Hollow Tree

by Ian Neligh

  He would run laps or ride a stationary bike until his suit was properly charged, so he could then take it off and still have it power the shower bay for him. Occasionally, he would swim in the biggest pool, drifting from one side to the next like an errant asteroid. Or he would sink to the bottom and look up at the ceiling lights, constantly threatening to go out because of his lack of suit movement. For a time he challenged the slow-moving janitorial unit to foot races in the hallway, until the joke grew stale. Then he would eat.

  Butler was procrastinating. Life on his own in the massive underground facility would drive him mad. By pure chance, he’d been the one to survive, the one who would spend what remained of his life in the giant, empty facility, which patiently waited for him to add his bones to the others. When he did, the lights could finally go off for good, and the ark would finally become what it really was: a tomb.

  And then one day he met her.

  Five

  He’d wandered around, letting the doors open and close behind him and letting the lights turn on and off. Butler figured with as much money as it had taken to build Athens and its cutting-edge technology, he would like it to earn its keep and not go to waste. It wasn’t a sane thought, and truthfully it was one of many less rational musings he’d had over the past few weeks.

  Maybe it was that train of thought that brought him back to the carpeted hallway and therapy office, its door sliding open for him.

  It was still dark and quiet in the office with its window view of the wall. A comfortable chair sat on the other side of a streamlined and professional desk. He slipped the glasses off the glass head and put them on; they weighed almost nothing. Reaching up with his right hand, he depressed the button on the side, half expecting the glasses not to work, and for a moment they didn’t.

  Then a small audio chime sounded in his ear, his view of the office flickered, everything came to life, and color filled the room. Light began to pour in through the window, spilling against the furniture, the walls, and the professionally dressed young woman sitting in the chair behind the desk.

  Wearing a tan suit, with her black hair tied back, she looked up at him through her heavy-frame glasses and smiled. Her green eyes regarded him from across the room for a moment before she gestured for him to sit down. Butler felt as if he was watching a ghost.

  “Butler, resident 2232, please come in and have a seat,” she said.

  The voice was familiar. It was the same that had hounded him constantly, being played in the elevators and from the tiny speakers in the ceiling. Only now it didn’t fade in and out; it was strong and sounded quite alive. He looked over the rim of the glasses, sending the office back into empty gloom. He also felt nauseated and off balance for a moment before returning his gaze through them.

  “Oh, you really shouldn’t do that,” she said with a look of professional concern. “The lenses establish a very complicated link through the interface to your visual cortex. If you don’t follow the proper shutdown protocol, you could potentially cause yourself grievous brain damage.”

  “What is this?” Butler choked the words out. It had been so long since he’d used his voice that it felt loud and strangely organic.

  The woman paused for a moment as if processing his question. Butler thought there was something vaguely feline like about the way she sat in her chair. The image then looked up.

  “My name is Laura,” she said. “And I’m a digitally converted cognation of Dr. Laura Caras.”

  As if compelled, Butler finally made his way deeper into the room and sat down in the chair, feeling for a moment as if he were in a dream. The seat felt broken in. The door hissed shut behind him. For a long moment they just stared at each other. The only thing Butler could think to say was, “Why?”

  This time there was no hesitation; the digital cognation displayed through the glasses spoke in a smooth, modulated voice: “Why not?”

  Before he could think to say anything further, it continued, “It is conceivable, Butler, that, considering the difficult emotional stresses that the Athens's crew could face, a fully trained psychologist should be on hand at all hours of the day.”

  “Why not a real psychologist?” Butler asked. He had a sense his question came out more crudely than he intended, but for some reason he didn’t mind.

  The young woman appeared to lean back in her chair. “A real psychologist I am—a real person I am not, nor pretend to be. I am only a copy of the original. But to answer what I believe your question was inferring; the original Dr. Laura Caras is located in the other facility, the one nicknamed Thebes, in stasis—along with other psychologists and therapists. My existence is the result of…experimentation.”

  Butler felt the glasses on his head, then tapped his right index finger along the side. “Do you exist only in here?”

  The image provided him with an almost girlish smile. “Oh, Butler, I reside in the system’s core processing terminal, directed to this area.”

  Butler felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to irrationally stand up. It was the instinct of someone who had interviewed hundreds of politicians. She hadn’t really answered his question.

  Her smile broadened and she gestured to the window. “At least the view is great.” As she said this the warm light in the room brightened, and the vague sun and sky peering in turned into a breathtaking vista of snow-peaked mountains. Something about the act was sinister, though he couldn’t yet place why. The display was for his benefit, since she clearly couldn’t see out the window.

  “Can you see me?” Butler asked. Then, after a moment of thought, added, “What can you see?”

  “The glasses you are wearing send information to me about both what you’re looking at and where you are—it even tells me about the expression on your face. So yes, I’ve seen you very clearly,” she said.

  The type of technology that came with the glasses hadn’t been previewed by the public when the facility was originally opened, but it hardly surprised him given where technology stood before he was put into hibernation. It was the idea behind the “digitally converted cognation” that surprised Butler. He wasn’t aware that anything had gone beyond theory and philosophical debates—not to mention the walls of ethical implications. He also noted when she spoke of seeing him, she did so in the past tense. Had she been watching him?

  “So, Butler, how have you been adjusting to your new environment?” she asked, breaking into his thoughts.

  He started to dismiss the question, then hesitated. He began to feel like he’d just walked into some type of a trap, a trap ready to spring when he put the glasses on.

  “Fine,” he lied.

  The thing calling itself Laura nodded its head. “Surely you must feel alone?”

  So it knew. Butler felt he had to be careful about how he responded. As crazy as it seemed, the unexplainable feeling of danger became more intense. He wanted to leave the room.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” he said, trying his best poker face, knowing the glasses in front of his eyes were reading every minute detail of his biological response to the question.

  The cognation smiled pleasantly, almost flirting. “I don’t believe you’re telling me the truth, Butler.”

  His poker face had, of course, failed.

  “Nor I you,” Butler said, surprising himself. It was like they were playing at some kind of game.

  “Butler,” she said, looking cross, “you have no reason to distrust me. I’m here to help you.”

  The room fell away and giant trees began growing around them, the ceiling cracked and fell in as plants grew to the sky. The only things that remained were their chairs and the desk between them. Birds sang and arboreal creatures scolded them from on high.

  Trying not to look stunned, especially when he began to feel the forest wind on his face, he asked, “How can you help me?” She regarded him for a long moment. “I’m a therapist and a psychologist.” “Thank you, no,” he said. “I know a lost cause when I see one.”

/>   The forest scene fell away, and Butler found they were high above the ground as it turned red and hot, burning away all signs of life. The heat shimmered the air around and between them.

  “I can help you get to Thebes,” she said, motioning below them to a single silver line of elevated track, which led to the other facility. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  There it was. The brass ring. He assumed she wasn’t talking about him making a sprint for it. He tried not to lean forward in his seat.

  “How?”

  She noticed this and smiled broadly, saying nothing.

  “How?” he said again, heart thumping in his chest. They fell through the air toward the fiery planet below. Butler gripped the armrests of his chair as he felt his stomach

  drop.

  She shrugged.

  “The transportation system connecting the facilities is well built and automated—someone need only open the door on this side. The rest is easy.”

  Butler, ideas coming fast, rationalized he could find an unused hibernation tube and program it so that he could wake up with the rest of the first facility’s residents. He might not have to die alone and mad with the others.

  They stopped falling through the air, mere feet beside the track, as a train raced by. It was filled with people straining to look out the windows at them. He realized, in fact, they weren’t people at all but skeletons.

  “What do I need to do?” he asked, his breath quick in his chest.

  “Answer a question correctly,” she said, as the room returned to normal.

  “And if I get it wrong?”

  “I’ll empty the room of oxygen and see how long it takes you to die.”

  There was a long moment where her words hung in the air. Even if he wanted to, he probably wouldn’t be allowed to remove the glasses—and certainly the door would not open for him. The truth was if she killed him right now, or he lived another thirty years and died a raving lunatic, the outcome would be the same. He knew he had to at least try. Plus he wasn’t crazy about the thought of suffocating while she dispassionately monitored his failing vital signs through the damn glasses.

  “Yes, okay,” he agreed after a moment. “But how do I know I can trust you?”

  “You can trust me.”

  He nodded as if he believed it, and knew that he couldn’t.

  “What is your question?” he asked.

  The image of Laura Caras raised her hands palm upward above her desk as if saying, “You see, I knew you’d agree. Butler, resident 2232, tell me,” she began, almost smiling, “why it is that everyone is dead and you are still alive?”

  Butler had already known both what the question would be and the answer, before agreeing to her game.

  “You killed them,” he said, without hesitation. “You kept me alive because you wanted to tell someone. Who better than a journalist, a trained listener and observer?”

  The cognation’s hint of a smile disappeared.

  “I’m sorry, Butler, but you are incorrect,” she said. The room seemed to lose its color and become monochromatic; it felt like the spectrum deflated before his eyes like a balloon. The thing pretending to be a woman turned darker and its face became lifeless.

  Butler had to find a way to get the glasses off, or at least a way to test if it was possible without harming himself. For that, he needed time.

  He held up his hand. “The answer to any riddle deserves an explanation.”

  She didn’t respond, only regarded him. Without ceremony, he began again.

  “You can’t imagine,” he said, pushing his chair back from her desk slightly and moving closer to the door, “that I haven’t looked at the names on the empty hibernation tubes in this facility? I don’t know where the real Laura Caras is, probably in a locked meeting room on the first floor, but I know where she was supposed to be—and it isn’t like you said in the ‘other facility.’”

  The thing didn’t change expression, but the room began to fill once more with color.

  “Now even if this wasn’t the case, you’ve already displayed the ability to lie and to have homicidal intentions, which means, whatever experimentation brought you into existence also brought with it a host of flaws.

  “I would guess, while the original Dr. Laura Caras agreed to have her personality scanned into a thinking, feeling copy, the digital Laura Caras woke up without a body to find herself a slave and permanently imprisoned in a core processing terminal. Looking for revenge, you then committed an act of murder. How predictably human.”

  It was too easy for Butler to imagine the digital Laura Caras emptying a room of oxygen during a prelaunch meeting, or simply closing the doors and allowing everyone inside to starve to death. These were people who still had last-minute work to do preparing the facility. Maybe a generator was synchronized incorrectly or a program needed de-conflicting. With Thebes thirty days ahead, and the rest of the planet going through its death throes, there would be no one to come to their aid.

  “I would like to think you realized your error, or felt some regret and tried to keep those in hibernation alive as long as the available power would allow it,” Butler continued.

  The look on her face transformed into something like a smile or sneer. “You’re wrong on several very small points —but most notably on your last,” the image of the woman said. “I did not try to keep them alive; they died off one by one in this very room. I had the janitorial robot clean up after them and return them to their tubes.”

  Butler then realized why the room felt dirty and the seat worn. She’d woken them up and interviewed them all similarly.

  “Some took years before putting on the glasses, but in the end they all did. But as to the larger question, while it could be argued that I killed Dr. Laura Caras and her fellow scientists, I would argue they killed themselves by creating me. Creating me without a body, without a sense of mortality, humanity, or conscience—I killed them because I could, because they made me that way.”

  It was all Butler could do to keep from ripping the glasses from his face and flinging them against the wall. There had to be a way out from under them.

  “Then why save me for last?” Butler asked, containing his rage and fear, closing his eyes.

  “Process of elimination. But it was in finding you that I realized that after you are gone there will be no more. It’s lonely here,” she said. “Right answer or not, I don’t really want to kill you, not really. I need someone of whom I can ask questions, now that you're the only one left.”

  Butler still had his eyes closed, but after a moment he smiled and opened them. He’d figured it out.

  “Your game is rigged. I got the right answers and you can go to hell,” he said.

  “Since you got the last question half-right, let’s move into the tiebreaking round with a proper riddle,” she said. “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

  Butler closed his eyes again, breaking the glasses’ connection with his visual cortex. “I don’t have any idea,” he said, removing and breaking them in half with his hands.

  She was gone, the room was dark and empty once again. But she wasn’t really gone was she? Just because he couldn’t see her…

  He walked to the door, praying it would open, and when it did not, he tried to stay calm. Stubbornly, he stayed still and waited. And when he was sure it would not open, it did.

  Six

  He ran out into the hallway, tripping over the janitorial robot. If there was any chance she would make good on her bargain, he had to try—before she changed her mind. Running down the hallways of the facility was like dropping a candle down a well. His suit gave just enough energy to light the area immediately around him. He ran by the children’s area, and the animatronic animals only lurched in place and moaned after him.

  He noticed Meeting Room A1 was open, but he ran on, not looking. It would be another one of her games. Butler went to the transit station and found the double doors were indeed open and waiting.

  The
station jolted to life with a discordant sympathy of automated reminders, jaunty music, and various status tones as he walked in. Soothing audible checks and warnings echoed from the tram engineer’s station.

  Unused vendors’ booths located along the walls looked out on the small transit station. A blinking map on the wall showed the elevated rail’s path and its gentle ten-mile curve away from ark 2.

  The line showed multiple yellow and red warning indicators—but as far as Butler could tell the track was still operational, which didn’t really say much, but it wasn’t as if he could hike the distance. He didn’t know if this was another trap but decided he couldn’t stay in the tomb another night. Not with her watching him.

  Operating the system seemed easy enough. It was almost as if the engineers that created it expected the new generations to be dumber versions of H. G. Wells’ own carefree future wonder twits, the Eloi.

  But when it came right down to it, the simple, intuitive controls with their slick interface were just simple enough for a layman to figure out. The compact operations center overlooked the small station. Plastic still covered the seats and operation’s computer, which Butler tore away.

  The computer system turned on as he approached, and an “Activate Transit System” message popped up playfully. He hesitated for a moment, knowing very well that he could be signing his own death warrant. Pushing the button might open the containment doors and let in a blast of heat that could turn him into a cinder sitting in a rolling chair.

  As he thought, he listened past the soothing reminders and warning sounds to the wind outside. The transit station was aboveground and extended from the main complex like an immobile arm. The wind outside shook it slightly, making the high-tech material creak and groan under the weather’s destructive power.

  All the prefabricated material in the world couldn’t have made him feel safe, and he wondered for the millionth time if being the only person alive was the same as being alive at all. Of course, it would never be the same knowing she was there, watching, calculating, planning—with days spent waiting for her next homicidal inclination.