Solipsis: Escape from the Comatorium

by Jeff Pollard

  Renee takes the gun from her shoulder and aims it at Lazarus's brain as it sits in the open air, the gel is evaporating. “You took an oath! Do no harm!”

  “I'm sorry Paul, it seems we've lost him,” Renee says sarcastically. She fires. Lazarus's brain explodes, white and gray matter flies through the air in all directions. The NCU flat-lines and sends out a harsh warning.

  Paul falls to his knees, crying. Seth is losing consciousness. He barely gets out a few words before his eyes glaze over, “Don't forget about the bomb.”

  Renee looks back up and no longer sees Paul. She can't hear him either. He may have run away, or he may simply be hiding.

  Renee crawls, pushing with her legs, pulling with her one good arm. She keeps the gun held in her teeth in case she needs it. She crawls for the bomb hidden away in the floor panel over the environmental air tanks. She crawls, scraping her body along the wet grated floor, searching for the bulging rubber panel.

  She crawls over countless dead cult members, broken animatrons, past dozens of broken vats, each one representing a person who has succumbed to a Xenon Shock.

  She crawls on, finding a vat where the brain has been stabilized into the cradle and sealed inside the neuroprotective shroud.

  Renee carries on until she spots a bulging rubber floor panel. She rips the rubber panel open and finds the bomb, still ticking: 15:20, 15:19, 15:18. She tries to turn it off, but her weakening hydraulics make it very difficult for her to perform any precise task. Her hands and fingers rattle loosely in their joints. She realizes she might hit the wrong button... She decides instead to simply yank all the wires from the timer. She gets a firm hold of two of the wires, but the third keeps slipping between her fingers.

  A foot steps on her arm, pinning it down, making it impossible for her to yank the cables. Renee's eyes swivel up and to the corner of her eye, she is unable to move her stiff neck. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Paul standing over her, aiming a gun at her back. He says, “You're deleted.”

  BANG.

  Renee flinches, closing her eyes. The purple-blue flames from the muzzle flash sear through her closed rubber eye-lids.

  Time stands still.

  This is it.

  Death.

  41

  What is that?

  Renee looks down on a robot that lies face-down on the Comatorium floor. Paul stands over this robot.

  That's me.

  Renee looks down at her own lifeless body from the ceiling.

  Seth!

  Renee spots his refracted image floating in a series of vats. She flies over to him, finding him sitting against a vat that has a crack, leaking cerebro-spinal fluid that covers a whole side of the glass. Seth's back is soaked in it. He holds his hands over his badly bleeding stomach, head down, eyes closed, defeated, dying. His skin grows pale. Renee hovers right over him. She looks carefully at his wound.

  Looks like it hit his pancreas. He better get help soon.

  Renee feels a warmth on the back of her neck. She looks up at the Comatorium ceiling. The dull metal, covering in condensation, begins to glow read with heat. Renee feels an intense beam pulling her upward. The ceiling grows perilously close, she tries to turn away, but the indefatigable tractor beam has her.

  No!

  She reaches the searing heat of the ceiling, but passes harmlessly through it. She finds herself on the Simulation Floor, a layer of dead bodies and robots covers the floor. She continues upward, to the Animatron Floor, through an aisle of docking stations, now mostly empty.

  She continues upward, through the Vivisection Floor, past the living quarters, and up into the glass atrium that caps this ocean-going pyramid.

  The atrium echos the pounding waves washing up ten meters up the glass. A storm brews overhead. The splatter of heavy rain droplets echo from the acres of glass walls. Renee continues upward, through the glass, into the elements, pelted by the heavy rain and gusts of wind. She sees a large boat docked at the south side of the platform. Two cult members rush out of the dock and onto the boat, starting it up in a hurry and zooming away into the stormy seas.

  A hole opens in the thick clouds. The brilliant sun sends a shower of rays, splitting the slight hole wide open. Renee dries, her clothes seem to turn into a warm blanket. She feels an intense joy, a deep happiness that permeates her entire body, making her sub-consciously smile. Everything feels just right.

  “Renee,” A voice says from the light. The sun doesn't seem to be millions of miles away, but very close, as if it is a ball of plasma just ten kilometers high, growing larger and brighter, but not blinding. “Renee,” the voice beckons. A hand emerges from the yellow glowing plasma, offering her an open palm. “Come on in, everything's going to be alright.”

  Renee slowly reaches out and takes the welcoming hand. Though she moves slowly, she is not at all reticent, not worried or even caring about where this might take her.

  She passes through a membrane and into the light.

  “We've been waiting for you,” the voice says. Renee recognizes the voice, but doesn't want to succumb to any trick of wishful thinking. The face emerges from the glow. It's Percival.

  “Dad?”

  “It's okay Renee, come on, this way, they're all waiting for you,” Percival replies. He takes her hand and flies away, leading her into a tunnel of light.

  “Aren't you dead?” Renee says. “Am I dead?”

  “It's okay Renee, don't be afraid, it's alright, everything's fine,” he says.

  “I know,” Renee says, offering no fight or struggle. The tunnel of warm light beckons. “Is this what love feels like?”

  Renee wakes up in her bed. She doesn't open her eyes, but senses her body. This is the real her, the avatar of her mind, the flesh-and-blood Renee. She recognizes that she is in her own bed. A faint scent of tulips wafts in through her cracked open window thanks to her mother's garden just outside. This is the room she grew up in.

  A strange sound echos off the open door, coming from downstairs. It's some kind of music. There's a high-pitched melody and through the pillow she feels a rhythmic thumping. It's all very soothing, synchronous, euphonic.

  Renee emerges from bed, her steps feel so light, automatic, almost like she isn't in control of her legs, but she has faith that they will lead her where she wants to go. She tiptoes down the stairs, finding Medved, her mother, and her father sitting around the kitchen table. Percival smokes his pipe and flips quickly through a newspaper.

  “Would you stop?” Gwen asks.

  “What?” Percival responds, feigning ignorance.

  “I'm getting a breeze over here from your reading,” Gwen replies sarcastically.

  Medved stirs a large mug of coffee he holds close to his chest. “Good morning honey bear.”

  “Good morning,” Renee says, sitting at her usual seat at the end of the wooden table. A plate of strawberry pancakes awaits her. Butter melts over the moist pancakes. A glass with warm syrup sits at the ready. Even the plate radiates a warmth. She douses her pancakes with syrup, then picks up the fork and cuts off a bite three pancakes high.

  “What's on the agenda for today?” Percival asks Renee.

  “What agenda?” she says while chewing.

  “With Patrick, what are you studying today?” Percival asks, looking up from the back of the newspaper, over his reading glasses.

  “I'm meeting Patrick?” Renee asks, surprised.

  “Why don't you just look it up on there,” Medved points to the table and a hidden display that is just wood at the moment.

  “I know I can look it up, I want to talk about it with her,” Percival replies. “Geez, what's with you two, trying to give me a hard time this morning?”

  “It's fun,” Gwen says with a chuckle.

  “So what's on the agenda?” Percival says again.

  Renee looks to the table, below her plate. She flicks her fingers across the grain and the display turns on, she finds her calendar. “Astronomy,” Renee reads.

 
“What specifically?” Percival asks.

  “Kepler's laws of planetary motion.”

  “Haven't you done that one before?” Percival asks.

  “I don't know. Maybe we did the beginner's one already,” Renee responds.

  “Why don't we cancel that and go sailing,” Percival asks. Gwen and Medved nod in agreement. “Come on, it'll be fun, you can bring Patrick along.”

  “Alright.”

  Renee lays out over the front edge of the sailboat as it skims along the calm surface of the lake. The warm breeze counters the mist of cold water. She looks back and sees her family, happy, enjoying a day on the lake. It's all shattered in an instant. She plunges into the icy water. The cold is debilitating, her body stiffens, her blood vessels freeze over and harden, expanding beneath her skin. She sinks into the lake. She tries to fight, but can barely move her arms and legs. The water pushes her down faster and faster, the surface races away, disappearing into the haze.

  Renee screams out, clawing at the water for a grip, she's drowning. A purple glow emanates beneath her. The purple ball seems to have a black hole at its center, pulling her into it like a drain. She swirls around inside the purple tunnel, passing through a membrane. She finds herself inside a purple-red orb. She is still submerged in fluid, but not drowning, instead, suspended serenely, as if in utero.

  She presses her hands against the warm wall of the purple orb. It presses back, it's tense, springy. She stares into the wall of the orb, it seems at first to be a solid color, but on very close inspection, it seems to contain very small, slight details. She has to focus her eyes intently on one spot, then she sees motion, little circles and squiggles, almost transparent shapes, shadows. If she moves her eyes at all, they disappear. She focuses harder, finding that the translucent shapes seem to be moving in strict lines, as if following an invisible road, like ants marching home. The shapes don't move at a constant speed, rather they rush ahead, then slow to a stop, then rush ahead again, like they're in a traffic jam that moves in short bursts.

  Just as the shapes finally become really visible, the purple background fades to black and everything disappears. She panics, but within moments, the background light returns faintly.

  The orb seems to twitch and move, revealing a bright opening by her feet. Renee looks at the opening, a slit of light beams in, blinding her.

  Renee grabs the side of the slit and pulls herself through, coming out the other side she finds herself in a brightly lit canyon, perched on a cliff.

  The bright canyon dims and Renee can finally make out the detail. There's a series of trenches, clearly man-made, in fact they look metallic, more like bridges over some black darkness beyond.

  A giant, a man a kilometer tall, crashes to the canyon floor in slow-motion. His impact sends a visible shock wave along the metal bridges, which vibrate in tune with each other as the shock wave passes.

  The scale suddenly changes, the immense becomes tiny, the giant becomes a man. Renee is lying face down on the Comatorium floor, in her flesh-bot animatron. She presses her hand weakly against the grated floor, struggling mightily to raise herself. Paul lays face down, his blood drips onto the metal panels a meter beneath them. He's been shot.

  Renee looks left and right, her neck refuses to move up or down. She sees nobody around. The bomb sits in the opened rubber panel, the clock ticks: 15:10, 15:09, 15:08.

  Somebody shot Paul. Somebody saved her. But who? Seth is gravely wounded, unable to move. The neural-net is down. Who is it? Who would help her? Foot steps approach, clinking across the wet grated floor. The footsteps clearly belong to an animatron, too metallic to be human. The feet approach. Renee's glass eyes dart to the edge of her rubber eye sockets, but her damaged neck can't raise her head. The feet stop right in front of her, a hand reaches down and picks up the bomb.

  42

  Lazarus lies frozen to the icy rocks. Mutilated and in pain, he writhes in agony, clenching his teeth. In an instant he goes limp, his mouth hangs open, he's still. The avatar has lost connection to the brain. In the real world, his brain has been utterly destroyed. His avatar remains, floating over Solipsis.

  Down the remnants of the steep mountain, across the desert plain, under the ring of orange suns, Gwen is trapped in a stockade. Blood seeps through the cracks in her leathery skin, floating away in zero-gravity. She's delirious. Her cracked lips mouth ghostly words over and over. All around her, others are locked in place, suffering extreme agony.

  A flash of light catches Gwen's eyes. She looks up through the wall of burnt hair hanging in front of her face. The display system has turned back on.

  Gwen laughs maniacally, not believing this mirage of light and color. It can't be real. She navigates the menu with her mind, discovering that her admin privileges have been reinstated.

  She searches the menu, finding: System Restore.

  The stockades vanish, the ground changes around them, morphing into a green field. All of Solipsis transforms back to the state saved six weeks ago. Gwen activates a manual reset of all avatars, sending everyone to loading purgatory that they individually control. Gwen stands in her loading space, immediately she steps into the televator and instantly finds herself at home. The house is exactly as it was. An instant later, the televator door closes and out comes Medved.

  “Medved!” Gwen says, holding back tears of joy. They hug, reunited, their world safe. “How is this possible?”

  “I don't know what happened,” Medved replies.

  “Where are Renee and Percival?” Gwen asks. They look to the televator, hoping, praying.

  43

  “You're deleted.”

  BANG.

  Paul hits the floor.

  Foot steps approach, clinking across the wet grated floor. The footsteps clearly belong to an animatron, too metallic to be human. Renee's glass eyes dart to the edge of her rubber eye sockets, but her damaged neck can't raise her head. The feet stop right in front of her, a hand reaches down and picks up the bomb, stealing it from her grasp. The figure presses a button on the bomb, then tosses it several meters over her shoulder.

  “What are you doing!?” Renee asks, trying to roll over and discover the identity of the animatron. Renee gets a clear look at this miraculous savior. But it can't be. It's her. It's Renee's original animatron, the one that looks like the real Renee, not this flesh-bot she's been wired into. “Who are you?” Renee asks of the person piloting her own animatron.

  The able-bodied Renee bends down, taking the gun away from Paul's limp hand. She walks away, heading for the central node.

  “Who are you?” The speakers in the flesh-bot's throat crackle. The animatron returns, there's blood on her hands.

  “I'm going to need your help. Seth is in bad shape, and I can't carry him by myself.”

  “Then I need hydraulic fluid,” Renee responds.

  “I'll be right back.”

  “Wait! Who are you!” The animatron disappears without an answer. Her footsteps echo through the cavernous Comatorium and disappear through a door that used to be sealed. It is eerily quiet. Movement catches her eye. It's Paul, crawling away, his right arm hangs limp, paralyzed from the gunshot. He slinks away, staying low, leaving a trail of blood.

  Footsteps approach. Renee can only hope it's her animatron and not a remaining cult member. She listens closely for the metallic clink in the steps, not sure if she can hear it or if it's wishful thinking.

  Renee's animatron returns with two bottles of hydraulic fluid and a repair gun used to patch hydraulic leaks with hot acrylic glue.

  “Paul's alive,” Renee's speaker chokes out, her mouth has lost all ability to move. The animatron yanks the gun from her side and looks around, seeing nobody.

  “Shit, where'd he go?” Her voice is exactly the same as Renee's voice.

  “I don't know,” Renee replies. The animatron gets to work patching Renee's hydraulic leaks. She then begins to pour in a bottle of fluid. As she does, Renee can feel strength returning. “Who are you?”
Renee asks again.

  The animatron is reluctant to answer, tries to pay attention only to accurately pouring the hydraulic fluid.

  “Please,” Renee pleads, her mouth has started to move with her words, but jerkily and with a slight delay.

  The animatron reconsiders, looking into Renee's eyes. “I...” Renee's animatron says, “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  “What!?”

  “I'm Renee,” Renee's animatron says. “Who are you?”

  “I'm Renee,” the wounded flesh-bot responds suspiciously.

  “That's all of it, is that enough?” She tosses the empty plastic bottle aside.

  “Let me see,” the flesh-bot tries to stand up. Her weak legs wobble and rattle, but she steadies herself and the strength seems to return slowly. “I think I'm good.”

  “Come on, he's in bad shape,” Renee's animatron replies, leading them to Seth. He's unconscious, bleeding badly from his stomach. Each robot claiming to be Renee takes a side, they bend down to pick him up.

  “On three. One. Two. Three.” They lift him up and begin to walk sideways toward the control room door.

  Seth wakes up on an operating table. Two figures stand with their backs to him, scrubbing their hands to prepare for surgery.

  “I'm dying, aren't I?” Seth says, surprising the figures.

  Renee's animatron approaches, “You're going to be fine.”

  “I don't believe you,” Seth replies, in a great deal of pain, having lost a lot of blood.

  “Trust me,” Renee tries to comfort him, and presses a gas-mask over his nose.

  “Wait!”

  “What?” Seth's response is muffled by the mask.

  The flesh-bot Renee steps up, “First tell me what the hell is going on.”

  “He doesn't have long, we need to vivisect him,” Renee says, pressing the mask back down on his nose and mouth.

  “I made a copy,” Seth is barely able to choke out an explanation.