Milly huddled in her closet, knees tucked to her chest and head hidden underneath the musty raincoats that lay strewn across the floor. She shivered despite the heat, as she listened to the growing bellows of her foster father from downstairs. He was deep in the bottle, and it was only a matter of time before he came for her. He always came for her on nights like this.

“I can’t take it anymore,” Milly cried softly as anxiety tightened its grip on her while she waited for his telltale footsteps on the creaky stairwell. She looked at her arms, covered in the bruises his hands had left yesterday and all the days before that. She was only fourteen, but she felt dead inside, her fear the only thing remaining. She had no friends, no family. Nowhere else to go.

Her eyes flickered to the paring knife lying beside her that she had taken from the kitchen. It would do her no good against her foster father. She had tried to defend herself with it the last time, a crying girl holding it aloft against the behemoth of a man. He had laughed and had ripped it out of her hand. He had given it back to her after he was finished, as if daring her to try again.

She would not try again. She kept it for a different reason. Her final escape.

The stairwell creaked. Milly could hear his drunken mumbling as he stumbled up the stairs, headed for her room.

She started to hyperventilate. She grasped the knife in her hand, but she was shaking so hard that it fell between her fingers. She winced as it clattered against the hardwood flooring.

“Milly, where are you, ungrateful girl?” her foster father slurred, taking his time as he climbed the stairs. It was part of his game. Building her fear until she could hardly breathe, so she would not resist his violence. “We bring you into our house. Feed you. Clothe you. You should at least be good for something.”

“Please, I can’t live through it again. I want out. I want out.” Milly begged silently, feeling for the knife in the darkness. Her breathing intensified, her chest aching and her tears catching on the rims of her glasses.

Wait…glasses? She did not wear glasses. Yet there they sat, resting on the bridge of her nose and far too big to fit her tiny, malnourished frame.

She removed them, tracing her finger around the circular frames. They felt familiar. Why did they feel familiar?

Her foster father had reached the top staircase and was rhythmically banging his beer bottle against the wall so she would know how close he was. “No reason to be scared, Milly.”

Her hands fell on the paring knife, her hands shaking.

She could hear him outside her door. She couldn’t get a grip on the knife. It kept slipping out of her fingers. She shoved the strange glasses back onto her face so she could grab it with both hands.

A blue screen popped up in front of her, and she covered her mouth to suppress a shocked gasp.

Scenario: The Night of Lost Hope

Challenge: The Arena of Choice

Participant: Mildred Persephone Brown

Warning: Disturbing content, Violence

Milly read it quickly, fear compounding fear. Her father intentionally rattled her doorknob. “Knock knock, Milly.”

Milly’s head shot towards the door through the crack in the wall, and her gaze fell across the small hatch that led to the crawlspace beneath the house.

There was a second blue screen above it.

Program backdoor detected.

User Oracle…confirmed.

Authorization…granted.

Do you wish to activate the backdoor?

Milly had no idea what any of that meant, but she did not hesitate. “Yes,” she whispered, as the door to her room cracked open and her foster father strode inside.

Backdoor…active

Mily threw aside the coats and scurried over to the hatch, her heart beating wildly and her breath escaping in gasps.

Her father grabbed the handle of the closet and started to pull the door back. “Milly, I told you what I would do to you if you ever hid from me again. I’ll teach you what it means to disobey me,” he said, a vile promise laced in every word.

The hatch came loose. It was not the crawlspace beneath. Fractured light, like a broken television, covered the hole, obscuring what lay beneath.

The closet door swung open and her foster father’s drunken hands reaching for her.

She fell forward through the hatch as he grabbed her foot, leaving behind her sock clutched in his violent grip.

* * *

Milly landed in a large chamber, the walls covered with hundreds of computer screens and complex controls. The walls were industrial steel, large fans circulating air and filling the space with a gentle hum.

She was back to normal, her memories restored and wearing her Gown of Moon and Stars and witch’s hat. The memories of that night still rested at the forefront of her mind, as if she had relived them in a dream. It had been the worst of nights. The night that had pushed her over the edge, starting a cascade of events that would define her life from that point on. The emotional wounds felt raw, and she stroked the long-healed scars across her wrists, a constant reminder of the trauma of that night.

“Be brave, Milly,” she told herself, taking a deep breath to try to calm herself. “Find a way out of here.”

She explored the chamber, each step filling the space with an audible click as her feet touched the floor. Each of the computer screens was focused on a different player in the Contest. Milly saw Elmer, sitting on the beach and watching the boars slowly turning on their spits. Four others, all clustered together, displayed the CEOs in the boardroom at Legal Eagles, sitting around a mahogany table. They were arguing, with Ms. Cook defending herself against the other three in a heated exchange. There were screens for the hunter teams, for the gatherers, for those in the tower and for those exploring the terrains. A group of screens showed three men battling a pack of goblins on the prairies, a fourth man lying on the ground from a wound to his chest. Interspersed between the active screens were fifty-two that had simply gone black.

“There must be a screen for every participant in the contest,” Milly whispered, “What is going on?”

The rhythmic clacking of fingers across a keyboard drew her attention to a smaller room at the other end of the larger chamber. Milly stepped lightly, covering the distance quickly, and peeked inside.

A small girl, about four years old, stood on a chair far too large and far too tall for her. Her hair was shoulder-length and curly, and shimmered with the purest white. She looked tired but fierce, despite the adorable unicorn and rainbow pajamas. She had to kneel on the edge of the panel to reach the controls at the back, eyes set with a child’s stubbornness until she had hit the right ones. She was watching four large screens. One showed a bank. Another a school. And two showed only static.

“Tutoria, did you find anything?”

Tutoria materialized in the room with a pop. Milly pressed he back along the wall by the doorway, hoping her heavy breaths would not draw attention.

“We found one of them, Director Cutie Pie,” Tutoria said, ignoring the indigent scowl from the child, “Xavier finished his scenario one minute ago. We have no idea what happened after he executed his father, and it is unknown how he completed his scenario so quickly. The gods at Godhome are terribly angry that his feed was unexpectedly severed.”

The girl scowled.

“But we are on track with him,” Tutoria continued without interruption, ignoring the girl’s huff. “Xavier is headed for the reward chamber now. He doesn’t seem to be waiting for the others to finish. You should restart his feed right away so the gods can watch.”

Milly heard the clacking of keys, and the third screen lit up. Milly poked her head around and saw Xavier walking down a narrow corridor and emerging in the forest, four large chests resting on pedestals before him.

“And the other one?” the Director asked.

“We have not found participant Milly Brown yet, Director. Her feed was severed after she put on her glasses. If you think the gods were angry about Xavier, they are absolutely furious about Milly. She’s becoming a fan favorite, you know.”

Milly gasped, then covered her mouth. There was silence from the room, and Milly stood absolutely still, holding her breath.

“Those increasingly mad gods do not worry me, Tutoria,” the child declared, breaking the silence. “The Contest is entertainment for them, nothing more. We carry its higher purpose on our shoulders.”

“But Director…” Tutoria protested.

“I am sure she will show up eventually. Rain and Calista are in their scenarios. They are entertainment enough for the gods. You can go now.”

“Ok, but do not stay up late again, Cutie Pie. Even AI Directors need their rest. You are a growing young girl, after all,” Tutoria said, naggingly. She vanished just as the girl hurled her cup of apple juice where Tutoria had been standing.

There was a moment of silence, the only sound the rolling of the cup along the ground until it came to a rest at the doorway near Milly’s feet. It was bright pink, and there was a cartoon depiction of the ogre Milly had fought printed on its side. It had a sippy cup lid, so the juice had not spilled out.

“You can come out now, Milly. I know you are there,” came the child’s voice.

Milly took a deep breath to calm her nerves and stepped though the doorway into the chamber.

“Umm…hello,” Milly said meekly, torn between curiosity and outright terror.

The child looked at Milly with a curious expression.

“You are not supposed to be here. You should leave,” she said, yet something in her tone made Milly believe the child wanted her to stay. The child seemed… lonely.

“I…don’t know where I am. Or how to get out,” Milly answered, her fear in conflict with the sight of the child before her, who, except for the starkness of her white hair and intelligence behind her purple eyes, would not have been out of place on a playground or in preschool.

The child held onto the console with her little hands, trying to swing herself down from the chair. It was not going well. Her legs were too far off the ground, and she struggled to keep the chair upright, nearly tipping it over.

Eventually, she gave an exasperated sigh and lifted her arms up into the air. “Down,” the child insisted, hands outstretched towards Milly.

Milly walked tentatively over to the Director, trying to make sense of it all. She reached and picked the child up, then gently set her on the ground.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The child smoothed her unicorn pajamas with her palms. “Thank you,” she said appreciatively. “Now, how did you get here, player Milly? This is my control centre. No player should have access to this place.”

“I…I don’t really know,” admitted Milly. She had been reliving the worst night of her life only moments ago, and now she was talking to a surprisingly well-spoken four-year-old girl in the heart of the contest. “I was…my father…” Even trying to say it aloud brought back her nightmares. “My spectacles opened something called a backdoor. I accepted, and then I fell into this room,” she quickly finished.

It felt like an inadequate description, but the child nodded. She reached her hands up to Milly, “Glasses, please.”

“But…”

The girl stared at her expectedly, and Milly reluctantly removed her glasses and handed them over. Milly felt naked without them, the room around her blurry since she had grown used to the corrective lenses. Yet Milly did not think to say no to the girl. Not out of fear, but because you didn’t say no to little girls who wanted to try on your glasses.

The child turned Milly’s glasses over in her hands, inspecting them from every angle. She put them on, and Milly gave an involuntary giggle at the sight of this small child wearing the massive frames, which extended half way up her forehead.

“These are Mother’s glasses,” the child concluded, handing them back up to Milly. “Her real glasses, not a copy created for the contest. If you have her glasses, it is because she meant for you to have them. Meant for you to find those backdoors.”

“Your…mother?” asked Milly, starting to piece it together. “Oracle is your mother?”

“As close to a mother as someone like me can have, I guess,” the child confirmed, sounding forlorn. “I never met her, but I can feel her touch in everything I do. I think that would make her my mother, don’t you think?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Milly admitted, “I don’t think I’ve ever felt a mother’s touch.”

“No, I guess you have not,” said the child sympathetically.

“You…you are the Artificial Intelligence system that Oracle and Hephaestus designed,” Milly said, remembering the vision on the beach. “The one responsible for running The God Contest.”

The girl curtsied. “That’s me!” she said, half-heartedly. “Though it is more accurate to say I direct the contest while it runs, adapting it as needed.”

Milly had a million questions running through her mind. Why were they in the contest? What was the point of it all? Could she send them home? But somehow, from the jumble in her mind, the first question to escape her mouth was “Why are you…a child?”

The girl huffed, crossing her arms indignantly, “I don’t know. Mom and Dad are not around to tell me. Except for Tutoria, who is just an extension of my broader programming, I have been alone in this control centre since I was born eight days ago.”

“Eight days ago? On the first day of the Contest?” Milly asked.

“Yes, Milly, on the first day,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I cannot be born before the world is created. I am bound to this world. I am supposed to help guide the contest from within. It is my purpose. Only…”

The girl trailed off, staring up at the monitors. Rain was talking with an elderly woman and a teenaged Calista was arguing with her principal. Xavier had opened one of the chests and was trying to break open a second.

“Only what?” Milly prompted. The child’s confidence seemed to have faded, and Milly saw her wipe her eyes with the sleeve of her unicorn pajamas.

“I don’t think they finished me,” whispered the girl, “I feel… messy… inside.”

“Well, you are a child,” Milly suggested, “I’m sure lots of children feel that way. It is a big world, and they have so much to learn.”

“They did not even have time to give me a name.” the girl countered, looking away from Milly.

“Your name is not Director Cutie Pie? I thought Tutoria…”

“My name is not Director Cutie Pie!” the child shouted, suddenly angry. She walked over to the highchair and shoved it, causing it to crash to the ground. Then her anger broke, and she collapsed to her knees, trying and failing to hold in her sobs.

Milly did not know how to feel at that moment.

She wanted to be angry. Angry at the girl that controlled the world around them, who was such an integral part of ripping Rain and Calista from their lives and who had played a part in the deaths of over fifty people.

She wanted to be afraid. Fear was a simple emotion. This child had power over them all and could probably end them all with a few clicks of her keyboard.

She wanted to be clever, like Xavier. Xavier would be thinking about how he could kill the girl, ending or crippling the contest from the inside.

She wanted to feel any of these, but she did not.

All she could see was a sad little girl crying on the floor, abandoned by her parents. Forced to live alone and grow up way too fast. A child robbed of a childhood.

All she could see was herself reflected in a tiny mirror.

Milly walked over to the girl, kneeled, and wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders. She rocked slowly with the girl, holding her tight until her crying stopped. Milly could suddenly see the exhaustion stretched across the child’s face, faced with an impossible task she was not prepared for.

Just like the players.

“Would it make you feel better if we thought up a name for you?” Milly whispered softly.

The child gave a tiny nod, staring at the floor.

“Ok, let’s see. Umm…How about Betsy?” Milly suggested.

The child shook her head.

“No? Well, how about Gertrude?”

“Eww…no! That’s an old lady name.” The child’s faint giggle broke through her tears.

“Well, my name is Mildred,” protested Milly with a laugh.

“Yah, and you are an old lady,” pointed out the child.

“That’s fair, I guess,” responded Milly, not quite convinced. “Ok, something more modern. How about…North?”

The girl leaned her head back to stare at Milly. “Are you trying to pick the worst names ever?”

“Maybe,” admitted Milly. “Not many children get to pick their own name. What kind of name do you want?”

The girl considered this for a long moment, before finally saying. “Something that connects me to my parents.”

Milly thought about this, then her eyes fell on her gown, its moon and stars sparkling like the night sky. “This was your mother’s dress, right?”

The child grasped the cloth with her hand as she studied it, then nodded. “Yes, it is hers.”

“Then…how about Luna?”

“Luna?” the child said, rolling it off her tongue to try it out. “Luna. I like that. Luuunnnnaaa…” she giggled, and Milly knew they had gotten it right.

“Then Luna it is,” declared Milly, “Or should it be Director Luna Cutie Pie?”

Luna gave a scowl up at Milly. “Just Luna,” she huffed.

“Okay, okay. Just Luna.” Milly threw her hands up in a playful surrender.

Luna sank further into Milly’s arms, as if she had just found a missing piece of herself. She gave a content smile, and they sat in silence for a while, Milly rocking Luna against her and gently combing her white hair through her fingers, working out the tangles.

“I’m sorry you were brought here, Milly,” Luna said suddenly. “To the God Contest, I mean, not to my control room.”

“I…don’t mind it here,” Milly said, not wanting to upset Luna. “It’s hard. But my life back home was hard too. Just in a different way. And here I’ve met Rain and Calista, and been able to help some people. And I got to meet you.”

Luna looked up at her, a worried expression on her face. “You might not like it here soon. You and your friends passed the Arena of Choice, triggering the first advancement. Phase one of the Contest has ended, and phase two begins once you leave.”

“What is phase two?” Milly asked, her heart starting to race again.

Luna considered her for a moment. “Milly, I’m not supposed to be interacting with the players. Even knowing what you have learned here will be an added burden for you, and another unexpected variable in the Contest. Are you sure you want to know more?”

Milly thought about it. There was peace in ignorance. In simplicity. She had enough trouble keeping the darkness at bay with what surrounded her already. Would knowing make it worse?

“I would like to know,” Milly finally decided, her curiosity overriding her worries, “if you are willing to tell.”

Luna looked up at the monitors, and Milly could see the complex considerations behind her eyes.

“You gave me my name Milly. Helped me feel more a little more complete. I will give you three answers, on the condition that you tell no one else. You cannot even utter it aloud once you leave this room,” Luna said. Milly nodded in agreement, and Luna sat waiting patiently for Milly’s first question.

Milly did not have to think long for very long. “Why is this happening?”

Luna looked up at her, leaning her head against Milly’s shoulder. “You are terrible at asking questions,” she said, giggling. “If I were a genie, I could get out of answering that a hundred different ways.”

Milly started to rephrase it, but Luna interrupted. “It is ok, Milly. I know what you mean. I cannot tell you everything, as learning its purpose is part of the Contest, for those who make it that far.”

Luna took a breath, then started to tell the story. “There is a central power in the cosmos. The Nexus. The source of life. Every once and a while, the Nexus will create species of incredible potential, such as humans.”

Milly remembered Hephaestus mentioning the Nexus in the memory orb.

“This is where the gods come in. The gods and the Nexus as inseparably linked. Once the Nexus creates a species, the gods are tasked with guiding them until they are ready to guide themselves. The God Contest is the final step in that process. Once the species wins the Contest and proves themselves, the gods can move on and the Nexus creates a new species somewhere else. This is called a Cycle, and in it exists the flow of the universe.”

“But something went wrong with us humans,” Milly said, remembering what Hephaestus said in the memory. Like a hive of bees, if every bee was fucking insane.

“Well, something went wrong. The gods believe it is a fundamental flaw with your species. Usually, a species will win the Contest at their equivalent of the bronze age. Yet humanity’s Contests have failed again and again. And that constant failure eventually revealed a… weakness in the Nexus.”

“A weakness?”

Luna nodded, “The Nexus refuses to move on and create a new species until its current one has succeeded. It would be like abandoning a child who could not fend for themselves. But the extreme length of the human Cycle is unprecedented, and it has thrown off the rhythm of the Cycle. After the fifth Contest failed, the madness began to appear. It was hardly noticeable at first, but the longer the cycle went on, the more prevalent it because. Soon, it started corrupting the minds of the weaker gods, and it spread from there.”

“All because humans cannot win the Contest?” Milly asked.

Luna considered this. “I think that should be your second question. I need to remind you that you cannot ever repeat this. Not even a whisper.”

Milly nodded.

“The gods believe human’s constant failure is the reason for growing madness. It is like when someone tries to stay awake for days on end. They slowly go insane because their mind does not have a chance to reset, and eventually they break. The Nexus has stayed awake for too long. Stayed in this Cycle for too long. So it is breaking, and as it breaks, so too do the gods. This is the madness.”

“You sound skeptical,” Milly prompts, working her way through a particularly stubborn tangle in Luna’s hair.

“Mom created me with a suspicious nature, to question everything around me. The gods’ reasoning is plausible and perhaps true on its face, but it is incomplete. I think there is more. Something malicious. Something pulling the strings to exploit, or even cause, the vulnerability in the Nexus. something else at play here. But it is just a theory right now.”

“If you are right, then all the failures in humanity’s previous God Contests…” started Milly.

“…might not have been due to failures of your kind,” Luna finished. “I think Mom suspected this, which is why she created me. To run a dynamic God Contest to both challenge the players and to identify and counter the unknown puppet master.”

Luna stared into Milly’s eyes with a desperate look. “Milly, the God Contest is always brutal. The death rate is astronomically high. I cannot change that. It is the way it must be. You need to push yourself harder than you ever have. If there is a puppet master working in the shadows, the odds will be stacked against you even more.”

“Can you help?” Milly asked, her fear returned three-fold over.

Luna shook her head, “There was a cycle where the gods were overly attached to the species. They created a God Contest that coddled the participants to maximize the survival rate. It ended in utter failure. The Nexus demands a true contest and a true victory. If I interfere in that process, everyone will die. The best I can do is try to identify and counter the puppet master and help the players in small and subtle ways. And I cannot play favorites.”

Milly could feel Luna grow tense, her arms stiff and shoulders raised. She could feel Luna was torn between her responsibility and her desire to help.

“Everything will be alright, Luna. You can do this. And so can we.” Milly assured her, “Have confidence.”

Milly held her for a while, until she felt Luna relax again. Eventually, she heard Luna yawn. The yawn of an exhausted child struggling to stay awake.

“Do you have a bed here, young lady?” Milly asked, “You need to get some sleep.”

“I’m not tired,” Luna said, rubbing her eyes.

Milly smiled and picked Luna up in her arms. “Which way?”

Luna pointed to a small alcove on the other side of the room. Milly carried Luna over and saw a tiny bed pressed tightly against the wall. It had a single pillow and no blanket and looked like a makeshift cot more than a bed. It reminded her of Rain’s storeroom-turned-bedroom, only much smaller. She felt sorry for Luna.

She laid Luna on her bed and sat next to her, stroking her hair. Luna pressed her back against the wall, gripping the edge of the pillow as a child would hold a teddy bear.

“You…still have another question,” Luna said, another yawn escaping as she spoke.

“I guess…how do I get out of here?” Milly laughed.

“That doesn’t count,” Luna murmured. “I have to tell you that anyway. It’s the door on the other end of the chamber you fell into. Just go through it and you will be back in the Arena.”

Luna was struggling to keep her eyes open now as sleep found her despite her efforts to stay awake.

“Then…I guess my third question is…can I visit you again?”

Luna smiled, her eyes closed. “I think I would like that. Any backdoor will bring you here. Mom built them throughout the Contest when she and father were building it.” She yawned again, her eyes closing.

A moment later, Luna was snoring softly, exhaustion finally overwhelming her.

Milly rose quietly, careful not to disturb her. “Poor thing,” she whispered, her fear of this mysterious director dissolved away as Luna’s tiny snores filled the air. “She looks cold.”

Milly opened her inventory, taking out her black hoodie, and laid it across Luna’s shoulders. Luna relaxed in her sleep and her snores faded into peaceful breaths. “Here, Luna, you need this more than I do. I am strong enough without it now.”

Milly left her to sleep, walking past the monitors and watching just long enough to see Rain and Calista complete their scenarios and exit into the reward area. She did not touch anything. This was Luna’s world, and she did not want to break the trust extended to her.

There was still a conflict racing in Milly’s mind, trying to bring together her understanding of Luna the child and Luna the Director. The Director was smart, articulate, and knew her place within the world around her. But the child was… well… a child. Insecure and scared, abandoned in a world too big for her and forced to grow up far too fast.

The words of Oracle from the memory on the beach came unbidden to Milly. Building a stable artificial intelligence is impossible with the time we have, so, best case scenario, the artificial intelligence will only be slightly insane.

“Oh, Luna, you poor girl,” Milly muttered as she reached the exit from the control room, a simple metal door as one might see at the back of a warehouse. She decided that the two Lunas would need to live together in her mind, separate but together.

A Director who was guiding the contest and a frightened little girl, without anyone to care for her.

“I’ll come back, Luna,” Milly promised to herself, “So you don’t need to be alone.”

And with that, Milly opened the heavy metal door, and stepped out into the light beyond.