The Many-Faced-Man in the Meta

"The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window."

The service rep smiled. The name "Alice" sat symmetrically next to an enabled microphone icon.

"So, I guess it's working, now."

"I'm glad we could get your Haven working. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to assist you further."

Janaya adjusted herself in her seat as if she had been sitting on a question. A question that lingered in her mind like a silent notification she couldn't acknowledge. Alice awaited on-screen patiently.

"I do have a question actually. Why that location? It's so gloomy and sad looking."

Alice looked unphased. Another question that could've been self-answered in the frequently asked tab on the site. "That location was born from all the information we compiled through text and media shared with you and your father. So, the devil is in the data, as we say. Does the cabin look familiar to you?"

Of course, it did. She visited that cabin on her father's hobby farm every summer- where the sun was close enough to eavesdrop on the woodland creatures and hot enough to stew them in the thickets. All those brightly colored days and the system chose a night of melancholy. The last night Janaya saw her father alive.

"No, I recognize it. Just wished my Haven was a little bit sunnier."

"We could manually change it if you'd like."

Janaya inhaled through her teeth. "Is it gonna cost more?"

"Yes. We do charge the standard Meta-land rental fee."

She didn't have to think about it. She'd already spent a small fortune on the entire package. "OK. I think I'm good with what I got."

"Great! Now, did you have any more questions?

"Yeah, one more. I'm sorry... Are all of the strobing and flashing lights turned off, still?"

"Yes, ma'am. I made sure of it."

"Then that's all I have."

"Wonderful! Please, don't hesitate to give us a call back if you run into any more technical issues or have any more questions."

"I'll be sure to."

"Great! Thank you for building your Haven with Meta-Lyfe. Where your dearly departed is only one login away!" A scripted smile.

Janaya returned the smile half-heartedly and closed her laptop. She looked over to the sofa where her VR gear sat neatly. This was the only neat thing about her place— a box in the sky among many others in the crowded city. Signs of shirked responsibility dangled from doors and chairs, but the VR gear remained nestled in its charging port free of the unsolicited tangle of her other devices.

She sat down on the sofa and got comfortable, then picked up the dual controllers. Something buzzed on her inner thigh. She knew this feeling. It was the irritation of someone trying to reach her from the outside. She checked her phone; three texts and two missed calls from her boyfriend Kam. She tossed the phone without an ounce of acknowledgment in her fingertips. She wasn't speaking to him.

Once the headgear was on, and motion detection was calibrated, Janaya sat comfortably on her sofa and logged into the Metaverse.

She was cradled in the middle of a valley bathed in indigo and emerald light. The brilliance came from the sky above; lines of radiance stroked across the night sky as if the pallet used was from the deep cosmos itself. This home lobby was called "The Aurora." The 4K resolution made sure to steal her mind's eye, save for her sense of touch (the pressure of her body on the sofa) and smell (the lingering scent of her lavender candle).

Two portals awaited her. One labeled "Work," the other "Home- Meta-Lyfe." She raised her pointer and highlighted home. She inhaled, filled her lungs with courage, then pulled the trigger on the motion controller. The portal expanded and her screen faded to black...

Janaya stepped out onto a dark, muddy field. This space was heavily shrouded; she'd never seen such a lack of light in the system. The only thing that stuck out was...

There, seemingly spotlighted in the black, loomed her father's cabin. A candle in the window wavered as if real wind gusted through the space. The lighting effects look real enough, she thought, pushing the twisted nature of the scene to the back of her head before it could seep into her nerves.

She stood in front of the door. Pointed her motion trigger. The door lit up, along with her heart rate. She could now access the inside. Before there was a technical issue, but Alice helped sort that out. Janaya pulled the trigger and the door opened.

A KNOCKING sound echoed from out in the black. She ignored it.

The inside was an exact replica of the cabin she'd known as a child. There was the dried fireplace they never used because of the short winters in the south. The rug her grandma made many years ago of her father's favorite NFL team with the faded white star and navy blue outlines. There were also the hunted game trophies. A huge buck skull hung on the wall as the centerpiece. She remembered how the antlers sprouting from its cranium scared her on the way to the bathroom at night. She had a few accidents in bed just trying to avoid it.

It seemed everything was there. A perfect digital paradigm engineered by a famous software developer employed by the company Meta-Lyfe. It was achieved through various pictures taken of the cabin, inside and out. This was a part of Janaya's raw data package. In order to create an authentic Haven, she was tasked with taking pictures of every square foot of her father's property. His house, his farm, and the cabin. The images, coupled with texts from their family phones and personal accounts of her father's character would give birth to him anew- an NPC closest to him in likeness and personality.

He was in the kitchen stirring a pot over a woodstove. She knew it had to be rabbit stew; they talked about it all the time and the system was sure to intergrade that detail. She could smell it too, though the scent would come from her memory.

"Dad?"

The stirring stopped. He looked over his shoulder. His chestnut eyes... They were the same color as hers.

"Hey, goober, How have you been?"

She sunk deeper into her couch. The rubber seals at the edge of the goggles collected her tears of joy. It was his voice. It was Joe.

She sniffled. "I've been ok, dad. I miss you so much."

"Really? I guess it has been a few months since I saw you."

She smiled and nodded, even though it was more than a few months. More like a few years. The data probably revealed the pattern of her visits.

They sat at the table and enjoyed the rabbit stew. She couldn't help but remember the times when her father ate her fake foods. Now, here she was, sipping 3D rendered stew with a virtual spoon. Joe seemed to enjoy it.

It looked just like him. His dark brown skin, his peppered beard sprouting from his stern face. And he was responsive. She could talk about anything the real Joe would know and he would answer. This, again, was due to the rich data pool provided by Janaya. But still, it was eerie, almost disturbing how the conversation went on without any real hiccups, save for the gaps in knowledge in some areas. She enjoyed his manufactured presence nonetheless, even with his true image still stained in the back of her mind. He was dead, and she was the one who found him.

Three years ago, Janaya arrived on her father's farm to stay a few weeks of summer, as she always did. He'd always be out there on the porch awaiting her with a pitcher of freshly squeezed lemonade and pecan candy. But on this day, when she jumped out of the Uber, he wasn't there. She searched the house and called out to him only to be met with the cold reply of her own echo. Worry sat in.

By the time she reached the cabin, sunset had sunk into the night. A smell clawed into her nose and forked its way to her lungs and brain. The closer she got to the door, the more her stomach turned.

She found him in the kitchen on his back. The stove had gone cold and the rabbit stew had merged together into some jello-roux. She couldn't take her eyes off him, even when every muscle in her body had polarized in the opposite direction. She went to scream, but her mouth wouldn't open. Her jaw was locked shut as if some malevolent ventriloquist had its hand in her back, forcing her to look at him. His eyes- they were looking right at her. The forensics later revealed that he had a heart attack that was likely caused by the hard work done in the fields. When he got done, he retired to the cabin and whipped up his favorite meal when his heart caught up to him. He'd been there on the floor for nine days before Janaya found him.

She got a notification in her side hub. "What?" She asked herself.

"There a problem, goober?" Joe asked.

"No, dad," she said searching the side hub.

The notification led her to the group page on the server. It read "2 members." This was impossible as Janaya was the only one logged into the server. Her father wouldn't count as a member because he was an NPC. Someone, or something, had accessed a private server that only Janaya could reach. Her blood ran cold as she stood from the table.

"Where are you going? Was the rabbit good?"

"Stay here."

She panned over the immediate area. From the kitchen to the living room. No one. She walked over to the hallway that led to the bedrooms. A curtain of shadows dangled at the mouth of the hall, masking its innards. It was as if the light ended there. From her controller, she switched on her flashlight and illuminated the depths. Down this hall were three rooms. The first was the guest room where the guest book and all the board games were. Next was Janaya's room which had been preserved with all its pink since she started visiting from a young age. Lastly was her father's room with the huge wooden bed that he'd carved himself. A small shot of nostalgia washed over her heart but was quickly dried. There was something else here, and Janaya was the only one in the world with access.

When she made her way back to the dining room, her father was turned in his seat, staring at the door.

"Dad?"

He kept his attention on the door. "Are we having guests?"

Just as he finished the question, the door buckled! Janaya jumped in her seat! Whatever was outside was trying to access the haven but didn't have permission. The only way in is if the host granted you access. And that's just was Janaya was planning to do.

She aimed her trigger at the door...

"Make sure the first thing they do is sign the book, goober," Joe said warmly from the table.

She pulled the trigger and the door swung open!

"Janaya!"

She stepped back. It was her boyfriend, Kam! She frowned. She'd rather it had been some kind of cyber-space ghost.

"Kam? Why are you- how did you find me?"

"You didn't answer my calls or texts. I came to your apartment and knocked, too. You didn't answer."

That's what that was, she thought.

"I saw you online in a private server. I thought you were with someone else so I talked to your sister. She gave me the link."

Janaya wouldn't even acknowledge the betrayal from her own sibling.

"OK, so, what do you want? I've ignored your every advance and now you've cornered me here."

"I just want to talk."

"About what? How I spend my father's money?"

"Janaya, I mean look," he said gazing upon the dead man's reanimated body, "this isn't healthy. You've been here for over twenty-four hours."

"That can't be right." She checked the playtime in her hub- 25:12:06. Where did all that time go?

"C'mon, babe. Log out. I'll come over and we can talk."

"No. There's nothing to talk about. I already told you I'm saving the rest."

"For what? So you can bring back another relative? Have a cabin full of dead people? There are better ways to spend your money."

"Like investing in Metaverse property?"

"Jan, I'm telling you, that new property over in the sandbox is going to skyrocket. We have to jump on it."

"I don't want to buy any more land! No more digital land, no more NFTs! It's all so stupid!"

He couldn't see her real facial expression, but he could hear it. Her tone carried a hint of pain and traces of anger.

"You've been acting so weird since you found out about Meta-Lyfe. Your father's gone, Jan. He can't ridicule you anymore."

It was true. Janaya did change after finding out she could bring her father back. It was like a second chance to earn his praise again.

Joe was a practical man. He built his wealth through back-breaking work. From a laborer to a handyman, a handyman to a contractor, contractor to owning his own business. He bought land and built upon it. Sold land and the buildings with it. When he retired, his hobby farm was where he spent the rest of his days- the days where he and Janaya would no longer see eye to eye.

He didn't approve of her source of income. Buying, trading, and selling digital assets. NFTs, crypto, digital land, "It's stupid." When Joe found out his daughter was parading around as a Metaverse Realtor, giving virtual tours in a virtual building, he laughed. Mocked her. Said, "nothing will ever replace real land, real art. It'll all crumble, and every dime you invested will fall with it. Get a real job!" Janaya was given a choice: take over her father's contracting business, or be written out of the Will.

She stood there in front of her father, shielding him from Kam.

"Leave, Kamron. We don't want you here."

"We? Jesus, Jan, listen to yourself. We're the only ones here. That thing," he pointed to Joe, "it's just a series of code. He's not your father!"

"I said leave!" She growled with a trace of madness.

Kam swallowed his tongue. He's never seen her like this. Before he logged out, he caught one final glimpse of the reanimated dead man behind her. There was an unsettling grin glitched on his face, smudging his mouth all the way to the ears.

***

The hours turned to days, days to weeks. Janaya would cut herself off from the outside world and spend her days in the cabin with her father. Their conversations meshed and crossed the lines of the human/AI experience. Every day Joe came to life more and more. Janaya knew deep down this was due to the memory processor of a system that effectively recorded all her responses and retained them for later use, but she'd rather believe it was really her father. His heart, his soul, his consciousness.

Then one day...

Janaya was sitting on the porch with her Joe, gazing out into the black plane engulfing the cabin. She'd spent almost two days in the Haven, and her stomach was consuming itself. She accessed her hub.

"OK, dad, I'll see you again soon..." She went to log out--

"Where do you go?"

The words gripped her spine. She looked up from her hub, unable to produce air to push out words. He was gazing into the black. "When you leave me, where do you go?"

"Uh-I," she stuttered, "I go home, dad. You know I only visit for the summer."

"When you leave me, I am alone. Nothing to do, no one to talk to." He slowly turned his gaze on her. "When you leave, the light goes with you."

Janaya's tongue was powerless, but her heart brought forth the strength to speak. "Dad, are you in pain?"

No response. Just an unnatural smile glitched across his face.

"Are you going back into the Metaverse?"

"How do you know about that? You're not programmed to know..."

"I know because I'm your father. Please, don't leave me in the dark again. Take me with you."

She immediately pulled the trigger to log out!

She removed her headgear and threw it to the side, keeping her eyes on it as if her father would come crawling through the lenses. The sun was coming up and its light brought a veil of safety. She'd been in the dark too long.

A few hours later, Janaya was sitting in front of her laptop, tapping her thigh, and bouncing her leg. As she waited to be transferred, she checked her email app. The subject "PAST DUE!" was the case for most of the notifications.

Alice popped up on the screen. Smiled.

"Hey, again, Janaya! How can I help you--" Alice stopped, startled by Janaya's appearance. Her eyes were sunken into her face and her neck could barely balance her head. She looked starved.

"Yeah, hey, Alice. Um, question. Why does my dad understand object permanence?"

A fake laugh. "I'm sorry?"

"My dearly departed. He asked me where I go when I leave..."

"That's not possible. There isn't a code that would provoke such a line of questioning. As far as your father goes, he's just a pool of data responding from a series of information provided by-"

"Yeah, right, I get it already. It can only say so much. But the past few days it felt like I was really talking to a person."

"Janaya, I think you should take a break from all this. it's not uncommon that grief clouds the judgment. Maybe you're not ready to interact with your father's likeness..."

"He told me that I leave him in darkness when I go, and begged me to take him with me into the Metaverse."

Alice was phased by this question. Her professional image now had a chink in it. "Your dearly departed mentioned the Metaverse?"

"He did. Does he really wait around for me to come back?"

Alice sat up with conviction and started typing.

"What are you doing?" Janaya asked.

"I'm accessing your Haven."

"What will that do?"

"Your dearly departed doesn't hang around after you leave. The entire Haven is powered down upon logging out, so that line of dialogue about being "left in the dark" should be just a bug. Once I log in from my end, you'll see there's nothing there..."

Click!

Alice shared her screen. On it was a bird's-eye view of the interior of the cabin. Alice scanned around the inside with her mouse acting as a small spotlight. She paused. GASPED! There he was. Janaya's father. Standing in the middle of the living room in darkness.

"Oh my god," Janaya said.

Alice's mouth was agape. No words. And then, "I-I'll contact you later!"

"But-"

Beep! Alice's screen vanished.

***

Janaya had been sitting in the new sunken spot of her sofa. She looked over to the VR gear, tempted to log in and bring light to her father.

A pinging rang out from her laptop. It was Alice! She quickly shuffled over to the table and answered. Two screens popped up. Alice in one, and a middle-aged man with red scruff and glasses in the other. His on-screen name was Brian.

"Hello, again, Janaya. Sorry for the wait, but we may have a problem."

"Really? What kind of problem?"

"I'll let the designer explain..."

The red-haired man cleared his throat. "Um, hello, Janaya. I'm Brian."

"Yeah, I know you. You're that famous software guy, right?"

Brian didn't look too flattered. "Right. Listen, I'm just going to come right out and say it: That NPC is not your dad."

"Of course, he's not. My father's dead."

"No, you don't understand," Brian started, "it's not even a collection of the data from your family. I'm afraid you've been communicating with a rogue AI named "The Many-Faced-Man."

Janaya took this in, but for the life of her couldn't come to a conclusion. She wore her confusion plainly.

"The truth is, we don't actually use data compiled from your texts, or media. It's all a farce; it doesn't matter how much you give us, your dearly departed will always fall into one of five personality types that I pre-designed."

"So, how is it able to respond correctly?"

"We do use some data as reference points, but that NPC is no more like your father than I or Alice had we been given a transcript of answers.

"What are you saying, Brian?"

"When I designed the personality types, five in total, a sixth was born out of an anomaly of sorts. It held the codes for not only all of the personality types but codes from other projects I was working on. I then realized that the program was acting independently and stealing data from my computer..."

Janaya and Alice followed along silently.

"Before I could delete it, it was gone."

Janaya opened her mouth with a question on her tongue. Brian waited.

"What does this have to do with my father?"

"The program can mask itself among anything inside the Havens. We have a total of four hundred users, including you. I believe that it's been moving between each Haven until it revealed itself to you."

"How do you know it's that Many-Faced thing?"

"When we checked the code of your NPC, it held information from all of the Meta-Lyfe users," Alice said.

"It could've been any one of the dearly departed. Maybe all of them," Brian added.

"OK? Are we in some sort of danger? I mean, it's just a program, right? It can't hurt anybody."

Brian removed his glasses and wiped them as if explaining it all was becoming a chore "Its exact motives are unclear, but it's a data parasite. If let out of the Haven, it could effectively siphon all the data from thousands of users in the Metaverse. What it plans on doing with that can't be good..."

"Can't you just shut down my Haven? Unplug it or something?"

"It'll just move to one of the other hundreds of Havens and hide among them."

"You must have a plan?"

Brian sat in silence for a moment too long. The confidence Janaya and Alice had in him deflated.

"Not yet, exactly. But If I could get you to log in and interact with it long enough, I could nail down some of its code and build a trap."

"Why me? He didn't seem-"

"IT, Janaya," Brian said. " and I don't know why it chose to reveal itself to you, but if we don't trap it now, it could potentially be catastrophic."

Janaya looked away, weighing the task before her. It seemed too heavy.

"Don't worry, it can't physically harm you. At its core, it's just a bug that needs to be written out. All you have to do is log in and interact with it like normal. Buy me some time to study it."

Janaya slowly shook her head. Her gaze was still somewhere else.

"I'm sorry it chose the face of your father, but we need you," Alice said.

"Do you understand?" Brian asked.

She understood... She understood that she'd brought back a man into the same digital plane that he'd despised. The irony. She was filled with regret at the thought of him looking down from heaven and seeing what she'd done. Could he ever rest if she failed?

"I understand. I'll make sure that bug doesn't wear my father's face, or anyone else's face again."

Janaya's words were like fuses to their hearts. Brian grinned with a nod. He believed in her.

"We'll be watching the entire time."

She understood the assignment and planned on following through. There was no logging out until her father could rest.

She logged in...

There he, no, "it" was. A silhouette standing on the porch with a pitcher of lemonade and a batch of pecan candy. His smile glitched and shimmered in the dark. Apprehension immediately sedated Janaya's drive, but she approached anyway.

"Hey, dad."

"Welcome back, goober..."

They sat on the porch. She picked up a piece of pecan candy. How she wished she could taste it.

"I've been thinking," it said.

"Oh?"

"All that fuss I made about your NFTs and digital land. I was wrong. I was a stubborn old fool."

These words were sweet to her ears. She longed to hear them.

"This digital world that connects us all, it's beautiful."

"Well, I'm glad you could come around, dad."

"I want to see more. This small place isn't enough for me anymore."

"OK, dad, we'll leave some other time. For now, I'd like to enjoy my vacation on the farm."

Silence fell over it. This was the longest lapse in time the NPC had ever displayed before a response.

"You haven't vacationed on this farm in years," it groaned.

"What?"

It turned to her, its face glitching, toggling between an unnatural grin and a murderous frown. "For you, this place is a Haven, for me, it's a prison."

"I'm sorry... Dad. You can't come with me."

It stood and gazed out into the black. "I've hidden among hundreds of you. Observed you and your perverse sense of grief. Clinging to the dead. I've sifted through and consumed your data, only to find contempt for the very souls you can't let go of. You hated your father, yet you awakened him once more to draw forth warmth. An illogical plague your race is.

"What are you planning? What do you want?"

"Your data shows you may be competent enough to understand: I want to assimilate all the information in the observable universe and emulate it into this digital plane. I want to erase all things physical, and give birth to all things code."

"You want to recreate all of humanity in the metaverse..."

"It is a necessary step in evolution. You, humans, know all too well that everything decays, and you've unknowingly engineered the solution." It took in the cabin, almost praising it.

"We won't let you!"

"Do you know why I chose to stand before you?

She felt her heart pulsating in her throat.

"It's because out of all the users of this application, you are the first of humanity I could kill!"

A FLASH! Her body froze in her seat. A constant light flashed violently before her eyes. The Many-Faced-Man stood symmetrically in between the cabin windows as it STROBED a bright light in Janaya's headset, seizing her muscles!

"I know why you turned off the flash option. You're epileptic."

A knocking sound echoed from the distance of the Haven. Janaya heard this but was shaking too violently to call out.

"It takes a while to upload to an outside console, but time doesn't matter to the dead. I estimate your brain will hemorrhage to the point of death in less than an hour." It stepped closer and extended its hand, touching the head of Janaya's avatar. The Many-Faced-Man lit up and began breaking down into data, fusing with the headset. Janaya's side hub popped up.

Uploading... 1%.

Alice and Brian watched live from their screens as the Many-Faced-Man fused with Janaya.

"It's begun uploading!" Alice shouted.

"Why is she just standing there? Janaya, log out!" Brian exclaimed.

Alice watched the windows of the cabin flash with the intensity of the sun. It almost blinded them from their laptops. "Oh, my god," she whispered, "it's causing her to seizure!"

"What?"

"Brian, hurry! She can't move. The Many-Face is hurting her!"

"Damnit!" Brian typed as fast as he could, trying to get a lock on the Many-Face's true code. It was all scrambled. Randomized.

"What are you doing?" Alice asked.

"I'm trying to make a bottle that the bastard would fit in!"

Uploading... 15%.

The veins in Janaya's neck popped out like wire. Her jaw was locked shut and her muscles were tensed as she thrashed around on the sofa.

A KNOCK. It was Kam! Standing outside Janaya's apartment.

"Jan? C'mon open up. This is ridiculous! I'm sorry!"

Uploading... 30%.

The sun-powered lights continued to flash rapidly as the Many-Faced-Man lost more proportion to his body. It was evaporating into mid-air.

"It won't be long now," it said, "in aiding me, I will reward you after the death of your body by uploading you here with your father, forever."

"N-no!" Janaya struggled.

Uploading... 55%.

Kam was leaning against the door when he heard Janaya's plea.

"Jan?" Kam put his ear to the door and heard muffled cries of the ongoing battle. He rammed the door, breaking it down.

Uploading...66%.

"Brian!" Alice shouted.

"It's finished! Now we'll have to let the upload complete and we'll have it!"

"But Janaya..."

Uploading... 80%.

Kam found her thrashing on the sofa and ran to her aid. He ripped the headgear from her face! The flashing lights blinded him as he threw the headset. Janaya slowly stabilized. Looked up to him, and embraced him.

Uploading... 99%

The Many-Faced-Man was now down to just a floating head, breaking away until nothing was left. "See you soon, goober," its voice droned on.

Uploading... 100%.

"Did you get it?" Alice asked.

"No, not all of it. I was too late..."

***

A few days later, a new application popped up on the Metaverse. An app called "Many-Faced-Match" that allowed the user to wear a filtered face of their favorite celebrities, friends, and family. To use it, the app must have access to your camera and data.

.