The Witch of the Castle of Glass

Milly and Rain chatted for hours as the night wore on, alternating between refills of tea and tidying Rain’s shop. Milly felt herself opening up to Rain, drawn in by her kindness and curiosity. She asked Milly questions about her life, her hopes and dreams, and her passions, and she did not make Milly feel small when she had few answers to give to any of those questions.

And Milly learned about Rain. How she was the youngest child of eight, all older brothers who had joined her parents’ butchery business. How she had lasted six weeks in university, quitting the moment she started working at the University’s local student-run coffee joint, not realizing that meant she could no longer keep working there. But her love of coffee and tea remained, and Rain spent the next decade employed by different coffee spots as a barista, staying at each employer just long enough to learn everything she could before moving on.

She saved every penny and three months ago had finally saved enough to open her own place. Rain On My Parade was nothing fancy, but she was proud of it. A collection of used furniture and auctioned-off second-hand equipment, set up in the only location where she could afford the rent. The Castle of Glass.

Milly listened to Rain tell her story, enthralled at her resourcefulness and drive. It made Milly envious, and she wondered if she could have accomplished what Rain had. Could she have broken free from her own soul-crushing routine? “I guess it doesn’t really matter now,” Milly thought, yet Rain’s ambition had ignited something within her.

By the time their fourth cup of tea was empty, Milly knew she had made a lifelong friend, and when she realized that she felt tears forming in her eyes.

“You ok, Mil?” asked Rain.

“Yah, I’m fine,” Milly sniffed, wiping her eyes on her hoodie sleeve, and grimacing at the smear it left behind. “Thanks for caring.”

Rain just smiled and they sat in a comfortable silence, staring out the window at the moonlit beach and the gentle waves crashing onto the shore. Wherever they were, it was a beautiful world.

There was a light in the sky, like a shooting star, and Milly watched it travel across the sky.

Until that light started to grow brighter, and Milly realized it was not streaking across by sky but headed straight towards the beach at incredible speeds.

“Rain!” shouted Milly in alarm, as the object careened into the beach at the edge of the water, scattering sand across the landscape and causing the ground beneath the tower to rumble.

“What the heck was that?” said Rain in shock, knocking over her empty teacup with an errant elbow.

Milly opened her inventory and removed her mallet. With the strength gained from her ring, it felt like it hardly weighed anything, a marked difference from her first encounter with the goblin when she struggled to lift it.

Rain’s eyes grew wide at the sight of the mallet appearing in Milly’s hands, and Milly realized that Rain may not have left Rain On My Parade since the Contest began.

“I’m going out there to check,” Milly said as confidently as she could, standing abruptly and rushing for the door.

“Milly, no! It’s dangerous out there. People died yesterday. There was a giant monster…”

“I know,” interrupted Milly, “but that’s no reason to stay cooped up in the Tower forever. I’ll be back. Save me another cup of tea.” Milly rushed into the lobby and through the Ocean entrance without waiting for Rain’s response.

The night sky above the beach was peaceful, the sound of ocean waves and the swaying of palm trees in the breeze joined in a gentle rhythm that would sooth even the most anxious soul. The sand beneath Milly’s feet, stretching from the lobby entrance to the edge of the sea two hundred paces away, was silky soft, without a single stone to mar its perfection. The stars were bright overhead, a nearly full moon lighting up the beach in a pale glow. The only imperfection of the landscape was the crater that now existed near the water, and the wave of sand splashed against the eastern facing glass of the towers.

Despite her hurry, Milly took a moment to fill her lungs with the vibrant night air before she dashed towards the crater, amazed that she was able to do so even with the shifting sand beneath her. Yesterday, she could never have sprinted anywhere. Or done any form of exercise. The simple walk through the plains with Xavier had exhausted her. But now she was not even out of breath.

“Focus, Milly. Be aware of what is around you,” she told herself, suddenly picturing giant orcas erupting from the ocean to drag her down into its depths. She gripped her mallet tighter and opened her eyes wide as she searched the darkness, looking for any signs of movement but seeing none.

The crater was ten meters wide and not particularly deep given the strength of the impact, as if the object that fell from the sky had slowed just before striking the ground. As Milly approached the crater, she saw the soft glow of fractured light, randomly moving along the ground. The light shone in one direction, then would suddenly change direction or split into multiple beams. Where the light touched sand, the sand became something new. Molten lava or solid stone or crystalline snow, the effects random.

In the centre of the crater lay a milky white orb, the size of a basketball, physically intact and the source of the light that was casually transforming the landscape within the crater.

“It seems…broken,” whispered Milly. Yet she felt herself drawn to the orb, as if an external force was urging her forward by harnessing her own curiosity.

She carefully stepped into the crater, knowing that she should not. She did not know what would happen if the light touched her. Yet she continued forward, one step at a time. The light flashed to her left, and the sand became a sheet of pure glass.

She took another step.

Another beam of light to her right, and the sand became a foot wide swatch of poppies.

Another step.

Milly jumped quickly to the side as the light shone where she had been standing, the ground now transformed to concrete.

“Fuck, that was close,” whispered Milly, and she started to take faster steps.

She was almost there. All she had to do was reach for it.

The light shone on Milly’s face, and in her shock she fell forward, her hand slapping the orb on the way down. She landed on the soft white sand, and her hands started flailed about her body, looking for missing pieces or sudden eruptions of flowers or lava. But there was nothing. The random lights had vanished.

Milly suddenly came to her senses, her curious pull towards the orb dispelled. “What the hell are you doing Milly?” she shouted to herself, as she ran away as fast as she could, leaping out of the crater just as it became awash in a glowing white light.

Milly rolled across the sand and rose to her feet, mallet in hand. She watched as the orb at the centre of the crater dislodged itself and floated skyward until it was ten feet above the crater.

And then a voice began to emanate from the orb, fractured and robotic.

“God Contest Development Log…log…log, Day 1. Access…grant..grant…granted by Oracle. Begin playback?”

“Oracle?” Milly whispered, astonished, “The one from my monitor?”

“Begin play…play…playback?” The orb repeated.

“Umm…yes. Yes, begin playback,” Milly spoke, letting her grip on the mallet relax.

The orb began to spin in midair, picking up speed quickly, releasing light from thousands of tiny multicolored points spread across the orb’s surface. Milly gasped in wonder as those lights came together to create a projection across the crater, a three-dimensional hologram of what looked like a medieval workshop. Candlelight illuminated the oak workbenches spread throughout the small chamber and ornately carved bookshelves lined the walls. In the centre of the room hovered a sphere of pure energy, a kaleidoscope of colors circulating within. And at the workbench at the centre of the projection, a bearded man in a blacksmiths apron rested his hairy arms on the surface of the bench, a tiny cube placed before him. The man radiated power, an oversized hammer of sparkling metal strapped to his back and muscles perfectly toned from unknowable eons of labour.

Then the image began to move, and a deep, frustrated voice came from the figure.

“Do I really need to do this? We never did for any of the other contests. Why is this…oh, fine. I’ll not argue with you, woman.” The man cleared his throat, “God Contest, trial number thirteen. Hephaestus’ journal, first entry. This journal is the record of my…of our…attempts to develop the thirteenth God Contest for species homosapiens. The twelfth contest has just ended after three years, eleven months, and twelve days. There were no survivors, making it another failure.”

Hephaestus laid his head in his broad palms, sighing and taking on a more conversational tone. “Twelve attempts. Twelve cycle-barren attempts. We worked on the design for the twelfth contest for over four hundred years. And it turned out to be no better than the other eleven attempts. Even species Bohidian of the fifth Cycle only required four Contests before they found success and we were allowed move on. You would think we would have learned to do this better over the three hundred and eighty-two cycles since then.”

“Each creation is different, Hephaestus,” came a calming voice, and the projection of a beautiful young woman in a white dress embroidered with moons and stars, and wearing round glasses to large for her face, entered the scene. “You know this. If they were not, we would not have to spend so much time designing the Contests.”

“Yes, thank you Oracle,” Hephaestus said sarcastically, “As always, your insight is invaluable to this endeavor.”

“Oracle,” whispered Milly, absorbed in the scene playing out before her. The woman from the message on her screen.

Oracle gave a sweet laugh, brushing off his sarcasm and resting her hands on his broad shoulders. “Focus on the heart of the problem.”

“The problem is the Nexus made these humans to be completely predictable in groups and completely unpredictable as individuals. Like a hive of bees, if every bee was fucking insane.”

Oracle raised an eyebrow at his language.

“What?” Hephaestus said, “Cycle-barren is a terrible swear. I do not like these humans, but I do like their swears.”

“Focus, dear heart,” prompted Oracle, “time is of the essence.”

“I know that,” spat Hephaestus, “You think I don’t know that? I watched the madness take my brother. I see it gaining hold in the others. I feel it trying to grab on to me.” He gave a resigned sigh. “How long do we have, Oracle, before we are all lost?”

“Based on the current rate of acceleration? About forty years,” she said, as if telling him the weather.

“Forty years? Oracle, the Contests take thousands of years to design and build. This last one was deeply flawed because we only have four hundred years to do it and our High Lord launched it before it was ready. Are you telling me we only have forty years to design what will be our last shot? Our last attempt before the madness takes us all?”

“No,” Oracle corrected, “I said up to forty years. So we had better get started.”

“And if we fail, then…”

“Then this will be the last cycle,” Oracle said, “The cycle cannot end until the humans have victory in the Contest. Only then can we gods move on, leaving this cycle and the madness behind and starting anew once more.”

“Great. Any ideas where to start this design then?”

“Actually, I do,” Oracle said chipperly, “The humans have just invented something called a ‘video game’. They have proven to be remarkable good at them, and they are accessible to a broad swath of their population. I believe we can adapt this model to be the basis of the thirteenth God Contest.”

“I’m sure we could,” interrupted Hephaestus, “If we had another thousand years. But we do not have that kind of time, Oracle.”

“That’s where the human’s second invention comes into play,” she answered, leaning down so her mouth was beside his ear, “Artificial intelligence.”

“What the hell is that?” Hephaestus said, skeptically.

“Right now? It is a concept dreamt up by their writers and a distant glimmer in the eyes of their scientists. It does not exist. But it will in about forty years.”

Hephaestus stared at her without understanding.

Oracle sighed, “An artificial intelligence is exactly what it sounds like. A created intelligence, built into their machines, which can make decisions without user inputs.”

“Oracle, that sounds like what the Nexus does when it creates intelligent species.”

“And it is exactly what we need, Hephaestus. You said it yourself. Humans are too unpredictable. Every time we design a static contest, they fail, because we cannot alter its parameters once it is launched. But imagine a Contest with an artificial intelligence director at its core, able to adapt the Contest in real time.”

“The artificial intelligence could build the Contest as it progressed,” Hephaestus whispered, starting to understand, “We would not need to spend a thousand years designing and building the entire contest. We would only need to design the start and implant an artificial intelligence at its core to do the rest. It could work.”

Hephaestus turned to face Oracle. “So what are you not telling me?”

Oracle grinned and removed her hands from his shoulders. “It is dangerous. And against Holy Law. And building a stable artificial intelligence is impossible with the time we have, so best case scenario the artificial intelligence will only be slightly insane. And about a hundred other downsides. I have a list if you want to see it.”

Hephaestus groaned. “Woman, you are going to drive me mad.”

Oracle raised an eyebrow but remained silent.

Hephaestus sighed. “We don’t really have a choice, do we?”

“No, we really don’t,” Oracle said, her voice soft, “If this Contest fails, it is the end of the humans, of the gods, of the Nexus, and of all things we know and love.”

“Then we should get to work. Now, how the hell do I shut this recording off?”

The images stopped moving and the light faded from the orb, dissolving the scene into tiny motes of light that flashed and disappeared in the darkness. The orb fell to the ground, its light extinguished.

“Milly, what did I just watch?”

Milly turned in surprise. Rain stood behind her, knees shaking as she grasped a wooden club in her hands. Her knuckles were white, and the blood had drained from her face.

“I don’t know, Rain,” Milly said in a whisper, “A memory. A memory I don’t think we were intended to see. I…I think we should keep this to ourselves for now.”

Rain nodded meekly, both woman picturing the utter pandemonium that would erupt amongst the players if this knowledge were known.

There was a sudden click from the orb in the crater, drawing Milly and Rain’s attention. They watched as the orb’s outer casing dissolved away and disappeared into the sand beneath it.

Where it once stood rested a simple white dress embroidered with moons and stars.

And a pair of rounded glasses.