“The truth is I never enjoyed living. You know that, Ava. Your mother, not so much,” he says. “So I let myself go in the real world. Heard you speak at my funeral. Beautiful speech, kiddo. You were about the only one who gave a damn.”
“You never liked to keep anyone around,” she says.
“I’m a lone wolf,” he says.
“Whatever that means,” she replies with enough snark to force a smile back on my face.
“I came here to escape. But when I got here, I was unimpressed. Everything was the same. Our world, this new experiment, was no different from Earth. Sure, there were irregularities. Slight alterations that formed an overall narrative,” he says. “But I wanted something different. I wanted--”
“Heaven,” Ava whispers. “You died, but you never got a taste of heaven.”
Her father, lost in thought, stops for a moment. He bows his head as if hit with a truth too hard to handle. This is the first time I see pain reflect in his eyes.
“You caught me,” he says.
“You want to become a God,” she says.
He whiffles his head and continues walking, headed for an old mining town nearby. “No,” he says. “Not a God, but something close. Something without responsibilities, free but aware.”
“That’s impossible,” she says.
But it’s not impossible. I felt that before. What he’s describing is love.
“That’s what I thought, until I entered that secondary realm and saw what was happening behind the scenes,” he says. “My coding skills have deteriorated over time, so I got you to come see for yourself.”
“All I saw was a world eating itself, fueling a nightmare I want no part in,” she says.
“You see, I think it’s bigger than that,” he says, voice hollow. “You want to get rid of me? We’ll do it the right way. We’ll go to the source. The Furnace.”
Ava tenses up, eyes narrowing toward me.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she admits.
“It was the first area Elon built,” Gerard says. “But it threw the narrative off-balance. The characters wouldn’t behave properly, so he hid it somewhere. I’ve been looking for it for ages, and now I think I know where to go.”
“Why bring us?” she asks.
He chuckles. “Because somewhere deep down inside one of you is the key into that place. I just have to find the door.”
“What’s there?” I ask.
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
We do more walking until we reach the foot of that mining town. Past the front entrance, working-class characters from a different time period roam the area, drinking, laughing, as a few brawl near what looks to be a bar.
There are countless agitators here, some loitering, some scurrying, some chatting. Three adolescent men, all of them in denim jeans and white t-shirts, have volunteered to whistle at Ava’s presence. Four more join them, their rugged faces and the menacing hold of their arms combining with their youthful gait convey one monstrous whole.
Over the music, we hear the quick, heavy thud of glass shattering. A woman cackles and shouts, “My word!”
“I don’t like this place one bit,” I say.
Ava is quiet, so I keep near her to protect her, but I don’t hold her like I wish. Ever since we found her father, things have changed between us. The love is still there, but now there are complications threatening its demise.
Her father rounds a corner and nods up at an old motel with a flashing, neon pink vacancy sign. Like everything else around it, the establishment’s facade is attenuating, a sight prevailing as the light fades from the nighttime sky.
Her old man steps onto the patio near the entrance. “I know you think of me as your enemy, Ava. In a way, I suppose you’re right too,” he says. “I’ve never treated you with goodness because I never thought you knew what good was. In the end, it doesn’t matter to me. If I get what I want, you can have what you want. I’m sure you two got a lot of talking to do. Use the night to get that out of the way because tomorrow is when everything changes.”