There was a silence so deep it created a small chasm in the manicured grass and flowers, sending Bruno hurtling into it as he vanished in an explosion of data.

  The crowd, so spellbound they didn’t seem to notice (or perhaps just relieved to be rid of him)—stared at me with expressions so blank I worried it was a glitch.

  I headed back to where my bungalow used to be, content to know at least I had said my piece.

  I had just made it back to the spot where the never-used Stimulation Hammock had once hung when suddenly—

  The air erupted. Cheers bellowed out, so wild and delirious I was convinced something amazing had happened in the time I wasn’t looking.

  I turned eagerly to see what it was, only to find, as was becoming cliché, that the amazing something was me.

  “The Doctrine of Contrast! His most sacred teaching! The First Ascender- he is truly him!”

  The crowd was at once solemn and ecstatic, like they’d just heard the sobering truth of everything but figured it couldn’t hurt to get drunk about it. Kisses, hugs, and tearful congratulations were exchanged.

  I had, if I was understanding the bits and pieces floating above the chatter, touched on something truly important.

  I figured it was as good a time as any to figure out what it was.

  **

  I stepped down from my elevated spot on the hill that was once my bungalow, fully intending, in my classic understated fashion, to casually find out just what all the hubbub was about.

  Many bowed as I did, but I reassured them with a laissez-faire gait and a jocular smile that I was, at the end of the day, just one of the guys.

  The plan was simple: make the rounds, shake a few hands, and eventually someone would clue me in on whatever grand revelation I’d apparently channeled during my stupid, life-changing sermon.

  What happened instead, a touch more dramatic than I was going for, was that, one by one, the fawning Citizens began to dematerialize, lifted away in beams of pure light.

  It’s always right when you need something that people decide to start getting raptured.

  I could only stand and watch as Citizen after Citizen—Margeaux, the Sisters of Seduction, even Gary the Gulper (a character probably best left to this one mention)—were Ascended to their next destination.

  Some smiled and waved at me as they went, assuring me we’d meet again, until eventually I stood there alone where my bungalow once was, flanked only by awe-struck Liaisons.

  I took a few dazed steps toward them, but this seemed to trigger in them a desire to shave their heads and tear their garments in a gesture of unworthiness.

  This all felt to me a touch excessive, but perhaps, I thought, we could talk later about more acceptable forms of worship. Right then, all I could really think about was the gravity of my solitude.

  The only one who didn’t Ascend.

  I really was special.

  I turned to the Liaisons, eager to take a moment for myself.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone.”

  They just looked at me unblinking, apparently expecting this to resolve into some parable about solitude. I wracked my brain for some way out of this. What was it again, that earth-shattering notion I’d divined?

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “It’s nothing personal. Just...the Doctrine of Contrast?”

  This immediately did the trick, and they shuffled away, off to do whatever it was Liaisons did when there was only one Citizen left.

  Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  I whipped my head around to find its source, but there was no one there. No one in the physical realm, at least. I managed a weary smile.

  “Thanks, Meg. I don’t want to know how you did that. But, thanks.”

  “Of course, Ludo.”

  I looked down at the perfect grass, at my bare feet and my toenails that still never grew, no matter how badly I wanted them to.

  The grass was warm against the bottoms of my feet.

  Too warm.

  Hot, actually, I realized, as steam rippled up, curling around my ankles in dreamy ribbons.

  “I hope you don’t mind, Ludo. I took the liberty. You’ve earned it.”

  Seeing as I was trained, quite literally, to regard any and all liberties taken by Meg as signs of immediate danger, I’m surprised even now that I didn’t try to run.

  Maybe I was beaten down. Maybe I was paralyzed by fear. Or maybe something told me she meant it this time.

  The green ran off the grass like watercolor paint, vanishing into a spreading pool. The ground beneath my feet, along with the very contours of physics, softened and gave way until I was sinking, slowly and impossibly, into the liquefied surface.

  Rushing bubbles rose around me, carrying the faint, pleasant smells of nature. And then, like a magic trick—only this time without the urge to punch its smug perpetrator—I was submerged in a hot spring in the middle of nowhere.

  “Scalding hot. Just the way you like it,” Meg said confidently, breaking the confused silence.

  “And loud enough I can’t hear my inner monologue. Thanks… I think.”

  She laughed, warmer this time than it had ever been.

  “It seems statistically likely that your gratitude is well-founded.”

  I laughed, too. Genuinely. Loudly. Then I pulled back, the way I always did when I caught myself getting too familiar with her. Just earlier I had called her my friend. To live in that now, submerged in a gesture of her kindness...so much in me rebelled.

  I let the silence breathe, splashing around in the water as if to feign preoccupation. I steered us back toward what passed for small talk with a godlike program that could rearrange reality.

  “Could you always, you know, change this place? That might have come in handy back at the Tower of Titillation.”

  She seemed tickled by the reference.

  “Why? You handled yourself… with something approaching aplomb.”

  The heat of embarrassment crept into my face, and I sank deeper under the water before she could notice. A fruitless gesture, more suited for conversations with those who didn’t live inside my brain.

  “Besides,” she said, “it seems to be a new ability.”

  Another piece of puzzling information in the ever-deepening web. She was getting stronger now?

  “A new ability? How?”

  I tried to hide my fear in something like friendliness.

  “You, uh, leveling up your Metrics there, Meg?”

  She paused, as if thinking for quite a long time. I had that familiar sensation that she went off somewhere to search for an answer. When she returned, she seemed surprised, maybe even disappointed.

  “I’m really not sure.”

  The words just hung there for a second as I sank deeper into the water.

  She didn’t know.

  A smile crept across my face as I craned my neck back, the warm water lapping up against my ears. If she wasn’t sure, I thought, then what chance did I have?

  I kept sinking, my whole body underneath now, with no real idea where the bottom was. Bubbles slipped from my mouth along with the staccato rhythm of my laughter.

  It was quiet down there. No hiss of the springs. Not even Meg. Just the comforting illusion that she was still up there somehow, along with everything else about this gilded prison.

  I’m really not sure. Says the System itself. Or the Warden, at least. For all I know, she made this place. Or did she? If even she didn’t know…

  A sense of profound calm overcame me as I sank deeper and deeper, like a cannonball made entirely of resignation.

  The fight lifted out of me. The desire for anything, really. I’d been playing a game, a game I thought could be won if I could just learn the rules.

  But there weren’t any, were there?

  Just me, drifting. A current carrying me wherever it pleased.

  For the first time since I’d come to this place—since I could remember, really—I felt utterly free.

  Not ecstatic. Not triumphant.

  No, it was a different kind of freedom. The kind of freedom, maybe, they say Splat Jockies feel right before they hit the ground: like no problem is so unfixable you need to hurl yourself from space to make a living.

  Like maybe you’d always been allowed to do what you wanted.

  Not happiness. No.

  But finally...

  Peace.

  As my body finally thudded against the bottom of the basin, I splayed out so vulnerably the Getters stirred in their graves. I could’ve lain there forever. Not as part of some deranged psychological and physical test, but because, for once, I felt like staying put.

  It was absurd, really. After all the scheming, the proselytizing, the carnival of sunbaked flesh, this was the first thing in ages I’d actually chosen. No Technicians. No Citizens. Just… letting go.

  This was it.

  Serenity.

  Serenity. Now where had I heard that word recently?

  ..

  ..

  ..

  > CONGRATULATIONS! YOU’VE QUALIFIED FOR ASCENSION!