"WHAT DID YOU DO?" I shouted. "What did you do this time, Robert!"
"C-4," he replied. "All the C-4 in the world."
"Frack," Aaron muttered. There's no point to quote him exactly here.
"And I also beat the crap out of Aaron," Robert said. Again, not exactly what he said.
"<Insert string of technical sounding insults.>" I know you can make up something good to replace what I said.
"The world is on fire," Jack whispered, his eyes the size of golf balls in shock.
"It's been my life goal," Robert said. "To f'ing murder everyone. But somehow, I couldn't kill Aaron even after dropping him off the Empire State Building."
"Because you're weak," Aaron said, starting to get up. His bruises were healing at an alarming rate, and his burn was no more than a shadow. I realized had completely forgotten about my hand by now, and Cole was practically standing upright. There was definitely something up with my writer.
"Bobby, Aaron can control gravity," I said. "You can't kill him with fall damage."
"But I had him run over by six cars," Robert said.
Aaron smiled. "You can't kill me, can you? You can't kill any of us."
"Well…" I said.
"And why didn't anyone get the speed of light?" Aaron quipped.
"The speed of light is special," I explained. "Whoever has control over the speed of light is, well, basically on par with God."
But I am God of your world, my writer informed me. Controlling the speed of light won't change that.
I was aware of that fact, but in a normal, non-written universe, the speed of light controlled the amount of matter and energy in the universe. It was also the cosmic speed limit, and had in controlling space-time movement. Pretty powerful, if you asked me.
But I wanted to try something first.
"Let's try a surface walk," I suggested. "There are suits, right?"
Aaron nodded. "But why, exactly?"
I sighed. "We're on f'ing Mars. Why not?" I walked over to Airlock 1, the famed airlock that exploded in the movie.
"Okay," Aaron said. "As boring as it'd be with you, I'll go." He started getting up but groaned, staring at his oddly twisted leg.
"You shouldn't be walking in this state," Robert said.
"I take that back," Aaron said, glaring at Robert. "You're the one who's no fun. With gravity, what was I supposed to do with the pickup truck?"
Robert shrugged, as if he couldn't care less. "I don't know. I assumed gravity was all powerful."
I grabbed a suit off the wall and threw it at Aaron. "If you can get into the suit at all, you can probably contemplate going outside," I smirked.
Suddenly, Aaron pushed off the ground and floated in his own personal zero-g. "Gravity, right? All I have to do is change the strength of gravity."
"See? All powerful," Robert said, turning to walk away.
"No," I said, popping on my helmet. I messed with the comm settings until I linked up with the Hab's internal speakers. "The speed of light is all powerful."
Aaron forced his helmet on and floated over to the airlock. 'Okay, let's go then," he said, his comm set just to me.
"Anyone else want to come?" I asked through the Hab.
A mixture of "nah"'s came back, so I pressurized the airlock. We stepped in and Aaron cycled the airlock.
"So, anything interesting?" he asked.
I shrugged. "I made a C++ program that calculates bowling scores," I said.
"Really?" Aaron said. "I made a batch file that makes a window that says, 'Your computer is updating. Do not close this window.' And every 3000 milliseconds, it duplicates the window."
"Ah, a virus," I said.
I opened the airlock and stepped out onto the Martian landscape. Aaron floated off to the left and we parted ways. The radio still essentially connected us together, so there was no reason for us to see the same things.
"I have a question about your game," Aaron said.
"Yeah?" I asked. "What about?"
"How does it work?"
I contemplated for a second. What actually happened was my writer spun a bunch of parallel universes, and in writing, they picked the one they wanted and forced events to take place. Multiple sets of events, or writing pieces, in the same multiverse make up a series.
But I wasn't supposed to tell Aaron any of that. I wasn't exactly sure how much I was supposed to tell an unprotected when asked a direct question.
"It just happens," I said. "I'm not exactly sure what happens, just that stuff does." I decided to take the perspective of one in the universe.
"You know the Dyson Sphere?" Aaron asked.
I smiled, even though he couldn't see. "Yeah?" That was another event, another part of this universe. I think my writer called that set of events Chaotic Rooms.
"That was something like this, right? Except this started at school," he said. "We were on a Dyson Sphere, somehow."
"Yeah," I said. "It was pretty boss."
"I was in control then," he said.
"What?" My writer had written that. They hadn't told me Aaron was protected in that set of events.
"It was supposed to be sci-fi horror," Aaron said. "But somehow, it was just sci-fi suspense, even with the dead ten-year-old and the fan blades. Pathetic."
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
"What?"
"Nothing," I said quickly. "This is kind of like that, except its sci-fi adventure, not as much suspense, and definitely not horror."
"Oh, so you do know what's going on," Aaron deduced. "Why can't you tell me, then?"
That was a question I couldn't answer, yet I couldn't outright lie about it. So I decided not to answer it at all. "Let's go in. The sun's getting low in the sky." The sun was barely past its zenith, but he could tell I was evading.
I heard Aaron sigh. "Okay. Fine." He headed to the airlock and we went back into the Hab in the shadow of the flaming Earth.
"One more thing," Aaron said. "Who gets the speed of light? Is it you?"
"I don't know how to control the speed of light," I said, taking off my helmet once inside. "But I know one of us will."
The rest of my crew, Jack, Jason, Robert, and Cole all rushed to greet us.
"Who?" "Which one?" "Why?" I was bombarded with questions, none of which I could answer. But there was one thing I did know.
'You want to find out?" I shouted. Everyone quieted down. "Team v. team time." 878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU4tPs3vYlo
