© Copyright 2017 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der.
Rood Der — Episode Twenty: World Above
The
classroom bustled with girls, with several groups bunched in various areas of
the long expanse, their small old-fashioned desks nosed together. Nobody was in
RL here, of course (nobody did RL university these days), and not even the room
was an actual, physical location, but merely a cloud provision of the
university, a hangout space for bored students with downtime, taking a break
from the mandatory classes that actually provided credits toward their
education. This was a Vestigial Surreality study hall, but most of the students
used it as a gossip and meetup spot, running facile, silly simulations using
the free VS beta software, with several clubs in attendance. Girls in the Chess
Club were grouped close to the group in the Go Club, and on the other side of
the room the Glamor Fashion Club squeezed in almost uncomfortably close to the
snooty Victorian Fashion Club. Avatars were suitably attired, the fashion club
girls wearing highly dysfunctional high couture, the Victorians in stately and
impracticable period dress, the Chess Club girls in three-piece suits and heavy
black geek glasses, with the Go Club girls in Asian costumes, or Russian
Cossack attire, depending upon their faction.
“Just terminate it already, the whole thing
is boring,” Lorraine said, slumped in her desk. She glowered at the others,
daring them to argue.
“We’re seeing it through, it’s almost done,”
said Iona, firmly.
Alycia snorted, but didn’t speak; however,
she drank some VR coffee, making sure that she slurped loudly.
“I agree with Iona, let’s just wait till it’s
done, and then we can finally run your zombie apocalypse,” said Vivienne, but
making sure that she didn’t catch Lorraine’s eye. “I don’t know why people
still want to run zombie apocalypses.”
Lorraine glowered at Vivienne, and her
already rosy cheeks flushed scarlet.
“I agree,” piped in Shonna, ensuring that she
offered Lorraine a big, California girl smile. “I mean about sticking with it,
our sim. Eye knows best.”
“Me too, there’s some interesting stuff,”
agreed Yvette.
“Interesting stuff,” spat Lorraine. “There’s
absolutely nothing interesting about it. Nothing significant has happened. The
world sure didn’t improve. It just got stupid. Again, men started taking over,
ruining everything. I don’t know why the hell we went with Ayn Rand. I still
think we should have run the Hillary Clinton sim.”
“Nobody was ever gonna let Clinton be
president, not even in a simulation,” said Alycia, surprising them all. She
generally didn’t offer her opinion, but even now, although she had spoken, she
seemed detached, staring out one of the VR windows (it was snowing outside,
while the next window over, it was a view of the beach, sunny and bright, and
the next window down an underwater view of a brightly lit reef). None of these
things actually existed any longer, so they were exotic, fantasy views of the world.
Scooted far away from the regulation and
official clubs, was the Odd Ballz Club, a collection of the usual university
misfits, snobs, loners, or new girls. This group had coalesced because each of
the girls enjoyed running simulations that were highly unapproved, and usually
improbable, and in some cases dangerous, while in their spare time they ran
such singular simulations completely off the grid (and there were...rumors, about each of them). They often
gathered here to compare their results, while maintaining a simulation in which
they all participated, calling it, half-jokingly, Rand World.
Shonna, a very rich girl, who didn’t mind
when the others referred to her as an airhead (she sported a certified IQ badge
of 110, and seemed intensely proud of it, displaying the VR medal high on her
left shoulder), usually was the spokesperson, as she, while lacking both great
GPA and the enhanced IQs of the others, certainly had the most pronounced gift
for gab. Her avatar was medium-sized and blonde.
Yvette, also wealthy (independently), was the
good girl of the group and would proudly assure anyone that she had never
experimented with any of the virtual drugs, not even VR pot, and had the best
gift for peacemaking—she often pulled the girls back together after their usual
passionate spats. Her 140 IQ kept the other girls on their toes. Her avatar
looked like something out of Little House
on the Prairie or Anne of Green
Gables, puffed sleeves, bonnet, and all.
Lorraine, the group’s token bully, was a
middle-class girl partially on scholarship, and her main goal in life seemed to
be criticizing the use of simulations, especially their pathetic Rand World. She constantly chain-lit VR Virginia Slim cigarettes, which she
sported in the corner of her lips, and puffed the VR smoke at the others. She
quipped that she wanted to see if she could give her avatar cancer, but
constantly maintained her lipstick, which she checked every couple of minutes
with a little mirror. Her avatar was gorgeous, and exotic, with alien
cheekbones, huge black eyes, and a high hair-do that suggested a Geisha
mistress. No one, however, believed her to be Asian, as the previous year she
had worn an African-American avatar, and the year prior to that, mixed-race
gear.
Vivienne, ancient for university at
twenty-seven years of age, was here on a hundred percent scholarship ride, a comeback (a derogatory term applied to
adults that came back to school after broken marriages, failed careers, or
rehab), maintaining a 4.5 GPA at all times, and never attended a single party
or rave. Her 138 IQ was good enough to assure most perks at the university, but
not expansive enough to ensure any deference or hero worship. She was mostly
quiet in their talks and arguments, but never missed a single nuance or
whisper. The other girls felt she might be studying them for a novel she was
secretly writing. Her avatar always wore reading glasses perched at the end of
her very long, pointed nose, and her round cheeks blushed frantically at some
of the things Lorraine and Alycia were fond of spitting at each other. She was
also reproachful of Vivienne’s cigarettes, on principle, as apparently, cancer
was a genetic disposition in her family.
Iona, the others suspected, wore an avatar
that line-for-line reproduced her RL person, and was as fiery and passionate as
her red hair alluded. She was the only one actually studying Simulation for her
major, and she tended to steer the Odd Ballz into the preposterous worlds they
created and shaped. She was tiny, or at least her avatar was tiny, hardly five
feet in height, and she always sat in her VR desk with her knees drawn up under
her cleft chin (a facial feature of which she seemed inordinately
self-conscious, at one time admitting to Vivienne that she considered it a
deformity), which she almost always planted a fist there like a screen to hide
the offending fleshy dimple—in truth, the other girls thought the chin cleft
adorable, though they certainly never told her so, and once, just as a joke,
they had appeared in the VR study hall sporting similar clefts on avatar chins,
but they understood they had gone too far when Iona, looking around at them
with her jaw dropped, had winked out, and had not reappeared to meet with their
group for an entire week. Iona had the highest IQ (169, unenhanced, she did not
wish to rely on the brain augmentation, and felt she could get in permanent trouble
with gear in her skull if there was ever an EMP dropped over the city), and the
other girls understood that she was no joke, and had never mentioned their prank,
or her chin, or her dimple, again. And though tiny, she had no problem standing
up to Lorraine, when the bully pushed things too far.
Alycia, the final member of the Odd Ballz,
smiled when you referred to her as the bad girl. She was devilishly clever, and
could turn an insult on its head and spit it right back in your face—her avatar
featured horribly erotic tattoos of indeterminate gender, and it seemed at
every Odd Ballz meeting she had a new piercing on her face (by the latest
count, seven earrings in each ear, all about the rim of the ear, two in her
lower lip, and three in the upper lip, a nose-ring possibly stolen from a small
bull, and a tiny diamond stud in each nostril, two through her left eyebrow,
and three through the left, and her exposed mid-drift revealed three in her belly
button). These, of course, were only the visible tattoos. She wore black
leathers and thigh-high boots, and once or twice wore what must have been a
floppy musketeer hat, complete with garishly large black feather, her panache.
She mostly sat sprawled backward in her desk, listening to the others, shaking
her head, drinking her bottomless VR coffee, black, and staring into the
depths, but seemed to always have the answer to any problem after the other
girls had spent ten minutes arguing, cursing, threatening, and screaming. Her
avatar was cadaverously pale and gaunt, although mysteriously attractive, and
other girls suspected, like Iona, that Alycia wore a simulation very close to
her RL person. She was tall, almost six feet.
“Ayn did okay, at least as well as Ford,
Carter, and Reagan,” pronounced Iona, her nose up. It had been her idea for
running the sim with Ayn Rand as president, after all. “But she was every bit
as controversial as Trump, though her extravaganzas made a bit more sense.”
“Yeah, sure, ole Ayn did okay, but we had to
replace Ford as Veep, and you know Nixon would have never picked a woman for
his VP,” sneered Lorraine, chain lighting her tenth Virginia Slim of the day (and it was only ten in the morning).
“Plus, the best president ever—we already
know, history proves it out, that’s why I thought this was silly,” said Yvette.
“Nobody ever did better than President Neta-Lee Hershlag Portman, elected in 2024
and serving four terms, winning the popular vote and the electoral vote every
time, overwhelmingly, and she didn’t even push for setting aside the
Twenty-Second Amendment. First female president, longest-serving president,
most popular president, prettiest president, as well as the very last
president!”
“Gee,” said Alycia, almost to herself,
staring into her coffee. “Augment much?”
“That wasn’t augment,” said Yvette, sounding
wounded. “She’s not only my favorite president, but my favorite movie star, and
author!”
“Stop talking in exclamation marks,” grated
Lorraine, glowering.
“If you don’t want to see my exclamation points,
then turn off the silly old CC,” pouted Yvette. “I can’t help it if I’m...exuberant! Not like some people!”
“Gee wilikins!”
mock-exclaimed Alycia, which brought all-around laughter, organically, even
from Lorraine and Yvette.
The group, save for Lorraine, gave her Likes,
and even though Alycia never courted any kind of Socnet pats on the back, she grinned. That grin was too much for Lorraine,
who belatedly gave her a Thumbs Down. Alycia sighed and shook her head, and
returned to her coffee.
“I can’t stand those old movies, there’s no
interaction,” said Alycia.
“Me too, or the books, I can’t believe people
paid money for books and spent so much time watching movies—I mean just watching,” said Lorraine. “What fun is
that, if you can’t touch the scenes and things, and the people.”
“I was examining some anomalies last night,”
began Iona, but Shonna and Vivienne burst in on her, with strangled whispers
and bulging eyes.
“You are not supposed to do that!”
whisper-shrieked Shonna.
“They’ll revoke your Sim privileges, we don’t
take the class stuff home,” whispered Vivienne.
“Oh big deal,” said Lorraine, “we’re not even
getting real credit for this, just special-project status, big deal, you guys,
sheesh.”
“Sheesh,” repeated Alycia, earning a glare
from Lorraine.
“Plus we all agreed there were no anomalies,
our sim pretty much agrees with history, as always the president hardly made
any kind of difference,” said Vivienne, keeping her eyes down. “None did in
that era, they were all the same hand beneath a different puppet.”
“Yeah, my point, nothing interesting, so who
cares if she sneaks it home?” Lorraine said, leaning back in her chair, bored
out of her skull.
“I just took a little copy home, you know we
all do,” said Iona, also whispering.
“I’ll never admit to that,” said Lorraine.
“I’ve only taken a couple of...pieces, you know, home, just to see what
they’re like,” said Iona, rolling her eyes. “Nobody cares. Nobody’s monitoring
us. I wanted socio topo maps, as well as to see what the people were like in
the early Two Thousands.
“But I couldn’t see what was going on, I only
had the lowest definition, but I could see that about nine different character
points winked out, then winked back in. But stranger, two other things winked
in, one was very bright, and the other was faint and wandered off into the
simulation, and there’s no telling where either of the two entry characters
came from, or where the others go to, but they’ve been doing a whole lot of
activity,” Iona finally concluded, speaking very fast to fit all this in as she
always did when she knew either Lorraine or Shonna would interrupt at any
moment.
“So? It’s a flat-world simulation, things go
off the edges,” said Lorraine.
“No, it’s not a flat-world-sim,” interjected
Vivienne, “that’s why we had to run it at so low a resolution. We set for full
world. So nothing should be wandering out of the borders, as there are no
borders.”
“Exactly,” said Iona, “and it’s also
impossible.”
“Big deal, it’s just a cheapo VS, they don’t
give us the full ancestor-simulation package, are computers aren’t big enough
to run them,” said Lorraine.
“That’s what it looks like at first,” agreed
Iona, “but I was able to zoom in to observe the activity from above. I wish I
had taken more of a slice of the data. I could see that this group of sims was
doing something furtive.”
“Furtive?” sneered Lorraine, sighing
dramatically and falling back in her chair.
“It means sneaky,” supplied Alycia, grinning.
“I know what furtive means,” said Lorraine,
glowering at Alycia.
“I was able to see that they built a tunnel
between two houses,” said Iona. “And they did a pretty good job of installing
the whole effort in the middle of several nights, so none of the neighbors made
a fuss, and then they hid the thing so well, goodness, you’d never guess that
there was a hundred-foot tunnel beneath the houses. And the one house is where
the appearances and disappearances have been going on, in the timeline of the
sim, it’s all been about three to six months, and now, I just checked and none
of the original sims are there, and there is absolutely no sign of where or how
they left.”
“Ooh,” Alycia crooned, “what if they found a
way to come here, and they are going to start bumping us off in horrible ways,
one after the other? Kill the gods for giving us this crappy life!”
“Don’t say things like that,” Yvette said,
and Vivienne nodded in hearty agreement.
“Can we zoom in, check it out, see what
they’re up to?” queried Lorraine, looking interested all of the sudden.
“I thought we might like to do that, so I’ve
gone ahead and channeled resources to building out that whole six-month period,
from just before the initial anomaly, up until now—I mean as far as the
simulation has run,” Iona said.
“I’m not paying for any resources,” said
Lorraine.
“You don’t have to—I figured you wouldn’t
want to contribute, Lorre, so I’m using some credits I’ve built up over the
past year,” Iona said, sounding very unconcerned, yet very determined.
“Oh, I’ll kick in, let me pay for half,” said
Shonna. They all knew, if pressed, she would pay for the whole shebang, as she
often did. She wasn’t showing off, she just did not think of credits, or money
for that matter, as entirely real. It was just there and had always been there
and would always be there and if you needed something you just scattered some
of the credits around like seeds and your desires grew up.
“Me too, split it three ways,” said Vivienne,
who was always ready to contribute, especially if there was a real chance for
mystery, and romance. Although no one had ever caught her in the activity, they
all suspected that she was a reader, of books, and that if they could peek into
her RL world, however small that place must be, they would discover books
lining the walls. They thought this was the funniest thing, in like ever.
The Great Burnings were over, and people had
mostly stopped thinking about those things, but the truth was that the legality
of privately owned books had just never been reinstated. So it probably was not
illegal, but not exactly legal.
“Whatever,” said Alycia, “five ways.”
Although somewhat distant, and usually snotty, Alycia would generally come
through for her mates.
“Well, if everyone else is doing it, we can
do a six-way split,” said Lorraine, huffing. In the early days the other girls
had gossiped among themselves that Lorraine might actually be a man, in masquerade, which would be
amazing, and highly illegal (unless she was one of the gender people).
“I figured that’s how we would roll,” said
Iona, smirking, “so that’s the way I split it last night when I placed the
order!”
Most of the girls snickered, as they expected
nothing less of Iona, who was known for making decisions for the whole group,
which practice had set off some of the most hilatious fights.
Her hand over her chin (thoughtfully), she
smiled. “And I’m glad we are all in agreement, because the full simulation is
coming available right now. We can go in, but I suggest ghost mode.”
“Yes, but first we better enter a private
chat room—we don’t want any of the chess or go geeks catching a glimpse of our
stupid simulation,” said Lorraine. Although she was usually the most controlling
and dominating of the group, she was generally the most practical of the five
girls.
“And put a shell about the whole thing, with
double encryption, with our usual password, only do it backward this time,”
Alycia said.
“Do our password backward? What do you mean?”
Shonna asked, eyes wide.
“You don’t know what backward means?”
Lorraine snorted.
“No, I mean yeah, but no, I don’t know how to
say it backward,” Shonna said.
“Don’t actually say it out loud,” cautioned
Alycia, who was expecting Shonna to do just that thing at any moment, which
would necessitate the creation of a new password.
“Type it, call up a keyboard,” Vivienne said,
providing an example, showing the virtual keyboard and typing: Now is the time for all good girls to come
to the aid of their country, the text appearing in their midst just above
their heads.
“Oh, is that what you mean?” Shonna asked in
complete seriousness. “I don’t know how to type. I always do my texts with
sub-audibles.”
Lorraine rolled her eyes, sighing loudly.
“Here. Don’t show anybody this. It’s a password cookie, helpfully typed in
reverse, you just feed it to the prompt when it appears.”
“Oh, thank you, Lorre,” bubbled Shonna. “That
is so much fun. I think I’ll do all my passwords that way from now on. Can you
write me a sub that changes the prompt into a mouth? Like a monster mouth?”
“Done. Glad I could be of service, I’ll send
you the password-cookie app, and the monster-mouth app” said Lorraine. “Where
is that invite, Iona? Let’s see what our credits purchased.”
“This is going to be so much fun,” Yvette
said, coloring prettily, looking more than ever like Anne of Green Gables, when Anne was older, and becoming a beauty.
A private chatroom appeared as a text message
and each member of the group logged in. They appeared, each of them standing in
a plain room with couches and small coffee tables.
“Why do they always make these things like a
clinic waiting room?” Alycia wondered.
“You mean like in the old movies? I’ve never
been out of our manor,” said Shonna.
“Yeah, like in the old movies,” Alycia said,
closing her eyes.
“Reminds me of the waiting rooms in the old
rehab movies,” said Lorraine, slyly.
“Okay,” said Iona, interjecting before Alycia
could retaliate, “I’m opening a door right here, and we’ll enter into the
basement of what they later call Cross House. This is at the beginning of the
simulation, or at least a few days before the anomalies began. Our only real
objective is to ascertain the nature of the anomaly.”
“Sounds good,” said Alycia, “but please stop
talking like an aug.”
Iona, paused, almost said something, then
shook her head and opened the door, and after a few long seconds, strolled
through. The other girls gave each other nervous looks and then slowly filed
in, one at a time, understanding that what they were doing was not only highly
discouraged by the university, but depending on how things progressed, could
get them kicked out of the school.
“Let’s see what we paid for,” Lorraine
sighed, moving forward in little steps, her long legs constrained by her ankle-length
silk kimono.
They emerged in a dark room with brick walls.
A long table with many chairs dominated the space, and there were absurd
decorations on the walls. It looked like a child’s room, from a few centuries
back, except there were plastic swords and other weapons instead of teddy bears
and dolls.
“How weird,” Shonna crooned appreciatively.
“Bizarre!” exclaimed Vivienne, her hands on
her cheeks.
“Is this what they used to call a man cave?” Alycia asked, pulling out a
chair and plunking down at the table.
“From what I’ve been able to see, it’s a
meeting room, for some kind of club,” said Iona.
“Vivienne just moved that chair—what if
someone comes in right now?” asked Vivienne.
“They might think they have poltergeists, or that
a burglar might have come through,” said Iona, walking around the room, looking
at everything, but touching nothing.
“I’ve only been in sims where you are one of
the characters, this is so weird that they aren’t supposed to know we are here,
among the poor things—never been in one where we could be their gods!” she
crooned, and they knew she was going to want to mess with these poor nolifes. The poor creatures in this
“world” were not even based on real people, but just upon a concept, the girls
pulled from the air when they were particularly bored.
“We should appear to them, really freak them
out, and then demand that they worship us,” said Lorraine, sounding especially
evil (even for her). “Don’t you want to know what that feels like?”
“No we are not doing any of those things, and
when we get to a scene where it is populated, do not mess with the sims, is
that understood?” Iona demanded, glaring at the bunch of them.
In turn they gave her nasty looks, Shonna
saluting, Vivienne actually curtsying, Yvette nodding energetically, and then
Alycia and Lorraine giving her the finger (they actually did that,
simultaneously, and then they looked at each other and laughed, and then bumped
fists and elbows and twittered fingertips in some elaborate ritual they must
have picked up somewhere in some upside-down simulation). Collectively, the Odd
Ballz laughed, nervously—they were actually excited about this thing, for the
first time. There had been some kind of outside obtrusion into this spreadsheet
simulation, and then there had been disappearances, all of it originating in
this room. Iona was going to get to the bottom of the mystery, and the other
girls were going to come along.
“I don’t get why it is so lush, I mean like a
real historical room, I thought it was going to be like an animation or
something,” said Vivienne, strolling about the room, almost dreamily, hugging
herself as she walked.
“Since we were going to be investigating, I
wanted the full deal,” said Iona, checking out the bricks in the wall, as if
she were searching for a lever or hidden switch.
“Investigating,”
said Vivienne, dreamily. “Detectives.
I’ve always wanted to solve a real mystery. Thank you, Iona. This is just too
much. Thank you, Eye.”
“What?” said Iona, distractedly. “I just want
to see what’s going on. Someone’s been messing in here.”
“This is kind of boring,” said Lorraine. “Why
don’t you forward to a place where there are some actual girls.”
“That’s another weird thing, I don’t know
what it means, you’ll see what I mean, it’s entirely weird,” said Iona,
strolling to the far side of the room and shepherding the other girls as she
went, actually shoving Lorraine and Alycia as she went.
“You don’t know what it means, we’ll see what
you mean,” said Lorraine, rolling her eyes. “You are the weird thing here, Eye. Would you just tell us already?
What’s your major, and all that?”
“Okay, stand against this wall, whatever
happens, it’s over there on that wall, opposite. The Anomaly. Now I don’t want
any of you messing with the sim, or the sims. Behave yourselves. Don’t change
anything,” Iona commanded, as she slid Alycia’s chair back into its original
place at the table. They could see that she had several windows up in the air
about her head and she was checking them.
Iona looked at them. “Are you all going to
behave?”
They responded in kind, as before, but nobody
laughed this time. There was an air of expectancy in the room. They were
excited, and they could feel it, and they pulled in tight side by side, their
eyes wide.
“Okay, I’m forwarding to the day of the
anomaly, hold onto something,” Iona said, making adjustments in her windows,
and then she reached out and grabbed hold of the air, and moved it to the
left—they all understood this gesture, Iona was advancing them through time,
and the world rocked and rolled, for just a moment, making their stomachs drop
down for an instant.
The Odd Ballz giggled, quietly, glancing
about at each other, each of them grabbing their bellies.
“I love that,” whispered Vivienne.
“Shhh,” commanded Iona. And then, “Remember,
no joking, no messing. Just see if you notice anything—”
The door at the left side of the basement
room kicked open, and a very large man
came into the room, hefting small cardboard packets of dark bottles in his
large hands and under his arms.
“What the hell?” whispered Alycia, as they all
gawked.
The man was big and hale, with thinning gray
hair and a pleasantly lined face. He could almost be called bald, which was
weird enough, but he still had enough hair to arrange bizarrely all over his
head to give the appearance of just a bit more hair than he actually possessed.
He looked like a picture-book representation of the word Grandpa.
“Why in the world is he so—clean?” cried Shonna.
“Is he a scientist or something?” cried
Yvette, laughing.
“Shhhh!” commanded Iona.
“Oh come on, he can’t hear us, we don’t have
to whisper,” said Lorraine, practically yelling, but she sounded as
wonder-struck as Shonna and Yvette.
The man didn’t hear the outbursts, but went
about the room, switching on lights and small machines that whooshed air.
“I don’t know what he’s doing, not any more
than you guys,” said Iona, calling up a new window, which she split with a chop
of her hand, and this she flung at the group which became individual windows
for each of the Odd Ballz. “If you have questions, just refer to this, it will
provide subtitles and translations if we need them. There’s his name.”
“Hank
Reardon? Seriously?” said Alycia, giggling.
“Rand World, remember? He would have been
born about ten years after Atlas Shrugged,”
whispered Iona. “Ayn Rand would have been a senator, if I remember the
chronology correctly. The whole country was worshipping her at that point, no,
the whole world.”
“Seriously, stop whispering,” said Lorraine. “You
are just beginning to start pissing me off.”
“We passed that point about a year ago,” said
Alycia.
“Ayn Rand rules the world,” said Vivienne in
awe.
“Hey, what’s the man doing?” queried Yvette,
watching the man doing some kind of odd operation in the corner of the room at
a sink with a small glass container.
“I think he’s making coffee,” said Iona.
“He’s...making...coffee?”
laughed Shonna, “Seriously?”
“Is he a wizard or something?” asked Yvette. “Is
this going to turn into something about magic? How in the world can he make
coffee?”
“And why would he want to?” snickered
Vivienne.
“I want some,” said Alycia, laughing, calling
up a steaming cup into her hand with a slight gesture.
“How primeval,” said Shonna, smiling hugely,
shaking her blonde head.
“Remember guys,” cautioned Iona, “no goofing
off, I’m serious. And wait, when he gets that little machine going, water is
pumped up over a hot filament that heats it to a an extremely high temperature,
91 degrees Celsius, or 195 degrees Fahrenheit, and the water is pumped onto the
coffee grinds and soaks through into the carafe below—wait till you smell it.
It’s really something.”
“We’ve smelled coffee before, big deal, and
you don’t have to aug on us, Eye,
remember? We all have augments,” sniped Lorraine.
“Leave her alone, it’s interesting,” said
Shonna. “You go right ahead and aug
all you desire, sweet Eye. And I get it, I get it, this old man is the butler,
like in the old days. He’s making coffee for the old girls, who are about to
arrive, right? I got it, didn’t I?”
“Oh it gets weirder,” said Iona, “and no, he’s
not the butler. I think he used to be a policeman of some sort.”
“It says so,” said Yvette, “in the Info
Window, ex-cop. High school boxer, whatever that is. Wow, he’s fifty years old!
I didn’t think men could live that long, especially in the old days! I had no
idea our little simulation was this interesting! Hank, he is the leader of The Viking Simulation Society. Hey, it’s
like the Odd Ballz!”
“Yes,” said Iona, smiling at Yvette. “Just
like us, and that’s where it get weird—listen, here come the others. Wait, just
some of them, it looks like three are about to come down the stairs.”
They heard loud footsteps on the stairs and
they turned in time to see three new—men!
The oddest looking people, men, three of them, came trooping into the room, all
smiles and boasts.
“You must be joking,” said Lorraine, in
wonder. “Four men in one room?”
“And they are all so clean!” laughed Shonna.
One of the men looked like a boy, he was so
lanky and gawky, with an extremely large Eve’s apple bobbing in his throat, and
a little hat on the back of his head. But on closer inspection, he was older
than any of the Odd Ballz, thirty years of age! He just looked so young, and
innocent, and...funny!
“Rodney Weinstein,” said Shonna. “He’s
wearing...spectacles! Have you ever heard of such a thing? Like Benjamin
Franklin!”
“Look! The next guy is Frederic d’Aconia—another...Randy!” roared Yvette, doubling over,
whacking her knees. “Everything is coming up Ayn Rand! And Barney Taggart, how
funny, they’ve all got Rand names, except for the Jewish guy, but then again
Ayn Rand was Jewish, right? This is so weird. This is too weird.”
“She was so popular people were actually
changing their surnames, legally,” explained Iona.
Barney Taggart, the meaty guy with bright
orange hair, actually threw himself into a chair, popped one of the brown
bottles out of its paper container, and levered off the top of the bottle with
a little silver device, and then he began guzzling whatever liquid was in the
bottle.
“Beer,” said Alycia, “I want some.” She waved
away her coffee and pulled a similar bottle from the air, which she opened with
her fingertips.
“Oh he is ugly,” Shonna laughed, studying
Barney. She moved close to the table and studied him. “And he’s so...loud. That’s what I think of when I try
to think about men, that’s exactly what they are, right here, just look at him?
Isn’t he funny? Like a frog wearing an orange wig!”
“That’s not what I think about when I want to think about men,” said Alycia.
“That’s because you are our official...perv,” snapped Lorraine.
“What kind of group is this?” queried Vivienne,
adjusting her glasses, studying Frederic, quite closely.
“That’s the weirdest part, I mean even
weirder than them being...men— the fact that they have formed this
Wednesday-night group to explore the possibility that their whole world...is a simulation,” said Iona, going back to
whispering, not looking away from the group gathering at the table.
“No way,” said Shonna, Yvette, and Vivienne,
as one, rubbing the backs of their arms, everyone alight with gooseflesh.
“It’s what they’re about,” said Iona. “They
don’t believe it, of course. They couldn’t. The Simulation Program actually
turns any such thoughts back on themselves, and they tell themselves that they
are joking, that this is all fun. They talk science fiction and time travel,
and they are a sort of book club, as well, they read all the old books about
Virtual Reality and simulations and games, but Vestigial Surreality won’t even
be created for almost three hundred years. High Vale, that old simulated world,
that won’t even launch until 2260, and it’s what gives them the beginning
notion for VS.”
“High Vale started all the trouble, people could
just do to much, it really pissed off the world,” said Shonna, auging.
“Come on, we just have a wanky sim running
here—there is no way in any world that these...idiots, I mean come on, they’re men! No way they can figure out
anything like...that,” yelled Lorraine.
Everyone stopped talking. Everyone. The Odd
Ballz looked about them, in shock, and awe, because the Viking Simulation guys
had stopped their inane babble, and were staring about themselves.
“Did you hear that?” Rodney Weinstein asked.
“It’s just ghosts,” laughed Barney Taggart,
after a very pregnant pause, looking almost truly terrified, but he was turning
it all into a joke, or at least he was pretending to laugh off whatever had
scared them. Or, more likely, the Program was kicking in, turning aside the
anomaly of Lorraine’s encroaching shout.
“I told you,” whisper-shrieked Iona, “not to
goof off! Damn it, there is something eerie going on!”
“I’ll say,” said Lorraine, sounding as
terrified as the Viking Simulation men.
“That was the...Abyss,” whispered Rodney Weinstein.
“Oh don’t start in with that—we just heard
some kids screaming outside, that’s all,” Barney Taggart said, passing off the
eerie moment. You could see, actually watch it on their faces, their
consideration of the plausibility, and then their acceptance, and dismissal,
all in a matter of seconds, played out right there across their faces. It was
actually kind of wonderful.
“What is that smell?” whispered Shonna, after
a moment, as everyone in the room—on both sides of the divide—began to relax.
“Ooh, yeah, what in the world is it?” said
Alycia, in wonder, taking great sniffs.
“That, my idiotic friends,” said Iona, quite
smuggly, “is the smell of coffee,
brewing. Real coffee, Arabica coffee.”
“It smells like heaven,” said Vivienne,
closing her eyes and breathing deeply.
“It smells like heaven,” crooned Rodney Taggart,
closing his eyes and taking deep inhalations.
“That, my idiot friends,” said Hank Reardon, “is
the smell of coffee, brewing.
Mountain coffee.”
“What is going on?” whispered Alycia,
freaking out.
“I told you, there is something going on,
something...inexplicable,” whispered Iona.
“I think we should get out of here,”
whispered Yvette, “we could get in trouble for this. I mean real trouble. I
think we already corrupted everything.”
“Oh big deal,” whispered Lorraine. “It’s a
knock-off sim, it’s a spreadsheet,
for Diana’s sake! We are just running freebie VS. Nobody cares. We could take
these boys out dancing and nobody would give a damn. We could have them.”
“We are not
going dancing,” whispered Iona, sternly. “And we aren’t having anyone.”
“I think Frederic is kind of cute,” said
Vivienne. “There’s something...dreamy
about him, don’t you think?”
“I kind of like Rodney, I’ve never even
imagined anyone like him before,” said Shonna.
“You must be joking. He’d call you a crazy shiksa,” sneered Lorraine, auging.
“But he’d still have you,” giggled Alycia. “I think he’d have you plenty. Look at him. He’s a virgin. In fact, it says so,
right here in the Info Window.”
“It does?” asked Shonna and Yvette, together.
There was more clattering and clomping on the
stairs and three additional men joined The Viking Simulation Society, one of
them especially...exotic. The Odd Ballz oohed and ahed.
“Look at him!” Shonna exclaimed, “he’s
beautiful!”
“Isn’t he what used to be called—an...African?” queried Yvette.
“African-American,”
added Iona, staring at the new man, who went right over to the coffee machine
and poured himself two cups of coffee.
“Technical,” auged Lorraine, “they call it Mulatto,
or no, I think he’s an octoroon, maybe a quadroon, I think that’s what they
used to call it.”
“Technically,” whispered Iona, “I think all
of those are considered offensive terms.”
“Ooh, didn’t mean to offend you, Eye,” crooned
Lorraine, “I’m so sorry. I got the terms right out of GooCloud.
“Stop googling everything,” whispered Iona.
“Like you haven’t been googling up a storm,”
whispered Lorraine.
“Both of you stop it,” whispered Shonna, and
then smiled hugely. “Hey, who is John
Galt?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, Ayn Rand, very funny,”
whispered Lorraine.
“No, look, that’s his name—the beautiful guy!
He’s John Galt!” giggled Shonna, too
loudly.
“Finally we have the answer to that age-old
question,” mused Vivienne.
“Who is John Galt,” said Frederic, accepting
a cup of coffee from John Galt, who sat down next to him with his own cup.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, Ayn Rand,” said John
Galt, rolling his eyes. “Very funny, Freddy. Now knock it off. It’s not my
fault—blame my Mama.”
“It just came to me,” said Frederic, looking
mystical and dreamy.
“I think we are affecting their thoughts, we
need to stop talking,” whispered Iona.
“We all need to stop talking,” said Hank,
taking his place at the far head of the table.
All the guys sat down at the table, scooting
in their chairs, including Jethro Mouch and Ronald Rand—their names in the Info
Windows producing a few subdued giggles from the Odd Ballz.
“I get John Galt—I call him,” whispered
Shonna.
“No that’s not fair, I saw him first,”
whispered Yvette.
“We all saw him at the same time and I should
get him, I’m the best looking,” whispered Lorraine.
“I’m the oldest, I call him,” shot Vivienne.
“You are not, I’m the oldest,” said Alycia, “and
he’s mine.”
“Knock it off,” said Iona.
“Janken
Taikai,” whispered Alycia.
And five of the Odd Ballz immediately snapped
out their hands and counted off, and to no one’s surprise on the first casting,
Yvette and Shonna were eliminated, holding scissors to Alycia and Lorraine’s rocks,
and then on the second casting, Lorraine cursed herself with paper against
Alycia’s scissors.
“John Galt is Alycia’s man, that’s who John
Galt is!” Alycia laughed, braving Iona’s scowl.
“The Viking Simulation Society meeting is called
to order,” called Hank Rearden, with some majesty, and actually slammed his
fist on the table like a gavel.
“All hail the Vikings!” the men at the table
called loudly in one united voice, lifting up beers or coffees, and doing a
peculiar head gesture, where they actually moved their eyebrows, all the while
knocking loudly on the table three times. There was something strangely moving
about the whole thing, this camaraderie, these innocent-seeming male humans—evidently
a time before men became so...wild, together,
trying to figure out if they were real or not. Fellowship, that’s what it was,
like church. The nuns would love to see this.
The Odd Ballz immediately began trying to
move their own eyebrows, even Iona.
“How realistic is this?” whispered Lorraine, “all
these men in one room, and none of them naked, or drooling, and where’s the...meat? Supposedly the men from these days
only got together to burn animals on metal grates, actually consuming the meat!”
“Don’t be disgusting,” said Shonna, “these
men are obviously scientists, or priests.”
“Could be the Ayn Rand ascendancy changed
some of those things, I don’t know, or maybe men didn’t always run around naked
like it says in the history tabs, I don’t really know,” whispered Iona.
“What in the Name of Diana are they doing
now?” asked Shonna.
For Hank Reardon was walking about the table
with what looked like a wooden box—that couldn’t be true, could it? How
expensive could a box made of actual wood cost, and these men certainly didn’t
seem that important. Thus the box must be made of synthetic wood, some kind of
simulated plastic. But it was the strange things the men were withdrawing from
the wooden box that had Shonna confused. Strange dark shapes, long, about the
length of a spoon, but thick.
“I think those are sausages,” said Vivienne.
“What is a sausages?” asked Shonna, leaning
close to peer into the box as Hank passed close by.
“It’s meat,” said Vivienne, crinkling her
nose in disgust.
“Ah-ha!” laughed Lorraine, “here’s the meat!”
Then the men began doing something truly
bizarre, sticking the sausages into their mouths and lighting them with some
kind of fire-producing machine that they passed from hand to hand.
“Puteo!”
squawked Shonna, augmenting her best Latin to express her disgust.
“Must be smoked sausage,” said Vivienne, “and
it really, really stinks! What is wrong with them? They actually smoke meat?
Maybe this is a sadomasochism club? What if it’s human meat? People back in
these days literally killed and ate everything, didn’t they? Even people?”
Alycia snorted. “What is wrong with you guys?
Those are cigars. It’s what the men used to smoke instead of cigarettes, the bikers, you’ve heard of them? They wore
lots of leather and denim with skulls, and they smoked cigars, it made their
bicycles look like the old steam trains, puffing out clouds of smoke to intimidate
citizens that could not afford bicycles!”
“Ah like Virginia
Slims,” said Lorraine, as if enjoying a major epiphany. “These are just big
Virginia Slims, probably made especially
for men! You know how men always felt left out, and copied women in everything,
so they made their Virginia Slims much bigger, much cruder, I suppose to
represent the gender differences.”
“The cigar represents the penis,” said
Vivienne, blushing profusely.
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” said
Alycia.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Shhhh!”
“I think in Year 2310, when they closed High
Vale, they also purged all the books, and digitally removed all forms of
smoking from the old movies,” said Shonna, her eyes fluttering in the top of
her head as she quickly sorted through data.
“Oh you can still get the unexpurgated
movies,” said Alycia, “if you know the right people.”
“I bet you know all the right people,”
sneered Lorraine.
“Yes, I knew your mother, and well,” sneered
Alycia in retaliation.
“Knock it off!” commanded Iona, rolling her
eyes at them and lifting her hands to heavens in entreaty. “Diana damn both of
you idiots.”
“Diana damn you, shorty,” Alycia retorted.
“Yeah, like what she said, Diana damn you, Clefty,” Lorraine whispered, half to
herself.
“Why don’t you three just step outside and
fight it out like men,” Shonna whispered at the three, drawing a finger abruptly
across her throat for quiet. “Then you can have a pissing contest, although I
don’t know exactly what that is, but men like this used to participate in them.
You should listen to what they are saying, it’s getting truly...bizarre!”
“Did you hear what old Elon Musk said?”
Frederic was asking, sipping at his coffee. “It made it into all the papers. I
saw it on the Fox News last night.”
“Oh boy,” Hank said, “it must of been about
electric cars, how they will save the world.”
“Or solar panels, that man loves the solar
panels!” laughed John Galt.
The Odd Ballz sighed, as even his laugh was
beautiful. Iona had to admit it, even she was affected.
“Hey, they know about Musk,” said Yvette, excitedly, who adored historical figures,
especially those that made some kind of mark on the world, and she especially
loved Elon Musk, because he was the First Man, the significant husband behind
the adored President Portman.
Musk was not as historically significant as
his wife, possibly, who was the most adored president in U.S. history, but he
had gotten the proverbial ball rolling, starting the world into the future, one
of the key players in turning the death spiral of the world around, if only for
a little while. As far as men went—as far as they could go—Elon Musk was right there with Jack Messenger, President
Portman’s Wisdom Counselor (upon whom the Jackian religion was established,
although only after his death at one hundred sixty-five years of age). Elon
Musk lived to be nearly one hundred thirty years of age.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard, I heard,” Rodney
said, excitedly, and burst into a nasty coughing jag. “He said we probably are
living in some kid’s video game, way in the future!”
“Did Musk really say anything like that?”
Lorraine asked, amazed.
Iona paused the simulation, searching, but
managed to say: “It depends on which version of Musk you are talking about, as
more simulations have been run on him than any other human being. But he was an
actual biological, not just a figure in Vestigial Surreality. I doubt the real,
living and breathing version of him could have made that kind of guess, as
Vestigial Surreality only came into being more than two hundred years after his
death. Whoa, I just found it. Yes, he did say what they claim. I don’t know how
he could have predicted such a thing.”
“Why did you pause it? I want to hear what
they’re going to say next,” burst Shonna, actually jumping up and down.
Iona put a video window out in the air before
them with Elon Musk in some kind of interview, and he certainly was calling the
future, with incredible accuracy.
“Yeah, yeah, okay, that’s interesting, he’s a
prophet, we all knew that, but come on Eye—I want to see what happens next!”
cried Shonna, slapping away the projected video window.
“Musk and Messenger were very close, you
know, and it was more likely Musk that set the whole Vestigial Surreality line
of thought into action,” stated Yvette, quite proudly. “Musk was much smarter
than Messenger, everyone knows that.”
“You better watch out, that’s sacrilege,”
cautioned Shonna, “Diana might strike you with a lightning bolt.”
“That’s Zeus, idiot, Greek,” sniped Lorraine.
“Diana was Roman.”
“She wasn’t Roman, for goodness sake, but a
Roman goddess. Diana was the daughter of Jupiter and Latona, the sister of Apalla,”
said Shonna, somewhat by rote.
“Stop googling, Diana damn you,” Iona swore. “And
it is Apollo. They were twin
siblings.”
“Whatever, just unpause it, or I am going to
kill you,” Shonna said angrily.
Iona raised her middle finger and at first it
appeared she was flipping off Shonna in the ancient gesture, but she instantly
turned it into a finger snap and the simulation kicked back into life.
“The really interesting thing is the fake
reporters on their blogs, how they are doing their very bestest to make him
sound stupid, and crazy,” Frederic said.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, one idiot actually said
that a simulated apple doesn’t feed anybody!” Rodney laughed. “Can you believe
it? Can you?”
“The obvious answer to that,” Hank said, “is
that a simulated apple feeds a simulated person.”
“Wow, right, Hank, right,” Rodney agreed,
ever patting his little hat.
“Ooh,” John Galt said, “but this all feels so real, it can’t be a simulation, I just know it!”
“John Galt is really smart, you can tell,”
put in Shonna, and the Odd Ballz nodded, even Iona.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Rodney spluttered, raising
his beer bottle, “and computers just can’t create anything convincing enough,
right? Right! Computers are too wimpy. It’s not possible!”
“People did used to say that,” said Iona,
nodding. “Before all the quanta advances, ancient people just couldn’t grasp
the power. They used to have little boxes called PCs.”
“I think the fake reporters on their blogs—are simulated people—I just can’t figure
why the System doesn’t make them smarter, just a little smarter anyway,” Barney
said, blowing strangely graceful smoke rings at the ceiling. “The System loves
trolls, and the whole troll demeanor. The System keeps pumping out trolls and
blogs.”
“The irony is, this Barney doesn’t know that
he’s a troll,” said Vivienne, eliciting nods from the Odd Ballz. “And a
simulated troll, at that.”
“I think people, you know, in general, are
trolls. What else would System guys be like, sneering at the Musks and the
Besos and the Bransons and Garriotts?” said Hank from the head of the table.
Their discussion thus far had been pertinent,
and more than a little bit eerie up to this point, but then the Viking guys
wandered off talking about how scientists were running tests, trying to
discover proof of the vast computer simulation. It was amazing that even
scientists in this little spreadsheet world were trying to discover the truth.
They already had more than an inkling of the truth, but they were searching for
proof. The Program would not allow that, as that situational probability was
all factored into the Program itself. How in the world could little critters
inside of a computer-generated world ever prove their own little entities as
smart as the overall System? The short answer was, of course, that they could
not.
“Back it up a little bit, Eye, just about ten
seconds, and listen to the guy with this pipe thing in his mouth,” Shonna said,
pointing at Jethro.
“Can we run it faster?” asked Yvette, “I have
to get to my next class soon, and I cannot be late. I think we have about
fifteen minutes.”
“Would you knock it off?” shot Lorraine. “This
stuff is getting really interesting.
Shaking her head, Iona complied, pausing the
simulation, because they all experienced a little twinge of nausea whenever she
messed with the timeflow, and she suspected the sims themselves might pick up,
if only somewhat—as an eerie feeling—on the jags in the continuity of their very
reality. Yes, every man in this room looked more than a little...well, dumb
(except for possibly John Galt, and maybe Frederic, and even, on the outside,
skinny Rodney), but they were not dumb, none of them were, and they were all
very much sensitive, each and every solitary one of them, and they were picking
up on things, and they were figuring things out, amazingly enough.
“Hold your belly, here we go,” Iona said, and
unpaused the simulation.
“When scientists and engineers invest money
to run tests,” Jethro was saying, sucking on the end of what must be called a “pipe,”
looking very thoughtful, “you know they are thinking along the lines that we
are thinking. We have to give them credit, really.”
“Maybe we ought to be a little more careful,”
Ron said, playing with his cup like a child.
“What do you mean, more careful?” Hank said,
leaning back, his arms behind his head. He had big, meaty arms—Iona had never
imagined that men were this different from them, it was very strange when you
thought about it, because you thought of them as animals, wild savages, and yet
look at these guys in this room, they were practically human, with thinking
brains, and senses of humor, and real kindness for each other.
It struck her again that their group was a
whole lot like her group. Except, of course, that her group never sat around
questioning the very reality of their world, which would be just crazy. But
maybe these guys were just crazy. In actuality she understood that they were
not crazy, not at all, they were figuring it all out, these little simulated
beings.
“You know, we’ve probably all thought about
it,” Ron said. “Stare long enough into the Abyss—it will notice, and the Abyss will stare back.”
“Pause it!” Shonna cried, and Iona did.
“What?” they asked her.
“Do you think he’s referring to us, right
now? Because, you know, when you think about it, we are the world above their
world—we are the Abyss, when you think about it. We are their gods—we created
them! Do you think he’s sensing us, right now, here?”
They stared at Shonna. She was the airhead,
always (she wore her pathetic IQ badge on her avatar, as if it were a mark of
distinction!), and yet somehow, sometimes, she came up with the fiery ideas
that got all of them going.
“No,” Iona said, “not at all. He’s speaking
generally, understand? The spreadsheet in which they live. That’s what he
means.”
“I don’t know,” mused Lorraine, “they have
picked up on us a few times. I saw John Galt look right at me, more than once.
I mean his eyes were focused. It’s creeping me out, except, you know, that he
really is a beautiful creature.”
“Isn’t he?” Shonna swooned.
“Stop staring at him, idiot,” Alycia said. “We
all feel it when someone stares at us.”
“Unpause it,” Shonna said, almost
breathlessly, “this is really getting good. I love this, come on, Eye, start it
again.”
Iona did.
“Come on, come on,” Rodney said, patting his little
hat on the back of his head. What in the world was that all about? Whatever it
was there for, Rodney apparently relied on it, like some kind of talisman or
good-luck charm. He was forever touching the thing. “You don’t believe that. Do
you?”
“Yes, I do,” Ron replied, staring into his
coffee. “We all have noticed the coincidences, and the more you notice
coincidences, the more you have them. We accept this. And yet we don’t
understand what coincidence...is, and
yet we all love to stumble on them, and it happens so often, perhaps they are
being thrown in front of us, so that we do stumble upon them. Think about it.
This could be the Abyss staring back at us.” You could really tell from the
timbre of his voice, he was afraid—and the question he posed, oh yes, it
frightened him. His next words gave Iona gooseflesh.
“Do we really want the Abyss noticing us?”
“Let’s get out of here,” Yvette said. “ We’re
running out of time and I don’t think any of us want that, and the Abyss might
start noticing...us.”
“Yes,” Hank said, “I for one, do. Yes. I want
the Abyss to stop screwing around, and step up like a man.”
Lorraine snorted, and all of the Odd Ballz
grinned at that expression. Step up like
a man. That was hilariously ironic, especially considering where they were,
and what this was.
Hank continued.
“And answer some questions. Don’t you hate
this? This feeling, that we know something, and yet we have to know—the System
tells us so—we can’t be noticing anything, because there is nothing to notice,
because it is impossible. This is all there is. But we know about the other
worlds, they’re right here, right now, all about us.”
“Oh Eye, I don’t like this,” Yvette said. “Did
you just hear what he said?”
“I hate it, I vote for hating it,” said John
Galt, which made the girls of the Odd Ballz love him all the more.
“Me too,” said Barney and Frederic as one.
“Aye!” said Lorraine, and then Alycia said it
too, and Yvette and Shonna, and then finally Vivienne cast her vote of
ascension. Only Iona remained quiet.
Jethro, after a thoughtful moment, said: “I
don’t know. I think if any of us got an answer from the Abyss, we’d have a
heart attack, or a brain embolism—probably both—and if we didn’t die outright,
we’d flee shrieking in the other direction. We’d be running in terror right
alongside Chicken Little. The System is terrifying. Like in The Prestige, people want the magic to
be a trick.”
“Hey Abyss!” Hank shouted suddenly, startling
everyone in the room, especially the Odd Ballz. “Do you hear me, Abyss! Come
on, step up! Do you hear me? Step up! We know you exist. We know you are there,
pulling our puppet strings. Now come on, knock it off, quit playing, and get
serious!”
The simulation paused.
Iona made a wild signal at the other members of
the Odd Ballz, and they stared at her, their eyes widening. She pushed her back
up against the bricks, and the other girls followed her example, and they
stared across the room, to the opposite side, where there was a glowing
rectangle of red light.
“Oh shit,” Lorraine and Alycia breathed as
one, but nobody laughed at the united, scandalously quiet and obscene exclamation.
For they were all of them shaking, all the Odd Ballz, all of them were
trembling, and they drew together, cramming shoulder to shoulder, and none of
them were breathing, because a strange apparition was coming through the red
rectangle hovering just before the bricks on the other side of the room.
This creature, when he entered the room—his
very being shrieked it out insanely—was obviously not human.
The man—because he was obviously male—but creature, because he looked like nothing
in the History tabs, entered the room and glanced about at all the simulated
people. He did not appear to notice the Odd Ballz, no, he was one reality down,
in the spreadsheet simulation, and could not see those visiting from above, and
was blessedly unaware of the real people in the room.
He had a strange, flattened face, with no
visible indication of a nose, save for the tiny indentation of nostrils. His
face looked melted, with the gash of his mouth sliding into a vivid frown on
either side of his face. The strangest thing about him, however, was the
incomprehensible mat of feathers on
his head, instead of hair. He looked like the kind of amalgam you might achieve
if you mated an insect, perhaps a praying mantis—with a hawk. He was short,
probably not even as tall as Iona, but he emanated malevolence. And he
looked...strong, powerful.
This being strode about the paused room,
looking at everything in much the way the Odd Ballz had earlier, and he slowed
at each man at the table, lingering. At the orange-haired man—Barney—the
creature craned his body exaggeratedly around and over the paused man, peering
into his face.
“Yes, yes,” muttered the being, sounding like
an effete British admiral, “I heard you, and I have come. Hmmm, yes, you—Bernard Rathbone Taggart—you, yes you,
you just might do, yes, you just might do.”
Iona remained locked in place. She wondered,
wildly, if they were all as frozen as the sims—she felt she couldn’t move, even
if she desired to do so, but no, oh no, she did not want to move, she did not
desire to do anything that might catch this being’s attention.
And then the being moved back, his face
alongside Barney’s head, and then he moved his lips very close to Barney ear,
as if he were kissing him. But he wasn’t kissing. He was whispering.
Iona chanced an inaudible, and magnified her
hearing, focusing it right there. She increased the volume of the sim, and just
made out: “...you can rely on my
protection, little sim man, do as I have bid, for you are chosen.”
Iona was tempted to reverse the sim, just a
few seconds to catch the beginning of those whispered instructions, or commands
most likely, but she was struck frozen again when she saw the strange being
looking about the room—he had not changed his position, not at all, but he was
no longer whispering. She feared she had blundered.
He knew.
His eyes were looking about the room, and
bizarrely, his eyes were no longer where they should be, on his melted face,
but had somehow slid upward onto his head, right at the crown where the
feathers began, and his eyes were gazing about, searching. The eyes continued
to creep, one of them sliding down close to the tiny compacted ear below the
feathers, and the other eye traveling in the other direction, to that side of
the being’s head.
One of the Odd Ballz inhaled sharply, and
Iona was terrified that one of them was about to cry out, maybe even scream—probably
Shonna—and so she chanced a very quiet: “Shhhhh!”
The creeping eye of the being froze, and
rolled inside its wet lids, looking in her very direction. It looked like an
independent being, some sort of parasite. She tried not to look at it directly,
but watched it by staring at the feathers. Did it see her? Oh girl, I did it,
she thought, I shouldn’t have made a noise, any noise. Her mind hovered over
the kill switch to end the simulation if she received any kind of indication
that he was looking at her. This would be extreme unction, if she actually hit
the kill switch, and could theoretically scramble the minds of all the Odd
Ballz; you weren’t supposed to use that switch, unless imminent destruction was
the instigator.
The being abruptly stood, his eyes back in
place—instantly, just like that.
He smiled, this strange, exotic being, and
looked truly wicked. It was as if they were seeing the mythological devil,
right here, right now, in the flesh, made real. Iona had no idea that such
horrors existed in reality. And she might never be the same.
The being looked around the room again, at
the ceiling, at the floor, and then he did an odd thing. He sniffed, slowly,
taking deep breaths, poised with his head tilted to one side.
“Kronoss, I smell you, oh yes, I know you
have been tampering, and I will discover your purpose, you devil,” he crooned,
and then he turned abruptly and strode through the rectangle of red light.
Iona exhaled. She didn’t even know she had
been holding her breath.
“Shit,” breathed Alycia and Lorraine,
simultaneously, and this time they turned their heads, relaxing, grinning.
“Look at the red door,” Vivienne hissed.
Iona had not thought of it that way, as a red
door, but that is exactly what it was, some kind of portal. But that had not
been from reality—no, that had come from the horror of some other simulation,
even thought that was impossible. How could anything get through the
encryption? This was an encrypted simulation, running in an encrypted chat
room, running in the university simulation, which was encrypted beyond belief.
The Red Door was pulsing, fading out. Iona
felt the impulse to run forward and throw herself in a dive through the portal,
because she wanted to know. She wanted to know.
“Shhhh!” Shonna whispered, urgently, and Iona
looked at her, they all did, but Shonna was staring the other way, up the
stairs. Iona swallowed, hard, and cranked her head about on her neck, and saw
that something was coming quietly down the stairs.
This was not human, either, this apparition.
It came floating down the stairs, not walking, not taking it step by step, but
floating, possibly an inch above the stairs. And this being was elongated where
the first being had been short, and squat. This being was graceful, like a
ghost, and distinctly feminine, although it did not look anything like a
person.
It was more the suggestion of a tall, thin
woman, without features, and when she was in the basement room, she waved a
long arm at the fading Red Door, it pulsed, for a moment, and then came back
bright and steady.
“Who are you?” the being queried and Iona’s
heart leapt in her breast—of course, in reality, her heart was nowhere near
this place, or any place other than inside her body, which was tucked away
safely in her VR chamber, in the Towers. And yet Iona felt it thumping away,
right now, as if a small person were scrambling, a frantic homunculus,
terrified to escape.
The being of light, floating upon the air,
moved about the room, apparently studying each sim at the table, much the way
the short being had done.
“I see,” the being spoke. “Yes, I understand.
This is a spreadsheet simulation, and bored college students are running it.
How ironic. But yes, wait, hmmm, there is some room there, I think, yes, I see possibility.
And Mister Enseladus, oh yes, I see your work in the portal, but who else, who
else? Mister Aajeel, is that you? I would not be surprised. But no, it is not
you, no—oh, Kronoss, you naughty boy. But yours is not here as yet, not yet,
but soon. I will let it lie, I will allow it to play out, and possibly, I might
see what I can do, as well. We shall see, we shall see.” There was a flash of
green lights, and Iona stared—the green lights were peering directly into her,
seeing her, knowing her better and more fully than any other thing had known
her.
The being waved her long arm at the Red Door,
and it changed—it seemed more solid now, and there was a three-dimensional
quality to it now that had not been there before, and suddenly Iona felt a
breeze come through, it was fresh, sweet air, unlike anything she had ever
enjoyed before—the wind was beautiful, and refreshing, and alive.
The being was gone. Vanished, in an instant,
but the Red Door remained.
“Green eyes, did you see?” whispered Shonna. “That
angel thing, the ghost, it had green eyes, they were like lights, such strange
green eyes.”
“Be good girls, and be careful girls—you
might not like where this path leads,” that same voice came again, from
everywhere, loud, and startling. It was her,
that ghostly apparition with the green eyes. And then, like that, the presence
was gone—they were alone again, in their little encrypted simulation.
Shonna and Yvette screamed, and Alycia and
Lorraine swore, and poor Vivienne actually slid down the wall, apparently
unconscious. Iona, she took the cake, she nearly leapt out of her skin, and
partially loosed her bladder; as nasty an accident as it was, as embarrassing
as it was, it was not here, the wetness was not here, not in her avatar body,
the others would not know, but Iona would, and she flushed in humiliation,
actually clenching her eyes shut, and seizing her belly and squeezing. She felt
she was going to die.
“We are in so much trouble,” Yvette wailed. “They
know. That was someone from the university. They were here, they were
investigating us. What are we going to do?”
“Oh shut up,” snarled Lorraine. “Couldn’t you
tell? That was from nothing we know.”
For once, Iona was in full agreement with
Lorraine—that had to be the most miraculous and strange thing of all, agreeing with Lorraine. Would wonders
never cease?
Shonna was the only Odd Ballz present enough
in mind to see to poor Vivienne, who was swooning on the floor, her entire
being actually pulsing, as if she were trying to pull herself bodily out of her
avatar.
“What should we do?” Iona queried in a small
voice, still personally humiliated,
although none of the others could know what she was feeling. She had absolutely
never done anything like that in her life—peeing herself! Some Daughter of
Diana she was. Maybe nobody else knew, but she would always know.
“What do you mean, what should we do? Idiot!
What are we supposed to do, curl into fetal balls and wail like babies?” Lorraine
snarled. “We are Odd Ballz, now all of grab hold of your balls, and shut the
hell up!”
“What we do is get out of here!” wailed
Yvette. “Hit the kill switch! Eye. Hit the kill switch!”
“We are not hitting the kill switch,” Iona
stated, calming down, finally. She took a deep breath. Oh that air—what was it?
It was as if she had suddenly smelled real air for the first time in her
existence. “What I mean is, do we calmly exit the sim, or do we continue, and
find out what is going on here? Believe it or not, this was not the Anomaly!”
“You are crazy—continue—didn’t you hear the angel? She said we shouldn’t go down
the path, that we wouldn’t like it,” Yvette wailed, spilling tears down her
face. It was impressive, as they had never seen an avatar weep so gushingly.
“Oh yeah, we are continuing,” said Alycia. “I’m
not afraid. Hit the pause button, I want to see what happens next.”
“Agreed,” said Lorraine, hating to agree with
Alycia, but desiring to prove herself. Because she was terrified, there was no
denying it. “We continue.”
“Exit!” cried Yvette.
Another puff of breeze came through the Red
Door and Iona closed her eyes and breathed deeply. That was truly wonderful,
and heartening.
“Take some deep breaths,” said Iona.
“What’s that supposed to...dooooo!” wailed Yvette.
But the other girls were doing it to,
breathing deeply, and they were smiling.
“Come on, Sweety,” crooned Shonna, lightly
tapping Vivienne’s cheeks. “Take some deep breaths like Eye says, Eye always
knows best.”
“Eye am that Eye am,” muttered Vivienne,
goofily grinning up at Shonna. “Mama? Are we at the beach?”
The Odd Ballz laughed. The idea, being at the
beach—you would have to dig your way through a mountain of syringes and condoms
to get to any beach on the planet, and then you would walk across a carpet of
needles to reach the oil-slick waters, oily, and red, and dead. Of course, dear
Vivienne must be remembering some virtual vacation she had enjoyed with her
mother, in childhood. And this thought made them all tear up, just a bit. Even
Lorraine sniffed, just a little.
“Oh, that smells so good, of course we are
continuing,” said Vivienne, now fully awake, and looking flushed with health.
“We are all in agreement,” said Shonna, and
then, courteously: “And you, Yvette? You’re sticking with us, right? Odd Ballz!
Yvette wiped her eyes.
“If you are all sticking with it, so am I,”
she muttered, breathing deeply. “For that air, yes, I agree, go ahead, hit the
pause button.”
“Wait,” said Lorraine. “Where were we? What
was the last thing that happened before that bird thing came through the Red
Door?”
“It was Hank,” Vivienne said from her place
on the floor. She was not getting up. She would watch the rest from here, safe,
against the wall. “He challenged the Abyss.”
“Remind me never to do that,” Alycia quipped,
which got a big laugh, from all of them, and they all gave her toss-off Likes,
even Lorraine. But after just a moment, Lorraine unclicked her Like. At least
she didn’t give a Thumbs-Down. After a moment, she did just that. Hey, Lorraine
was Lorraine, you kind of expected it—and it was rather reassuring, in a way.
Iona hit pause, unpausing the sim, and their
bellies leapt a little as suddenly it all went into motion again.
“You’re hurting my ears,” Jethro cried.
There was an eerie vibe in the room, and they
all felt it.
“You’re freaking me out, freaking me out,”
Rodney said. “Just. Stop. Please.”
“I don’t like you talking to the System,
directly,” Jethro said.
“It is terrifying,” Ron agreed.
“They don’t know even ten percent of it,”
quipped Alycia.
“It’s like you’re calling on the Devil,”
Rodney said, gone quiet, his eyes huge behind his thick spectacles. “And the
Devil always comes when you talk about him.”
“You don’t believe in the Devil,” Hank said.
“I don’t,” Rodney said. “But I do. You do too. We all do. It doesn’t
matter if you call him god or the devil, or the System, or the Abyss. We all
believe. We don’t have a choice. Just shut the hell up, please.”
“I don’t believe in the Devil,” Hank said,
decidedly. “I believe in God, but almost against my will.”
“There is far more evidence for the Devil
than for God,” Jethro whispered, pointing his pipe stem at Hank. “Just walk
down the street. It’s easy to believe in the Devil.”
“You guys are nuts,” Barney said.
“For once, I agree with Chubby,” said Alycia.
“These guys are nuts. All of them.”
“Shhh,” said Iona.
Barney belched. “I could be working on my
muscle car. Yet I’m here.”
“Week after week, you’re here,” John Galt
said, smirking. “Thank God you can break away from that stupid gas guzzler.”
“Better than your stupid New Age Prius,”
Barney sneered.
“I love my Prius, it’s like driving an iPod.”
“I think I’m in love with this John Galt,”
Shonna said. “He even has a sense of humor.”
“Yeah, love him if you must,” Alycia said, “he’s
still mine. I won him, fairly, squarely, and I don’t sharely.”
“That didn’t count,” said Shonna. “We’ll let
him choose, and we know who he’s gonna choose.”
“Bitch,” said Alycia.
“Do you feel that?” Rodney said, going all
still, his eyes huge.
“Finally,” Lorraine said. “These guys are
dense as a block of concrete.”
“The breeze,” Iona said, closing her eyes to
that wonderful, miraculous wind.
“Took them long enough,” said Vivienne. “That
wind brought me back from the dead.”
“Yeah, I feel it,” Ron said, “what the hell?”
“What?” Hank said.
“Yeah,” Frederic said, “a breeze, right? I
feel it! What the hell?”
“I don’t feel anything,” Hank said.
“It’s coming across the table,” Rodney
whispered, pointing across the table over Barney’s shoulder.
Barney half turned in his chair. “Yeah, I
feel it too.”
But behind Barney was the brick wall of the
basement. Thick red bricks. And brick just did not allow for the passage of
much breeze, but now they all felt it. And there were no vents on that side of
the room. Just bricks.
They couldn’t see the reality of the Red
Door.
“Something is about to happen,” Ron said.
“They can’t see the Red Door,” whispered
Iona.
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Rodney, edging back in
his chair. “Something is about to happen.”
“I think we should exit, now, before it
happens,” whispered Yvette.
“Wait, it’s the...Anomaly,” whispered Iona, checking her counter. Yes, it would
happen, in the next few seconds, and they would witness it—and the Anomaly
couldn’t be any weirder than what they had already experienced.
But nothing happened. Nothing at all. The
counter clicked. It should have happened, whatever it was. Iona frowned.
Nothing happened.
“You guys are starting to freak me out,” Hank
snorted.
Then a man came hurtling through the bricks,
backward, through that Red Door of light, taking little staggering steps, and
slammed butt-first into the table, shoving it back against the guys on the opposite
side, knocking over empty beer bottles.
Iona blinked. Okay, that was weird. But yes,
this was the Anomaly, right here, this huffing, puffing man, he looked dried
out and sunburned, and exhausted, entirely spent—but there was something about
him, something...shining. Somehow, he
seemed more real than the others in the room. She felt her body cover in
chills. He seemed more real than the Odd Ballz!
This Anomaly—a man, of all things—appearing
from the Red Door, stuck between Barney and Frederic, pushing them apart, and
half-sitting there on the edge of the table. He blinked his eyes a few times,
looking around the room, and then leaped to his feet—like a big cat, it was an
incredible action, literally springing two feet into the air, whirling about,
flashing a black stick in his hands.
“What the hell!” the strange man shouted. He wore
some kind of black costume, with a massive hood thrown back from his head. He
was large and handsome and was bleeding from several cuts on his face. His left
eye was swollen and half-shut with glue and blood. And something big swung from
his right hand—everyone who saw it thought the same thing: he’s carrying a severed head!
“Oh Diana!” cried Shonna, “he’s got a severed
head!”
“It’s a helmet,” said Iona, electrified by
what she was witnessing. This Anomaly was so different from the other two
strange visitors, from another place entirely. And she could smell him. He
smelled like a slaughterhouse, and was spattered with blood. Yet somehow, he
smelled good, and right, and true.
Nobody said anything. The seven men seated at
the table gaped. The Odd Balls gawked.
The strange man held a knobbed stick in his
left hand, one of those weird black walking canes you expected to see in the
hands of a leprechaun. He pointed the knobbed end around the table, until he
pointed at Hank, spotting the leader of this group.
“What year is this?” the strange man gasped, beaten
and parched, bloody and exhausted, his eyes bloodshot.
“It’s Twenty Sixteen,” Hank said.
“Wow, I thought this was all gone,” the man
said, “but I can’t say it’s good to be back. I’ve got some heads to crack, if
you’ll excuse me. But first! Ah, yes!”
The strange man had seen the unopened beer
bottles and he strode to the table and plucked a bottle and easily popped the
top with his thumb. He put the bottle to his lips and tipped back his head, and
the seven members of the Viking Society and six Odd Ballz watched dumfounded as
the strange man gurgled down the entire bottle in a few seconds. Belching
incredibly loud, he slapped the empty bottle back into the box. Then he clunked
the severed head onto the table.
Everyone relaxed—a little. It was not a
severed head, but a massive helmet, with two impressive bones jutting out from
either side.
“Oh I needed that,” the man said, and then
smirked around the table, “I’m Stacey Colton, the Pugilist.”
He whirled and charged directly into the Red
Door and vanished. Just like that. He could see the Red Door, just as they did.
“Right out of the Abyss,” Ron muttered.
“We all saw that, right? I mean, we all saw
him, that man,” Hank said, lurching to his feet. “It was real, right?”
“He’s not real and he wants to know if that
whole mess was real,” Alycia said.
“It was amazing,” Iona breathed. “Okay, now I
think we have to exit.”
She paused the simulation.
“Are you crazy?” Lorraine screamed, and the
men in the room reacted, startling, looking about.
“We know what the Anomaly is now, that was
our purpose,” Iona said, “and when these guys go through—because that’s what
they are going to do—but my class buzzer went off about five minutes ago, and
if they start monitoring for us, they might track us right into...here. You guys want university orbs
following us here?”
“Oh we are going to be late and I can’t get
another demerit,” Yvette said, “come on we have to exit, and now.”
“We’ll pick this up tomorrow, and see where
it leads,” said Iona, making calming gestures to sooth Alycia and Lorraine, who
looked like they were ready to launch themselves upon her, and tear her avatar
limb from limb.
“Okay but you are so sending me a copy of
this sim,” said Lorraine.
“Me too!” demanded Alycia, and then the rest
of the Odd Ballz chimed in, demanding the same thing.
“Okay okay, everyone gets the sim, we all
paid for it,” said Iona, “but don’t start messing with anything. And you can’t
tell anybody about this, no one. I am going to mark them as copies, so none of
you can do something crazy with the original. We all agree we will only
experiment with our copies, right?”
They all assented, too quickly, Iona noted. Oh
that poor John Galt and his soon-to-be seven selves, for there would be six
girls trying to answer the important question: Who is John Galt. It didn’t even matter if he was real or not, she pitied
him just the same. And she was positive there would be a whole lot of bragging
tomorrow when they all provided their unique answers. She knew how the girls
could be with their simulated...men,
they bragged about it enough, and she felt truly sorry for the poor man, all
six versions of him. Thank Diana the original version would never know those
answers.
© Copyright 2017 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der.
Rood Der — Episode Twenty: World Above
If you like Rood Der, try
Vestigial Surreality online free:
Sunday SciFi Fantasy Serial
by Douglas Christian Larsen
© Copyright 2017 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der. 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).
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