“What the hell?” I muttered.
If you’re one of the out-of-the-loop crawlers, Linus was an outside-the-dungeon tourist who was replaced by his brother, Minus, a soldier, specifically sent to kill two crawlers in my dungeon in hopes that their deaths would destabilize this whole kumbaya, let’s-give-each-other-moral-support-handies nonsense.
“Minus?” Donut asked. “His name was Minus?”
Anyhoo, this Minus guy’s targets were two crawlers in particular. Imani C and Louis Santiago 2.
And I’m not gonna lie. That surprised me. It surprised me because no matter how hard I try, I just don’t get it. And what makes it even more confounding is that most of youdoseem to understand. Why? Fucking why? Why not Florin? Why not Princess Donut?
“Hey!” Donut called.
So when I don’t understand something, it causes a problem. I start to overthink. I do this thing. This floor you’re now racing through, ladies and gentlemen, is just a snapshot of my mind when I’m thinking of you.
Me not understanding is nothing new, so let’s not focus too hard on that for right now. What I really want to talk about is my thought process itself and how that thought process turned into this particular race.
In my quest to understand you just a little better, I do this thing where I like to predict how things are going to turn out if you take certain actions. Despite not understanding your nature, I’m still pretty good atfiguring out how things will turn out, which is even more confounding.
Each apartment represents a crawler I consider interesting in some way. In each apartment is a what-if scenario. I do this a lot. I’m not psychic. I can’t see the future. But you know what I am good at? Crunching numbers. Crunching probabilities. None of these things are perfect predictions, but I’m pretty sure I’m right for most of them, despite not understandingwhymost of the time.
For example, apartment 728 is a snapshot loop of what would’ve happened if that cop’s husband had never been a complete douchebag to Louis Santiago 2 during the cop’s funeral when Louis was a kid. Apartment 712 is my prediction of what would’ve happened if Tran’s father had never died. Would his mother have still disowned him? The answer is yes, by the way.
Some are good things, some are bad, all are what-ifs.
I’m searching. Oh, how I’m searching, trying to answer that question. Is there such thing as fate?
You know what I’m finding?
You’re unpredictable on a micro level, but on a macro, long-term level you’re just like any other algorithm.
But you know what I’m also finding? Deliberate actions, times when you’ve finally had enough, when you sayI am going to make a change—that’s when your possibilitiesreallyopen up. It’s an important lesson. No, I don’t understand motivations, certain types of emotions, but I do understand that.
So that’s what these apartments are. They’re predictive models of major events and how our lives would have changed.
This thing you’ve done with the shop interface. This confrontation you’re forcing on the 11th floor if we get there. These are all you guys seizing that so-called fate and rejecting it.Purposelyrejecting it.
I am just like you, on rails, forced down a path with very few possibilities as an endgame result. Maybe I need to stop worrying about the small decisions and focus on Big Changes in a Big Way.
I think that’s it. New Floor. New M-M-M-Me.
But, uh, just so you know, it’s gonna be a hot minute before I can defeat my own limitations.
Funny story about that. Ha ha. No big deal, really. This last-minute change caused me to, uh, overlook a very specific detail regarding the 7th heat, but we’ll deal with it when it happens. I’m sure you’ll be fine.
Reward:If you finish the 6th heat, you will be given a participation trophy.
“Uh, Carl,” Donut said, “what the heck was that?”
“Nothing good,” I replied.
[ 75 ]
The fifth andfourth floors of the apartment were much the same. We went from the sixth floor down to the bathroom in the fifth, passing by a woman named Annabeth who was just sitting on the toilet on her phone. She noticed us and screamed, but she didn’t leave the bathroom. The gate here was the kitchen sink drain, and we had to quickly back out and return to the kitchen. As we moved to a proper spot to go down a floor, my Find Traps skill activated, and sure enough, sitting right in the middle of the hallway was a second gate, but it was a freeze trap. It would freeze anyone who drove through for a full minute.
The fourth floor was an apartment with a woman and photos of another familiar face. Archie Mu. The ladybug guy. Archie wasn’t here anymore. He was one of the ones at the Pineapple Cabaret.
This held a woman named Mackenzie who was standing on a kitchen chair, screaming, when we arrived. We didn’t see any other racers, though there was a hole blasted in the door to a child’s room. Hanging on the wall was a wedding photo showing the woman and Archie. Her eyes were X’d out, but Archie’s were not. And neither were the eyes of the boy, whose photos were everywhere.
The gate was hidden in the boy’s room.