by Isaac Stone
“You will need to present a driver’s license or state ID card for identification.”
“Won’t be a problem. Is tomorrow a good day?”
I heard the click of a computer mouse. “Mr. Konkin hasn’t had a visitor in years. I think he’ll be glad to see anyone. Keep in mind that your uncle might not recognize you right away.”
I counted on it. A shame how easy it still is to get fake ID’s and bogus credentials, but I was ready to go to jail for what I wanted to know. My only concern was that he was too advanced to remember much of Chamita’s character development.
I’d read up a lot on Hans Konkin over the past week. He was a legend in the game development field and in VR programing. A lonely man who never married or socialized much, he had a unique set of skills, which made him and his company leaders in the field of advanced game systems. When he transferred to Sandstone ten years ago, great things were expected out of him. At the time, most VR games consisted of small TV screens that fitted over your eyes. For some reason, he became reclusive and retired early.
To learn more I needed to talk with him.
“He was a lot more lucid when he came here,” the nurse said to me as we walked down the hall. She’d gone over my identification cards with care and they were good enough to fool her. If I did my job right, no one would ever know a complete stranger came into his room and interviewed him.
“How long ago was that?” I asked the nurse. I watched as people pushed trays on carts down the hall to different rooms.
“Five years ago,” she told me. “He’s never caused us any trouble. I’ll let you look at his charts later and we can go over them.” I nodded in approval.
“Mr. Konkin?” she asked as the nurse opened the door. “Your nephew is here to see you. Would you like to talk to him?”
The door opened to show a man of about 40 in a chair who was focused on the television over his bed. He turned in our direction and his eyes regarded me with confusion. I needed to act fast.
“Hello, Uncle Hans,” I said to him. “Don’t you remember me? Henry. It’s been a long time. Too long, but I’m here to see you.”
His eyes began to focus. “Oh yes, Henry,” he said. “So good to see you. Why don’t you go, nurse and I can have a nice chat with my nephew?” I sat down across from him in the second chair.
“I will, Mr. Konkin,” she told him in her pleasant nurse voice. “You know how to get in touch with me if you need anything.” She shut the door behind her as I heard her sponge waffle shoes squeak on the floor.
He looked at me for a few minutes and didn’t say a word. I knew there were security cameras on us at all time. I decided to let him say the first words.
“Who are you really?” he asked. “I don’t recall things that I used to, but I don’t remember your face at all.” He continued to stare.
I took out a card from my pocket with the world “Chamita” on it and handed it to him. He took it from me and looked back at me.
“I’ve seen her, sir,” I told him. “They have the system working and I was the first test subject.”
“She lives?” he asked.
“Very much so, sir,” I told him. “But I don’t know how much longer. They’ll have an incentive to erase everything if I can’t show them how successful the system is. I understand she was based on a real person.”
“She was,” he answered me. I could see he had difficulty standing and I got him a cup of water.
“Is that person still alive?” I asked him.
“I’m not sure,” he told me. “I used to know where she lived. I don’t even remember her real name. It was much easier before this problem started. I wish I could help you.”
“Sir,” I said, as I looked Hans in the eyes. “I need something to go on. If they wipe the scenario clean, there will be no more memories of Chamita. She will cease to exist and the world which was created for her. Don’t you have anything to help me?”
He leaned over to a nightstand and opened the drawer. Hans slid is hand inside, ruffled around, and pulled out a picture. He handed it to me.
It was an older film photograph, maybe ten years old. It showed a young woman who resembled Chamita close enough to be her twin sister. It shocked me so much I almost dropped it. This had to be the person he’d based her character upon. I needed to find out who she was.
“It’s all I have,” he told me. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you anymore. Please go, I won’t say a word about you not being my real nephew.” His head sagged down and I knew it was time to leave.
I signed out of the rest home and told the nurse who showed Hans to me that he was in good spirits, but didn’t seem to remember much. I promised her I would inform my mother about his progress and left Sunny Valley Manor. At least I had the picture with me. I could atone for the morality of what I’d done later. The picture brought me one step closer to the person who was used as a model for Chamita.
I thought a lot about how to find her on the drive back home. I knew I had gone full creeper, total stalker, complete otaku gamer psycho, but I didn't care. My funds were exhausted after all the money I’d paid to get this far. The picture wasn’t much to go on, but at least it was one step closer to the real person. I could attempt to interview his former coworkers, but that would raise a lot of suspicion. Better Sandstone Gems didn’t know I’d found out this information. A picture was something I could use to find her on the Internet.
The problem with using the Internet to find information on a picture is that there are too many of them out there. I used various reverse look-up programs to find out who was in the picture, but it was ten years old and made on real film. Quite possibly, the photograph was never uploaded to the Internet. The searches I did gave me plenty of contemporary women who could pass for the one in the picture, but she wouldn’t look like this after ten years. I even tried a way to age the image to get a better match, but I couldn’t find a thing.
I had reached a dead end. The company could easily destroy Chamita and the rest of the scenario or reuse it for another purpose. There was nothing I could do and I knew it. I made several copies of the picture Hans gave me and framed the original.
There were too many women out there who had her body type for the Internet to find a reasonable match. One night, I came to the realization I’d spent 8 hours straight in an Internet search that continued to prove useless. I decided the time was better spent on a real life improvement.
The next morning, I put the picture frame into my apartment desk drawer. The copies went into a folder that was place in my file cabinet. I’d decided it was time to close the door on the search for the Chamita prototype.
I spent some time at the old game store. Most of my friends there told me that I resembled a different person than the one who used to hang out. I was sworn to secrecy by the terms of the papers I’d signed with Gemstone and couldn’t talk about what I’d done while I was gone.
Most of the old crowd was there, including Lane the owner, even though he came around less and less as the weeks went by. It was hard to keep the place up with all his responsibilities at home. I would go in and watch the game tables as the gamers tried to seize control of battlefields and castles. The games made by Sandstone Gems didn’t interest me any longer. It was hard to play a simulated game when you’d gone through the real thing.
A few weeks later, I was surfing the Internet when I came across a story about Sandstone Gems. It seemed the VR program they’d touted at game conventions and in their press releases was about to be scuttled. The investors dumped truckloads of money into the project and had yet to see anything for it. The development team was months behind schedule and the stockholders threatened to shut down the entire company and sell it off if they didn’t see results very soon.
I clicked to the comments section and found the usual keyboard warriors and smarmists who seemed to think the company deserved everything it was about it get. People argued over the possibility of VR working and demanded proof of everything th
e company proclaimed it accomplished. It never failed, success brings envy and big success brings hatred. I remembered when Sandstone Gems was a nothing startup company with barely enough assists to make payroll. These fools had no idea what it took to get to the top of the game industry.
Several experts in human consciousness and cybernetics swore it was impossible for the company to achieve any of what it claimed. They published video lectures that proved it was impossible to manipulate the human brain into believing it was in a simulated world. Several times, I came very close to writing comments myself, but I knew the company had professional trolls that scanned the Internet on the lookout for anyone who talked crap about them. I didn’t need an army of lawyers at my door demanding Sandstone Gem’s money back.
As the weeks went on, the stories about Sandstone Gems and its problems became less and less prominent. The scapegoat artists moved to other issues and problems and left the company alone. I made sure to go to my doctor’s appointments and followed up with the psychiatrist visits. I don’t think any of the doctors knew why I was there, but the results of the tests were sent to the company headquarters. I checked and was reassured my “benefactors” received copies of every evaluation. Somehow, I wasn’t too surprised by this fact.
20
The rest home where Hans lived called a month later. Mine was the only active number for a relative, so they called me. It appeared they hadn’t figured out I used a fake ID. I smacked myself in the head when I realized I’d left them my real phone number. At least I didn’t identify myself with my real name when I picked up the phone.
Hans passed away the day before. They needed to contact a family member for legal purposes and wanted me to help arrange the funeral. There were his clothes and personal effects, which need to be inventoried. As for any money he had, it was all turned over to the retirement home before he was admitted.
I was there by the early evening and took a motel room to be sure I had a place to stay while I worked everything out with Sunny View Manor. This time it was an administrator in a suit who met me at the door to the home. He was used to this procedure and I found out later that the manor did two of them a week on average.
“I’ll try and send an email to mother,” I told him as we sat down, “but I don’t expect she’ll be able to make it. She’s away in Japan this month.” In fact, I’d checked earlier and found out my “mother” was doing fifteen to life in Gratersford and wouldn’t be going anywhere for a long time.
I sent some flowers in her name just to be on the safe side. I found no trace of family members when I looked into Hans’ background. He didn’t seem to have any religious affiliation, so we did a small ceremony with the staff. This was usual, I found out, with so many people dumping their relatives off in a rest home so they didn’t have to deal with them.
I said a few words about him that I did know. How Hans was crucial to the development of several technologies that would someday be used by millions. A few nurses talked about how nice he was and what a pleasant man he’d been to them. We had his body cremated and the ashes placed in an urn which went to a shelf at a local cemetery. I had the feeling that cemetery received plenty of business From Sunny View. I know the funeral home did.
Then there was the matter of his possessions. The clothes I had sent to a charity, but he left behind a small box of personal effects.
I looked through them in his now-vacant room and saw a few things that warranted more study. “I’ll take this with me,” I told the director. “I didn’t know Uncle Hans that well, but it will give me something to remember him by. Someday, I hope someone will do the same for me.” After I filled out the paperwork, I was allowed to take the box with me. There was nothing of value that would interest the taxman.
It started when I walked into my apartment. I was grateful it didn’t happen when I was in the car or this story never would’ve been told.
I locked the door behind me and sat the box down on my kitchen table. It was one of the pieces that came with the apartment as I rented a furnished one. After I seated myself and checked my phone for email, I took the lid of the box and looked inside.
At which moment I was back on Wolf Mountain.
The strange thing was, I was there in my normal body. I wasn’t in the hunk version they created for my character. I had the same clothes on that I wore at the moment of opening the box. I didn’t have time to take off my jacket, so I still wore it.
It was early in the morning and I was back at the bootlegger camp. The huts were still in place and the truck my three companions took back to the highway was gone. This time I had no magic logbook or pocket watch communicator. I could hear the birds in the background, but other than that, there were no sounds.
I was back on Wolf Mountain at the exact time I left it.
I looked around for Chamita, but couldn’t find her. At least not in the camp. There were plenty of other places she might be at that time of day. I’d told her I’d be back, but not when. It was reasonable to assume she left after I disappeared. I sat down on a log and tried to figure out what happened.
This time I hadn’t been in a VR chamber when I traveled to the scenario. I’d been inside my apartment in the act of opening the box that contained the last effects of Hans Konkin, the man responsible for the creation of Chamita and much of the reality about me. What happened?
Perhaps I was still in the VR chamber. Was this all some kind of test by Sandstone Gems to find out how I would respond to different reality perspectives? I pondered over the contents of the box. Perhaps there was something in it that triggered my return to the mountain. How long would I be here?
I sat there a good hour and tried to run different possibilities through my mind. Was I going crazy? Was this all a big hallucination and I was still at my table in the apartment. I reached down to the ground and felt the dirt. Real. No way to fake this mess. Even the smell of unwashed bodies whiffed out of the huts. It reminded me of a locker room.
And then my head began to hurt. The pain increased the point where I felt sick. I doubled over and grabbed my stomach as the pain blotted out my vision. Everything went black.
The apartment returned and I was sitting back at the kitchen table. The pain slowly went away and I managed to crawl to the bathroom and throw up in the toilet. As I finished washing myself in the sink, I staggered back to the kitchen where I poured myself a glass of water from the tap. As I crept back to the chair and drank it. I looked back into the standard office document box full of the personal belongings.
I picked up the first folder and waited for another phase shift. It had to be related to the way I’d left the VR chamber. They hadn’t told me what happened, but something went wrong in there and they didn’t understand it. Whatever it was, the mishap distorted my sense of reality. I couldn’t be in the car when it happened or even crossing the street.
I opened the folder and looked at what was in it. Electronic drawings. Sketches of circuitry. These were things I didn’t understand and way out side of my range. I flipped through a few of them and started to return the pile to the folder. At which point I noticed the logo at the bottom of each document.
These were all from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA. The government agency that placed men on the moon a long time ago and sent satellites into space. I noticed a division below the logo and wrote it down.
I spent the afternoon as I tried to find out what this division was all about. Yet, I could find nothing on it. There were many projects NASA worked on over the years that were scuttled due to lack of funds or interest, but all left some kind of trace. Heck, I even one that wanted to send a rocket to Mars by blowing it off the Earth with hydrogen bombs. But this division left no trace.
It was, however, possible that this was a fake set of documents. Someone could easily make them appear to be official NASA papers and slap a phony division on it. But why go to such trouble to make it appear faked? Was this part of some fraud Hans was involved in at one
time?
What wasn’t faked was the pain in my head. It subsided since I returned from Wolf Mountain, but my head still hurt. I took and a painkiller the psychiatrist prescribed and sat down on the couch. It was funny that the psych doc felt confident enough to give me pain medication when I wasn’t allowed to tell him what caused my condition. He did seem to know a lot about what happened to me and we didn’t talk about the specifics. I had a phone number to call if I had any bad reactions, but never used it. I was afraid who would come and get me, since I’d looked the number up on-line and it wasn’t listed to any emergency service. It rang into an answering service, who wouldn’t tell me where they were located.
I fell asleep and dreamed I was back inside the abandoned asylum. It was daylight and I could see how dilapidated the place was. It was the worst location imaginable for a mental hospital and I couldn’t understand why it was there, even after I found the background in the logbook. I didn’t hear anything and walked to the front door, which was bashed open from our dance with the bootleggers. The doors were reduced to splinters and I stepped over the chunks of wood as I walked outside. I had to crawl over the fallen masonry to get out.
By the time I reached the bottom of the steps, I decided to use the pocket watch and find out where everyone was. I reached into my vest and pulled out the watch.
By then I noticed the movement in the bushes around me. It couldn’t be the bootleggers; they were all dead. No pistol or gun, I hoped this was my companions. I waited for them to emerge from the undergrowth.
The bushes parted in seven different locations around me and a wolf emerged from each one. They walked out of the forest and stopped when I was encircled. Okay, I needed to call Rhonda quick because she had to get me out. The wolves didn’t look like nice doggies and each one had very sharp teeth.
I depressed the stem on the watch and the screen illuminated.
But it wasn’t Rhonda. It was Chamita and she was crying.