Persephone looked around, her eyes wide, staring at the billowing red fabric above us.
"I've never been to the Circus before," she said, "though I know where I'm going."
"We all do," Eurydice said, her attention drawn to a bright pair of large striped-pink lollipops, mounted in the ground. "I don't know why…"
"Programming," I said abruptly. I wasn't sure exactly what I meant, and resented it.
"Googler's circus," Orpheus drawled, sounding rather like a recorded message. "The Big Top, the Boom Room. The Circus of Doom. Home to insanity…"
There was a harsh laugh from behind us, and we turned.
"Four visitors, bright and early, runaways and rebels," a voice said, the tone melancholy.
The four of us looked around, searching for the voice's owner. We could see nothing, but there were various platforms suspended from the roof, lots of places to hide…
"Show yourself!" I yelled. Best to show strength.
Harsh laughter, cold and humourless, responded.
"And what do you trespassers and traitors have to say for yourselves?"
"We were equally betrayed," I said, not bothering to conceal the anger in my voice.
Orpheus raised claws, but from the wild movement of his eyes it was obvious he didn't know where the opponent was.
"Over there," Eurydice whispered, jerking her head slightly to indicate the location of the speaker, and I saw a flash of black behind a raised platform.
"Stay out of here, spidergirl," the voice said. "This is our territory."
"We have nowhere else to go," Persephone said. "We beg your pardon…"
"We beg nobody's pardon," I interrupted her. "Who are you, hiding behind that platform? Are you afraid of us?"
"We are all afraid," I heard, and watched as a clown jumped down from the platform.
He wore a black-and-white mask over his costume with a wide grin drawn on it, and baggy clothes hung over his near-skeletal form.
"Why else would the master be called Lord Fear?" he continued.
"Kilobyte's the master now," Persephone said. "They're in the mortal world…"
"We don't have to be afraid of anyone," I told him. "What's your name?"
The clown laughed. "Names have power, and the one whose name means a thousand powers is in this domain. Tell me yours first."
"Elysia," I said. "My name is Elysia." There was a power in it.
"Persephone," she chimed in.
"Eurydice."
"Orpheus."
"I am Charon, the Happy Clown," he said, and swept us a surprisingly grateful bow. "But you should not be here."
"I already told you, we have nowhere else to go!" I snapped. "And you, friend Charon, are outnumbered."
He jumped in an easy movement, flipping up and hitting the top of a platform with oversized boots.
"Follow the path!" he called, and before we could react a trapdoor opened beneath us.
We were flung into a hidden passageway, air whistling around us as we were dragged down, falling for what seemed like hours, ending up in a tangled heap at the bottom. It would likely have killed a mortal, but none of us were seriously hurt.
"Bastard," I muttered, trying to extract myself from underneath Eurydice.
"I don't think he was trying to kill us," Persephone said thoughtfully. She was already standing, tracing a hand over the walls of the underground cave.
"There's only one path we can follow," she said. "Do you think Charon was trying to help us?"
"Who knows," I said grumpily, finally extricating myself. "You never know, with the clowns. But if we don't have a choice, then lead on."
Orpheus nodded thoughtfully. "It appears practical," he said simply.
The underground tunnel, lit only by the scattered glare of an occasional powerup—the powerups only affected Knights, we knew; what we didn't know was why they existed in the first place—continued for what seemed like miles, under deep stone and into depths I barely knew existed.
"Can we stop? My feet hurt," Eurydice complained.
I turned to her, a sharp retort on the tip of my tongue, but I realised that I was equally exhausted.
"Fine," I said, slumping against the wall as Eurydice plumped down into an undignified squat next to Orpheus. "We can rest, for a while."
Persephone was staring up ahead.
"There's light," she said. "I think it ends soon."
"The path forks, and gets smaller." Eurydice squinted at it with narrowed beady eyes.
Persephone stared. She was panting—I could see her chest wobble up and down—but she looked interested. "I might…go see," she said. "Check which fork we should take, while you're resting. Elysia, do you want to come with me?"
"All right," I replied. I didn't want to appear weak, and I did want to know where we were.
The tunnel split into two, one narrower than the other, that one with more light coming from it.
"Down there?" Persephone asked.
I had already crawled into it. It was difficult to fit and I felt the stone scrape across my elbows, but I thought I could manage.
"We're still in the Circus," Persephone said, whispering behind me. "Near Googler's domains, I think…"
She was stating the near-obvious, but I imitated her tone of voice as I replied.
"Kilobyte's using this area as a headquarters," I said, remembering the clown's words.
Kilo, Greek, thousand, teacher slamming ruler into desk as he lectured the class, one thousand eight-bits¸ I remembered, the unfamiliar thought spooling across my mind, and I wasn't sure of its origin.
I saw the beginnings of a checkerboard design ahead of me, the tunnel narrowing into a small peephole in the wall, and stopped suddenly.
"What?" Persephone whispered.
"Dead end," I whispered back, leaning towards the small opening. "Not sure who's on the other side…"
The room was large, painted in a crazy checkerboard pattern that drew the eye in every direction, and a few zombie-clowns aimlessly wandered about, howling.
What really caught my attention was the mortal in the cage. He wasn't screaming, just sitting with his arms and legs curled into him, his eyes wide and staring.
So that's a human, I thought, and I knew it was my own. Not very impressive, but we have little enough to boast of ourselves.
He'd have been fairly tall if he stood up, dark-haired and with skin a shade darker than the two Knights', on the slender side, attractive by our standards, I supposed. At an age, too, that most of us weren't; he wasn't ancient, ageless, or youngish. Or dead. Yet.
Persephone put a hand on my shoulder. "Who's the human?" she whispered.
"I…don't know," I replied. "You think he knows anything?"
"More than Kilobyte, I think," she said, making sure to keep her voice low at the mention of the name. "He's human, and Kilobyte's going back to his world…"
"Then we need to talk to him. Somehow." Our world is changed, and Kilobyte's not going to tell us why. We need to know. No matter what.
There was a sound, and the clown-zombies scattered away. We both stared as Kilobyte entered the room, an imposing figure, taller than any of us. Taller, even, than Lord Fear, who had made up for in height what he'd lacked for in girth. There was a woman too, standing behind him with her head bowed, a dull-grey band the same colour as his costume around her neck. I knew her, I thought, and felt sickened at that. The traitor. My former mistress.
Kilobyte reached a tentacle into the cage, watching with amusement as the human tried to avoid it.
"Prepare to take us back, programmer," he said. "I've sorted out everything I need…"
He gestured to the woman, and she materialised a crystal ball in her hand. Roughly grabbing her wrist, he spoke into the crystal.
The message would go to the leaders of the game-areas, I knew, those who remained.
"You will remain here until I am able to summon you to the mortal world by the power of the amulet," he said. "I will not tolerate treachery—" he spared the woman a brief glance, though she didn't react.
She's still a minion, I decided, obedient and submissive and silent, with nothing but emptiness behind her eyes. She'd have been beautiful to some—she always was—perfect form trained into compliance, but to me there was nothing to consider attractive.
"—and I do not think it will be long before you will hunt for mortals," he finished. "I rule this dimension, and I believe I have made myself clear." He suddenly dropped the woman's hand.
"I'll need a computer. A keyboard. A way out of this cage," the programmer said sulkily. "You need me, Kilobyte."
"I have the power to destroy you, master," Kilobyte warned. With a gesture of a tentacle, he placed a mortal device—letters and numbers set in oddly arranged rows—in front of the programmer. "How long will it take?"
"I'll need time," the programmer said bitterly. "I never thought I'd have to get myself out of the Sixth Dimension."
Kilobyte laughed. "You'll get more than yourself out of this dimension," he said, and with another gesture of a tentacle placed shackles around the programmer's wrists, binding him to the bars of the cage. "You won't leave until you've taken me back to the mortal world."
He swept out of the room, and after a moment the woman followed him.
When I was sure they were gone, I drove a knee into the wall.
"What are you doing?" Persephone whispered.
"We need to talk to him—" I pushed on the wall again, trying to make a way through—"and this seems like the easiest way. Before the guards return."
Persephone sighed. "You won't be able to get through this," she said, but joined me anyway. "We should get back to the others, find another way around."
"You're…wrong…" I said, grunting with effort, and as I shoved the stone crumbled and we both fell onto the ground, in front of the mortal's cage.
He stared.
"Who are you?" I said briskly, raising myself to my feet and dusting myself down.
"I was the Master Programmer," he said, sounding slightly hysterical. "I created you and this world and Kilobyte." He paused. "Rick Hummel."
"You created us?" Persephone exclaimed. She stared around her. "Of course, that…"
It made sense to me too, I realised suddenly, the world seeming to blur around me in a kaleidoscopic spiral.
This world. A game. Not real. I'm not real. No. My name is Elysia, and there's a me who's thinking this, there has to be…
"This was a computer game. Something human kids did for fun. It's not real, this whole world isn't real," Rick said, his voice beginning to get louder. "The colours and the shapes, haven't you noticed they're all wrong? It's bright here, more vivid colours than you ever get on Earth, but there's no detail to it, nothing beyond the surface, just a program…"
It's a created world and I was created, but there is an I even if it was a mortal slave for some time, isn't there some human saying, Latin, Descartes, cogito ergo…
"We get it," I interrupted. "So, that's why Kilobyte wants to destroy mortals."
"Because we created him," Rick said. "You were all slaves to us. To me. Worse than that really, because you never had a choice, not that any of you do anyway. He'll destroy our world and everyone in it, not so I get to rule it but because he wants to…"
We were slaves, mortal toys, creatures of the imagination brought to life in cyberspace...
"That won't make him any less of a slave," Persephone said thoughtfully. "He was still created."
"I see his point," I said, hands clenched by my sides. "What you did to us was worse than slavery. I'd follow him, if he hadn't chosen to try to destroy us."
"He thinks of you people as nothing more than slaves," Rick said quickly. "He'll only use you as minions in his fight, I didn't program him for empathy…"
Kilobyte's the master now…
No. Not of us. Our sector was destroyed after a traitor's folly, and we were sent to wander, minions no longer…
"We know," I said. "And we're not minions, any more. Our names are Elysia and Persephone, and we are free."
He looked thoughtful. "You're from the House of Illusion, aren't you? I wondered if you people would be affected by her. That was interesting, really, human emotions starting to kick in…but I digress. Are you going to help me out of here, since neither of us like Kilobyte?" He stared hopefully at us, raising his chained hands.
"Kilobyte's too powerful," I said. "Only when he's gone will we be able to gather support."
I turned to Persephone.
"We're nobody's slaves," I said, the words spilling out of me in the excitement of a sudden realisation. "Kilobyte's leaving this dimension. So is the programmer, and most of the Powers. We can find others like us. Show them that we're people."
Persephone nodded. "We were born slaves…" she said. "We can't change that." A light grew in her eyes. "But we can change our choices."
"Nice talking to you, slavemaster," I said, turning away from the programmer. "Good luck bringing your master back to your dimension. Keep him there, won't you?"
"I'll tell him you're rebelling," the programmer said, desperately. "You have to free me!"
I felt nauseated at his words, a weak man spilling everything he knew simply for the sake of his precious freedom. No wonder he longed for a release; he'd been accustomed to choices all his life, an option suddenly taken from him that was nothing like the heady excitement that was just beginning to swirl in my brain.
"He won't believe you," I said, and started to walk back through the tunnel. "He thinks he destroyed us, and he has no power over us anyway. By the way, was it you to whom Mr. Delgado hammered in the precise definition of the Greek prefix 'kilo'?"
I heard a slight gasp from Persephone, and turned to see the zombie-guardians approaching us, ready to fight.
The human laughed.
"I could have helped you," he said. "I know all the cheat codes. Too bad, isn't it?"
A/N: Lightning Flash, thank you for your kind feedback.
