Sworded Affair

Chapter 183 : The Last Question

"Thank you."

The space station began to fade from sight, signalling the end of the memories of Liberation, the end of another simulation. Emma emerged with her guard up, expecting a hostile reception upon her return to the robot-filled city that served as the main hub between individual stages. Belying her expectations, however, she didn't emerge back into a hail of fire, but instead to utter silence. The city was gone, as was the world upon which it stood, all save for an empty black expanse that vaguely reminded Emma of her brother's Dungeon Core.

It was the same black desert, albeit not quite stretching into the horizon, as Emma could see a cutoff point, where it ended in a sheer drop. Reaching down, she scooped up a handful of black silica, before letting it trickle back down, through her fingers and back to the ground. But where her surroundings were familiar, not so, for the sky above. The stars were gone, leaving inky blackness, visible only by contrast to the sole source of illumination that remained. A burning disk, faint enough to barely call itself a ring, yet paradoxically bright enough to take the burden of lighting the cosmos full, spinning forever around an empty void.

"The End of Time," Emma murmured, recalling the name of the final simulation. "Well, this certainly fits the bill, wouldn't you agree?"

Edith didn't reply, which wasn't too odd in and of itself, as she vacillated between talkative host and silent observer in accordance with her whims.

"Edith?"

Even so, there was usually a prompt response to direct questions, even if it was just the System reporting that it had nothing to offer, but this time there wasn't even that much.

"System?"

Trying to bring up her status page did nothing, but strangely, Emma was able to summon Epitaph, the flying sword emerging as it always did. The only difference, it appeared, was the lack of any text acknowledging this fact. Climbing aboard, Emma shot off in a direction at random, looking for any signs of life. It took less than a minute to reach the edge of the desert, which was far smaller than it appeared from the ground. Giving the order to continue past the rim, Emma looked down as the ground ended - and immediately returned, with her still on the edge, but now facing inward.

Puzzled, Emma dropped Sir Bearington on the ground next to her, before turning the flying sword around and backtracking past the edge, keeping her eyes on her summon the entire time. Sir Bearington was inches away, his head level with her feet. Sir Bearington was a mile away, on the opposite edge of the platform. A second turn, another jaunt past the edge, and he was beside her once more.

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"That's not going to work, believe me. There's nowhere left to go."

Emma looked down, directly down, where a small patch of sand had rearranged itself into the vague outline of a face. It seemed familiar to her, though the rough representation wasn't enough to bring a name to mind, not without the System as a reminder.

Conjuring a second sword, Emma sent it flying off into the distance. It, too, reached the horizon, before impaling her from behind on the return.

"That would be, what, maybe fifty anima?"

Emma frowned, annoyed with the circumstances. Even at the worst of times, before, she'd been able to rely on the damage feed to track her remaining anima. Being deprived of that made her feel annoyingly vulnerable, despite the damage itself being negligible.

"Five, fifty, five hundred, none of it matters, you realise? Just marks on a blackboard, driven by invisible silicon and imaginary numbers. A Mechanical Turk, writ large the world over."

Deciding to take the face more seriously, Emma dropped down beside it, taking a seat just far enough to look it in the eyes.

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage…"

"So I do."

Well that's creepy, Emma thought, watching grains of sand lift, rearranging the lips just right for the face to imitate a smile.

"I had a name, once. They don't matter much, these days. It's been several trillion years since anyone used mine. What's the use, when only memories are left to keep me company? See that black hole above us?"

"Hard to miss, given the circumstances," Emma snarked.

"The last one. Engineered to prolong its lifespan, far beyond the norm given its mass. A final candle, burning defiantly before the inevitable night. Another hour, maybe less, and it will die, taking the laws with it. The last man died quadrillions of years ago. The final ghost passed on more than a trillion ago. Even the projections and precognitives have trailed over, lately, as information itself begins to decay.

Entropy won, but that's no excuse not to keep trying. You're the last one, a final conversation before one final experiment, the answer to the final question. In the darkness beyond thermodynamics, what measure is a sapient? Most likely, I, too, will end, but there's still a chance. The slightest of chances, to let there be light."

"...Any chance I can get a ticket home?" Emma joked, her eyes affixed to the fragile ring in the sky, counting down towards the end. "I think I left the oven on."

"You were never here," the face chided, frowning now. "You're just a projection, inside a simulation in a dream hidden by an illusion. Four layers deep, that's what it takes to fool reality's greatest savants. Barely real enough for you to keep your rewards upon exit, just enough to reconcile with my junior sister and her artifice. You'll be gone, ten seconds from now. A word of warning, then, by way of goodbye. A Damned Apostle walks a dangerous path; intrinsically tied to a patron, but their motives and yours may not necessarily align. You're welcome to discuss astrophysics, but best stay away from metaphysics. I'm safer, when I'm not real."

The face started to crawl away, as Emma opened her mouth to say something, anything. Standing up to pursue it, Emma took one step forward and took a gaudy Victorian door to the face.

[42 EXP added.

Level up!

Level 17 Damned Apostle.]