Ludo Brax: Intergalactic Gig Worker (Chapter 42)

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The curtain lifted to reveal a makeshift stage at the front of the Cathedral. At each end, flickering candles sat on altars adorned with glowing green cubes I'd later find out were metric offerings.

Hooded figures in robes like the ones I'd seen backstage encircled an unseen center, humming, chanting at some frequency I could only barely perceive.

I stumbled out onto the stage, drinking in for an awestruck moment the stares of my Neighbors who made up the crowd. They had all made it. Even The Destroyer, busy as he was.

They had all shown up here to see me do something unprecedented. Something important.

But just what that something was, or whether I should even be doing it, was very much up for debate — even as the invisible, clammy hand of inertia led me ever closer to the middle of the circle.

The hooded figures stepped to either side, clearing a path for me as I glided by them. The center of the stage began to open, not abruptly, but with the painful slowness of self-important ceremony, a system of rudimentary mechanics creaking as the floorboards separated.

Its inefficiency felt intentional. A tribute, maybe, to some ancient force who loved it when things didn't really work.

An object began to rise from the stage, carrying with it such anticipation that my impatient smirk toward the audience failed to earn a single laugh.

At first, the object was abstract. Hard to comprehend.

The dim cathedral lighting slid off its matte, sterile surface, carrying away any half-formed notions I had of what it could be. Slowly, though, amid the collective bated breath of the crowd (and the ill-timed shouts of the hot-dog vendor) the object reached its full height at the center of the circle.

Only then, with a pang of befuddled recognition, did I realize what I was looking at.

An Ancient Computer.

It was awesome in its profound simplicity. The quaint directness of its two-dimensional interface. The primitive beauty of its absent Pleasure Hose.

I approached the object with a renewed sense of purpose.

From the looks of it, it dated to the 21st century. I'd read about things like these in the heavily redacted Anthropological Studies I'd gotten my hands on back in the halcyon days before they made me stop learning.

It was just as I'd imagined it: the looking box. The letter masher. This one even had a clicker.

In front of it sat a chair — suspiciously similar to the ones I'd been forbidden to sit on at MegaTech™ — and, without being told, it became obvious to me what I was supposed to do.

I sat down in front of it, tracing my fingers carefully over the device. Around me, the hooded figures began to walk in a choreographed circle. Slow at first, their chants low and measured, then faster and faster with each revolution.

Staring into the display, I placed my hand on the clicker.

On the screen in front of me was a garishly pixelated image of a grassy field beneath a bright blue sky. At its center was a single small image of a circular disk. Underneath it was a label:

 

THE GREAT UPDATE

 

An eerie overture echoed through the Cathedral, played somewhere on an organ. Or maybe it came from the Computer itself.

The room began to blur around me, warping and swirling. I had that awful feeling I was trading one plane of existence for another again.

Through the confusion, rising above it, I could finally make out the words of the hooded figures, sing-song and dignified at the same time.

"Dou-ble click.

Dou-ble click."

It was dizzying now, the speed of their movements. I forgot where I was, what I was meant to be doing. The artifact had consumed my attention, captured my mind.

I had the sense I had always been there, but if that were true, where had I gotten all of these scars on my mopping hand?

I placed my hand on the clicker and watched the hovering white arrow respond immediately, obediently. Like some Ancient Hero I dragged it across the screen as if it were an extension of my will and placed it above the circular image.

What, I wondered, had 21st century man done with such overwhelming power?

"Dou-ble Click.

Dou-ble Click."

It seemed that even the crowd was chanting now.

I pressed down once.

The infinitesimal moment afterwards felt like a lifetime. I could feel the sweat dampen the palms of my hands, practically hear the later entreaties to wipe down my station.

The circular image began to shimmer.

I pressed down again.

The image exploded with a bright flash. I shielded my eyes reflexively, understanding now the hideous goggles they'd made me wear for the ceremony.

I waited for the light to die down, lowering my arms, half expecting to discover I'd blown it somehow.

They had warned me the experience would be trying. To prepare myself for anything.

Still, I couldn't help but feel that an explosion this early into the ceremony was a bad omen.

I blinked a few times, bracing myself for the jibes of my Neighbors. Maybe some time being punished on a stretch rack.

But when the room finally came back into focus, I wasn't myself at all.

I was somewhere else.

Someone else.

**

I scrambled quickly to get my bearings.

I wasn't sure if the crowd could see me anymore, but I had the uncomfortable feeling that every move I made was being watched closely.

With each passing second, my new surroundings grew clearer, buffering into place around me.

The dazed silence softened into a murmur of voices, gradually aligning with the scene in front of me.

It was a cavernous, stately hall teeming with people in ceremonial garb like what the hooded figures wore back in the Cathedral. As I turned to look behind me, faces stretched out beyond my field of vision, hundreds maybe.

I sat at a long, elevated table, just in front of the mass of spectators. A small group of figures in ceremonial garb sat alongside me — though I couldn't help but notice I was at the head.

The event at hand was already well in progress, a contextual clue I picked up when I finally turned my attention to the speaker at the front of the room just in time to hear him launch into Sub Addendum 36A: Some Notes on The Notes Given in 14F.

Judging by the way he mopped sweat off his brow, I'd say he was making an impassioned case for something, though his demeanor was closer to a bullfrog with conviction.

The air in the hall was stale, and the powdered wigs we were all wearing didn't exactly breathe — a detail I realized I hadn't actually noticed until I'd already thought it.

I grasped at my head in a panic, lagging a second behind myself, somehow. Accessories, I'd always felt, are the first step down the treacherous road to being known.

But as my hands reached my head, in a curious twist I was pretty sure was a mistake, my fingers buzzed right through my skull with an audible whir.

For a split second, the veneer fell off the room.

The marble walls flashed a dismal gray. The robes and wigs flickered away, revealing the sweat-soaked bodies beneath. The clothing was unspectacular; the people beneath were harried, not dignified. Regular, not mythic.

And some of them, I realized as the actual cramped dimensions of the space revealed themselves, were not even here at all.