VEG

by Zachery Nims

  Chapter 7: Awake Now Mark Boggs

  Source: Journal

  Name: Mark Boggs

  I awoke with a jolt, remembering the prior night’s events. A slight dip in the bed lay vacant by my side. The little girl had slipped away in the night. That had never happened to me and I smiled at how tired I must have been. “Cíest la vie,” I said out loud as I bounced up off the bed.

  It was already noon, I must have gotten back late last night. I didn’t feel comfortable hunting during the day but I had lost time saving the girl. I made myself a hearty lunch and watched as Sally ate her food. She liked to cut it up into the smallest bits. I would always tell her that if she made it too small ants would come and take it away. It never failed to put a smile on her face and she would begin to eat her food.

  The streets were barren, forgotten under the afternoon sun. The hustle and bustle of anyone stuck working in the district was gone before the sunset. A new breed awakened at night, crawling out from all the foul places parents warned their children about. I had been tracking Gothamsreckoning for close to four years now and he had been eluding me thus far. This transient scumbag never stayed put. Days turned to weeks, and weeks bled into years. I had been searching VEG spikes, an excessive amount of server usage recorded by a single user. I scoured the slums looking for abnormal activity. Gothamsreckoning was a big fish and the payout for his capture would set me up for life. It was more than that though, some illusive obsession that tugged at lost memories.

  I walked past the same alley where I had diverted my path the prior night, putting on my Jackers to begin the hunt. The first couple of streets showed little promise, barren wastelands void of both life and atmosphere. The sun was starting to set and shadows began creeping up abandoned alleys, filling them with their familiar gloom. I dove deeper into the maze, looking for any modified buildings and that’s when I saw it. I turned a corner and a new world stood before my eyes. I recognized it… Virtual rain fell thick, soaking neon lit alleys. Police cars hovered above head whipping fog filled streets into momentary chaos.

  Rogue users seemed to gravitate toward the science fiction genre, leaving breadcrumbs for the truly dedicated fans. I had studied countless science fiction films. My favorite of which was Blade Runner and now I was immersed in its world. Gothamsreckoning must have recreated a sci-fi haven where he felt at home. I was standing in awe of its intricate beauty.

  It was hard to tell what was augmented reality and what was physically standing before me. I turned one of my lenses on my Jackers off so I could differentiate between the two. Most of the city disappeared in my left eye, just a few people walking aimlessly in the distance. I could see the Tyrell Corporation’s two-pyramid skyscraper engulfing the horizon. In the film, Tyrell was a high-tech corporation that made androids. Their company motto was, “more human than human.” The problem being that they made replicants, non-human bioengineered beings that became illegal on earth due to an off-world mutiny. Six replicants from the tragic event escaped, stealing a shuttle to Earth.

  Zhora, one of the replicants from the mutiny, was running in my peripheral with her clear plastic raincoat on. A doe, attempting escape in front of black market knock off clothing stores. Rick Deckard, a cop hunting replicants played by Harrison Ford, was in pursuit. His gun was drawn and poised. She began crashing through store windows after he released a bullet that pierced through her right shoulder. Brilliant shards of virtual glass danced with gravity, reflecting lights into the mannequin’s emotionless eyes. It was such a beautiful scene up close. She regained her footing, trying desperately to keep running but she was more frantic than before, fear flooding her enlarged pupils. Another bullet tore through her chest sending her diving face first into the ground. She was now just as dead and lifeless as the mannequins that stood beside her in the storefront window.

  It made sense to have her die next to hollow human forms since she was a replicant. At the time of her death, Deckard felt that replicants were nothing more than soulless robots. I examined the body but something looked different. I brought up a virtual display in my Jackers of the exact same scene from Blade Runner. Yes!!... her body was different. Her fingers were all flat in the original scene, sprawling out like she had tensed up upon death. In this version, her right hand was above her head with the palm facing upward. I looked toward the same direction and saw nothing. The buildings looked identical to the original film. I looked again at the palm of her hand; it appeared as though it was awaiting an offering. Something strange grabbed my memory, laying waste to control. I pulled a piece of paper from my pocket and began to fold and crease like a mad man. My possessed fingers lost themselves in a daze of origami. When I came to, a delicate white paper unicorn was nuzzled amongst the hardened cracks of my ogreish hands. The unicorn represented a theory that Deckard was in fact himself a replicant. I placed it in her hand. The earth paused and her polished fingers closed upon it. An almost blinding light flashed above. On top of the building was the Chinese symbol for origin. Ridley Scott, the director, placed these symbols throughout the movie. My heart raced knowing that it was probably a clue. I pulled out my Glock 17 and approached the front entrance.

  It was dark inside, the kind of dark that masked bravery, so I clipped a flashlight mod onto my pistol. Times like these, I felt I was back in the Army. The collection agency job kept me grounded. The only flash of purpose since retiring from the Green Beret. It made the pain I felt constructive, and missions gave me purpose. They never tell you how hard it’ll be to try and be a family man after you’ve watched kids die in your arms. Life feels like a dark dream you once had. After the wife left the nightmares took me most nights, seething with despair. The collection agency brought back some normality, the muscle memory trigger responses kept me focused. I lived for the case, lived almost too much for this one.

  My light bounced down long corridors revealing eroded life as I searched. The number of stairs I had climbed made me dizzy, doors began to blend together. Opened or closed they all reeked of neglect. Another stair set, another step toward the inevitable truth that I had found another dead end. Nothing, there was nothing, nothingness plagued my pupils into a trance, making the mind tired. Floor thirteen… floor fourteen… Floor fifteen… floor sixteen… Wait floor sixteen. My left eye saw a vacant corridor like the others but my right eye saw the rooftop in one of the final scenes in Blade Runner. Smog from the ventilation cascaded over dull metal covering the neon lit letters TDK, one of the many corporate ads of companies that didn’t succeed after the movie other than Coke. Rain bounced so realistically off the sleeves of my coat that I instinctively attempted to brush it away. I caught myself shivering, the impulse ingrained in my brain.

  Roy Batty, another replicant, was already sitting cross-legged like a child, his head wavering a little with blood running from a cut around his left eye. He spoke, “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark…”

  It was beautiful, but my focus was distracted by something. Above one of the doors further down the hall there was some sort of beautiful glittering light in the sky. Curiosity drew me in for a closer look but I saw nothing. I waited for about fifteen minutes for the loop of the speech to reset. Then I stood near the area that I thought I saw it. Mid speech I saw it, a borage of lasers, which I imagine represented C-beams, battled above the crown molding. The bronze apartment number sixteen fifty-two shimmered in the spectacle. A small insignia GR was carved into the wood frame just above the numbering.

  Gothamsreckoning… An ecstasy type feeling flooded my veins as adrenaline carried me to the door, my body shaking with the anticipation of my first kick. My busy mind rested and took audience for the physical performance to come. The smash rang in my ears, a symphony of raw pleasure, as my army reinforced steel-toed boot unleashed at full force near the doorknob. I had already
calculated the force required, given the age of the dilapidated structure, and applied four hundred percent over just for sheer effect. It tore from the bottom first, ripping from its hinges. Then the swinging force sent the door airborne, twisting in the air like a propeller. It crashed into a table in the center of the room as I ran in gun drawn.

  The soft click of a trip wire whispered hello in my ears. I didn’t even feel it, my body froze knowing it was too late to react. The entire floor shot up around me, trapping me in a thin mesh netting. My senses were sharp enough to know to log off from VEG. The net material was made of metal so I knew I had mere seconds. If a person stayed logged on, hackers could access anything and everything in their life. VEG technology had taken the place of cell phones and computers because it incorporated them all into one. I said “Sally,” my code to activate my automatic shutdown, and the VEG simulation went blank locking just before the pulse of electricity knocked me unconscious.