Sunday SciFi Fantasy Serial
by Douglas Christian Larsen
New! Vestigial Surreality for e-Readers
New! Vestigial Surreality for e-Readers
Confrontation.
Meren
Dulance, Lord of High Vale, paced in the darkened high chamber. The room flickered
by the light of one small lamp, and the great and large man cast vast shadows
in the high-ceilinged room, passing back and forth before the amber flame of
the lamp, his mighty arms clenched across his chest. He paused and listened in
his pacing, for was that not a distant cry? No, not yet. It was not time. He
had just left Varrashallaine sleeping, and felt this was the last time with
her, as he was finally ready to surrender to the inevitable. When the dragon
warriors burst through the front doors, he would humbly offer them his head,
his life, for this was the thirty-second visit to this, his halted world, and
after, after this final time of agony, he would delete this crystal sandbox,
and he would no longer think of Varra. He sighed. This was the end.
 |
| Illustration by Harrison Christian Larsen ©2016 - Vestigial Surreality: SEVEN |
“There
is a way,” a voice spoke from the echoing room.
Meren
Dulance gasped, whirling, perceiving a dark and looming shape half-hidden in
the shadows of the dark room.
“Toby,
I know how much this world means to you. High Vale is beautiful, and you have
been a true artist, a genius in its construct,” the voice murmured.
“How
did you get in here?” Six snapped, his heart hammering in his great and broad
chest.
“How
tall are you in RL?” the shadow queried, hardly moving, it looked like the grim
reaper refusing to emerge from the grave.
“What?
Oh, I’m, I don’t know, five-foot seven?”
“Let’s
say five-foot six, we’ll be generous,” the voice echoed. “But here, oh, look at
you, Toby. What? You prefer the number, Six? Fine, Number Six, here, you are
massive, a man of power, six-foot-four in your stockinged feet. Powerful,
truly, a man of power in every way. And yet, sadly, you cannot stand up to the
overwhelming force that even now approaches. Do not worry. Look at the lamp.”
Six
turned and looked at the lamp. The flame did not flicker. The world of High Vale
was frozen. Whoever this was invading his crystal sandbox, the person was an
admin, with its controlling powers. Whoever this was, they had control.
“What
do you want?” Six gasped, more frightened now than ever he had been by dragon
warriors. For this was a threat from RL. They could take away everything. They
knew. Instead of his doctorate, his supposed studies, dissertation, all of that
rot, he was living here, at fraction time, at creep, passing ten years in
lordly bliss, while mere weeks passed in RL. They would take everything.
“Do
not be afraid,” the voice murmured, and a tall and very thin old man moved
forward, more into the light. “Try and relax. I am not here to punish you. I am
here to help you.”
“How
can you help me?” Six gasped, nearly bursting into tears. It was all over. Relax. Don’t be afraid. Absurdity,
ludicrity, asininity. How stupid this all
was, how pointless.
“Ah,
my young friend, it is not stupid. It is not pointless.”
Six
ogled the old man. He noticed the sparks of silver flaring reflections from the
frozen flame, tiny sparkles of rainbows light off the stubble on the old man’s
chin. This admin was somehow reading his mind. He remembered something Seven
told him, about the old man on the bench, the one with the pigeons. Hadn’t he
told her that, do not be afraid?
“I
am not reading your mind; well, not exactly,” the old man soothed reassuringly,
moving forward a step. He suddenly reached out an arm and clasped the beefy
Lord of High Vale by the hand, and squeezed.
Six
sighed. His fear was gone. Memories of severe trembling passed from his mind.
“Tell
me what to do, I’ll do anything,” Toby Winnur, Number Six, said.
“It
will take some daring, on your part,” the old man said, smiling sweetly, “daring, on your part, and mine. But
more, we will more have to be lucky. Very lucky. Does God throw dice? And, I
think, we shall have to break…a few rules. Perhaps just a few rules.”
Seven
instinctively stepped back, as did the businessman. Newbury noticed that the
small man had stepped away from her even as he retreated a few steps from the
advancing men, and he had his umbrella out before him. He struck the ground
hard with the metal tip of the black, tightly coiled umbrella. She glanced at
him. With his left hand, he snatched off his half-lens spectacles and tucked
them into the inner pocket of his suit jacket.
“You
may take your leave,” the lead figure stated, stopping, glancing at the
businessman, as the other figures fanned out across the alleyway.
“You
do not have the authority to dismiss me,” the businessman said softly. “And I
view your presence here as an act of insurrection. You may take your leave, and
please, take your aberrations with you.” He swiped the air with his umbrella.
Seven
hastily looked over the men facing them, spread like a barrier across the
alley. She blinked, counting six, but it felt like a trick of the eyes, because
the six men looked absolutely the same, absurdly identical. Apparently, the six
were impossibly identical sextuplets. They wore gray athletic jackets and
pants, and black Nike high-top sports shoes. These details she barely
registered, because her gaze kept snapping back to their identical faces.
They
had weird faces. Her first impression was that each man wore a stocking over his
head, flattening their features. The men had too-small noses, or mere
suggestions of noses, tiny lumps between their eyes and mouth. Tight black hair
stood up like half-inch crests on their heads. A first glance would suggest
crewcuts, but their heads seemed to have tight, short feathers instead of hair.
Their eyes were too large, too round, too protruding, showing too much white
and not enough iris. The mouths were lipless, and hard, seemingly reptilian.
And the skin showing at their faces and hands and throats, was pale, too sickly
beige, featureless, and smooth.
Seven
swallowed hard, staring at the six grim men that looked like an Olympic gymnast
team sent from the planet Mars. They were small, perhaps shorter than Newbury
herself, but they looked very stout, very strong—wooden rods.
Enough
of this. Never before had a crystal sandbox frightened her, not like this. She
lifted her hand and ended the world, returned to her couch in her Inner
Sanctum, only it did not work. She stood here in this too bright crystal
sandbox. She glanced at the sun. The sun was gone, but not the light, and the
planet Saturn was there in the sky as it had appeared to Jack and Stacey in the
park. The others, both the group of aliens and the businessman, followed her
gaze, and they all stared at Saturn hanging there in the sky, surreal and
hyperreal.
The
sun reappeared through the planet, Saturn faded, and the crystal sandbox
lurched into movement, shaking the ground. The people in the alley braced
themselves, spreading their legs, putting out their arms to steady themselves
in the sickening movement of the ground. It was an earthquake in every sense of
the word.
Sandra
Newbury jabbed at the air. Something was desperately wrong. She could not find
control.
The
shaking ground quieted; however, Seven kept pointing and jabbing, swirling her
fingers, searching, seeking.
“Stop
that!” snapped the businessman.
“We
have control, and we shall terminate after all aberrations are eliminated,” the
leader of the six stated.
One
of the men on the edges of the six, the one nearest the coffee shop window,
came forward impossibly fast, and he seized Seven by the arm and began dragging
her toward his fellows. She jerked her arm savagely, and nearly pulled the
small man off his feet, but he was as strong as she had supposed, and his grip
did not break. His hand clamped like a vice and he spun her around him as
another of the closest men leaped forward and seized her other arm.
Without
another word the businessman turned and abruptly retreated at a swift jogging
trot up the other end of the alley, his umbrella tucked up under an arm.
“You
are under arrest,” the leader of the six said to Seven as she pulled and cried
out between her two captors. “We are the Keepers of the Code, and we have
judged you a Violator of the Code.”
“I
haven’t violated anything,” Seven cried, kicking at them, stamping her foot at
their feet, and if she could get close enough she would bite them, but they
ensured her unbalance, her feet barely touching the ground. “Stop it! You’re
hurting me! Ah, stop, help me! Somebody help!”
“Into
the portal,” the leader commanded, marching toward the building across the
alley from the coffee shop.
Seven
glanced up and saw a perfect green circle form in the bricks of the building,
shimmering, a rippling sheet of plastic water hanging impossibly in the air. No way was she going in there. In
strength born of terror she lurched her body and twisted, yanking at the
hand-clasps on her arms, not caring how her bones bent and her skin stretched.
They could barely contain her as she dug in her feet and screamed. Another of
the strange men came forward to snatch her up but she met him full on and
kicked him fully between his legs and he grunted and fell atop her, and the
whole mass of them surged and tangled.
Someone
cried out and there was a flurry of movement and Seven was thrown backward onto
the pavement, suddenly free of the intense pressure of the men’s hands on her
arms. She banged her head, hard, but rolled and tried to scamper away but legs
tripped over her half-risen body and she was knocked to the ground again. She
rolled away from bodies and slammed into the bricks. She remembered, the green
circle, the portal, and she knew to move her body as far away from that thing
as possible. She looked back and saw a tall figure amidst the strange men.
“Are
you okay?” someone said, gently taking her shoulders in a grip so different
from the ones she had just escaped that she did not even start at the touch.
She looked up into Jack’s eyes, who looked as terrified as she was, and yet he
smiled reassuringly. And then she saw a shoe connect with his face and knock
the kid back and away.
She
scrambled her fingers in the warm bricks and climbed to her feet as one of the
grim gray men came at her. She did not think. She punched him squarely in the
face, and shockingly, the man tumbled violently backward, away from her,
crushed by her blow.
She
did not even think of the power she felt in her fist as she struck the man. She
rushed to Jack, who was half up, scrambling woozily on hands and knees. She got
her hands under his arms and aided him to stand, and then the tall man, the big
man, Stacey Colton, he came backing into them. She drew Jack back and away down
the alley and they separated for a moment, and she stood panting, bending over
with her hands on her knees, and she looked up, and it struck her, this was it,
this was that moment, that very moment she had arrived in her opening of the
crystal sandbox, it was laid out before her like a dream she might have had, or
a prophecy in the moment of fulfilment. This was her POV, Stacey facing off
with the attackers, Jack bloodied behind him, and here she was; she had not
seen herself, before, when she sat on her couch, but she had seen this same
scene, through her own eyes, right now, at this moment.
Stacey
was there, facing off with three gray men, and Jack was just behind the taller
man, the boy’s hand braced against Stacey’s spine, his face full of blood.
Stacey had his fists up loosely, and his feet were doing some kind of
slow-motion tap dance, constantly in motion.
Three
of the six aggressors—Keepers of the Code—stirred and jerked on the pavement.
The
three strange gray men, the leader most prevalent, advanced.
Stacey
lurched in his seat and the coffee mug seemed to leap out of his hand. He felt
woozy, dizzy, and blinked his eyes hard. What in the world?
“Did
you feel that?” Jack croaked, his own arm spasming and knocking his coffee mug
off the table. Instinctively, blinking his eyes hard, he seized the paperback
book from the table and crammed it into his backpack. He half expected the book
to be gone, but no way was he letting them snatch that away. He felt like he
had just fainted. His head felt sick. One moment he was looking up, he was
seeing the beautiful girl standing there, half-substantial, a ghost, looking at
him, and he was just smiling, and then everything had lurched.
“Everything
lurched,” Stacey said, clutching at his forehead. It felt like everything just
stopped, just froze, and now began again. He thought maybe he was having a
stroke. Then he looked out the window, and started. Jack half stood and leaned over
the table, and they both saw the strange group outside, the young woman in
black sweats poking a very familiar figure in the chest, and the group of
strange men appearing from the periphery.
Then
the earthquake began. Stacey seized the table top and stood.
“Earthquake!”
Jack spat, grabbing onto Stacey’s arm, attempting to steady the both of them,
attempting to steady the very world.
“Away
from the window,” Stacey said pulling Jack with him as the diners of the coffee
shop began wailing, many people slipping beneath tables as the whole world
undulated.
“Come
on,” Stacey said, tugging on Jack, heading them like drunken sailors toward the
front doors.
“But
we’re not supposed to go outside in an earthquake,” Jack complained.
“It’s
her,” Stacey said. “Hurry,” spoke over his shoulder, pulling the kid along by
an arm, “and you stick with her, okay, let me handle them!”
“Her!”
Jack said, and then “them! WHO?”
As
they reached the front doors the shaking of the world settled, it had only
lasted ten seconds, at most, even though it felt as if it must have been an
hour. An earthquake is a terrifying force of nature, trembling the very core of
reality, the foundation on which they existed.
“Get
ready!” Stacey called, releasing Jack’s arm and bursting through the front
doors of the coffee shop. One of the doors slammed into the bricks and
shattered into a blizzard of glittering bits, but Jack ignored the explosion,
chasing after the large man who was moving too fast to be possible and then
they were charging down the alley and Jack barely registered the struggling
knot of people when Stacey slammed into them, a freight train scattering
bowling pins.
Jack
saw the girl go over and roll amidst the bodies and he lifted his backpack like
a battering ram and slammed into the pile of bodies, driving two little men
apart, then he got knocked to the side and literally tripped over the girl’s
body as she was trying to rise.
Stacey
grabbed a strange looking man by the seat of his pants and the scruff of his
neck and hardly considering lifted the man and spun him up into the air above an
open dumpster. The tossed body boomed loudly inside and there was the crash and
smash of glass and the bang and clatter of metal garbage.
With
lightning quickness Stacey perceived a man spinning toward him and he
registered a foot slamming him across the cheek, but reflexively (those old reflexes,
bless them) he rolled with the blow, and chopped his left elbow up and across
in a savage crank, blasting the blur of a man off his feet. Then with hardly a
breath several men were punching him, kicking him, and he was covering and
turning, swinging his torso about, his arms up in the old stance, he was
blocking and ducking, and he realized (with a stab of embarrassment) he was
bellowing like a bull.
Stacey
took another huge kick to his thigh and he almost went over, but he spun neatly
and backed through the remaining tangle of bodies, putting himself between the
attackers and the two young people, Jack and the girl.
He
was ready, but he reminded himself not to start jumping and hopping like he
always used to do. He used to be a swift motorcycle, but if he attempted to
fight in that fashion, he would die of a heart attack in a matter of seconds,
because now he was more like a lumbering tank than any two-wheeled vehicle. But
he still had all the tools for this kind of madness.
Someone
lurched at him and Stacey neatly jabbed his left fist, a clean snapping strike,
and it caught the guy square in the nose. But that was weird, because the guy
didn’t seem to have a nose. But the little man flopped backward just as neatly
as any normal man would do, nose or not. Stacey feinted at the next closest
assailant, and the thug jerked back.
Stacey
started edging backward, never ceasing his footwork, ever tracking the three
guys in front of him. The guy in the dumpster started emerging like some kind
of eel from a hole but the lid of the dumpster crashed down on him. Stacey felt
a hand on his spine and knew it must be Jack, and kept moving backward, herding
them away from the three odd-looking thugs.
“This
is the main aberration,” one of the identical men said to the other two, “eliminate
him, that is the first objective now.”
The
three men came forward but now each had a long black instrument in hand, at
first Stacey thought they must be watchmen batons, but a second peek revealed
that the weapons were sharp, like needles.
“Ooh
boy,” Stacey murmured. “This…is…gonna…hurt.”
But
he stepped forward, fists up, ready to use the only tools he had at his disposal.
“Get
away, Jack, run!” Stacey commanded under his breath, and he moved forward.
“Stop
this immediately,” barked a voice of command, and Stacey heard behind him shoes
clattering on the pavement. He glanced back, keeping an eye on the three
fighting freaks with their black needles, and he witnessed what had to be the
strangest vision of the day, even in a day full of strange visions, because a
line of businessmen came trotting up the alley, trotting up alongside Stacey
and then passing him, forming into a line of blue business suits.
Stacey
registered there must be six of the businessmen, large men in identical blue
suits, but all the men were diversely varied, there was a blond businessman in
a bowler hat, a black businessman with neat muttonchop sideburns, and at least
two businesswomen with their hair drawn back behind their heads tightly into
buns. They formed a wall between Stacey and the clones. Each of these suited
saviors had their umbrellas up and pointed before them like swords.
“You
should not be here,” the seventh businessman said, coming up alongside Stacey.
He paused for a moment, meeting Stacey’s eyes. Stacey recognized the man from
the park, the one that had given Jack the book, the one Jack mistakenly
believed to be the author, Murakami. “But you handled yourself competently, for
an out-of-shape pugilist.”
Stacey
grinned and managed to pant: “I never liked fighting.” And he was completely
out of breath, with the old asthma just kicking in. He spat on the pavement and
felt like he was about to faint.
Jack
moved up and took hold of Stacey’s arm and wound it over and around his shoulders.
Stacey leaned on him, just beginning to feel pain in his ribs, a limp in his
right leg, and assorted other wailing body parts, crying out for attention.
“You…okay?”
Stacey queried, noticing he could only see Jack through his right eye, the
first kick in the face closing his left eye.
“Fine,
are you okay?” Jack returned, pulling
the larger man away from the stand-off in the alley.
People
were out on the street, many of them looking down the alley, watching the odd
confrontation. The lead businessman pushed through the wall of diverse umbrella
wielders and stood with his own umbrella poking the ground. He looked like a
monument erected to filthy lucre.
“You
are under arrest for crossing boundaries, and violating security,” the
businessman said to the clones.
“You
have no power to arrest Keepers of the Code,” the speaker for the six said.
“I
will not discuss these issues with you, but demand that you come without
protest, or we shall subdue you,” the businessman said, and now he sounded as
if he were enjoying all this.
A
double-cab pickup truck moved across the rear of the alley and a grinning
shaggy head erupted from the descending driver’s window. It was the giant from
the coffee shop.
“Stacey,
Jack, Sandy!” the giant called, “Come with me if you want to live!”
Stacey
and Jack and Seven who stood near them gawked at the giant in the red pickup
truck.
“I’m
just kidding! I always wanted to say something like that, now hurry, get in the
back!” the giant bellowed, and despite his size and shaggy beard, he could almost
pass for a mischievous child, beaming at them. Apparently, he wanted to take
them all on an adventure.
“Do
not leave this place!” the businessman bellowed back at them, and it was at
that moment that the odd-looking attackers launched themselves forward, as if
they meant to break through the line and come after Stacey. The line of
businessmen closed and umbrellas spiraled and flashed, there were fierce cries,
and the din of battle was loud.
“Into
the truck,” Stacey whispered, turning Jack about.
“Agreed,”
Jack snapped, and they began moving toward the truck, both of them limping;
Seven, however, remained where she was, making odd signs in the air with her
finger.
“Come
on,” Stacey called to her over his shoulder.
“It’s
not working,” she wailed, trying everything she knew to take back control of
the crystal sandbox, but it was as if she was no longer in the sim, but the
real world. Each moment that passed in this place made her blood pressure elevate.
A black metal sliver clanged on the ground near her feet and she glanced and
saw that its end was soaked in blood.
Sandra
Newbury ceased signing in the air and dashed after Stacey and Jack.
© Copyright 2016 Douglas Christian Larsen. Vestigial Surreality. All Rights Reserved by the Author, Douglas Christian Larsen. No part of this serial fiction may be reproduced (except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews) or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the publisher, Wolftales UNlimited, but please feel free to share the story with anyone, only not for sale or resale. This work is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental (wink, wink).
Douglas Christian Larsen FREE Short Fiction
Read FREE Sample Chapters of the Douglas Christian Larsen Novel:
Read FREE Sample Chapters of the Rodolphus Novels:
DCLWolf Links:
related terms, ideas, works:
ancestor simulation, digital ark, salvation of humanity,
vestigial surreality, manda project, rocket to saturn,
the singularity, the butterfly effect, simulated reality, matrix,
virtual reality, otherland, the matrix, 1q84, haruki murakami,
hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world, dreaming,
the dream place, waking from a dream, ready player one,
hologram, holodeck, saturn, saturnalia, cycles of time,
simulacron-3, daniel f. galouye, counterfeit world,
tad williams, science fantasy, science fiction,
Victor Frankenstein, Nikola Tesla, genius
do we live in a computer simulation?
Victor Frankenstein, Nikola Tesla, genius
do we live in a computer simulation?
mystery, thriller, horror, techno thriller,
signs and wonders, vestigial surreality,
william gibson, neal stephenson, serial,
cyberpunk, dystopian future, apocalypse,
scifi, mmorpg, online video game world,
end times, apocalypse, armageddon,
digital universe, hologram universe,
sunday sci-fi fantasy serial fiction,
virtual reality, augmented reality
the unknown writer blog
the unknown writer blog
are we living in a simulation?
puppets, puppetry, punch
Elon Musk, Tesla, VR
No comments:
Post a Comment