by Zales, Dima
Dimly, I register that my left side hurts a little less. Did Liam pop my shoulder back into place when he grabbed it? If so, it saved my life.
Glancing down, I see that the other wall of the tower is under my feet. If I let go of the windowsill, I probably wouldn’t hurt myself too badly. I consider doing exactly that but see that a streak of Goo is running up the wooden handrail. I’ll be running the chance of touching it if I jump down. The fact that the Goo is already here, right below me, sucks what little hope I had left.
How is it on the handrail? I wonder with strangely academic interest. I guess the Goo must find it easier to eat away softer substances, such as wood, than the heavy-duty steel that the rest of the tower is made out of. I don’t have any illusions, though: the Goo can eat through anything.
We have a desolate ocean of the stuff to prove it.
Still, I can’t hang like this for long. My left shoulder, though somewhat better, is still in agony. Gritting my teeth, I use the last remaining bit of my strength to pull myself up. Once my head is sticking out the window, I lever the rest of my body up and try to stand on what used to be the outside wall of the tower.
My head spins. The wall of the tower is tilted at about a forty-five-degree angle, sloping toward the sea of Goo that is the ground. It’s probably a matter of moments before the Goo eats through the tower’s base, toppling the entire structure into its abyss.
The knowledge of impending death sharpens my senses. The tiniest details of my environment jump out at me. I notice how the sky looks a bit bluer without the Dome, and how strange it is that the tower looks weather-beaten, given that in Oasis, there’s no erosive weather to cause this sort of damage. Then another detail catches my attention: a light where the tower’s peak would be.
I recall Liam staring that way in his last moments.
What is that light, if that’s indeed what I’m seeing?
I carefully run on what used to be the tower’s wall. It’s not a solid surface, but a patchwork of metal beams and some surviving glass windows.
It’s hard to focus on running after everything that’s happened, but I force myself to. I will the pain of losing Liam out of my head. It seems more manageable than trying to suppress the pain of losing everyone else I’ve ever known.
My thoughts narrow on one goal: figuring out what that light is. That much I can do, and it enables me to pretend that I still have some modicum of control over the events around me.
As I get closer to the top, the light becomes clearer.
It’s the biggest Screen I’ve ever seen, yet it also looks like an ancient neon sign, all pink and bright. In some way, it reminds me of a Times Square billboard from ancient times—if the billboard were merged with a gate-looking Barrier, that is.
I run faster, ignoring the pitfalls of broken windows and protruding metal rails.
I must reach that billboard-like Screen.
As I get closer, I realize there’s a message on it—a very simple one.
‘Goal,’ it says in garish, flashing font.
Goal? Why would the top of the tower have such an odd decoration?
My lungs scream for air, but I push my muscles to move even faster.
The tower shakes.
I wave my arms to catch my balance and inadvertently look down.
Instantly, my legs give out and I stop.
I’m rooted to this spot. This paralysis feels like a culmination of everything that has just happened to me and the rest of Oasis.
Everyone is dead. The world is over. These thoughts hit me hard, overwhelming me, and I double over from the pain of it all. Maybe I don’t need to wait for the Goo to get me. Maybe I’ll just die from the horror and the guilt.
An oddly familiar shimmer next to me catches my eye, bringing me back to reality.
When the Screen appears, I’m actually not as shocked as I should be, because I’ve seen a Screen like this once before, when I was in Quietude.
It’s ghostly, and like last time, there’s a cursor flickering on it.
Theo, the Screen writes slowly, one letter at a time. Theo, I’m not sure if you can see this. The Screen continues typing each letter at a pace that matches my heartbeat. I’m worried, the Screen informs me. Your neural scan is out of control—
Before I can even blink at it, the Screen dissipates into thin air, but the hairs on my arms stand up.
An idea forms in my mind. It’s a faint one, yet it’s enough to motivate me to move again.
I must reach the top and the word ‘Goal.’
I focus on that one task, leaving all other concerns behind.
The tower quakes again. Trying not to fall, I balance on the metal beams like an ancient surfer. As soon as the bout of shaking subsides, I resume running and jump over the gaps between the steel struts.
I run like a berserker, the concept of time erased from my mind, and stop only when I reach the biggest gap I’ve encountered so far.
This gap is an unfortunate part of the tower design and is about seven terrifying feet wide.
Though I’ve been successfully suppressing my phobia, looking at the gap brings it all back.
The Goal sign is still beckoning me. It’s just beyond this last obstacle, and I’m almost there.
I decide to break down the impossible into manageable steps.
Step one: calm my frantic breathing. This step is semi-successful.
Step two: jump. My leg muscles tighten, ready for the action of jumping, running, or whatever else might burn some of this adrenaline off.
I back up, figuring the jump might be easier to execute with a head start.
When I’m a good ten feet away from the gap, I start running toward it.
This is it.
This is when I face my fear of heights and become victorious.
Only when I reach the gap, I don’t jump.
I stop, my whole body trembling uncontrollably.
Can’t give up, I think and back up again.
I run.
I jump.
Time slows.
I see the Goo swooshing menacingly far beneath my feet.
I’m almost on the other end of the gap when the tower shakes again with a deafening screech of metal scraping against metal. The other edge of the horrible gap moves away from my feet just as they’re about to touch it, and the top of my chest hits the unyielding metal edge.
Air escapes my lungs, and I flail my arms, trying to grab on to something. Only my index and middle fingers manage to connect with cold metal.
Right away, I realize this hold is tenuous at best. The weight of my body is too much for those two fingers to handle.
My fingers go numb and begin shaking. Worse, they start to slide down the sleek steel surface.
I hold on to the edge by my index finger for a breath before I completely slip.
I’m not holding on to the edge at all, I think dimly.
Either time slows down, or like a cartoon character, I first have to look down before my descent begins. So, masochistically, I look down. I see how far above the ground I am, and then my plummet begins.
Air lashes at my face.
My body feels weightless—a feeling that would be pleasant if it weren’t for the fact that I’m about to die.
This fall reminds me of my most awful recurring nightmare, the one where I’m falling toward something. Turns out this nightmare was a dark prophecy.
I look down again.
The Goo is approaching.
Futilely, I try to enter the Goo head first, like the insane ancient sport of high diving.
I hit it hard and submerge deep into the Goo.
All I can see is the orange shit vomit of it, which feels surprisingly smooth on my skin. I squeeze my eyes shut and hold my breath, wondering why it hasn’t eaten me yet. Even through my closed mouth and nose I can taste and smell it, and it’s worse than I ever imagined. I’m on the verge of throwing up, but I don’t dare open my mouth.
I realize I’ve been holdi
ng on to the same breath since the drop. My lungs are burning, but so is the rest of my body. The burning of my body must mean that, despite my secret hope, the Goo is about to take me apart molecule by molecule.
The burning increases in earnest. My whole body feels like lava for a fraction of a second, and then the sensation multiplies a hundredfold.
I gasp in pain, knowing I’m about to inhale the Goo into my lungs.
16
I inhale the Goo, but the pain doesn’t worsen.
In fact, the burning stops.
I feel insubstantial. I feel like a sunray that’s beaming through a bright corridor of white light.
An ancient would probably think they’re entering the afterlife, since it matches their description of what that experience might be like. Given the circumstances, I might consider that theory plausible, except I have a better one.
I’ve gone through this already, earlier today, though it feels like it happened ages ago.
I feel the sensation of my body returning, but I close my eyes. When I open them, I’ll know for sure if I’m right.
“Theo?” Phoe says.
I open my eyes.
I’m standing in a cave. Stalactites hang overhead, and on the floor, there are stalagmites and an inventory of various dangerous objects.
Phoe’s beautiful pixie face is contorted with deep worry.
There’s a large Screen next to her. On it is what I assume is my neural activity. My brain looks like a beehive going to war against an anthill, at ten-speed. The sight of it causes me to relive the terrors in a strange biofeedback.
The Screen disappears. Phoe must’ve realized I’d recover better without it in my face.
“Calm down, please,” Phoe says. Her voice is the epitome of soothing. “You’re back.”
Deep down, I know the answers, but I still can’t help but voice the questions. “You didn’t destroy everyone?” I take a step forward and do a jerky sweeping gesture with my hands, as though the people of Oasis are hiding at the edges of the cave. “You’re not Instructor Filomena?”
Phoe looks at me, incomprehension taking over the worry in her eyes.
“Was all of that the fucking game?” I say louder and step back. “Was none of that real?”
Phoe approaches me and wraps her arms around me. I don’t fight this hug, the second one I’ve received in my life, even though this time, it feels different. This time, the ancient social gesture is meant to soothe me, and it’s pretty effective at that. As the fragrance and warmth of Phoe’s body envelops me, my heart rate slows from hypersonic to merely three hundred miles per hour.
She rubs my back in random circular motions that are also soothing.
“Shh,” she whispers in my ear. “You’re here. You’re safe.”
“But it was so real. I died.” I take in a shuddering breath. “Liam died too. Everyone did.” I try to pull away, halfheartedly, but she tightens her arms around me. Lowering my voice to almost a subvocalization, I say, “You betrayed me.”
“It’s over.” She gently strokes my hair. “I would never betray you. How could you ever think that?”
I take another breath, and as I exhale, I say, “It all happened so fast.”
She lets me go, backs up a step, and regards me solemnly. “Can you talk about what happened? Judging by the fact that the memory gap is still here”—she points at her head—“not to mention the lack of new computing power, I have to assume you didn’t shut down the game.”
“You couldn’t see what happened? You don’t have access to that place?”
“As I told you, not to see, no. I did try to get a message in. It seems it didn’t work.” Phoe looks dejected.
“It did,” I say. “I saw the Screen you sent. It looked like the one I got in the Witch Prison. It gave me hope, but…” I shake my head.
“That’s great.” Her eyes brighten. “That means next time I should be able to—”
“Next time?” I feel my cheeks heat up. “There will never, ever be a next time.”
She frowns for a moment, then asks, “Can you tell me what happened?”
I begin my story, starting with how the game tricked me into thinking I wasn’t in the game. Phoe listens quietly. She clearly has questions but is saving them for later. I finish with, “And after I inhaled the Goo, I came back here.”
“That is so peculiar,” she says. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
“At the beginning,” I tell her. “I can tell you’re upset.”
“Well”—she makes a chair appear out of thin air and sits on it—“there are things in your story that should’ve been clues about how fake everything was.”
I decide I also want to sit, and as soon as I do, another chair shows up. “Such as?”
“Well, for example, Grace just let you go? And she actually touched you?”
“I know, odd,” I admit. “But I was in a rush and didn’t question it. It seems like she had some kind of…” I feel my face flush. “I don’t know, secret feelings for me or something.”
“Fine.” Phoe crosses her arms over her chest. “I can always chalk that one up to your inexperience with hormones. Same goes for the part where Instructor Filomena showed interest in you.” She makes a disgusted face. “But, Theo, the Adult section of Oasis was the French countryside? With Amish-looking people? You don’t think it’s rather convenient that you learned about them just yesterday? And you actually believed I was Instructor Filomena?” Her lips press into a thin line.
“I just—”
“And Owen attacking you physically… You know he’s too pacified by the Adults and too cowardly for something like that.”
“He kicked a ball at Liam yesterday,” I remind her. “Nothing stopped him from doing that.”
“Fine. Maybe that could’ve happened, though I have my doubts. But a tractor chase? I made you do something that brought on the end of the world?” She shakes her head. “Out of all the problems with that scenario, don’t you realize that if there was a way to shut down any of the Barriers, the control room for that would be managed by the Elderly. It wouldn’t be in an incongruent, anachronistic tower, which, from what you told me, fell in a very odd and physically improbable manner.”
I feel a warm, tingly sensation in my face. I know Phoe’s biggest gripe is with the fact that I thought she was capable of killing everyone. Truth be told, now that I’m out of the game, I find that idea extremely hollow.
“It was like a dream,” I tell her and attempt to reduce the warmth in my cheeks by rubbing at them. “You know when you’re dreaming and the dream makes sense, but then you wake up and wonder why Liam was Santa Claus and why you didn’t question it? I mean he’s not that fat.”
Phoe nods, as if she’s urging me to explain further.
“Look.” I mirror her arms-folded posture. “The world was ending. I didn’t exactly have a moment to reflect on anything.”
“But Instructor Filomena with her bullshit history?” Phoe’s slender face is pinched. “You know she represents everything I loathe.”
I force myself to speak calmly. “Well, if you’d told me who you really are, I wouldn’t have concocted a theory, misguided as it might’ve been.”
She bites her lip, a gesture that fascinates me for some reason. “Let’s not throw blame around.”
“So all I have to do to shut you up is ask you who you are?” I narrow my eyes. “Why don’t you just tell me? Maybe if you did, I—”
“It’s not that simple.” She gets up from her chair. Her ears perk up as though she’s listening to some distant noise. With worry on her face, she says, “Shit.”
“Let me guess.” I give her my best effort at a condescending smile. “Some emergency came up, and I need to run, right? The last thing we have time for is to continue talking about your least favorite topic.”
Her long eyelashes flutter as she sighs and says, “That is pretty much what I was about to say, yes.”
“How convenient.”
Out of her palm streams an image. It’s not exactly a Screen, but it might as well be as far as its function goes. Only, unlike a Screen, the image in her hand is three-dimensional, like a hologram. It’s showing us a small section of the forest.
There I am, lying on the forest floor, surrounded by greenery and looking fairly bored. My eyes are unfocused.
“You’re jacked into this place,” Phoe says. “Your neurons are only receiving inputs from your nanocytes instead of real sensory inputs. Only things like your parasympathetic nervous system are active in the real world, allowing you to breathe and digest Food, among other things. If someone were to approach you out there, you wouldn’t even blink an eye at them.”
I nod. Though this isn’t something I’d thought about, it makes sense as she says it.
Content that I’m following her so far, she tilts her palm. The image moves deeper into the woods, away from my comatose self. I watch as the camera, or whatever it is that’s behind the point of view, reaches a small clearing.
There’s the shiny visor of a Guard’s helmet.
I get up from my chair and fight the urge to run. With my system still overflowing with adrenaline, the fright that comes over me is stupefying.
This Guard is walking through the clearing. What’s worse is his direction: he’s heading straight for where I’m lying, and my unconscious self is as aware of him as the trees are.
“Crap.” I begin pacing and nearly trip over Phoe’s chair.
“Yeah. You can say that again.” Phoe follows my frantic movements calmly, as if I pace like an insane person all the time and she’s gotten used to it.
“What do I do?” I circle her a third time.
“Use the gesture and run.” With fanfare, she flips me off with both fingers. “I’ll be with you.”
I mimic her gesture, too preoccupied to feel any hesitation at doing something the Adults would consider obscene.
Instantly, through that same white tunnel, I’m returned to my body in the forest.