Chapter 9: Save Files

“You know,”, Delta began speaking again.

“The closer I get to that cabin home of yours, the fancier these little creations of yours seem to get. You must’ve improved as you moved along your world right?”

Delta stopped in front of a block-based model of an old-timey fire department building. It was made mostly of red and white colored stone, but the placement was impeccable.

“Oooh”, said Delta. “I remember reading about this. That was back before drones handled all the fire fighting right?” She turned her yellows eyes to Bruce to see him holding a bazooka again. She smiled, unphased.

“Go on, fire.”, said Delta.

She swung open her mouth.

“Aaaah~”

Bruce looked into a mouth that could swallow him whole with ease. He had to be less than an inch-tall to the woman, and a single strand of the saliva dripping within could probably drench him good.

Nevertheless, he felt no fear. This was just a game after all! He fired the rocket right into her gob. Her tongue swung up with impeccable reaction time to intercept the missile. Fast after, her lips slammed shut, then she pursed them to blow some warm smoke over his body.

He stood, stunned and briefly blinded. He felt a tug as her fingers pinched up bazooka, then his entire inventory satchel. He grabbed onto the straps and moved with it as she dangled it over her mouth. Her lips moved as she spoke right below him. Hot air rose from beneath as though he was standing over a thermal vent.

“Really now? You wanna go down with that little bag of yours? Are you sure?”

She opened wide again, this time right below him.

“Aaaaa~”

Bruce *definitely* felt like he was above a hot vent now. Game or no, there was some primal fear about staring into a wide open maw like she had now.

“N-no that’s ok, you can have it just put me down.”

She started shaking her hold. The strap got harder to grab on to. The bazooka pinched up between her fingers fell free and he saw it disappear down her throat. She swallowed opened mouth, and he witnessed that throat move with the tilt of her tongue.

“P-please!”

‘There it is.’, thought Delta.

She pinched him by the legs with her other hand. Upside down, he had a bit of a skewed view as she let his satchel fall. All his hard-made tools within the pixelated bag went right down her throat.

‘Well, jokes on her. I can just reload all of this!’

“Watch now”, she said. Delta still pinched him at the side of his legs, but she had the decency to hold him upright now. It was more to assure he had a nice view than out of any sense of kindness.

Bruce saw as she lifted her bare right foot above the roof of his building. He had something of a soft spot for that one: first serious project he started years ago when he first got the hang of Make-Landia. She twisted her foot to step on it long-side-wise, so her toes curled over one end while her heel pressed down at the other. He saw the roof crack till it broke.

Delta paused to let him see the inside of it with all the red block furniture he made. Then, she stomped down and the whole structure blew aside. Her print dug through the white floor blocks to the dirty cubes beneath. At the moment of the stomp, she let out a pleased little grunt.

“Mmf”

Bruce had a dumb smile on his face as he saw.

“Oh, you like that do you huh?”, he said

Delta moved her foot to the building’s side and rested the appendage in another deep print.

“Well, jokes on you! I’ll just reload one my autosaves here.”

Bruce pulled up his holodisplay. It was supposed to be private, but for debug reasons her GODMODE status gave her access to it. She knew the info shown to him, and the actions he made while clicking to try and find the save file locations. There were a bunch of autosaves.

He tapped at the latest one, which had a snapshot of his fire department creation intact. He clicked it, and it highlighted, but he couldn’t find a load button anywhere on the display.

She deleted it, of course.

Bruce kept thinking the command at the save location. There was a hint of that desperation Delta was looking for. She grinned.

“Oh didn’t you read the patch notes? It’s voice activated now. Just say ‘reload’.”

“Reload!” he said, not wasting a second. Delta laughed internally; of course he’d believe such a dumb thing like that.

It was a trivial thing for her to load the save at his words. The fire station building was back, good as new. Bruce had an even dumber shit-eating grin on his face.

“Ha, see? I can just undo whatever you’re up to here, so it’s no issue. I don’t know how you got so big, but whatever dumb vengeance idea you have you can take and shove right up your giant-”

Delta lifted her foot and stomped the building again. She grinned softly.

Bruce pulled up his holodisplay again, highlighted the save file, and shouted the word again.

“Reload!”

Nothing happened. He paused for a moment, then again.

“Reload!”

Nothing.

“Reload!”

His building was still down there, mostly destroyed with a giant foot print where it used to be. He began to grow nervous.

“Reload!”

He began to grow desperate.

“Reload, Reload!”

It was at this point he noticed the opaque rectangle on the scroll-bar for the list of saves get bigger. He scrolled to the bottom of the list.

“Reload.”

He saw the oldest manual save entry disappear before his eyes. It was dated years ago, and it was gone forever now. Worst still, he knew that wasn’t the first save he made. Each time he said the word...

“What did you do? How are you doing this?”

His voice trembled. Now Delta was the one grinning wide.

It had to be a glitch of some kind.

“Reload!” he said again.

The bar grew again.

“C’mon, reload! I spent weeks on that building. Reload reload reload.”

The scroll bar got bigger as it kept deleting his saves. He worked it frantically to see and select an autosave from earlier today, before she showed up. He’d lose a bit of progress, but maybe it’d work if he tried to load something from before she entered his realm.

“Reload!” he yelled.

Every save up until that one was deleted. The scroll bar was gone as he had a scant few saves left for his realm. His heart sank. His body language and face grew deflated.

“Please, don’t! I spent years here. Bring it back, you can right? Please tell me you can Delta?”

She smiled. A pleasant shiver ran down her spine.

“Please!”, he begged.

“I can.” she answered.

“Oh thank you, thank you. I’ll do anything!”

She smiled.

“Reload.”, she spoke.

The building came back. In the distance, he saw his tower return too. Even her footprints were gone. She must’ve restored everything.

His racing heart had a moment of rest. Before she crushed it again.

“Oh whoops, I didn’t mean that file~” her tone oozed sarcasm. He watched the highlight over the save files move back up to the latest one. It was made just a few seconds ago.

“No Delta please!” he screamed. He tried to change the selection on his holodisplay, but she had more power than him here. It didn’t budge, no matter how hard he focused. “I’m the owner here! This is my realm! H-how even--Please don’t!”

“Reload.” she said.

His building was broken again. The foot prints were back.

“You bitch!” His hands pounded at his fingers. He kicked his legs weakly in the air.

‘That’s right, squirm~’ Delta thought. She shut her eyes for a moment to drink it all in. She didn’t need them to see the save options.

“Fuck you.”, began Bruce. “You rotten piece of-”

Something stranger happened. The selection inverted so that every other save was highlighted. Something like that wasn’t normally possible. You couldn’t load more than a save at a time.

“Delete.” she said.

All those saves went away, right before his eyes. There was only one left.

“Delete.” she repeated. She started laughing as Bruce fought back tears. She noticed.

“Aww, are you gonna cry? What’s the fun in ruining your stuff if there’s no permanence involved.”

“Fuck you.”, he said.

“You wish~”, she replied.

He was silent as she got on the move again. Another structure was near by. This one was nice and short, coming up just past her ankle.

“I like this one, it’s very detailed. Probably your first time experimenting with those fancy light cubes I take it? Nice job painting the blocks too.”

She pivoted the ball of her foot atop the little structure’s roof and pressed down.

“Oooh, I can really feel all those details explode nicely. You must’ve spent a lot of time on this one? Definitely paid off~” She twisted her foot, left and right to stoke his anger to a boil.

“You bitch! I don’t know how you’re doing all this, but I bet it’s some dumb trick.” shouted Bruce.

While the man ranted, she lowered him to her palm.

“You’re a cunt you know that! Whatever satisfaction you’re getting out of this will fade fast once the Justice Ministry hears about this!”

She moved her finger to his legs.

“Once they figure out you’ve been exploiting something they’ll-”

Delta pressed at his legs below the knee. Her finger came down to smash that part of the limbs into her palm. The 20-year old woman felt the blood and bone mash against the unyielding might of her index finger. She lifted her digit up and some of the gore dripped off the digits tip. Her yellow eyes focused on Bruce now, who screamed at the sight.

“Fuck! Fuck what? No. Fuck.” he was clearly in shock. Violence like this couldn’t normally occur.

“Did that hurt?” she asked.

“Fuck, fuck what in the--how?”

“Did. That. hurt?” she asked more stern. “I can do that with an arm if need be.”

Bruce wiggled his legs, now blood stumps below his knees. She pressed so hard almost everything was just blood now: red mist and fluid.

“N-no, it didn’t hurt. But still this is-”

“Horrifying?” she completed the thought. “Good, I hope so.”

Bruce started to hyperventilate. His pulse was off the charts. She could see the veins at his neck throb. He opened his holodisplay and scrolled to the log-out option, but found it grayed out. He tried to return to paradise, but found that also didn’t work. Delta watched, amused.

“Did you really think I’d let you just leave like that? We’re not done here, not by a long shot.”, she said.

Delta pinched him up again and swung him from side to side, spraying blood here and there. A thought and her hands were clean of it, but it still dripped everywhere else as she bobbed him to and fro. It was amusing, but she was also testing things. Blood seemed to act realistically, the flow of red slowing as his virtual body began to ‘clot’ at the area. He didn’t die yet, and he clearly wasn’t in pain. She spoke again while his face had horror glazed over it.

“No pain, as expected. Well lucky you, you get to help me test some code!”

“W-what?”

She rolled her eyes. “I bet I’ll get a lot of victims like that, just constant bewilderment and stupidity.”

Delta briefly stood back up and slammed her right foot down into the blocky earth to her side. She made a deep hollow in the crude shape of her foot. She crouched down to her haunches and dropped Bruce to the print’s side.

He was too dumb to put two and two together till she started to nudge him towards the foot-shaped hole.

“W-wait! No don’t put me in there!”

She easily booped him over the edge. Bruce rolled down the layers of blocks to land at the bottom of her footprint. He immediately began to try and climb out, but at 500 feet tall her foot was 25 feet wide and the print was deep enough to hit stone cubes. His legs were essentially useless, and he’d have to climb up quite a few squares of rock and dirt to get back to the surface. She let him try, as it amused her.

Delta spoke as she pulled up her own private-holodisplay to view Paradise code.

“Alright, let’s see here. Paradise can transfer pleasure, and there’s a lot of shared pathways between that and pain. Both are just part of the nervous system, right? You’re a programmer too Bruce, just think about it. It’s probably easier to get all the data then filter what you don’t want out then try to filter at the source.”

“P-please, let me go!” he stammered.

She rolled her eyes in reply.

“Ah, here we are.” she said. Her voice still booming as ever.

Delta had opened files for the various bits of code handling the transference and simulation of sensations for all the users of Paradise. She scanned the files fast and quickly found what she was looking for it. It was at the start of some sensation simulation code.

“

# No matter the changes to the code,

# do this before anything else in the sensation stream.

user.filterNegativeSensations();

“

Delta changed it, of course. The new code read.

“

# No matter the changes to the code,

# do this before anything else in the sensation stream.

If (user.status() == GODMODE) {

user.filterNegativeSensations();

}

“

Now, only those with GODMODE status--just Delta--would be able to avoid negative sensory processing. She saved her changes and the bloodcurdling screams from Bruce down below let the hacker know she succeeded.

“Ah.” she sighed, savoring the sound. “Look’s like pain’s back on the menu, isn’t it Bruce?”

It took him a bit, but between the agonized screams he spoke. “Please, please make it stop! You win! You win you’re the best! Just please this is too much.”

Delta giggled. She leaned over her foot print to watch him writhe.

“My finger crushed your bones just below the caps, bunch of blood vessels too. The simulation replicated it well enough, but didn’t put the pain or any sort of disturbing tactility to it. Now, you feel it all as you would in the real world. Amazing, right?~”

“Please!” he shouted, begging.

Delta smiled.

“Don’t worry, I’ll put you out of your misery. Respawn functionality should be intact at your realm. That means you’ll be right back at your mountain base soon enough.”

‘My cabin.’ thought Bruce. ‘That’d be nice but, how’d she know about that? It’s too far to see.’

“There, you can watch as I have a bit more fun before meeting you there.”

‘What? No. Not more of this torture.’, he thought.

Bruce looked up as Delta swished something around in her lips. He heard the sounds of some fluid in there. She pursed her lips and she saw it drop down towards him. It wasn’t saliva. It was orange, thick, and blocky in its own right. He recognized the texture as it fell towards him.

‘Is that... lava? What? How can she do that?’

it fell into the foot print and splashed over him. Despite being Make-Landia-made, the molten fluid burned like the real stuff on contact. Delta smiled, this was one more test of hers. She watched his skin melt from the heated air surrounding him. The mechanics of Make-Landia fluids kicked in. They were slower than in real life. The blocky lava enveloped him and silenced his last cries of agony. His last sight before respawning was Delta’s self-satisfied smile.