by Gard Skinner
“I dunno,” he answered. “I guess you look like normal humans who’ve been suspended in a fish tank. Those cables that run right into the soft spots of your eye sockets are serious work. It’s not like pulling out a USB.”
“Am I pretty?” Mi asked.
“Am I strong?” York was looking at his huge digital muscles.
“More important,” Dakota pressed, “can you wake us up?”
Jimmy stared.
I pointed. “Look at the screen, Dakota. You’re not exactly fit for active duty.”
“But you can trace our cables, so you know which bodies belong to us, right?”
He conceded a small nod.
“I want to wake up,” Dakota said firmly.
“So do I,” York agreed. “I can get back in shape.”
“Count me in,” said Reno. “New mission, new rules.”
Mi, to my surprise, actually grabbed Dakota’s hand. And Reno’s.
Now the circle all turned to look at me. As if they still needed my code off my hand to step into the next world. They didn’t. But I was one of them, leader or not.
Charlotte was tugging her brother’s lab coat, asking, “Can you really wake them up, Jimmy? Let’s help them, maybe they’re really the good guys. Getting kidnapped and drowned wasn’t their fault.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Daddy’s gonna freak.” She smiled.
The boy was thinking. “I know he will. But, Sis, I’m not sure I could sleep every night knowing they’re still in there, breathing that blue goo. I sure know I couldn’t shoot them anymore. I think I’d feel bad.”
She smiled up at him. A little-sister/big-brother smile. There’s nothing else like that anywhere in nature.
Dakota grinned too, and she hadn’t even heard his answer yet.
“This is not a good idea,” I warned.
But it was too late.
Jimmy reported, “Well, there is this emergency revival manual taped to the side of the tank.”
“Open it!” Dakota urged. “Read! Learn!”
“Now!” Mi agreed.
“Guys, girls,” I began, hands out, pleading, “you have no idea if this is safe. It could kill us, for real, immediately . . .”
They were staring at me so coldly.
“The kid said that half or most of our intelligence files are not in our heads, but on those other computer drives . . . Without being plugged into that . . . Jimmy?”
But Jimmy wasn’t listening. No, he was gone.
Then Charlotte’s character faded from view. The last I saw of her was her little thumb, pointing up, right in front of those cute little teeth.
“Dakota, we have time to think this through. What we gain may in no way measure up to what we lose . . .”
As I turned, I realized I was speaking to empty space. Dakota had departed this world. All that was left was a shadow. It pixilated, flickered a few times, then blinked out.
And for the next minute, one at a time, I watched the rest of them slowly, agonizingly, fade from the playroom.
Reno began to melt. His body converted to liquid metal and seeped lazily into a drain.
York’s skin hardened, turning to crystal. Then, while the top half was still coagulating, the bottom started to chip and shatter and clatter away like ice that had been shot with a BB gun.
Mi was next. Her eyes locked on mine and she gave me a sweet smile. Everything else turned to ash, as if she were in a furnace. Flakes drifted on an invisible breeze. I missed those eyes as soon as they went dim.
I didn’t know if I’d go next. Or where. After all, I hadn’t really given my vote. Would it be back to CO, all alone? Or forward and out, to be painfully born of a primordial ooze on the floor of a cold laboratory in a world I didn’t know?
So much nausea. Room swirling away. That feeling like you’re twitching and tumbling and . . .
Instant death.
At least, instant digital death.
The only way I can describe it is, suddenly, a small black hole opens over your head, but not big enough for you to fit through. Tough luck, victim. You’re going to get squished anyway.
The harsh suction yanks every cell and pore and hair and tooth straight up, squeezing you into empty space like meat being twisted into burger.
You pop through, look down, and receding is everything you know and care about, quickly dropping away.
All you feel is helplessness. There’s nothing you can do to get back.
No matter how hard you inhale, no air is left. You begin to suffocate . . . gasping, choking.
Bright lights.
Waking up in your human body is nothing like waking up on the Re-Sim table.
Level 19
Start by holding your breath for the next two minutes. Now, without opening your mouth or nose, go stick your head in an unflushed toilet and try to breathe.
That’s what it was like waking up in the BlackStar tank. We were all coughing, gagging, sucking for air. The fluid was putrid. Heavy, gluey, it belched from our lungs, ears, nose, and throat. The bright lights burned our virgin eyes as we tried to focus on two adorable kids staring at us through the Plexiglas.
I felt like a monkey in a zoo.
No. I felt like a fish in a zoo.
My head burst up through the solvent just as Mi’s, York’s, and Reno’s heads did the same. For some reason, Dakota wasn’t thrashing like the rest of us. She surfaced as if she were some kind of mermaid who liked breathing preservative soup. I didn’t like it. Not a bit.
And all around, floating left and right, there were even more bodies. Maybe a dozen of them, each wired in, that synaptic spike plunged horizontally through their eyeballs. None was alert. All remained locked in the gaming universe with no idea they had real flesh-and-blood arms and legs out here.
Was that Rio? Or Deke? The others I’d seen every day around Central Ops? How could we tell who was who? They still had no clue what they were. I could reach over and touch them. That is, if I could get my arms or legs to work right.
The cables were bizarre. Mine slowly popped from its socket and splashed into the goop. That’s when I realized I was standing, floating almost. The heavy syrup kept me upright.
My fingertips brushed the wiring. On the end of the cable was a long, metallic spike. From its length and size, that thing had gone in my right temple, behind the bridge of my nose, and completely through my left eyeball as well.
The data transfer, the digital impulses moving in and out, contained an enormous amount of information. These guys had some twisted ideas about what they had the right to do to other humans. What kind of surgery had it taken to implant the receptacle in my head? What size drill?
Two of my fingers came up to rub the port. It was like a hole through which their server could feed me everything I saw, heard, smelled, and experienced.
Well, not everything. They hadn’t been feeding me my feelings through it. My affection, my love . . .
We all looked the same: blue skeletons covered in slime. We were thin as rails and no stronger than newborns.
It was hard climbing over the edge of the pool. Slippery. Painful. The concrete floor was bitter cold, hard; my feet ached almost instantly. So soft. Tender. Like tissue paper for skin.
Jimmy pushed blankets our way. Through clouded eyes, we helped each other rub away years of goo. We all had to sit for a while. Every move was exhausting. Then, shuffling down empty corridors, along an underground tunnel. Huddling close, like disaster survivors. Slowly, we loaded into the back of a van. I remember pain in my joints, the soles of my feet, how my legs would barely walk, how my eyes blinked and fingers trembled and it felt like I was going to throw up.
Mi did throw up.
She puked about a gallon of the fluid we’d all been swimming in.
But . . . how long? How many years? What were we? Convicts? Lost hospital patients? Or normal people who got kidnapped, lobotomized, reprogrammed?
We slept. Almost as soon as the van door shu
t, we all closed our eyes and drifted away.
Later, in the dark, a hand grabbed my arm. It was small, insistent. My face rose, stuck for a moment in a foul pool. I’d lost my stomach too, in my sleep. Lucky not to have suffocated on the stuff.
Jimmy walked us. I had no idea where we were, but the air was so cold.
“How long?” My mouth forced the words out.
“Three days,” the little voice said. “You slept three days.”
Doors closed. Heat washed over my face.
Soon the five of us had stumbled through a series of plush rooms. Down a hall, toward more gloom. The lack of light was a beacon. It felt good, much better than the harsh glare of lamps and bulbs.
We were attracted to dark corners. And not for the first time.
More sleep. All of us. Curled on a huge mattress, tucked together for warmth or safety or perhaps just to feel our first human contact in . . . how long?
Once, when I opened my eyes, the sun had come up. It hurt less and less each time, and eventually I could focus on things farther away than my hand.
My hand. All clean now. But so small. Slender fingers. A third its former size. No calluses on the palm or scars on the knuckles.
So I turned it over. Real world, right?
But there it was. Just as in the digital world, my tattoo remained. All those swirling bars, all that code.
Now, however, it didn’t glow.
It would not shine.
The charcoal ink was just ink. Slightly worn, not perfect or animated. There was no internal power source. It was just lettering. Just a plain stamp.
Where were we? I figured it was a guest home or a pool house, because in the distance was what could have been a castle, with wooden beams, stone entryways, turrets, and towers. Fields of long grass stretched in every direction. It was even bigger than anything in the game world.
And there was a familiarity to all of it. Pieces matched up. By one pool, was that the statue from PAIN PLANET? I thought so. Didn’t that tree line appear in the closing sequence of VIETNAM VENGEANCE? Even the barbed wire looked the same.
Dakota was right. Real-world memories were tucked away in our heads. But whose memories? Was I even Phoenix? Or was I Fred Smith—plumber, fry cook, whatever. Had I gone missing at summer camp? Or had I not woken up from a dental exam? They were always doing freaky things to death row inmates in games. Maybe I was just too violent to be allowed to roam free, had gotten convicted, and . . . ?
What had Reno said that day? “There’s always an abandoned research facility where the secret experiments run amok and the virus gets out of hand . . .”
Then, instant sleep. For a long, long time.
Some soup. It tasted strong even though it was barely water.
More light. A pair of dark glasses.
And more sleep.
It went on like that for days and nights. One after another until, finally, one of those cloudy evenings, I felt a whole lot better.
The sickness was gone. I ate some bread and didn’t vomit it right back up. The broth seemed like water, so I added more powder. Then some noodles. An hour later I’d eaten so much my belly felt like it’d pop.
I stood. My legs held. My head, which I realized had been foggy, felt clear. It was the first time I could remember feeling like I wasn’t about to fall down and crack open my skull.
“We’re getting used to it,” a voice said. It was Dakota, and she was also standing.
But she wasn’t what I expected.
And I bet you this—I wasn’t what she expected either.
York and Reno were on a couch. It was pitch-dark outside. A TV screen with stock tickers and profit projections read 3:14 a.m., but our internal clocks just didn’t care what time it was. We had become night creatures. We were all wide-awake now. There must be some formula to determine how long it will take a brainjacking victim to readapt to the real world.
In the distance we could see the lights from the main mansion. Jimmy and Charlotte would be up there somewhere, tucked in by the help, snoozing away. Maybe having dreams about their strange new pets, the ones they’d smuggled from BlackStar and hidden in the estate’s guesthouse. In their million-dollar playhouse.
The pets they’d been feeding. The ones who wore stolen clothing from main-house wardrobes. The ones who were beginning to understand the word “mortal.”
“I’m ugly,” York was whining. “And where are my huge beastlike muscles?”
“My forehead’s not even brick-shaped,” Reno agreed. “My skull’s no longer a square block of bone.”
“I can barely lift this coffee cup,” York said, testing his strength, “let alone throw huge boulders and cars at my enemies.”
“Ha ha! So you wanted to be human?” I chuckled to myself. “Welcome to Earth, puny mortals.”
“I’m just so plain.” Mi was looking in the mirror. “What are these? Average-sized boobs? Ick! My weak, skinny butt! No bulging calves? Ripped thighs? Why don’t I look the same anymore?”
She was right. In digital, like everyone still back in there, we were all figments of an artist’s imagination. Those worlds were always full of huge, athletic megastuds who could fight and run and jump.
Out here, just like all those gamers when they came back to their real lives, we were about as average as average could get.
I was no taller than any of the rest. Had dork hair growing in patches around my head. Arms as limp as pasta. When I made a fist, instead of a leather sledgehammer, it resembled a doll’s hand. Soft and tiny. Breakable.
Dakota had auburn hair, not neon blond, and everything from her nose down to her toes was soft as a marshmallow.
York and Reno might have been poster children for some kind of geek camp or nerd retreat. Poor Reno had already taken to wearing a pair of reading glasses around the house. Bad eyes? Game villains never need contacts.
Actually, it was pretty funny when you think about it. What had Dakota expected? To come into this world as the planet’s most dominant woman? Reality check here: we’d been living in a tank. We’d had no more real exercise over the past years than any other kid who lies around playing video games all day.
Our bodies were horrible. Our looks were worse. We were weak, slow, and short. Talk about homely!
“You still love me, right?” Mi was pleading. “I mean, this won’t change anything, right?”
I gave her a hug and a long kiss on the cheek. Whoa, that was new. It was . . . remarkable. When my lips touched her face, it was the first time I’d really physically tasted . . . her. Does that sound right? Does it make sense? Sure, it was just cool skin, nothing to it, but I remember the smooth texture as vividly as any sensory moment I’ve ever had.
It was great.
She smiled. I hugged her again. She was, after all, human now. She needed the affection more than ever.
So did I, perhaps. It sure felt good to hold her. It felt safe.
Not just safe, it felt . . . alive. It felt like promise, or hope. Now I could put my head on her chest and hear a heartbeat. And not just hear it, but feel it. No game had ever provided that mix, that intimate connection. How could it? It was so simple, yet so unbelievably wonderful.
But safe was the last thing we were. There was too much going on, and those few waking moments in the guesthouse would end up being the most peaceful times we’d have together. I’ve come to believe that war just follows some people, maybe like one of those magnetic bombs.
Dakota stayed occupied with Charlotte most of the time. I didn’t know if she was working the child for information or seeing if she could somehow become BlackStar_1’s adopted older daughter, but the little girl didn’t mind a new playmate. These kids lived on a huge estate. A pretty desolate existence, other than all the money and all the toys.
They made a nice pair, Dakota and the little cherub, but this was not going to be a successful infiltration experience. We couldn’t hide here forever. If they’d taken all that surgical trouble to tank us in the first pla
ce, they’d want their investments back.
On our bodies’ surfaces, we changed. Brief journeys into the sunshine helped our skin move past the instant-sunburn risk. And our diets were getting better, not to mention Jimmy had lifted bottles and bottles of workout shakes and protein pills. None of us looked like the comic-book muscle boys on the package labels, but hey, that day I first did two pushups without having chest pains? It was a great moment.
One day Jimmy cornered me and peppered me with questions. As he did, his eyes barely left my face. I think maybe I was some kind of school science project to him. I couldn’t imagine any other kids would be able to bring video game legends to show-and-tell.
Heck, I didn’t even know if he went to school, but he was trying to find out everything he could before the project came to an end.
“How does it feel to be so puny?” he asked. Then, before I could get my words straight, the follow-ups flew. “Does it hurt to be hungry? What will you do for money? Can you keep Mi happy if you’re dirt poor? What will you do when you get sick? Everyone is going to ask about that huge cable port next to your eye, how can you explain that? An industrial accident? One that you all had in the same spot? How about your tattoos? Bounty hunters will be on the lookout for those, so do you all just wear one glove everywhere? What about jobs? What else do you have training in? Are you actually worth anything to the world now . . . ?”
I couldn’t keep up. All I knew was this: “We can’t stay here much longer.”
“No, that’s the bad news. The search is spreading. I opened Dad’s e-mail today. They’ve expanded the hunt off the company campus and are working their way through the suburbs.”
“Are these suburbs?” Mi asked. “Nice burbs, Jimmy.”
His answer was “I’ll get some supplies together for you.”
“Cool. Thanks.”
York had a different idea and turned to me. “I say we don’t go anywhere without better toys.”