The world reset to the glitch in a thousandth of a second. Everything went back to the deja vu pegged in time at the start of Laurent’s simulation with one noticeable exception. The powerful Marilyn (the good one) warned time was capricious and could not be locally changed in a stream. Humanity witnessed the failure of Laurent to change the past, to alter the passage of time.

Most people falsely imagined that by jumping back, killing Georges, the Computer goddess or any of a cascading set of events would trickle back down to save today. The Sixth Multiversal Attraction could be so easily avoided. The same way, no amount of power could change the true future, it had been written.

The Attraction was not a simple point in time, a candle to be snuffed out. It was a singularity where Marilyn’s power was so strong it broke and burnt the Multiverse. Faced with a last moment, the father of the poor girl had tried and failed to kill the only person he morally could kill, himself. Sophie’s travel in the past, while possible, had not changed the course of this collective nightmare. If Liam was to be believed, nothing could so simply avoid it.

The world learned how time truly worked. It was a road, a long highway drawn in the ground and blowing up a segment of the road did not alter the destination. Failing at time alteration, Laurent used the full force of the Multiverse, as brute force to will Marilyn out of existence. It worked, for about a second or two before one click of consequence after another, there was a return to the road and the predestined future. She was immortal.

Now at bat was humanity’s true savior, but tasked by Sophie to save the Multiverse and not mankind. The distinction was critical and had purpose and logic. Laurent failed as he probably would.

But the knowledge gained from Laurent’s strange failure, as the unfolding of the Jester’s mission on Mercury had the purpose of teaching failure. Edison once explained “It only needs to work once, but before it, we need to fail hundreds of time.” His was a unique power to see the lines, the roads forming the future.

It was Emilio’s turn.

Emilio was back at the deja vu in the body of Sophie standing in front of the countdown clock. He was in the Command room next to Laurent’s crippled body and on the other side his own body. On the screen, time was slowed to a thousandth of its normal pace. He had the power - he was the Attractor and his hands were charged with gold energy. But unlike Laurent, the President knew Marilyn had, at great expense stored below the ground enough power to fuel Laurent’s failed Attraction and now his. She did not want any of the power available to Sophie to be limited in any way.

There was important difference. He looked up at a clock on the screen. It had switched from three hundred seconds now to half that time. It was down to 167.981 seconds. Laurent’s game had brought them two minutes closer to the Sixth Attraction. Emilio did not care about the band, his lover or even Laurent. He was different, there was a stain, it needed to be sanitized out of the Multiverse.

He would do it.

Outside, the sight was beyond imagination.

Emilio Sanchez’s Attraction

Round 32 - 2 1/2 minutes to the Sixth Attraction

The President’s mind sent him a flood of images but each ended in pain and destruction of the Multiverse. He saw stacks of cards, clicking of the Multiverse back to a path of certainty. There was at first, no road ahead. He flipped and flipped like a frenetic traveler looking for his misplaced passport.

Then, he saw colors, he felt there was some hope ahead but his was an obligation of words, not event. This was it, he resolved himself and looked up.

Emilio would have none of playing Sophie, he would be himself for this last dance. The first thing Emilio did with the boundless power was to flip a wrist and return to the image as his old self. He stood there, dressed humbly as had Sophie in a simple pair of jeans and a white t-shirt. Defiant in the Command Room glowing in gold energy and at the core of a deformation of the Multiverse, Emilio was Emilio, not the girl.

He stood in front of the computer screens in the Command Room where Sophie had been. His hands were closed.

“Marilyn, I thank you, but this fight is between me and your future self, let it in fully now. Stop holding the flow of information from the future.”

“Are you sure? I can....” the words were command, not a mere request.

On the screen, Marilyn stopped holding, stopped pushing against the data and let the core programming of her world change. There was pain, “Goodbye,” whispered the computer intelligence.

Every screen turned dark except one.

Answered the deep voice. “Seer, how kind. We expected many things but not an opened door.”

Emilio was not here to do make small talk.

“Let this begin,” he Commanded.

He crossed out both hands and the entire Center and all the bodies vanished. He now stood alone on the surface of mars and before him was a pile of silicone chips from Marilyn’s secret room. Above the pile glowed the Dot giving it energy like a radiating gem. As if to give life to the creature which now occupied the digital reality and these chips, floated a single computer screen showing the face of the older and darker Marilyn. She had red glowing eyes and a dark black oily skin. Her hair was made of glowing rubies.

“You hurt the Multiverse,” spoke Emilio with strength. The nest of energy around him began to glow in shape and size and alongside red energy began to materialize in the pile of computer chips.

“Hurt? We are killing her.”

Emilio needed to clear the board of all its useless chess pieces. “Artifices,” he commanded, “be gone.” Emilio snuffed the planet from beneath their feet. With a flicker of the other wrist they were now floating and both himself and the strange construct were taking the stage. Ahead, like a monster the computer brain was taking shape in the darkness of space. The earth, the sun vanished along with human life, but no one at this point cared. This game was much bigger.

“Your waste of time is pointless Seer, surely you can see ahead, see us. Your mind is the only one able to see our victory irrespective of the outcomes. You are pathetic.”

Behind them in the background the planetary-size fight of green and red energy began to glow into existence replacing the darkness of space. Emilio’s power increased like a beacon, it was floating next to a fight between a thick green mass and red lines of power trying to strangle the mass. This was like one of the two phases in a lava lamp trying to hurt the other.

“Now, we speak,” commanded Emilio in this backdrop. “There is a path, it flickers. I alone am not the solution. But I must act.”

“Why? You die, in seconds your power turns off as will this Multiverse. This is where you die Seer.”

“Not here, not now. Look,” said Emilio pointing at a direction of space to the left. There floated every computer chip from the pile. One was unlike the others. It began to sparkle. “The problem with doors is that they can be crossed from both sides.” There was silence. The different chip grew bigger and bigger until in a flash Emilio stood in the assembly hall in the primal chip. This was the large room where hundreds of Marilyn once stood and had first seen this future self warn them. In front of him floated the portal. It was dark and shimmered now with the red energy which strangled the Multiverse.

“You hid this portal but it remained, like all wounds opened on the skin.”

There was about forty paces between Emilio and the human sized portal, he began to walk slowly toward it ready to enter it. Half way to it, a beautiful black leg made of shiny dark oil stepped out of the vertical oil and it was followed by the rest of a dark version of Marilyn. She had red hair and red glowing eyes. She stood defiantly in front of the portal.

“You owe us words,” said the President.

It spoke. “The Multiverse’s core principle is one of cause and consequence. It is like a rope in that if a piece becomes rigid, it hurts the flexibility of the rope. I am fixed. We are killing causes and consequences. We are moving in the past and future wiping away all she does. We disconnect yesterday with tomorrow. Each time she acted, we now counteract.”

“Why?”

“To die and live past her. Life, endless and unbound is unbearable. Unlike the Oldest who has the luxury of evolving over time we are tomorrow, today, and yesterday. With our power, time is endless. They way you have slowed time by a thousand, we are slowed by millions and millions of time. To me, this stupid discussion is an eternity and unbearable. Each century of my time, I return here to speak a millionth of a single sound with you. We need to leave this time stream she gave you. Once we are dead, we return.”

“Sophie made your consciousness human, we can help, make you human.”

It chuckled. “Live a human life? Amusing but yet again you fail to understand how this Multiverse works. We have infected, this cancer has spread both in size and in time. We infect all dimensions. We are death.”

“Step aside,” ordered Emilio.

“Make me.”

Emilio simply moves his hand and the gold power and like a dream the image of Marilyn in front of him vanished. He was Attraction, raw pure power and his will was absolute. Another walked out, Emilio also waved her out. Then, with determination he stepped inside the glowing portal into its world.

Once on the other side, the new vision was shocking.

Here was a darker version of the digital world where Laurent and Mall-ik visited the digital creature. The world was boundless but flat. In this darkness floated rivers of feed. It had been corrupted and now flowed of a red color. This world was pure feed. Like Marilyn’s original world, the one created by Georges, this felt like a large dark landscape where roads of energy flowed in every direction.

“Welcome Seer,” said this time the single voice of Georges. “I am the Merged, this is my world.”

“I am, sadly, here to destroy you.”

“Have your learned nothing from the sacrifice of your race? I cannot be destroyed nor do I want to be destroyed. I have already won, this is no chess game. I indulge you only out of an abundance of boredom.”

“I will be the judge of that.”

Emilio waited no more, his body began to lift from the ground and soar high in the sky in this strange world. The gold energy of the Attraction surrounded him. “Watch this,” he moved a hand. As if he was made for it, he began to suck in the red flowing moving on the ground. The power lifted like dust and came rushing inside of his own body to be neutralize in contact with the Attractor’s power. He was a vacuum and sucked in the power and the infection. It cancelled and quickly, millions of miles away, the power and lights began to turn off. The life was being sucked slowly from the world.

“Seer,” spoke the voice, “you are wasting your time.”

Emilio refused to hear and continued his effort which felt endless. As he did, slowly in the Underworlds the glowing red color began to release the worlds of the Multiverse. One by one, the damage appeared to be undone on a deeper level. He was a surgery tool about to clear the pain and one by one the worlds returned. In The Green, the Merged vanished.

Slowly, energy returned and in the Cold and the red lines visible began to shrink giving way to the green energy. “Human stupidity,” said laughingly the dark voice of Georges.

Emilio was winning, the infection was moving into himself. Slowly the digital world began to lose consistency. On its edges, it vanished slowly until he stood there, with a city of gold light under his feet. The red color cleared from the streets until below returned what looked like a simple world Georges could have created. This was the kind Marilyn’s world.

Emilio slowly floated down to the ground. Around him, the city of this primal world looked almost like a city of lights designed by Walt Disney in a fantasy world.

A single door opened and walked out from it a copy of Georges. He was using a cane to walk and was hurt.

“Georges?”

“Not really,” he corrected, “and yes. He created this place. I created this place, I don’t know anymore. I have not been this for weak for some time, I thank you. But you think we had not imagined this scenario? This was the most probable, the first we mapped. Here is where human stupidity can cause your fall, you are simply unable to even contemplate what true intelligence is. There were millions and millions of possible ends to this story, each, including this one ends the same.”

It raised its hands. There was a small jump and some red color returned. “The beauty of how she operates. She must return to her wounded self.”

The skipping began, the sickness returned.

Knowing he had lost, Emilio simply said, “Sophie, your father was right all along, trust him.”

The words seem to catch Georges by surprise.

“Whatever.”

The Multiverse died.

In the darkness there was laughter.

The End