by Orson B Wolf
Thousands of panicked people began to stampede in his direction.
59
Pure Evil
Paul stood on the verge of the deep, flooded pit. He directed the beam of his penlight downward and could not believe his eyes.
“Come quickly!” he cried, but the noise of the raindrops striking on the tin roof drowned his words. Rachel couldn’t hear him.
He turned back and popped his head out of the door. Rachel was still standing outside the building, holding her dog. “What did you see in there?” she asked apprehensively upon seeing his expression.
“Come quickly!” he shouted again and turned back inside. “I need you to hold the flashlight.”
She quickly stepped inside after him, but he suddenly grabbed her shoulder.
“Careful of the pit,” he exclaimed and directed the light back down.
“Wow,” Rachel said, shocked. She stopped on the edge of the flooded pit.
“We need to hurry, we only have about a minute, maybe less!”
Once again, he used the penlight to comb the surface of the water, searching for what he had seen earlier.
She looked at the circle of light flickering over the surface of the water. “What do you mean…”
She turned dumbstruck as the beam settled on the area furthest from them, at the bottom of the opposite wall. The dark head of a dog poked from out of the cold and gushing water.
“Max!” she shouted with a broken voice. Buffy began to bark wildly and struggled to break free from her arms.
“He must be tied to the ground,” Paul shouted to be heard above the noise. “Otherwise he’d be swimming.”
The dog looked exhausted. He tried to bark, but his mouth instantly filled with water. All he could do was look up at them with his snout turned up, gurgling for breath.
Paul diverted the light beam left and right, trying to find a way to go past the rapidly filling pool. Their only chance of saving Max was going down into the pit and somehow getting to him through the water. Paul looked at the cold water and realized that there wasn’t any other choice. He would have to swim to Max.
“Hold this.” He extended the penlight to Rachel.
“No.” Rachel’s answer surprised him.
“We don’t have much time!”
“I know.” Her voice was tinged with determination as she placed her dog on the ground and handed him the leash.
He took it and asked, “What are you doing?”
“I owe him at least that.” She slipped off her coat with a single movement.
Paul immediately objected. “No. It’s better that I…”
She silenced him with a sharp look. “Turn around!”
He realized he would not be able to stop her, so he nodded and obeyed. When he turned around, he continued to direct the beam of the penlight toward Max. He extended his second hand to her and waited.
“Hold this!” She shoved the coat into his hand. A few seconds later she hung her pants on his arm as well.
“I’ll be fine,” she said loudly, reassuring both Paul and herself. “I’m a professional swimmer!”
Before Paul had a chance to react, he heard the wet thudding sound of her body hitting the water. Buffy went wild. Paul tugged on the dog’s leash hard to prevent her from jumping into the water herself.
He directed the penlight’s beam to the surface of the water just under his feet, and slowly moved it up to give her light.
“The water’s very deep!” she shouted through chattering teeth. “Max must be standing on something!” She began to swim with all her might.
Paul watched as Rachel shot forward like an arrow, rapidly cutting a path through the dark water. Her movements sprayed the shadowed surface of the pool, creating ripples across it.
Once again, he moved the penlight’s beam forward to try and find Max. He could barely trace him: the downpour made the surface of the water rise rapidly and the dog’s snout could hardly be seen now. He returned the beam to Rachel.
“Quick!” he shouted, while directing the penlight back and forth between the girl and the dog. “You’ve got guts, girl, I’ll give you that,” he muttered, while watching her swim.
Paul held his breath and prayed for a happy ending. He was suddenly filled with burning anger toward whoever had done this act of cruelty. Violence toward an animal—a helpless creature putting its trust in you—was the manifestation of pure evil, of sadism for its own sake.
He directed the penlight at Rachel and for a brief moment saw her rise to take a deep breath, then dive under the surface of the water. Max could no longer be seen.
Paul moved the penlight from side to side. All he could see was the dark surface of the gushing, foaming water, as the hard rain lashed at it through the opening in the roof. “Where are you?”
Buffy barked and howled frantically. The dog leaped forward and tugged on her leash. Paul was afraid she might damage her neck and picked her up with both hands. Buffy protested with an outburst of howls and even bared her teeth at him menacingly.
“Shh… little one,” he whispered into her ear.
Suddenly the dog started barking furiously at the water.
“Here! We’re here!”
Paul directed the light toward the sound and saw Rachel and Max swimming at him with great effort. He quickly placed Buffy back on the ground and stepped on her leash to leave both his hands free.
“Grab him!” Rachel shouted as they reached the edge of the pit.
Paul knelt and stretched one hand into the water. His fingers touched Max’s frozen fur and he felt the thick collar on his neck. “I’m pulling, push him up!” he instructed Rachel as he grabbed the collar.
Max tried to climb up, his forepaws seeking a grip on the slippery ground. With a joint effort, they both succeeded in lifting him out the pit and onto safe, solid ground.
The large dog collapsed on the ground, panting heavily. Paul now held out his hand to Rachel. She grabbed it with both wet hands and climbed up, gasping for breath and shivering from the cold.
Paul handed her clothes to her and leaned down to Max. “He’s freezing,” he declared.
The dog rose to his feet with effort. He shook himself and sprayed Paul and Rachel with jets of icy-cold water. Buffy was overjoyed. She yelped excitedly, jumping in circles around her large friend. Then she stopped for a moment and slowly approached Max. He sat and quietly looked at her as she brought her tiny snout forward to sniff his large face. She poked out a small tongue and gently licked his cold snout. Max looked more revived. He heavily rose to his feet and sneezed.
Rachel finished putting on her clothes. “We have to get him dry. Where’s your car? We can turn on the heat.”
“Good idea. You need to dry yourself off, too. We should be able to get there in a few minutes.” He tried to grab Max’s collar, but before he could reach it the dog leaped up and ran off in the other direction.
“Hey, Max! Come here!” Paul and Rachel cried after him in vain. The dog hurried outside and disappeared.
Paul ran outside with Rachel behind him, wrapped in her coat. “Where did he run off to?”
“I think he’s running off for exactly the same reason Buffy hurried to get here earlier.”
Rachel nodded in agreement. “He must have heard or smelled something.”
He looked at her. She was shivering. “Come. We don’t stand a chance of catching him. But at least we can get to my car and warm ourselves a little.”
She walked beside him with quick steps. Her small dog stubbornly pulled forward as well, as if she knew the way to the car. Paul was tired. He looked at Buffy, who tugged and pulled forward, her tiny tongue lolling. It looked like the dog never got tired.
Rachel seemed to be reading his thoughts. “She’s pulling hard, maybe she wants to get to Max again?”
“Right. A
nd she’s pulling toward my car anyway. That’s where we’re headed now,” he spoke firmly, as if pointing out a fact.
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
He noticed that her lips had turned blue from the cold. Lightning flashed in the distance, its thunder closely following.
As they got closer to the parking lot next to the giant tent, a siren went off.
60
A Little Spot in the Snow
David hovered a few inches over the ice and examined his surroundings.
He was in the middle of a vast frozen lake. Frost vapors drifted over the bluish icy surface, and he felt the cold biting into the soles of his bare feet. The edges of the lake could be seen far on the horizon. A dark boulevard of trees marked the shoreline and snow-capped mountains towered above it.
He was supposed to feel the frigid environment, but not with such intensity. It was normal for the flight simulator to maintain a perfect synchronization between the visual perceptions and the player’s physical sensations, but the experience was supposed to be limited to normal human endurance. The suit was planned to prevent uncomfortable sensations. It was disappointing this time. Someone must have screwed up, because David was shivering.
“We can’t have simulator players freezing here,” he uttered through chattering teeth.
There was probably some glitch in the suit. David made a mental note to check this with George, or even with a more superior Dreams Planet manager.
He lowered his eyes to the frozen surface under his feet and looked at his own reflection. As always, everything looked completely realistic. He noticed something moving under the thick layer of the ice. A dark body, enormous in size, drew closer to the water’s surface. David held his breath as the giant creature quickly sailed past him with its body almost touching the water’s frozen skin, inches from David’s feet. A few seconds later, it dove back into the depths until disappearing.
David sighed with relief. This was both impressive and terrifying. He was always surprised with the design team’s talents. They knew how to simulate a perfect ecologic environment. The player, who in the real world would be in a dark room, connected through the suit to the imaging system, would be awarded with an extraordinary sensory experience.
David asked himself whether he would see new, even more imaginary creatures. Chubby, fur-covered snakes, perhaps; or pink vultures with elephant trunks? He remembered that the simulated worlds had been realistically designed and the development team was careful to populate each world with animals suitable for its climate and living conditions.
A dark shadow passed over the surface of the ice quickly. David looked up and saw a large gull soaring above. The gull emitted loud screeches, beckoning David to join him.
David decided not to accept its invitation and simply waited to see what happened next. Much to his disappointment, he discovered that the water fowl’s reaction wasn’t especially interesting. The gull circled the air one more time, and once it had realized the boy wasn’t joining its flight, simply soared and flew away.
David followed the gull with his eyes until it reached the shoreline and slowly glided along the boulevard of trees.
Suddenly, the gull changed direction, approaching a figure that moved back and forth along the border of the ice. That figure had not been there earlier. Despite the great distance, David recognized that it had four legs. For a moment he thought it was a bear, but a second look made him realize that it was a dark dog. The way he skittered… the sight was disturbingly familiar. David concentrated on the tiny spot darting across the edges of the frozen lake and instinctively took off and began to fly toward it.
“It can’t be!” he exclaimed. Even from that great distance he was able to recognize his dog.
David sped toward Max, who rushed back and forth along the tree line. Could George and the development team have developed characters so realistic that even those who knew them in real life would not be able to tell the difference? He could not recall being updated about it.
This must be a limited beta-version development, and if that was the case, it was nothing short of a major breakthrough. People would be thrilled to see the virtual versions of their loved ones, meet their long-lost relatives. Just thinking about the vast potential made his head spin.
He drew closer. Now he could hear Max barking at him excitedly. He wondered if he would be able to recognize any differences between Max’s virtual representation and his real dog.
He slowed the speed of his flight when he was about a hundred-and-fifty feet from the edges of the ice. That moment, Max lunged on the slippery surface and began to run toward him.
“Max, no!” His dog did not heed the call and continued to rush to him, barking incessantly.
“Here’s the first development mistake.” The dog looked real enough, but his behavior wasn’t precise. Max never barks when he runs to him, unless… David’s mind was suddenly filled with concern—unless Max wanted to warn him of something?
He and the dog drew closer to each other. They were now only about thirty feet apart. Suddenly, a fissure cracked under Max’s paws. In an instant, the fissure widened and Max plunged into the freezing water.
“No!” David gasped in surprise and rushed to the gaping opening in the ice. Large cracks spread around the hole and Max’s head poked up from it.
He reminded himself this was only a simulation. This wasn’t really Max, and he himself wasn’t really in that frozen world. And yet, it all seemed so real. As he arrived at the hole in the ice, Max barked with panic and his voice cracked into a hoarse howl.
David gently landed on the slippery surface, aware of the barely audible crackling sounds as his weight began to strain on the ice. He leaned forward and reached for Max, but something stopped him. His hand refused to move and he was unable to touch the dog.
“What’s going on here?” He stared at Max, stunned.
Max stared back at him, howling and barking with an intensity David had never heard before. He once again tried to extend his hand toward the shivering dog, but simply couldn’t. His hand moved a bit, then just stopped. An excruciating pain throbbed in his elbow and crawled up his arm until it reached his shoulder.
Max barked repeatedly; his mouth was foaming and his pupils were wide with terror. David was swept back, saw the hole getting further away from him. He was unable to prevent it from happening. David opened his mouth to shout for Max not to give up, that he would do anything to rescue him. Tears flowed down his cheeks and instantly froze as he watched Max’s head slowly sinking into the opening, disappearing in the icy water.
It was that moment that the siren sounded.
***
The deafening sound of sirens woke David up.
He opened his eyes and found himself in a dark room. He was lying in an ice-cold puddle, his teeth chattering.
The noise that had brought him back to reality did not cease for a moment. He must be close to one of the municipal sirens. The sound was so intense that David felt as if the siren was inside his head. He wanted to seal his ears, but his left elbow was paralyzed with pain and he could barely move his arm.
The sound of barking joined that of the loud siren. It came directly over his head. He looked up at the opening in the ceiling. A shadow infiltrated his field of vision, retreated, then reappeared.
David gasped in surprise. It was Max! The dog barked at him and prepared to jump inside.
David realized that Max would not be able to get out again if he jumped into the room.
The siren stopped at once, but its ear-splitting sound still echoed around him.
“Max, wait. No,” he tried to warn his dog, but to no avail.
Over the course of the past few minutes, Max had been standing and barking at the unconscious David, but now the boy had woken and spoken to him and the dog could no longer contain himself. He lowered his head and prepa
red to lunge forward, and after a moment’s hesitation, he jumped inside.
David heard his dog groaning with pain after hitting the wet concrete ground, but Max immediately stood with a limp and stormed the boy with a barrage of licks.
David reached out with his healthy arm and hugged his large friend, who wouldn’t stop moving jerkily and whining excitedly. The dog got to his feet again and surrounded the boy with leaps and bounds, until he stopped, lowered his head to the ground, and happily rolled on David, covering him with mud in the process.
David closed his eyes and allowed himself to sink in the warm, wet fur. Tears poured from his eyes. “Are you all right, buddy? I was so worried about you…”
Max sensed that David was in distress and remained where he was, covering his owner and offering him of his bodily heat. Gently, he licked David’s neck with his warm tongue, stopping every few seconds to examine his face. He moved back a little, sniffed the boy’s injured elbow, panted some hot air at it, then gently licked it as well.
David reached out with his hand again and hugged Max as hard as he could, drawing warmth and strength from that creature he loved so much, his closest friend.
“Max, I can’t believe you’re here,” he repeated. Max looked back at him and blinked his large eyes as if understanding every word.
It was only a year ago that David had visited the SOS Pet Rescue shelter, walking among the numerous dogs and looking for the “perfect one.” He wasn’t necessarily looking for a certain breed or color, just the one that would be perfect for him. He had a feeling that once he met him, he would immediately know.