Episode Eleven: Death is not the Answer

    A blast of pain surged though Troy's body when he hit the ground then evaporated into nothingness.  Sensing that his virtual body had sustained fatal damage the program immediately ceased sending information to his brain.  Once again Troy experienced the void.  The first time it had been enjoyable, his thoughts and feelings were ones of excitement and anticipation.  This time he found his thoughts and emotions to be a chaotic mix of disappointment, fear, and regret.  Anguish consumed him for the few moments he remained in the void.
    Like it had done before, the void vanished as his brain once again received  information.  Troy took one look around then fell to his knees and began sobbing—he was back at the origin, still trapped in the Endless Frontier.   The tears were both of joy and sorrow: joy that he was still alive, and sorrow that he had not escaped.  Minutes later when he finally regained his composure, he stood and tried to think rationally.
    Why did I come back here? he thought.  William said that I would either truly die, or wake up in the portal.  Well, I guess he was wrong.
    Troy went down to the stream and washed his face so that if William was still at the lodge he wouldn't know that he had been crying.  He found William a short time latter in the main lobby of the lodge.  He had various papers scattered all over the large wooden table.  He was concentrating on some calculations and didn't notice when Troy walked into the room.
    “You were wrong,” said Troy still standing in the doorway.
    “Don't scare me like that,” said William, startled, “I thought you were a hundred miles away by now.  I'm glad your back though. I thought I might never see you again. Why did you come back?”
    “If you had been right I wouldn't have come back at all, but you were wrong.  I died, William.  I fell off a cliff.  The next thing I knew I was standing on the origin.  I was expecting to die, or perhaps by a slim chance wake up in the portal and escape.”
    “That's impossible.  The code I wrote turns off the mind bridge equipment.  Are you sure you died?”
    “I jumped off a cliff, a big one. It was probably three or four hundred feet high. Just a moment or so after I hit the ground I reappeared here.”
    William sat thoughtfully for a moment.  “I honestly don't know why that happened.  It doesn't make any sense to me, but I'd rather think about it later.  Some things have happened that you should know.”
    Troy walked in and had a seat across the table from William.
    “A few days ago another man appeared,” William continued, “His name is Jim Senoma.  Apparently he is Dean's brother.  According to him, Dean is running out of money and wanted help to hide our bodies at a different location.  When Jim refused to help Dean turned on him and trapped him in here with us.  Jim is afraid that Dean will kill us to hide the evidence if he can't get money fast.”
    “Where is he? Jim I mean.”
    “He left that day.  He is trying to escape.”
    “Didn't you explain to him that the landscape goes on forever in all directions?”
    “Actually, he helped me realize that there is a way out.”
    “Go on,” said Troy.
    “The landscape ends just out of sight, right beyond the horizon.  As you know the computer creates the landscape as you explore it.  Well all that landscape is saved on the computers hard drive.  There can only be as much landscape as there is memory in the computer.  When the computer runs out of memory the horizon will stop moving.  You would be able to walk to the edge of the world and step out into nothingness.  The code I wrote for that scenario is similar to the code for death.  You should wake up in the portal.  But now I'm not sure.”
    “Why didn't you think of that in the first week when still had time?” said Troy in a moment of anger.  “No, I'm sorry.  I know you were trying.  At least we know what to do now.  You said Jim already left, chasing the horizon.”
    “Yes, he didn't waste a moment once he had a glimmer of hope.  But as I said, I'm not sure if it will work anymore.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because, when you jumped . . .” William's mind froze on that word as he realized that it meant Troy hadn't fallen by accident.  Deciding not to bring it up he quickly resumed talking.  “When you died the sensation didn't cause your brain to stop functioning.  Which means, according to the code I wrote you should have woken up in the Portal, but that's not what happened.  You are back here.  The code for the horizon is practically the same.”
    “Just curious, how much landscape can the computer hold before it runs out of space?”
    Humph.  William waved his hand at all the papers on the table. “I've been trying to figure that out for days.  The truth is I don't know.  At first I thought it was more that we could ever explore in a lifetime, but my rough calculations have given me a little more hope.  Depending on how many hard drives Dean's assistant connected, the total landscape could be anywhere from roughly the size of Ohio to as big as the entire continental US.  It also depends on the kinds of landscape the computer generates.  Ocean, for example only takes about half the memory per square cubic foot as rock.  However, a complex structure, like a tree,  takes more than double the memory of rock.  Every time I try and figure it out I run into so many unknowns I end up getting nowhere.”
    “So, any day now Dean is going to kill us all, and our only hope is to force the computer to generate more landscape with the slim hope that we will actually fill the hard disk space.  And even if we do, the horizon is likely to just send us back to the origin,” said Troy.
    “That about sums it up,” said William.