by Jason Segel
“After what I’ve seen, dull is good, sir,” I tell him.
“Yeah, I bet it is,” Don says sympathetically.
If only he knew.
The doors of the hospital slide open and an orderly pushes a gurney outside. My new boss tosses his coffee cup in the garbage. “Here we go. You open up the back of the van. I’ll bring the patient around.”
I do as he asks and then help him push the gurney inside. The patient rolls by; I don’t get a good look at her. But it’s impossible to miss the fact that she’s wearing one of the Company’s visors.
“What’s that thing on her face?” I ask, wondering if he knows.
Don gives me a funny look. “If I was a doctor, you think I’d be hauling vegetables around at eight o’clock in the morning? It’s not our job to ask questions. Our job is to make pickups and deliveries and ensure that our packages get to their destination alive.”
“Yes, sir,” I say.
“You ride in the back with the patient,” he tells me. “Make sure the visor stays on and the IV stays in. We had an IV pop out about a week ago and the patient started shouting like he was being murdered or something. So let’s make sure that doesn’t happen today. Got it?”
He’s waiting for my response, but I’m still stuck on what he just said. When the IV came out, the patient started shouting. Just like the night Kat cried out in the hospital. The nurse said Kat’s IV had run dry. That means there must be something in the IV. The patients are being given a drug that prevents them from moving or speaking.
“Got it, Mike?” Don repeats, and I snap to attention.
“Yes, sir,” I tell him. “I got it.”
—
It’s eerily quiet in the back of the van. The woman stretched out in front of me can’t be more than twenty-five years old. One of her arms is in a cast, but I can’t see any other signs of injury. Once the van is on the road, I look around for a chart, but I don’t see one of those, either. There’s no way of knowing who she is or where she came from.
I wonder where she is right now. Has she left the White City? Is she indulging in Imra—or fighting for her life in one of the realms? I’m suddenly struck by an overpowering wave of guilt. I’m alone with this woman in the back of a van. No one is watching. I could peel off her disk. Find some way to destroy it. Or I could remove her IV. But I can’t run the risk. If I help this one woman, I could lose the chance to help hundreds. But let’s be honest: I don’t give a damn about hundreds. Right now, all I care about is one. And it’s not this lady. No—taking her out of Otherworld would put too much at stake. I hope like hell she’s safe, but she’ll have to stay.
The van comes to a stop, and I hear Don chatting with another man. I peek out the window and realize we’ve stopped at the gates of 1250 Dandelion Drive. The rear doors open and a security guard pokes his head inside. He glances at the patient and then at me. Once he’s satisfied that we’re not smuggling whatever qualifies as contraband here, he slams the doors. “You’re good to go,” I hear him tell Don. A few seconds later, the van starts up again.
I watch from the window as we drive through a park that’s filled with ornamental trees and dotted with man-made lily ponds. I catch a deer bolting for cover just before we swing past the facility’s main entrance, which looks like it belongs to an upscale spa.
The front of the building is entirely glass. The statement it’s making is impossible to miss. The business inside has nothing to hide. It’s still early in the morning, but there appear to be a few family members visiting. I bet they’re grateful for tasteful scenery. The facility’s lobby is bright and airy. It looks nothing like the hellish, fluorescent-lit waiting room of your typical New Jersey hospital.
Our van takes a sharp turn and drives along the side of the building. I realize it’s much bigger than it first appeared. The facility is long enough to park a dozen 747s inside and still have room left over for a few games of professional football. And unlike in the welcoming lobby, the windows in this part of the building are few and far between. The only ones I see are small and made of mirrored glass.
Don stops near a metal garage about halfway down the side of the facility. He throws the van into reverse, and when the door rises, he backs all the way into the building. The van shuts off and Don comes around to the rear. He opens the doors.
“What’s the name of this place?” I ask. “I didn’t see any signs on the way in.”
“Dunno. All I know is they pay my boss and he pays me,” he says. He doesn’t sound terribly curious.
“You really don’t know?” I probe.
“Don’t know, don’t care.” Don grabs the end of the gurney and rolls the patient out of the van. “Okay. Let’s haul ’er in,” he says.
I’m not going to argue, but I’m kind of surprised we’re the ones taking the body inside. You’d think a place this big would have a thousand workers, but I don’t see anyone around. I help push the gurney from the loading dock into a featureless hallway that ends in what looks at first like an office. There’s a desk, but no one’s sitting behind it. I count three sliding steel doors on the wall in front of us.
“Hey there, Don,” someone says. The voice is coming from a screen mounted on the wall. An attractive middle-aged woman with big blue eyes and bright pink lips is peering out at us. Judging by the love-struck look on Don’s face, the lady on the screen is his fantasy girl.
“Morning, Angela,” Don says dreamily, proving me right. “You’re looking lovely for someone who’s probably been up since the crack of dawn.”
“Well, aren’t you a charmer,” Angela flirts back. “Who’s your friend?”
Don looks over his shoulder at me as if he totally forgot I’m there. “Oh, right—name’s Mike Arnold. Phil called in sick again, so the recruiting agency sent me a sub. But if Phil keeps getting sick after playoff games, Mike here might just become permanent.”
“Welcome, Mike,” Angela says. “May I scan your badge? Just go ahead and hold it up to the screen.”
I do as commanded. I hope she doesn’t notice that my hand is shaking. There’s no telling whether the badge will actually work. She bends forward for a look. “Wonderful. That all checks out,” she says, though I didn’t see her check a computer screen. It was like she scanned the badge with her eyes. “Welcome back from Afghanistan, Mike. I hope we get to see you more often!”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I say. There’s something about the woman that isn’t quite right. How did she access my information? She appears to be sitting in a room that looks exactly like this office. Why isn’t she here in the flesh?
Then it hits me. She’s not a real person. The woman who stars in Don’s wet dreams is a robot. She’s not quite Otherworld-level, but she’s at least as advanced as the NPCs in the White City. That means there’s a single place that Angela could have come from. Only the Company is capable of producing artificial intelligence this impressive.
“So which door would you like this young lady to go through?” Don asks Angela, referring to the patient between us. He clearly has no idea that his dream girl isn’t human.
“Door number one, as usual,” says Angela. It slides open soundlessly, revealing a metal interior that looks like the world’s least interesting elevator. Don feeds the gurney into the opening and the patient vanishes behind the sliding door. Just like that, she’s gone.
“Anything else I can do for you today?” Don asks Angela.
“As a matter of fact, there is. We have a delivery that needs to be made to the Bosworth Funeral Home in Hoboken. Can you fit it into your schedule this morning?”
“Sure!” says Don as though nothing could make him happier.
“Wonderful,” Angela says. “You’ll find the delivery behind door number three.”
The door slides open. There’s another gurney inside. On top of it is a long object encased in a dark blue plastic bag. I try my best to keep my jaw from hitting the floor. It’s a body. A dead body.
“They know it’s
coming?” Don asks so casually that you’d think he was talking about a floral arrangement.
“Yes, they’re expecting it,” says Angela. “The delivery data has been sent to your phone. Make sure you check it before you depart. And thanks again for your help!”
“It’s always a pleasure,” Don says. “See you next time?”
“Absolutely,” Angela replies cheerfully. “I’m always here.”
I have to stifle a laugh.
The screen goes black. Don gestures for me to follow him to the third door; then we wheel the body toward the van.
“Isn’t she something?” he marvels once we’re in the hall and out of earshot.
“Angela?” I ask, and he nods. “You ever seen her in person?”
“Nope,” he tells me. “But one of these days I’m going to work up the nerve to ask her out.”
“That should be interesting,” I say. I’d love to hear her response. How does a robot weasel out of a date? I wonder.
“Tell me about it.” Don’s practically drooling at the thought. We’re at the van and the doors are open. “You good to ride into Hoboken? Traffic this time of day can be brutal. Might take a few hours. Some people get a bit uncomfortable sitting in the back of a van with a corpse for that long.”
“Not me. I’ll be fine,” I assure him.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Don says. “It’s protocol to confirm that we have the right package before we fire up the engines. Gotta check the info Angela sent.” He pulls out his phone and opens a file. I see a picture of a kid. It must be an old photo, because the boy in it can’t be more than fifteen. Then Don unzips the bag and I almost gasp. The picture is up-to-date and the body inside the bag is so young that it’s hard to believe its owner could be dead. How did it happen? Did he die of injuries he sustained in the real world—or was it the disk that killed him?
Then I notice there’s something wrong with the top of his head. There’s an incision just above his hairline—it runs from one side of his head to another. I’m trying to figure out what might have caused it when the truth hits me so hard that I almost double over. The kid’s been autopsied and his brain has been examined. I feel my knees soften and my head starts to spin while my mind repeats the same sentence over and over and over again.
Oh my God, this could be Kat.
“Yup, same guy,” Don confirms, then zips the bag back up. “Let’s hit the road.”
I push the gurney with the dead kid’s body into the van. Then Don heads for the driver’s seat. I make a show of climbing into the back with the body, but when I slam the door, I’m not inside. The van heads out of the loading dock, and I hitch a ride on the back bumper. Just before we drive past the front entrance, I hop off again. I need to get into the main part of the building, and I figure there’s no way Angela is going to let me pass. My only hope is going in through the front door.
There was a second ID badge in the package the Clay Man left at Elmer’s. JOHN DRISCOLL, MAINTENANCE, it reads. There’s some kind of code beneath that. It’s a long shot, but I’m hoping John is my ticket inside. I take the second badge out of my pocket and fix it to the pocket of my blue uniform. This adventure’s risk level keeps rising. Right now it’s hovering between “you’ve got to be shitting me” and “good luck with your death wish.” But I’ve seen what happens to the patients here, and at this moment, I couldn’t care less about the danger.
I’m barely through the front doors when a guy steps in front of me, blocking my way. I assume he’s a flesh-and-blood human being. If not, he’s an excellent replica of one. He’s dressed in a blue polo shirt, dark jeans and white sneakers. He has a casual, friendly face to match the casual, friendly environment.
“Good morning,” he says. “I’m Nathaniel. May I help you?”
“I’m John from maintenance,” I say, pointing to my badge and hoping that’s enough.
Nathaniel scans my badge with a handheld device while I stare over his shoulder. There are a few miserable-looking people in the reception area who must be family members. A man is standing at the main desk, speaking with the woman behind it. I can’t hear the conversation, but it looks tense. When I recognize the voice, my entire body goes rigid. It belongs to Wayne Gibson—Kat’s stepdad. He’s here for a visit.
“Come with me,” Nathaniel says. I’m almost trembling with nervousness when he leads me past security. I keep my head turned away from Wayne as we pass. “There’s a clogged toilet in visiting room number three. Someone must have tried to flush something fairly big. We’d love to have it fixed as soon as possible. We have a limited number of visiting rooms, and as you can tell, we have quite a few family members with us this morning.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I promise. This place must be filled with some of the most advanced technology ever developed, and yet no one here is able to unclog a toilet. Typical.
I follow Nathaniel out of the lobby and into a hall with a half-dozen doors. He chooses one and places his palm against a black glass scanner on the wall beside it. The door opens and we step inside a room that looks more like a high-end hotel suite than something you’d find in a facility that tends to the nutritional and waste-removal needs of lost causes. The television is large, the furniture is well designed, and the floor is a tasteful hardwood. I wish the chair I slept in at the hospital had been half as plush as the one they have here. I walk up to the bed and rub the sheets between my fingers. Even my mother would approve of the thread count.
“The toilet’s in there,” Nathaniel says, helpfully pointing at the bathroom. “The door will lock behind me when I leave. Just press the button on the wall as soon as you’re finished and I’ll come get you.”
Nathaniel doesn’t seem to have noticed that I have no tools with me. It’s highly unlikely that anything in this room’s getting fixed. When he leaves, I realize I’m stuck. There are two metal doors—the one I just entered and another on the opposite side of the room. But I’m not getting out of either one. Instead of knobs, they both have biometric scanners embedded in the walls beside them. I cross the room to the second door to examine its scanner. I’m bending over for a closer look when the door slides open and I jump back in surprise. A doctor in a white lab coat jumps too when he sees me. His eyes dart to the empty hospital bed and then narrow as they return to me.
“Who are you?” the doctor asks warily, as if I could be anyone from a Russian spy to a hired killer.
“Maintenance,” I tell him, tapping my badge. “Toilet’s clogged.”
His attitude instantly shifts from fear to annoyance. “Still? I’m supposed to be meeting here with a family in…” He checks the device strapped to his wrist. I can tell it’s a smart watch, but I’ve never seen one like it before. I’d bet anything it’s a Company design. “…two minutes.”
“I guess you’re going to have to find another room,” I say.
“I have a better idea,” he says snippily. “Instead of standing around making small talk, why don’t you do your job so that I can do mine?”
I’m about to suggest I use his face as a plunger when three quick beeps issue from the device on his wrist and his expression changes. He knows what the signal means without having to look down at the watch. “That just bought you some time,” he says. “Fix the damn toilet before I get back.”
The doctor presses his palm against the scanner and the door slides open again. He rushes away down another featureless hall without realizing that I’ve slipped through the door behind him.
The door slides shut, and the doctor’s footsteps grow fainter. I’m clearly in a part of the building that’s off-limits to visitors. I expect security guards to show up at any moment and haul me away, but no one does. I scan the ceiling and walls, but I can’t spot a single camera, which seems highly unusual. Slowly, placing one foot after the other carefully, I head in the direction where the doctor just disappeared. Identical metal doors line the wall on my left. I suspect they lead to other visiting rooms, but there are only six of the
m. Where are the patients? Martin and Todd said there were three hundred people participating in the beta test. A lot of them must be here at the facility by now. But where are they keeping them all?
I turn a corner and realize I’ve left the hall. In front of me is a metal balustrade. There are stairs to my left leading down. I walk to the railing. Below me lies a space the size of an airplane hangar.
I’m not quite sure what I’m seeing. There’s obviously a mammoth building project under way. Most of the space remains under construction, but a small section appears to be already in use. Inside the finished area, corridors cut paths through massive metal walls that must be at least twenty feet deep and eight feet high. Three rows of glowing hexagonal windows are set into the walls. From where I’m standing, it looks like a high-tech beehive.
I spot the doctor below me. He stops at one of the windows and punches in a code. The window opens, and he pulls out a sliding shelf with a body resting on top. It’s a man, and he’s naked aside from an aluminum foil Speedo and the black visor on his face. Clear plastic tubes sprout from his mouth, forearm and groin, while thin black wires tether him to the inside of the capsule. I realize I must be looking at some sort of giant life-support machine, with rows of individual capsules stacked three high like shipping crates. Each capsule contains a human being who’s being kept alive. The fancy visiting rooms are just to make the families happy. This is where the patients are actually stored.
In Otherworld, the guy on the shelf is probably battling to survive. But here in this world, he’s nothing but a bag of flesh with a beating heart. Nourishment is pumped directly into his veins while his liquid waste is removed via a tube that’s been inserted into his bladder. I’m sure the shiny diaper he’s wearing takes care of the rest, but I’d rather not know how.
My entire nervous system is buzzing with anxiety. Kat is down there somewhere, locked inside one of those capsules. Carole and Gorog are too. The horror of it almost makes me retch. I cannot—I will not—abandon them here. There’s no time to think it through. I have to act. While the doctor is examining his patient, I dart down the stairs and up to the first capsule. Behind the window, a middle-aged African American woman is lying on a steel shelf, her bare feet only inches from the glass. At the back of the capsule, her head is raised slightly. I can see her face clearly, and it’s not one I recognize. I step back and, one by one, I work my way down the row of windows, looking for Kat. I have no idea what Carole and Gorog look like IRL, but I keep hoping I’ll recognize them, too, somehow. Maybe, like me, they’ll resemble their avatars.