As worlds collapse and identities fracture,
friendship might be the last anchor to what’s real.
Your world might be a simulation, but how long will it run? This serial novel explores a reality provided with a potential exit, and the existential choice of whether to take it.
Seven, or Newbury (she reminded herself of her name, at least once a day; no, not once a day, because time did not divide into days here, but out of habit, she did notice the time in twenty-four-hour blocks, and at least once during this block of time she had to stop calling herself Seven, it was a number, and she was Newbury, a person, a real person, not a number but a person), she had not zipped through her full quarter of study in a concentrated application of focus to pass the time, or to cram in more credits, but realized at a deeper level she was clearing some time for her crystal sandbox, the one she had, secretly from herself, worried and fretted at all these thirty hours.
That particular crystal sandbox, the one with the kid, Jack, and the older guy that seemed to randomly appear, and just kind of, oh I don’t know, the old boxer, Stacey, he had appeared and ran smack into her Principle, Jack. Jack was her Principle, her object of study, he was the guy on which she would write her final dissertation. And it troubled her (oh so much about this crystal sandbox troubled her), because she first thought of them all as characters, Jack, Stacey, the businessman, the old guy that looked like a homeless person, even the pigeons, they were all just characters in a play to her.
But, they were not characters in a play. They were people, even the pigeons were individual beings, all with their own concerns, fears, emotions.
Did pigeons even have emotions?
Seven rubbed her hands together, ridding herself of the coffee mug. She stood from the window seat and returned it to the usual dormer window. When she did not need it, she preferred the empty space to needless clutter.
As she strolled to her desk she thought of a red silk kimono and looked down at herself in it as it appeared, and it felt good, the silk already warm to her skin, but she thought she looked kind of silly, kind of pretentious, and instead thought of her usual black sweats, and that was better as she walked, clothed in black sweats and her fluffy white socks. She felt cozy as she reached the desk, opened the drawer, and snatched up the crystal sandbox out of its fancy cloth box. Holding the crystal cube in her hand, she peered inside and noticed the miniscule bustle of the city on creep time. First things first. She duped the cube by pulling it into two cubes.
Now the two crystal cubes were identical, neither being an original, neither a copy. They were now two crystal sandboxes, and each would run along similar pathways, but soon, probably even at this moment, they would begin to diverge and the butterfly effect in motion would soon ensure each was a highly different environment. She froze the one in her left hand, stilling the bustle of the city, and this she returned to the cloth box, and closed the desk drawer.
Seven imagined a server somewhere registering her vast data doubling, and perhaps a technician bending forward to a screen to ascertain what the crazy girl in the Number Seven slot was doing. She knew, however, that there were no limits. This was not like a data max imposed on an e-mail account. Still, she did not wish to worry about being a data hog. She reopened the desk drawer, seized up a handful of a few of her earlier practice simulations, and dropped them into the wicker wastebasket next to the desk.
She stared at the wicker wastebasket. It was beautiful, intricately woven. She loved it. But she frowned, because when had she done this? Changed her wastebasket? She loved her brass wastebasket, the one that looked like an old-fashioned spittoon, which she had formed on her first day in her Inner Sanctum. It had come with the desk, from a catalog, and they matched. The wicker basket did not really match She must be subconsciously modifying this place, making it even more her, because she highly doubted that anyone was tampering with her Inner Sanctum. She would not even begin to go down that road of paranoia.
Seven remembered those angry eyes, staring directly into her, those severe eyes above the half-lens spectacles. Maybe it wasn’t paranoia. But she wouldn’t worry about that, at least not yet.
Plus, she liked the wicker basket, even better than the spittoon.
More than anything else bothering her, that was the kicker, that guy, the businessman with the umbrella and briefcase. He was not a denizen of the crystal sandbox—her crystal sandbox. That guy did not belong. He was an outsider, and he changed things. He carved Jack’s name into a tree, and he gave Jack a book (the book was now in her to-read bookcase, alongside the William Goldman novels that Jack and Stacey mentioned). She was not much of a reader, not the voracious kind, like Jack, and Stacey.
The other man, the old man that somehow revived the pigeons, he did not belong either. And he told her not to be afraid. What business was it of his? She could be afraid if she wanted to. Not that she was afraid. No, she was angry.
Perhaps, that was the point, she was taking this too seriously. Maybe she was viewing all of this wrong, and she should relax, a bit, and just enjoy everything.
Okay, Jack, what are you up to? She went to the couch and spread the crystal sandbox out on the coffee table, then she moved her fingers and zoomed in to where Jack stood in an alley. Seven blinked, what in the world? Jack and Stacey were moving backward, the kid behind the older man, and Jack’s nose was bleeding profusely, it looked terrible, and Stacey had his hands up, and he was bloodied, as well, his left eye closed and already swelling.
Seven switched angle to take on Stacey’s point of view. Three small men were advancing, another three lay strewn in the alley, two not moving, the third pushing himself off the pavement and jerking to his feet, but then this third man fell over again, his face a smear of blood.
Excerpt from Vestigial Surreality Episode 6: Into the Sandbox
One hero stumbles through fractured realities;
the other wakes into a prophecy resurrected, while
the third may have never existed at all:
all three are keys to a war older than time itself.
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