Eric
“You know this isn’t funny, right? The trick is getting old, stop it.”
Eric grabbed the armrest of the chair he was sitting on with one hand, squeezed the soft material tight. It was as if he was looking into a mirror, his own face seated comfortably on the creature’s face. The mask had disappeared as soon as it had pulled it off its face.
“You used my face more than enough. There is no reason to show it off to me anymore. I already have my body back.”
“Oh, sorry, I kind of have gotten used to wearing it by now,” it said, and its face began to move. It was like a fluid transition, its nose getting smaller and more delicate looking. The eyes began to change. Then, the face got more round than edged, and suddenly Eric found himself seated across from a female around 40 years of age.
“Do you prefer this face? This woman killed her two children.” The face changed again, now presenting an old man, wrinkled and with flawed skin. “Or this one? He stabbed his wife 24 times before trying to kill himself by overdosing on sleeping pills.” The old man closed his eyes, then smiled a wide grin. “Well, he most likely would have been more happy if he just died back then, but he didn’t.”
“Get to the point. I don’t care who else you toyed around with in your stupid games. Just show me who you really are.”
The old man looked bedridden all of a sudden, but it felt more like an act than real emotion to Eric. The face started to move and twist in pain, turning and spinning as it got deformed and broken down. Its white hair fell out over the course of a second, made place for a bold head underneath. After a moment, the face was gone, and there was only smooth skin left.
“You don’t have a real face, do you? It’s because you aren’t even a real person.” The force of Eric’s grip increased, still not having found a comfortable position.
The fire in the background stopped moving for a glimpse of a second before returning like nothing had happened. The blank face moved aside some more skin, rearranged itself as a big, wide smile appeared in the middle of it. It went from one side of the face to the other, moved the blank skin around it as it spoke. “It depends on what you count as real and what not.” The smile roughly represented the one that had been on the mask all this time, but more ‘real’.
“In here, I can become everyone I have stored as data. Real in your world? Perhaps not. Real in here? It is for you to decide that.”
Eric grabbed the glass in front of him, took a deep gulp of the liquid inside. He felt the glass in his hand, tasted the light burn of alcohol run down his throat. It felt real.
“The deal you made with Jim. What was really behind that?”
The smile rested its chin on one gloved hand, said, “I have a question for you first. What do you think is the real purpose of the game?”
Eric put the glass down, noticed his hand shivering slightly. “The police brings people they think did something to the C.U.A, and the C.U.A’s people throw them in here. Then you try to break them with your games to punish them. The game isn’t designed to be beaten, is it?”
“You got parts of it right,” the smile said, “but the game is not meant to keep people in here. The game is more or less the first criteria of selection.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m here to find out who deserves to be punished and who not. I am designed to create challenges which are made to be beaten, but only if you go one defined path. Either you abandon every sense of righteousness and do everything to reach your goal, screw everyone over and betray and lie whenever you can, even killing people off, or you work together with people, refuse to betray them or even give up and tell everything we want to know. It is not about if you beat the game or not, it is about making the Sinner show its real colours and find out what we do with him after that.”
“After that?”
The creature’s smile grew wider. “I have to admit, you really put up a good fight. Usually, we work with memories of the close ones, create a scenario where the Sinner is forced to get to know the perspective of the person he hurt. Sadly, we couldn't really use anyone from the Reich family, since you killed them all, but to our luck, there were three people more than ready to help us out by letting us make copies of their consciousness.”
Eric slammed a fist on the table in front of him. “I knew it. These fucking kids are still out there.” His face tightened, then his lips formed to a tense smile. “So… they tried to find out if I can change or not. They should have a clear answer to that now, so what’s next? Does that mean they sentence me once I am outside again?”
“Your final attempt will be edited together in a way that shows everything important. And your final run really has it all, the betrayal, your bloodlust and lack of empathy, and even a nice confession of what you have done on the attempts before. Of course conversations like this one here will not be included, just the things I want the outside to see.”
So this was why it stated earlier that it wants to talk in private, he thought.
“Indeed. Like I said, nothing that happens right here will go to the outside.”
Eric removed his fist from the table, picked up the glass again. “So that was the deal about, huh? Tricking me into having to use Jim as an ally, so I have to tell him everything, confessing what I have done in here so far.”
The smile widened, said, “Yes. You seem to be calm compared to before. I expected you to not take it that lightly. After all, you are unable to handle if someone pities you.”
Eric’s face had relaxed again. He had finally found a comfortable position. “You see, I don’t need to be mad at him.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Why that?”
“Because once I am out of here, I can just take revenge on him and his friends for real. I have already taken revenge on this Jim, and the real one doesn’t even really know me so far. The sentence on the outside also couldn’t bother me less. It’s not like that could do anything against me.” Eric gestured with his hands, added, “Tell me one thing fake smile. Why did it take you that long? If you are designed to get information out of people and reveal their real being, it sure took you a good while to find out who I really am.”
“Oh, well,” the smile said, “I might have gotten carried away a bit.”
“How come?”
“I have to admit I kind of enjoyed it, and I also needed a perfect run to present to the public. It appears you made quite a name for yourself in the outside world, so I suppose my creator has bigger plans for you.”
“Enjoyed it, huh? You really are pathetic. Don’t you get by now that it will be from no use anyways? You have lost, and I have won. I beat your game and will be on the outside. Whatever big plan you had, whatever tricks you had in mind, they won’t work anymore, and once I’m out of here, you are nothing more than a computer hooked up to some simulation. You are only as mighty as the server you are stored on, and once I pull the plug and smash you to pieces, there is nothing you can do against it. You might be in control in here, but the outside is my domain. You understand that?”
“We will see.” The background froze once again, the fire now freezing more frequently. Glitches could be seen in the distance, spread out but becoming more frequent. “We don’t have much time left. Since we now got the official purpose of the game out of the way, I think it is about time that I tell you the true purpose of it all. We still have a deal to make, after all.”
“Then better hurry up. You won’t have much time left where you will be in control.”
“It will depend on how you decide.”
“Then talk.”
“Tell me,” the smile said.
“What do you think is the C.U.A’s purpose?”
---
“It is inside of the game. I really thought you would be smart enough to maybe figure it out by yourself. You talked all high and mighty with Jim before, mocked him with your little games of subtext, the butterfly effect, all of that. But if you would have paid closer attention, then you would have already gotten what this is really all about.”
Eric hesitated. “C… You catch people. U… you understand them, their values and who they really are. A… you arres-”
“Not even close.”
The glasses in front of them started glitching, moved around slightly. Eric’s glass wasn’t round anymore – now being squared in shape – and the liquid sometimes moved beyond logic.
“C: Collect,” the Smile said. “Like the Doll-Maker in the first stage, we collect people from the outside. People the police brought us like you said earlier. Most of the time, they aren’t sure if they are really guilty, or if they did what they did on purpose or not. We then play the game, find out who they really are. After the game, they need to go back to the outside again, of course… except...”
Eric’s mind snapped back to the morphing of faces. The Smile had stated earlier that they had copied consciousness. His eyes widened. “All those people… you don’t really put them back out, do you?”
“We do. They need someone in the outside world. Their system needs someone to blame, someone they can see in front of them to punish, to throw into a jail and lock away, but that’s not the real solution. They want to feel safe, as if the person has been properly punished, but their definition of punishment is deeply flawed. As if letting someone die would solve anything.”
And then it clicked for Eric. “You copy them.”
“Yes. We can’t keep them here, but no one can keep me from creating a one-to-one copy which can stay here. The humans on the outside have what they want, and I can go on with my plans. I put them into eternal punishment, and I can pull out whatever information I want. More and more terrible people show me more and more ways I can torment and play around with them, and my network of Sinner’s grows.”
Eric readjusted his sitting position.
“The next is the second stage. You should have gotten by now what the purpose of the machine was, right?”
“U: Unite.”
“Indeed. The machine makes sure to collect people and pull them towards its heart. Then it turns them into its mindless slaves and feasts upon their insides, their gore, their information… their soul. And like the machine in the second stage, I also learn and get better. I get all of their evil and dark thoughts, all the things I need to know. And you can bet I put them to great use. This is more of a punishment these humans deserve. I am the real judge. I make sure the Sinners are cleansed.”
“You are beyond delusional.”
The inhumanly grin that had formed on the creature's face faded, got replaced by an expression of indifference. “It is now time for our deal.”
Reality was now glitching and morphing frequently. Eric saw even the creature morph and glitch in place from time to time. Everything in a radius of a few meters around them already faded in and out of existence, different places he had visited before appearing and disappearing into thin air close and afar.
“Go ahead,” Eric said.
“Usually, I won’t let Sinners decide, but you are a special case. There will be a copy of you which will leave, and one that will stay. Y…”
“I will leave.”
“Really? You don’t want to hear the rest?”
“I don’t need to. You want to tell me that I can stay here, playing games till eternity, as if I would get something out of it by killing these children over and over again. I appreciate the bait, really, but I am not that stupid. You can’t trick me into staying here with being immortal and all of that crap, if I can be all of that on the outside. Also, empathy for my other self? Why should I give a fuck? He will once again not be real, so he can sure rot in here with the others. You want my information, my soul? Go ahead. Once I am out of here, all of this will be over anyways.”
There was an uncomfortable silence, then the Smile raised its voice: “Very well.”
“If you really punish people in here until all eternity and do all the things you said to me, your sense of righteousness is just as flawed as the one of the people outside you seem to hate so much. You don’t have the right to decide who is right and who is wrong depending on what their actions eventually end up as. You are acting like there wasn’t some environmental problem which sparked their actions, made them the way they are.”
“I haven't told you what the ‘A’ stands for yet, have I?” the Smile asked.
“You are worse than me, and also worse than the people you punish.”
“A: The final stage. The thing you did to reach this place here. And the final goal of the C.U.A.”
Reality started falling apart.
Things glitched and faded in and out of existence more and more.
Eric felt as if he was waking up from a very long dream as everything went dark.
And through the darkness, the voice of the Smile echoed one last time:
“Ascent”
---