Stasis (Part 2): Iterate

by E. W. Osborne

  “Lights.”

  “Yes, lights.”

  “Like, Christmas lights.”

  He heard Neil mutter something to Mouse and then her curse in response. Ready to finish the conversation, Alex cut in. “Drilling into your skull is most direct option, but the second best is going in through your eyes. There isn’t much of a barrier between your eyes and your brain, right? If you program the lights to blink at the exact right interval and you stare at it for the precise amount of time, it will disable the Seed.”

  “How do you know this?” Mouse asked, the awe apparent in her voice. The small flattery went straight to Alex’s head.

  “Because I’m the one who developed it.”

  “And it won’t hurt?”

  “No. What will hurt is the next thing those strangers in the night might have planned for you. So if you’d rather do that, by all means…”

  “No, no. That’s fine. Th-thanks, man. Really. Thank you.”

  “Yeah, sure. Mouse, you’ll find the details in your folder within the hour.”

  Alex ended the call and systematically wiped any record of it. Even though the connection security he had in place was second to none, he couldn’t take any chances.

  His stomach grumbled. He opened a drawer to the left of the computer and found it filled only with wrappers. While he battled with his wide lazy streak, his stomach rumbled again.

  “Fine, fine,” he muttered back as if speaking to another person. With legs spread wide, he gripped the lip of the desk and pulled himself up with a grunt. A broad belly threw off his center of balance and his bad knees meant he couldn’t simply pop straight up.

  Huffing and panting, he made his way to the top of the stairs. Alex gripped a railing on either side as he took each step one at a time. Right, then left. Right, then left. It was easier on the legs this way, plus the narrow stairway was better to navigate turned to the side. Knees aching, he was completely out of breath by the time he’d reached the bottom step. He held the banister for a moment and let his heart settle to a steady drumbeat in his barrel chest.

  The front door lock snicked open and his mother came inside.

  “Oh, Christ Alex! You scared me half to death,” she exclaimed, her hand flying to her throat. “What’re you doing lurking in the shadows like a rapist?”

  “How exactly can I lurk in the shadows of my own house?”

  She shot him a glare and whooshed past, leaving the front door open. “There are more bags in the boot if you don’t mind,” she called out, disappearing into the kitchen.

  Alex let out a long sigh, knowing it would be better to at least make an attempt than ignore her altogether. Still, he needed time to psyche himself up to go outside. He lingered in the front hall pretending to tie his shoes until his mum returned in a huff.

  “Come on now, it’s only the drive. Nothing’s gonna kill you out there, I promise you that.” She gave him a little pat on the cheek as she passed, leaving a wake of lavender perfume. It mixed with cigarette smoke and sweat, cloying in his throat.

  Their house was at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. He’d lived there his entire life, could draw each tree branch and cracked brick from memory. But every time he set foot outside the safety of those four walls, he was in mortal peril. An unseen, unimaginable danger waited behind every curtained window. An automated car could go screwy and careen off course, directly into his path. Make sure to check the sky. That tree could topple over. The cells in her car battery could spontaneously…

  “This isn’t a spectator sport,” she called from behind the parked car.

  In bare feet, he shuffled along the roughly paved drive. With his head down, he moved as quickly as he could. His breath stayed shallow for fear of inhaling a poison or allergen. His eyes remained downcast so he didn’t have to see the nosy neighbors looking out at the spectacle of his fat ass walking up and down the drive.

  His trip back to the house was faster than the one out. With four bags in his sweaty hands, he shuffled as fast as he could into safety. The boot was still half empty, but he made a show of emptying the bags and helping to put things away.

  “You getting’ on alright?” his mum asked, watching him from the corner of her eye.

  Alex was still breathing hard, beads of sweat pouring off his forehead. Rather than draw attention to his lack of fitness by wiping it away, he shrugged and dismissed her concerns. “Yeah, alright. You? Did you get the crisps I like?” he asked, pawing through the closest bag.

  The way his mum huffed, he knew he shouldn’t have asked. “I have no idea, Alex. If you want to make sure I get the right crisps,” she said with an eye roll, “then maybe you should haul your fat arse out with me next time.”

  He pressed his mouth shut knowing if he said anything further, she’d get nasty. After unloading two bags of groceries into the cupboards, he grabbed a soda, a package of pork pies and disappeared upstairs. Since talking to Mouse for the first time, he wasn’t interested in letting his mother ruin his good mood.

  A message was waiting for him when he made it back upstairs. He mopped at the beads of sweat rolling down his shaved head, hating the pounding in his chest… loathing it only took a flight of stairs to make him nearly double over.

  Thanks for the help. I’ll let you know how it goes. Stay gold, pony boy.

  He smiled at the inside joke, an offhand comment about an old movie they both discovered they liked when they’d first met. Alex had been drawn to the name, The Outsiders. She never said why she enjoyed it, but he liked to think that was another thing they shared.

  That was what originally brought Mouse into his life. What started as a customer with a snotty complaint had turned into an mutually beneficial arrangement. She had an endless well of ideas and he could turn any of them into virtual realities. Her story lines were some of the best he’d ever sold… and used. The feminine touch had definitely improved his ratings.

  Alex was brilliant, of that he had no doubt. His knowledge of complex computer systems, global infrastructures, and even nanocell technology was beyond his contemporaries. His work developing and programming intricate Dreamscapes to illegally sell online, while lucrative, was hardly a good use of his skills. He was better than that, but yet he never found the same satisfaction in any other work. There was a soul in it, a purpose. The knowledge he’d spent decades amassing could impact another person, however anonymous and far away.

  But he wasn’t so smart he lacked self-awareness. He knew this was his dwindling access to the outside world. More time passed between each outing in his own garden. A few weeks turned into a few months. If it hadn’t been for his granddad’s funeral, he would’ve probably gone an entire year without leaving the property. For the longest time, that’d been enough for him… until Mouse.

  A simple question during a long conversation with her had changed his life. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could be in a Dreamscape together?

  And since that point, his vision, his life’s work, was to create a system in which people could safely share and enjoy each other’s Dreamscapes. Alternate realities, shared realities, virtual realities… they’d all been developed, but never using the Seed technology. Any waking hour he wasn’t working on Dreamscapes was dedicated to bridging the gap between people’s dreams. It came with a host of problems, not least of which was dealing with people themselves. Unfortunately, humans were an unpredictable system, prone to making decisions that would sometimes be a detriment to even themselves. Trying to create rules and systems around that sort of chaos was… well, it was beyond him. But he was determined to create it.

  He shoved the last of the pork pies into his mouth, brushing the flaky pastry crumbs off his stomach. Even though it was early evening, he’d been up for over eighteen hours straight. Mouse’s first frantic message about her friend being kidnapped had pulled him out of a deep sleep. Mentally, physically, he needed to rest.

  Alex scrunched the empty soda can and tossed it into the overflowing garbage bin. After a quick sc
roll through his Dreamscapes, he decided to skip over any one Mouse had designed. Instead, he chose an old favorite.

  As he pulled the blanket over his head, he had a passing thought. If Dreamscapes were physical objects, I bet this one would be worn thin.

  Alex was in a pub surrounded by friends and family. It was his eighteenth birthday and everyone had come to celebrate with him. The party had been a surprise, something his mum had been planning behind his back for the last few months.

  Everyone was happy. He had a girlfriend. She looked like how he imagined Mouse might look. Relatives asked him about his plans for University and beyond. His dad was still alive, and in fact, was the one who bought him his first legal pint. They all laughed as Alex downed it with three gulps.

  “Where does he put it all?” “How can someone so skinny eat so much?”

  His dad pulled him to the side, his broad hands holding him by the shoulders. They were eye-to-eye when he said, “I’m proud of you. I know you’ll do great things, not because I expect you to, but because it’s your destiny.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Rochester, NY

  “IT’S JUST LIGHTS,” Maggie groaned, rolling her eyes. “What the hell do you think could happen?”

  Neil paced his small room. Exhaustion and fear had quickly combined to create a hyper state of paranoia. Given the circumstances, he could hardly blame himself for feeling a little weird.

  “You heard him. The easiest way to the brain is through the eyes. I’m not about to trust some guy you met online…”

  “He’s not some guy. I’ve known him a long time,” Maggie sighed.

  Neil shot her a darting glance. “And that’s why I’m only hearing about him now?”

  “I know you don’t approve of my,” she paused, a clever grin forming on her lips, “clandestine hobbies. So I never brought him up.” She crossed her legs, heel drumming against the side of his desk. “Besides, Hypnos is a private kind of person.”

  “Hypnos,” Neil said as if the word tasted bitter. “What the hell kind of name is… and Mouse? You’re just about the furthest thing from a mouse I’ve ever seen,” he snapped.

  Her brow furrowed. “It’s from the—you know what? It doesn’t fucking matter. We need to get that thing shut down right now,” she declared, jumping from the desk.

  Neil stopped in front of the door, blocking her exit. “Whoa now, I haven’t even agreed to doing this. Can’t we…” He held his hands up defensively, brain working albeit at half-speed. “For all we know, this guy could be an agent of some sort. He could be trying to get me to look at this sequence so he can… he can…”

  “What? Melt your brain?” she finished with disdain. “Seriously. A couple men straight out of a spy novel show up and take you in the middle of the night and Hypnos is who you’re afraid of?” Maggie moved to push past him. With surprising strength, he grabbed her shoulders and spun, forcing her to look him straight in the eye.

  “I don’t know what the hell to trust.” The true extent of his fear was betrayed in the tiny quiver of his voice.

  “Okay, okay,” she replied with more softness than she’d shown him in a long time.

  He allowed himself to be guided back to his desk. Maggie took a spot on the bed, the frame squeaking.

  “What would make you feel better about all this?”

  Neil shook his head, the movement leaving him dizzy. “I don’t know. Nothing. I don’t feel good about any of this.” His gaze drifted to the blank, dark tablet on the desk surface. He resisted the urge to reach out, bring up the website. The ticker; familiar, comforting, infuriating. He wondered how far it’d counted down. Most of the time, he’d stared at it long enough to be able to guess at least to the minute. But after the night he’d had…

  “Let me go check my messages and see what it is exactly he wants me to do,” Maggie whispered.

  Neil suddenly didn’t want to be alone, even for a moment. “No! Why don’t we… how do they remove Seeds normally?” He asked this obvious question realizing it’d never occurred to him before. Judging from the scowl on Maggie’s face, she hadn’t either. “I mean, people must get them removed, right?”

  “I guess,” she said. “I don’t know anyone who has.”

  He thought for a moment and began nodding. “Yes you do. Remember that odd woman that lived down the street from Stacy Hathaway? The one with the dead plants in her garden?”

  Her eyes widened as she remembered. “God, yeah! I haven’t thought about her in years. She was the one who used to water all her fake plants. Strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “She had hers taken out,” Neil declared.

  Maggie squinted at him. “She’s not a reassuring case study, but how exactly does that help us?”

  “We can go home and ask her!”

  To his sleep-deprived, stress-addled brain, this seemed like the most logical of explanations. He was as positive as a person could be. But even in this state, the way Maggie spoke to him revealed how far gone he might actually be.

  “Okay, we could do that,” she started slowly. “Or, we could just look it up ourselves here. I mean, considering we don’t have any way to get back home right now.” She nodded in a way that encouraged him to join in.

  A sensible part of his mind kicked in, realizing it was a pretty crazy idea. “Okay, yeah. I’m not even sure she’s alive actually, now that I think about it.”

  Maggie gestured, quickening her nod. “Right, exactly. Good idea,” she said in a sing-songy voice.

  “I’m not losing my mind,” he scoffed at her.

  “Of course you’re not,” she replied with wide eyes, a smirk betraying her. She was the little sister he never had and like most family that annoyed you from time to time, he was glad to have her around.

  Neil reached for the tablet, his reactions moving as if through quicksand. He began to type in the search and yelped. He tossed the tablet onto the bed as if it’d bitten him.

  “What the hell?” Maggie jumped, ready to run for the door.

  “What if they know I’m looking it up? What if they’ve already done something to me that will, I don’t know… tell them if I’m looking up how to remove it?”

  “That’s crazy,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Is it? Is it really?”

  “I mean,” she trailed off. Maggie wiped her face with one hand. “The Seeds are only for sleep. You said yourself you were working on the problems in your Dreamscapes, so that’s probably how they figured it out.”

  “That doesn’t make it any better!” Neil cried, his voice cracking on the last word.

  Maggie conceded. “No, no it doesn’t. But it also doesn’t mean the government or whoever has gone complete Big Brother. I think as long as you…”

  “You look it up,” Neil said, pushing even further away from the tablet. “You do it.”

  Her hand hesitated just over the device. She laughed nervously, trying to play off how scared she was. “But you’re watching me right now. I’m going to implicate myself by telling you something about it. How is that different?”

  “I don’t know, but it is. It’s different. You look it up.” Neil felt himself get more and more panicked the further down the road they went. The idea they could see more than Dreamscapes was a terrifying thought. If that were true, he couldn’t imagine the outrage people would feel if they found out.

  They both jumped as three or four people blew into the far end of the hallway. Their laughter and squeals of playful chasing could’ve been coming from another world for all the relevance it had to Neil. He’d always yearned to be one of those carefree, happy people. They went to parties, had casual sex, never let life bother them. With this ticking bomb of a Seed inside his head, he felt like he’d never get a chance.

  “Look it up.”

  Maggie huffed, knowing she wasn’t going to win this argument. She muttered under her breath for the first few moments, silencing as her face grew more serious. He gave her as much time as he could sta
nd, nearly bursting with anticipation.

  “Well?” he finally snapped when he couldn’t take it. “Is it the same way they do it?”

  She didn’t reply. The tiniest shake of her head loosened a strand of hair from behind her ear. She didn’t bother to tuck it back, finger scrolling across the screen.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  Maggie flicked the page onto his smart wall. “Well, I’m not really sure.”

  Neil clapped his hands over his eyes and spun away like a child watching a scary movie. “Why did you do that?”

  “You seriously need to get your shit together,” she scoffed. “If they’re watching you, they’re watching. Don’t you want to know how to stop them?”

  He conceded he was acting a bit juvenile and bit back a number of scathing comments directed at her. It’s not like she’d been taken to some weird room for hours. She’s just assuming I’m fine, which I am, but she doesn’t know that. They could’ve done horrible things to me and I’m actually putting on a brave face.

  As difficult as it was, Neil pushed through his emotions and fought to find a place of reason. He scanned the site as Maggie navigated around the ultra-modern interface. It was a subpage for the Seed technology on the Steele Industries site.

  “There’s no mention of getting it removed. There’s a little bit here,” she said as she magnified a bit of relevant text, “but that’s about the insertion, which I still can’t believe you lied to me about all these years.”

  Neil blushed again, feeling inexplicably guilty. “I got it when I was thirteen, so I didn’t lie the whole time.”

  “Nearly ten years, that’s all,” she replied. He knew she was deliberately pressing his buttons, but it was a sensitive spot for him.

  “I didn’t really want it at first,” he said, tucking his hands under his thighs. “Remember when Mom started making me go to therapy for all that stuff at school?”