Read Online Sorry Please Thank You by Charles Yu - Free Book Online

with all of it.
    THE END
    Really?
    Is it really going to end like that?
    I Am Here.
    When I wake up in the sky, I am two hundred feet above the battlefield.
    It is not pretty.
    But on this side of The End, everything looks slow motion, almost like a choreographed dance, or perhaps a game, played by people that don’t quite seem real anymore. Even my lifeless body down there looks like some kind of puppet, something to be pulled along, controlled and manipulated. The fighting goes on in silence, this gorgeous ballet of carnage, and I start to wonder, did it matter? Did any of it ever matter? I tried. I gave it my best. That’s as much as anyone can say, right? So there. So that’s that. And now, I find myself floating up to my eternal reward.
    Then Frëd appears, sticking his big face through the clouds. I was right: he’s a child. Hasn’t hit puberty yet. A god-child. Even gods have to grow up, I guess.
    “Hey Frëd,” I say.
    “Actually, no umlaut,” he says. “It’s just plain Fred.”
    “Well, good to finally meet you face-to-face, Fred.”
    “Things aren’t looking too good for you,” he says. “I’m sorry about all of this.”
    “Why are you sorry?”
    He looks at me like, you don’t know?
    “What?” I say.
    “This world, all of this, all of your world,” he says, trying to find the words. The tingling gooseflesh of comprehension starts to creep up my arms and the back of my neck. My mind strains for a grasp of what it is he is gettingat, like trying to visualize higher dimensions. Fred either can’t say or doesn’t want to say.
    “I’m just sorry to have put you guys in this position,” he says. “And now I have to go.”
    “So, that’s it? That’s all we get? No proper ending? The forces of good and evil, geography, history, destiny, when you have to go, you just pull the plug and all of this just goes away?”
    “Let me ask you a question,” Fred says. “What do you believe in? Do you believe in yourself? In your team? In heroism? In good? Do you believe in anything?”
    “That was more than one question,” I say. “I want to believe. I believe I am capable of believing.”
    “I guess that will have to do,” Fred says, and with a wave of his hand the clouds part and projected onto the sky are two paths, two alternate futures for me.
    In one direction is The Path of Legends:
    You have fought enough battles. Your record, while imperfect, is enough to earn you a place in the Hall of Eternity. Choose this path and you can vanish from the ordinary world. Perhaps you watch over the ongoing struggle, content in the knowledge that you have played your part. Perhaps you leave your plane of existence and become a minor deity yourself.
    In the other direction is Honorable Death:
    On the field of the most gruesome battle in history, you shall meet your foes and do battle. You may prevail. You may be defeated. You may prevail even as you are defeated. You may end up killing your enemy and, in the process, killing yourself. Rejoin your team now and find out.
    “Select Your Path,” Frëd says, resuming his god voice.
    Trin is bleeding from her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.
    Byr has lost an arm.
    Rostejn has lost both arms.
    Fjoork is in the process of being eaten by an orc.
    Krugnor is looking up at the sky. He seems to have given up.
    Maybe Frëd is just Fred. Maybe we have been praying to a nine-year-old whose mom keeps yelling at him to clean up his room. Maybe this is all just a game, an elaborate architecture created by some intelligent designer, out of what, boredom? Grace? Perverse curiosity? Some kind of controlled experiment or attempt to reconcile determinism and free will? What is my score? What is a health bar? Here I am, outside my own story, no longer moving to the right, or to the left. On the other side of the edge of the screen, off screen. After the end of the game, I can see it for what it was. You know what? I can know all that and still care. I can know all that and at the