by Peter Clines
“Why are you still dreaming about me, George?”
“AS OF RIGHT now, our first priority is to check for survivors,” said St. George. “I’m guessing that’s going to come down to me. I’ll start as soon as the sun’s up. I can try to grab some more clothes for everyone and maybe find a wheelchair for Barry.”
“I need my wheels, man,” said Barry with a nod.
St. George had shaken out his shirt and knocked some of the dried matter off, but it still smelled like death. Stealth, on the other hand, had found a tight black turtleneck that looked like a cross between spandex and body armor. She looked a lot more comfortable in it.
They stood around the far end of the conference table. Madelyn was still sleeping, but there was enough space for all of them to gather around the rough sketch of the Mount Danielle had made.
St. George glanced at Christian. She hovered on the edge of the little group. She still hadn’t said much, but she’d been fine with eating their food. “Christian?” he asked. “Any information you’ve got would be great.”
She shook her head, then looked at the map. “There were two families over on Stage 29,” she said. “The Dvorskis and the Randolphs. We all talked with walkies for a while, but the batteries ran out. I haven’t heard from them in a month, I think. Someone said Father Andy took people into his church when the walls fell, but I don’t know if that’s true or not.”
“I’ll check them all out.”
Her lip twisted into a sneer. “Some of the scavengers struck out on their own about a month ago. No idea what happened to them.”
St. George thought of Billie Carter in the truck with the pistol in her lap. “Second goal is setting up a safe zone,” he said, pushing the image from his mind.
Stealth tapped the different gates into the studio on the map. “The Mount is still defendable for the same reasons it was originally chosen. St. George can check the gates with relative safety. Once the perimeter is secure, we can terminate all exes within the studio grounds and better assess our resources.”
St. George looked at Barry. “This would be a lot easier if you could power up.”
“Don’t I know it.” Barry shook his head. “I’ve got nothing. I’m pretty sure the switch is still there in my head somewhere, but it’s like I’m feeling around in the dark and can’t find it.”
“I know what you mean.” St. George looked at the map and tapped Danielle’s workshop. “Third goal. Cerberus.”
Danielle set her jaw.
“If we get everything cleaned out, how long do you think it’ll take to get up and running again?”
She tapped her fingers on the tabletop. “Hard to say. From what I saw, I know I’ll have to rebuild the lenses and screens from scratch, most of the inter-component connections, too.” She glanced at Barry. “Assuming we can get power back up, that’s a solid three weeks of work right there.”
He coughed into his hand. “A real three weeks,” he said, “or are you trying to sound like a miracle worker?”
Danielle snorted, but her lips almost twitched into a smile. “It’s a month of work,” she said. “If I get really lucky with a couple of things and there’s some decent replacement parts kicking around, maybe three weeks. It’ll all depend on what I find when I do a full diagnostic. As long as most of the computer systems are still intact and I can find all the missing components, I should be able to get the rest of it running again. Eventually.”
“That brings us back to the big, overall question,” said St. George. “What happened here?”
They all glanced at Christian, but she stared past them and out the dark window.
St. George took in a breath to speak, but she cut him off.
“You’re all so full of shit.”
Stealth raised an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”
“All this acting so concerned,” said Christian. “Acting innocent. It won’t work. Are you trying to get me to buy into it so I’ll be on your side? Everyone knows what you did.” She stared back out the window. “Everyone who’s left, anyway.”
“I know you’re not our biggest fan,” St. George began with a sigh. Then something in her tone, her inflection, gnawed at him. “Wait, are you saying,” he started again. “Do you actually think we had something to do with this? With whatever attacked the Mount?”
“There wasn’t any attack,” she spat at him. “It was just you.”
Freedom stood up straight and looked at St. George. So did Barry and Danielle.
St. George blinked twice. “What?”
She pointed an accusing finger at him. The nail was chipped. “You were out with the scavengers a few months ago. They said you just abandoned them and walked away, talking about dumpsters or something. No one knew what to do, so they just let you go.”
He exchanged a glance with Stealth and shifted on his feet.
She glared at him. “A week later you came back and started pounding on the Big Wall. Just punching the cars. You stopped before it fell over, and then wandered off again. A few days later you came back and knocked a hole in the West Wall. We had guards there for three days straight while we tried to figure out how to make it safe.”
“No.” He shook his head. “There’s no way I would’ve done that. I was—”
“Then you did it again,” she yelled. “Just lording it over us that they couldn’t hurt you. Showing off that you were safe.”
“Where was I during all of this?” asked Stealth.
“I don’t know,” snapped Christian. “Hiding somewhere, as always.”
“And Danielle?” She nodded at the redhead. “Barry? The gate guards would not have let an unarmed woman and a man in a wheelchair out into the city.”
“I don’t know all the details,” Christian said. “I just know you all left us high and dry, like I always said you would.” She pounded her chest. “I stayed. People can depend on me when things get tough. That’s why I—”
“Enough,” said Stealth. “Be silent.”
Christian took in a breath to shout and Stealth’s hand slid down to the baton tucked through her belt. The former councilwoman turned and stalked out of the room. Her swears echoed back to them.
“Should someone go after her?” asked Freedom.
“She will be safe as long as she remains on this floor,” said Stealth. “We have more important matters to discuss.”
St. George looked at his knuckles. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “I just can’t.”
Barry shrugged. “If Smith could make us all think the world was normal again, why couldn’t he make you smash through the Big Wall and think you’re … I don’t know, in the shower or something?”
St. George shook his head.
“I also do not believe you caused this damage,” Stealth said.
“Thanks.”
“At the moment, I cannot believe any element from her version of events.”
Danielle frowned. “Why not?”
Madelyn yawned at the end of the table. She sat up, blinked her chalk eyes, and took a quick look around the room. “Still just us, huh?”
Freedom shook his head. “Christian Nguyen’s survived,” he said, “and possibly some others.”
“But everyone else is dead?”
Freedom and St. George exchanged awkward glances. The giant officer took in a breath to speak, but Stealth interrupted him. “You remember where you are?” she asked Madelyn.
The Corpse Girl studied the room. “It’s your office at the Mount, right?”
Stealth’s eyebrow went up. Her jaw shifted as she studied the girl.
Madelyn looked around again. “It is, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Stealth after a moment, “it is.”
“And,” said Danielle, “you were about to tell us all why Christian’s a liar.”
“Perhaps not a liar,” Stealth said, her gaze swinging away from Madelyn, “but her version of events clashes with many observations I have made over the past forty-eight hours and additional fa
cts I have culled from your own individual accounts.”
St. George set his hands on the table. “That’s a good thing, right?”
“Perhaps.” Stealth crossed her arms. “Christian claims St. George has been present here at the Mount and is responsible for much of the damage to the Big Wall. This would be consistent with the patterns of damage the Wall has suffered. The overall evidence I have seen here confirms that at least four months have passed. During this time, all of us were most likely wandering Los Angeles in a trance or fugue state.
“The most straightforward possibility,” continued Stealth, “is that Smith has affected our perceptions. This is within the scope of his powers as we have experienced them.”
“Okay,” said Barry. “Got it. Smith’s playing mind games.”
“Which means he’s here in Los Angeles,” Danielle said. “He needs to talk to someone to control them.”
“That makes sense,” St. George said, “but how could he have made it into Los Angeles, into the Mount, without any of us knowing?”
“Maybe we did know,” said Freedom. “It’s possible he just forced us to forget.”
Madelyn snorted and flexed her arms over her head.
“However,” said Stealth as if they hadn’t spoken, “there is the matter of our clothes.”
“What?” Madelyn looked at herself. So did Freedom.
“Most of our clothes show little sign of wear. The stains are recent, from the past forty-eight hours, and many have not had time to dry. The damage is fresh and still shows clean edges which have not frayed.”
“What’s your point?” asked Freedom.
“Where did they come from?” responded Danielle. “If we’ve been walking around hypnotized for the past four months, where’ve we been getting clean clothes?”
“Not just clothing,” said Stealth. She gestured at St. George. “Your hair smells of shampoo, as does Madelyn’s. My hands smell of skin cream. Captain Freedom has freshly cut fingernails. Barry’s clothes contain hints of the antiseptic spray used by cleaning crews between domestic flights.”
Madelyn pulled a lock of hair under her nose and sniffed.
“But I thought we decided this is all an illusion,” said Barry. “I wasn’t on a plane.”
“You could not have been,” agreed Stealth. “Yet these scents cling to all of us. We also have this.” She pulled three small cubes of glass from her pocket and they bounced on the table. “These are from the windshield St. George went through when the Driver stopped moving. They were trapped in his fleece coat. If this was all an illusion, where did that momentum come from?”
“If our view of the world has been altered,” said Freedom, “it’s possible we thought we were in a car when we were just walking along the road. Then we climbed into a wreck and found ourselves back in the real world.”
St. George picked up one of the glass cubes. “And me going through the windshield?”
“You can fly, sir,” said the captain. “Maybe you threw yourself.”
“A solid hypothesis,” said Stealth. “Very similar to the one I had formed myself before you found Barry.”
Barry blinked. “Me?”
“If this was an illusion,” she said, “we could have crossed the city on foot. Barry could not have.”
“Unless I was in my energy form,” he said. “Then it’s like George and the windshield. I could’ve been flying along, flitted into the cab, and turned human again.”
“Except you were found clothed,” said Stealth. She looked at Freedom and Danielle. “And the car had suffered no heat damage from proximity to Zzzap.”
“No,” agreed Danielle, “it didn’t.”
“Maybe he changed a few yards away,” Freedom suggested. His lips twitched as he said it.
“Which still does not explain the matter of his clothing,” Stealth said. “There is also the matter of food and water. Even if we had all avoided contact with ex-humans, which is unlikely, four months is sufficient time to starve to death. Yet none of us are hungry or show signs of malnourishment. What have we been eating for the past four months?”
Danielle shuddered. “I don’t want to think about it.”
Madelyn’s lips twisted. “Couldn’t Smith just make us believe we’ve been eating and drinking?”
“He could,” agreed Stealth, “but that would not stop our bodies from suffering the effects of malnourishment and dehydration.”
“Unless he’s keeping us from seeing those, too,” said St. George.
“If we are going to accept that Smith has altered our perceptions in …”
Stealth paused. A moment later Barry sat up in his office chair. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “We’re in the ship in a bottle.”
Madelyn looked at him. “What?”
“It’s a classic Next Generation episode,” explained Barry. “ ‘Ship in a Bottle.’ It’s one of the best ones they did. They filmed it here at the Mount. Picard and Data go into the holodeck and encounter the holographic Moriarty, but when they leave Moriarty walks out with them, even though he shouldn’t be able to survive outside.”
“Barry,” sighed St. George, “not now.”
“No, listen,” insisted Barry. “They spend most of the episode trying to figure out how he did it, because it should be impossible—it defies every bit of science they know—but it turns out the whole thing’s a trick. They never even left the holodeck. Moriarty created a holodeck program that made them think they’d left and were out walking around the ship.”
They all stared at him for a moment. “Yes,” Stealth said. “I believe your analogy is accurate.”
“What are you two talking about?” asked Danielle.
“A lot of people thought the Wachowskis were doing the same thing with the second Matrix movie,” continued Barry. His eyes were wide and he tapped the desk with his fingertips. “See, after The Matrix Reloaded there were all these theories about why Neo could use his powers outside the Matrix because people were still thinking the Wachowskis knew what they were doing. And one of the ideas was that the Matrix we all knew was actually nestled inside a second Matrix. That way people would think they’d escaped but really they were still hooked into the pods.”
“How is it that no matter what’s happening you can relate it to The Matrix?” asked St. George.
“Because it’s the greatest movie ever made,” said Barry.
“I’m lost,” said Freedom. “Are you saying … we were in pods?”
Stealth shook her head. “We have based all of our assertions off that reality’s interactions with this one, but we have been doing so under the assumption this is the real world.”
St. George got it. So did Madelyn. Danielle saw the look on their faces. “What?” she said. “I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“None of this is real, either,” said St. George, waving his arm at the office. “Smith’s still got us.”
“IT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING,” said Stealth. “There is no conflict of facts if this is another illusion. This is why none of us have been bitten, and also why elements of the other world are carrying over.”
“Sounds like this world is kind of sloppy, then,” said Madelyn.
“It’s not a world,” said Barry. “It’s a safety net. If we break through the main illusion, this one catches us and bounces us back.”
St. George looked at him. “How do you figure?”
“Think about it. You’re convinced the world’s normal and you start having these ‘hallucinations,’ right? I don’t know about you, but my first reaction was ‘Well, that can’t be real.’ ”
“So everyone’s okay?” Danielle asked. “Gibbs, Makana, all the rest of them?”
“It is best to assume everything we have encountered in this world is another perceptual illusion created by Agent Smith,” Stealth said.
“And Cerberus is okay,” said Danielle. She almost smiled.
“A question, if I may,” said Freedom.
Stealth dipped
her chin.
“Are we all real?”
They glanced at each other. “How do you mean?” asked Danielle.
“How do we know that some of us aren’t just part of the illusion, too? I mean, for all we know one of us could be Smith telling us to see him as someone else.”
“Like the Shadow,” Barry said. “Clouding our minds so we cannot see him.”
St. George looked at the others. “Valid point. How do we prove we’re real?”
Madelyn shook her head. “I’m real.”
“I think I am, too,” said Freedom.
“Maybe I’m the one who’s real and I’m just thinking you’re both thinking you’re real,” Barry said.
“That’s just silly,” said Madelyn.
Barry shook his head. “I have a really vivid imagination.”
“Cogito ergo sum,” said Freedom.
“Aptly put,” said Stealth, “but how can any of us prove to another that we are actually thinking beings and not just hallucinations?”
“And,” Barry said, “another ‘Ship in a Bottle’ reference. You’re getting better at this, Captain.”
Freedom managed a half smile. “Thank you, sir.”
“I’ve got one for you,” said Danielle. She cocked her head toward the office door and the hallway. “Is she real? Christian?”
They all glanced after the councilwoman. “Why?” asked Madelyn.
“If she is part of the illusion,” said Stealth, “why is she the only living person in the Mount? If she is in the illusion, as we are, why has Smith isolated her?”
“Because she has power,” said Freedom. “He attaches himself to people with power and influence and uses them as puppets. That’s how he stays out of the crosshairs.”
“But then wouldn’t he need her … I don’t know, awake?” Barry asked. “Not trapped in the Matrix with us?”
“Assuming she is real,” said Stealth, “and not an element of the illusion.”