Chapter 3: Manual Override
I contemplated for about a minute as to whether I should step through the door, and headed back to see Felix. When I made it to his room, though, he was gone, so I just had to trust my intuition and step in. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and walked into the frame. After a few steps, I realized I should have hit the wall behind that frame, opened my eyes, and realized I was somewhere different, standing on a dark catwalk well above the ground. I headed down the walkway and into a door at the other end, wondering just what this room, this whole area was for. This new room had quiet elevator music playing from a speaker resting on some low shelves by the door, two red couches facing a coffee table with a potted plant and assorted magazines, and behind one of the couches a giant window facing down on some dark room with two chairs on opposite sides of a desk, lit up only by a single lamp. Looking around the room, I didn't see much else, it felt like the waiting room of an old doctor's office, or maybe a car lot. I kinda expected to see a CRT on a bulky wall mount playing reruns of Friends or Seinfeld. I sat down in the couch facing the window, and watched as Felix stepped into the light, sat down at one of the chairs, and took out a Modifier.
Francisco suddenly appeared in the other chair, and the two started talking. I couldn't tell what they were saying, I couldn't hear them through the window, so I got up to head back onto the catwalk, hoping for better odds. On my way out, though, I spotted the familiar sight of a Modifier resting next to the speaker. I grabbed it and immediately was greeted by the usual menu. I clicked the window, and deleted every property.
“Don't start with that!” Francisco snapped.
I gasped. It worked, I sat back down on the couch, listening in and trying not to be seen; I didn't want Felix to know I was trespassing like this. “Don't start with what?” Felix asked.
“You're using this town to kill us all, I can prove it! Twitch has done all the math and he's--”
Suddenly, Francisco stopped talking. I looked down on the room again to see his chair completely empty. What was Felix doing? “Twitch... then how about we start with... there you are!”
“Wh—what's going on?! Explai--”
“Twitch, it's just me, Felix! Gosh, you're looking terrible. Are you doing alright?”
“I was doing just fine,” Twitch started before being interrupted by a hacking cough, “until you started screwing w—with things!”
“What do you mean? Here, let me just...”
I heard the click of a Modifier's trigger being pulled and Felix tapping the screen while Twitch ranted. “You're just like the rest of 'em! Y—you're always looking to tear everything apart, ruin my life, ruin all these people's lives, well I can't stand it! Jam magnets around us, reset every day, stop and start and stop an—wait...wh--”
“There you go, fixed you up. Looks like some settings were causing you to age rapidly, went ahead and reset them but kept the rest of you intact. Now, go on?”
“...You're not... with them, are you?”
“Happy Infinity? No, we're miles away. I mean, I used to work with 'em, you must have been buried in the civilization code when I dumped it years ago.”
“Why do you have their code, though? They were never up to any good!”
“Because I honestly thought it could do good, Twitch. Here, why don't we start on the right foot. Please?”
“...Fine, explain yourself.”
“I took the job with Happy Infinity because they were looking for programmers, and I felt like my talents in writing concise, compact code were going to good use over there. And once I figured out about the damage they were doing, I faked my own death and escaped with the code. I've been repairing it ever since to make actual living towns like those all around America, but all neatly stored on one computer instead of across hundreds and hundreds of acres, y'know?”
“I said explain yourself!”
“Twitch, I--"
"N—none of these are answers, just empty words!"
"I'm sorry, I didn't want to do this, but...”
I heard a crack sound, and gasped. I looked back through the window and saw Felix and Twitch still there (Twitch looking much healthier), but he had a distant look in his eyes. “Hello, Twitch!” Felix exclaimed.
“I...”
“Let's start from the beginning. Do you remember anything about your past, any traumas?”
“I... a little, but...”
Twitch looked to be stumbling a bit over his thoughts, remembering memories of when he remembered things, his own mind seemed to be foreign to him. “Well, Twitch, that's all behind us now. I'm Felix, I run a digitized town that's just like a regular town. Nothing bad's going to happen to you there, I'll keep the town safe.”
“...A... are you sure?”
“Positive. Those people who hurt you are long gone, alright?”
“...A... alright. F—Felix, it was?”
“That's right, how can I help?”
“Can... c—can you show me your town, eh...”
“New Infinity? No problem. Give me a couple minutes and then I'll introduce you to a new friend and then we can take a tour of New Infinity!”
There was another click, and then Felix sighed. Twitch was gone and Felix just sat there, thoughts brewing for a long, long minute. Eventually, he brought Francisco back. “--he's going to make sure you can't kill us by kicking you out!”
“Francisco, listen to me. I don't mean harm. I explained the whole situation to Twitch and he was very understanding, after a bit of prodding, but he totally gets that I don't mean harm with New Infinity now.”
“Wh... what did you doto him?!”
“I didn't do anything. Er, anything serious. He's still Twitch, but I had to clear up any misconceptions he had of what I do, he's got a lot of prejudices against all this.”
“You lobotomized him! Wiped his memory! You monster, you sick fu--”
there was another click and I gasped from the shock, everything suddenly felt different. I peered back through the window and looked at Francisco. He looked a bit different, his beard was a bit less full and he was wearing a black shirt with the Doom logo on it. I hadn't seen him wear graphic tees in a while, and that's when I also noticed my nails were painted, which I hadn't done in a ye--
I took out my phone to confirm something. The date on the lock screen said 15 September 2014. Felix, in an instant, had rolled everything back to just after I arrived, just after Francisco and Twitch met. “Francisco, what were you about to say?”
“Huh? What?” Francisco said.
“You were talking about Twitch. What were you about to say?”
“Oh, uh, Twitch told me that this whole town is on a computer, and we need to get out! It's because of you, er, maybe! I dunno, he knows more about it!”
“Well, you're half right, but I'm not to blame. How about we invite Twitch in and we can talk about it.”
“Sure, he knows so much about this.”
Felix got up from his seat and moved it over to Francisco's side, and suddenly Twitch walked into the light. “Francisco... F--Felix, what's going on?”
“Oh, Francisco here had some questions about the town and wanted some answers from a friend. You are friends right?”
“Y...yeah. What was your question, Francisco?”
“You said this whole town is on a computer, right?”
“That's right, but otherwise it's—it's just a normal town. How Felix explained it to me is that it's more or less a regular town, just saved to a computer. Everything else is the same.”
“But what about needing to get out before it's too late or something?”
“Felix corrected me, that's because I used to live on another computer but in the same software, and those people used it for evil. Sounds like Felix wants to use it for good, though, y'know?”
“So this is... this is all a misunderstanding?”
“Yeah.”
“Now then,” Felix said, stepping in front of the desk, “Francisco, would you want to lead Twitch on a tour of the town?”
Felix stepped out of the light, and Francisco and Twitch followed along, exchanging a joke or two and talking about Doom games. Felix stepped back into the light a moment later and called out, “So, Ash, any thoughts on how I handled that?”
“How'd you know I was up here?” I asked.
“Oh, I knew you'd be up here all along,” he replied, "and kinda hoped you would be listening in."
A staircase appeared from out of the window, and I made my way down to Felix's level, realizing halfway down that I had gone back to how I was just before I entered this place. “So what happened with Twitch and Francisco?”
“Well I knew they couldn't trust me anymore but I do know Francisco once did. Unfortunately, I had to wipe a lot of Twitch's memory to get to a point just after I dumped the files for the software, he was a bit shaken up then and after that hated me just as much as he hated Happy Infinity.”
“Why's that?”
“Well I kinda had to stick him in limbo to work on the town, it's the circumstances I had to work with there.”
“And Francisco? A—and me?”
“He trusted me about a year ago, I had to take everything back a year ago. No doubt you were noticed that, too. I've properly introduced the two and I'll be getting them up to speed. I just don't want to see them causing any more trouble, I know Francisco could be a good kid and Twitch just needed a hand to get him to trust me. Any other thoughts?”
“This is morally gray as hell, Felix.”
“Yeah, I know, but I figured if I was fixing the town, I should also fix Twitch's old paranoia about digitized civilizations and the troubles that brought, y'know?”
I rolled my eyes at him. “So as you figured out,” he said, “the whole town is more or less a bunch of rifts leading into New Infinity. I could link them to go anywhere, including this little room I built just the other day, but I'll be sending everyone back through a rift to New Infinity tonight, and they'll get up tomorrow morning and everything will be back to normal.”
“So the rifts--” I started.
“Really old technology,” he said, “dates back to the early 1940s, and recently I've found use of them for this.”
“That's not my questio—wait, 1940s? I've never heard of them before, are you sure?”
“For sure,” he said, “though it was mostly the government using them before. Sometime in the 60s, the plans to them were leaked and anyone with the right know-how and a little bit of electricity can turn people into data and drop them into a digital civ, and there's a lot more you could do with 'em! But what was your question, then?”
“...Y'know, I should probably just do my research. That's a lot to take in, Jesus Christ.”
Felix started climbing up the stairs and I followed him. “Yeah, it kinda is!”
“How'd you first learn of them?”
“Oh, an old friend. I'd tell you that story one day, but it'd have to be kept between just you and me.”
“It's just you and me right now, isn't it?”
“Well, I'd have to know you'd never ever tell anyone the story, my life's kind of at stake there, and right now isn't a good time.”
“Felix, what does any of that mean?”
“Just don't worry about it for now, alright?”
I sighed, kinda knowing in the back of my mind he'd probably never tell me. I took out my phone and left a note: “REMINDER: Felix's rift/old friend story”.
“Now then, at the end of the passage will be the rift in my room. Just head out, back to your room, and get some rest. You should wake up in New Infinity, alright?”
“A... alright, Felix.”
“Thank you, Ash. You've been an absolute saint with me this last year or so.”
I stepped through the rift and immediately found myself taking a step into the computer room. Felix returned to his desk, the rift went dark, and I headed back to my room. I had a lot on my mind about Felix, his old friend, the rift, and really hoped he'd tell me one day, or at the very least it'd be easier to research this sort of stuff than it was to get dirt on his past.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
