by White, Gwynn
“How do you know?”
“I know because I know.”
“You know because of… memories? That’s not the best proof, Detective.”
“Whatever you think happened, kid, didn’t. Your mom didn’t make it back. You’ll have to work that out on your own, I’m sorry.”
Grey looks at the water droplets he flicked on his phone and takes a sip of water. He sits rigid, looking thoughtful.
“We live in a networked world,” he says. “Satellites, security cameras, electronic eyes are everywhere nowadays, no corner left alone. It’s all uploaded somewhere, collated and stored. I suppose the Maze builds a parallel world with this data, a virtual environment that simply pieces together a three-dimensional reality indistinguishable from this one.”
He knocks on the table. A private grin breaks out.
“But I suspect the Maze is more than that,” he says. “The details are so… precise. You know what I mean?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Every speck of dust is accounted for, every mannerism, every piece of litter and drop of dew. Maybe it’s some sort of quantum absorption, an essential snapshot of this world of flesh and bone and everything in it—you, me, our thoughts and beliefs.”
The grin widens. For a moment, he looks like a kid filled with wonder, seeing the world for the first time, like he knows how such an impossible feat as creating a parallel world could be accomplished, knows how something could know all things in this world.
Or he’s making it up.
“I think you’re full of shit, Grey. The Maze I know about is guns and monsters and video games. It’s not parallel worlds, kid.”
“There are all kinds of Mazes. This one was an experiment, like watching a mouse finding its way out of a trap.”
“And the point?”
Grey shrugs. “Will the mouse find the cheese?”
“Before he dies.”
“There’s no dying in the Maze.”
The weird thing is this eighteen-year-old kid just lost his mother. Instead of cursing God or running away, he’s nodding along like death is just a doorway to a room full of virgins. He doesn’t look like a Christian, although Freddy’s not sure what a Christian is supposed to look like.
Just not that.
The childish joy fades. Grey stares off and continues nodding.
“If you don’t die,” Freddy says, “then what happens when your face is ripped off.”
“You start over.”
Freddy waves his hand. He doesn’t care about the details. He really cares about going home, cares about his wife, his family. Not some… some video game.
“You have survivor’s guilt?” Freddy says. “Is that why you’re here? Listen, I’m not a psychologist, Grey. I’m not a therapist or a priest or a bartender for you to spill your troubles to. You appear sane, at the very least normal, as far as I can tell. If you entered the Maze and came out that way, then I’m guessing you won, so congrats. Take your winnings and drown your sorrows. Your mom would apparently be proud. Given that the Maze took her life, I’m willing to let this conversation slide. The feds don’t need to know about it. Go visit your local church. I’m sure there’s a better soul than me you can tell your tale to.”
Freddy has seen the newsfeeds, at the very least the gossips. The survivors that came out of the Maze sometimes sliced the flesh off their arms and fried it like bacon or jumped off buildings Superman style. Those were the ones that left their minds in the Maze and couldn’t distinguish real life from a dream. This isn’t what’s sitting in front of him.
He’s too calm.
Sunny Grimm wasn’t the typical Maze candidate, but there are plenty of those stories, too. One day, a family man is balancing the company ledger, the next he’s punching a needle in his forehead. Maybe it’s the pressure, the boredom. A secret fantasy.
Who knows why anyone does anything?
“She didn’t escape,” Grey says.
“That’s right.” The kid is on the verge of accepting reality. He needs to do it somewhere safe; maybe that’s why he’s here. Freddy isn’t good at this. “Listen, this isn’t the Maze, kid. You’re not in a parallel world so don’t go leaping off buildings. You won’t fly, you won’t bounce. You won’t respawn. This is the skin where the dead stay dead.”
“What is death?”
Freddy waits. This existentialism is getting tiresome. Grey pushes his phone to the center of the table. The spray of water droplets he flicked on it earlier have evaporated. They went from liquid to vapor.
“It’s a change of states,” Grey says.
“No, kid. Death is the final stop.”
Grey looks around the room, slightly whimsical. Slightly disturbed. Freddy hammers the table. He’s reached the end of his goodwill. This isn’t a homeless shelter or a confessional. Freddy has played bad guy to move things along plenty of times. That, he’s good at.
“I can throw you in a holding cell until the feds get here,” he says, “if that’s what you want. You can sleep off the guilt, if that’s why you came here. I really don’t care, kid. I suggest you sleep it off in your own bed.”
Grey drums his fingers. A darker pall falls over him, the serious overtones that possessed him when he first arrived.
“Someone is guilty, Kaleb. That’s why I’m here.”
Part I
LOST IN REALITY
1
Sunny
After the Punch
Henk can’t find out.
Sunny Grimm found her son comatose, and her first thought was to keep it from her ex-husband.
Priceless.
She came home with groceries. Dirty dishes were in the sink, the orange juice was left out. The mail was on the kitchen island, along with half a dozen dead cans of energy drink. He had a list of chores that was still there, stuck on the refrigerator, held in place by yellow flower magnet. And all he did was grab the mail.
She didn’t bother setting down the groceries, went to his bedroom and kicked the door open, expecting to find him hunched over a laptop or dumping his brain in that virtual reality headset, slack-jawed and stupid. This would be the last time.
She was right about that.
The gunshot sound of the door smacking the wall would make him scream. He’d start promising to clean up, like always, swear that he lost track of time, like always. He didn’t know her shift was over. Was it morning already? Sunny was going to break some shit.
She dropped the milk instead.
There was a thing around his head. It wasn’t a chunky headset or VR goggles. It looked new and dangerous. She’d never seen it before. A ghostly shiver pulled the short hairs on her neck.
“Grey?”
His arm was tacky; his shirt sour. His chest slowly was rising and falling, long and methodical. She hesitated to touch him, afraid his flesh would be room temperature. Instead, he was feverish.
“Grey? Honey?” she whispered. “What are you doing?”
She tapped his chin, traced his cheeks. His eyes didn’t jitter beneath the lids; lips didn’t twitch. That thing around his head, she didn’t know what it was—a hefty knob centered between his eyes, his brown hair curling around a thick strap holding it snug. A cable was plugged into the knob and ran beneath the bed. Black equipment was hidden in the corner, lights blinking, drives breathing. She didn’t know what the box was or the thing on his head, but she knew the symbol embossed on them.
“No. No, no, no.”
She held up her phone, thumb over the glass. She’d heard rumors about the symbol, that it was not wise to search about comatose teenagers and malicious knobs connecting their foreheads to modded computers. People listened closely to those searches. What people, she didn’t know. The police, the feds, or someone worse, it didn’t matter.
She needed that thing off his head.
She deconstructed his bedroom, kicking dirty clothes, pouring desk drawers on the floor, turning over milk crates and boxes of discarded gear. His desk was clutte
red with empty cups and plates with dried ketchup. A pile of papers of a scattered research project on something called Foreverland.
A wristwatch was balanced on a tin box, the digital numbers turning over. Masking tape was wrapped around the band, small letters stenciled in black marker. For Mom. It was how he labeled his presents. Last Christmas it was a cuckoo clock in a plastic bag, tape pressed on the side.
For Mom.
The tin box rattled onto the floor. It was his old vape pen holder with weird stickers of a serpent eating its own tail. The vape pen was on the desk, a shiny metal pipe that looked dangerous. She thought he’d quit after her nuclear meltdown a year ago.
She paced the room and dialed. “Pick up, Donny. Pick up, pick up, pick up—”
“I’m off the clock, Grimm.”
“Donny, come over, now.” She could hear him sucking on the long end of a hookah. “Donny?”
“I’m waiting for the punch line.” His words were smoke-filled.
“I need you here, now.”
“Use a hairbrush or a showerhead or whatever works down there, Grimm.”
“Stop—” Her hair was too short to grab. “Just listen to me. I’m calling you a car.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to talk about this on the phone.” Her lips pulled into a thin line.
“Why can’t you talk?”
“What don’t you understand, Donny?”
“You’re on the phone talking and you can’t talk is what I don’t understand.”
She breathed into the phone, a wounded animal not to be mistaken for one in heat. Donny would be the last person to call to get laid.
“Goddamn it.” He sighed.
Sunny killed the connection. She picked up the half-empty milk jug and closed the bedroom door to put the groceries away and start some coffee. Pretending her son wasn’t a breathing funeral display, she lit a vanilla-scented candle and went for the aspirin above the stove.
The time was flashing three o’clock.
The mail was on the counter. An empty package was left open, the address label ripped off. No return address. No invoice, no instructions.
She went back into his bedroom, hoping this was a dream, that he’d be sitting at his desk. She would hug him even if he was packing a bong. Everything needed perspective. She came back to the kitchen with his phone, laptop and the silver pipe. A tiny light glowed as she sucked a blue cloud of cherry menthol. The urge to vomit swelled in her throat.
She took another hit.
His browser history was clean. The email log was empty. His phone was locked and she didn’t know the code. It wouldn’t matter. What was she going to do, call a random friend?
Hi, this is Sunny Grimm. Grey’s mom. Yeah, have you guys been experimenting with awareness leaping wetware in, say, the last twelve to twenty-four hours? Oh, Grey is sleeping, I just thought I’d ask. No worries. Please don’t tell your parents or call the police.
Who was she kidding? Grey didn’t have friends except for Rachel and she hadn’t been around lately. Her son was a loner bored with school. He wasn’t much crazy about people in general.
Nut, meet tree.
It was all the same reasons Sunny had quit medical school. Well, she’d stopped going in the first semester, so she was hardly a med student. It was a career plan that didn’t make much sense for her. She needed something that minimized human contact, someplace she could get paid to push a button. She had lowered the bar until it lay on the floor. Sound choice-making was not a skill set she’d acquired.
Sunny did everything on her own because no one did anything for her. Never had.
Maybe she deserved it.
The world isn’t going to hell. It’s already there.
She cleaned her face, washing off the smell of third shift, a plastic odor that followed her home. The yellow bandana around her neck smelled salty. Three stories below, the asphalt shone with brake lights. Her streaked reflection looked back through a haze of cherry menthol. What few tears survived childhood had dried up in a sexless marriage.
The sky cried for her.
Her eyes stared from sunken pockets, verdant green with light spokes radiating from large pupils. Her graying hair was cut near the scalp. A horizontal scar was high on her forehead, just below the hairline—a jagged gash that was more Jack Ripperish than Harry Potterish. It was where her uncle dropped her, or where she fell off her bike, or was bitten by a dog. No one really knew.
She vaped and watched cars pass through watery lines as she strapped the digital watch on her wrist, leaving the masking tape in place. The old pawnshop cuckoo clock Grey had bought her for Christmas was stuck.
She didn’t bother winding it.
Donny arrived thirty minutes later. Or maybe it was an hour. Time was warped from the heat of desperation, stretched and pummeled until it stood still or raced past. Sunny watched him through the distorted window, rain slashing his grizzly frame crawling out of the compact automobile.
He grunted when she opened the front door.
Sunny stepped aside, eyes pried wide, heavy words stuck on the back of her tongue. She pointed at the bedroom. Donny, half-lidded and unshaven, smelling of spiced apple and peppermint, dragged his feet through the apartment. He was weary when he arrived, grumbling when he walked inside. He never went straight home after third shift, not even after a double. It was straight to the café for a hookah to calm the nerves. Now he was wide-eyed. Almost hyperventilating.
“Holy shit.”
He stood in the doorway, fingers fluttering over his mouth. Somewhere in those thick whiskers, his tongue darted over his lips, something he did when he was in trouble at work.
He hit a soggy spot of milk, looked at his shoe, and kicked a pile of clothes. She told him to look under the bed. A few minutes later, he came out with a velvet bag with a loose gold drawstring.
“Where’s the box?” he said.
“Box?”
He pointed at the mail. Sunny stepped away. He studied the torn label, turning it over. The velvet bag in his hand was empty. No tag, no logo.
“You better sit down.”
“What the hell is going on, Donny?”
He took the pipe from her and sucked on it hard. Thin clouds streamed from his nostrils. He nodded, pulling a deeper drag.
“A punch, Grimm.”
“What?”
“That thing around his head…”
She knew it. Just needed to hear someone say it out loud, confirming this wasn’t a dream. Awareness leaping was more alluring than any drug invented by God or human, a new addiction that never gave back its victims. Twelve-step programs didn’t exist for it.
Wealthy addicts used submersion tanks and respirators, sensory manipulators that drew them into a lucid dream as real as the rug under her feet. When the dream was over, they were hoisted out and returned to the skin. Some claimed it was nothing more than a recreational addiction. A good time. Drinks with friends, a day trip to fantasyland.
Most people couldn’t afford tanks. There were places that leased trips, but those were inaccessible and legally questionable. There were other ways to get there, one-way tickets that transported the awareness through a cable and left the body behind.
Heart still beating.
“How can this be?” she whispered.
“It’s automated.” Donny tapped the package. “Grey must’ve known someone to have it shipped to him. You don’t just order this online. Even if you get one, it’s the access—”
“That’s not what I mean.” She raked her scalp. “This is my fault. This is all my fault. I never should’ve—”
“He’s eighteen, Grimm. He’s not a kid.”
She started walking. The urge to destroy the apartment tremored in her joints; the compulsion to drive her elbow into something clenched her fists. She needed something to blame, something to punch.
Besides herself.
“What are we going to do?” she said.
“Not be hasty, tha
t’s one. You were right not to talk about it on the phone. That’s a hot word.” He tapped his forehead, referring to the symbol on Grey’s forehead more than the punch. “The government listens for it. And don’t search about this on the Internet just yet.”
“And just sit here?”
“For now, yeah. You can search his room—”
“For what, Donny? An off switch? A fucking suicide note?”
“Keep your voice down.” He handed her the pipe. “Listen, this is illegal. You need to think about every move you make right now. It ain’t easy to escape. Come up with some generic search words for an Internet search, something that sounds like research or game play.”
“It ain’t easy to escape? Escape what, Donny? What are you talking about?”
“What do you think I’m talking about?” He jabbed at his forehead, referring to the punch that had emptied her son’s head.
“Oh, God. I’m a horrible parent, a terrible mother. Oh God, oh God—”
“You’re not a terrible mother, Grimm. You can’t isolate him from the world. He was going to do something like this sooner or later. They all do, they’re kids, stupid as hell. I’m surprised he made it to eighteen.”
She rubbed her face, a spring suddenly welling up. She swallowed it back and clenched her teeth. “I just want him back. I don’t give a damn what happens to me, just… we got to get him out, find help.”
Donny sighed. He didn’t answer that. Because people don’t come back from this.
“What am I going to do?”
“I know someone from the Glass Jar,” Donny said.
“The gay bar?”
“Yeah, the gay bar. Let me make a call. Keep this quiet for now, see what our options are, all right? Stay off the computer and phone until we get some answers.”