The World Which Is, CH 93

Automaton Patrol, Level 10

Because humans proved unexpectedly stubborn and refused to die off, the computer had to spend resources into protecting the cities it controlled.

Perception check failed.

The six of them make us work for it, but we take them down. As we rest, I look over the description, trying to figure out what bugs me about it. Then I see it.

Cities.

Plural.

It’s as if the ruin exists in something that goes beyond itself. Or that it’s telling a story. This reinforces the idea it came about around an amusement park. Grandpa Louis has talked about some of the places he drove to before the system appeared. And there was an amusement park in Arkansas build around a western movie. It makes sense that such a park in a military town could have a technical apocalypse theme, and that it would be carried over when it became a ruin.

When the healing potion stops having an effect, I’m just above the three-quarter mark. I stand. “We good to go?”

Brandon hasn’t healed. But his health’s around the same point as mine on the team list. Considering he’s higher lever, he’s in better shape. He spent the time we rested going through the remains and taking their loot.

Because now, there is loot. Each encounter since the building has given us loot. Nothing impressive, but that’s a change from before.

Did we pass a threshold? I’m tempted to ask Brandon if that’s a thing with ruins, to go along with zones, but I haven’t. Not sure why, but each time I think about it, I can’t shake the feeling it’s a bad idea.

The first thing he found in the loot is, conveniently, a map of the patrols routes. It’s just a paper with them marked in what could be pencil; as if the automaton had taken it off a human it killed. It doesn’t let us avoid all of them, but it gives us an idea of where to go to avoid as many of them as possible.

And how nearly all of them intersect with that building Brandon has decided is the ruin’s heart. I’ve let it be our guild, although that’s about to change.

“All looted,” he says.

“Anything useful?” Helen asks.

“We won’t know until we reach the heart.”

“Meaning there’s no healing or mana potions. I thought those were standard in these kinds of things.”

He smirks at her. “When did you become an expert on ruins?”

“You’re saying there shouldn’t be one or two at every encounter?”

He definitely doesn’t like having that pointed out, but then he smiles. “I’m saying that I know better than to expect anything.”

Cute save, Brandon.

We follow the map for two more intersections, staying off the patrol routes. When Brandon heads left, I grab his arm.

“We’re going in that direction.” I point ahead.

He checks the map. “There’s nothing in that direction.” That part is nothing more than quick lines hinting at buildings and the streets between them. Nothing there looks like it matters. Unlike where all the patrol routes converge.

“And no patrols.” I don’t know why I’m not telling him where I think the heart actually is.

“Dennis, that’s more reason not to go in that direction. This was the drop we were waiting for. That’s how ruins are. Somewhere among the loots will be clues and keys that get you to the heart. They are clearly patrolling around where the gold is kept, which makes this the heart.”

“What if the ruin is designed in a way to make you misinterpret the clues?”

I look around. Is that what’s nagging at me? I’m misinterpreting something about the ruin?

“Dennis? Are you even listening to me?”

“We’re going that way.” I walk ahead. Helen and Silver follow, then Brandon joins us.

“But why?”

I almost tell him. Tell him about how a lot of movies will misdirect the watcher, then pull a reveal. And no matter what, this feels like a movie to me.

Why I don’t?

That nagging sense. I’m missing something about this place. Or I’ve picked up on it, but it hasn’t resolved into a solution. It’s happened a few times watching movies, but there I barely had to wait an hour at most to either be told or work it out fully.

It’s been hours of this nagging, and it’s really getting annoying.

“You really shouldn’t be keeping secrets from us, Dennis,” he says, and Helen snorts.

We make it three intersections without incidents. Then a group of automatons burst through the walls of the buildings like they’d been waiting to ambush us. Ten of them.

Automaton Patrol, Level 10

Because humans proved unexpectedly stubborn and refused to die off, the computer had to spend resources into protecting the cities it controlled.

Perception check failed.

The fight’s hard. If they’d been a different design, if one of them had had range attacks, I think we’d have to have fled. As it is, we need a break, and the sun’s getting close to the top of the trees.

“We need a place to camp for the night.”

Brandon looks at his map before realizing the futility. We’re off what it covers. “Take your pick. This is a housing neighborhood.”

The house we chose is in good condition, all things considered. The living room’s seen better days. The remaining pictures on the wall are of a couple, two women. Clearly in love. I catch myself feeling sad for them, and I have to wonder if that’s the point. If that’s the story this house is telling. They were in love, bought a house to move in together, then the apocalypse hit. In a movie, I’d be related to one of them. Maybe I’d be here trying to find out what had happened to them.

Fuck, what am I missing?

“The dining room’s the most secure place,” Brandon says, barely glancing at the pictures. “One door in, in the middle of the house, so we’re going to hear anything coming in before they reach up.”

“You think those automatons will break in during the night?” Silver asks.

“Nah,” he replies, moving the remnants of the dining table to the side. “Ruins always provide safe places to rest. This is clearly one of them.”

How many movies have I seen where the characters thought they were safe for the night, only for that not to be true?

“Lets not be careless, regardless,” I say. “We’ll keep watch. Helen, Silver, which one of you wants the first one?”

We settle that; I get food going, then try to put all the nagging aside as I sit for my Aether training.

    *

The attack comes during Brandon’s watch.

And that might have saved us.

I’d gotten back to sleep after my watch, and had trouble focusing. Helen was barely conscious, and Silver’s not good enough with her explosive music to fill that gap.

Brandon, on the other hand, gets more effecting when he’s pissed. He takes down four of them by himself. Me and Silver manage to hold up the other two until Helen is finally awake enough to blow it up, along with half that side of the house.

“Safe place, huh?” she tells Brandon, glaring.

“It should have been.” He motions around us. “It’s an enclosed living structure, with a few accesses. They were safe the previous times. That should have been the pattern establishing what’s safe and what isn’t.” Then he stares at me, and I can see the realization hit. I shake my head when he opens his mouth.

Helen and Silver watch us, then Helen drops on her bedroll. “Just wake me once the sun’s up.”

“Are we safe?” Silver asks.

“Me and Brandon will keep watch.” Are we close enough to reach the true heart before the next night?

She moves her bedroll close to Helen and goes back to sleep.

“Why don’t you want me to say it?” Brandon whispers.

And I finally understand why. Not that I can tell him.

Every change happened after one of us pointed out the detail that stood out. Which means the ruin is listening in. Brandon never talked about that aspect, but it isn’t like I asked before. And I can’t now.

I shake my head.

I have to hope he’ll work it out on his own for now.

    *

The rest of the night’s uneventful.

I have breakfast ready before Silver and Helen wake up, and she plays a song before we get moving that reduces my ‘didn’t sleep well’ debuff until I can ignore its effect.

We run into a patrol almost as soon as we exit the building.

Five level fifteen.

Me and Brandon go at them hard, and I, at least, pay the price, but we get our first healing potion from the loot, and it’s decent enough I don’t have to use one of mine. I also gained a level out of this. So Grit Strike is at five; one more level and I get healing magic. I also raise my Dexterity training to twenty-six. My second treen in that skill has got to help, even if it only leaves me one skill point for an emergency.

But I will need a new armor well before we leave at this rate.

Brandon spots the next patrol before we’re in their detection range and we go wide around them, which takes us to a hole in the ground the size of a block.

“What happened here?” Helen asks.

“Nothing,” Brandon replies as I look in, and immediately step back.

Fuck, that’s deep. A shudder runs down my spine and I have to chase away the feeling of falling, the pain of hitting the ground. The fear of nearly dying.

“You okay, Dennis?” Silver asks.

“How about we keep going?” Just looking in its direction is enough to trigger the memory again.

Three intersections, and two 209s stand in our way.

“This makes no fucking sense,” Brandon mutters as we hurry into a building.

I peek out the window. They stand there, waiting. I’m pretty sure we aren’t close enough to the heart for them to be the final bosses.

“First, it’s in a building with nothing warranting something that high level. And now two of them in the middle of a road to nothing?” His chuckle’s half-hearted. “Well, at least once we tell the club about this place, we are going to be famous for discovering the weirdest ruin in existence.”

“If there’s a club for you to tell to,” Helen points out.

He groans. “And I’d finally managed to forget the world as we know it might be ending while we’re having fun.”

“We can’t take them on,” I state, and Brandon glares at me.

“Really? You only now figured that out?”

“I’m saying it before you explain how you’re going to go take them on while we do something else.”

He stares at me harder. “Do I look suicidal to you?”

We all stare at him back.

“I’m not.”

We keep staring.

“I swear, I am not.”

“You took on an entire gang back in Detroit,” Helen points out.

“They took me on. I was just hoping to talk.”

“And you didn’t call for help,” I state.

“You took on a lich,” Silver points out.

“I thought he was just some old man.”

“And you didn’t call for help,” I say.

“That’s me being stupid,” he snaps, “not suicidal.” His mouth closes with an audible click of teeth and he looks surprised.

“My brother admitting he did something stupid,” Helen says pensively. “That’s progress, I guess.”

“Bringing this back to the problem at hand,” I say. “How are we doing this?”

“We go around them,” Brandon says. “And I mean a few blocks around them. I don’t trust their detection threshold anymore. Too many things don’t make sense in this place.”

We sneak from building to building until we can’t see them anymore.

I’m not entirely certain anymore that we’re in the right direction for my target until we come across two 209s standing in our way.

“We didn’t go around without knowing it, did we?” Silver asks.

“At this point,” Brandon grumbles, looking his map over, “I’m not putting anything past this place.” He crumbles it and throws it aside. “But no. The buildings are wrong. These are two more of those automatons. Which means there is something there.”

“So we keep going around?” Helen asks.

“How wide do you think their threshold is?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Larger than the one we fought in the building. Otherwise, it’d be too easy to walk past them.”

Dennis: I’m annoyed I didn’t think to use this before. But the ruin is listening to us.

Brandon: that’s not a thing.

Dennis: Good to know. Now explain to me how it keeps adjusting things after we point out inconsistencies?

He glares at me.

Dennis: do you think the range is more than one block?

Brandon: it might not be that. The width of the road is probably it. Just enough to make it impossible to walk past. What’s your plan?

Dennis: there are a lot of buildings between the roads. Why don’t we travel through and around them, instead of on the roads?

Silver: couldn’t there be other things among them?

Dennis: worse than those two?

Helen: I’m game to try it. Worse that happens is we need to go back and keep searching for a way through.

The others nod and we set about sneaking closer.

    *

It’s too easy.

Those words keep popping through my head each time we avoid a patrol by not being on the street. Each time I catch a glance of the building we’re heading for.

It’s too easy.

Anytime it’s this easy in a movie, things are about to get a whole lot worse.

I don’t tell the others that.

There’s no point in turning them into the nervous wreck I’m becoming.

When I look around a building and see the undamaged low one in the center of the courtyard. It’s too much.

“This is bad,” I whisper, leaning against the wall. “This is so fucking bad.”

“I don’t see anything,” Silver whispers.

“Exactly,” I reply.

“You tell stories,” Brandon says somberly. “How would build one around this place? How would you build the tension for your audience as you tell it?”

“You’ve worked it out,” I say.

“Yeah. And I still say it makes no fucking sense, but there’s no denying how this ruin works. We’re in the middle of a fucking story.”

“Who’s telling it?” Silver asks.

My hackles stand up.

No fucking way.

I look at the building again.

How did I not see this coming?

“Dennis?” Brandon asks as I leave cover. “What are you doing?”

“We don’t mean you any harm,” I say as I walk.

Brandon is next to me. “Look, of all of us, I’m the best candidate for suicide, so how about we turn around before whatever trap this story has blows up under us?”

“I just want to talk.” I dodge Brandon’s attempt at grabbing my arm. “Silver’s said it. Who is telling this story?”

She and Helen have joined us.

“It’s a ruin, Dennis.”

“Except that as a ruin, nothing makes sense. You said that.” I nod toward the building. “Our storyteller’s in there.”

“You think someone’s controlling all of this?” Helen asks, dismay mixed with awe.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Brandon grumbles. “No one’s that powerful.”

“I think you’ve been alone for a long time. We’re not going to hurt you, I promise.”

“Like we could,” Brandon mutters.

I finally relax when we’re halfway to the building’s door and nothing’s blown up. In a movie, this would be exactly when things turn bad. But what would happen if those characters could talk with the filmmaker? If that filmmaker wasn’t just making a movie to entertain, but dealt with real live people?

I’d like to think they’d hesitate to continue with the story as scripted. That’d maybe they’d remember that they should have people around them.

My heart beat picks up when I put my hand on the door’s handle.

Moment of truth, as they say.

I turn it and push the door in.

The only thing in the room is an icosahedron floating a meter off the ground and glowing slightly.

“Hi. My name’s Dennis McLeod. What’s yours?”

Author's Notes

• What I was working with

The ruin.

Heading to the heart of the ruin?

How far does it go to keep them from reaching it?

And we reach the Heart of the ruin. I doubt anyone understand what they are looking at at this point, because this type of character within this world was only written before in a story that is unfinished and unpublished. It was going to be the second of three stories taking place in the early days of the system apocalypse. The next chapter will explain who/what we are dealing with.

How the chapter concludes was not how I planned to have it happen, but I much prefer this. My initial plan would have things be violent until Dennis makes it in, realizes what he’s dealing with, and everything finally falls into place.

Silver’s question changed all that. And no. That question wasn’t planned. So Dennis’s hacking rising? Those were mine as I realized the implications.