It’s a damn hospital room in purgatory. I don’t own it.
I lower my hands and close my mouth, sighing under my breath. Trudging toward the window, I grasp the mythology book harder. Will she want it back? Will she take it from me, the only thing I’ve ever had from outside the hospital? The only escape in this dreary white world?
As I move closer, the girl turns away from the window, the same innocent smile crossing her face as she recognizes me again. This time, I don’t look away. For anything.
“Mr. Icarus!” she says as she hops from the chair. She runs up to greet me, her arms wide open. I fully expect her to go right through me—everybody else does—but she makes contact. She wraps her arms around my waist and hugs me tight.
There’s a moment where I honestly don’t remember what you’re supposed to do when somebody embraces you.
That sad, isn’t it?
I respond at a snail’s pace, hugging her back with one hand.
When she’s satisfied, she lets me go and beams up at me. “Mr. Icarus! I was afraid I wouldn’t see you again.”
My best smile plastered on my face, I speak to another person for the first time since I woke up in the white room, ages and ages ago. “You….were?”
The girl nods, excited. “Yes! This place is so scary. I don’t like to come in here. I usually play outside with the nice people in the garden. Except for the grumpy man. I don’t play with him. I asked him his name once, and he replied, so mean—”
“There’s a garden outside?” I mumble.
She nods even harder. “It’s so pretty! You should come with me and see it.”
I shake my head. “So, you can come and go as you please?”
A look of confusion sprouts on her round face. “Well, yeah, Mr. Icarus. I can go anywhere.” She nibbles on her lip. “Can’t you?”
“No…I can’t leave this building.”
“Why not?” Her smile collapses into a pout. “You told me anyone could do anything in Olympus.”
Olympus?
I dare to glance at the mythology book in my hands.
The home of the gods. That Olympus?
“You said,” she continues, “that once someone gets into the scary machine, they can go to Olympus and do anything fun. So why can’t you come with me?”
Machine?
“I…” I’m at a loss for words. I’ve never spoken to this girl before, not in my time at the hospital. And my memories of before are too blurred; I can’t recall any conversations about Olympus or scary machines. So this girl knows more than I do right now. I can’t possibly answer her question—that simple why—without her filling in more blanks first.
Even then, there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to solve the mystery together. She’s only a child. How much can she possibly understand about what’s happening here?
I’m an adult, and I’m still totally lost…
I crouch down in front of her, offering the mythology book. “Can you tell me everything you know about this place?”
She takes the book from me and tilts her small head to the side, frowning. “But, Mr. Icarus, you know a lot more than me. You made Olympus, right?”
“Made?” I whisper. How could someone make a place like this?
“In the computer, remember?”
“No…” I sink to my knees, letting my eyes roll toward the floor.
The girl, on the verge of tears, vanishes again.
“No. I don’t remember.”
* * *
“Tomorrow morning, the investigation team is coming to shut the project down. Robert will be there. He’s giving up on Angela—he’s only coming to say goodbye—and he blames me for everything. Ericson will be there, too, of course, lending his knowledge of the project hardware to the police, since they refuse to trust the word of anybody I didn’t fire. God. That smug bastard actually had the gall to call me yesterday, to taunt me.
“I know he did it. I know it. But he covered his ass well, and because I can’t prove he did it, the world is apparently choosing to believe it was an error on my part. I’ve been threatened so many times that I’ve stopped going home altogether.
“But none of that matters anymore, I guess. I’ve finished prepping the back road to Olympus. Tonight, after most of the staff has gone home, I’ll enter Olympus through the back road program and seek out Angela. Once I’m there, my deadline will cease to matter. Time between Olympus and the real world is relative, and I’ll have a virtual eternity to find her.
“I may need it, too. The system has been so corrupted by the virus that even with the back road, the odds of my mind getting into the program unscathed are…very low. I’ll probably lose a large portion of my memory, and if I forget what I set out to do, then…it’s likely that the moment my mind is registered by Olympus, the virus will attack it, causing irreparable damage. I doubt my body will live longer than five minutes, with my brain going haywire. I’ll probably seize to death. But five minutes out here could be a thousand years in there. Or more.
“As long as I find Angela before it’s too late for her, then nothing else matters.”
— Dr. Ignatius Monroe
Day 95
* * *
4
There was a boy named Icarus
Who flew too high toward the sun,
But when his waxed wings melted so
He refused to let his toil be done.
The girl said I made this place, this world. It’s artificial. And as I sit idly in front of the broken window in the lobby, the clues coming together in my head, I realize just how much sense that makes. This world doesn’t follow any natural laws. This place is beyond any sense of normal. For it to be fake is its “natural” state.
And I knew that from the beginning—to some degree. I knew this purgatory was weird, if nothing else.
But to think such a realistic-looking world could be made by a single man is ludicrous. Insane. What faulty human hands could craft so many fine details, paint all the intricacies of reality in their proper places? Who could build such a complex forgery from scratch?
I stare blankly at my hands.
I can?
Me?
Icarus?
But then, I built it all kinds of wrong, didn’t I?
I built a mockery.
If I’d truly built an Olympus, a mountain of the gods, a perfect reality beyond reality, then surely it wouldn’t work like this. It wouldn’t be a trap. It’d be a joyous, fun place, not a morose prison. It’d be colorful, not monotone. It would all look like the beautiful world outside; it wouldn’t be stained by the presence of this ugly hospital. The mere existence of this awful building contradicts any claim I could hold to being the god of a perfect artificial world.
I tried to overstep my bounds as a human being, didn’t I? And royally fucked it up.
I caused my own downfall. I trapped myself—somehow, someway—inside a world of my own making. Inside some kind of damned computer. I burned myself right through to the bone and fell out of the sky.
I tried to do the impossible. I failed to do the impossible. I am Icarus.
Hah. At least now my shitty name makes sense.
* * *
Another window breaks. I watch it crack, watch the web spread across the pane that separates me from the beautiful world that I created. Like before, the window explodes outward, spewing glass across the sidewalk.
This time, however, I notice other signs of decay. The world outside is becoming less beautiful. Everywhere. Around the shattered glass, the grass is dying, dry and brown. The flowers in the fresh mulch are starting to wilt. The trees are losing leaves, like it’s autumn, but the leaves are still green, not a wash of red and orange. Whatever’s gone wrong in this world of mine is getting worse. It’s escalating. And I don’t think I have the power to stop it.
I can’t even begin to guess how I would fix an entire world. I don’t even know exactly how this world came to be. My memories are still faded, still blurred. I have
flashes of another time, of people and places that look familiar, that I should remember. But I can’t hold on to them. They keep slipping through my fingers.
The girl in violet—she’s in these flashes, her name on the tip of my tongue. But I can’t catch it. I grate my teeth and clench my fists and growl, but the name doesn’t come.
I fear it never will.
* * *
Mere days later, the flowers outside the broken windows are dead. The grass is crumbling into ashy pieces that no longer contain any hint of life. The tree trunks are rotting, soft and bowing. How much longer will it be before the decay spreads further? Until the entire beautiful world is nothing more than death and dust? It won’t be long—I can feel it in my bones—not with the rate at which it’s spreading.
My eyes skim the remaining lobby windows. They’re all cracked now.
And still, no one notices but me.
I was right, I realize. About the others. The visitors are fake. They’re simulated, like the world itself. But so are the other residents. And the orderlies. Everybody else in the hospital is part of this fake world I’ve created. False people with no minds of their own. That’s why I’m the only one who can see what’s happening.
Which means I was always more alone than I ever imagined. My only real companion is the little girl, the girl I apparently sent here.
Trapped here.
I trapped her here.
I must have.
Because if the creator can’t escape, how can anyone else?
* * *
5
If life has taught us anything
It is that mistakes can be undone,
And with passing years of knowledge gained
The mortal coil may straightly run.
By the time the girl appears again, all the windows in the hospital have shattered. Except the one in my white room. Worse, the decay has spread to other things, more than glass and flowers and grass and trees…it’s spread to people. The people I created.
Their bodies have dried up, like the plants. They’ve dropped dead, like stones. In the course of seventy-two hours, the hospital has become a crypt. Bodies slumped in the hallways, in lobby chairs, at desks. Linda and Martha and all the orderlies are among the casualties, cracking faces staring up at nothing but the harsh fluorescents. And look, I know they aren’t real people with real lives and heartbeats, but walking past their flaking corpses in the hall is…
Out of nowhere, the girl comes through my door, tears streaming down her face. She runs straight into me, holds me tightly. I can guess the reason for the tears.
“Mr. Icarus, why is everything dying?”
I can’t give an answer. I don’t know, goddammit.
Instead, I sink to my knees in front of her and gently grasp her shoulders. “I’ll find out.” It’s half a lie. “I just need you to answer some questions first.”
She sniffles. “O-Okay.”
Swallowing, I start with the most important question. “Can you tell me my full name?”
She blinks. “You’re, um…it’s kind of hard to say. I think it’s I-Ignatius Monroe.”
The memories slam into me, a physical blow that knocks me back.
Dr. Ignatius Monroe. PhD in computer science. Pioneer of virtual environments. Young. Unmarried. Works late. Allergic to peanut butter. Voice recorder—
“Oh,” I whisper. “Oh.”
“Mr. Icarus?” The girl is starting to sound afraid.
I shake my head and right myself. “That name. Why do you call me Icarus if that’s not my name?”
Her bottom lip wobbles. “Because that’s what everyone at work calls you. It’s a nickname.”
“Why?”
She starts at my shout, and I immediately regret it.
“I’m sorry,” I say, softer. “But why do they call me Icarus, of all things?”
“I don’t know exactly why.” There are more tears in her eyes. “I think it’s a joke. Mr. Johnson said that someone who used to work with you gave you the nickname, and you didn’t like him much but kept the name anyway.”
Ericson. Young like me. Lazy. Jealous. So jealous. Always trying to leech off others. Fired from the Olympus project. Tried to change my code without authorization. Almost ruined the entire thing. Almost cost us millions. I fired him. Fired. Jealous.
Angry.
Sabotaged me.
The decay is not my fault.
It never was—
My window shatters.
The girl screams, and I shield her, but no glass comes through. It explodes out into the formerly beautiful world, and I can picture it falling like acid rain on the sidewalk below, on the dead grass, poisoning everything it touches.
“Mr. Icarus, what’s happening?” She’s bawling now.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to stop this. There’s something I’m missing, something I haven’t remembered yet, something vitally important. It’s on the tip of my…
…tongue.
“You…” I mutter harshly. “What’s your name?”
“My name?” Her wide eyes stare up at me sadly, red-rimmed and teary. “You don’t remember me?”
“Please! Just tell me your name…”
A rumble shatters the deathly quiet of the room. Louder and louder. The room starts to shake. Harder and harder. Then, like a rubber band snapping in half, the entire room shifts to the right so fast the floor flies out from underneath our feet. Both of us tumble over, the girl in my grasp, my chair clattering to the floor next to us.
I set the screaming girl down softly and scramble to my feet again, stare at what used to be my sacred white room. The wall, the floor, the building has been split right down the middle, a massive crack through the solid stone getting wider by the second.
The hospital is falling apart. The entire world is falling apart.
It’s doomsday in Olympus.
I turn back to the girl, both of us terrified beyond all reason, and shout, “Your name! What is your name?”
Her response is barely a whisper.
But I hear it anyway.
“Angela.” A tear rolls down her cheek. “I’m Angela.”
* * *
“To Robert: I apologize for everything that’s happened. If I could have known then what I know now, I would have scrapped the entire Olympus project before it ever started. But I refused to let my doubts overcome my pride, and now I’ve paid the price. My deepest regret is that I’ve potentially caused Angela lasting damage, impacted her entire life. If I have, then I am deeply sorry, and I can only hope my final act is enough to make up for what I’ve done. I know I can’t expect you to forgive me, and I’d never ask you to. But, if you’re willing to do anything at all for me…Everything I own has been willed to Angela. Please let her have it.”
___
“To my team: I’ve wasted years of your time on this project, and my mistakes have led to the ruin of your good names. I’m afraid that the most I can leave you with is all my life’s work—except for Olympus. Every discovery, every invention—they’re all yours to share for whatever endeavors you take on in the future. You all are brilliant, dedicated. I wish you all the best of luck.”
___
“To Angela: For all the pain and fear I’ve caused you, I’m sorry. I know that no apology can ever fix my mistakes, but I hope you can walk away from this—from me—with a happy outlook on life. You are smart and talented and surrounded by people who will encourage and love you for your entire life. Please don’t let this experience hold you back. Please don’t let me hold you back. Please.”
___
“To Ericson: I sincerely hope you’re happy with what you’ve accomplished, you son of a bitch. You’ve wasted millions of dollars. You’ve destroyed the life work of several of your peers. You’ve physically and mentally harmed more people than you can imagine. Do you feel proud of yourself, I wonder? Are you sitting in your home every night, giddy and giggling as another story defaming me rolls across the s
creen? You must, I imagine. You must because you were cruel enough to do something like this in the first place.
“That you ever dared to dub me ‘Icarus’ only proves my point. You wanted me to fail so completely that you even gave me the name of a failure, of someone who overstepped his bounds so far that it cost him his life. I’ve often wondered if that was your final goal, Ericson, to kill me. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me. I flew so high that your eyes could no longer take the strain of the sun, so you burned right through my wings, burned right through everything I’ve ever accomplished, just so you could watch me fall. Or perhaps you are the sun in your own mind. Far above everyone else. So arrogant you think that no man can ever touch you. I got close, didn’t I? I was a threat. And you eliminated me the best way you knew how.
“Let me assure you of something, Ericson. No matter what, you will not get away with this. I know it was you. I recognized your style, your trademarks, the day the virus infected the system. And no matter what you do to try and hide it, to try and continue to feign innocence, you will fail. Your guilt may be exposed by the most innocent of sources or the most complex, by the most offhanded comments or the most acute interrogation. But mark my final words, Leonid Ericson:
“You are guilty, and the world will know it.”
— Dr. Ignatius “Icarus” Monroe
Day 95, The Final Record
* * *
6
Thus, there is a boy named Icarus
Who flies too high toward the sun,
But when his waxed wings always melt
He simply stands back up and runs.
The world crumbles around us. I haul Angela into my arms and take off down the hall. The floor tiles shatter under my steps, and dust rains down onto my face from the shaking, flimsy ceiling. Lights flicker. Abandoned medicine carts spill hundreds of clacking pills. Dried bodies slumped against the walls vibrate themselves to ash in the worsening quake. The hospital, the world outside, all of it…there are minutes left, if that.
The Doomsday Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Page 38