Chapter 23 - Gnosis (conclusion)

It was Mona. Her idea where she couldn’t predict what would happen. Marley fumed to herself but tried to keep a smile on the outside. Olivia lost and so dressed up as a maid as she served Marisa (mostly) obediently. At each mention of the ‘chateau’ though, Marley felt a flash memory of Oswald shooting Marisa. This Olivia dreamed of hardworking princesses and lovely, palace-like places being cared for.

She was sure her friends realized something was amiss about her, but she put on a good face for them. She bid them goodnight and helped tuck Olivia into bed after her bath. But she paced as night came. When she finally went into her bedroom, Mona was there.

Dressed all in white with shimmering, pale hair, Mona offered a kind smile and said, “I’m sorry.”

Marley clenched her hands. “You lied to me. This is a trap.”

Calmly, Mona shook her head. “This is a safe haven.”

Bending forward, Marley demanded, “Tell me everything…”

With a sigh, Mona set her hands in her lap and answered, “This is a modified version of the boxes. It’s separate from the main system, protected from Simona’s efforts to reset it and erase you.”

Clenching her lips, Marley parsed that as, “This is where we all were until Sim decided to mess with us and wake us up…”

“In a way. But you were never conscious of it, as you are now. It would always be a pleasant dream.”

Batting her hand towards Mona, she declared, “It’s meaningless…none of it’s real….and how long will you keep me here?”

Cupping her hands, Mona looked down and said, “If I had my wish, a painless eternity. Protected from Simona’s wrath and surrounded by your friends.”

Marley scoffed, “But they aren’t real…”

Mona looked up. “Actually, they are. I had to be careful, but I was able to move them into the box. They are the friends you’ve known all this time, saved automatically by the system, just as I hoped…information and souls. They’re only missing a few minutes of memories as Simona was about to purge and delete them.”

Marley's eyes widened as she cupped her mouth. She breathed in pants. She wanted to believe Mona and the look in her eyes urged her to do so as well. But she still had one question, “Jessica? You couldn’t have gotten her…”

To this, Mona had to nod. “Jessica is not a full copy. But she is linked to the real one Simona inhabits. She’s like a projection…a ghost of your friend out of her body of data, bolstered by your memories of her.”

Clutching at her neck, Marley asked, “Does that…does it mean I might be able to free her? If you can get at her information…can I get Simona out of her soul? Can she be free?”

Mona hesitated a long moment before offering her, “It’s not impossible. It’s dangerous and I can only imagine how it might be done….but there will be consequences.”

Her anger forgotten, Marley found the end of the bed and sat near Mona as she pleaded, “Tell me…”

Mona leaned back, as though in prayer, and said, “I will tell you but I also offer you two alternatives.”

Marley listened as Mona explained, “The first alternative…I cut away all your memories of a world beyond this place. It will be hard, but I can do it. You will feel strange, for a while, but you will fully accept this as reality. You will be protected, and you will be with your friends. The second alternative…I leave you as you are now. Only you will remember. With that is the obligation of control over this place. You have it now. You can will anything into reality. You did it in your art class by making Marisa’s drawing accurate and you considered changing your gym classmates. If you remain as you are, you could reshape the world as you wish. I would still be around if ever you needed help, but you would, in essence, become the goddess of this world.”

Marley eased back on her bed, flat against the mattress. She could see it. The walls above her shifted as she focused on them growing slightly. She changed the crown molding and felt the carpet beneath her feet shift as she dreamed of something softer. She knew that the same changes in the room could apply to the entire world around her. She could craft new constellations, send rain or snow. Rewrite time itself. Olivia could be a wide-eyed little kid again. They all could…but then she paused.

They were real. And Jessica…

Swallowing roughly, Marley responded, “I couldn’t do that to the others. And I refuse to forget again. But there’s another thing. Jessica. The full Jessica, the soul kidnapped by Simona…she won’t last forever.”

Mona answered, “No more than a year.”

“And how long has it been inside here?”

Mona assured her, “Not long. Just a little over a day. Simona thinks she’s won. She’s been working on restoring the system from backups. She won’t know I’ve done anything for a while. I’ll keep fighting her. I’ll keep her away.”

Sitting up, Marley softly answered, “But you don’t know for certain. And I wouldn’t want to live in a world where I knew she was still out there….especially not a world where I don’t remember that she’s out there…”

With a sigh, Mona said again, “I’m sorry. I wish I could give you a world of dreams without fear.”

Marley shook her head as she sighed as well and answered, “It’s okay….so…tell me what I need to do…”

Spreading her palms out, Mona began, “If you wish to leave, your best chance is with your friends with their full memories as well. I could prod them, but I can’t force them to remember if they don’t want to. It would be up to you to lead them to a primal memory which allows them to recall the rest.”

That alone felt daunting. She’d chanced upon her memory. She wasn’t sure if she could engineer a situation where they just remembered who they were before…if they wanted to. And she hadn’t even met Nicolas yet.

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“And after that?”

Mona continued, “If you five all decide, then your best course of action is a sudden strike. Blast forth the walls of this world into the system. It would overwhelm her control and you might be able to subdue her together. Anything after that would be entirely hypothetical…”

With a smirk, Marley mused, “Opening the box…”

Mona also told her that Sim’s primary program was still being worked on by Simona but wasn’t finished yet (although his sadistic alter-ego’s file was hopelessly corrupted).

Then, she paused with a quiver of her lips. Marley urged her on. Turning her hands over, Mona explained, “There’s one more thing. I mentioned your memories. And I said I could only guess. I’ve been searching and I’ve found enough to be sure…”

She gave another pause before revealing, “Simona indeed has a number of people in comas plugged into the system. It’s where she gets souls and it’s what runs the heavy processing of the virtual realms. It means that the bodies your souls came from are still alive. But…the reason there are separate memories is because your data consciousness and your physical consciousness are two separate entities that share a soul.”

Tingles covered Marley’s body, like being alone in a cold abyss. She took a breath as she said, “Then Simona was right. We aren’t them. We’re just creations. Temporary reservoirs that simulate people to store a soul until she needs one…that bitch…”

“I believe you are more. You are alive as much as any physical body could be alive. You’re both alive…but…”

She shut her eyes as she said, “That’s where the problem lies. Assume you defeat Simona and she doesn’t have a secret kill switch I don’t know about which activates upon her death and deletes everything and kills everyone plugged in. Assume you win…your data consciousness has nowhere to go. Everything you’ve ever felt. Everything you are…is a part of the system. You are, in essence, a program with a soul. So are your friends and so are the ones who never woke from their boxes….”

Marley shut her eyes as well and tried to listen without hyperventilating. She wanted to yell, scream, and cry all at once. She quieted all those feelings with a careful breath as Mona continued.

“And, if you win, you will continue to exist. But all those people in comas will still be plugged in. They’ll be trapped, because I’ve found Simona has them on a special drug which keeps their brains active for processing but locked forever in sleep.”

Swallowing, Marley asked, “With Simona gone, we could free them…but…ohhh….” She realized it as Mona gave a nod.

Mona laid out the critical problems. “You could free them, but to what kind of world outside? And their minds….their minds are the foundation of this world. They keep the information organized. They create the reality. They run the programs. Without them, we all vanish into silence.”

Cupping her mouth, Marley felt sick again. There before her lay the path. Her choice. Her end and the end of everyone she cared about. Saving this world meant trapping others in the dark until their bodies stopped working or the systems broke down. Either way…death lay sprawled out before her in all directions like beasts in the shadows.

At that moment, she wondered if this was what Simona felt to drive her to madness. The certainty of non-existence looming just beyond. The fear of losing everything. The agony of dooming herself and her friends or dooming people she’d never met.

She clutched her stomach and pressed her back against the bed. There was no good option. There was no fix. There was no answer. There were just choices and an ultimate destination.

As she lay flush and shivering, Mona comforted Marley and stroked her hair as she said, “I’m so sorry to lay this all on you but you deserve to know before you make your final decision.”

Marley gave a tense nod as she said, without feeling, “Thank you. Yeah. And I thought I knew which decision to make. I…don’t….I guess…I will…”

Stroking her shoulder, Mona begged her, “Sleep on it. Rest your thoughts. I’ll be watching over you. When you are ready, I’ll help you however I can…no matter what you decide.”

With a kiss on the cheek, Marley felt Simona vanish with a warm whisper. She shut her eyes and rubbed her cheek. She felt so hopeless, even more so than when Marlise sacrificed herself and her friends vanished while she watched. Sobbing, she crawled to her pillow and set her head down. It was a small comfort.

She didn’t want to take a shower, she didn’t want to get up. She willed her body to be fresh with the fragrance of her favorite soap, cleansed of the day’s grime, and dressed in her nicest pajamas. It was another small comfort, but it only dulled the edge of her fear.

She added a nightlight in the dark to play warm colors across the walls and tried to sleep. Still, she tossed and turned, sweat and fear returning to her body. Then, the door across the room creaked, pushed by a careful hand. Standing in the doorway, with a droopy bunny named Flopsalot and a pillow under her arm, was Olivia.

Her face was red at the edges, but she’d already wiped away her tears. She dipped her head and asked, “C-c-can I sleep with you tonight…?” She stammered out several nervous reasons from someone teasing her at school to a creepy, darkened corner of her room. Marley smiled, hid her own tears, and told her little sister, “Of course.”

Dashing, Olivia bolted under the covers and scooted next to her with Flopsalot in her grip. She didn’t question the nightlight. She didn’t say anything more. Her slim body didn’t take up much of the bed. Before long, she was asleep. And, despite her mess of stomach-churning fears, Marley soon joined her.