Strange Exit

by Parker Peevyhouse

  He stepped onto the tilted porch. Stood for a long moment like a patient visitor. He knew what he needed to do before he went inside.

  He breathed weed-scented air.

  Finally turned his forearm stars-up.

  He touched one of the inked stars and then dragged his finger to his wrist, taking the star with it. In a moment, he’d rearranged the entire constellation, as simple as a surgeon rearranging his own veins.

  Now he wouldn’t get trapped in his own sim-home. Much as a part of him wanted to.

  He opened the door.

  His dog trotted to meet him the moment he stepped inside. Taren dropped to his knees and scratched the dog’s boxy head, clutched his warm, furry body. “You been eating? Let’s get you some water.”

  The dog wasn’t real, didn’t need water. But it felt good to snatch a bowl from the cabinet, fill it with rainwater from the barrel out front, set it before the wriggling dog. Taren leaned against the wall while the dog drank, imagining the house as it had once been. The sound of his mother dropping her keys on the counter, of his dad digging through rustling bags of groceries. He wandered down the hall to the door of his own bedroom. If he stepped inside, would he see himself hunched over his desk?

  He hurried on, to the kitchen. He touched the calendar on the wall, and the drawing tacked next to it of a tall-peaked house and cloud-shaped trees. Sat at the table, smelling his dad’s coffee, his mom’s pancakes. Kept checking his tattoo so he’d remember not to stay too long.

  The whole time, the back door trembled against a buffering wind. Shut tight against Taren’s anxious thoughts: his parents probably hadn’t survived nuclear winter. Or they might have, but enough years might have passed to claim their lives anyway. Taren couldn’t stand thinking of them waiting for a son who hadn’t returned. But if they weren’t waiting for him, did he still want to go home to the surface?

  He stood from the table, his eyes on the trembling door. He knew what lay out there. He’d seen it last time he’d come to his sim-house. He forced himself to go to the door, open it.

  A massive crater comprised the entire landscape, the size of ten neighborhoods together. Gusting wind whipped up thin plumes of dirt like smoke. The churned earth seemed ready to become a grave.

  It’s not real. This is just a simulation.

  The crater exhaled smoke. A noise rose from its depths, a rumble of fractured earth. A voice. Do you want to survive? it asked Taren.

  Taren quaked. He had boarded a ship, slept for decades, escaped the sim, fought his way back through it. “Yes,” he answered.

  The sides of the crater shifted, crumbled. The sound of trickling dirt was the sticky sound of a throat opening. Do you know what you need to do?

  Taren went on quaking.

  He had to wake the sleepers. There was no getting out of it. Wake them or die.

  His arm throbbed, and he looked down to see his distorted tattoo, the stars all wrong. He remembered what Ransom had told him: You use the tar, you become the destroyer. He could feel it already—he was losing himself. The tar had somehow gotten inside him and was eating up everything that made him who he was.

  Was there another way?

  He pictured Lake in the desert. “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. You don’t understand what’s at the heart of the sim.”

  He backed away from the door, the crater.

  If he carved a door in the wall, the way Lake had in the cavern—what would he find beyond it, in the heart of the sim?

  To make a door, he would need tar.

  He took a deep breath, bracing himself for what he had to do: create more tar.

  You woke in a simulation, and then you woke to reality, he told himself. How do you know, each time you wake, that you’re waking at all? He dug his fingers into his scalp, reeling against the confusion that fogged his brain. He pressed into the feeling, searching his mind for the thoughts that most threatened to break his grip on reality—the only way to make the tar he needed.

  They’ve left you to survive on your own. But only tar offers survival.

  And yet, if you use it, there will be no waking, only darkness forever—

  He fell to his knees with a groan.

  A wave of nausea rolled over him. He clutched his forearm, where his tattoo showed. For a moment, he couldn’t understand why the stars were in the wrong place. And then it came to him. The sim. I’m a prisoner.

  The fog of confusion rolled away.

  At his feet, in the join between the wall and the floor, an inky string of tar wormed its way free. Taren scuttled back from it. He picked up a rag from the kitchen counter and carefully dipped it in the wriggling tar.

  “Please don’t touch it, please,” he murmured to himself, trying his best not to imagine the tar seeping through the cloth and infecting his skin.

  As quick as he could, he smeared the tar over the wall next to the back door.

  The wall crumbled. Taren used the rag to jab at the disintegrating wall, below where the tar had cut to form the top of a doorway. The wall turned to dust and rained onto the tile. Taren dropped the rag.

  Through the opening in the wall, he spied only darkness.

  Was this the lost world Lake had found? A pitch-black nightscape?

  Taren stepped through, uncertain. He smelled salt water and rock, heard the crash of distant waves, felt a chill of icy wind over his skin.

  He crept forward. Rocky slope under his feet. He slipped on the uneven ground and fell to his arms and knees.

  What is this place?

  In the distance: the mournful waves. No—something more, another sound. An eerie cry, like the keening of a creature.

  Taren scrambled over the rocks on his hands and feet. What’s out there?

  Up ahead, as though a cold dawn had broken, blue light glowed on a rocky riverbank. Taren shot toward it, away from the creature calling in the darkness.

  At the water’s edge, the light shone brighter, an early-morning glow. Across the river, a strange forest of billowing trees filtered the low sunlight. And above, on a high promontory, a figure stood surveying the land below.

  Eden.

  More figures gathered behind her, and then more, emerging from the trees on a high ledge.

  Taren inched back into the darkness.

  The sleepers had all left the Battery. There was no point now in waking Eden, or in closing the pocket she’d created.

  Taren would have to wake the sleepers one by one. Before the ship failed. An impossible task.

  Unless he used tar.

  He sank to the ground, hands pressed over his face.

  He’d have to use tar on every single one of them.

  24

  LAKE

  Lake stepped through the door into a space identical to the dimly lit hallways on the ship. A wave of dizziness made her press her hand against the cool wall to brace herself. She turned back to see Willow closing the door behind them. “The door didn’t take us out of the sim?” she asked Willow.

  “Well.” Willow gave her a grim smile. “I’m still here, so…”

  Lake’s stomach clenched. Still in the sim.

  And she realized now that if she had wakened from the sim, she would be in a stasis chamber right now, her breath fogging a plastic shell shut tight over her.

  “Where are the controls?” Willow looked unimpressed with the empty hallway, the flickering lights.

  “Must be somewhere nearby.” Lake started down the hallway, trailing her fingers over the wall, hoping the touch of metal could keep her grounded.

  “Do you think this will work?” Willow asked. “Do you think the controls in the sim can fix the real ship?”

  “The captain said the sim is connected to the program that runs the ship.” Lake bit her lip. Is this too much to hope for?

  But what if it works? What if I can fix the CO2 scrubbers, or unlock the doors?

  “He said you can’t go home to the surface,” Willow reminded her.

  Lake tried to keep he
r breathing steady. “I’ll think about that later. Right now, we just need to make sure the ship doesn’t quit on us.”

  The hallway forked, and she stopped, troubled by the distant sounds floating from the branch to her right. “Do you hear that?”

  Willow tilted her head, listening. She gave Lake a worried look. “I don’t think we’re alone.”

  The sounds grew louder: a distant clatter of activity, a whine of laboring machines, a chorus of anxious voices. “It’s the eatery,” Lake said. “That’s all.”

  Willow frowned. “The…?”

  “One of the few places on the ship not locked down or full of stasis beds.”

  “But we’re not really walking around on the ship right now—it’s just the sim.”

  Lake dug her fingers into her palms, trying to keep herself focused. “The sim-ship must have an eatery just like the real ship.”

  Willow listened to the distant chaos, her eyes going wide as the voices turned to garbled shouting. “Is the real eatery as terrifying as the sim-eatery?”

  “Come on.” Lake grabbed her hand and pulled her down the other hallway, spurred by the sudden echo of footsteps from the eatery. They’re only figments—what can they do? But she knew from experience that figments felt as solid as real people, in the sim. They could grab and hit and—

  Adrenaline surged through her and she quickened her pace.

  Then—a door. Lake seized the handle. Locked.

  “Over here.” Willow pulled Lake toward an open doorway lit by an eerie red glow. “The controls.”

  The room throbbed. Red lights pulsed from the screens that covered the walls, and from the bulbs overhead. Lake felt she had slipped into the bowels of a beast. Swallowed by the sim.

  “I hear them coming,” Willow said, leaning half-into the doorway.

  Lake scanned the readings on the screens, understanding nothing except that the ship’s systems were failing. Even here in the sim, the ship’s a mess.

  She touched a screen, hoping it would open access to something—the shuttles, the locks, the stasis machines.

  The screen went dark at her touch and then a word bloomed there:

  PARACOSM

  The program that ran the simulation. Lake tapped on it, but nothing happened.

  From the hallway, the sound of thudding footsteps grew louder. “Lake,” Willow said.

  Lake jabbed her finger against another screen.

  PARACOSM

  Another.

  PARACOSM

  This isn’t working.

  Grunts and shouts from the hallway.

  “I can’t get it to work!”

  A piercing shriek—

  Lake’s head snapped up. “Willow?” No Willow in the doorway.

  Silence from the hallway.

  Lake barreled from the room—into an empty hallway. “Willow?” She crept along, ears pricked. Only the hum of the air vents, the pounding of her heart. The figments from the eatery—they got her.

  But then, where were the figments now?

  She reached the fork in the passage. Hesitated only a moment before choosing the one that went to the eatery.

  Still quiet. Even when she reached the door at the end. Even when she opened it.

  The eatery was twilight-dim, lit only by a few electric flares scattered over the floor like embers. A glowering boy stood before her: Kyle, the boy she’d argued with about opening the door to Taren’s makeshift cell.

  “You’ve been going into the sim, haven’t you?” Kyle snarled, his face up-lit by the red light of the flare he clutched. “I’ve seen you sneaking around the ship.” His free hand closed on her wrist, tight as a vise.

  “Let go,” Lake barked.

  He held tight, dragging her into the eatery, past huddled forms and overturned tables. “You’re the reason the ship is breaking down. The lights have all gone out, the food is gone.”

  He’s just a figment. This isn’t real. This isn’t—

  He jerked open the door to one of the makeshift cells and shoved her inside.

  “Stop,” Lake said. “I can’t stay here. I have to get out.” He’d trap her in the sim. He’d lock her in and she’d never get back to the—

  Or … wait.

  She was already on the ship. Right?

  The scene before her was so real. The huddled forms, the glowering boy, the darkened view-screens …

  Is this the sim or isn’t it?

  She raked her fingers over her head. Where’s Willow?

  Nowhere.

  So is this the sim?

  Something trickled down the door to her cell, a shadow darker than the other shadows. What is that?

  The sound of metal scraping over metal startled her. Kyle was dragging a table toward the door of her cell, preparing to block her inside.

  Don’t let him trap you. A spike of fear drove into her heart.

  She started to reach for the door handle, but whatever substance had wormed its way down the glass had dripped onto the metal. Just the tiniest drop, hardly worth worrying over. But Lake didn’t want to touch it. It spread even as she watched it, coating the handle with a thin veneer of shadow.

  Don’t touch it. But the table was moving closer. She’d be trapped.

  She wrenched the handle, banging the door against the table Kyle was dragging nearer, and slipped through the narrow opening—

  Into the blinding glare of the desert boneyard.

  I’m still in the sim.

  She should have X’d the door and left the sim, but in her panic, she’d only gone from one pocket to another.

  Something clung to the skin of her palm. Lake didn’t want to look at it. Forced herself to.

  A thin layer of tar. Spreading toward her fingers.

  Death, coming for her.

  Panic seized her. I have to get out of the sim. She found a red-brown pebble at her feet and snatched it up. Drew a tiny X over the door. Good enough. Opened the door and stepped through—

  Cool darkness. The wheezing of machines.

  Lake lifted the plastic lid and tumbled out of the stasis bed.

  It’s okay. I’m okay.

  Her legs were weak, mouth dry. She needed a bathroom and water and someone to tell her she wasn’t dying.

  She’d have to settle for the company of her own desperation. As usual.

  The warehouse was pitch-dark. Lake stumbled past stasis chambers, her fingers brushing over walls to guide her to the warehouse’s opening.

  The hallway was dark too, but up ahead, an electric flare glowed in the doorway to the eatery. She remembered Kyle’s glowering face, his painful grip on her wrist. He’s not here, that wasn’t real.

  She crept into the eatery, her skin glowing with the blue light from the flare in the doorway. What a specter I must be to them. Faces turned toward her—one she recognized.

  “Ajay,” she said. “You made it through.”

  He frowned. “Who are you?”

  She’d been in disguise when she’d last seen him. But it didn’t matter that he didn’t recognize her. She was just glad he’d made it out.

  “Please,” she said. “Do you have any water? Anything to eat?”

  He studied her for a moment longer, his expression softening. “A little.” He held out a cup.

  She collapsed next to him, all of her strength gone. Lying in a stasis bed for hours and still exhausted. But that was what happened when you didn’t eat or drink, when you lived on a diet of adrenaline and defeat.

  She took the cup from Ajay and drank. The water was gone too fast, and she still shook with thirst and exhaustion.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “Just come from the sim?”

  Lake glanced around at the passengers huddled at tables and conspiring in corners. No one seemed to be listening to her conversation with Ajay. She nodded.

  “I only just got out,” Ajay said. “A girl helped me.”

  From the far end of the eatery: shouts of distress met with raised voices.

  “There a
re still people stuck in the sim,” Ajay told Lake. “We can’t get off the ship until someone rescues them.”

  Lake squeezed her eyes shut, fighting against the nausea roiling in her stomach. Stuck in the sim or on the ship—it doesn’t matter which anymore. The ship was failing. She hadn’t been able to fix any of its problems. It didn’t even matter that they couldn’t get to the shuttles, because there was nowhere to go. Earth’s surface was no longer habitable, would probably never be.

  “I told everyone here that the rest of the people trapped in the sim are all in a place called the Battery,” Ajay said.

  It doesn’t matter. Let them stay there. Let them sleep, if all they have to wake for is death.

  “The people who are stuck in the Battery don’t really want to be there,” Ajay said. “They’re afraid. They don’t think there’s anything better waiting for them elsewhere.”

  “What if they’re right?”

  Ajay peered around at the shifting silhouettes, the flare-lit faces like masks of misery floating in the darkness. “Do you think they’d leave if we promised them a tour of a spaceship?” he joked.

  “I’ve taken the tour myself. It’s not what you’d hope for in a spaceship.”

  Ajay examined her with pity in his eyes. He shifted so he could pull something from his pocket. “Are you hungry? There isn’t much, but you seem like you need this.”

  He pressed something small and round into her hand. Lake hardly registered it. She wanted to tell Ajay that it didn’t matter, that they might as well go back into the sim and find their way to the lost world and wait for the ship to fail …

  But then she looked down at what was in her hand.

  Fruit. Fresh fruit.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked, voice trembling.

  “Someone found it in a strange metal box.”

  Lake looked around, and now she realized that the forms huddled together weren’t passengers who had given in to despair. They were whispering, passing something hand to hand—fruit.

  But where did it come from?

  She studied the small globe in her hand, its strange pink flesh. In a flash, she remembered the shelter under the trees that she and Willow had lived in. A bowl of fruit pits sat on a table—the table where she had once feasted on ripe fruit like the globe she held now.