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Monster might not have been the right word to use for them. They were
amorphous blobs that shifted their shapes as they moved in unpredictable
ways. They were mostly a navy blue, though hints of other colors randomly
appear like twinkling stars. They had no faces and no limbs, but they were
heading right for the trio. Mateo didn’t know if Romana and Boyd were as
worried as he was, so he took his eyes off of the apparent attack to study
their faces. They both looked just as surprised as they stood up from the
picnic blanket, and tried to back away. This was evidently not normal.
There were more monsters behind them, coming from up the ridge, in the tree
branches, and even from burrows in the ground. The landscape and foreground
objects, like the picnic supplies, started flickering. The waterfall moved
backwards, and then forwards at superspeed. It wasn’t just that there were
monsters in this world. It was that the world itself was unstable. The
simulation was clearly corrupted. They would have to take it out of Romana’s
head. But first, they had to find a way out of it. Any amount of time could
have passed in the real world for them. She was not in control anymore.
Perhaps she never was.
“We have to get out of here,” Mateo pointed out as they were running through
the one gap they found between the monsters. “You leave first, Romy. I’ll
follow.”
“She can’t leave,” Boyd argued.
“I don’t know if you’re real or not,” Mateo said to him, “but if you love
her like you’re supposed to, you’ll let her save herself. I don’t know where
you could go, but—”
“No, it’s not that,” Boyd argued. “The nanites are in her brain and body.
She can’t simply log out. Whatever is happening will still be happening, and
could still be damaging her. But at least here, she can see what’s going on
from the inside.”
“Our friends don’t necessarily know that something has gone wrong,” Mateo
reasoned. “We have to leave so we can tell them, so they can solve it from
their end.”
“You go,” Romana urged. “Tell Ram and mother. I will stay and maintain the
link.”
Mateo stopped, and stopped her by the shoulder. They had covered some
ground. “That doesn’t make sense. You need to be able to talk to them about
what you’re feeling, and what you’re thinking. They need to be able to ask
you questions. I will stay here.”
“Time is different when she’s not here,” Boyd explained. “I don’t have to
wait a full year for her to come back, but I do spend some time alone, so I
live more like a normal person, instead of a program that she just turns on
and off. Whatever these things are...”
“They could be messing with that.” Mateo turned back to his daughter.
“That’s why you need to go. Please. We’ll take care of each other. If he
were the original Boyd, or if he’s not; it doesn’t matter. I don’t know how
to test for that. I have to assume that he’s a conscious being, so I will
fight for him like I would anyone else.” He waited. “Now go!”
Romana gave Boyd a hug and a kiss, and Mateo only a hug. Then she
disappeared.
“Do you have any idea what these things are?” Mateo asked. “Can we fight
them?”
“I wouldn’t know, but I wouldn’t try. They might kill you. Just by touch,
they might genuinely destroy your IDCode, leaving your body an empty husk in
base reality.”
The monsters were closing in on them again, so they started running off
again. “Can we simply shift to a different environment?” Mateo asked.
“Anywhere but here.”
Boyd extended his hand, then transported them away when Mateo took it, but
no matter where they jumped, the blobs were always in the exact same place,
relative to their positions. The blobs could pass through solid objects, so
the only way to stay ahead of them was to run. The humans had to keep
running for a week before rescue came.
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