LITMIR.BIZ

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held up a hand. “Is this going to involve math?”

      Malik winked at her, and Dekka was caught off guard by the almost maternal feelings she had for him. Shade might be a manipulative brainiac, but the girl had excellent taste in men.

      “I’ll stick to English,” Malik said.

      “Proceed,” Dekka said. Her gaze shifted to Shade and she thought, If you break this boy’s heart, I will personally administer a beat-down.

      “The point is that simulations can be reproduced like any other computer program. So if we suspect that there is a single simulation, we have to suspect that there could be millions. One reality and a potentially unlimited number of sims. Simulations might outnumber reality by billions to one. Which would mean statistically it’s likely that we are not in an original, evolved reality, but in a sim.”

      Cruz returned from the bathroom and flopped down, spilling a bit of her coffee. “Oh, God, are we doing this again?”

      “He promised no math,” Dekka stage-whispered.

      “Basically there would be no way to ever know if you are living in a sim or not. Unless something goes wrong. A glitch. Or maybe a hack.”

      “You think the Dark Watchers are the hackers?” Shade asked for the benefit of Dekka and Cruz, since she knew almost as much about it as Malik did, give or take a college-level physics course.

      Malik shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe we’re a TV show. Maybe we’re a game. Maybe we’re something our three-dimensional brains can’t even describe.” He winced, closed his eyes as if in pain. Sometimes the attention of the Dark Watchers was so intrusive it felt like a kind of pain. After a moment Malik continued. “The question is: Francis.”

      “I can hear you,” Francis said, coming back in, reaching for the overflowing platter of pastries, and pausing to ask, “Can anyone have these?”

      “Francis, eat,” Cruz said.

      “You’re an anomaly,” Malik said, turning to address Francis. “Everyone else who has taken the rock has three things in common.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “One: they’ve been changed physically, given a morph, sometimes vaguely animal, other times . . .” He shrugged. “Second: a power, an ability that defies conventional physics. And third, the Dark Watchers in your head any time you’re in morph.”

      “All except Francis,” Shade said. “Morph? Yes, that whole prismatic, rainbowy thing she does. Power? Definitely. But no Watchers. Why?”

      Malik sighed. “Well, babe . . .” He froze for a moment and shot a guilty look at Shade. “I mean, Shade, that just, um . . . slipped out.”

      Shade smiled, a rare occurrence, especially recently. “You know, bunny, I kind of don’t think our secret is much of a secret.”

      “What?” Cruz erupted in mock surprise. “Shade and Malik?”

      “I’m shocked,” Dekka said in a perfectly flat voice.

      “Anyway,” Malik said, too loudly.

      “Don’t ever try to stop Malik once he’s got his lecture on,” Shade said.

      “As I was saying—”

      “So? How was it?” Cruz interrupted, batting her eyelashes.

      Malik gaped at her in shock, his mouth open.

      But Shade, in a low, marveling voice said, “Like you’ve fallen off a cliff and you’re going to die and then, suddenly, a hand grabs you and hauls you back up.” She made a face meant, belatedly, to make it seem like a joke.

       Well, well, she’s human.

      “So,” Malik persisted, his voice a bit desperate, “The point is if we are living in a sim, then what we always saw as the immutable laws of physics are just so much software, the OS of this universe. And software can be rewritten. The fact is, none of this superpower stuff is possible, not under the laws of reality we’ve always accepted. Someone, some thing, has rewritten the program that defined those laws of physics.”

      Francis had kept well clear of the gentle teasing. Dekka knew she did not yet feel like she was really part of the group, and probably felt young besides.

      “If we’re just some program, then . . . well, what?” Francis asked.

      Malik shrugged. “Nothing changes, really. We cannot help but feel real because we are real, subjectively. I think, therefore I am, as Descartes said.”

      “Who’s day cart?” Francis wondered aloud.

      “No, no,” Shade said, shaking her head. “Whatever you do, don’t get him off on a tangent.”

      “We experience real emotions, real pain, at least it’s real to us,” Malik went on, trying to float above the constant interruptions. “At one level it all doesn’t change anything, real or sim. But . . .”

      “But?” Dekka prompted, trying to resist a croissant and wondering if she could use the Caesars gym without being interrupted by people wanting to get a selfie with a Rockborn mutant freak.

      “But, Francis doesn’t even conform to the ‘new’ rules. She doesn’t feel the Dark Watchers. And more to the point, her power is not limited to our three dimensions. She can move into extra dimensions. Maybe,” he said, with slow emphasis, “into their dimension.”

      They heard the door of the suite being unlocked, and Armo came back wearing a bathing suit, flip-flops, and a towel draped over his shoulders. “What are you guys talking about?”

      “Extra-dimensional space and multiple universes,” Malik said.

      “So, I’m not missing anything. Anyway I just came back to get my shades. It’s sunny and hot as hell, and they serve nachos at the pool. You guys should check it out. How about you, Cruz? Come on,” he pleaded in a wheedling voice, “I need someone to hang out with and I’ve heard all of Dekka’s stories at least twice.”

      Cruz’s eyes went wide and a blush rose up her neck. “I don’t have a bathing suit.”

      Armo waved that off. “Shorts and a T-shirt. Come on. They gave me one of those tent things, a cabana or whatever—I didn’t even ask. It’s got room for like, six people. And they already brought me a massive fruit-and-cheese platter.”

      Cruz said, “Give me a minute and I’ll find a picture I can morph into.” She laughed, and it sounded just a bit hysterical. “You could be hanging out with Olivia Wilde or someone.”

      Armo made a face. “Yeah, see, I don’t know who that is. Come on, Cruz, don’t make me carry you.”

      “You wouldn’t want that, Cruz,” Shade said with a careful neutrality that Dekka recognized as knowing mockery, earning Shade a discreetly hidden upraised middle finger from Cruz.

      “Okay, I’ll change into shorts.”

      Armo flopped onto the sofa, nearly bouncing Shade off, and said, “That’ll take a minute. So in sixty seconds or less, explain this whole space-alien-extra-universe thing.”

      Dekka looked around at them, seeing happy faces. Good. It was good to be happy. You never knew when it might be for the last time.

2	MANHATTAN MAYHEM

      “FOOLS AND THEIR money are soon parted,” Bob Markovic said to his daughter, Simone. “It’s not illegal to profit from people’s stupidity.”

      “No, just immoral,” Simone snapped.

      It

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