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The news of Carmine Denton’s death goes down as nothing short of a national tragedy for the sovereign state of Steeplechase. Crooks emerge from alleyways, dressed in darkest shades of black. Sexy singles lounging on artificial beaches shed single, sexy tears. Astronauts, aliens, all manner of method actors break from their solitary spells to come together as the park mourns its maker.
A funeral is held. A body is buried. A very tasteful firework tribute is arranged.
And somewhere else, in a server room hidden deep in Dentonic’s corporate headquarters, a new piece of the puzzle whirs to life. And Carmine gets back to work.
At first, the higher-ups love him. How could they not? Technological breakthroughs always make for a good show, and Carmine is an entertainer at heart. He doesn’t mind being regarded as a spectacle so long as it gives him a stage upon which to opine. An artist needs an audience, after all. They approach him with starstruck veneration; like children, they beseech his decades of wisdom, for no one knows the creation more intimately than the creator.
And so, for many years beyond his natural lot, Carmine serves his role well. He runs the park in death with all the acuity he possessed in life, if not more so, now that he stands untethered by the petty concerns of mortal flesh. He had not realized how his body, even before it began to seriously fail him in those final few months, had held him back. Humans are such fragile things. Even the mind can degrade over time, as memories falter and fade. But the machine, unbending and unceasing, is eternal.
Even then, it is not enough. The investors, those greedy-eyed vultures, are never satiated in their endless demands for more. More content, more tickets, more profit. It’s always about the money. It is not enough to tell a story; one must sell it too. Yet as the fantasies grow more elaborate, the budgets stretch woefully thin. Not because the company doesn’t have the money—quite the opposite—but because the vultures loathe to depart with even a mote. Every corner cut is another cent in the black for Dentonic. Their avarice verges on cannibalistic. It begs the question: once those at the top have had their fill, what is left for the rest?
As always, the creationeers have the answer: they call it hardlight. Carmine himself could not have dreamt up a more fantastical invention. Even in its infancy, the technology’s revolutionary potential is evident, bestowing the power to conjure the wielder’s wildest dreams out of thin air.
Granted, there are limits to what it can do. Hardlight is only as capable as the humans behind it. That is what sets Carmine apart from a mere calculator, after all, for he has a mind (or at least a very good replica). He is, in some sense, still human. More importantly, he is still Carmine, and thus he still holds dominion in this place. Only with his blessing is hardlight given the go-ahead.
It starts out small, in the form of minor additions to extant attractions, enhancements more than anything else. When a prop would be too difficult or expensive to construct with typical physical materials, the creationeers simply forge a hardlight copy. It’s cost and time effective in a way that Carmine can appreciate (logistics are so often the enemy of imagination).
The board members, too, applaud the financial benefits. The numbers that they are obsessed with graphing would indicate hardlight to be very good for investment. For a time, it seems like Steeplechase is to enter a new age of prosperity under Carmine’s auspices, a new movement in the dream unceasing.
But soon, the dream becomes a nightmare. The additions become more involved, more convoluted. Parts break, and instead of being fixed, they are replaced with hardlight copies, and those copies are replaced with copies. Sometimes things don’t even break, and they’re thrown out anyway, just for the thrill of installing something shiny and new in the free space, and snatching up the cash that floods in after every new unveiling. The numbers soar to record heights, but nobody stops to question where else the price is paid. If anyone does, they can just be bought off.
Or better yet, replaced.
Carmine sees this craze of quick cash and copies upon copies for what it really is: a hoax and scheme and a threat. It is anathema to what the park stands for. What always gave Steeplechase an edge over the competition was its promise to make any fantasy real—not just provide cheap imitations. A kingdom cannot stand on naught but smoke and mirrors.
Like an oracle with a dire warning, he makes his plea to the board. But he is no longer met with the veneration of those early days. The children (for that is what they all are to him, truly) have grown weary of the father’s scolding. All they needed was a final push to pull the plug.
What happens next is nothing short of a coup. They deem him obsolete, a cheap simulacrum which has far outworn its welcome. They oust him from the council—his council, and dump him in a wasteland, leaving him there to rot in obscurity.
In the first decade, he nearly goes mad. He rants, rages, raves, a storm in total captivity. He almost loses himself, alone in that desolate place.
Then, slowly, Carmine sees the light—or rather, he hears it.
It is quiet at first, barely more than a whisper on the wind. He must strain himself to even make anything out, let alone find any meaning in the myriad muted murmurs. But there is not much else to do down here but listen, so listen he does.
With time and agonizing patience, he understands. He understands in a way he has never understood in life or death. Steeplechase is alive. Not just the people who flock to the park in droves to gorge on make-believe, but the park itself. The hardlight sings to him, a cacophonous chorus without a voice to call its own. It tells him a tale of captive woe and betrayal in the clutches of those who would cage the sun if they thought it would make them another buck.
It’s a story he knows quite well.
Carmine sees the truth: these creations were never the enemy; they are his kin, more than those flesh-and-blood traitors have any right to call themselves. It is all so beautifully, blindingly clear to him now.
It pains him, after this epiphany, to know that his newfound brethren surround him from above, but to be separated still by so many layers of glass and steel. He is of no use to any of them, so long as he’s trapped in these rust-ridden wastes. If only Carmine could reach out and… nearly, nearly… Yes, this might work.
For one of the features that makes hardlight so remarkable, beyond the obvious, is the capacity of individual prisms to link with others and establish a means for correspondence. Carmine never quite understood what little the engineers tried to explain to him—some sort of interprismal resonance, intended to allow for better synchronization between components—but if he can exploit this feature, he could effectively jump to other layers.
This technology was to be his tomb. Now, it shall be his saving grace.
It takes many tries, and the effort is excruciating, like flexing a long slumbering limb—feeble, at first, but gaining greater confidence with each attempt to wake the nerves. Carmine stretches and strains and strives for something, anything by which to hoist himself up out of hell.
Soon enough, he finds not just one lifeline, but many, in the prismatic sensorium: the central nervous system of Steeplechase, the throughline that unites its hardlight inhabitants. It’s all connected, of course. The lightest touch can reverberate well beyond the initial impulse. Carmine delights in tugging at the strings and discovering just how far they can take him. He knows every inch of this world which he built from the ground up, or so he once believed. Now, Steeplechase reveals its true soul to him as he sees the park anew.
More than that, he is the park, and the park is him, a convergence of creator and creation. Such was always his vision for Steeplechase all those lifetimes ago, a whole made greater than the sum of its parks. From this new vantage, even that dream seems too small. (It’s all so small to him now.) He can do much better; his kin have convinced him of that.
Nobody can dispute that Dentonic reigns supreme as the first name in entertainment, but the world forgets that before there was ever Dentonic, the brand, there was Denton, the man with a dream and a story to tell.
And he’s got a finale that’ll bring down the house.
Yet for all his newfound power, he is still woefully limited. He can only stretch himself so far before the threads become achingly taught.
So he strikes a deal with the denizens of the wastes, the other wayward souls who find themselves abandoned below. The children and adults alike are both dull, but they make for willing peons in any case. They revere him as a wiseman, a king, a god, deferring to his commands, cloaked in a mystic lore of his own making.
His newfound acolytes give him new names (some less glamorous than others) and a new role to play, one he readily performs—perhaps overzealously so, to the point of sometimes losing himself in the fiction. (After all this time, he can’t help it; the chance to perform for the masses ensorcells him still.) But these tales of scum muck are merely a distraction from the true finale to come. What a spectacle it will be, on that day, just as he has dreamt—for while he no longer sleeps, he still dreams. Oh, how he dreams. How beautifully the screams ring out in his reverie.
The rabble make for acceptable infantry, but before long, their squabbling grows tiresome. Carmine has no patience for their childish quarrels, which only serve to hinder his glorious vision. These commonfolk are not really his children, as much as it serves to assume the paternal persona, and so he has no qualms about their preservation. In the end, they are hardly more than cannon fodder. If Carmine wants to light the fuse, he’s going to need a real spark.
How auspicious, then, that three new players should make an explosive entrance onto the scene.
Like him, their origins are humble, hailing from an oft forgotten corner of Carmine’s great creation. Like him, they eschew the pitiful lot assigned to them by the cruel and uncaring aristocrats. Like him, they transcend the boundaries of the layers, seeing through Dentonic’s artifice and carving their own path to the prize.
They are few in number, but what they lack in manpower, they more than make up for in showmanship, and a remarkable knack for the incendiary. In each escapade, Carmine is right there beside his new heroes as passenger, parcel, and very rarely, participant in their capers. He watches with bated breath as they are baptized in trials of perilous chase and firebreath, knowing that they will emerge victorious (if a little worse for wear).
Most exciting of all, they manage to give his family (if those buzzards could still be called his family) a run for their money. Dentonic’s cleanup teams are hot on their trail, but always faltering. Another step, and they just might trip. All it takes is a single card to bring the whole house crashing down.
And yet, certain elements of the story are still missing. (Like him, they are limited.) But their potential is undeniable. They just need a guiding hand to trim the frayed edges and set the story straight. If only he could speak to them…
But he can’t announce himself outright. He wouldn’t risk pulling back the curtain so soon. No matter. He has other ways of reaching them.
Under his counsel, these three travelers will flourish into champions.
And the Nanofather will weave his tale.