Page 290 of Light Leech

Not as all-knowing as you act, bakuh?

The swine snorted, each laugh a draining echo until the sound of capitulation cries drowned him out.

Perhaps my strength was in not understanding this and accepting that. I didn’t need evidence of the end or an explanation of the present. Regardless of the relief of this conclusion, the continual analysis tired me.

The familiar exhaust I had felt while running up the stairs returned like a tide rolling in. Moments of clarity and mental fog pushed and pulled as I fought to keep up my momentum. Ralia kept pace, showing no signs of exhaustion. Focus, or the lack thereof, kept her face still and focused straight ahead.

The hall continued with no sign of change. When it came after what felt like an hour of running, it was not gradual, but as if in the blink of an eye, our surroundings shifted.

We now ran in smaller groups stretched out across multiple rows of cubicles. Their walls divided us with neurosets on desks and corporate posters with passive aggressive statements of control. Though this scene was darkened by the light-headed structure of the neurocore, it was easy to see this for what it was.

We were sprinting through an office building.

The people who sat at their desks paid no heed as we ran by. The business itself was nondescript, but I could tell this was one of those places where Water Hill’s failures would fill space.

The building was not endless like the previous corridor. After a long stretch, we emerged and ran through a parking lot, past a row of skyscraping apartments, then back to the parking lot and through the office building once again. Everything had the dark neon cast of an artificial world, but the idea remained the same. I was running through a repeating workday and felt my mind coated by the thoughts of a standard corporate employee whose single motive was to impress his superior.

Clock in. Clock out. Repeat. Repeat the same job with my mind tapping in and out of the neuroset.

Just as there had been with the tunnel, there was no end in sight. No reprieve or hint of retirement aside from death.

One of the competitors ran right, choosing to jump through the window rather than continue with the group to the next work day where the only thing we were promised was a token of appreciation to distract us from the fact that we would never receive a raise.

I knew I was no employee, yet I felt the frustration of decades of labor where my only rewards were disappointing paychecks and a jacket with the company’s logo.

I watched the defecting competitor smash through a veil of red light that shattered like glass.

My pace grew lethargic as I focused on the man who had ejected himself from the race. He did not fall, as anyone would after leaping through a window, but disintegrated. A digitized scream broke the dense silence of the race as his form broke into red pixels that flickered like fireworks.

“Pet!” Ralia shouted.

I focused on Ralia as I quickened my pace to reach her.

We glanced at each other, now side by side again, as we ran into the next business day.

Years of endless work at the corporation passed until we passed through the office for the last time. I knew that only a mere hour or two had passed, but the cognitive fatigue and the attached experiences of a corporate slave argued otherwise. It reminded me of the life I thought I had lived with Naoma and our kids, but this illusion was a lot easier to see through.

The cluster of runners had spread wide as some began to walk and others chose to end their race prematurely. A vivid memory of the first man to jump through the window plagued me. Each subsequent scream was just as painful, leading me to wonder if there was any chance their consciousness had survived the unapproved capitulation.

The result did not matter. I could not lose or surrender if I wanted to. I did not trust this Test and therefore, did not trust that there was any safe exit besides victory. Even victory carried no promise of safety.

Our pace had slowed to a jog, matching those around us as we ran through the tunnel from the beginning. We were far from the front, but I had seen too many choose to walk or end their course for me to think that we were at risk of elimination.

If I had learned anything from my time since receiving the Bite, it was that assumptions and unchecked trust lead to dire consequences.

I felt like I was back in school, trying to grasp a plethora of new concepts at once. No, that was a gross understatement. I had been given years in school. This felt more like having the world’s true state revealed to me and the information regarding the Luxists, Gui, Gong, the old earth, and every related component shoved into my mind in an instant while being expected to understand it. The feelings of self-hatred for not being able to comprehend it all returned. How were we expected to tell the Earth that this was a prison for some world-consuming god when I didn’t understand that myself? Recalling the memories of the Luxist’s reveal prior to leaving Arabasia, I understood what I was facing in this race.

The walls were no longer monochromatic. Blue lines formed throughout them, including the ceiling and floor, then broke into fragments which then formed into shapes. Characters. Words.

Everyone stopped where they were. Looking around, I saw the same confused frustration that I felt. No one could move.

Until the woman before Ralia did.

Her eyes were on the floor, watching her feet as she walked.

Another man did likewise as he faced the left wall.

More joined in, focusing on their individual walls of choice as they kept a steady walking pace.