by K.A. Rose

Stage 13:
I Won't Say Please
 
 

    "No."
    "Now come on, Kite--"
    "No, no, no, no, no."
    "Listen--"
    Lios went so far as to reach out an arm and stop Kite in his tracks.

20 December. Tuesday. Mac Anu. Item shop. Noon.

    "Come off it, Lios," Kite said, embarrassed. He pulled himself out of the sysadmin's grip, and stood at ease in front of the shop stall. Lios had caught him off-guard by posing as a store NPC again; it was his favorite covert means of communicating with PC agents. But right now Kite was neither his agent nor had any intentions to become one again.
    "Listen, you," Lios said gruffly. "This is a bad situation. Hell, you're probably aware."
    "You're stuck in a trap of your own making, s'far as I'm concerned. I don't owe you anything."
    "What's got your panties in a wad?" the admin demanded, seemingly unaware how informal his conversations with Kite had spiralled down into. "With the way you presented that dungeon to us all we could think was that it was a hoax. It's different now and we're hurting badly. I'm pretty sure I'm sacked before the year's out."
    "It'll be a great human tragedy."
    "Goddammit. I don't have time for your kid crap. I need you and your men now, Kite."
    "'Men'? What am I, building an army?"
    "Seems that way to me. You're telling me you've survived four separate expeditions into that place, inta-- well, more or less intact? You've got some inhuman task force on your side or you're damn lucky."
    Kite caught the inflection in Lios's voice. "There's been more casualties, haven't there."
    "We're still confirming a couple of them... Didn't I tell you? This is up shit creek without a paddle. Or a goddamn raft. We need your guys in there to hash it all out for good."
    "I don't think you understand," Kite told him. "Two deaths for the home team should be enough to tell you that place is no picnic for us either. If we're going in there again, it's not at the behest of some administrator looking out for his job. I'm not going to sacrifice my 'men,' as you call them, for your sake."
    "You're going in there anyway, aren't you?"
    "It'll be our choice if we do. We'll have enough to worry about in there without fretting over whether you get sacked."
    "Hate to be the one pulling the humanitarian act, but ever consider the other players you're hurting? If we can't at least tell the higher-ups we've got an investigation going, the only thing we can do is seal it off."
    "Oh, oh, what was that?" Kite demanded, cupping a hand to his ear as if to hear better. "Doing what we asked of you in the first place? God forbid!"
    "I don't have to take this from a user!" Lios complained. "When did you go off and grow a pair?"
    "What are you gonna do, ban me? You can't afford to ban anyone right now, can you? That's wasted time and effort for your superiors." Kite gave him a pointed look, leaning forward with an arm on the stall counter. "And even if you could, you weren't about to go around banning a certain one of my associates. Were you, now?"
    "What," Lios laughed, "did I do one of your kin some injustice, Don Corleone?"
    It wasn't that Kite didn't get the joke. He just didn't find it funny.
    He kept staring.
    "Well," the admin said, trying to salvage the conversation he'd allowed to go to pieces, "as it happens, we are busy, so your little friend's safe for now. Don't take that as any incentive. As for the house, if you're refusing to act on our behalf, we don't have any choice."
    "You put up a barrier, it'll just get hacked through again."
    "Stronger restrictions are waiting to be implemented. And all we have to do is wait for the Ziggurat B release after the new year to take more drastic measures. Face it, Kite, you're out. You play our way or you don't play at all."
    "In the words of that certain associate of mine, Lios, STFU."

    Kite waited until he had wandered far enough out of sight of the Item shop before he opened up the PM window.
    >>We've hit a roadblock, he wrote in a message addressed to multiple members. >>Keep working on your individual research and I'll get back to you when I can get a more definite plan in place. Our deadline is now 31 December.
    This done, Kite saw his next order of business was to mail BlackRose. He'd respectfully waited a few days to let the older mail liquidate before sending again, but he'd fought the urge only by writing down his next letters in a .txt file saved to his desktop. Yet the more he read them over, the more he realized the sincerity wasn't there when the words were premeditated. So he deleted the file and started anew.

Subject: Like the Three Musketeers
To: "BlackRose" (burakurozu@boggle.co.jp)
From: "Kite" (kaito@mail.co.jp)
Date: 20/12/2011 12:33 GMT+8hrs.

BlackRose,

Going to the house one last time. This might be the one that gets me.

Hoping everything goes okay. Know I got a good team with me. We're looking into additional resources and it looks like we can make this expedition go the distance. Contacting all the other people, Mia, Helba, even this Judge X guy in America. Trying to get a hold of Tsukasa but so far no luck. That's okay. She's not so fun to be around these days. Even you'd hate her. The problem is I think she got that way because she's no longer afraid of people. Confidence is a double-edged sword sometimes.

Everyone tells Sanjuro he needs to commit sepukku, just get it over and done with. People are weird.
 
 

I dream of you now and then. I wish I knew what it meant.

Your friend, at least I hope,
Kite.

    Sora's foot tapped impatiently.
    He had waited, as instructed, at the bottom level of a water dungeon as specified in Kite's email. He'd even taken the liberty to take care of monster portals as a special courtesy. But that was a loss; they'd long since respawned. What a nuisance.
    He didn't want to be here. He couldn't stress enough, even as an internal monologue, how much he didn't want to be here. This was, unfortunately, the only way that it could work out. It was originally a given that he, Sora, would be the one to meet Helba, given his continuing reputation with her as almost a nephew. But when it was discovered Helba was keeping offline until the final loose ends of the trial were tied up and the meeting had to be conducted over the phone, Sora was very quick to back out. Kite did not argue.
    Unfortunately, that left Kite to deal with Helba, and with Elk communicating with Mia and Sanjuro in contact with that Judge_X guy, it was left to Sora to meet with Wiseman.
    Wiseman had a reputation as a mercenary. He had played a crucial role in 'the Ordeal' and was at one point a favorite battling companion of Kite's, particularly when other Wavemasters turned hard to come by, and he possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of arcane, not to mention archaic, subjects. In real life, as it was Kite's understanding, he was a freshman or sophomore in college, but his PC was elderly and his speech patterns mimicked this. Well, to a degree. There was a strange flirtatious quality to his words that gave Sora the willies. It didn't help that this only enhanced itself when the mage was around other male PCs.
    At the age of 12 Sora had no informed opinions on homosexuality, though he could smell hypocrisy well enough that he knew not to make any judgements until he could. At the same time, he was a 12-year-old, in Japan, who routinely had to take the subway alone to get to school in the morning. Also to be considered was the net cafe he had accessed from until he'd purchased a new ethernet cable recently-- creepy strange businessmen with exotic tastes and the kind of glint in their eyes that would make any sentient creature turn tail and run. That sort of scenario can not but build up certain prejudices.
    But in any event, Wiseman was running late.
    "Ten more minutes," he announced to the empty room, to the Gott Statue that lay on its side in its basin. He'd taken the liberty of opening the dungeon's Gott chest, though it hadn't contained anything of interest. "Ten minutes and then I'm blowing this joint. I have better things to do."
    Those stupid teammates of his. He'd picked up the new Shonen Weekly yesterday and found the latest installment of Rheingold Densetsu, and there it was on the page, Wodin's warcry as he stormed the enemy battlements: "Do or die. One last shot. One last stand." Those bastards were all reading ahead of him. Even the goddamn American.
    What were those guys doing reading it anyway? Weren't they too old for this sort of thing? Kite, he knew, was 16, and he was pretty sure Elk was 15. For Sanjuro, who knew, but he had to at least be in his 30s. But Japanophiles in America were weird like that...
    Huh, so if Kite was 16 while he was 12, when he was 16 Kite would be 20... That wasn't so bad...
    "Why, hello there."
    Sora refocused. The doorway at the end of the room had parted open, and standing by it was a Wavemaster, elderly but nevertheless tall and standing rigidly erect, as a trained military sergeant. It was in direct contrast to his easy, almost sardonic grin, that immediately softened when Wiseman saw who it was.
    "You're late."
    "Terribly sorry. Were you kept waiting?"
    "If you're naming the meeting place, it's kind of proper not to be late to it."
    Wiseman tilted his head a little, as if studying something interesting. "You are Sora, correct? Tsukasa's little friend?"
    For the life of him, Sora couldn't help a minute eyetwitch. "Yeah, sure. And I remember you just fine, so we can skip over the introductions. Sorry Kite couldn't be here. He's meeting with Helba."
    "So I am aware. Perfectly reasonable," said Wiseman, with a grandfatherly smile. "Have you always been in the habit of subbing for Kite's meetings? I was not under the impression the two of you socialized much."
    "I'm a registered Assist."
    "But this goes past that somewhat, don't you agree?"
    "Are we playing Twenty Questions? If so, you forgot 'is it larger than a breadbox.'"
    Wiseman chuckled softly. "Fair enough." Staff in the crook of his elbow, he folded his arms. "You came seeking information about computer programming, correct?"
    "That's right. You've looked at Adamantine's code?"
    "Ah yes. And this would be the part where you are going to ask me 'is it possible?'"

    "You sound very young, Kite, for a boy of your age. If your voice hasn't deepened by now I think it's safe to say you'll sound high-pitched for the rest of your life."
    "It wouldn't help to say I'm nervous?"
    "A little. Not much. Kite-kun has no reason to be nervous. You should know better than to think I might mean you harm." Her voice was warm. Comforting. Somewhat like an aunt might sound. In fact, her voice possessed a timbre of age that did not exist in her World incarnation. For the first time, Kite had to wonder how old the hacker Helba was.
    "So," she went on, finding their line falling into silence, "what can I do for you?"
    "Before I was just going to ask you with help on item cracks. But now the situation's a little different. Lios is interfering. Well, mostly because we refused to act on his behalf..."
    "If you could, would you go back and ally yourself with him?"
    "Not a chance," Kite said, a little cockier than he'd wished to sound. He scaled himself back and ended up sounding much more timid than intended. "Same as I told him, I don't want to be investigating if it's for someone else pulling the strings. We need nothing but dedicated men in there-- Oh Jesus."
    "What is it?"
    "That's what he called them, 'men.' I said it sounded like I was raising an army."
    "Aren't you?"

    "If anyone asks," said Judge_X, staring straight ahead. "We're fucking. That's all."
    Sanjuro tore his eyes from the road for a moment to glance at the teenager in the passenger seat. "Excuse me? I'm straight."
    "So am I. But I think my parents will buy that a lot quicker than the alternative. 'Ma, Dad, I hafta confess, I'm a world-renouned white cap cracker-cracker --that's one for the hick and one for my leet skillz-- and I'm helping the middle school Japanese teacher to save the world.'"
    Judge_X was seventeen, tall and gangly, a jumbled mess of awkward angles and pale, pimpled skin. Sanjuro had never taught him, though he once taught the boy's younger brother. But it was a small town and an even tighter community, to the extent that the two might as well have been next-door neighbors.
    Sanjuro wondered if 'irony' got its name from the bad taste it left in your mouth.
    "Just tell me what I need to know and you'll be back home before sun-up. Own up real fast and I'll even skip the foreplay."
    "Fuck you."
    "Listen, kid," Sanjuro said coldly, dimming the headlights he pulled the car over into the shoulder of the road, "two of your friends are dead and one is in jail because of this bullshit. Two of my friends are dead, and by the sound of it many more are on the way. So cut the tough-as-coffin-nails crap and just gimme the low-down. We're trying to save lives here." He shut off the ignition; soon the only light was the minimal illumination of the moon.  "'Cause like as not, you're involved now. I am too. I didn't like to figure I was, but that's the way it plays out. Doesn't matter whether you stepped beyond the door or not."
    Judge_X took a deep breath and watched the wheat fields blowing in the night breeze. The teenager's glassy eyes reflected more than a little apprehension.
    "In the chans I hang out in, the dungeon is an urban legend. A spook story. It made the rounds as something kids'd tell each other at 3 AM when they're bored. No one ever remembers it not being around. The only thing Holloway and them did was actually find it."
    "Did you help in the discovery at all?"
    "I was there when they found the first hallway. Those first screencaps on the journal, those are mine. All the rest were Holloway and Wax and Jed. Mostly Jed toward the end."
    "How did Jed escape the maze?"
    "Pulled the plug. Fried his comp dead, I heard, short-circuited the whole block. Made the last journal posts from a friend's house, before they arrested him. I can't figure it, and I've tried. Jed likes to overclock but what the police found inside his computer, he didn't even put there."
    "The other guys ever talk at all about their cooling systems going nuts?"
    "Wax once, for the first day on their last trip when they could still get messages across. You gotta understand, they were inside. I mean, like, really inside. It sounds like bullshit to you, I'll bet..."
    "Not so much. You'd be surprised."
    "Hard enough to think of going into that place with a couple bits of rope and spells for company, but can you imagine literally being in that place? No food, no water, freeze yer nuts off. And no light. Goddamn, but I shoulda given them light." Judge_X inclined his head, chin against his chest. "Shoulda given 'em light."

    "You have to understand, computer technology circa 1970 and before isn't really computerized in the way we think of it today. A good deal of it was being conducted on punch cards fed into machines that filled entire rooms. To go even before that we can't even consider the technology then as being computerized. There is no programming language per se. Nothing that can really be applicable for anything we function on today."
    Sora waited. When Wiseman seemed to doze, he caved in and prompted: "But...?"
    "But, ah yes, but... The fact is that the language of Adamantine's Code is far too rudimentary to be anything beyond 1965, and could date as far back as the 50s, even 40s. In which case we're dealing with nothing even resembling graphics processing, probably nothing more sophisticated than a set of algorithms, using a system that would take every computer in Japan to crunch. Clearly impossible. Which leads to one of two conclusions: either Adamantine's Code is a hoax not actually attached to House of Leaves in any respect, or the house itself is purely a figment of collective imagination."
    "..."
    "What is it?" Wiseman asked kindly.
    Sora suppressed a sigh. "I hate to say this, but... Try again, using smaller words, please?"

    "Lios is going to put restrictions on House of Leaves that go above and beyond what your Bracelet can handle," Helba said emphatically to Kite. "You could collect all the virus cores in The World and it would mean nothing. Those will not function on an upper-level barrier like he will use."
    "What other way is there?" Kite asked.
    "Were you to enlist the aid of Tsukasa, you could conceivably--"
    "I've been trying," Kite interrupted, exasperated. "I don't want to talk to her again but I know she's important to have right now. But she hasn't responded to any emails and I can't access her personal data. She's out of my reach."
    "Forget her for now," the hacker said gently, trying to sooth. "I'll see what I can do in the mean time. Maybe I can chance an online visit in time to assist you. But whatever the case may be, console yourself for now that that, at least, will be resolved. Concern yourself instead with how you will conduct yourself once inside."
    "I had an inkling at first, but now I'm more certain..." Kite said cautiously. "The house eats up RAM like candy. It forces the system components into overclocking. It might be some sort of self-destruct mechanism designed to keep people out. Whatever else might go on in there, if we... get in too far... and then our computers bust..."
    "Finish your sentences, Kite-kun," Helba told him playfully. "You mean to say that you cannot competently complete your mission if a death-trap lies by your very feet, is that right?"
    "Um, yeah. But what can we do about...? No, wait a second..."

    "A knock? No, no, there wasn't anything like that there. We never got as far along as you guys." Judge_X took a nervous drag of a cigarette. Sanjuro did not smoke except occasionally, such as after sex, but the boy had been getting jittery and he had left his own pack at home, and Sanjuro hated the thought of losing the boy's participation now.
    "You guys are way above and beyond what we ever saw, Mister Brenner."
    "But there's still more to go," Sanjuro insisted. "Any day now we're going on our fifth expedition. I'm just waiting for the word. Until then..."
    When the teenager exhaled, it was more frosted breath than smoke. South Dakota winters still tended to get chilly. "What, teach, you think I've got something to offer you?"
    "Your hack schematics."
    "Jesus fucking Mary. I can't just hand out that stuff like nothing."
    "This isn't nothing."
    "Anyway, it's all bull. By the sound of it the guy you had working on your case did just as leet a job as I might've, script kiddie or otherwise. You overestimate what a guy can do in a game like The World. The hacking potential just ain't there for the most part, that's why it's stayed so clean after so many years. If your hacktricks failed inside the house, it's the house's fault, not us guys."
    "William," Sanjuro said slowly, "what do you think the house is?"

    "As for what the Adamantine Code actually says, well, there's not much to talk about," said Wiseman unhappily. "It doesn't actually have anything. It's dense black space, but nothing shapeable into walls and corridors. And there's nothing programmed in there that can account for that creature you talk about. Not even randomly activated BGM."
    "So what are you saying?" Sora demanded. "We're making it all up?"
    "No, no, not at all," Wiseman recovered quickly. "Although it may give rise to the possibility that what we are seeing in the house is actually more than one source file-- possibly infinite source files, in the same respect as The World's stages are purportedly infinite. If these were able to interract with each other in real time, it might explain how the dungeon is able to reshape itself at will."
    "But that's just the thing," the Twin Blade protested. "'At will.'"
    "Oh dear. I hadn't even considered it like that."

    "What are you going on about, Kite-kun?" Helba asked, sounding a little out of her element. "Are you suggesting we hijack every computer system in Tokyo?"
    "It can be done, can't it?"
    "With a little effort, yes. But do you understand the massive repercussions we could face for such an act? Society is contented with the concept that Altimit is an unbreakable OS. For us to suddenly dump this crisis into the laps of literally millions of people is to upset more than a few system administrators, do you see?"
    "But we could do it. And if we did, it could work. Right?"
    "Is all that effort worth the eleven days until the Ziggurat B release, Kite-kun?"
    "Yes!" Kite shouted into his cell phone, shocking a group of school girls that happened to be passing by. "Yes, it is! Because, you see, it's not just a couple people we're talking about. It's not avenging anyone or protecting a few more. It's because it's fucking Jonah and the fucking whale, all right? If we do this, and finish it, that will end it. It might just end everything!"
    "Everything," Helba said quietly, "is an awful lot to lose."

    "The look on his face the last time I saw him," Judge_X whimpered, shaking flecks of cigarette ash into his lap, "oh god."
    "What happened to Holloway's body, William?" Sanjuro pressed. "It was the same with Adamantine, wasn't it?"
    "They kept a lot of the details out of the papers. You can read about it now, 'cause that one lady was found, but when Holloway died the Iowan police did everything to keep the specs quiet. I bet you about know what it was like. And they didn't actually find his body in the house. He was out in the garden. But he was real torn up. At the time no one could explain it so they just... didn't say..."
    "How? How can that happen? Even if their minds get trapped in The World, their bodies only lie comatose. We've seen this thing before."
    "Not this. Not this. Jesus Christ, Mister Brenner, ain't been nothing like this." The eyes he cast toward Sanjuro were watery and red. "Kind of a miracle any of them made it out alive. First Jed and Wax, then just Jed... Makes you wanna believe in God, you know?"
    "I've heard that sort of thing before. Back in the war."
    A forced singular laugh sent smoke out of both mouth and nostrils. Judge_X extinguished the cigarette in the ash tray. "Is that what we're fighting with this house, teach? A war?"
    "If it was, would you come join us?"

    "If the randomizing matrices keep changing," Wiseman mused, "it's possible that eventually any exit that might have existed in some form will disappear entirely. In such an event, it'd be safe to assume that our options had completely run out."
    "I'd say it's unlikely," Sora said at length, "but the longest we've ever been in there was about three-fourths of a day. The Holloway Team lasted much longer, according to Kite. But..."
    "But...?"
    "Say someone did get trapped in the house, in the way you're talking about. Is it at all possible to get the person out again?"

    "What do you say?" Kite asked Helba. "Can we make it?"

    "No," said Judge_X.

    "No," said Wiseman.

    "No," said Helba.
 
 
 

    "Thanks, Elk," said Kite, flipping the notebook closed. "Tell Mia thanks too. We know it's a strain on her."
    "Already told her," the Wavemaster answered, smiling graciously.
    "That about wraps everything up for tonight. Go get some sleep. I'll email you tomorrow if anything comes up."
    Elk nodded, and, his staff guiding him, he began to turn around and walk toward the Chaos Gate. He stopped abruptly, looking back over his shoulder. "Is everything all right, Kite?"
    "Hmm? Oh. Yeah." He suppressed a yawn. "Just kinda tired, I guess."
    "Well, you ought to get some sleep too. Sora told me what you were like after last time. You're too young to push yourself so hard."
    "You're so old, Elk?"
    "Ninth grade," Elk said shyly. "You're in sixth grade or something, right?"
    "Um..."
 

End Stage 13.

>>Stage 14: One More Look

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