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- Jul 6, 2008
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Code Masters
“Oh, very well,” I say, as I release Diogenes and the Masters. “If you insist.”
A flicker of disappointment crosses the old man’s face, as if he hoped I would have chosen otherwise. With a shrug, he dusts himself off. "A sensible choice.” The female Master approaches me slowly, her hands held firmly by her sides. “The procedure should be easy,” she says. “Theoretically, you should instinctively know what to do the moment you come into contact with the security terminal.” Suddenly, she frowns. “Camna, there’s a disturbance out in sector A7. It looks like Sheldon is causing a mess.”
Diogenes’s crinkled face contorts into a mask of fury, the first time I have truly seen him angry. “Damn his foolish pride,” he curses. He looks at me, and then at Stella, dithering. Finally, he decides. “Bring me there, Stella.” Then, he turns to me and says, “Our deal is still valid. Follow through with your end and you won’t have to worry about any universe-ending mishaps. Mikey and Rory will show you what to do.”
With a flash of lightning, Stella, Diogenes and the dog disappear.
I walk over to the large door, where one of the Masters is standing; Mikey. He looks just slightly older than me and has an unkempt appearance. “It’s locked us out,” Mikey offers an explanation nervously. The Masters are still rather twitchy around me, as if I’m going to explode and kill them if they handle it wrongly. I smile at him, “Thanks. Hey, no need to be so stiff. We all did what we had to do.”
I look at the security workstation next to the door, a square old thing that appears rather clunky to me. “You can’t hack it? I’ve had a look at the language that this world uses. It’s more primitive than mine – I’d have thought any of you could have coded together a bypass in a flash; is this facility more advanced?”
“Huh, cool,” grinned Mikey, his interest overcoming his concern of me. “I’m impressed, you picked up the fundamentals in what… an hour?”
“Half an hour. I derived the assembly language from one of the computers in the library. It’s all rather similar to what I’m familiar with anyway, and that makes sense.”
Mikey nodded, seemingly glad. “I won’t have to waste time explaining the details then. Anyway, to answer your question, we can’t hack it. It can't be solved by merely coding or programming. Iae changed the lock on us, so to speak. It’s like coming home and finding that your girlfriend put a biometric scan on every entrance. It’s not a matter of finding a key, it’s what we are. That disqualifies us entirely.”
“To continue Mikey’s analogy, what we’ve been trying to do, with Dio’s help, is to blow up the whole house because we can’t break the lock,” replied Rory, joining us. “Then suddenly the key drops in our lap. You can see how that makes things easier.”
“That’s interesting,” I say, tapping in some commands at the security terminal. “Why do you guys want to blow up the house anyway? Do you remember what happened before this whole thing started?”
The two men shook their heads. “Nah,” said Rory. “Not a thing. Hell, we only remembered our names because of the name-tags we had on us.”
“You have personalities,” I comment.
“We don’t even know if they’re real personalities or something Iae made up to fuck with us. I mean, amnesia, man,” muttered Mikey.
“We slowly pieced stuff together from the lab notes, and we seem to have retained our expertise, but other than that, it’s a blank.” Rory adds.
I decide to dig into another angle. “Diogenes mentioned something about the crisis that required Iae’s creation. Do you know anything about that?”
“Huh, there was something in the lab notes,” Mikey says. “Wait, that’s not the right shell, you need to go there –“ He stops his explanation to guide me back onto the route I’m supposed to be taking to unlock the door.
“What was I saying? Oh, yeah,” Mikey continues. “Apparently Iae is a replacement observer or something. Some really secretive organization affiliated with the company wanted to use it to impose a new reality on the universe to stave off impending doom. Or something. If you really want to know about that, ask the metaphysicists, like Sheldon, or maybe the mathemagicians. They spent like forever ruminating on theories as to what the crisis could have been, and even more forever running simulations. I’m just a code monkey in the end.”
“Well, it seems to have backfired spectacularly anyway. Story of our lives,” muttered Rory.
“And I’m done,” I proclaim, making the final entry and unlocking the door. The door slides open, revealing a rather familiar place. It looks identical to the room where I had deleted the Council immortal, though I know that was just a representation. “What happens next?”
“Consciousness transplant,” says Rory. “We’ll replace Iae with the old guy. He doesn’t need to be here for this, all the action is going to happen outside when Iae begins to resist.”
“Why the old guy, anyway?” I ask. “Can’t one of you do it?”
He shakes his head. “It could be possible, theoretically, but why would we? Can you imagine eternity as some all-seeing eye?” Mikey nods. “Bothersome as life is right now, I’d rather die than get imprisoned as the next ‘god’. No way. Oh, and don’t try to stop us. We’ll take your universe out if you try anything. I mean, I don’t want to, but I will.” His warning seems to come a bit late, seeing as Diogenes had already made his point to me quite clearly. “Yeah, you seem quite cool and all, but Dio’s our best bet here, even if he’s a bit of a twit,” says Rory. “You would be subject to all the same problems that Iae has. Iae version 2.0, in fact, with even less chances of us fixing this shit.”
“Well,” I begin, “What’s stopping Dio from betraying all of you when he ascends?”
“Good point,” muses Mikey. “I mean, besides the fact that we’re doing this entirely altruistically and it doesn’t matter if we or trillions others die as long as the entire multiverse is saved, but yes, good point.”
“You just said you didn’t want to become the next god because it was bothersome,” I point out.
“Huh. Oh, you got me there,” flushes the Master.
“As Mikey said,” adds Rory, “It doesn’t really matter if he betrays us because we’ve taken steps to ensure that it won’t succeed. Sheldon’s idea, really.”
Mikey glances to the side with a little smile, and whispers conspiratorially. “We’ve prepared new rules for the system. Diogenes will be a rather passive and benign fellow after his ‘ascension’.”
“And you think he doesn’t know about that?”
“Hm, well, he shouldn’t,” mutters Mikey. “Actually, I’m quite confident he doesn’t. He’s not very good with computers, even after all this time. He wouldn't be able to notice it, and even if he did, he wouldn't be able to do anything.”
"Well, it is still possible that he could sabotage your program somehow," I suggest.
Rory shakes his head. "The IAE system is very sensitive. It'll lock down the entire dimension if anything goes wrong. The last time that happened, it took... what was it?"
"Probably nearly six billion years in real time," says Mikey.
"Yeah. We spent a long, long time playing cards. Galen managed to invent an entirely new way to turn stars inside out in his spare time, but we had no stars to use it on," Rory laughs.
I laugh along with him.
***
A. I put my trust in the Masters and their plan and help them carry it out. If what they say is true, things will fall into place and work fine once they enslave Diogenes as the new Observer. I can decide what to do after that.
B. I attempt to subtly sabotage or otherwise influence the process of ascension as best as I can. I am in a good position to do so, though it may backfire if I am not careful. If I cannot stop Dio from ascending, I can at least induce a lock-down, which would remove the threat of the universal reset.
C. I change my mind about cooperating. I attack Mikey and Rory immediately, attempting to catch them by surprise and kill them, universe be-damned. This will end Diogenes’s chances of becoming the next Observer. It also means that I will have to take on Iae without the aid of the Masters, but I will chance those odds.
“Oh, very well,” I say, as I release Diogenes and the Masters. “If you insist.”
A flicker of disappointment crosses the old man’s face, as if he hoped I would have chosen otherwise. With a shrug, he dusts himself off. "A sensible choice.” The female Master approaches me slowly, her hands held firmly by her sides. “The procedure should be easy,” she says. “Theoretically, you should instinctively know what to do the moment you come into contact with the security terminal.” Suddenly, she frowns. “Camna, there’s a disturbance out in sector A7. It looks like Sheldon is causing a mess.”
Diogenes’s crinkled face contorts into a mask of fury, the first time I have truly seen him angry. “Damn his foolish pride,” he curses. He looks at me, and then at Stella, dithering. Finally, he decides. “Bring me there, Stella.” Then, he turns to me and says, “Our deal is still valid. Follow through with your end and you won’t have to worry about any universe-ending mishaps. Mikey and Rory will show you what to do.”
With a flash of lightning, Stella, Diogenes and the dog disappear.
I walk over to the large door, where one of the Masters is standing; Mikey. He looks just slightly older than me and has an unkempt appearance. “It’s locked us out,” Mikey offers an explanation nervously. The Masters are still rather twitchy around me, as if I’m going to explode and kill them if they handle it wrongly. I smile at him, “Thanks. Hey, no need to be so stiff. We all did what we had to do.”
I look at the security workstation next to the door, a square old thing that appears rather clunky to me. “You can’t hack it? I’ve had a look at the language that this world uses. It’s more primitive than mine – I’d have thought any of you could have coded together a bypass in a flash; is this facility more advanced?”
“Huh, cool,” grinned Mikey, his interest overcoming his concern of me. “I’m impressed, you picked up the fundamentals in what… an hour?”
“Half an hour. I derived the assembly language from one of the computers in the library. It’s all rather similar to what I’m familiar with anyway, and that makes sense.”
Mikey nodded, seemingly glad. “I won’t have to waste time explaining the details then. Anyway, to answer your question, we can’t hack it. It can't be solved by merely coding or programming. Iae changed the lock on us, so to speak. It’s like coming home and finding that your girlfriend put a biometric scan on every entrance. It’s not a matter of finding a key, it’s what we are. That disqualifies us entirely.”
“To continue Mikey’s analogy, what we’ve been trying to do, with Dio’s help, is to blow up the whole house because we can’t break the lock,” replied Rory, joining us. “Then suddenly the key drops in our lap. You can see how that makes things easier.”
“That’s interesting,” I say, tapping in some commands at the security terminal. “Why do you guys want to blow up the house anyway? Do you remember what happened before this whole thing started?”
The two men shook their heads. “Nah,” said Rory. “Not a thing. Hell, we only remembered our names because of the name-tags we had on us.”
“You have personalities,” I comment.
“We don’t even know if they’re real personalities or something Iae made up to fuck with us. I mean, amnesia, man,” muttered Mikey.
“We slowly pieced stuff together from the lab notes, and we seem to have retained our expertise, but other than that, it’s a blank.” Rory adds.
I decide to dig into another angle. “Diogenes mentioned something about the crisis that required Iae’s creation. Do you know anything about that?”
“Huh, there was something in the lab notes,” Mikey says. “Wait, that’s not the right shell, you need to go there –“ He stops his explanation to guide me back onto the route I’m supposed to be taking to unlock the door.
“What was I saying? Oh, yeah,” Mikey continues. “Apparently Iae is a replacement observer or something. Some really secretive organization affiliated with the company wanted to use it to impose a new reality on the universe to stave off impending doom. Or something. If you really want to know about that, ask the metaphysicists, like Sheldon, or maybe the mathemagicians. They spent like forever ruminating on theories as to what the crisis could have been, and even more forever running simulations. I’m just a code monkey in the end.”
“Well, it seems to have backfired spectacularly anyway. Story of our lives,” muttered Rory.
“And I’m done,” I proclaim, making the final entry and unlocking the door. The door slides open, revealing a rather familiar place. It looks identical to the room where I had deleted the Council immortal, though I know that was just a representation. “What happens next?”
“Consciousness transplant,” says Rory. “We’ll replace Iae with the old guy. He doesn’t need to be here for this, all the action is going to happen outside when Iae begins to resist.”
“Why the old guy, anyway?” I ask. “Can’t one of you do it?”
He shakes his head. “It could be possible, theoretically, but why would we? Can you imagine eternity as some all-seeing eye?” Mikey nods. “Bothersome as life is right now, I’d rather die than get imprisoned as the next ‘god’. No way. Oh, and don’t try to stop us. We’ll take your universe out if you try anything. I mean, I don’t want to, but I will.” His warning seems to come a bit late, seeing as Diogenes had already made his point to me quite clearly. “Yeah, you seem quite cool and all, but Dio’s our best bet here, even if he’s a bit of a twit,” says Rory. “You would be subject to all the same problems that Iae has. Iae version 2.0, in fact, with even less chances of us fixing this shit.”
“Well,” I begin, “What’s stopping Dio from betraying all of you when he ascends?”
“Good point,” muses Mikey. “I mean, besides the fact that we’re doing this entirely altruistically and it doesn’t matter if we or trillions others die as long as the entire multiverse is saved, but yes, good point.”
“You just said you didn’t want to become the next god because it was bothersome,” I point out.
“Huh. Oh, you got me there,” flushes the Master.
“As Mikey said,” adds Rory, “It doesn’t really matter if he betrays us because we’ve taken steps to ensure that it won’t succeed. Sheldon’s idea, really.”
Mikey glances to the side with a little smile, and whispers conspiratorially. “We’ve prepared new rules for the system. Diogenes will be a rather passive and benign fellow after his ‘ascension’.”
“And you think he doesn’t know about that?”
“Hm, well, he shouldn’t,” mutters Mikey. “Actually, I’m quite confident he doesn’t. He’s not very good with computers, even after all this time. He wouldn't be able to notice it, and even if he did, he wouldn't be able to do anything.”
"Well, it is still possible that he could sabotage your program somehow," I suggest.
Rory shakes his head. "The IAE system is very sensitive. It'll lock down the entire dimension if anything goes wrong. The last time that happened, it took... what was it?"
"Probably nearly six billion years in real time," says Mikey.
"Yeah. We spent a long, long time playing cards. Galen managed to invent an entirely new way to turn stars inside out in his spare time, but we had no stars to use it on," Rory laughs.
I laugh along with him.
***
A. I put my trust in the Masters and their plan and help them carry it out. If what they say is true, things will fall into place and work fine once they enslave Diogenes as the new Observer. I can decide what to do after that.
B. I attempt to subtly sabotage or otherwise influence the process of ascension as best as I can. I am in a good position to do so, though it may backfire if I am not careful. If I cannot stop Dio from ascending, I can at least induce a lock-down, which would remove the threat of the universal reset.
C. I change my mind about cooperating. I attack Mikey and Rory immediately, attempting to catch them by surprise and kill them, universe be-damned. This will end Diogenes’s chances of becoming the next Observer. It also means that I will have to take on Iae without the aid of the Masters, but I will chance those odds.
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