False Idols - Published Version

Chapter 6

After his frightening encounter with Laura, Nick had stayed away from the network for two weeks. But eventually his curiosity and loneliness had gotten the better of him. He found himself sitting once again in his room, internet cable poised to be plugged in.

He shook his head. I can't believe I'm stupid enough to do this again.

This time, he had taken precautions. He had a large glass bottle of imported Italian spring water, the bubbly kind that he preferred. And a box of fine Swiss chocolates, to provide him with a jolt of energy in case his blood sugar fell from overusing the MindWave.

More importantly, he'd programmed the internet connection to die after five minutes. If he were trapped and disoriented like last time, he would be released automatically.

He took a deep breath. And another. Then he clenched his jaw and pushed the cable into the socket.

He was immersed in a familiar dimensionless blackness. He felt fear rising up into his consciousness but beat it down. He knew it was possible to conquer this world, to make it his own.

Right now he was a point of nothingness amidst the nothingness. He remembered that when Laura had created her world last time, she had begun by forming her own body, and then by emanating space and dimensions outwards from herself.

The first thing he needed was his own body. He was seeing, so he must have eyes, and yet he didn't have eyes. He reached up with his hand to feel where his eyes should be.

Wait!

He had hands! That was a start. He held out his hand. It was a shimmering, shifting, ghostlike appendage. It shimmered, sometimes showing his wrist wearing a watch, sometimes not, as if his mind couldn't quite decide exactly how his hand should look.

If he had a hand, he must have the rest of his body. He followed his wrist, up his arm. The arm seemed to form as his eyes looked at it. Now he saw his shoulder, his chest, and below that his legs.

Below – there was an up and a down. Things were coming into place.

He had a full body. He looked at his foot. He was wearing his favorite pair of gray sneakers.

No, wait!

He was wearing blue flip flops. Somehow, both seemed to be true at the same time. Several different slightly different versions of himself seemed to be co-existing and intertwined.

Never mind the details. I have a body! He reached up and pinched his cheek. It hurt dully, like a slightly less defined version of what a real pinch would feel like. "Ow" he said, happily.

It was time to create a world. Better to start off with somewhere he knew personally. His room. He imagined the thick carpet beneath his feet. And it was there. He looked around to his bed, and his desk. They were all there.

He walked to the bed. The sheets were nondescript. He couldn't quite make out what color they were. He looked towards his shelf, where he kept his game collection. The titles of the data crystal holders were unreadable. He could not read the words so instead he focused and tried to read one letter at a time. It was impossible. Every time he began reading a letter, it shifted into another form. He might follow a horizontal stroke to see where it went. It would intersect a diagonal, so he'd think he'd found a "Z". But as he followed the diagonal, it would curve back up into a strong vertical, which never met the original horizontal.

He looked out the window and saw blackness. There was no world outside his room.

"Are you the demiurge of this world?" Came a sudden, scornful female voice.