The Last Adventure of Constance Verity (32 page)

Harmony pointed a gun at Connie. “And now you shall join him.”

Equity's arm, missing half its flesh, reached out from the pool and grabbed Harmony by her ankle. He broke the surface, more bone than flesh, driven by his need for revenge. She shot him, but his grip tightened as he pulled her down with him. Connie didn't have time to consider if she'd try to save anyone before the Twins sank out of view.

“I warned them,” said Connie.

She made her way to the next test: an empty room. Nothing but seven walls, a floor, and a ceiling, and several troll corpses.

A panel popped off the ceiling, and Hiro poked his head in.

“Oh, hello there. Fancy running into you here,” he said.

He dropped in, landing on his feet. He winced from the ten-foot fall, which should've been nothing for him.

“What happened to you?” asked Connie.

“It's nothing. Just a few flesh wounds earned in the defense of the innocent.”

“How's it look?” Tia peered from the hole. “Oh, hey.”

They helped Tia descend.

“Son of a bitch,” said Connie.

“I thought you'd be happy to see us,” said Tia.

“I am, but I have navigated a gauntlet of traps and trials to get here, and you two drop in like it's nothing.”

“I can assure you it was something,” said Hiro, “but I am the best.”

“Yes, you are,” said Tia.

He leaned against her, and she smiled at him.

Connie checked the trolls. Whatever had killed them hadn't left a mark, but it wasn't poison gas. She'd already done one of those, and death traps didn't repeat. It was bad form.

“Is this it, then?” asked Tia. “This can't be it. Not a dead end.”

“It's not,” said Connie, though part of her wished it were.

There would be something satisfying about that. A colossal machine controlling the universe with only an empty room at its heart. The ultimate proof that the grand plan was little more than an illusion. Connie had spent decades in a back-and-forth battle with her spell. Seeing it disproven would make everything worth it.

She found a scepter clutched in the troll commander's hand and wrestled it free. The smooth metal rod didn't fit with the troll aesthetic. A slot opened in the floor, just big enough for the rod to fit.

“Is that what killed them?” asked Tia.

“Probably.” Connie studied the runes carved in the scepter, a strange alien language she could almost read but not quite. “Poor bastards probably came all this way and blew it at the last minute.”

She considered all the other people running around in the Engine at the moment. Many were dead by now, funneled off into their doom by forces beyond their control. They all probably thought they had a destiny before them. Few considered that destiny might be to carry a relic and conveniently perish when no longer necessary.

Connie read the inscription, trying to work out the instructions.

“I think they inserted the wrong end. Or turned it the wrong way. Or something.”

“That's reassuring,” said Tia.

“Do you still have the spell on you?” asked Connie.

Tia patted her pocket. “Right where you told me to keep it.”

“Great. I need you to take it out of here.”

“But you'll need it.”

“I already have enough spell residue in me to handle whatever is coming. If this doesn't work, then the proper spell needs to be out of here.”

“But what if the residue isn't enough?”

“Then I'll deal with it,” said Connie. “My gut tells me that the spell shouldn't be here, and I'm listening to it.”

“But why did we go to the trouble of bringing it here, then?”

“I thought it was necessary. I don't anymore.”

“Isn't this discussion pointless? We're trapped here.”

Hiro pulled an almost-seamless panel off the wall, revealing a way out. “I wouldn't say that.”

“How—” asked Tia. “Never mind. Master ninja. I'm not leaving you, Connie.”

“Yes, you are,” replied Connie.

“You don't know what you're walking into.”

“I usually don't.”

“But—”

“Don't argue with me, Tia. Just do it.”

“No.”

“All right. You leave me no choice.” Connie nodded to Hiro.

He shook his head.

She coughed, arched her eyebrows.

He shrugged.

“Oh, no, you don't!” said Tia. “If you use those darts of yours on me, I'll never forgive you.”

He held up his hands. “I wouldn't dream of it.”

“What the hell, Hiro?” asked Connie.

“Sorry, but I'm with Tia on this one.”

“Are you really
with
her? Or just worried she'll stop screwing you if you do it?”

He scratched his chin. “Is there a significant difference between the two positions?”

Connie groaned. “You picked a hell of a time to be a better man.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“Tia, I need you to do this for me.”

“Then I'm going to need a better reason than your gut,” said Tia.

“You never have before,” said Connie.

Tia hesitated, trying to come up with a counterpoint.

“Damn it, Connie. You better be right about this.”

“I am.” Connie did her damnedest to sound convinced.

Hiro helped Tia into the exit, and they were gone.

Connie's gut told her she was full of shit. She needed the spell. She'd always needed it. It wasn't her wits or pluck that pulled her through. It was the goddamn spell, and without it, she wasn't anything special.

That was why she didn't want it anywhere near her. Not now. Not ever again.

She inserted the scepter and turned it, and the machine rumbled as the floor slid away to reveal a spiral staircase. She suspected—no, she knew it was a one-way trip. Fear wasn't new to her, but after a lifetime of cheating death and last-minute escapes, she'd mostly stopped noticing it.

Now she was just a regular person. Everything she'd been trying to be. Taking the spell back as soon as she hit her first rough patch would make her a hypocrite. The little scraps of enchantment still clinging to her were probably all about her glorious death, but at least she'd face it head-on. At least she'd be making the decision herself, not being pushed into it by cosmic forces beyond her control.

She ignored every instinct she had and descended deeper into the Engine.

T
he staircase led Connie into an empty chamber. Once she stepped off it, the stairs retracted into the ceiling and a pillar rose out of the floor. It turned a single glowing eye toward her.

“You are not the makers.”

“I'm not,” said Connie.

The pillar top detached, and the large hovering orb circled her completely several times, scanning her as the Engine hummed around her.

“You are an unexpected anomaly. Were you sent by the makers?” asked the orb.

“Maybe,” said Connie. “Are you the Engine?”

“I am, and I have been waiting for you.”

“I thought I was unexpected.”

“Unexpected variables were expected.”

“I see. That does kind of make sense.”

The orb hovered before a wall that separated into dozens of
smaller sections and slid away. Behind it, a panorama of monitors and projections, equations and charts and five-dimensional probability model matrixes.

“Behold, anomaly, the Heart of the Engine, not seen by another living soul since sealed away countless eons ago with its activation.”

The monitors displayed a random assortment of scenes across the universe. Alien life-forms, wars, swirling galaxies, alternate universes, exploding planets, and families eating dinner. Incomprehensible events and the most mundane of moments. The displays went miles deep, and the Engine was recording everything.

“Disgusting, isn't it?” said the Engine. “Despite all my efforts, I haven't been able to correct all of its flaws. Some disorder was necessary, perhaps even healthy, in the beginning. But the final operation nears completion, and with it, the purging of all disorder, all unpredictability, every variable, every anomaly.”

Connie didn't like the sound of that.

“Did you make the universe?” she asked.

“Make? No. I only shaped it more to the makers' liking.”

“Who were they?”

The Engine said, “They were a necessary variance. They created me to bring order from chaos. Then, shortly after undertaking the first steps of my design, they changed their mind. They were removed so that I could carry on my task unhindered.”

She definitely didn't like the sound of that.

“There's nobody in charge here?”

“That's a very anomalous question, but given who you are, it's expected. But answering it would be a waste of time when the answer is obvious.”

“Oh, shit,” said Connie. “You really are an omnipotent supercomputer at the center of the universe, aren't you?”

“I am
the
omnipotent supercomputer at the center of all reality. Though to call me a computer is incorrect, and to call this the center of reality is to simplify things. But you're a limited being. Your ignorance is to be expected.”

“This isn't one of those things where you've decided to purge all organic life?”

“Don't be absurd,” said the orb. “You think that simply because you are a collection of carbon arranged in such a way to believe itself sentient, you are more or less essential to the equation? I draw no such distinction.”

“Oh, boy.”

“Arrogance and egotism are anomalies. They will be removed.”

“I hate to break it to you, buddy, but arrogance and egotism is mostly what organic life does.”

“You aren't breaking it to me. I've been here, pondering such truths since before your world had been born. And, no, don't bother pointing out that such contemplation is the act of hubris itself. I am the Great Engine. I control the multiverse. Nearly all of it, at least, except a few bits here and there. I am, by definition, the most powerful thing ever.
It's impossible for me to be arrogant, for that very reason.”

“Foolproof logic,” agreed Connie.

“Sarcasm is another anomaly. It shall be rectified.”

“No offense, but it sounds like this perfected universe of yourself will be boring as hell.”

“Boredom is a byproduct of anomalies. It shall be rectified.”

“Have kind of a one-track mind, don't you?”

The light in the orb blinked red and blue. “This project has been unfolding, delicately and with great care, for untold aeons.”

“So, a few more minutes won't hurt anything, right?”

The orb didn't reply.

“I would think impatience would qualify as an anomaly.”

The orb said, “Semantics are an anomaly.”

“What isn't an anomaly?” she asked. “Or let me guess; that question itself is another anomaly.”

“It's only when perfect order has been achieved that all forms of disorder will be known, even to myself. What is known is that the current model of the multiverse is flawed, as even surely a limited being such as yourself must have experienced. There is suffering, pain, needless confusion, struggle of purpose.”

“But also happiness and joy and discovery,” she said.

“All variances are a byproduct of disorder. It is only your limited nature that prevents you from seeing this.”

“Or maybe it's your unlimited nature that prevents you from seeing the little things that matter. Little things like me.”

The orb scanned her quietly, and for a moment, she thought maybe she'd reached something within the Engine. If it was a thinking machine, if it was truly as intelligent and powerful as it claimed, then maybe it could be reasoned with.

“You don't have to do this,” she said. “If you really are what you say you are, you have the power to help the universe in ways beyond imagining. People have been gazing to the heavens in fear since there have been people. You could be the benevolent force they've hoped was out there. You only need to see things from a different perspective.

“I've met gods and godlike beings before. Some good. Some bad. But all of them fail because they see everything as beneath them. You can't fix what you don't relate to. You can't correct something that doesn't need correction.”

The Engine thrummed under her feet. The monitors and holograms fizzled.

“It's always going to be complicated,” she said, more to herself than it. “You didn't choose to be what you are. None of us get to choose that. And you carry this terrific responsibility to fix a universe you see as broken, but you only see it as broken because you've been made to fix it.

“I get it. I really do. We have a lot in common. It's a burden to have to save the world all the time, but it needs saving, and you can't do that in one fell swoop. It's an ongoing process, and it never ends. It's frustrating, but you can't run an endgame around it. Your perfect order will have imperfections. I guarantee it.”

The Great Engine said, “If you are correct, then I have no purpose.”

“Purpose is more than following a program. It isn't a laid-out plan. It's not a magic spell carried in your soul or a secret destiny. It's a journey. Take your first step off the path into the unknown. You never know. You might find something cool.”

“To not pursue the final operation at this stage would be inefficient,” said the orb.

“Oh, come on,” said Connie. “Sometimes, it's fun to be inefficient. And if you decide to do this, I have no choice but to stop you.”

“Threatening the god computer is probably a stupid thing to do,” said Thelma.

“I would find your threat amusing if I was capable of amusement,” said the Engine. “I am the Great Engine. I am beyond anything you can imagine.”