The Unincorporated Man

by Dani Kollin; Eytan Kollin

  Neela laughed at her companion’s sheer glee.

  “Well,” she smirked, “I guess there’s still some elevated hormone levels to be dealt with.”

  “Oh no, you don’t,” he answered, mouth agape in adolescent awe as the craft skimmed a small patch of rapids along the Colorado River. “They’re right where I want ’em.”

  “Well, if you like this,” she answered, seemingly bored, “you’ll go Alaskan when you hit the canyons of Mars. They make the Grand Canyon look like a scratch in the sand.”

  “Hot damn!” Justin said, banking up a steep curve. “How ’bout we go now?”

  Neela’s nonanswer was all the answer he needed. He shrugged, realizing his little side trip was over, pulled the car up and out of the canyon, and pointed it toward L.A. At the speeds they were traveling, it only took a few minutes to arrive.

  The car slowed down appreciably as they entered the city limits.

  Neela watched as Justin took in the new and improved City of Angels. “How does it look?” she asked.

  “It’s big, spread-out, and not very tall,” he answered. “Hasn’t changed much at all.”

  It hadn’t. After the Grand Collapse those who were able headed north to the Alaskan Federation. When the world eventually got its bearings back on track, California no longer held its allure. After all, weather, one of the state’s main claims to fame, was now technologically influenced on an almost regular basis. The state’s other claim to fame, entertainment, had left such a black mark on society that there were those who, like some of the Jews who’d escaped Nazi Germany, refused to ever step foot on its soil again. Neela had explained to Justin that the placement of a virtual reality museum in L.A., the flashpoint of the VR plague, had caused such an uproar that some people were still arguing about it.

  When they were within range of the museum, Neela told the car to descend into a parking area near a large, well-manicured square. As it came to a soft landing, she gave Justin an “are you ready for this?” glance. He answered with a nod. They slipped out through the vehicle’s walls and walked toward the main park. Once there, they came upon an oversized, elaborate entrance made of stone, metal, and thousands of pieces of crushed computer motherboards. The gate was at least ten feet wide and twenty feet tall and had the words IT’S NECESSARY spelled out above in wrought iron. As they passed through the entrance they made way for a group of twelve students heading out. The students, Justin could see, appeared to be about seven or eight years of age and were accompanied by two adults. It looked like a school field trip, except that none of the children were smiling. They were so lost in thought that two of them even had to be gently redirected from hitting the side of the gate. They shuffled their feet as they walked by, barely noticing the media stars in their midst. Justin waited until they were out of the park and turned to Neela.

  “Justin,” she tried to explain, “our world came about from the collapse of the old world, but that world fell in such a horrific fashion it came very close to the destruction of all civilization as we know it.”

  “What does that have to do with those kids?”

  “Everything.”

  They walked for another hundred yards along a gravel path, with only the sound of the grinding rocks beneath their feet to interrupt the silence. A large building appeared over the horizon. The structure appeared to be collapsing upon itself. Huge sheets of glass and metal were jutting out in different directions, seeming ready to fly off at any moment. There was no courtyard to speak of; rather, the large, discombobulated edifice was sitting in the middle of a huge pit void of any foliage. Storm clouds surrounded the compound. Justin and Neela descended a flight of steps leading into the vast hole in the ground.

  The entrance was a wide opening at the pit’s base. The wall surrounding that opening was made of marble, and on that marble, engraved in three-foot-high letters, were the following sentences:

  I. A CULTURE THAT ACCEPTS VIRTUAL REALITY

  ACCEPTS DESTRUCTION

  II. THAT WHICH A HUMAN SHOULD DO, DO

  III. ACCEPT NO REALITY EXCEPT REALITY

  IV. ABSOLUTE PLEASURE CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY

  V. NEVER FORGET

  Neela waited while Justin read the inscriptions. She also wanted to give him time to absorb them.

  “Behold,” she said, “the famous Virtual Reality Dictates.”

  “Impressive,” replied Justin, standing back and taking in the scarred yet pristine landscape.

  Continuing their earlier conversation, she added, “We wait until the children are old enough to understand and remember. The age is different for each child, but it’s usually between seven and nine.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Seven,” whispered Neela, momentarily looking like one of the children they’d just seen exiting the park.

  “What’s this place supposed to do, Neela?”

  “It’s supposed to show us the price paid by society when it takes away responsibility and replaces it with pleasure.”

  “Well, that sounds awfully Puritan, don’t you think?”

  Neela didn’t answer. She seemed somehow entranced by the building. Justin realized that she hadn’t even heard his question. She just stood there, staring—a victim revisiting the crime scene. Neela took a breath and indicated that it was time to enter.

  As they walked through the large doorway Justin could see that the building was much larger on the inside than it appeared on the outside, as was evidenced by a multitude of escalators heading farther down into the Earth. The escalators’ destinations were veiled by a thin layer of fog.

  They were met almost immediately by a sharply dressed employee who had a button on his lapel that said THINGS ARE LOOKING UP. After they were finished signing in, he checked his holodisplay, then looked up again. “Please excuse me, Mr. Cord, Dr. Harper,” he said, obviously excited to be in the presence of celebrity, “just a few more modifications and we’ll be on our way . . . And by the way, congratulations on your case.”

  “Thanks,” they both answered, then laughed nervously.

  The employee continued to mess around with buttons and knobs.

  “Just presetting your experience to better accommodate your visit here.”

  “Ahh,” responded Justin, not knowing what else to say.

  “And by the way,” continued the employee, looking up once again from his holodisplay, “all of us employees here at the VR museum loved how you stuck it to GCI.”

  “I’m surprised you don’t work for them.”

  “Oh no, Mr. Cord,” answered the employee, beaming with pride. “We work for the government.”

  Justin gave Neela a surprised look.

  Neela shrugged. “Not everyone works for GCI, Justin.”

  Justin looked around, moving on. “Where’s everybody else?”

  “Everybody who?” asked the employee.

  “The rest of the visitors.”

  “Oh, we cleared them out. Professional courtesy. Plus, the last thing we want is to have you surrounded by a mob of fans for your visit here. I think you may have bumped into the last group on your way in.”

  “As a matter of fact, we did,” answered Neela.

  The employee made a few more adjustments and got out from behind his holodisplay. “Right this way, Mr. Cord, Dr. Harper,” he said, indicating that they take the third escalator from the left, which was now well lit. Both Justin and Neela got on. Justin, out of habit, began walking down the already moving escalator until he noticed Neela. She’d picked her step, grabbed hold of the rail, and was now leaning against it. Though the escalator was moving slowly, Neela’s pall was that of an unwilling passenger being strapped into a roller coaster.

  “You go ahead if you want,” she said. “They won’t start without me.”

  Justin smiled and climbed back up the steps.

  “That’s OK,” he said, taking her hand. She gave it over, too anxious to argue.

  As soon as they were through the clouded veil, things, as
the employee’s button said, really did start to look up. It appeared that they were descending into an early-twenty-first-century shopping mall, complete with cheerful music and busy shoppers. The only thing wrong with the scenario, noted Justin, was that there was entirely too much cheer for what he knew was meant to be a cheerless place. Nevertheless, he was in it for the ride, and he’d take whatever experience the museum decided to throw at him at face value. He couldn’t help but notice a large back-lit sign advertising that the latest in VR technology had just been installed. The sign also indicated how to find the store within the mall.

  “We going there?” he said, pointing to the sign.

  “Yes,” she said, “unless you feel like having a Starbucks.” She pointed over at the café with a logo Justin recognized.

  “You mean I can just stay here and shop and drink if I like?”

  “If you like,” she said. “But you won’t be able to leave until you visit the VR center.”

  Justin laughed. “Starbucks or hell. You people are too much.”

  Neela stood silently, waiting for Justin to decide.

  His eyes narrowed with shrewd intent. “Let’s go to hell,” he said.

  As they made their way through the mall toward the VR center, Justin struck up a conversation.

  “You know, Neela, I might not have liked malls, but this place doesn’t really seem all that scary.”

  “Justin, the mall’s not scary . . . it’s what you can buy here.” Justin was already sure this experience would be about as pleasant as a weekend at a Taliban resort, but that last statement unnerved him. It was the old “careful what you wish for” mantra.

  “It’s also not like any museum I’ve ever been to,” he continued, “unless, of course, this mall here is part of the exhibit.”

  “I guess you could say it is,” she answered, “or it just might be the whole exhibit. You never really know.”

  Justin looked at her quizzically.

  “It’s different for everyone,” she said.

  “Ahh.”

  After a five-minute walk, they arrived at a large glass-fronted store occupying one hundred feet of mall front. There in front of them was a large sign spanning the windows that read VIRTUAL REALITY BOOTHS, FIRST TEN MINUTES FREE! Not wanting further delay, Justin walked in first and was greeted by an overly cheerful hostess. Neela shuffled in behind him. The hostess looked to be about seventeen or eighteen and had the well-worn demeanor of a high-school kid working her way through a summer job. She welcomed Justin professionally if not a bit stiffly, as is always the case when nonprofessionals are forced to go by a script. At the end of her brief monologue, she made sure to assure both Justin and Neela that they were about to have the experience of their lives. When Justin started to ask questions, Neela gently laid a hand on his arm to quiet him. The hostess took the both of them to another room marked with a sign that read CALIBRATION.

  Neela began to shake.

  “Are you all right, Miss?” asked the hostess.

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she answered, “just a little cold.”

  “Neela,” said Justin, “not only are you not cold, you’re also a terrible liar.”

  “I’ll be all right,” she said in a small voice.

  “You plan to go through this again . . . on my behalf?”

  Neela nodded. “You shouldn’t have to do this alone, Justin.”

  “Neela, even if we did this together I’d probably end up doing it alone . . . I very much doubt they’d let you interfere in my experience.”

  “I . . . I could arrange something . . . make sure you weren’t in too deep.”

  “Pass.”

  “Justin, no adult has ever done this before . . . at least, not in my day.”

  “Stay here, Neela,” he answered, ignoring her.

  “But—”

  “—no buts. You won’t do me any good if you’re in shock. One of us will need to talk to me with a clear head afterward. You’re elected.”

  “Dr. Gillette—”

  “—probably has no idea you were even thinking about this, does he?”

  Neela shrugged. “And if he did,” continued Justin, “I suspect he’d have your head. No, Neela, it’s you I’m going to want sane when I wake up . . . again. And it’s only you who I trust to see me through whatever it is I’m supposedly about to go through. Now do me a favor and leave.”

  In the end it wasn’t that difficult to convince her. They stepped outside the store, alone. Neela agreed to wait and Justin suggested she try the Starbucks. “I prefer the nonfat venti latte,” he offered, “but I suppose,” he said, grinning, “you can go for whole milk in this day and age.” She agreed to give it a try, laughed nervously, and then wished him luck. But before Justin could turn around and head back into the VR store, Neela pulled him toward her and kissed him powerfully on the lips. He stood there, stunned, knowing he should have been overjoyed. He’d been waiting for this moment from the time Neela first put her hand on his in the pawnshop. Had fantasized about it even. But not like this. Not this kiss. Neela’s look as she pulled away from him and stared sadly into his eyes told him what he needed to know. This was the kiss of the desperate sending a loved one off to war. This was the kiss of someone saying good-bye.

  As Neela departed, Justin went back into the store and followed the teenager into the calibration room. There it was explained to him that the process was the equivalent of a head MRI only with much, much better scanners. The reason, he was told, was so that Justin’s virtual reality encounter could be a “hyper” experience. In other words, the hostess patiently explained, once the machine knew how Justin’s brain experienced sight, sound, taste, and smell, it could better create those experiences by using his brain as the architect and driver of the newly simulated experiences.

  “No single piece of pizza tastes exactly the same to two people,” she explained. “We might all agree that it tastes ‘good,’ but until we know what constitutes ‘good’ in your brain, we can’t really give you the ultimate experience. With this machine,” she said, pointing to a large box seated next to a recliner, “we can.”

  It took ten minutes. Basically, it boiled down to Justin sitting in a large, comfortable recliner and having a small dome placed over his head. Once the dome was removed, he noticed that the other couches in the room were all made for children. They were not only smaller; they were also brightly colored and more pleasing to the eye. It was explained to him that his VR rig had been specially installed.

  When he was settled in, the hostess departed the room. Now he was alone. He felt tired. His vision began to fade and his fingers and toes went numb. Then his vision ceased entirely and he was effectively blind. Next, his sense of feeling faded away. It was akin to a controlled blackout. But before he could panic he felt something. Very quickly his vision and all his senses came back. But he was not where he had been. In fact, he was not who he had been. He was a tall, bearded, and very muscular man standing in front of a polished brass mirror. He was half dressed and in the process of putting on a shirt—linen, of course. He looked around and saw that he was in a tent. On a rough-hewn bed was a vivacious dark-haired, olive-skinned, and very naked woman. Justin looked her over. If he didn’t know any better he’d have to say that she appeared to be sleeping the sleep of the sexually exhausted.

  “This I could get used to,” he said to himself. But the voice he said it in sounded deeper and more menacing than anything he had ever sounded like. He noticed a riding crop and a sword next to the bed. Deciding to play along, he put them on and walked outside. His chin dropped as he gaped in awe while an an entire army of similarly dressed warriors raised their weapons in salute. Thousands of voices from a chorus of Viking throats greeted him, shouting in unison, “Justin king! Justin king! Justin king!” An old, grizzled, yet vigorous-looking man sidled up to him.

  “My king,” shouted the old man so that all could hear, “shall your men ride today?”

  The horde silenced itself, awaiting h
is word.

  “Um, sure,” Justin muttered, and then, catching himself, got more into the spirit of the affair. “By the gods, yes!”

  The Vikings let loose with another massive roar, and as a man turned to run over a nearby rise. Justin and the old man followed at a manly gait. When Justin glimpsed over the hill he saw a vast plain filled with . . . he blinked and rubbed his eyes in disbelief and looked again.

  His companion spoke up. “Aye, my lord and king, your father would often do the same thing. It seemed no matter how many times he went to ride, the sight would still fill him with wonder. You are your father’s son. Come, my lord, your mount awaits.”

  Justin blinked again and tried to “see” what his eyes were showing him. Covering the plain in front of him were dragons—thousands of them. Each had a saddle and handler, and many had Vikings already in the saddle, ready to ride. Justin realized what had been bothering him from the second he “woke up.” This world he was now in did not feel like a dream. In fact, it was as real as anything he’d ever experienced. The clothes, the hair, the feel of the grass beneath his feet, all of it, down to the scent of jasmine in the air mixed with the distinct smell of . . . fire-breathing animals, was real. How could it be this real? he wondered.

  They approached Justin’s dragon. The attendant bowed formally and handed him a rope that led up to the saddle. As Justin touched the animal’s scaly skin, it cooed. The sound was loud and accompanied by a gust of smoke from the great beast’s nostrils, but it was unmistakably a coo. Justin was further mesmerized by the sight of the dragon’s huge belly heaving in and out.

  “A sword for their necks and a fire up their arse,” cried the attendant.