Hour 33

Even as she asked the question, though it was more of a thought than a question since she didn't currently have a mouth, Emi's mind oscillated painfully. The voice responded, "It's hard for you to maintain a connection with us in such a pure form; let us talk with you in a way you're more familiar with." From the epicenter of the spinal cord, a sinuous stalk, an impossible form hard to describe, ballooned out in a turgid flash. It vacillated between physical and ephemeral before settling with something in between, a bubbling pseudo-mass of repulsive information. The closest thing Emi could perceive it as was a rotating, boiling sphere of blue light. As the sphere opened at the base, the light hit Emi, and it felt similar to an extremely hot shower. A tentacle-like appendage swirled from the puckered orifice at the bottom, its appearance somewhat purple with a blue spiked-like appendage at its end that touched Emi's mind. She felt every emotion possible in that second of contact with the sickle-like protrusion, all the best and worst parts of human psychology. Before she could recover, a gross semisolid growth festered from the surface of the sphere the tentacle originated from, a gurgling anomaly like an otherworldly blister. Then the mass flexed itself outwards and the loose shape formed a head, an ambiguously feminine head. Hair erupted from its scalp in flowing waves that matched precisely how Rico had cut it as color flushed through the face in a wisp of saturation. The head slithered down to Emi with an abstract, almost prehensile neck, and now Emi was staring at herself. The being used this head for communication as Emi heard her voice eerily explain in an uncomfortable tone, one that was hers but also wasn't, "We are a collective, a species that evolved past its physical shackles well before your solar system existed, mapped out our entire galaxy before your planet ever housed life. We spend much time in hibernation but occasionally awaken to feed. We seek out planets with sentient life and connect with them to do so." Emi, speaking with what one might call an internal voice, or the voice in their head, asked, "Connect?" The voice stealing her appearance answered, "Correct, the moment our fungal nerves touched your planet, we became one with every living thing." Multiple small tentacles sprouted from her imposter's neck in an insect-like way as if to count off its assertions, "How your planet functions, its biological hierarchy, even basic communication." Her fake face grinned as the new tentacles clicked in harmony like insects legs and she said, "Our spores mapped out your mouths and listened in on its movements and vibrations. We learned every one of your archaic languages in an hour." Emi, still trying to grasp all this new information, said, "Hold on, you said connection, but I never saw any connection." Her fake face swam around the space of her mind as it spoke, "We are imperceptible to you unless we want to be seen, almost like a 3D organism interacting with a 2D one. Though we connected to your planet with massive tendrils about an hour before the game began, you wouldn't have been able to see it or interact with us." Emi shouted internally, "fine, but what's the point of this game? Why are phones at the center of it all, why a fight to the death?" Her fake head stopped moving in the black abyss around her perception as it explained, "We chose cell phones as the game center point because it was the most popular means of communication throughout the world. Though we observed the Internet is similar to our hivemind as it connects everyone, phones were the most immediate way to connect to the most people at once." Emi pressed on, "ok, but why are you here, why did you orchestrate this game?" Emi saw her face creepily relax into a thinking pose and when it smiled, it terrified her. Her face snickered, "Lifespans. We absorb lifespans from others to add to our own. We used to use our spores to latch onto beings and slowly drain their lifespans, but over time we found the taste uninviting. As we evolved, we found stealing Lifespans tasted better when we forced them to die as early as possible." Emi asked earnestly, "Wait, Lifespans?" Her face cocked its head and answered, "Yes, every biological organism without fail has an expiration date, that is absolute." Emi asked, "So, you're saying if you kill something, you take its remaining life?" Her head cocked in the opposite direction and replied, "Yes." Emi asked, "Are you saying fate is real? All of us have a number, a set lifespan?" The head answered, "Relatively, yes." Emi was silent, and the head elaborated, "Is it that hard to believe? You already know you will, without fail, definitely die someday. But, you can't accept that when is predetermined, at least to a maximum degree?" Emi retorted "That still doesn't explain this ridiculous game! Fine, you eat lifespans, but why did you do this to us? Why didn't you just eat us all from the beginning?" The way her thoughts flowed in such a utilitarian fashion felt wrong, but she stood by her question. The beings impersonating her head spoke, "We evolved past emotions within our hivemind long ago, all our individual insecurities and weaknesses compensated for by others of the collective. The games or mechanisms by which they're utilized change based on the organisms we're eating, but we use them to enhance our food. We don't have to personally kill our food to consume its lifespan; we just need to be connected to it with our nerves." Emi asked, bewildered, "What do you mean by enhance?" Her false face sighed and it angered her, its expression that of slight annoyance, like she had asked an obvious question. Its eyes looked up at her, and it replied, "Make it taste better. You humans do the same thing. You could spend your life eating raw flesh, bugs, and the occasional fruit or vegetable. But you harness the power of the earth and your limited intelligence; why eat a cockroach when you can take tomatoes, yeast, and cheese to create a pizza? That's exactly what we do. We extract life spans to live, but we flavor them, cook and marinate them with emotions. The way they feel when they die seasons everyone differently." Her face changed expressions sinisterly as it recounted, "You saw some of the process, the black shapes of the audience in truth or dare and the spelling bee was partially digested humans from previous games fusing with us. Some take longer to break down their egos, but the ones you saw were weak. Stripped of their humanity they gave into primal instincts." Emi was confused, and silent for a moment. When she spoke, she asked, "You said those black things were digesting humans, so how could we see them?" Her face responded, "Our digestive tract isn't anything similar to you humans; it's a cognitive pathway of absorption. As we played the game with you, some of you crossed pathways with our nutritional ducts, allowing interaction." Emi interrogated further, "You said we all have expiration dates, but what about in the hotel? our time stopped there before the game started." The being reprimanded her, "This is getting tedious." Emi's mind remained steadfast so the hivemind gave in, "The hours you had accumulated from others in the game were paused because the game itself was paused, that just meant your natural hours took over again like they were normally functioning before the game." Emi asked, "wait, if you're absorbing hours, how can we so freely use them for boosts?" The entity laughed, "we still consume the hours you use, it's just the boosts they represented were miniscule, things we could actualize easily. The payoff is a penny on a million dollars." Still not satisfied, Emi shouted, "what about my mom!? She was dead but came back to attack me! Why did that happen!?" Her fake head still being puppeteered by the gangly, stringy tentacle, acknowledged, "Though your physical bodies were real, the hotel was a mental reconstruction. That space connected to all your memories, all the floors endlessly led to doors of your past experiences based on who opened them. Opening that door would bring you to the present-day location, no longer in the mental construct." The head stopped, then finished, "We didn't make your mother attack you, not in your original hotel room or the door that led to your house. What assaulted you was your guilt. Think about it, that neighbor of yours didn't attack you, right? His body was just as dead as your mom's in your kitchen, laying right next to her, but he didn't reanimate." Emi almost felt guilty that Alex hadn't been the one to attack her, that she somehow felt more subconsciously guilty about her mom... But, no, it only happened because she saw her body, it must've triggered her emotions more than she had realized. Emi said, "Fine, even if that's true, you told me we all have predetermined lifespans, so are you trying to say my mom was always going to die? What if she passed the first phase, when did her lifespan end?" Her fake face said, "Of course, some people die before their time naturally expires due to extenuating circumstances, like poor lifestyles, accidents, and murder, but your maximum limit still exists within your cosmic embryo." Emi asked, confused, "What is that?" Her face responded, "Sorry, more accurately, soul. You see, that's what we absorb to continue living, that's how we extract your lifespans. When you kill someone before they should die, your lifespan doesn't change, but we can absorb the difference just by making contact." Emi asked, "By contact, you mean when your nerves touched our planet?" The imposter's face agreed, "Correct, we always delegate a portion of beings to be absorbed right away. This time, anyone without a phone was digested immediately for pure sustenance, like a tube into your stomach for pure calories. Then, the rest were left for enjoyment, the seasoning, the desert. The game began with our first layer of spores. That layer touching you is the same as your tongue touching your food; it's only the beginning of the process." Her head smiled, "This game is just a buffet for us." Emi inquired, "Why kill us all though? Why would you kill off all your food at once?" That utilitarianism was back, and it still made her feel ill. Her head cackled, "All planets in the universe are our plantations, our harvesting grounds. We grow life on them like you grow fruit, and then we take all we want. Your planet wasn't worth saving; we'd rather a new species take over, so we're resetting it." Emi still had so many more questions, but her captors were at their limits. They asked, "We're about done here, so back to our question, what's your wish?" Emi cried, "what's the point of wishing now? Everyone's dead!" Her head circled her again as it said, "We can recreate it for you." Something didn't sit right with Emi. This entity that had just consumed her planet promised it could reshape it in her will, but why? How much energy would that take? Then she thought of the hotel, the doors that led to all her memories. She was convinced this being would manipulate her perception, her wish wouldn't be physically real, but it would feel real. Her head laughed at her, as if reading her thoughts, "you're the smartest person we've seen come this far in a while." Emi realized it was reading her ambient thoughts and she shut down, mediated her mind. The being stared at her with her own head, eyes slowly growing more perturbed before it set her loose, she could feel her physical form come back and gravity pull at her clothes. As she stood on a massive root that led to the spinal cord, the being spoke in her head, "make haste, we await hibernation. Take too long, and we will cast you aside." Emi asked, "Will you grant any wish I ask for?" The words felt odd as they left her mouth, she had gotten so used to speaking through her mind that the way her flesh contracted across her jaw felt strange. The being spoke in its inhuman voice, "No, wishes that inconvenience us will be denied." Emi thought, "they're devoid of emotion, house only logical thoughts. Still, they will only grant a wish they approve of, meaning they could refuse anything they don't like..."

Emi spoke confidently, "My wish is to play a game with you of my choice. If I win, you have to grant my next wish no matter what even if your hivemind whatever doesn't approve of it." The spinal cord rumbled in what she could only assume was a laugh, "why would we agree to such a thing?" Emi poked them with a mental antagonization, "Scared? So, you're feeling emotions then? Thought you evolved past that stuff?" The spinal cord stopped moving as she heard, "This proposition doesn't sit well with us, so the answer is no. If you don't give us a valid wish in 30 seconds, you will be absorbed like the rest of your species." Emi countered with her best attack, "You spend your existence challenging others with deadly games, but won't accept a challenge yourselves? Just absorb me then, but if you do, you have admitted defeat." The spinal cord was quiet for awhile, almost long enough for Emi to think they hadn't heard her, then it pulsed, a pulse of annoyance, something not more than a human sigh, and remarked, "we will honor your flimsy request. You will not win anyway, you are but a speck in the cosmic wind to us." Emi asked, "how will I be sure you will honor my request if I win?" It responded, "You have connected with us on a cellular level now, your wish will become law as long as it's physically possible to do so, though..." The voice paused before laughing, "you will fail, little human." Emi opened her bag, took out the store pamphlet she had taken from the Californian grocery store during the game of tag and wrote something on it with the pen Akachukwu had gifted her in his dying moments. The voice asked her, "what's that for?" As Emi folded the paper and put it in her pocket she said, "my wish is written down, so even if I can't communicate, you know what it is."

The voice thundered, "Fine, what is the game that ended Emily Wyatt's life?"

Final game: ???