by Jeff Pollard
“I don't know, I saw you fall and just went for it. Seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Is this a trick or something, like trying to get me all Stockholm Syndromed?”
“I don't know what that means,” Seth replies.
“Okay, well, thanks for the rescue, but I've gotta go.”
“Where are you going?” Seth asks.
“I'm not telling you that,” Renee replies as she hops across the rocks, heading for the shore of the lake. Her sword lands not far away, hitting a rock at an angle, the hilt bounces off tumbling over her head and falling into the lake, sizzling to the bottom.
“Maybe I can help.” Seth says.
“Why would you help me?”
“Are you trying to get back to Earth?” Seth asks. Renee is suspicious and won't confirm or deny. “Because if you are, you know they cut the neural net, so nobody can get to their animatron.”
“I know,” Renee replies.
“So where are you going?”
Seth follows Renee down the craggy rocks and toward the lake and the city of Solipsis beyond it. In the distance, the hot air balloon holding all of the televators hovers above the city. A dragon circles it silently.
“So that shouldn't be too hard,” Renee mutters.
“You need a televator? I know of one,” Seth says. They reach the shore of the lake. Seth starts walking into the shallow clear water. “Come on.”
“In there?”
“There's a televator on the bottom of the lake,” Seth says. He takes her hand and tries to ease her into the water. “You afraid of drowning? Running out of imaginary air?”
“Yes.”
“Come on, I'll show you,” Seth says. Renee stares at him, trying to figure out the ruse.
“I don't trust you,” Renee says.
“I wanna help,” Seth says.
“If you want to help, then go alert the media, send for help, flip the breakers, do anything, you're on Earth,” Renee says.
“I can't,” Seth responds. “They cut the internet, cut the cable. And I'm not allowed to go down to the important areas.”
“Then just shoot Lazarus in the head, I don't care, do something!”
“I don't have a gun, and I don't know that I could kill. I can't do anything out there. But if you want to heal your wounds in a televator, I can help you with that.”
“Fine,” Renee replies. “Where is it?”
The televator rests on the bottom, its door sways in the current. Remnants of skyscrapers dot the lake bottom like the teeth of a sea monster. Renee and Seth swim down toward the televator. Renee's breath runs out. She starts to panic. Seth tries to keep her going down, but she pulls away from him. She comes to the surface with speed, like a submarine doing an emergency blow, she breaks the surface at high speed. She breathes frantically and Seth comes up behind her.
“I can't do it.”
“It's just imaginary,” Seth says.
“You're not plugged in, you don't know how real this is,” Renee says, out of breath. “That's why you have to do it, No matter how hard I fight. You have to take me there.”
“Are you sure?” Seth asks. Renee nods.
Seth takes hold of her firmly. She takes a last deep breath. They go under. Seth holds her with his arms, but his wings and legs do the swimming, down, down, down hundreds of meters to the bottom.
Renee holds her breath as long as she can, then it gives out. She struggles against him, but he keeps going. They see the lights of the televator up ahead. Renee struggles harder, Seth fights her, holding her wrists tight. A figure emerges from behind the skyscraper.
A barbed spine pierces Seth's wing. It came from a leviathan, a scaly sea serpent. The barb rips back out, taking a chunk of wing with it. The sea serpent swoops in for the kill. Seth pushes on toward the televator, with Renee fighting desperately to get free.
The barb takes out a chunk of the other wing. Seth's holy wings keep flapping, but are far less effective. Buoyancy pushes them up, his wings fight as hard as they can to push them down. The result is a hover, just a few meters above the televator. The leviathan's giant eel-like mouth slithers towards them, they're a stationary target. Its gaping mouth beckons.
Seth tucks in his wings, creating a protective cocoon around Renee. No longer flapping, buoyancy takes over, sending them skyward in a hurry.
Seth and Renee come bursting through the surface. Seth immediately starts flapping his damaged wings, trying to fly them to safety before they fall back in the water. Renee finally takes a breath. The sea serpent shoots out of the water, just ahead of them. Seth has to turn to dodge the scaly spines lining its back. They make for the city, flying low. His damaged wings make for a turbulent flight. The serpent slithers across the surface of the water, gaining on them quickly. The Leviathan spouts a breath of fire, about to engulf them, but they reach land and keep flying.
The leviathan gets to the land and its slithering grinds to a halt. They get away, flying towards the city.
28
Renee and Seth sneak into the ruins of the city of Solipsis. “There's a televator in a building just up ahead,” Seth says. They sneak through the rubble, moving quietly through the remnants of buildings. “We have to cross here,” Seth says, looking both ways down the urban corridor. They start to cross the street.
“Wait,” Renee pulls back, spotting an angel circling overhead. They stop in their tracks and retreat back to cover, hiding just inside the broken window of a virtual-pet store. Renee eyes the blue skies, waiting for the patrol to disappear. “So who are you?”
“I'm Seth.”
“I know your name,” Renee replies, “Why are you doing this?”
“My dad's gone way too far. I believe most of what he says, but this is too far. It's not his place to torture people like this.”
“Why'd you go along with it before?”
“It seemed like the ends justified the means. It seemed like the right thing to do. I guess I didn't think that hurting virtual people wouldn't really be that real. I didn't know how much pain you can feel. And now that they've started...the torture. I just couldn't go along with it anymore.
Footsteps approach, a patrol walks down the street. Renee lays down as low as she can get, laying across his armored chest.
“How old are you?” Renee asks.
“Why?”
“Well, your avatar is a buff twenty-five year old, but how old are you?” Renee asks.
“What does it matter?”
“This might be my last chance to do this,” Renee says. She closes her eyes and kisses him on the lips.
“You know I can't feel that right? I'm just at a console.”
“I know,” Renee says, sitting up. “I think they're gone.” They push on, crossing the street and making their way through alleys, back doors, broken windows and fallen buildings.
“The televator is in the next building, just around that corner,” Seth says. “You ready?”
“Let's just stay low and run fast,” Renee says. They scoot along a brick wall and to the corner. They peer around and discover two behemoths crouched over the fallen building. “God dammit,” Renee mutters. The behemoths are trying to reach into the rubble to extract the televator, but are unable to get it cleanly out.
“Now what?” Renee whispers, watching the clumsy monsters.
“That's the last televator I know of,” Seth replies.
“Well, then you're helping me get in it,” Renee responds.
The televator is pinned between two monstrous hands, but it clips a steel girder and slips. The fingers slam together as the televator falls. The behemoth, frustrated with his clumsy controls, smashes his fists into the side of the building. Seth flies up slowly, they have no reason to suspect he's not on their side.
“Having trouble with this?” Seth asks, landing on the shoulder of one of the giants. Without warning, he swipes his sword through the monster's neck to decapitate it, but the sword isn't long enough to completely sever the h
ead. The monster reaches for him with its big clumsy hands. Half of the behemoth's neck gapes open. Seth swipes at the remaining neck, leaving only a small section of skin holding the head on. Seth slices the last strip of flesh and the head crashes to the ground. The monster is not dead nor paralyzed, just blinded. He leaps from the headless stump and flies at the other behemoth.
“Go now!” Seth shouts. Renee emerges from the cover of a nearby building, sprinting across open ground toward the fallen building containing the televator. Seth flies into the face of the other behemoth, but it smacks him out of the air. Seth crashes into the ground and the behemoth stomps towards Renee. Seth gets to his feet quickly, taking to the air. Renee sprints right between the monster's legs, and into a crevice in the side of the steel structure. The behemoth turns around to follow, but it greeted by Seth's flaming sword slashing his neck wide open. Seth crashes into the behemoth, falling to the ground. The behemoth raises up its fists to smash Seth into a paste, but in doing so, its head falls over backward, hanging by its spine. The monster can't see a thing. It stumbles, then falls directly on Seth, crushing him. Renee climbs up a steel girder, up the sideways floor of the over-turned structure. The decapitated monster's head sits on the street, its eyes watch her every move. It directs its headless body after her.
Renee is nearly to the televator, but as she leaps for the open door, the headless behemoth bashes the televator. Renee and the televator ricochet off the behemoth's hand, through a glass wall, and tumble into the street, right by the decapitated behemoth's head.
She scrambles to her feet, racing to the only exit. She jumps for the open door of the televator, lying on its side. The headless behemoth grabs her. The giant hand holds her tightly. She struggles to get out of its grip. It squeezes harder.
Renee screams in pain as the monster crushes her. Bones crack. Ribs shatter. Her torso is being ground into sausage. Through the pain, Renee is able to get one arm free, then the other. She tries to pry herself from the monster's grip, but it has her too firmly. Her pelvis flexes, threatening to shatter. She stares at the open televator lying on the ground just a few meters away. Defeated. No help is coming. The behemoth squeezes harder.
Renee grabs onto her own head with her free hands. She bends her neck into an ugly position, breaking bones. She grips her own skull, pulling, twisting. Ligaments tear, tendons rip. Blood vessels hold together like rubber bands before tearing and spurting blood.
Renee rips off her own head.
She holds her head in her hands and eyes the televator. She's only got one chance at this. Renee throws her own head. She floats through the air toward the televator. The behemoth panics and tries to block her head, but just clips her face, sending her tumbling. Renee's head lands on the pavement right by the open door to the televator.
“Shit,” she says. Renee lays on her cheek. She jerks her jaw back and forth, rocking her face side to side on the pavement. She rolls her head toward the televator using only her jaw. But her head isn't exactly round, and she gets stuck on the lip of a crack in the street. The headless behemoth swipes at her, missing. Its head can't clearly see her and thus can't direct its body toward her. The behemoth throws Renee's headless body into the air. The body comes crashing down, sending all of the sensations directly to Renee. She screams out in pain. Her screaming rocks her head in the wrong direction.
Renee reaches her tongue out, pressing it to the ground to get some traction, she pulls her head forward. She repeats, sticking her tongue out, and pulling herself along. Centimeter by centimeter, lick by lick, she reaches the televator. The lip of the metal door frame extends about five centimeters off the ground, quite a hurdle for a severed head. Renee sticks her tongue over the lip, searching for something to hold on to, she finds it seamlessly flat. She tries to bite the lip, but can barely get her teeth to it. She rocks her head, trying to get closer to get a better bite. She finally gets her teeth around it, but biting down sends her head up and away from the door. She finds herself looking away from the televator. The headless behemoth smashes the street blindly, trying to crush her or send the televator away. She has to get in now.
Renee starts flapping her jaw open and closed as quickly as she can. Her head dances and wobbles around the pavement. The shadow of the behemoth comes over her as it prepares to stomp on the televator. A last final flip of the jaw sends her head at the televator. The stump of her neck clips the door, but she makes it in, coming to a stop inside the shaded televator. The door shuts automatically and the whole televator is rocked violently as the behemoth stomps on it. The televator is indestructible in the physics engine, so trying to stomp it results in the televator flying away at high speed. Renee floats around inside the televator in zero-g as it flies through the air.
“Destination?” the televator asks. It's the best sound Renee's ever heard in her life.
Glass eyes open and adjust to the lighting. Its eyes flicker back and forth silently, finding nobody around, just thousands of docked animatrons. Her legs are bent, hanging just off the ground. She's suspended by the docking mechanism in her neck. Renee extends her legs, pushing herself up and free of the docking port.
Renee tiptoes down the row of robots, heading for the stairwell. She hears voices and footsteps approaching. She stops, finding an empty docking station, she stands in it and closes her eyes all but a sliver. The guards walk past without noticing. She waits for them to round a corner before she continues on. She quietly heads to the stairwell. Just before she gets there, the stairwell door swings open.
A teenage boy, 16, sickly, rushes at her. Renee panics, turning to run away.
“Wait! It's me, Seth!” the sickly boy protests, “Come on!” He takes her hand and they run up the stairwell. They disappear into a small room in this massive platform. Seth shuts the door and turns off every little light in the room. This was the personal quarters for one of the few non-vivisected people that maintained the station.
“I can't believe I got out,” Renee says quietly. She sits down on the grated floor, leaning against a wall. Seth sits across from her.
“So what's the plan?”
“If we take back the control room, we can turn the neural net back on. That means that anybody trapped in Solipsis can get to their animatron,” Renee says.
“Yeah, but only if they get to a televator,” Seth replies.
“Right.”
“And they have all of those,” Seth says. “Can't we just go in as a dragon and get them down?” Seth asks.
“They're not at all dextrous. You'd be a giant uncoordinated mess,” Renee replies, “it takes time to learn how to control those things, and we don't have time, we only have one shot at this before they figure out what we're doing.”
“We could go in as angels and fly to the televators,” Seth says.
“But nothing can cut through the cables. They used indestructible architecture to make them.”
“So we can't free the televators and we can't very well get the people up to the balloon. What if we destroy the balloon?”
“The whole thing is indestructible.”
“Okay, so the plan is to turn the neural net back on in the control room, then somehow get the people to the televators. Then what?”
“Then everyone storms through the televators, all the robots come to life and we take the station back,” Renee says.
“I don't know, that doesn't sound good.”
“And we need a bomb,” Renee adds.
“Why?”
“If we fail, we don't want those people to be tortured for an eternity. We're setting them free one way or another.”
“I can't kill,” Seth replies.
“Then I'll do it, it's what they would want,” Renee says, staring at the floor. She thinks about the sudden violent death of almost everyone she's ever known. Seth moves to her side.
“It's gonna work out, we can stop this,” Seth says, “before it comes to that.”
“I don't know,” Renee replies. Seth's hand reaches
for hers to comfort her. He squeezes. She squeezes back. “You know...I've never touched a real person before,” Renee says.
“Can you really feel anything with those hands?” Seth asks.
“Some, there aren't as many sensors as a real body, but it's still a decent approximation.”
“What about this?” Seth asks, running the fingertips of his other hand down her arm. Renee lets a little smile out.
“Kind of tickles.”
Renee sits up straight, lightly touching the fingertips of her robotic hand to the skin of his pale cheek.
“Can you feel that?” Seth asks.
“Prickly,” Renee says. She runs her hand across his bald head. She looks closely at his skin, real, human, fleshy, hairy, sweaty skin.
Seth interrupts by kissing her on her mechanical lips. Renee kisses back.
“How did that feel?” Seth asks.
“You are stuck in the real world,” Renee says quietly, “We can never be on the same plane of existence. There will always be something between us.”
The cult member Renee tackled lays in a hospital bed, on the verge of death. A respirator keeps him alive. Two men attend to him.
“What are you doing?” Lazarus protests as he enters the room.
“I'm trying to save this man.”
Lazarus reaches for the respirator and grabs the power cord.
“Stop!”
“If it is god's will for him to die, then he must. This is exactly what we all signed up for,” Lazarus says definitively. The medic wants to oppose him, but can't bring himself to. Lazarus pulls the plug. The crushed man flat-lines within a minute. The guards and the medic watch him slowly die. “I'd expect any one of you to do the same for me,” Lazarus says quietly, “Don't mourn, as his soul is arriving in Heaven right this moment. It's to be celebrated.”
Lazarus leaves, running into Paul, his second-in-command.
“How in God's name did she get out of Solipsis?” Lazarus demands. “We completely severed the Neural net, right?”