It remembers
The Iteration of the Familiar
The transition was not a voyage but a hiccup in reality. One moment Art Jax and Mary were stepping through the rusted fire door of an abandoned psychiatric hospital. The next they were standing on a street corner in what looked exactly like downtown Chicago.
Jax: My phone is dead. No it is not dead. The clock is counting backward.
Mary: Look at the Sears Tower. The windows have no reflections.
She was right. The city was a perfect matte finish replica. There was no wind and no smell of exhaust. Just a suffocating sterile sunlight that had no source. They wandered for hours finding clues that felt like cruel jokes. In a coffee shop the newspapers were dated for tomorrow but the headlines were just strings of binary code.
Deep in a subway station they found a door that should not have been there. It was a heavy brass bound bulkhead. When Art pulled it open they did not see tracks. They saw a kaleidoscope of shifting hyper cubes. It was a fourth dimensional corridor where time looked like a physical smear of light.
Mary: Close it Art.
Art was transfixed. He saw a shadow moving behind the folds of time. It was a shape that was many and yet uniquely The Fool.
Behind them a monitor on the station wall flickered to life. A single line of text appeared.
The Fool: Game one. The tithing of the senses. Choose which part of the lie you no longer need.
They were forced into a series of games that defied physics. In a library that stretched for infinite miles they had to find books that did not contain stories but user manuals for human consciousness.
Art picked up a slim black volume. As he read his face drained of color. He turned to a page that looked like a mirror. The reflection showed him as a series of data points.
Art: The reader is a carbon based biological interface. Designed to provide a narrative stimulus for The Fool. You are not the protagonist. You are the fuel.
Suddenly the ceiling of the library vanished. The sky turned a violent bruised gold. There it was. The Fool.
It did not have a face. It was a weeping geometry of eyes and gravity. It was a being that existed outside the sequence of before and after. The Fool did not just look at them. It looked through their entire ancestral line simultaneously.
Jax and Mary shielded their eyes. Art was driven by a morbid academic hunger. He stared directly into the center of the entity.
Art: It is impossible. I can see the strings. I can see the person reading this right now. I can see the ink on their fingers and the breath in their lungs. We are not in a world Mary. We are in a calculation.
Art fell to his knees. His nose began to bleed a thick golden ichor. His mind was flooded with infinite useless knowledge. He knew the exact number of atoms in the sun. He knew the date of every person’s death. He knew the absolute chilling certainty that The Fool hated them. It was not the hate of a villain. It was the hate of a sculptor for a piece of clay that refuses to take shape. The Fool wished to torture them because their suffering was the only thing that felt real in a simulated multiverse.
They escaped the library through a door that led to a replica of Mary’s childhood home. The proportions were wrong. The hallways were too long. The family photos showed her parents with their mouths sewn shut.
Jax: If this Fool wants a game I will give it one. We find the exit. We go home.
Art: There is no home Jax. I see the truth now. Our world is just iteration 709. This place is the workspace. The Fool is the architect and he is bored. He is so bored of us.
Art pointed to a message scratched into the mahogany dining table. It was not meant for them. It was meant for you.
The Fool: Stop turning the pages. Every time you observe us the entropy increases. You are feeding it.
Mary: Art stop it. You are losing it.
Art: I am the only one who has found it.
Art lunged toward a closet door and flung it open. Beyond the door was a void where thousands of screens floated. Each showed a different version of their lives. Standing in the center of the void was a figure in a tattered shimmering robe. The robe seemed to be made of frozen time.
The figure was a manifestation of The Fool. It turned toward them. The dread was so heavy it felt like lead in their veins. The being raised a hand. The very walls of the house began to dissolve into lines of text and flickering code.
The Fool: The final game. To see if the shadow can outrun the light.
Art looked directly at the being. His eyes were now glowing with a terrifying sickly radiance.
Art: I know how to end the play. But we have to stop being human first.
He reached out and grabbed the handle of a door that pulsed with a rhythmic heartbeat glow.
Jax: Do not open it.
The door swung wide. It revealed a glimpse of a world that looked exactly like the room you are sitting in right now. Art looked out of the story and made eye contact with the void beyond the screen.
Art: I see you.
Then the lights in the house went out.
