by Jeff Pollard
“Alright!” Renee shouts. She grabs Seth's hand and runs for the stairwell door. Cult members round the corner and find the destruction in Renee's wake.
32
Renee, in the flesh-bot with an X slashed into its forehead, and Seth run down a flight of stairs and get off on the Simulation Floor. They head for a central elevator that connects to the Solipsis Control Room. Before they get there, Seth grabs Renee and pulls her into an empty room.
“What are we hiding in here for?” Renee asks, “We have to go turn the neural net back on.”
“Before we do that, I want to know your plan for taking the control room,” Seth says.
“You said there's two guys in there, right?” Renee asks.
“Yeah.”
Renee holds her new sub-machine gun with a nearly full clip. “We have the element of surprise.”
“Okay, two things,” Seth says, “One, if we get into a fire-fight, you know that this isn't a video game, these are real bullets. If I get hit, I die for real, and these guys you're killing, they're real people.”
“I know that!”
“You don't act like you do!”
“They're torturing my family. If they stand in the way of me saving everyone I know from eternal hell, then fuck them, they deserve to die,” Renee says.
“You cant' just go around murdering anyone you want.”
“Why not?”
“Because this isn't a game,” Seth grabs her and tries to plant his words deep in her brain.
“I'm not comparing it to a video game,” Renee says, incensed. “In fact, you should have let me execute that guard.”
“What?!”
“He knows what I look like, and maybe more importantly, he knows that you're helping me. They definitely know what you look like. Leaving him alive seriously decreased the odds of our success. So back off, I know what I'm doing,” Renee shoves Seth off of her. “What was the other thing?”
“What?”
“You said, two things, that was one, what's the other?”
“Oh...” Seth, stunned, returns to his previous thought, “You're not in a surrogate robot, your brain is in your chest. If you take a bullet to the right spot, that's it, you die.”
“I'm mortal?” Renee asks.
“Yeah, maybe feeling some vulnerability will help you empathize with these guys you're murdering. Now tell me, how are you planning on taking the control room?”
Renee doesn't want to elaborate. “How do you want to do it?”
“You can just hang back behind me, I'll go in, I know those guys, I can distract them, and then we can take them hostage, tie them up or something.”
“And what if you can't distract them? What if they think you're with me?”
“Then you come in behind me and...get them.”
“You really like that plan better than me just surprising them with a bullet between the eyes before they can react?”
“Yes, I do,” Seth replies. Renee sighs. “And that's how we're doing it. I won't go along with you anymore if you keep killing people.”
“Alright! Alright already,” Renee says, “we'll do it your way.”
Seth walks into the Comatorium Control Room. The two guards watching displays immediately jump to their feet and raise their guns.
“What do you want?”
“Jeez guys, what's with the guns?” Seth asks quickly.
“You're a traitor.”
“That's just a misunderstanding,” Seth replies.
“Your own father gave us the green light to kill you, that's some misunderstanding.”
“Put your hands up,” the other guard says, sticking his own gun in Seth's face. The guard takes Seth's gun from the sling on his shoulder. “Keep 'em up!” The guard spins Seth around, pushing him against a wall. “We got anything to tie him up with?”
A purple-blue flash in the Comatorium is followed by a bullet shattering the glass window of the control room. A guard hits the ground, dead. The other guard turns, and finds Renee aiming right at him, he puts his hands in the air. Renee approaches slowly. Seth turns around, free. He takes the gun away from the guard and holds it on him. Renee climbs through the glass window and steps over the control panels.
“Don't kill me!” the guard begs. “My name is Micah, I'm a person, I'm on your side.”
“What?” Renee asks incredulously.
“I've been trying to sabotage them, I thought we were going to be missionaries, not torturers! I swear. Don't kill me.”
Renee looks to Seth. Seth clearly wants to leave him alive. “You know that all it takes is him getting to a radio and telling them we're in here and that's it, game over.”
“I know,” Seth replies.
“You better tie him up good,” Renee says.
“Thank you, thank you,” Micah replies as Renee presses duct tape across his mouth.
They lock his fingers together behind his back and tape up his hands and wrists. They push him down into a corner and tie his feet to his hands behind his back. Renee tapes over his eyes, then tapes over one ear. Before she tapes over his other ear, she whispers, “I'm in med school, I can kill you slowly.”
With the guard disposed of, they pull up the controls for the Neural Net. Turning it back on requires them to both press a button simultaneously.
Neural Net Re-starting.
Renee then opens advanced settings and applies a password to the neural net. Now they need her password to turn it back off.
“How long does it take to turn on?” Seth asks.
“I have no idea. Move aside,” she motions Seth out of the way and then empties the rest of the clip into the display panels. “Let's see them turn it off now.”
Renee and Seth hop through the broken glass windows and into the Comatorium, moving quickly, with purpose.
“Wait, did you hear something?” Renee asks. Seth shakes his head. Renee readies her gun and moves quietly back toward the control room. She peeks over the edge of the broken window. Micah has pinned a radio against the wall behind his back, his tied hands can't grasp it. He is figuring out a way to depress the talk button by pinning the radio to the wall.
“The neural net,” Micah says in a harsh whisper. “Did you copy? They turned on the neural-net. Lazarus, do you copy?”
His transmission is only intermittent as he struggles to hold the talk button down. Renee stands up straight, locking eyes with her prisoner.
“Now you die,” Renee says, firing a bullet into his heart. Seth watches her end a man's life. “Come on,” she says as they move away from the control room, toward a giant set of cables that runs through the ceiling to the Simulation floor above. Seth hooks his laptop into this central node. Renee sits down with her back to it. Seth plugs a cable into Renee's neck, her eyes flutter and her consciousness disappears into the machine.
33
A band of survivors rests on the ripped open top floor of the remains of a skyscraper. Medved winces repeatedly as a survivor attempts to set the bone in his forearm. Percival's torso looks on and offers advice to the medical novice.
A lookout at the edge of the building shouts, “There's a message!”
“What is it?”
“Take cover,” the lookout says, reading flashes of light coming from a distant building. Survivors in that building are using a large mirror to reflect the sun in Morse code, “Angels headed your way.”
“How many?” Percival asks. The lookout flashes the question. While they wait for a response, everyone gears up for a fight. Medved grabs his mangled right arm with his left hand and jams the bones back into place.
The lookout receives the answer. He doesn't speak up. “So how many?” Percival asks.
“All of them.”
Angels are coming in fast out of the sun. Everyone gets their weapons ready. Some have captured angel weapons, others have makeshift ones. At the last second, they realize the cloud of angels are actually chasing one lead angel, and he's carrying someone.
“Don
't attack! Friendlies!” Percival shouts. Seth flutters to a landing, holding Renee tightly with his arms. Medved runs to Renee and gives her a giant hug. The survivors suspiciously watch Seth.
“We've turned the neural net back on,” Renee declares, “the televators are on.” The crowd of survivors whispers excitedly. There is hope after all. Medved looks up at the hot air balloon holding the televators in the sky.
“So how do we bring them down?” Medved asks. Before they can answer, the shadows of dozens of angels cover the building. Seth and Renee's presence hasn't gone unnoticed. The entire army of angels is after them. There's only going to be a few seconds before this epic battle begins.
“We're going to bring them down,” Seth says.
“You guys have to rush to the televators when we do,” Renee says, “We need to overwhelm them on Earth.”
“Go!” Percival shouts. Renee and Seth rush to a stairwell and disappear into the building just before the attacking angels arrive. The first angel lands and immediately finds himself in a bear head-lock. Held still, a survivor slashes off the angel's arm. The dropped flaming sword is immediately scooped up by another survivor and put to use.
The rooftop deteriorates into chaos. Blue flaming-swords fly through each other. Nobody can block the sword's blows, so they must all go on the offensive.
An angel comes flying in, smashing into Medved. With Percival on his back, he heads to the corner in severe pain. His arm dangles by the skin.
“We can set it,” Percival says, knowing it's not going to happen. Medved's inner anger finally comes out. He roars angrily, ripping off the dangling end of his arm. He throws his arm at an angel, knocking him off the edge of the building. What's left of Medved's upper arm is a boney stump. With his other hand, he uses a flaming sword to cauterize the wound and sharpen the bone into a point.
An angel, preoccupied with a sword fight, suddenly finds a bone spear coming through his chest. Medved unleashes hell on the angels. He charges them fearlessly, roaring like a grizzly. He slices them to pieces, impales them on his spear of an arm, and throws their mangled bodies off the roof.
For a moment the battle is won. But more angels are flying in to attack. Far too many to fight off. Lazarus, leading the assault, stops them. “Wait! They're not here anymore. Spread out and find them!” Lazarus grabs Paul, “Not you. We're gonna find them in the real world.”
Two angels stand guard atop the giant ball of televators high above the city. The balloon itself towers over them. Two dragons circle below. Renee and Seth come flying up from above. A dragon takes off straight toward them, unleashing a wave of fire. They don't stray from their path, bravely heading for the fireball.
“You feel so warm,” Renee says quietly with her cheek resting on Seth's chest.
“It's really weird when you talk when you're this close to me,” Seth says. “Your mouth and tongue all move when you talk, but they don't actually make noise, it's just a speaker hidden in there that makes the noises. This close up I can sense those things working independently.”
“Oooh, that does sound weird,” Renee says almost excitedly.
“Does this mean we're...dating?” Seth feels embarrassed saying it.
“You know we might die in the next few hours,” Renee says. “So I'm not sure I can make a whole lot of commitment right now,” Renee half-jokes. “We fooled around, that doesn't mean were instantly in love or anything,” Renee says.
“Just...checking.”
“I can't get over how warm you feel,” Renee says, with her head back on his chest.
“Your body is rubber and metal, the specific heat isn't very high. I'm mostly made of water, which has a high specific heat, so I retain heat a lot more than you do.”
“That's it,” Renee says profoundly.
“What's it?”
34
Seth flies toward the hot air balloon, grasping Renee tightly. A fireball looms in front of them, but they push on. The air around them is like a sonic-boom of cold, a cloud of ice crystals follows in their shock wave. In this cocoon of cold, they fly through more fiery attacks. Seth and Renee fly past, slicing the head of the beast clean off. The body tumbles to the ground like a plane shot out of the sky. The angels on the balloon yank on the heaters, sending flames into the balloon. They hold them down, accelerating the balloons quickly upward.
Renee and Seth fly to catch up to the rising balloon while the other Dragon pursues them. The balloon is getting away, rising faster than Seth can fly.
From the ground, the survivors watch and wait for the televators to rain down and give them a way out.
In the Comatorium, the hidden bomb ticks down.
Seth watches in horror as the balloon is getting away. Renee seems unfazed. They fly on. Suddenly the balloon comes to a crashing stop. The balloon has hit the top of the skybox on Solipsis. The angels are thrown upward and land on their backs on top of the pile of televators.
Lazarus and Paul run down the halls of the simulation floor on the Solipsis Ocean Platform, checking every window, searching for Seth and Renee.
“If they're plugged in they have to be in here somewhere!” Lazarus says.
“We've looked everywhere!” Paul says. Lazarus stops to think.
“No, there's one place we didn't look.”
Lazarus and Paul emerge through a clean room door connecting to the side of the Comatorium. The nervous systems of thousands of people glow a purple blue in this vast dark and humid cavern. They run between the vats, frantically searching.
In the center of the Comatorium, Seth sits next to the giant collection of cables running up to the simulation floor above. His presence on Solipsis is controlled just by his laptop. Renee is hooked directly into the node, her animatron, the flesh-bot, is unconscious.
Seth hears footsteps and distant shouts. He knows they're about to be caught.
Seth lands on the edge of the giant ball of steel beneath the hot air balloon, releasing his grip on Renee. The angels come to meet her, swords drawn. Renee runs for the center, the opening of the balloon. Seth runs alongside her, then suddenly stops, standing perfectly still. Renee looks back at her frozen companion. He's AFK, no longer controlling his avatar. She doesn't have much time.
“Hands up!” Lazarus shouts to his own son. Lazarus and Paul aim pistols at Seth as he slowly lifts his hands away from the keyboard. “Unplug her,” Lazarus commands. Paul yanks the laptop away.
Renee runs for the opening. The angels try to stop her, but as she runs toward them, they freeze up, their metal armor frosts over and freezes together holding them hostage. She climbs the ropes leading into the balloon itself. The water in the air around her condenses, crystallizes, and falls as snow. The balloon comes down from the top of the skybox, dropping slowly at first, picking up speed. The balloon becomes little more than a deflated parachute within moments as Renee sucks all the heat out, storing it away inside her modified body. The bulging balloon begins to deflate. Their ploy, changing the specific heat and rate of absorption of her avatar, has worked.
The balloon starts to fall, picking up speed, deflating further. The balloon becomes little more than a streamer trailing behind the ball of televators.
Renee wakes up, sitting on the floor of the Comatorium with Lazarus holding a gun in her face. Renee tries to run, but quickly discovers that she is unable to move. Her arms drip hydraulic fluid. She's been drained.
“Turn the neural net off,” Lazarus says. Paul holds out a small touch screen. “Password,” Lazarus says insistently, jamming the gun in her face.
Survivors all across the city run toward the falling ball of televators. Angels, behemoths, dragons, all flock toward ground zero. The ball crashes sending the indestructible televators bouncing in all directions. The entire resistance group, with Medved and his sharpened spear-arm, lead a charge toward the televators while monsters form a perimeter.
Behemoths run for the stampeding mob, crushing people. Angels form a line, like the Spartans, trying to hol
d back a horde. Medved rams into the line of angels, spearing right through a shield, and tossing the angel aside. Solipsis unleashes thousands of hiding survivors. Medved and Percival are among the very first to reach the televators.
“This better work!” Medved shouts. He lowers Percival's torso into a televator and lays into his own.
The doors close, then the doors open back up. Percival stands up, able bodied. “The neural net is still down.” Behemoths head for those who have gotten to the televators, smashing them with their giant fists.
In the Comatorium Control Room, part of a broken display shows:
Neural Net Restarting : 89%...90%...91%
Dragons spray fire over the survivors who have gotten to the televators. Percival and Medved close their televator doors and are safe from the flames. Others aren't so lucky. Some survivors stay in place, hoping the televators will turn on. Some flee. Still many more are pouring in from the ruins of the city.
Dozens of cult members sit at computers on the simulation floor. They are controlling the angels, dragons, and behemoths. The atmosphere is growing more and more tense. They had been ruling this world with impunity, and now their plans are falling apart, perhaps moments from turning completely against them. They all concentrate at their consoles, maiming and incapacitating as many people as they can.
Lazarus and Paul drag Renee between vats, leaving a trail of hydraulic fluid. “Maybe this will change your mind,” Lazarus says as they press her face against the glass of a vat.
“That's Nellie.” Lazarus aims at Percival's suspended brain. “Turn it off.” Paul holds the display up to Renee, waiting for a password.
In the Comatorium Control Room, a broken panel says: Neural Net Startup Complete