“Lua, you’re breaking the rules. I didn’t bring you on this mission.”
He kept wrapping the log, affixing it to another log he pulled from the underbrush. “Boss,” he said softly, “you need to see what is real.”
I stepped back; that was what Armando had said. I reached for a stick to use as a weapon, pulling at it, but it was stuck in the underbrush.
Lua went faintly transparent, as if he weren’t all there. “I guess,” he said as he worked, “we have different ways of trying to make you confront it. Armando, he always was a little loony. He had a loony solution.”
I glanced in the direction the others had gone. I really didn’t want to be alone with a possible nightmare.
“Don’t mind them,” Lua said. “They’re getting pulled into the simulation, you know? Rolling with it.” He yanked on his log and pulled—from the underbrush—a fully formed catamaran ship, made of logs and vines. “Not the best I’ve ever made,” he noted, “but it’s not bad, considering what I had to work with.”
I gaped. That was a serious breaking of the rules.
“In here, you are the rules, boss.” I could still see through him, and got the distinct impression that in his outline—as if he were a window—I could see a concrete floor, some desks with computers.
Voices.
He’s up and walking. The brain has stopped suppressing his movement, even when we tell it to. That’s new.
How are the readings?
Interesting. Completely different from Sandra—and completely different from when he broke in. These readings mean he’s adding aspects into the simulation, though. The program should be able to interact with them, like we interacted with Sandra’s aspects.
“I could live here,” I said to Lua. “I could let them create my reality, and I could just … go with it.”
“Isn’t that what you do anyway?” He smiled, then turned and waved at the other three, who were walking back along the beach. He gestured toward the boat, looking very proud.
“Lua,” I said. “What does it all mean? Why is this happening to me? How do I stop it?”
“You think I know? I’m what you made me to be—the guy who can get you off an island. In the end, we’re all just trying to help.” He got behind the boat and shoved his weight against it, pushing it along the sand toward the water.
J.C. and Ivy arrived to help push, while Ngozi complained that seawater was “full of animals.” Finally she climbed aboard, then J.C. and Ivy joined her—with Lua ready to push the boat the rest of the way out into the water. He waved me toward the last seat in the catamaran.
I stepped into the warm water. “They can just stick me into another VR world if I escape this one.”
“Nah,” Lua said. “You can see through it.”
“That’s crazy,” I said. “I can’t even see what is real in my own bedroom.”
“And tell me. Who is the strongest, boss? The guy who never goes to the gym, or the guy who tried—but failed—to bench his best yesterday?” He nudged me toward the boat, looking even more transparent than before.
I sat down, then realized there were only four seats. “You’re not coming?”
“Gotta stay here now,” he said, giving the boat a good shove. “Broke too many rules. But don’t worry about me. I’ve got a day job.” He winked. “Call center for an insurance company. Something boring. Normal.”
He pushed us out into the water, then waved as we picked up oars and began to row. I watched him as he vanished, and I braced myself for the ripping sensation, the loss of knowledge and information. But this time it was more … more like a subtle fade. Like falling asleep.
The simulation barely lasted twenty feet beyond the small bay. One second we were rowing, and the next, the four of us were standing back in the warehouse. I reached up, wiping the tears from my eyes.
“That was awful,” Gerry—the tech—complained from his seat at the computers. “He didn’t follow any of the quest paths. He just broke the thing.”
“A ton of hard work, flushed right down the drain,” the female techie complained.
“It’s the aspects,” Kyle said. “They’re letting him cheat. We’re going to have to remove them. He’ll be helpless without them.”
“No,” I said. “Listen. I—”
“Don’t worry, Steve,” Kyle said. “They aren’t actually people. No loss. Mob scenario, Gerry.”
The room flashed white, and we were standing in an old-time casino, next to a spinning roulette wheel.
A man burst through the door. “Big Salamander is here!” he shouted. “He’s wise to—”
Gunfire blasted through the door, ripping through the man’s body. He collapsed as men flooded into the room, then began shooting people indiscriminately.
THIRTEEN
Ivy fell first. She clung to my arm as she looked at the bullet wound in her stomach. Then she began to slide down.
“No. No, no, no!” I screamed, kneeling beside her. Gunfire tore up the room. Ngozi dove for cover, but a bullet hit her in the forehead, and she collapsed. J.C. kicked over a table, then grabbed Ivy, hauling her behind cover.
I scrambled over beside them, bullets blasting wood chips from nearby tables. People screamed, but for once, J.C. didn’t return fire. He pressed his hand against Ivy’s wound. “Hey. Hey, stay with us. Ivy?”
“Steve,” she whispered. “Steve!”
I huddled beside the overturned table.
“You need to promise,” she said to me, “that you won’t abandon the rest of them. That you won’t let us end like this.”
“I promise,” I whispered.
She smiled, lips bloody. “That was a lie.” She nodded toward J.C., and tried to sit up. He helped her, and then she kissed him. An intimate last kiss, amid a hail of gunfire. Our table wasn’t doing much good. A shot went right through the wood and hit J.C. in the shoulder, but he lingered on the kiss until Ivy was gone.
He reverently lowered her body back down onto the floor. Then he looked at me, bleeding from one arm. “You’re going to have to handle this alone, Skinny.”
“I can’t, J.C. I can’t.”
“Sure you can. You had an awesome teacher.”
“Don’t—”
“Why do you think I’ve been training you all this time? I knew.” He tapped his head. “See what’s real. You can do it.”
“J.C.…”
He raised his fist toward me. “For good luck.”
I raised my fist, then tapped his. He grinned, then pulled one gun from a holster under his arm and a second one from a hidden holster strapped to his right ankle. He stood up.
And was hit with about a hundred rounds at once. He collapsed back to the ground without getting off a single shot.
“No!” I screamed. “NO!”
I let out a ragged, raw screech, a moan of pain and frustration. Of anger. I rocked back and forth on my ankles as the bullets demolished the room. But they didn’t hurt me. They weren’t real.
Not … real.
The shooters grew faintly transparent. The splinters flying off the table, the spilled casino chips, the fallen corpses. It all … faded. The roar of the gunfire became a buzzing. In its place, I heard voices.
We need to learn why he’s still up and moving.
We could tie him down maybe.
I could see them gathered around, watching me. Shadows looming, all save for one man at a desk of computers. Chin, I thought. I need you.
I stood up. Then, for effect, I ducked in a low run and scuttled across the casino room, as if trying to dodge bullets. That put me close to the computer desk in the real world.
To my eyes, the virtual casino faded further, and I could see real-world details. Kyle, grinning as if amused to see how helpless I was. The two guards approaching, perhaps worried that I’d hurt myself or ruin something in my thrashing.
The computer monitor.
“Yeah,” Chin said in my ear. “That’s easy. Not a bad UI, for what has to be an ear
ly build.”
“Emitters are along the ceiling of this warehouse,” Arnaud said. “In the whole room.”
“Click that radio button,” Chin said, “and change the target from ‘single subject’ to ‘entire room.’ See that checked box at the bottom? The one that says ‘Debugging mode.’ I suggest turning that off, as it might prevent them from using backdoors they’ve made to get themselves out of the simulation. Good luck.”
I leaped for the computer, shoved Gerry aside, and clicked as Chin had instructed.
The guard from the hot dog stand rushed for me, but moved too slowly to stop me. Instantly, we were all there together. Kyle, the two guards, Gerry and the other techies. We stood in that casino, surrounded by dead people. The mobsters had stopped shooting, and were now picking through the wreckage.
“Oh, hell,” Gerry said. He scrambled for the now-vanished computer controls, but just waved his hands through empty space. “Oh, hell!”
The hot dog guard grabbed me by the arm. “This won’t accomplish anything. You’re still in our prison.”
I sagged in his grip, glancing toward J.C., dead on the floor. I muttered something softly.
“What’s that?” the guard said, shaking me by the arm. “What did you say?”
“This isn’t your prison,” I muttered louder. “It’s mine.”
I bolted upright, slamming the back of my head into the guard’s nose. As he shouted in pain I turned, grabbing him by the arm and flipping him over, then slammed him into the ground. I came up with his handgun, and held it out, sighting—flipping off the safety—just as J.C. had taught me.
Thank you.
I squeezed the trigger, firing off three quick shots, bringing down virtual mobsters who had been picking through the room. I wasn’t really worried about them, but I wanted to get the others into firing mode. Indeed, the rest of the mobsters raised their weapons and started shooting again.
The other people—one more guard, Kyle, the four techs—screamed and dodged behind overturned tables. “It’s not real!” Kyle shouted. “Remember, it’s not real!”
It didn’t matter. I’d been there so many times. What sounded real, what looked real, was real to you—even if you logically knew otherwise. Even Kyle ran for the doorway to a bathroom, where he could hide from the gunfire.
I stalked through the room. A pile of poker chips next to me exploded as a bullet hit. Shots passed right through me. I reached to my arm, where Armando had cut me, and found only smooth, unmarred skin. When had I started ignoring that wound?
A guard—one of the real people—pointed his gun toward me, so I was forced to shoot him in the shoulder. He screamed, and I casually stepped over and kicked his gun away from him. I pushed him down and took a second gun from his leg holster.
Thanks again, J.C.
I stood up and fired in two directions at once, simultaneously killing two mobsters. The techs were screaming somewhere nearby, but the only person I really cared about was hiding in the bathroom. I stepped up to the wall nearby, then pushed through. I didn’t break through; I just shoved my way past it. As I did, the virtual world became even more flimsy to my eyes.
In the bathroom, Kyle spun on me, but I easily swept his feet out from under him, stepped on his wrist—getting him to drop the gun—then kicked his weapon away. I leaned down in a smooth motion and pressed two weapons to the sides of his head.
“Two guns, Kyle,” I whispered. “One is real, one is fake. Can you tell which is which? Can you feel them, cold against your skin?”
He stared up at me, sweating.
“Death in one hand,” I whispered, “a game in the other. Which should I fire? Right or left? Would you like to choose?”
He tried to stammer out some words, but couldn’t even form a sentence. He lay there, trembling, until I stood up. Then I casually shot him in the side.
Kyle screamed, doubling over, blood leaking between his fingers.
“I lied, Kyle,” I said, tossing the gun away. “Both guns are fake. I got them in the simulation. But you couldn’t tell, could you?”
He continued to whimper at the pain.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “The wound isn’t real. So no actual loss. Right?”
I dropped out of the simulation. The six people lay unconscious on the floor, trapped in the simulation. Of my aspects—J.C., Ivy, Ngozi—there was no sign. Though I did feel a buzz from my phone. A call, from Kalyani.
I didn’t answer. A moment later, a text came.
GOODBYE, MISTER STEVE.
Somehow I knew what was happening. Some of them had turned against the others, becoming nightmares. By ordering them all to congregate, I’d simply made the massacre easier. I tucked the phone away, and decided I didn’t want to know which of them had chosen that path.
I just knew that when I returned, there wouldn’t be any left. It was over.
Exhausted, I strode along the wall and looked into the windows here. Each was a cell, for testing patients.
Sandra was in the last one, seated on a short stool, eyes closed. I checked the wall monitor, tweaked a few settings, then opened the door.
I stepped into Sandra’s world.
FOURTEEN
Her final hallucination took the form of a long pier at night, extending into a placid sea. Little paper boats with candles at the centers floated along, bobbing and bumping into one another.
They didn’t do much to light the sea, but they did contrast with it. Fire upon the water. Frail lights one step from being snuffed out.
I walked along the pier, listening to quiet waves lap against the posts beneath, smelling brine and seaweed. Sandra was a silhouette sitting at the end of the pier. She didn’t turn as I settled down next to her.
She was older than I remembered, of course. The older I grew, the more shocking it was to see weathering on the faces of people I’d once known. But she was still Sandra—same long face, same eyes that seemed to be always dreaming. A beautiful sense of control and serenity.
“Do you recognize it?” she asked.
“That place along the coast where we went,” I said. “With the buskers on the dock.” I could faintly hear jazz music in the distance. “You bought a necklace.”
“A little chain. And you bought it for me.” She put her hand to her neck, but she wasn’t wearing it.
“Sandra…”
“It’s falling apart, isn’t it?” She continued to stare out across the ocean. “You’re losing control of them too?”
“Yes.”
“I was wrong. When I taught you all those years ago. I thought we could contain it, but we can’t. I suppose … suppose it doesn’t matter. It’s all just in our heads.”
“Who cares if it’s all in our heads?”
Finally she looked at me, frowning.
“Who cares?” I said. “Yes, it’s all in my head. But pain is ‘all in my head’ too. Love is ‘all in my head.’ All the things that matter in life are the things you can’t measure! The things our brains make up! Being made-up doesn’t make them unimportant.”
“And if they control your life? Dominate it? Take you away from anything that could be real or lasting?”
I waved toward her simulated world. “This is better?”
“I’m at peace here. For the first time in my life.” She hesitated, then met my eyes. “The second time.”
“You told me I had to have purpose, Sandra. Is this purpose? Sitting here? Alone?”
“I have no choice,” she said, then embraced me. “Oh, Rhone. I tried to leave again today. I visited the fairgrounds, to call you. They came back as whispers. It will happen to you too. They will steal your sanity. Unless you do … something … to contain them.”
The tiny, paper-borne lights trembled on the ocean, and in a moment I caught a glimpse of the dark shallows underneath … and dead eyes staring up out of the water.
Sandra held on tighter. I pulled her close as I picked out dozens upon dozens of corpses in the water, entombed in the depth
s. Her aspects.
“Oh, Sandra,” I whispered.
“It is peace. The only peace I’ll ever find.”
I closed my eyes against that horror. Such loss … the agony of feeling pieces inside of you being ripped away. I knew exactly what she’d gone through. Likely, I was the only living person who could fully empathize with what she felt.
“Mine are dead too,” I whispered.
“Then you can escape.”
“And if I don’t want to? If I want them back?”
“It doesn’t work that way. Once they die, they’re gone for good. Even if you make new ones, the aspects you had can never return.”
We embraced there for … I don’t know how long. It could have been hours. Finally, I pulled back from her and—looking into her eyes—knew that she didn’t have any answers for me. At least not answers I wanted.
There was an indescribable hollowness behind her eyes. I’d heard it in her voice before, on the phone. She’d lost so much, she’d seen so many nightmares. It had led her to this. A terrible numbness. Like a real-life version of becoming a nightmare.
For a brief moment, I saw through the illusion, the hallucination. I was in a small room, and Sandra—it was her, alive and real—sat on a little stool on the floor beside me. Though our surroundings were a figment, she was real. She’d always been real. I knew that as well as I knew anything.
“Stay,” Sandra said to me.
“All those years ago,” I said softly, “when you left me … I tormented myself, Sandra. Yet my aspects were never able to solve this one most important mystery. Where had you gone? Why had you gone?”
“Rhone…” she said. “That doesn’t matter now. Stay. If we have to be alone, let’s be alone together.”
“Do you know,” I said, ignoring her plea, “a piece of me always suspected that I knew why you’d gone. I’d become too needy. That was the reason, wasn’t it? You couldn’t keep dealing both with your aspects and with my problems.”
I stood up to leave, but let her hand linger in mine.
“I think I now understand your decision,” I said. “Not why you left … but why you had to leave. Does that make sense?”
Lies of the Beholder Page 8