Chương 20: 19-Tough Choices

Bob drank the last of his coffee and checked his luggage before departing. Then he remembered he had none. Since discovering the Inventory perk, he carried everything he needed in his mind: clothes, provisions, alchemical supplies, and the tools to craft them. He also carried all of Jenna and Billy's luggage in a separate compartment of his mind, labeled Do Not Peek—he wanted plausible deniability for the rat sausages. Finally, he stashed all the minor quality-of-life crafting projects he had created.

It was amazing what a portable shower and a cloth-cleansing magic rod could achieve. Bob found it hard to believe how all those magical juggernauts in fantasy novels had a spell for everything except the most basic needs of any camper.

"Are you ready?" Jenna asked from the door. Her eyes were red. Bob had heard her crying all night. Saying goodbye to the Vorians had been tough. They had cremated their bodies, along with those of the Essentials, in a funeral pyre, following Vorian tradition, before coming home with the news of their deaths. They had been ready for anything except the calm dignity and poise with which their surviving familiars accepted the facts.

"They were Einheriar. We knew we would only meet them again in Valhalla," a young farmer had explained to them. Jenna showed them the seeds and explained that they would transform all the tamed dungeons into symbiotic ones.

"Anyone who wants to level up will be able to do so," she said softly. None of them expected any Vorians to accept their offer after the deaths of their relatives. Perhaps in a couple of generations, but certainly not now. They grimly set to their task of replacing the dungeons. Seeing many of the farmers who had lost loved ones enter the Valhalla in their town the following morning, ready to take up the mantle of their fallen relatives, was like a blow to the gut.

"These people are brave to a fault," Bob had told Billy and Jenna.

"I have no doubt they will take their world back with the tools we have given them."

"Why doesn't that make me feel any better, Bob?" Jenna wearily asked him. Bob sometimes forgot she was only nineteen. Probably the bravest, strongest nineteen-year-old he had ever met, with Billy a close second, but nineteen, all the same. They walked in silence until they left the village.

"How is our friend doing?" Bob asked.

"She is still at the same spot. It is like an invitation," Jenna answered.

"Let's accept it, then," Billy concluded.

"I am not going to teleport near her, just in case it is a trap. A couple of miles away should be safe enough," Jenna explained. Then she placed her right hand on Bob's shoulders, feeding him the dimensional coordinates. Bob suddenly knew where they had to go. It was a strange direction, halfway between North and East, with a slight inclination between Now and Then, and tilted slightly towards the section between Could Have Been and No Bloody Way.

At last, those were the terms Bob's brain created to translate the obscure instructions Jenna's multidimensional mind was feeding it. He pushed with his mind, creating a Celestial Gateway. A modern city could be seen on the other side of the rift. The Losers entered the new plane. Before the gate closed, Jenna turned back and said, "We will return. I promise it. We will return with friends. Whatever Voria faces, it won't do it alone."

As the gate winked out of existence, Bob glimpsed, for an instant, their deceased Einheriar friends, saluting them with their swords held high. Then the gate closed. The new world looked like a shinier, better version of the Earth they knew. If Voria looked like the USA in the fifties, this new reality was like a version of what our world could be in twenty well-spent years. Electric cars zoomed about, making no noise. Silent gyrocopters dotted the sky, reminiscent of the Blade Runner movie.

Everything looked new, shiny, and ready to use. The walkways were clean and well-kept. Passersby looked human, their clothing cuts being the only notable difference. They glanced at the Losers as they walked past them. A those-guys-sure-dress-weird glance, not an Oh-my-God-invaders-from-other-reality glance. The inhabitants talked among themselves in a beautiful, musical language, vaguely reminiscent of Portuguese. Everyone looked happy, rested, and well-fed.

The Losers walked down the lane, approaching their destination, trying not to gape too much at their surroundings.

"What is your take on this, Bob?" Jenna asked him.

"Seems like another object lesson," Bob said. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"I am sure this world also has its share of problems, like all do, but Dawn has taken us to a location that exemplifies its virtues, making it look like a Utopia." Bob shut up as a gyrocopter hovered over them, making no sound. How can it be so silent? the scientist in him briefly wondered.

"My thoughts exactly," Jenna agreed.

"It seems we have reached our destination." Dawn was reading a book, seated at a table in a cafe. She dressed conservatively, much like the locals. She briefly glanced up when they approached. She was the same tall, athletic woman who had so effortlessly beaten them all some days ago. She was beautiful in a stern kind of way, but there was also a feel of danger about her.

"Sit down, please," she instructed them, as she called for the waiter.

"Let me order for you," she volunteered, "they have excellent fruit beverages." She spoke with the waiter in the local language as they took a seat.

"Not your first time here, it seems," Jenna said dryly.

"I have never been here before," Dawn answered.

"Is it because of the language? It took me twenty minutes to learn it. I am currently level 99, with a powerful intellect, and I know thousands of languages. When you learn enough of them, you realize they are all a smattering of a few common ones."

"Just how old are you, Dawn?" Bob asked.

"There is not enough wax in this world for the candles of my birthday cakes," she stated simply. Bob laughed. She did not. She was not joking.

"You took your sweet time," Dawn finally added.

"Sorry about that," Jenna answered.

"I was busy pulling a knife out of my lung. A knife intended for you. I was very worried about you running out of fruit juice while I lay dying. Why the hell didn't you help us?"

"If you had needed help dealing with Balance, you would not have been worth the effort of recruiting," she answered, not a whiff of emotion on her face.

"Charmer, isn't she?" said Billy. Bob decided to intervene before things got out of hand.

"It is clear you wanted to show us something. Voria was both a lesson and a test. The fact that you waited for us implies that we passed it." Dawn nodded.

"Very good. What was the lesson?"

"Voria was intended as an example of what would happen to Earth if we let the Compendium have its way," Bob answered.

"But we already knew that."

"No. You did not. You thought you did," Dawn interrupted him.

"You have met a mother who had to feed two of her children to monsters to keep the others alive." She took a sip from her fruit juice.

"Now you know," she concluded.

"And what is this world supposed to teach us?" Billy asked. The waiter chose that moment to come with three tall glasses filled with a dark liquid and ice cubes. Bob sipped it. It was delicious. Dawn began talking again.

"You were a teacher, weren't you, Bob?" she said, ignoring Billy's question. Bob nodded.

"I have been one, too. Also an assassin, a politician, a priest, a policewoman, a prostitute, an artist…What you call centuries are but seconds to me. There are very few things I have not tried," she said in that weird, matter-of-fact tone of hers.

"But my first job was teaching."

"I remember those long talks with other colleagues in the University cafeteria. We thought ourselves so clever. One afternoon, we discussed the Lever Dilemma. That is what we called it in my homeland. You probably know some other version of it." She kept looking into the distance as she talked, not even acknowledging their presence.

"You have five people trapped inside a lift in a burning building. You have a lever that may open the lift door, allowing them to escape, but if you do so, you will trap another man inside who would have escaped without your intervention. What do you do?"

"Do you kill an innocent man to save another five or do you let the fire do its work and keep your hands clean?"

"Yes, we call that the Trolley Problem, in my world," Bob answered.

"I was one of the ones who said she would kill one man to save five. No doubt. No remorse. It was the right thing, and I would just do it." For the first time, she smiled.

"What a fool I was."

"I have lived a long time now," she continued.

"I know now how things really work. The man you are going to kill does not just stand idly, waiting for your decision. He weeps. He soils himself in fear. He shows you his wallet, with the photos of his kids. He has five of them."

"Then, you know that whatever decision you take, it will be the wrong one. The faces of your victims, and that is what they are, will hound you till you die."

"What is the point of this?" asked Jenna, losing her patience. Dawn ignored her.

"And then you find out there is a big, red button. One that could free everyone without anyone dying. But there is a small chance that it will kill all six if you use it. What do you do? And if the chance of killing everyone is not that small? And if you do not have an idea of how big that chance is? Do you trade six probable deaths for the unknown chance of saving all?"

"Enough!" said Jenna, standing up. The family seated at a nearby table looked at her, curious but not afraid. Dawn kept talking placidly.

"Things are never like we imagine them to be. They are much, much tougher to do. If you are going to kill that man, no matter how noble your intentions, you look him in the eye. You taste his fear. You see what he has to lose. And then you decide."

"And that takes us back to your first question, Billy," she said, smiling back at him.

"Why this world? What is the lesson here? No lesson, I am afraid. Just a decision." She sipped her drink again.

"This world is next in line. If you give the Icosahedron back, they will be the next ones to be activated and eventually destroyed," she said calmly.

"So the only question to ask yourselves is this one: Can we kill all these people?" she concluded. Bob looked at the happy, smiling faces of the passersby.

"You know we can't. You have been watching us. You already knew before asking."

"I ask again, what is your point?" Jenna told her.

"We are not giving the Icosahedron back. We made that clear from the beginning."

"Yes, yes, yes…" Dawn answered in an almost bored tone.

"I have heard it all before. They will have to take it from your dead, cold fingers." She looked at Jenna straight in the eyes, "But the fact is that they will take it from your cold, dead fingers. It is only a matter of time, and they have got that in spades. They only have to win once. Unless you push the big, red button. The one that will either kill or save everybody. And there lies the question—can you push that button?"

"Yes, I can push the fucking button," Jenna seethed. Dawn calmly nodded. Then, almost contemptuously, she dropped the Icosahedron on the table.

"Then help me destroy this filthy thing."