"Do I have to lie down somewhere or do something?"
Not even that, said Nemo in his head. Just stay in the room. Lucky pretended to be relaxed, but he was nervously tapping his heel on the floor as he lined up the shots of angel tears. The eagle-man was working on his keyboard nearby. He typed surprisingly slowly, in front of a black screen that held nothing appealing. He asked Lucky to tell him the way he had died.
"Well, there was this whore, named…"
He suddenly had the sensation of being immersed in a block of dry concrete. His open eyes saw nothing but void, the dry stone invading his mouth, his larynx, and his esophagus, down to the smallest cell of his lungs. He could not scream, and his organs flooded him with distress and a nameless agony. He thought, in total panic, I'm going to die, and words appeared in his mind: This is Nemo. You are not going to die. It's hard, but get used to it. On a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the maximum, how do you feel the pain?
A million. Torture. Too much.
Two abject minutes, during which Lucky's body would have given anything for a crumb of comfort, just to be able to breathe - when he begged for it to end, even if it meant dying. Nemo was speaking to him, but he no longer read him. The thought that he would not die rose within him, but faintly. He associated this pain with Huan - if the despot had ever dreamed of the worst possible torture, this was it.
And then… one gets used to everything, it seems. The body accepted that it would not die, though it could not breathe, even as its pulmonary muscles hammered like mad.
"I think it's getting better, Nemo."
"Okay, try to visualize words rather than speak, it comes through very scrambled here."
"I can't read or write, man."
"Don't move…"
He felt a small envelope tighten around him and then burst with a "plop."
"I just installed a speech-to-text for you. If my predictions are correct, you can't see anything."
"Man, I'm inside a block of cement."
"Close your eyes virtually - or at least imagine that you're doing it - and try to be as calm as possible. You're about to receive a kind of stimulation from somewhere… I can't describe it to you; you're the first living being to experience this. And don't worry, if it doesn't work, I'll bring you back here."
Nemo's reassuring words did him good. He tried to summon as much calm as possible, which was difficult with the constant messages from his body screaming that he was dying… and then yes, he felt something like an extra limb inside his body, near his diaphragm. It was like a hand one could extend in a direction. The hand fumbled, and managed to recreate something in his mind: it was Nemo's room. It was very strange, because he could feel it perfectly with "the hand of the body," as he called it - but he could also see it perfectly: visually, in a cubist way, that is, with all dimensions projected onto a single plane. He saw Nemo and Euyin from the front, but also in profile, from every side, above and below at the same time. He also saw the entire room and every microscopic detail down to the minimum definitional length of the After in the same image. It would be impossible with an eye, but with the new perception, it was possible. "The hand that sees everything," he called it. They weren't simply visual data: he also had simulated temperatures, textures and materials, the names of every unique identifier of the digital objects. Immersing himself into Euyin's eye, he saw all his thoughts and the sum of his personality and his secrets. He had a good heart, and felt guilty for having dragged Lucky into this, but he planned to dive in himself one day.
His body had stopped believing it was alive and that it needed oxygen. He relaxed.
"I see you, Nemo and Euyin… sons of bitches."
But he had said that last word with a kind of benevolent relish, and he noted with pleasure their stress levels decreasing.
His "hand that sees everything" could "densify" or "vaporize." What he saw changed…
By densifying, Euyin disappeared. Nemo had a feminine appearance, and he was working at his desk with various tools. He met people, made love to them. At one moment, everything even disappeared and the room took the shape of a university lab where computers were running… alright, that was the past. By vaporizing, he turned toward the future… Euyin disappeared and many elements transformed into "?".
He noticed points of "attraction" in the room. If he had been using his eyes, they would have been luminous, but they were merely points of pull for his hand that sees everything. He reached toward one, and found himself connected to it.
"I see you've just connected to my server. You're making progress."
"Yeah, and I can see the past and the future."
"The past is true. Those are archives. The future is a probable projection, but be careful. Physically, you'll be here, alright? But when you connect, for example to my server and then to others, you'll feel like you're moving from place to place. Try to get out of the After. I'll stay here if you want to come back into your body - if we can call it that. And take your time. The more information you collect, the better it is for me."
"Is it dangerous or not, to get out of the After?"
"Yes. I can't rule out that they might erase you."
"So I die?"
"In theory, you're just here, in the server. You're establishing remote connections. But they can trace back - and yes, erase you. But I have a copy of you here. So yes, you'll die, but the world won't be deprived of Lucky."
"I'll try not to die."
And he vanished from the screens.
He rises back up over Big City and is struck by vertigo when his hand that sees everything shows him the entirety of the infinite city - capable of housing trillions of souls - all at once, in its totality, from all its sides, and in its microscopic details… at the same time! But, strangely, his brain acquires the capacity to take in and process all this information simultaneously. He learns that only 21% of the residents of the After are in Big City. The others are on their sanctuary islands or within "the Military Program."
He climbs still higher - higher and higher - Big City becomes finite; the universes can be seen spreading in three directions: the ocean of trillions of sanctuary islands, the plain of millions of games, and higher still.
He sees the barrier of the After, and just before it, a thin layer of darkness - at least, what "the hand that sees everything" defines as darkness: something ill-defined. He leans toward it and is suddenly drawn in, as if by a roller coaster, or an hallucinatory vision.
The black zone is immense - larger than the universe, says a robotic voice that is the transcription of the text-to-speech. White points in the darkness form a great flower, and he dives into its center, passes through it, rises again as under a giant wave; the white points are simulators in which the inhabitants of the After sit and connect, sometimes standing up again.
In the hallucinatory delirium that mixes past and future, expanding and contracting the amplitude of the flower, he perceives fragments of conversation:
…I don't agree with these methods, but we have no choice…
…I got a good rating. I'm entitled to three weeks on my sanctuary island. I'll invite you…
…It was a pleasure. I hate those fucking Xenos…
…I couldn't kill anything. I'm stuck for two more days of tutorial…
…I'd rather go kill the Aleph than these Xenos, but hey, he just presses a button and we all die…
…They say Big City's become unlivable without us…
…I feel like I'm thinking like a Xeno…
They are billions, coming and going. They have nothing but darkness and their place in the simulator. The hand that sees everything connects each simulator, by billions and billions of shining threads, to entities outside the After.
Lucky thinks bitterly that all of this is a fine piece of bullshit that ought to be destroyed.
A central connection point, at the center, becomes a "pole of attraction." Touching it, Lucky is hurled out of the After, into a vast laboratory.
LODOVICO - CONFIDENTIAL ACCESS. Old, fat, white coat. Scientists following him, in the past and in the future. A great robot. Armor. Clone. Golem Gemini. Confidential project. Golem Gemini. True twins, entangled minds. Armor made of Hyperchalque. The Aleph incarnate. This is where it happens, Samuel?Yes - Aleph. Yes. I can't see anything. Yes, everything's in the server. Overlay around the After. It's a universe that adapts and that… The old man is alone afterward. Lucky cannot see his thoughts. This scene doesn't take place in the After. The old man programs feverishly, murmuring instructions to an AI. The soldiers have been sent elsewhere. He has no time.
Why?
Lucky is flung far away in space and time. LENNOX - UNINOX. A Wau stands before the old man in a classroom. Cassandre? Lucky's heart seems to explode. Why does the old man say that name? Does he know? The cameras, the sensors cannot pierce what lies beneath the Wau's carapace. …I want you to insert a flaw into this project. There's a resistance taking shape…
He is pushed back to LODOVICO in an instant. In fact, he is in both places at once. Impossible to say when. Your name will be enough, murmurs the old man. And too bad if it gets me killed. The soldier returns. The Aleph wants you…
The scene freezes. Lucky looks closely at the "hand that sees everything." An ethereal animal extending in all directions. He understands that he can touch things - but also give it orders. He tells it: Cassandre, in the Wau. Find her.
And he is propelled into elsewhere.