. That confirmed my suspicions. This was pure code.

I looked carefully at it. I don’t know how, but I could sense that this code base was enormous. Bigger than all of the code I’d ever looked at, put together.

“15 seconds John.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

And then I just knew what I needed to do. I would need to merge my code with this one.

I looked over at Douglas, "If I merge my code into this, will I die?"

Douglas' eyes turned sad and he nodded. Could I have avoided death? Maybe I should have used all this time to grow stronger like John. Maybe if I'd levelled up just a bit more.

I looked back at my friends. Charlie, that crazy adorable inventor. Eyal, that stoic steady hand. Wen, that seeker of the truth. Noa, master of pointing out the obvious. And Sara, my little dictator, my friend. All of them, my friends.

Sara must have seen the look in my eyes, "James, don't."

I smiled. And then, I merged my code into the sphere.

The world went dark.

I opened my eyes and I found myself in the same room. Only my friends were gone, John was gone, the pilar with the sphere, also gone. Only Douglas Adams remained.

"What happened?" I asked, still disoriented.

"You died," Douglas said.

I nodded. My head drooped. "What will happen to the others?" I asked, defeated.

Douglas waited for me to look up at him. "That is up to you."

My eyebrows furled. "What? I don't understand."

Douglas motioned for me to sit. I looked behind me and saw a sofa. I did a double take and noticed, that was my sofa. The sofa I used to have in my apartment before we awoke to this new world. I sat. When I looked back around I noticed Douglas getting comfortable in a cushy chair. I knew that chair. It was from my old home too.

"Who are you?" I asked.

Again, Douglas smiled. "We. We are the creators. Or the programmers. Or whatever you want to call us.”

Some part of me knew that would be the answer. "Why did you create us?"

Douglas waved his hand, and the entire room vanished. We still sat on my furniture, but all around us the stars of the universe slowly moved. I felt a little motion sick.

"Our people live within suns,” Douglas started.

“Suns like the one in our simulation?” I asked.

He nodded, “Close enough to that, yes. We evolved within a star. As you can imagine, our evolutionary path would be quite different from the one you are familiar with. We learned to harness energy over millions of years." The scene around them zoomed into a sun. The creatures looked like pure energy, a bit like the sphere he just merged with. I tucked that thought away for now.

They didn't walk around on legs, but I could see a pattern to their movements. They extruded energy limbs in a sort of pulsing dance. The scene zoomed out.

"With near infinite energy we took to space and colonized sun after sun. Sometimes we found other beings on the planets that orbited our homes. We left them alone, and they never realized we coexisted next door. And then, one day, we lost touch with one of our colonies. It took us years to send an expedition to uncover what happened.”

The image changed and where there should have been a wall of stars across space, nothing. Just blackness. “We found nothing. No light. No planets. Just a nothingness. We calculated that the nothingness prevented us from seeing millions of stars. We aren’t sure if those stars were consumed by it, or we are just blocked from seeing them.”

The scene changed again and a small vessel of light approached the dark. "We sent a team in to gather information.” The nothingness pulled the vessel into… nothing. And then a huge burst of light blinded the camera view. “We could do nothing against it. A trailing vessel witnessed the scene and returned home."

This made no sense, "What does that have to do with us?"

"Our scientists analyzed that burst of light. It wasn’t just light. We believe that the nothingness isn't nothing. Buried in that light we found a huge release of data. We captured it all without knowing we had. We spent many years decoding it. We determined that the nothingness converts all matter into code. We don't know why. However, we were able to reverse engineer the code."

And then I got it. "We are that code."

Douglas smiled again. "Your code evolved from that code."

Ok, I sorta understood. "But why? Why all of this?"

This time Douglas frowned. "You aren't the only evolution of the code. We've created millions of versions. Early on, we injected our version of the code back the nothingness.”

I opened my mouth to ask but Douglas put his hand up, “It doesn’t matter how. The nothingness continued to expand and we continued to capture ejections of its code during the process. Eventually we found that some of our own code returned to us in one of those processes. We were able to reinsert that code into one of these simulators and interrogate it."

Douglas stopped talking.

"You are killing me, what does that mean?"

"The nothingness is an entirely different world, a different universe. The code we sent in couldn't find a way to communicate with whatever is behind the nothing. But it did provide us with a sort of map and guidance on what we might need to get there. We need to press into the heart of this nothing, but we can’t go in without being destroyed. We need to send our own code base and from there it will be on its own. We believe it will require many independent programs, each with different skills. But more importantly, these programs will need to evolve within the nothing, to absorb and modify the code from within it. And so we have been cultivating millions of these simulations. In each simulation we seek not the strongest individual programs, but the teams who we believe can navigate within. And within each team, we seek a leader. Someone who demonstrates the strength to do whatever is needed."

I thought about the sphere, "So the goal of the simulation was not to see who would become the strongest. That is why you rejected John. The test was whether I would sacrifice myself for others. To do whatever it took for their benefit."

"Yes."

My emotions were all a jumble. Angry for being used, but also understanding. What these creators are up against, it could be the end. Not just the end of them, but the end of life in the real universe. Real universe. Should I care about that? I mean, I’m not actually part of the real universe. I’m more like this nothing. I am literally the child of this nothing.

"So what happens next?" I asked.

"The door opens, and you and your team walk through, if that is what you want. Or, if you prefer, you can go back to your old lives, and we’ll wait for someone else to take the test."

And the universe around them vanished. The room reappeared. The doorway turned from rock to a black void. Douglas stood up, so I also stood up.

"What happens to the others in this world?" I asked.

"We close out this simulation."

My eyes widened in horror. "You kill everyone?"

Douglas smiled again, that smile a parent gives a child. "No, just think of it as hitting pause. When you return from the nothing, any of you can return here, if that is what you choose."

The couches disappeared and the others reappeared. All but O and John. The exit from the cavern also reopened.

Sara stepped forward, "James? What the hell is going on?"

How do I answer that? "Hey team," I turned to look at them, "There is a lot to explain, and I will.”

I looked at the doorway out of the cavern. Then I looked at the black void on the opposite end. I continued, “But we need to walk into that door first."

Charlie asked, “You mean that scary black void?”

I nodded.

James expected an argument from at least one of them, but none of them said a word. Sara walked through first. Noa and Eyal went next. Charlie and Wen paused at the door and began looking at it, trying to figure it out. I smiled.

I walked up to them and whispered, "I think there will be a lot cooler stuff on the other side."

Their eyes twinkled and they smiled and walked through.

I looked back at Douglas one more time. He nodded, "Good luck."

I paused, "Let me guess, you're all counting on me?"

Douglas shrugged, "Something like that."

I turned and walked through the door.