House of the Galactic Elevator

by Gerhard Gehrke

  But little of this interested her anymore. She found another tavern and slid into a booth. When a waiter tried to take her order she waved him off. She didn’t want to get dinged for more credits in spite of the fact that the savory smells from the kitchen made her mouth water.

  She yawned. Fought off the urge to nap. Somewhere in the real world her own body had its own needs and Fang would be awake by now and destroying things.

  The waiter returned.

  “A bowl of stew to recharge your batteries?” he asked. “Or perhaps a room for a few hours’ rest? Her majesty’s kingdom appreciates all its loyal warriors’ efforts in the struggle, especially when they’re all fed and well rested.”

  “Can you tell me how to log out of this stupid game?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand your request. Perhaps some mulled wine?”

  “Piss off.”

  Her alarm app still wouldn’t open. Neither would her basic communication app. But obviously her translator still worked. That made game interactions possible. But she couldn’t call anyone or send a message. So what else could she do while inside a game?

  Jordan thought about Shannanon as she appeared in real life. Thought about her species and homeworld. Sure enough, the cyclopedia app entry informed her of her friend’s diet, preferred atmosphere, and tolerances. She could read on and interact with a planetary history as well as contributions to the Galactic Commons.

  Bingo. So she could get one of her apps to work. The effort had given her a headache. But she tried to think of each application individually, as her program list wasn’t coming up. There were so many. Had she really installed over two hundred applications into her brain since coming to the Galactic Commons?

  Some of the programs she could open did nothing. She dismissed the many frivolous games and deleted an overlay that allowed her to see the world through the compound eyes of an arthropod. Some apps were specific to elements of the city, like where to find a restroom, a park, or transportation. These worked but were useless here. Nothing helped with how to log out of an overreaching fantasy sim.

  She couldn’t find the game itself so she could just delete the thing.

  A pop-up ad appeared in the corner of her HUD. She almost closed the ad, but for some reason it caught her eye.

  “Want a meal?” the bright green words asked. “A snack? A repast? A feast? Check our online restaurant delivery for options! A myriad of eateries will deliver straight to your door.”

  A graphic of three very different heads bit away at the text until only crumbs remained. The heads all licked their mouths clean and finished with flashing grins.

  She could order takeout, and it would be delivered straight to her. Real food. In the real world. She knew before she checked that Spice Valley was far too remote for any food courier. She checked anyway. Hundreds of venues had menus available. Not quite a myriad, but the selection was impressive. She sifted through them, picked one at random.

  “Delivery within Galactic Commons city limits only,” the fine print said.

  This was a common rule among the other establishments. She found a few places that would bring food out to her via drone, but it would take hours. She couldn’t wait that long.

  The numbness that crept down her fingers wasn’t carpal tunnel syndrome or ulnar entrapment but her real-life limbs falling asleep. If she could only kick her brain in gear. The last choice left was where to park the avatar before she succumbed. The booth she sat in felt comfortable enough.

  Just before she closed the menus, one item in the micetype disclaimers on one of the food menus stood out.

  It read, “Delivery to game participants only. This service is restricted and may not be used to purchase food items for third parties.”

  What did that mean? She wiggled her hands to shake off the pins and needles. It did no good, as her avatar felt fine. She clicked off that menu, pulled up another. Same disclaimer. Seventeen more menus later, and she found one that didn’t have the restriction on third-party recipients of food items.

  Her hands trembled now with excitement. This might be the path to salvation. If she couldn’t order for herself, she could order for someone else.

  The menu ordering app accessed her real-world contacts even though she could not. She pulled up Jeff. His location was unknown. Figures. He used no apps and his fear of tech precluded him having any location device active, especially since the translators could no longer track people. Oliop, then. Smarter than Jeff, a bit squirrelly, but he would drop everything once he found out Jordan was in trouble.

  Strange. Oliop’s location wasn’t showing up, either. He might have turned his location beacon off, assuming he even had one.

  “Oh, come on,” she said.

  Two other names appeared. Flemming and Ceph. Both had active tracking information. Both of these might also actually help her in her hour of need. She would have to send dinner to one of the cops, but which one? Captain Flemming? The crusty alien might not eat anything these restaurants made and would probably ignore a random delivery. But what about Detective Ceph? The few times she had seen him, he had his mouth on something crunchy or slurpy.

  Now to pick a restaurant that had items that Detective Ceph would actually eat.

  She pulled up a filter, selected “Third Party Ordering,” and chose the first restaurant with the highest user rating (“Nine taste appendages!”).

  Panda Crunch. That sounded like it could be interesting. Then she read the venue’s creed and mission statement and the first item on the menu. The restaurant name described the primary menu choice perfectly. She backed out of the virtual menu quickly and found another place. She vowed to look into veganism as soon as her current distress was over.

  She opened her cyclopedia and found Detective Ceph’s species. He came from an ocean world and had a diet primarily made up of saltwater life forms.

  “Seafood,” she said.

  The Chum Bucket turned out to be an inexpensive food purveyor. Its graphic featured an animated shark going belly-up, its corpse sinking to the ocean floor. The beast’s belly then swelled and burst into priced and labeled menu items, all seafood, and delivered to third parties according to the fine print. Her order would also allow her to add a message.

  “Help, I’m trapped inside a fantasy game world! I’m in the caretaker cabin at Spice Valley Park. Please help me get out, or at least contact Oliop or Jeff Abel. Detective Ceph, you’re my only hope. The snacks are on me. Love, Jordan.”

  With the message composed, she spent her last few real-world credits on a meal fit for an ocean-based glutton.

  CHAPTER 15

  The latest round of medicine taken before bed made waking up the next morning difficult. The post-sleep haze wouldn’t leave him, and before Jeff knew it he was again at group, the faint notion lingering that the rest of the morning’s activities had taken place without his consent or much of his own volition. He felt his chin. He had shaved, or been shaved. His clothes and body didn’t smell of sweat. He had food in his stomach from breakfast. But try as he might, Jeff couldn’t recall any of the steps involved in those tasks.

  Myron had the Star Trek communicator. It was his turn to speak, and he carried on about a series of dreams he had where he raised himself as his own father and repeated all the same mistakes his father had made. Doctor Carol looked interested enough in the telling. The others in group not so much.

  Jeff had wanted to use the tablet to get online. That probably hadn’t happened. But as far as Jeff could guess, he might have wandered the halls last night and painted the ceiling blue.

  “I’ve got to go to the men’s room,” Jeff said. He stood.

  Myron looked offended. “But I’m not done,” he said.

  “Jeff, can it wait?” Doctor Carol asked.

  “Sorry, Doc,” Jeff said. “Breakfast is doing a number on me. May I?”

  “Of course. Return here when you finish, Jeff.”

  Doctor Carol unlocked the door to the hallway. As t
he door shut behind Jeff, he heard Myron say, “Why does he get to leave? I wasn’t finished.”

  Big Albert stood leaning outside. “Come straight back.”

  Jeff nodded, and walked quickly as if he had to go.

  The rest of the hallway was vacant. Jeff walked down past the other doctors’ offices. Voices came through the doors. One group in session had someone weeping full-bore, a wracking sob that echoed out into the hallway. Another room’s group clapped in unison with some muted self-affirming chant. The sounds combined, making it seem as if the sobbing was being applauded. Jeff’s room was silent once he shut the door behind him.

  He picked up the Sunset magazine. The tablet wasn’t there. An old CD-ROM slid out of a fold of the magazine. The disc advertised a free dial-up unlimited internet service provided by Jinong Industries. Jeff put the disc and the magazine away. He searched through the other items on his nightstand, as if the tablet might have gotten very small or purposefully elusive. He checked his sink, the floor, the pillow. He pulled the sheets from the bed. There it was on the mattress, waiting for him. Had he slept with the thing? Somewhere in last night’s blackout slumber, he must have moved the tablet.

  He took it and turned it on. He entered the code 7070. Power at 13%. Recharge Soon, a box reminded him. He dismissed the message and tried the browser. There again, the network password prompt waited. He tried some classics.

  QWERTY. PASSWORD. 123456. ABCDEFG. ASDFGH. MADAMIAMADAM.

  He tried some of them backwards. He tried them with one less character. He tried them with an extra 1 at the end. His fingers moved quickly across the touchscreen.

  Someone knocked. Jeff tucked the tablet back under the sheets and jumped over to the sink. He turned on the water and began to rinse his hands.

  “Almost done,” he said.

  “Well don’t take too long,” Big Albert said. “You have a visitor.”

  ***

  Jeff hadn’t been inside the visiting room before. Much like the rest of the facility, the room was clean with a fresh coat of paint. Six tables with chairs filled the room. A water machine stood to one side. An attendant stood at another door opposite to where Jeff entered.

  And there at a table sat his ex-wife.

  She wore a pastel pink blazer and white gloves. She had on a pillbox hat with a sheer veil. Her white-gloved hands were folded before her on the table. For a split second she seemed to blur, her clothing changing before his eyes. He saw her wearing a white UCLA sweatshirt and jeans, with her hair down like she had looked when they had first met. But a moment later she was back to her prim suit, as if she were on her way to a wedding or Easter mass.

  “Go on,” Big Albert said.

  Jeff nodded, shook his head, tried to shake off the haze. He walked forward, his arms and legs feeling numb, like he had just taken a double dose of whatever chemical goodness this place kept fobbing on him. Was she actually here?

  “Hi, honey,” he said. His throat felt dry, and the words came out as a gasp. He sat down across from her.

  She didn’t move, just sat with her eyes almost completely hidden behind the veil. She was looking down.

  He hadn’t seen or spoken to her in two years. The uneventful separation and divorce was virtually contact-free. Jeff had taken online courses on computer languages with more emotion and interpersonal connection. The last few years of their marriage were spent living under the same roof but pursuing different lives, both of them immersed in their work.

  Jeff had left, and then the alien thing happened. So why couldn’t he think of what to say? She wouldn’t look at him. This was the typical reaction he got from most people once they spied his mismatched gaze. But she never had a problem with that before.

  “It’s the outfit, isn’t it?” he asked. “This is all the rage in here.”

  She didn’t respond. She never got his humor, was always serious.

  “So how are you?” he asked. She just sat there, so he continued. “I don’t know what you’ve heard about me being here. I’m having some trouble understanding what happened with me.”

  She rubbed her hands together and placed them on her lap.

  “According to my doctor, I did something to get myself in trouble. They’re evaluating me, giving me meds. I hope I’m getting better.”

  He paused, looked at her. The water machine against the wall blurped.

  “The staff treats me well. The doctor is, well, a typical shrink. I’m trying to behave myself and listen to what he has to say. It’s like you said. I need this kind of help.”

  He allowed for a longer silence. He heard the hum of the fluorescent bulbs above them.

  “So how are you?” She didn’t answer. Maybe he needed to go back to group and wrestle the communicator away from Myron.

  She sniffled, put her hand to her face, and got up.

  “Wait,” he said.

  She turned and headed for the exit. A sob escaped her. When Jeff went to catch her, the other attendant intercepted him.

  “Don’t go,” he said, but she was gone.

  ***

  “Lunch in ten minutes,” Big Albert said.

  Jeff didn’t answer. He was back in his room seated on his bed. It had been his turn to give way to tears. He hadn’t seen his wife in years, hadn’t felt much when they had split. Certainly he had given the breakup thought, had identified his significant role in the cracks and rupture of their marriage. Melancholy and guilty ambivalence were emotions, weren’t they? He had isolated himself in his work and his world. His increasing bouts of paranoia at being watched hadn’t helped. When he felt convinced that he was being monitored by someone through the internet and phone and television, she of course didn’t believe him.

  Why would she?

  Maybe he should have started strong with something like, “Honey, you’re not going to believe this, but I got kidnapped by aliens. Turns out they were watching me the whole time. Stuck a translation device into the back of my neck and tracked me with it. Listened to everything I said and read my every thought.”

  But what if none of that had actually happened? What if there was something misfiring, a chemical imbalance, a genetic kick in the psychic balls that had him fall into whatever fugue state had brought him here? Surely he would be able to remember something about the past few months if he tried hard enough. Maybe the doctor and the pills were the path to such clarity.

  He dried his eyes with his sleeve. Focus on what’s in front of you. What can you touch? Smell? Taste?

  The sheets felt like smooth fabric. The air smelled clean with a touch of a soupy smell from the cooking lunch. His mouth tasted dry. He got up and drank some water from the sink.

  The whisper seemed to come through the drain. “You’ve earned your first reward.”

  Jeff spun. No one else was in the room. He checked the sink but saw no hidden speaker. His head felt clearer than before. He was still fuzzy, but the numb blanket was gone.

  “You can find your first universal game item in the login menu,” the whisper said.

  “Uh, hello?” Jeff said. He directed his voice down into the sink, feeling stupid as he did it.

  “Congratulations.” And the voice spoke no more. Jeff waited, straining to hear.

  A knock came at the door that made Jeff jump. “Lunch is up,” Big Albert said from the hallway.

  “All right,” Jeff said. He leaned on the sink. Gave it a tug. It didn’t budge. But for faint sounds from outside his room, he heard nothing.

  He sat down on the bed. When he heard Big Albert’s footsteps continue down the hall and the man shouting lunch reminders at the rest of the patients as he went, Jeff picked up the tablet and turned it on.

  Power level 8%.

  Jeff went to the internet password screen.

  He tried 0000000, 1111111, 2222222, and on through 9999999. Tried it with six numerals of each. Tried CAROL. Tried ROSSHOSPITAL1. NUCKINGFUTS. FNORD. GEDDYLEEFORPRESIDENT.

  Power level 6%.

  “Come on,” he
said. He shook his head. Brute force guessing wasn’t possible. It always worked on the third try in the movies. He closed the browser. He had only a few minutes before the machine went dead.

  He checked to see what other programs were still running. Jeff thought he had closed everything, but the vaguely titled “Games” was open. Probably just a folder. That couldn’t be much of a power draw. Two games were inside. Doubt and Apprehension was the first. The second was Invasion! Target: Earth.

  Jeff tapped the second game open just to have a look.

  Someone turned the light off in his room. Maybe the lights were tied in to the tablet’s power level. It must have finally gone down to 0% and so there went the power. But that was stupid. Jeff couldn’t see anything. He put the tablet down and got up, feeling for the door. His hands swiped at air where the door should have been. He stepped forward and heard the crunch of dry material under his feet. Whatever he was walking on felt soft and uneven. He smelled smoke. Was the hospital on fire?

  “Hello?”

  He continued to walk forward, not understanding how he could be standing where a wall once was. Something beyond the wall flashed brightly, casting shadows interspaced with orange fire. He saw stalls of wood in front of him, and long beams and a high ceiling overhead. Bridles hung from a post to one side. Jeff put his hand on a support beam. Scratched it with a thumbnail. It was wood. He touched the bridles. They felt like leather with cool metal clasps. The flashing stopped, and again it was dark.

  “Hey!” Jeff shouted.

  A figure stomped towards him across what must have been hay. A soft blue light flicked on, illuminating a face behind a clear glass mask. It was human, male, with a couple days' worth of scruff growing uniformly over a cleft lantern jaw. The man wore his hair high and tight.