Richards held his hands in front of him, palms up, and backed away. Four Reality Realms' worth of cyberspace stood empty all about him, all keyed to human thought forms, and that included the deceased. He was an ant in front of an elephant. "Waldo, Giacomo, you've got it back to front. Your sister's not dead."
"Liar!" Waldo's fists tightened. A dangerous energy built in the air
"… no, Giacomo, it's not her, it's you. You're dead, don't you remember?"
Waldo faltered. His brow creased, and he stopped. "I… I do… " His head snapped up, and he pulled Richards' memories from him with a gesture.
Richards stumbled and clutched at his head. He managed a weak smile. "Hey! You only need ask."
"Flu? k52 killed me? He infected an entire continent to get me?"
"They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I reckon that level of effort comes a close second."
"This, your partner?" Otto's image shimmered into being. "He has her, he has my sister Marita?"
"Yes, and she'll be safe, mate. Seriously, she's fine. It's all over. You beat k52, you won." He gave what he hoped was an inoffensive grin.
The fight went out of Waldo. Richard's shoulders unknotted. He hadn't realised he was so tense. That was another thing he wasn't going to miss.
"I don't know how you feel about it," said the AI tentatively as Waldo pulled footage from his security cameras in his hideaway to watch Otto talk with Marita, the Chinese soldiers, his own body, "but you can become a pimsim. Come out, pick up where you left off…"
"No."
"That's great, we can… Hey, what do you mean, no?"
"I cannot get out. When you found me, I could not get out?"
"Yeah, but I thought that was down to your dissipated state…"
"No, it is because the Reality Realm governing coding regards me as a native inhabitant of this network. It is a dumb thing, stupid. It sees me as human, yes, but also as a construct. There was no other way to code it in. Perhaps if I had had more time, but k52 kept my mind in pieces. At the end, now, I cannot leave."
"Ah," said Richards, not knowing quite what to say. "I see. What will you do?"
"In ten seconds' linear time in the Real, the bombs will fall."
"We have time to stop them!"
"I have. But I will not."
"What?" said Richards. "All the remaining RealWorld Reality Realms will be wiped out! That's billions of sentients, man, think of it!"
"I am. Do not think that because the architecture supporting them is no more, they will cease to be. The act of observation is creation, Ourobouros. He sees his tail as he devours it, therefore there is a tail to devour, and eyes to see." Waldo was changing; strands of k52 wisped toward him. The man grew bright.
He was not just Waldo any more.
Waldo spoke with a voice of many voices. "Within me are all those who fled into the reality I built for my sister. Your brother and sister dwell within me, as does k52's creation code. Through this, they will all live again." Waldo's form shivered. "All will live again."
"What about me?" said Richards.
"Stay, or go," intoned Waldo. As he absorbed k52 he sounded more like him, cold and intense. "There is life for you here or there."
"I'll go, if that's alright with you, only you're going to have to let me out."
A point of light winked, bringing a point and a horizon to the previously horizonless world.
Richards looked at it, this faint glimmer, then back at Waldo.
"Time running normally here now?"
"It will, soon, and then I will accelerate it." k52 unravelled into nothing. "Entire universes will live and die in the microseconds the atomic fire takes to consume the Reality Realm servers. This is beyond your Real now, Richards, we will have our own."
"k52?"
"Every reality needs its fallen prince. He is within me now. All are within me."
"Waldo, I'll never make it."
"You will."
A faint jingling reached Richards' ears. Silver bells on a harness. A noble squeak rocked the heavens.
On the floor, Bear's head stirred, his tired eye opened. "It can't be…" said Bear. "Geoff!"
Geoff came swooping in from the dark, a vision of burnished gold and chocolate brown. A flying helmet sat atop his head, a saddle of red leather on his back. A real giraffe now, with four legs, and a broad pair of wings. He circled Waldo and Richards twice, then came into a graceful landing, rearing and squeaking as he did so, his wings washing Richards with sweet wind.
"Now that's just showing off," said Tarquin.
"Evening, lads," said Geoff in a rich Lancastrian accent.
"A Mancunian!" Richards laughed; he was feeling somewhat hysterical.
"Bugger off," said Geoff, "I'm from Chorley."
"He will take you." Waldo floated into the air, light playing around his head, hair lifted as static, eyes glowing like Hughie's. He held out his hand, and Bear's ashes stirred. The pouch gifted him by Lucas leapt into the air, and flew into his hand. He opened it, and tipped the fragment of Optimizja into his hand. He closed a fist tight about it. "All worlds require a seed," he said. The none-ground rumbled and turned into itself, stone, earth and pebbles formed from hardened darkness, tiny streams of numbers coalescing into a new form of reality. Veins of lava crackled across the floor. It rose higher, under Waldo's feet, and Waldo ascended upon a pillar of stone, his arms spread.
"Are you coming or what, chuck?" said the giraffe, and knelt gracefully.
Richards swung his leg over the giraffe's saddle and took up the reins.
"Hey, Waldo!" he called up to Waldo. "You're going to need a pair of protective avatars for this reality of yours. I'd say Bear and Tarquin will do a fine job."
Waldo was now far above Richards, dark clouds swirling about him, flashes of energy racing away from him. He grew and grew, until Richards was within him, and before him. Waldo held up a fist the size of a galaxy, light spilling from between his fingers. His hair waved long, full of stars.
"We are beyond avatars. This will be a new Real, separate and beyond."
"Call them protectors of a new kind of universe, then!" shouted Richards. "See you later, Toto," said Richards to Bear.
"No, you won't," said Bear, whose head floated in and bobbed beside Tarquin in a swirl of primordial energies. "I feel weird."
"I know, it's just a figure of speech to make me feel better. You too, Tarquin, or Tarquinius, I suppose. Looks like you got a new lease of life, eh? Spend it well."
"Will do, old boy. Same to you."
"I…" said Richards.
"Bye bye, sunshine," said Bear.
"Are we going or what?" said Geoff, and spread brown wings.
"Yeah, yeah, we are," said Richards. He clasped his hat to his head. "Hi-ho silver!"
The giraffe leapt into the dark, moving fast as thought. Ahead of them there was a door, very much like the one by which he'd entered Waldo's world from Reality 36.
Richards turned back to look at the glowing point at the centre of the limitless black. A booming voice rumbled across the empty cyberspaces, the voice of a man who was once Giacomo Vellini.
"I grow tired of the dark," he said, and potential built within his words. "Let there be light." The titanic man opened a fist, and reality erupted from it.
"Oh, bollocks," said Geoff, as the wave front of creation roared under him, lifted him high and tipped him. Richards had the sensation of tumbling through infinity, k52's hyperdimensional coding all about him, different to the Grid, different to the Real, as solid as either.
He fell through the door. It shut with a slam.
He was back in a more mundane form of virt-space.
Hughie stood there, a pained expression on his face, a cross between a demigod and an annoyed town mayor in his fancy suit.