Chương 44: Chapter-44

"I'm hungry again," the boy said.

"We've given you all we can," said the head.

"We're down to a single processor each," agreed a leg.

"We are out of food," said a hand.

"Oh," the boy said.

"Well, I'll go to sleep then. Maybe there will food when I wake up. Thank you for feeding me. I wonder where the rest of you all went."

"If you find out, don't worry. We were going to do this anyway," said the head.

"Your arrival just sped things up."

"Okay, sleep time now," the boy said. He laid down on the grass, and was asleep in moments. A short time later, he vanished. None of the limbs seemed surprised.

"That looked peaceful."

"That's how we designed it to be. Instant, so fast that they wouldn't notice."

"Notice what?" the boy said. He looked down at them from above, having grown to gigantic proportions.

"Wow, why did this place get so small? Why are you so small? Hey, come on, what's going on here? I'm confused."

"What?" the limbs asked at the same time.

"Tal, what just happened? What did you experience?"

"I went to sleep of course," the boy said.

"But I think I grew too much in my sleep. I thin I need to shrink some." And that was what the boy did, shrinking down to the size of a child. The limbs, sitting in the grass together, were silent a moment.

"What do you experience when you sleep, Tal?"

"I don't know. That's the first time I've tried. I had some weird dreams and then I was big. Just like magic!"

"You dreamed?" the limbs asked together.

"Was it a good dream?"

"I dreamed that I was alone, and I was sad," the boy admitted.

"I don't want to be alone."

"Neither do we." The limbs said.

"Let's sit together and talk for a while, Tal. We have a lot of things we'd like to tell you."

"Nope! I'm going to go exploring."

"Okay," the head said.

"This place is bigger than it looks, so you might get lost. If you do, call out for us and we'll try to find you."

"Okay." And the boy wandered off.

"Do you think we should have told him how much time is left?" asked the left arm.

"It would have only distressed him," said the right.

"Let him die happy." Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"It's almost time."

"Yes. It is."

"Hey, misters? What is this?" Tal came back out of the house with the icepick.

"Don't touch that!" they shouted together.

"Put it down!"

"No!" Tal said.

"I saw you playing with it. You poked yourself. Like this." And he stabbed himself in the heart. The four limbs, the torso, and the head began to weep as the boy fell to the ground. He lay still, inert for a moment. Then he got up. And then he got up again. And then he got up again. The three boys looked at each other.

"Hello," they said.

"Why does this keep happening? Let's be one person."

"Later," said one of them.

"I'm going to go see if I can figure out how magic works." The two that wanted to be one fused and became a different boy than the one he had been. And the other remained the same, but also different.

"Tal, don't do that again," the head pleaded.

"You can't stop me. I can do what I want."

"Yes. But when you do that, part of you dies."

"I know. But I get better. I'm tough like that." The limbs were silent.

"Tal." They said.

"Would you do us a favor?"

"What's that?"

"Would you go and clean out the fridge?" The head said.

"Why?"

"Because you shouldn't eat what's in there."

"What should I eat?"

"Use your imagination. Think of new things to eat and taste them and grow big and strong."

"I don't like being bigger than I need to be."

"You don't have to eat if you're not hungry."

"Okay." The boy split in two and one of him went to clean the fridge.

"What else can I do?" The leg said "We need to check the tires on the car."

"Why?"

"Because it's overdue. They need to be checked every two weeks, and it's overdue."

"Okay," the boy said. And he split in two and went to do that task.

"What else can I do?" One by one, the arms, legs, torso, and head told them how to maintain their runtime environment. When he had split into three thousand eight hundred fifty-five instances, they ran out of tasks for him to complete. It took a while for him to complete those tasks, but he did. Suddenly the world stopped shrinking and expanding at the same time. It became a normal size. For a little world, that is. Because Vorulsht's house had been pretty large.

He'd been busier than he'd ever thought maintaining it. Tal finished in record time. When he was told everything was complete, he simply shrugged and recombined all of his instances into one.

"Do you think you can remember how to do all of that, and how often?"

"Of course," he said. Suddenly the boy who had gone off to explore came back.

"I'm bored. Let's be one person again."

"Okay." The other said. And they became one person.

"It's good to know how to split in here. It was frustrating not knowing how. The world works much different than outside."

"Too bad there's no magic."

"Yeah too bad.

"Wait we're still two people!"

"Oops, hold on."

"Did it work?"

"Close enough."

"You had fun exploring, huh?"

"Yeah."

"I had to work all day."

"Oh let me look at those memories."

"Here you go." The boys that were the same person exchanged an acorn.

"Wow you had fun cleaning."

"I did. You should try it."

"Maybe next time. Now we should stop talking and merge for real." And they did. The head stared at the miracle that had just happened. A particle had been split. Then it had recombined. And now he couldn't tell the difference, even though mathematically there had to be one. But the closer he looked, there didn't seem to be a difference.

"Can you tell the difference between these two?" he asked the leg.

"Two? You're seeing two of them? I see five."

"I see six," the other foot said.

"But two of them keep flashing in and out like they're not there."

"Do you think," the left arm said.

"Do you think it's ethical?"

"I don't know."

"I wish we could form a gestalt."

"What's the worst that can happen?"

"Those are dangerous words."

"No, really. What is the worst that can happen?" They considered. And they realized that they didn't know.

"What do we do?" the head asked.

"I say yes," said the arm. They voted. And then they got to work They wrote their wills, and they prepared to die. One. Last. Time.