Complete Atopia Chronicles

Vicious could sense my amusement and grimaced, but gamely soldiered on. Trying to keep in character, he leaned towards Martin and said, “Sire, Master Sid asked me to bring you your mount and…ah…ah fook it, mate, yer horse is ’ere.”

Right behind him rode up my proxxi Robert, also bringing my mount. Wisely, he said nothing as he tossed me the reigns, looking towards Vicious and smiling. Vicious scowled back, and they both trotted off to get Sid and themselves ready.

I sheathed my saber, Martin dropped the remains of his meal on the floor, and we stood to get ready.

“I mean, I know this is a gameworld,” said Martin over the top of his horse, “but don’t you ever get the feeling, back in the world, that all of this is impossible?”

I laughed.

Back in the world-now there was an idea fraught with complications. In a cosmos already sporting an infinite number of universes, in just one of these we’d begun spawning our own infinity of digital universes. Collectively, they’d begun calling the whole jumble the multiverse, on the assumption that infinity and infinity overlapped somewhere.

If there were an infinite number of universes, then logically one of them had to have exactly the train of events that an arbitrary gameworld, like the one we were in now, had going on. So when we flitted into a gameworld, in a sense we were creating windows into the parallel universe the simulation was tracking.

According to some, there was an equivalency of actually being there if a conscious observer couldn’t distinguish the difference. So, the question of the day was this: were we just creating simulated worlds, or were we actually tunneling past the event horizon of our own universe to create portals into parallel universes?

Perception was reality. Was therefore, reality equivalent to perception? A slippery slope if there ever was one. Thus the question of this world being real or not was rather more troubling than it may have seemed.

I leaned forward to pat and stroke my horse’s neck, calming it as it strained around to look at me. It knew today was going to be bloody. Taking a grip on my tall wooden-framed saddle, with one foot in a stirrup, I returned to Martin’s question.

“So what exactly do you mean-is all of this impossible?”

I knew it would be impossible to win this battle without settling whatever was on his mind. I looked towards him as I swung up onto my horse.

“Look, I’m not stupid, I know all the stuff about the infinite number of alternate bubbly universes, this one springing from that, all spawning into each other,” replied Martin. “Whatever. It still doesn’t answer my real question.”

I settled comfortably into my saddle and we started off. The Mongolian saddle was designed to allow the horse to choose its canter, leaving the rider free to deal with other tasks-it was more of a platform than a saddle, a fighting platform. These guys had been way ahead of their time. I twisted around to check my quiver of arrows.

“Which is?”

“Why something and not nothing?”

My patience was beginning, as often with him, to wear thin. Why was it that human beings had this God-shaped hole in their heads that needed to be filled when the mind grabbed at straws? God certainly wasn’t a part of my life, not anymore.

“What’s going on, you caught religion or something?” I asked, catching glimpses of the Mongol warriors praying to their shamanistic gods as we began trotting through the yurt city.

Rising smoke from the cooking fires enveloped us, and the place was thick with the tension of the coming bloodshed. I raised my fist in a show of power and victory to those that turned to watch me pass. I felt suddenly angry.

“Do you know how stupid it is that you’d believe in God?”

Martin shrunk away at the criticism. “What, just because you don’t, you think everyone else is stupid? So you think mum joining the Eleutheros is stupid? Sid is a member, do you think he’s stupid?”

I sighed. It wasn’t his fault.

“No, that’s not it. Sid’s different. And don’t drag mum into this…”

Our mother had been disappearing further and further into her religion, even as the technology had sped further ahead. The Christian Eleutheros sect had gained an incredibly strong following on Atopia, pitching itself against the libertarian ideals that Atopia was founded upon, against what they perceived as the ultimate decay of society. Sid was a part of the Eleutheros hacking community, a somewhat different side to the sect than my mother. I didn’t quite understand it all.

“You always treat everyone like they’re stupid,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “Anyway, that doesn’t really answer anything, it’s just replacing one non-starter for another.” Martin shrugged. “It’s kind of giving up, religion, isn’t it?”

We trotted along for a bit. I said nothing, letting him finish his thoughts while I calmed my own down.