Eighty-Six Bits

Aparioth sat in front of the expansive table, looking over the cards he had laid down. The table spread out reaching into the infinity, but for a celestial being, space and time were but easily pliable cloth. He fiddled with a dozen thousand of these cards, a mere fraction of the billions that lay before him. He toyed with each, cocking them and flipping them over in some frenetic game with rules so abstruse no mortal could comprehend.

“What are we playing today?” Pharrathorn injected as he appeared instantly next to Aparioth. He hovered over the table, peaking at many cards and picking over them casually until his hand was gingerly slapped by the other Greater Force.

“Its called Humanity, and you know the game very well Pharranthorn. It was your little gambit the other day that cost me close to 15,000,000 cards!” Aparioth shot back, looking long enough into the eyes of his brethren to wipe the impish grin from the other’s angelical face.

“Its just a game, you know….I mean, what fun is it to sit here for two hundred years if we don’t mixed it up once and a while?”

“A war upon the world, Pharranthorn? A World War!” Aparioth glanced back at the table as cards far to his left busied themselves jostling in corybantic rhythm.

“Big deal! They are just cards…I mean they could be socks with eyes sewn on them — they are nothing more than playthings.” Pharranthorn reached down and grabbed a couple of the cards quickly from the table, “Phillip John Marsh, Walderslade, Chaltham United Kingdom; Alice Sarah Carpenter, Montevideo Minnesota, United States….” The Greater Force laughed as he ripped them both in half, letting them tumble to the unseen floor beneath him. Two souls lost as quickly as crumbs from a dinner’s table is brushed unto the floor.

“Enough! Pharranthorn if you continue with this frivolity I will tell father, and he won’t be as casual about the cards as you, I can attest.” Aparioth injected quickly, looking down at the two cards that lay crumpled on the floor. He grimaced, shaking his head. He paused for just a briefest of time, then turned back to the playing field and continued with the rapturous game.

“There must be other games out there far more enjoyable than this dreary one…” Pharranthorn rambled seeing what reaction he could get from the other Greater Force. Aparioth was not going to bite into his jeer, and with that he vanished from the continuum.

***

Doctor MacDougal looked across the bed to his nurse that was attentive to the man laying there. He glanced over at the clock on the wall, reading the time as 3:04 am. He looked back down at the ashen stricten face of the man on the bed, his eyes barely fluttering from beneath shallow pale eyelids. The doctor looked over his shoulder towards the calendar hanging on the wall. September 18th 1907.

“We are losing him doctor,” the nurse said quietly. She busied herself with a tray next to the bed, straightening folded linen, aligning instruments, anything to keep herself busy awaiting the end of the man’s life.

“What does that scale read, minus all but him, nurse Anderson?” The doctor looked downwards, slowly shaking his head. Resolution that there was naught he could do to preserve this man any longer; he too stood there futilely.

“One hundred and fifty-seven..and let me see 6 ounces to be exact doctor.” the nurse replied looking over a finely tuned scale beamed to the bed.

With a gasp the man surrendered his last breath and lay motionless. The doctor looked across to the nurse and waited. Cocking his head, he peered down at the results of his other experiments. The dogs, the cats, and the five other patients he had performed the experiment on.

“One hundred and thirty pounds….and five….and a quarter ounce, doctor!” The nurse looked with pride as she read the scale. “Three-quarters of an ounce! Yes, most accurately … its three-quarters of an ounce.

“Twenty-One grams is the weight of the human soul…..”

***

I sat here last night looking at the five avatars that I had created over the last several years. Each one held memories of a world full of excitement and profound pride.

Amertooth, the Bold; a dwarf who lost his way in the Shargaroth forest yet found his way into the elven city of Thoorush. Mordakki, the Dark Elf, who although of his heritage, still could rise above the rest of his vile race and save the city of Tumble River, and become Mayor for a day. Aye, I still remember the parade the halflings gave to my wizard. Hickups, the Foolish; a young soul that started out with so much promise but faded as he had inadvertently contracted the disease Ghoulish Gout. Moppy and his fun songs that he seemed to pull out of the air, the plucking of his ghetto harp still could make any who followed him run like their were hot coals in the seat of their pants. And Ginger…..ahhh Ginger, created from a night of revelry that soon lost its punch as I realized that I could not stand watching a female troll monk for fifty levels.

My hand danced over the the keyboard. I looked down at the screen, my jaw clenched, my eyes darted from the screen to the keyboard. I stood up clenching and unclenching my fist; my mind raced over and over upon the decision that I had made.

I sat down again. Forcing my hands across the keyboard. I moved my mouse over Amertooth, and clicked. Like slow motion, my world disappeared and all I could see was my brave dwarf looking serenely towards me. The music and jostling sounds of reality turned into a cadence of buzzing background noise. My hand moved from the mouse and hovered over the key. Then I punched it….not just clicking it, but physically slamming my finger down on the DELETE button.

With a WHOOSH reality came roaring back through my senses. Like a wave of Pacific torrent waters, I snapped out of my revelry and saw four avatars standing there, looking at me then to the others of their entourage.

Did their faces seem different? Could I not detect, perhaps, a glimmer of fear and also sadness. They stood there as they had for months, begging me to allow them life within the world. Longing to shake off the shackles of their imprisonment from the Hall of Pride.

Then a thought came to mind. from where it came, I could not tell. I looked at the computer screen, into the lower right…. The clock read 3:04 AM. The wheels in my head began to click and pop like something out of a gnomish nightmare. I stood up and paced quickly back and forth, sitting down several times, then getting back up and looking about with such frenzied desperation. I looked across the room towards the calendar given last Christmas…I looked at it and found that it was September 18th, 2007.

I returned to the computer and looked at my local hard drive. double clicking on My Computer, then on the drive, then onto Properties. I read my capacity: 79,949,717,504. I raced to the Game’s Folder and read the size of Moppy’s ini file: 1,256 bits. Yes, it was one hundred and fifty-seven kilobytes in size.

I returned to my game, and with determination that I have not had in many years, I clicked on Moppy then hit DELETE.

I returned to my My Computer, and with as much trepidation as Hickups had as he walked towards that gravestone in the Crypt of Vaar, I looked at the capacity of my hard drive.

There in shocking relief I read: 79,949,716,334 bytes…… I looked again, then looked at PowerDrive to my utter astonishment it was off by eighty-six bits.

I repeated this each time for my lads and with growing pride and utter hope, each time the results came back with eighty-six bits difference.

It is sad that perhaps my friends are gone, but perhaps not in the way I first feared. Perhaps the eighty-six bits gave me solace to go on….