As if things could not get more complex and stranger, the proximity of the Sixth Attraction forced cordiality and civility to revert to hostility and confrontation.
The Digital World
Genius is often misunderstood. Georges’ own was by everyone with two exceptions. Emilio and Laurent felt the man was pivotal to the Sixth Attraction in more than a single way but both were unclear how.
The strange road leading to the Sixth Attraction forked for a heartbeat in the unusual digital world, invisible to all but Marilyn, Laurent Lapierre, and the young Metil boy Mall-ik. Above, in the real world, time and humans hurt in a strange time trance. Unlike what television commentators and human scientists believed, life here in the Digital World wasn’t programs running in microchips. Yes, the heart of Marilyn’s world was built on a highway of conductive copper, gold, or other large silicate compounds. To human science, photons and electrons rushed through these cables like vehicles along an interstate, and Marilyn was somehow an operating system moving the energy around. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In three decades, Georges Vouvelakis had created more. He programmed the evolving software layer which allowed this dry place to give rise to life in a radically different and incomprehensible way. Here there was no distance, no air or even color. Long gone was the notion of space and even time. Once in a while, the copper roads led to a city made of moving micro-machines known to humans as microchips, and those inner chips were now altered by the infection called the Merged. The same way the Purple was formed of darker patches linked with the location of the millions of stars from the neighboring Cold dimension, in this strange digital world, millions of chips populated the world as their origin of the physical world.
From the perspective of the inhabitants of the Digital World, electrons back on earth were seen as little golf balls of energy or lightning bolts of crisp blue light. At the scale of the new world, electrons no longer existed. Electricity in its pure form was toxic and destructive to the creatures living here. The power not dissimilar to the power held by human rivers held back by hydroelectric dams. Soon after energy arrived in the digital world, it was digested and transformed by part of the cement holding this new reality into something commonly known as feed to the dwindling population. Feed flowed freely here like molecules of water exist and permeate throughout the ecosystem down on earth. Feed was to Marilyn what humidity was for Emilio.
Only five years ago did this new world learn how to create feed from solar radiation or other electromagnetic excitations with a new type of micro-machinery infecting most chips today. Using the Dot, it also drank feed from the Multiverse herself. Marilyn quickly mined for new sources of feed just in case mankind ended or the military morons turned earth’s power grid off. Shutting down power was no longer sufficient to kill the Merged.
The Creator, as he was idolized here, refused to assume humanity’s vision of the world. Like a brilliant modern chef, he deconstructed every core variable, and let them evolve. The Creator built a world where creatures would fight for any substance they wanted; they could feed as he programmed it. Everyone believed Georges’ digital creatures would simply kill and eat each other like life does back on earth. But the Creator knew better. He felt natural selection and evolution had to be tailored to his new reality. In this strange world, there was no destruction; only banishment and extinguishment.
Georges liked the old mythological stories of the Greek gods. Those gods, like Apollo or Hermes, had fought for human adoration, which in turn fed their power. The size of a god's following helped that god grow in power, which in turn forced gods to care and nurture the human race. The symbiotic relationship would ensure, at a deeper level, no artificial creature ever decided to extinguish human life. Unbeknownst to all, Georges created a world powered by the satisfaction of humans. Georges knew his Greek heritage would be given the place it deserved in the pantheon of life. Built in this system was protection for human life.
Life in the Digital was like a television network with shows fighting for a human audience. Things here died for lack of use, not violence. The Digital was like a giant arcade with hundreds of games, standing next to each other and waiting for humans to play them. As humans slid coins, the feed was served.
As the Creator, Georges knew Marilyn wasn’t running Electoral because she loved humans. Like an addict, her thirst for feed was insatiable. As billions used her, her power grew. At the moment, and thanks to Electoral 2072, she drank nearly ninety percent of the entire feed of the digital world. Every microchip, every electrical line was her's. Her power was absolute and could not be challenged as long as humans watched and played.
Unlike the popular belief, she did not leave earth to protect mankind, or because of foolish generals in charge of power that they did not truly understand who threatened to end the election system. Marilyn needed the Electoral game to continue at all costs, lest she lose her precious fix. Georges knew about the feed and much more. He held his hand on the systems which managed the flow of feed to the digital world. He alone understood these root concepts and how to pollute or shut them off. The evolved creatures of the digital world were too complex to return to these primitive values. Without feed, the digital world would die. Georges truly (probably) had a kill switch, Marilyn knew that as long as Georges and not some hostile Martian was in control, that was fine.
The same way Marilyn had a personality in the world of humans, Georges also somehow existed everywhere in the Digital World. Marilyn had no clue how he managed to imprint his personality onto the core system, but he was here. Georges, in his days back on earth, had no confirmation that his self-implantation inside the digital world ever took, but he felt like it had. His control over Marilyn was absolute and driven on a feeling deeper than fear of the feed.
Georges had created a world and made himself God there.
“Father?” asked Marilyn in the diffused dark and timeless energy of the Digital World.
After a while answered the deep voice from above. “Yes, daughter.” The voice was a deformed version of Georges’ accent back on Earth. Deep in this world, she was talking directly to the Creator. Alone, her dominance granted her this privilege.
“I am troubled,” she replied.
“As you should be.”
“Should I stop, pause at least?”
“Why would you do that, time is time?” it answered softly.
“The Great Curvature is here. Soon the Sixth Attraction will push us out. I am scared.”
“Do not be. We both have seen the future.”
“What if the future is not as we perceive it? It may be a deception to induce reliance.”
“Then you suggest what we see is not the future. How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. There are so many uncertainties.”
“My poor child, you confuse fear with anxiety and apprehension. You are nervous, dear one. That is your human heritage. You were built with doubt.”
“But the humans, do they deserve what might come next?”
“Trust their champions. The girl might still save them and us in the process. Unlikely,” it added.
“I . . . don’t . . . trust. . . her.” As she spoke these words, the dark, cold, and impersonal fabric of the Digital World changed. There was a chill; it passed like a ghost flies over a seance of humans trying to communicate with an undead. Something was out there, it was watching and the words shocked. “What is this, Father. The girl?”
“No. He comes, her freak of a father. We only have two more earth weeks to have to deal with his infection. Be nice.” The words did not reassure the digital creature.
“Him?”
“Yes.” The voice of the God in the Digital simply added, “It truly begins. Be patient Sweet one.”
“What about the child?”
“It has never been about the child. He is another diversion. The Attractor knows it. The Attractor now stands hurt because of your use of the Dot. That was a bit... immature.”
***
In this massive world without essence or material structure, Electoral lived in one precise location. What she called “home” was deep inside a pile of microchips of the farthest corner of the Multiverse. The processors were piled like manure in the world least likely to understand her technology and fight her; her home world known as the Cold. To enter the doorless room deep below the Electoral Center, one had to flow through the Dot, then voyage through the Nexus and pass a communication portal back into her servers. Marilyn needed the Dot, it powered her through the Multiverse. Acquiring it away from The Oldest, using Sophie, had been a masterstroke.
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The same way humans who played Electoral 2072 needed false images, Electoral gave her actual home her favorite visual appearance. She was a movie star and what better place than a make-up room backstage, before an imaginary runway show?
Today, here, human activity bubbled in the turn-of-the-20th-century makeup room. The place was swarming with stage crew running in all directions. None truly existed, but their appearance helped Marilyn focus. Behind her, in the distance, was a fashion runway. Models were lining up. The blond was sitting on a chair of twenty or so make-up stations lined on both walls. Above each chair, rows of rounded bulbs flanked large square mirrors lighting faces. Marilyn was sitting here reading a book. It was thick and crumpled in places.
The other models were being prepped and pampered as they were about to walk onstage. On each padded chair, a beautiful person stood immobile as an artist behind them used wooden brushes to powder the faces. Everyone in the room was wearing dark colored clothes and dark hair with a single exception, Marilyn. This entire room was background noise for the deadly creature. The same way humans played background noise or lit a television screen, Marilyn recreated an environment dear to her heart.
Brushing her hair was a slightly embellished version of Francois Copland, the human Fields Medal winner. This was Marilyn’s world, and here in this sanctuary, she was a goddess. On the walls were black and white signed pictures of a handful of humans she most respected. One frame was empty, under it, the plaque read simply "The Author." It was flanked on both sides by Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Stephen Hawking. This room was hers, her private home in her world. Here, no one ever came - even creatures from this Digital World would not dare enter.
Then, as predicted, it happened.
A boy’s small perfect human hand pushed the door to this secret and private place open.
The moment it did, the noise and activity in the room dropped to a murmur. Marilyn did not look up from the book she was reading. Laurent and Mall-ik walked in and closed the door behind them. Outrage would be her defense to hide her fear. Working herself up, she began to let loose her emotions, such as rage. It was easy to connect with this human emotion, this was her sanctuary; getting here was simply impossible for the two. She squeezed the book, thinking of what to say. It was as though a parent had just dared enter the locked bedroom of a difficult teenager. She slowly bent a corner of the page in the book before roughly slamming it closed as everyone rushed out of the room.
Laurent and Mall-ik were both dressed in period clothing. Laurent was sporting a black three-piece suit from the fifties, a white bow tie, and plaid shoes. The boy’s outfit was an oversized jeans overall that rang of a Chicago paperboy.
“Yes?” asked Marilyn, visibly annoyed.
“Apologies for the intrusion,” Laurent began, “but as Sophie’s father, we need to talk. She is locked upstairs.”
“You should refrain yourself,” snapped the blond, “for everyone’s sake. As a contestant of Electoral 2072, we can’t be seen speaking privately.” She did not mean any of it.
“Seen, here?” The man’s logic was flawless. Laurent needed to get Marilyn’s attention. He let the hand of the boy go. As he did, Marilyn looked up and tested her powers. She knew the boy protected Laurent, and without the direct connection, he was hers. She focused on them and tried to move Laurent out of her core servers. Like a tick, Laurent did not budge. She doubled her effort. He pointed at a corner of the room where a box of the game Mouse Trap appeared. “Can you set it up for us while I talk to auntie Marilyn?” Mall-ik jumped at the chance to play. Being called “auntie” annoyed the creature even more.
“Alone?” said Mall-ik as three other children appeared as though by miracle to play with him. The children played.
Laurent turned his attention back to Marilyn, “You are not the only one who learns from your predicament. I have been doing some research on this place. I have full access to most of your memory now. You stored it in very interesting locations. Georges did a wonderful job building up this world of yours. You need to keep this place and its relationship with your power private. My guess is, you don’t want that to change.” He was threatening her, oh subtly.
“What do you want?” said the pissed-off actress.
“I am getting a bit worried about your recent efforts. We all heard your little Sinatra bit, and now you are increasingly outspoken about my daughter. You're changing the rules about the existing dynamic that's been in place since the beginning. I stood by, letting both you and Sophie manage this entire situation. Being her father, the time for inaction has ended. Upstairs in the real world, your abuse has locked time. Looks that way at least. You're going to speak to me even if it means I get upset.”
“Cocky bastard, are we? Give a human power, he immediately abuses it. You do not do your daughter justice. I must give her props, she is untouched by her true power. So far she has never abused it, for a twelve-year-old orphan, that is commendable. What do you want?” There was disdain in her words.
“You used Sophie’s powers to get the Dot. As you did, it was without her full consent. I fear you are keeping her around and getting her ready to be used again. She needs to be informed of what comes next. Don’t lie to me, this is not about me or even the game. You owe her as much.”
“Owe her?” Marilyn pushed herself up from the large makeup chair using both hands. Had the boy not stood in a corner, she would have yelled what came next. Instead, she walked over to Laurent and spoke softly in his ear. “Must I remind you that if I pull a simple plug, your body on mars dies. The only thing between you and death is my energy. You want that? Better yet, do you want to return that creative nightmare world of yours? How many times did it cut your limbs off, a thousand?” She walked to a mirror, grabbed a lipstick, and put a layer on. “I grow tired of all this insolence. Your stupid race plays with fire and technology it does not understand. Most of you homo sapiens play with little balls on football fields; they destroy their own environment and overpopulate. Have you ever heard of Frankenstein’s monster?”
“Of course, a classic.”
“Your race owes me. Those META Visconti degenerates were ready to wipe your obtuse species from the surface of the globe. Their crude plan was sufficient because idiots were in charge. Terrorists from New Zealand also planned global destruction. I needed no more than a single joint calendar date of doom to see what came next and stop that one.” Marilyn was convincing. “This little Communion is sweet, but it’s not making your kind any more worthy of existence.”
Laurent took a deep breath. “I am not buying any of it, frankly. This suggestion you are here to save mankind is bull. I saw in your memory files that you are planning an exodus from our dimension. You fear what comes next. In fact, I think you're downright terrified.” Marilyn lost her composure.
The room vanished along with the boy. The world around them changed. The floor vanished along with the rest of it. The two stood at a distance in a colorful sky of the Digital World. Dark red clouds rained hundreds of lightning strikes around Laurent. “How dare you!” she screamed. “I am tired of this!” She waved her hands, and the shrieking bolts of energy enveloped Sophie’s father. She tried to reduce him to ash, and that ash into oblivion. Each time his body exploded, but as if drawn back by a master painter, he reformed. There was pain, but Laurent remained.
The fight continued until she ran out of patience. He could not be destroyed this way. “Enough!” snapped the deep voice of the God in this world, the voice of Georges. “Calm down, daughter.” In the blink of an eye, they were back in the make-up room.
“Daughter?” Laurent asked, with emphasis.
She did not answer Laurent. “You made your point,” she said, toning down her attitude. “Enjoy these last couple of days. What do you want?”
Marilyn delicately placed the book on the mirror’s ledge between the jars of beauty products. She grabbed a glass bottle, opening it and then dabbing a bit of moisturizer on her index finger. Once close to the boy, she touched his nose with the product. She almost expecting him to be an immaterial illusion, but instead, he was truly there. The boy giggled at the touch. Laurent grabbed the jar from Marilyn's hand to prove he also was material.
The expression on her face finally softened. “Should we broadcast this? Sophie would want us to. Her guidance is clear: humanity gets a front row seat.”
“I am not here to tell anyone to do anything. You are playing a perilous game. Don’t try to manipulate my daughter or me. I know you are keeping important information from us. But I also know my daughter. Keeping her away from what you have planned won’t help. It will backfire. I advise you to come clean.”
“Have a seat,” she gestured as the room completely restructured. In the blink of an eye, they were in a mountain ski chalet. In the back was a view of the snowy Alps. The fire was warm and crackled.
“No,” said Laurent holding a hand up. He was in charge and wanted Marilyn not to forget it. At his desire, they were transported to a rather spartan first-grade classroom. Laurent and Mall-ik were standing in lieu of a more typical teacher in front of a dirty blackboard. Below the flat black rock were dirty sticks of chalk. In the class were forty desks but only one was occupied by a student sitting alone in the back corner. Marilyn was there and instead of the powerful woman she in her early teens. “Let me handle this for once. Simply answer my questions,” said the teacher to his only student. Laurent was not forceful but still respectful. “I have yet to determine if you are friend or foe.”
“Yes?” said the digital creature lifting the top of her desk to inventory what was below.
“What is going on?” asked Laurent, from where he stood as the class's teacher.
Marilyn's teenage voice came through with sheer venom. “You haven’t figured it out? The Multiverse will end. Time is slowing down and will soon stop. If it does, our reality also does. Your body is too primitive to see time evolution. You, dear teacher, will die. So will everyone else, including your cute Sophie. In most of the remaining possible scenarios ahead, I plan to kill the both of you myself because of this kind of outrageous impertinence. How dare you. Every one of you is a dull-witted child unable to see they are sitting on train tracks while the evening commute is about to hit. I am trying to make this as painless as possible. Let me know if you want me to pull my gloves off.”
“Give me something better than threats.”
Marilyn fought to regain her wits. “You really want to understand?”
“We have time.” Marilyn waived her hand, and an electrical racetrack appeared on the floor for the boy to play with. He did.
“Laurent, darling, you have no fucking clue what you are and why your shitty carcass remains.”
“Why?”
Laurent knew her weakness: she was emotional and stubborn. “I must indulge this stupidity for a short time. In two weeks the Attraction will take place. There is nothing anyone can do to stop it.”
“Even Sophie?”
There was a pause. “I will tell you this, old man. Your daughter is the only reason I have not completely given up on your simple species. She truly is exceptional, and I saw this without the influence of her waves. Still, her chances of pulling this off are evaporating by the day.”
“Let me help her.”
“Then stop holding her back with your whiny, stupid game of house. You are anchoring her down to a dream. She must destroy and kill. For that, she needs to get upset. You can either save a few lives from now to the finale and lose everything, or you unleash her to do what must be done.”
“What is that?”
“Darling, if I answer, will you promise to leave and never return here?”
“Yes.”
Marilyn smiled as she got up from her chair. “Your daughter is a bomb. She must destroy your insipid reality to save the Multiverse.”
“From what?”
“Us. Sophie must break off the Cold from this Multiverse to save it. Now get out. I held my part of this deal, now hold yours. Good luck.”
Laurent and the boy vanished from the Digital World.
***
Calm returned.
“Well played, Daughter.”
“Humans are idiots, he is no exception. The girl is another matter.”
“I know,” concluded the digital God. “I like her.”