Complete Atopia Chronicles

“I guess it would be comforting, though, to give in to faith, especially if you really believed in some sort of supernatural evil,” Martin said reflectively as we reached the outskirts of our camp. “But really, what’s it all for?”

“Now you sound like you’re talking about the meaning of life,” I replied.

Crap, he was all over the place and I needed his head in the game, not distracted with metaphysics. He’d been terrible in the gameworlds lately, and I could see why with all this stuff floating around in his head.

I checked my dimstim stats and my fans weren’t digging the philosophical talk. I’d better cut this short and get to the blood and guts.

“Martin,” I said, turning to him and smiling with brotherly love, “I will share with you my personal philosophy on the topic.”

He shrugged and smiled as we bounced up and down. I began my performance.

“First off, you can’t answer the creation question. You need to double think it out of your brain.”

We trotted along the front line of my amassing warriors while I let this settle. Martin took out one of his daggers to inspect it.

“Second, the only meaning to life is the one that you give it,” I continued, “and don’t let anyone tell you any different.”

Martin considered this, nonplussed as he tested the edge of his dagger. I’d saved the best bit for last.

“Finally,” I opined grandly, “we will never resolve our existential angst in our identity world, and this is why we play out here.”

“What, like an escape?” he said, crinkling his nose, rubbing the dagger against his stubble.

“Not just an escape, my friend, it goes much deeper than that. Out there, at home,” I said, pointing towards the sky as if we’d descended from it, which in a sense we had, “you can’t get a satisfactory answer as to whether there is a Creator or if there is a meaning to it all. If you really sit down and think about it, it’ll just give you a headache, right?”

He shrugged his agreement.

“Here, though, in the gameworlds, in this world—there is a definite Creator. Whoever built this game, they are the Creator here,” I explained. “And there is a purpose—whatever it was they designed the gameworld for. For instance, today, we kick the shit out of the Tatars. That is the God–given purpose of existing here today and I know this for an indisputable fact.”

A smile began to creep across his face. He put the dagger away in his vest.

“The kicker, my friend, is that this isn’t just a game. If you believe, if you truly believe, then this place becomes real, and we know God and his plan intimately.” I raised one hand into the air and wagged my finger. “So to answer your original question Martin, this is real.”

Martin smiled ever wider. I was enjoying it, too, and our audience stats began to gain. My body surged with excitement, and my disbelief melted away into this reality. Sid, Robert and Vicious joined us at the center of the massing troops as I finished my monologue.

“This is not just an escape my friends, this is not just a game!” I shouted. “This is not just entertainment! This satisfies and solves a deep seated existential pain that cannot be answered in any other way!”

The excitement grew in Martin’s eyes.

“Martin!” I cried, “are you with me?!”

I raised my saber and bow, reaching skywards into the early morning sunshine. A flock of birds took to wing far in the distance.

“Are you going to kick some existential ass with me today?”

“I’m with you Bob!” Martin screamed.

The warriors around us roared, and with that, we galloped off towards the massing Tatars, surging once more unto the breach.

“Today, we ride with God!”

My army thundered across the steppes and into destiny.

2

WHAT WAS I AGAIN? I felt funny, disconnected, discom-BOB-ulated. Giggling, I looked down at myself, trying to focus my meandering mind. I had the shape of a giant yellow blob…wait, more like a giant yellow BOB…heh heh heh…with plastic skin, floating amid other aimlessly drifting blobs. Taking a deep breath, my blobness expanded and then contracted.

That was very satisfying, I thought, so I did it again, and a sense of relaxation began to soak through my membranes. My consciousness slipped backwards and sideways through time and space.

Another smaller blob, blue, collided with me, interrupting my introspection. The blue blob took a liking to me, and like two oil drops meeting on a watery surface, it began to merge into me, its blueness fusing with my yellowness to produce a bulging green smudge on my side. I tasted fresh blueberries in the back of my mouth.

Reaching out to the other blobs nearby, I discovered that I could swim through the goo and sweep them aside or towards me with some phantom telekinesis, tasting them as I went. And so began the game of collecting the tastiest blobs towards me, generating a flurry of savory color that mottled into my body as I twisted and spun through the rainbow rain.