by Kyte, Adrian
11
A dark ocean, the merest sliver of a moon. The boat was out of reach. He was on a small inflatable raft, about fifty metres away, watching it sink. Except, when he looked more carefully, it wasn’t a boat but a car. Had it crashed into the sea? Was he a passenger? He heard screams. A woman was in there, her head peering out of the vehicle’s hatch. Torbin tried to think of a way to reach her. He had no paddles so instead lay face down then frantically used his hands to propel the raft. The screams contained his name. He knew that voice. Was it Delina? No, someone else very familiar to him, though.
Now, having gained some momentum, he looked up just in time to see the woman sink below surface. And in that instant he knew it was her, the woman from the train. He thought about swimming the rest of the way but it soon occurred to him that he never learned to swim, gave up on lessons as an nine-year-old after an incident in an upturned canoe where he felt he would drown, had never seen the need to learn thereafter. The raft contained only one paddle; he tried gaining forward momentum, moving from one side to the other to correct a haphazard trajectory. Now all he could do was keep the momentum going. It took what felt like a further two minutes before near enough to the now entirely submerged car that he could jump onto its top. And where was she now? No sound. No time for thinking. He searched the car top until finding the hatch, eyes stinging – almost as bad as he had remembered from the canoe incident. Still he was able to see the emergency handle and wrench it open, and dove through. He found her unconscious, grabbed her about the waist. Then, with one kick against the passenger seat, push himself back out, his lungs feeling about to burst – just like that time he was sure he’d suppressed in his memory. This time there was no panic, only determination. Torbin hoisted the still-unconscious woman onto the raft. Turned her on her side, held her mouth open, patted her back. When she still wouldn’t come round, he tried mouth to mouth, vaguely remembering some first aid course he did as a student. Then the unbidden memory of her lips, a rapturous feeling of kissing from some time long past. Tried to focus on the present.
Movement now; her body shuddered into life. She looked at him in surprise, then pulled herself upright. She was mouthing something, which then became audible. ‘I, I didn’t think you could save me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Torbin said, ‘to have abandoned you.’
‘No you didn’t. I was alone. I saw your car. You must have crashed also. Don’t you remember?’
‘No. I don’t know how I got here.’
She smiled. ‘What matters is you did. You saved me,’ she said.
Torbin felt a warm glow in his chest. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I did didn’t I.’
‘I guess that makes you my hero,’ she told him. ‘The least you deserve is a kiss.’ She leaned into him, her body still cold and wet, as was his, but it didn’t matter. Torbin had saved her, it was all he had ever wanted to do.
But just as their lips met, she was gone. A sensation that seemed such a cruelty to end so suddenly. He fell forward, rolled on his back. The stars were wheeling so rapidly it made him nauseated, dizzy, like after one too many drinks when being drunk is no longer pleasurable. Torbin felt that he could no longer hold on. The disappointment, the loss, gave way to disorientation. Then the circle of stars became a spinning disk of multi coloured lights.
‘Torbin, can you understand what I’m saying?’ The voice was of a middle-aged male, not a voice he welcomed; it was the consultant doctor. The disk of lights slowed its spin. ‘You have suffered an embolism,’ the doctor continued. ‘The only option is surgery.’
‘No,’ Torbin was able to mouth. ‘I have to leave.’
All he could see in front of him was the static disk of lights.
‘It is imperative you remain,’ the doctor told him calmly. ‘Otherwise your life is at risk.’
Torbin tried to raise himself off the couch. His body felt incredibly heavy as if some enhanced gravity field was holding him down. Moreover his head felt about to explode from the searing pain.
‘Better to remain absolutely still,’ the doctor advised. ‘The operation will be conducted shortly.’ Then quick footsteps, receding, the swish of a door. Torbin got the impression he was now alone.
Except: something at the corner of his eye. He strained to look over at the image. Part of the light blue wall was shimmering like a heat haze, which at first he dismissed, seen through the misty veil of agony. After the effect became more pronounced, he saw what he understood to be a face. It was a woman, long dark hair, olive skin, delicate features. He reasoned this was merely a hallucination brought about by his brain condition. She seemed to be trying to work her way out of the wall. Then she spoke. ‘Torbin, please listen to me. This is very important, there isn’t much time. You are not where you believe yourself to be, but in a simulation.’
‘That would be convenient,’ Torbin suggested to her.
She didn’t seem able to break through the wall. ‘To escape you must repeat this code: A-5-2-0-1-7---’
At that moment he heard the door swish. The doctor had returned, hurried towards Torbin. ‘What’s going on here?’ he said. ‘I heard you speaking.’ The woman had now vanished.
‘I was just saying: A-5-2-0 … 1-7.’ Nothing happened, whatever it meant it wasn’t complete.
The doctor shook his head dismissively, and said, ‘Hallucinations are quite expected in your condition. We must now prep you for surgery.’ The pain had become so intense he could barely reason to protest or put together anything in his mind amounting to an escape plan.
No, he would simply submit.
* * *
12
The code conferred to its user a super power; it set her apart from every other being in this realm, but it didn’t make her invincible. She wanted it kept for herself but Roidon appropriated it with predictable arrogance, having memorized her chanting, now using his new power as if it were always intended for him. Not in the most obvious way – they would know it was him in the operating theatre, would be descended upon by every overseer henchman before he got within a metre of Torbin. Instead, he was involved in some kind of peripheral sabotage. Meanwhile Zoraina watched, invisibly (as far as she was sure, unless she was simply not regarded as a threat) as Torbin’s brain was being picked apart. It occurred to her that this all was just a show, something to draw her out. Why bother with illusion when Torbin is most likely totally unaware? Perhaps the surgeon and his assistants believed themselves to be real, and Torbin in genuine need of neurosurgery, that they were equally at the mercy of this mass virtual illusion. Of course, she reminded herself, in this century and for the last two, any kind of surgery to be performed by a sentient being was absurd and considered unnecessarily dangerous. There were occasions when a live surgeon would observe, but that was mostly for the benefit of the patient. An AI could proceed with far more precision, work a hundred times faster. It was only here, post singularity, humans were made to feel far more useful. She’d learned how this realm was originally intended: no overarching program, generating reality to suit some objective or agenda, just the mass of interacting recipients continuing with their lives as if this realm was all there had ever been. Whether by choice or not. The program simply enabled, the people created reality. But it wasn’t the right reality. She imagined the overseer (the Machine overlord) despairing at how it was all falling apart; people returning to their old ways, a compromise too far. Why not simply eliminate them all? she wondered, darkly. When humans could never be properly assimilated. Because, she concluded, humans were the project, the test subjects for every intelligent species.
Just as her faith in Roidon’s legendary resourcefulness had begun to wane, the lights went out. A gasp from one of the assistants before what appeared to be a generator kicked in. Still, it was enough to halt the progression of the surgeon. Holding a laser scalpel aloft he demanded of one of his assistants: ‘Go find out what the hell caused that.’
The surgeon then appeared to be considering continuing with the o
p, examining Torbin’s exposed brain. But after less than a minute the assistant returned accompanied by Roidon, or more precisely dragged back into the operating theatre in a strange kind swirling dance motion, as Roidon held a hypofuser against her neck. To the surgeon he said, ‘You will stop immediately.’
‘That would not be wise, Mr---’
‘Just do as I say, or lovely nursey here gets a lethal dose.’
The surgeon appeared curiously unfazed; it occurred to Zoraina that he may be an agent of the program rather than someone who genuinely believes himself to be in the real world. The man said, ‘Unlike like you, Mr Chanley, I am not a killer. But if I am not allowed to continue, this man will die.’
‘This man is not even really here, as I suspect you know … although I guess you are genuinely trying to mollify Torbin.’
The surgeon threw Roidon a challenging glare. ‘Torbin Lyndau wants his life back. Want do you want, Mr Chanley?’
‘To give Torbin back his real life.’
‘Feel responsible, do you?’ the surgeon sneered. ‘There’s no need. Torbin made his own choices. Don’t go believing you’re so important in influencing them.’
‘What do you know?’
‘More than you ever will.’
‘Step back,’ Roidon demanded.
‘You have no power here. So, I refuse.’
‘I am not working alone. Guess who’s on my team.’
‘And yet your master codes, at least the one that enables your exit, no longer works. That is why you’ve been unable to leave.’
‘So you’d rather I stayed? How curious.’
‘Truth is, we have not been detaining you here. I’ll prove it.’
The next moment Zoraina was back in the B’tari control room. As for Roidon, she had no idea. Roidon wasn’t one of the captured; as far as she understood he had no life outside of the virtual realm, unless he knew something her masters were not telling her. That would be no surprise at all.
* * *
13
Torbin woke to the concerned yet smiling face of his wife.
What had there been before this? He had a memory of being at home, of doing the normal routine activities. Then? Then there was nothing. It frightened him. How could there be nothing? Nothingness was inconceivable. Yet, for him, that last day ended a second before he awoke.
Tears appeared in Delina’s eyes. ‘Torbin. The doctor said you were going to recover. He said it had been a success.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘He said that’s to be expected.’
‘Something is wrong, Deli.’ Torbin sensed.
‘Wrong?’ She had a look of innocent dismay.
‘I can’t even explain it.’
‘Try.’
‘I feel like none of this is...’ He couldn’t continue, it seemed absurd.
‘You’ve only just woke from a major operation. Things might not seem right for a while.’
‘Tell me about the first time we met.’
‘Torbin ... darling?’
‘Please, this is important.’
‘It was … on a train.’ Her expression brightened. ‘I’d see you regularly, on your way to work. You would often look at me and I you.’ She nodded as if in remembrance. ‘At first I thought your attention was a bit creepy. I mean you’d never speak.’
‘I was afraid. Afraid to say the wrong thing. That in a few words I would ruin everything I hoped for, that I had fantasied about. I didn’t know how to make a start.’
But even as he recounted, something was wrong with that memory. The woman in his mind did not fit Delina. He could visualize that train, only the woman he approached seemed much less clear. Except, when he remembered how he looked at her, and recognized someone from his past. The aloof redhead he desired more than anyone, but someone who could never be his. And yet...
‘It was the same for me,’ she said, touching his shoulder affectionately. ‘That first move, those first words. Everything stems from those. A new life: scary but exciting. No turning back. We left our safe lives of moderate comfort, moderate happiness … and found something special.’
And, yet: ‘I wish I could remember, Deli. Just to make it feel real again.’
‘I think you should speak to the doctor. I’m sure he will tell you it’s only temporary.’
But the thought of that doctor coming anywhere near – with his arrogance, his presumptuous sense of authority; and the hypofuser to subdue the uncooperative patient – was something he wanted to avoid at all costs.
‘Actually, I think I am starting to remember now.’
‘I knew you would. How could you ever forget us?’
‘How could I?’
* * *
14
‘I’m Roidon Chanley,’ he told himself, in an oddly dislocated voice. ‘And I am alive, and well. I am sentient. I think therefore... Oh fuck that. What do I care? It’s all a sham anyway.’
The thing he now found himself to be resided in a metal body, and that body was in what he understood to be an immersion pod. He felt no shocking sense of reality, looking through the tinted glass at some kind of hanger. It took a few seconds of assessing his environment before he noticed the recessed lever at his side, he pushed with a curiously arcane mechanical action. A sound of metal latches sliding back and the glass front opened in a sudden spring action.
His body lifted up with surprising smoothness. He imagined he’d been here for three years but there was no way to verify it. Lights suddenly illuminated as though detecting his consciousness. Consciousness? Would they know?
Another pod was near to him, then another – a row stretching to a vanishing point as only one of hundreds, maybe a thousand. That hanger was vast beyond any cursory measure. He must be one of perhaps half a million in this place. Just another of the unwitting captured, just another with the illusion of sentience.
Illusion – that’s all it ever is.
Still, he was different, but in a way they must know. How could they not have known of the danger he possesses? Right now, right here even. The chance to destroy so much.
But there was another imperative.
The metal body moved, it moved smoothly. There was no discordance, no oddness of being without the ability to breathe. It was as if he had always been this way. His face was something else, it felt more flesh-like – rubbery. Catching his reflection in one of the tinted pods he saw himself as the human made up to be an android, like from some archive sci-fi b-movie. A caricature: the overlords’ idea of a concession to human sensibilities. This was supposed to be the ideal form the captured would welcome. Did any of them ever? The physical improvements were obvious; no one felt so starkly the flaws of the human body more than he. And yet for all its imperfections there was immense pleasure to be had; the challenge of overcoming the messiness of bodily functions gave the experience a viscerality that made you feel … alive. It was as simple as that.
Now he walked amongst the serried ranks of the un-alive. One of those could be Torbin Lyndau, the mind uploaded at the nanosecond moment of his death. No human technology could have ever done that, or even achieve a megabyte of his neural pattern. Torbin was dead before he knew it, consumed by energies unimaginable. A man who had already lost everything he ever loved. Well, he wasn’t the only one, but admittedly comforting to know there was someone else with nothing left to lose. Nothing except the illusion of a life.
There was no obvious way to identify who was in each pod, only flickering LEDs of varying colours coded to show some homeostasis of function. No local control, he surmised.
Roidon increased his pace, limbs pumping away with no perceived effort. He now picked up to a sprint; pods whooshing by in a blur. His sense of purpose served so efficiently towards …. an exit, a way to be back in the outside world. He imagined that all the while his actions were being observed, like some lab rat who’d escaped. Let’s see what it does, how far it gets before it realities its intentions are futile and it starts repeating act
ions, turning back on itself; before it gives up hope. Hope – the essence of human life.
And he was at the end of this inconceivably large compound. The end where if there was going to be an exit, it would be here. Yet there was nothing, just a smooth grey wall. The lights through the complex all illuminated as if they wanted him to see this, to be in no doubt. He had considered, as a secondary option, that he’d find some kind of control panel – a central access point governing every pod.
What could he do, turn back? See if there was what he hoped for at the other side ten or more kilometres away?
No, that’s what they’d want him to do; hours of running to wear away his resolve. Instead, he stood motionless, formed a plan.
This complex must harness a vast amount of energy, he reasoned. But even as the plan began to unfold in his mind he couldn’t shake that nagging sense of being a lab rat under close observation. His only hope was their overconfidence, their dismissal of the faintest possibility that he’d escape.
He studied the nearest pod. It’s hatch was fastened locked, the glass did not break despite his considerable strength when he hit it. A crude action. There had to be a weak point, and he as searched under the burnished metal unit his plastic-looking finger found a rivet which ran in a rectangle. He probed at it, pushed it hard. Hit it with his fist. It began to dent, then buckle until eventually it broke away revealing some kind of interface point – a multi pin socket. For a few seconds Roidon hoped he could extrude a direct interface. No, just too convenient. His plan b was far more radical. There were no exposed cables; the pod seemed to be welded to the floor by bowed feet. Even his strength was not enough to break the bond. Instead he kicked the side with the base of his metal foot. After about a minute this action felt futile: while not directly painful, a kind of aching fatigue developed. Then he could feel something begin to buckle, which energized him to continue until a crack appeared, splitting away to reveal … yes finally … circuitry. With his hands he ripped the exposed area wider until he could place one hand onto the circuit board. He ripped it out. Sparks followed, then the pod’s side panel lights flashed red. Its top hatch opened.