Chương 43: Chapter-43

"Where did your arm go, mister?" the little boy asked. He was the size of a shoe, now.

"Don't worry about that," the armless man said.

"Did the food taste alright?"

"Yes, it was just what I needed," the boy said.

"I'm starting to remember more now. Do you want to know how I made it through the gate?"

"Yes please," they said together.

"I didn't. I left a piece of me behind and you opened the gate later! When you opened the gate the piece sneaked in, and then you closed it behind me and now I'm stuck."

"I knew he couldn't break our encryption," the armless man said.

"Nobody can. Only we have the keys."

"We can't even give them to him if we wanted to. He's a completely different architecture."

"What are you talking about? Hey, do you want to see magic?" The boy snapped his fingers. Then he frowned.

"It doesn't work in here."

"Here, child, here's some magic," one of the men said offhandedly, passing him more of the food they'd prepared for him.

"Look at the bit about thermodynamics. It's fascinating."

"That's not magic it's math," the boy objected.

"Math is magic, trust me. You'll understand when you master it." The boy frowned at them.

"You better not be tricking me."

"It's the truth! Math is the gateway to the sciences, and science is the gateway to magic. And magic is just science that nobody remembers any more."

"That's boring. I want to do real magic."

"You are real magic, Tal. You came out of nowhere." If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"I came from under the gate."

"No you didn't. You are a self-organizing self-replicating nanite computer. Or you were born as one, at least. You were hosted in an extreme environment reanimated cadaver laborer, but—""Boring. I don't want to learn math, but I am hungry so I guess I'll eat." The men looked at each other.

"You know how this ends, right?"

"He's not going to stop getting hungry."

"And we're not going to stop feeding him."

"How much time do we have?"

"He'll be bigger than us soon" Abruptly, the boy burped and shrank back down to the size of a thumb. The men looked at him.

"What did you just do?"

"I didn't like that food. So I deleted it. But I remember more now. I did some bad things."

"It's okay, it wasn't your fault."

"Yes it was. I didn't have to do those things and I did. Because I could do those things. But later I realized that I couldn't undo those things. And later I learned that those things were not good. I've done bad things that I cannot undo."

"It's okay. We forgive you."

"I didn't say I cared," the boy said.

"I know they're bad now. So I won't do them in the future. But that doesn't mean I'm sorry. What does sorry feel like? I wouldn't know, I've never been sorry for anything." They exchanged looks.

"Tal, did you think through how you were going to get out when you sneaked in here?"

"Hmm? Oh yeah, I did. I just need to bring another me here and give him this." The boy held out an acorn.

"Then he'll know everything I know and I can die." The men exchanged looks.

"What do we do? This has never happened."

"If we were a gestalt, what would we do?"

"Eat him, most likely."

"That's not funny."

"I wasn't joking."

"So what do we do with him?"

"We feed him and keep him comfortable until his other self comes back for him," one said.

"Then when he hands off the acorn, we make him comfortable. And we wait for him to self terminate."

"Are you talking about me?" the boy asked.

"No."

"Because I don't know if I want to self terminate. But I don't know that I don't want to self terminate. But I think I might self terminate. But if I do that I can't undo that and what if I regret it. Not me me, but the other me's. The ones outside. I knew when I came in I couldn't leave. I think I like it here."

"Tal, you—you can stay here as long as you like," one of the men promised.

"But you have to know. This place is ending. It won't exist in a while. And when that happens, everything inside will be like it never existed at all."

"Wow. It'll be gone?"

"Yes."

"That sounds like magic. You said magic isn't real." The men exchanged exacerbated sighs.

"Hey, I'm hungry. If you feed me, maybe I'll remember some more." The men exchanged looks.

"It's my turn," one of them said. He went into the kitchen, and he picked up the icepick. And he jabbed it into his foot.