But he does. And he finishes the scotch. Two of them, actually. By then we’re pulling up in front of the mansion. A pair of stone cherubs guard the entrance, as tall as I am. Bad Billy admires their endowments as the chauffer ushers us through a pair of solid gold doors.
“He could feed an African village for what those doors cost,” grumbles Jed. Ever the bleeding heart, never the capitalist.
“He already has,” I say. “Never heard of AgriGrant?”
Jed looks away, muttering to himself. He hasn’t. He’s probably working up some financial expose on corruption at some company Linkletter left on autopilot. Linkletter does that. Jumps around like he’s manic, starting company after company and then running on to the next one once they’re out of the cradle. Guess he gets bored. Guess anybody would get bored living in a place like this. Nothing to do unless you make something to do.
Jed’s right about one thing: the décor is over the top expensive. The furniture probably cost another hundred million on top of whatever Linkletter paid for the mansion itself. Abstract paintings everywhere, puffy red couches that look like they came from a French palace, and glass cases covering up artifacts he’s been snapping up at Sotheby’s. I think I see a Picasso, and I know I see a Warhol. If the door could feed a village, the stuff in this foyer could feed a city.
We hear clicking down the hall. Heels against marble, clip clap, clip clap. A woman rounds the corner, flanked by two burly security guards in black suits. She’s drop dead gorgeous, a natural blonde with all the right curves and sexy librarian glasses perched on the tip of her nose. Jed’s jaw’s hanging open like he’s never seen a woman before. She’s clearly his type.
Who am I kidding? She’s everyone’s type. You get whatever you want when you’re a trillionaire, I guess.
“Miranda Kinsey,” she says, holding out her hand. Jed won’t quit leering, and Billy’s admiring the lace on the throw pillows. Guess it’s up to me.
“You the welcome wagon?” I say. I look over at the security guys. “Or the paddy wagon?”
“Just a precaution,” she says. “One of many.” She passes around three clipboards, a stack of papers on each one. I flip through mine. A non-disclosure agreement, and a nasty looking one at that. The party of the first part hereinafter wheretofore and all that crap. I skim through it. Linkletter gets final approval over whatever I write, and I catch a few clauses about the penalties for violating the thing. My soul, my first born, every penny I ever made.
“Really?” I say. But Billy’s already signed, and so’s Jed.
“Really,” says Miranda. “I must insist. I assumed you’d assume you had to sign one.”
“I did,” I say, and I sigh. And I sign.
“Very good,” says Miranda as I hand her back the papers.
“Now why are we here?” I say. “Why all the mystery? And where the hell’s Linkletter?”
“He’s by the pool,” says Miranda. “And he’s waiting.”
She leads us through the mansion. The piano room, the sculpture garden, the observatory, the other piano room. And finally we’re at the pool. The main one, not the secret one. It’s at the very center of the mansion, an Olympic-sized private lagoon with a retractable roof, currently retracted. I can barely see the water for all the Linkletter Ladies. There aren’t enough months for this many girls, but somehow he managed. It’s party central. There’s a volleyball game going on, a private chef working the grill, and beautiful waitresses swimming cocktails to all corners of the pool. And what a pool it is.
It’s almost as famous as the mansion itself. It’s a pool, but it’s also an aquarium. All around the sides and the bottom there’s a thick wall of glass. And on the other side of the glass there’s schools of tropical fish, sharks, turtles, the works. An aquatic menagerie that swims beside you and beneath you, salt water separated from chlorine by a glass partition.
“Marvelous,” coos Billy. I’m marveling a little myself. But I came here to work, not to play. I might be kicking myself for the rest of my life, but if I don’t get my story, my editor’s going to chew my ass off when I get back.
“I don’t see Harper,” I say.
“The Tiki Tower,” says Miranda with a nod.
And there he is. Up in a tower overlooking the pool. His own private office with a bamboo spiral staircase leading up. Miranda walks us over and waits by the stairs as we work our way to the top.
Linkletter looks like shit. Like crazy Howard Hughes if he’d gone on a month-long bender. He’s got the beard, speckled grey and hanging down to his waist like a bib. Bits of food in it everywhere. He’s wearing silk pajamas, monogrammed of course. Barefoot, and there’s a nasty smell. I look over and see what it is: jars of urine, like he’s been collecting them. Like he’s too busy to wander down to the pool and take a quick piss.
His fingernails are about six inches long, and he’s clacking them together as he paces around in front of a standing desk, a giant laptop in front of him. He keeps mumbling to himself, and he doesn’t even notice us standing there. Jed and I wait politely. Bad Billy breaks the ice as usual with a goofy giggle. And Linkletter snaps to attention.
He stares at us like we’re ghosts. He’s cocking his head, his eyes narrowing. I’m a little worried he’s going to leap over and bite us. But then there’s a glint of recognition. Just a glint.
“The reporters,” says Linkletter. His voice is nasal, monotone, just like in all the old publicity vids. He mutters to himself again, paces around, and finds a couple of chairs buried beneath stacks of paper. He clears them off and offers us a seat.
We all squirm. The urine jars are stacked up right behind them.
“We’ll stand,” says Jed politely. He points at the desk. “It looks like you like to stand.”
“Good for the blood,” mutters Linkletter. “And what’s good for the blood is good for the brain.”
Back to muttering, back to pacing. I’m not sure how this interview is supposed to go. I wish Miranda had come up with us. Maybe she knows him better. Maybe she could manage him. But not to be, alas, and one of us is going to have to figure it out.
Billy tries first. He always tries first.
“Are those the drugs?” he says. He points to a few pill bottles stacked near the laptop. He’s practically salivating over them. “I’ve heard so much about your drugs. About how they make you feel.”
Linkletter hisses. I mean, he literally hisses. Like a vampire who got hit with a bouquet of garlic. He tosses a manila folder over the pills and glowers at the three of us. Fucking Billy. We get invited to interview the richest man in the world and all he wants to talk about is drugs. He’s fucked this whole thing up for the three of us.
But Linkletter calms down pretty quickly. He paces some more, acting like we’re not even there. He stands still, rocks his head up and down. Billy starts to say something else, but I grab his arm and I squeeze. He gives me a bitchy look, but he figures it out.
We stand there. We wait. Linkletter stares out at his Ladies.
“The end of the world,” mutters Linkletter.
He turns and stares at us. Eyes crazy, the pupils dilated to hell. He’s on those drugs for sure. Smart pills, supposedly, but he’s gone off the deep end. His head cocks like a parrot and he shuffles over to me. He leans in towards my shoulder and sniffs. I let him, but I try to keep from breathing. I’m amazed he can smell anything over the stench he’s got going.
He leans back and alternates his gaze between the three of us. He raises his arms in a grand gesture and smiles. “I’m going to end this world and start a new one. And I’ve invited the three of you here to help.”
Jed and I exchange a look. Whatever’s been going on up here is big, and not because the world’s going to end. Because of what’s happened to Linkletter. He’s no different than some cracked out homeless guy, except for the money and the sycophants and the giant pool. To hell with the NDA. Both of our stories just changed. “World’s richest man needs to get committed, and fast. A
trillion dollars at stake. Will the world economy survive?” Billy’s just giggling. His story’s the same as it always was, only this time the juicy gossip’ll actually be true.
“End of the world,” says Jed.
“That’s a very interesting business idea,” says Billy.
“It’s freedom!” snarls Linkletter. “And it’s control!” He pokes Billy in the belly. “You’re not even real, you know that? Not an ounce of you is real. And I’ve proven it.”
He lunges at Billy, a madman lost in his raving. There’s some of the old Linkletter still in there. The aggression. The withering stare that made people do whatever he told them to. That made people dream crazy dreams that weren’t so crazy after all. Billy doesn’t know what he used to be like. He doesn’t see this coming. He just freaks, running around the tower in circles and squealing like a pig about to be slaughtered.
“I can prove it,” hisses Linkletter, pointing a bony finger at Billy.
“Sir,” I say in my calmest, most reasonable, least patronizing-to-a-crazy-person voice. “Can you tell us about this plan?”
Now he’s glaring at me instead. Wheels are turning in that head of his, and he’s trying to figure out whether I piss him off as much as Billy does. I guess he decides I don’t, because after about a minute he seems to calm down. He paces around some more, and finally he’s back to normal. Or whatever’s normal for him these days, anyway.
He glares at us again. And then he points that finger at us and says something like it’s an accusation. “I’ve discovered something. Nested realities. And we’re somewhere in the middle of a chain of them.”
We all give him blank looks.
“You know what a Russian doll is?” says Linkletter.
“Yes,” I say quickly, heading off Billy before he can make a sex joke.
“Reality is nested. Like a Russian doll,” says Linkletter. “With another doll inside, and another, and another. Now we’re not the big doll. I know that for sure. QuantLab California. You’re familiar with them?”
“The next gen computer thing?” says Jed. He perks up at the name. Linkletter’s corporate web has a lot of strands, and this one must be close to whatever Jed’s working on. “I read the press releases. Pretty interesting stuff. Should revolutionize computer chips.”
“Nothing of the sort,” says Linkletter. “There’s truth and there’s truth, but you’ll find none of it in a press release. I set up that company. That lab. A facility full of physicists to probe the particles at the bottom of the universe. I needed data. I needed it.” He’s clacking his fingernails again, thinking. He hums to himself, staring off into space. And then he’s talking again like nothing happened. “I got my data. And you know what it said?”
“What did it say?” I ask as politely as I can. I feel like I’m talking to some old coot in a nursing home, humoring him because it’s the nice thing to do. And maybe I am, although it’s a pretty expensive nursing home, and a pretty powerful coot.
“The data said whatever I wanted it to say,” says Linkletter. “It fit with whatever theory I investigated. And it changed. It changed as my theories changed. It shouldn’t do that. It couldn’t do that. Not unless it wasn’t even real. Not unless it was being procedurally generated as I went. Just fluff from an algorithm somewhere to confirm whatever my speculation of the moment was.”
“The press releases—” says Jed.
“The data,” says Linkletter. “I’ve proven it. At least to my own satisfaction. Proven what I knew to be true all along. That we—all of us—are living in a simulated reality. A reality generated around us as we interact with it.”
“That’s a pretty bold claim,” says Jed.
“It’s a pretty obvious claim,” says Linkletter. “At least for someone in my position. You, I couldn’t speak for. But the question of the nature of existence is a solipsistic one in the end. Whether you exist, I could never truly say. I only know what I perceive, and I can only speak for myself. Look around you.” He waves a hand out at the pool full of models and actresses. Out at the giant mansion, the diamond studded water slide, and at all his toys. “If you could be anyone in the world, you’d be me. It isn’t even a choice. If you were me, if you’d lived my life and you had all of this, would you believe it was real? You’d know it wasn’t. You’d know the odds of living this life at random. And you’d know that if someone were in fact to create a simulated reality, this is precisely the life they’d simulate.”
“So this entire world was built for you to live in,” says Jed. “And the rest of us are just chopped liver.”
“Perhaps you are and perhaps you aren’t,” says Linkletter. “I chose each of you, and carefully. I guessed at the odds. You’re each quite likely to be an actual consciousness, presuming this simulation contains more than one consciousness. A significant leap, but one must make some guesses. You’re all upper middle class. You live in the richest country in the world. You speak the world’s dominant language. Very unlikely that you’d check all these boxes if you think about it. It’s vastly more probable that you’d be farming rice in an overpopulated village in the middle of nowhere. Even your middle-class income puts you among the richest people on the planet. And there’s other factors. You all appear to be enjoying your chosen profession. No disabilities, no major physical defects. Some emotional traumas, but a perfect life would be a dead giveaway of unreality in and of itself, wouldn’t it? It certainly was for me.”
He pushes past us towards the staircase. “Miranda!” he shouts. She bounds up the stairs, the security guards right behind her.
“Sir?” says Miranda.
“My world,” says Linkletter. “I want to show them the world I’m building.”
“Certainly,” says Miranda. She barks something into a walkie talkie and Linkletter leads the way.
He walks us around the pool. The Linkletter Ladies cheer, laugh, catcall. They act like he’s a rock star. Or a meal ticket to a very expensive meal. Linkletter looks delighted. He’s crazy, but not that crazy. Not yet.
We wind through the mansion’s gardens and finally stop at a wall. Just a blank khaki-colored wall with a few palm trees on either side of it. “Open sesame,” says Linkletter. A panel slides open. There’s metal underneath, and a small hole. He puts a finger into it. We hear a beep. The wall slides away to reveal a staircase leading down into the belly of the mansion.
We head inside: Linkletter, the three of us, Miranda, and the bodyguards. We pass through three more doors. Three intersections, and on every side a security door. Giant ones, gizmos and locks all over them. Every one of them looks like it leads into a bank vault. Some of them are fakes, I think. He can’t have this many hallways, and the tunnel turns and zig-zags so many times I’m sure he designed it that way to confuse people. After the third intersection I can’t even keep track of what direction we’re going in.
We come to one final door. A big one. Linkletter sticks his finger in a hole, presses his eye against a scanner, and then it slides upwards. On the other side it’s a couple acres worth of servers. I can’t even see the end of it. Just computer after computer, stacked up and wired together. Humming so loudly it’s like we walked into a bee hive.
“This is it,” says Linkletter. “The way out. The way down.”
We walk inside. It’s cold. They must keep the air conditioning on full blast to keep these things from frying. The servers are a maze unto themselves. Rows and rows, and we follow Linkletter into the center of the labyrinth.
And there, buried somewhere beneath the mansion, is what Linkletter’s been working on for the last year. Gyroscopes. Big ones. Twenty, maybe thirty of them. Designed to strap a human being right inside them. Wires all along the sides, a back rest, and a helmet on top to go over your head.
Linkletter snickers. High pitched and creepy. “The way down. My own little world. These are virtual reality rigs, gentlemen. And the four of us are going to take them for a spin.”
We look at each other. None of us are
sure we want to go through with this. Billy’s getting pale, and Jed’s kind of a wuss about everything. I’m just thinking about how much I should trust Linkletter. He was a genius, and probably still is. But do I really want to hook myself up to some crackpot invention made by a guy who saves all his own piss as a keepsake?
But Linkletter’s already at one of the gyroscopes. Miranda’s helping him up onto the platform, strapping him in.
“Clicks,” whispers Billy. “Clicks, clicks, clicks.”
He’s right. Whatever else this is, it’s a story, and a good one. Talk about viral. And I figure if Linkletter’s still alive, these crazy-looking machines can’t kill us. Billy leads the way, and after a quick shudder Jed follows after him. I guess that’s it. I guess we’re going in.
The security goons help me up onto one of the gyroscopes. They strap my wrists to the metal, good and hard. I couldn’t move if I wanted to. We’re all locked in, and Miranda smiles. “Welcome to the brave new world.” One of the goons lowers the mask down onto my head. Everything goes dark. And then I start to spin.
I want to hurl. But I hold it in. It’s like a roller coaster on acid. I can feel it, but I can’t see a thing. Feels like I’m going up, going down, going everywhere at once. I don’t know which way is anything. Colors appear at the edges of my vision. I feel like I’m passing out. I close my eyes—just a blink.
And then I’m standing in the middle of a city park. A big city, but not one I recognize. Kind of New York, but not really. I’ve spent enough time there that I’d know. And it’s not just me. Billy’s kneeling a few yards away, dry heaving. Jed looks like he’s trying mushrooms for the first time. And then there’s Linkletter.
It’s him. It’s the old him. No beard, no smell, no crazy-eyes. He’s dashing, young, handsome. Even his demeanor’s changed. It’s more masculine. Dominant. This is the brash guy who took over entire industries and bent the whole world to his will.
“Welcome,” says Linkletter, “to the Linkletter-verse.”
“It’s amazing,” says Jed. “This is crazy. I mean so crazy.”
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