Enter When Ready
Common sense rating: 14+. This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. © Tommy J. Charles, all rights reserved
When Stephen Ferguson was made supervisor of his department, the only trickle of joy came in the form of a mug from his wife. In the immense bio-processing plant where he worked, there had been few with his peculiar fondness for the void. The promotion came as no great shock, then, and it gave him no great pride or sense of accomplishment.
In his experience, the mug had never held coffee and was instead usually filled with cloudy water from the lone pump two floors down. His wife had once painted a phrase in blue on the mug’s front side. He could not recall what it had said, and the paint had long since faded. He imagined the plant’s corrosive air stripping it away a layer at a time.
Stephen often marveled, seated in his rickety, raw-boned office chair, at the way the days blurred one into the other, gnawing away at his sense of what had come before. Before now. Before bedlam.
Genetically inclined toward a muscular frame but nevertheless seeming lank, Stephen appeared engulfed by the heavy blue jacket he wore. A few feet away from his paper-strewn desk, a tall fan spun lazily, its blades covered in a dingy film. Mold crept up the butter-bean colored wall, stretching, but not quite reaching, an air conditioner. The wheezing machine spat water from its vents every few seconds, and the droplets landed on the floor, joining a yellow-tinged puddle.
Stephen stood, straightening the jacket, and shuffled over to the puddle. Within it, as always — and despite the ever-present chill of the facility — danced the larvae of a small strain of mosquito. Arm outstretched, he upturned the coffee mug, adding its brackish contents to the puddle.
“As above, so below,” he mumbled, looking out his open door at the immense fan that was embedded into the opposite wall. The mold on that wall not only reached the huge fan; it engulfed it.
Suppressing the urge to scoop the larvae into his cup as lunch, Stephen plodded out to the black grating that started immediately outside his office door. It formed a gangway that wrapped around the entire structure and provided equal line of sight from all sides to the large pool below.
Stephen leaned against a support beam, eyeing the colossal guard who sauntered slowly and heavily along the gangway, a rifle nestled in his arms. Bound like Stephen to the void, the guard was his ever-wary companion. He turned his bald head toward Stephen, his blue eyes sharp, and then changed direction. Stephen eyed the nutritive tube that ran from the hulk’s gun metal suit into his jugular and bit down on his own withered lips. Having been engineered with a vestigial oral opening that was little more than a slit, the giant had no other way to take in sustenance.
Below, in the pool, was several metric tons of golden fluid. Stephen had never tasted the elixir where it flowed freely — in the cyber-bars or alcoves — judging the price too high. Yet there in the facility, naked and virgin, it was beyond his reach.
The pool was home to several large white maggots, each a foot in length and half a foot in diameter. The larvae sported bulbous orange membranes on their heads and a pair of simple eyes with which they frequently took sweeping glances around the room.
For every three maggots, there was one human worker near the pool. They petted the larvae absently and poured a cooling liquid on their backs every now and then so that the larvae might secrete their enzymes into the orange nutritive fluid. The “finishing touch,” the secretion was called. On the far end of the pool was a metal grate that would open every now and again, siphoning some of the finished product away into holding tanks.
The workers, known by dayburners like Stephen as “crispers,” came and went with alarming frequency. They sat, each and every one, with a blank expression, staring stupidly at whatever their pus-crusted eyes fell upon. Stephen often stood at the support beam, trying to tell the workers apart. Bald and frail in their blue jumpsuits, with faces sunken into the bone, it was no easy feat.
He often wondered if the organic molecules added to the pool by the drooling crispers was a hazard. Having never received guidance on the matter from higher up, he had come to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth the bother.
From time to time one of the the workers would appear to come out of their stupor. They would flail around until finally spotting him standing above.
“All right, then,” he would say. “Get back to it.” Then they would calm, and just before they slipped away again, they would notice his healthier pallor and fleshier cheeks. Then he would see something in them that often drove him to lock himself into his office and scream into his hands: their pity.
For them, he knew, the ordeal of the void, the everyday, was only a dream, only a wisp of which would ever be recalled.
Stephen stood at ground level, staring into the nutrient pool, sucking on his lower lip. The mug threatened to crack in his grip, desperate as he was. He knew, should he walk to the pool and dip the mug in the orange fluid, the crispers wouldn’t sound the alarm. They wouldn’t even look up. The hulk, on the other hand, was like himself: a dayburner. Mired in the void. Worse, where Stephen was a pariah by choice, the guard was an augment, a being designed with a single, unwavering purpose.
Stephen gulped, his throat dry and sore despite the chill, and rubbed his distended, roiling belly. It wasn’t protein he was hungry for; he could scrounge that easily enough. No, his body cried out for enzymes, and minerals and acids. The living nutrients that were far too scarce outside those walls.
Above him, the guard had stopped. He regarded Stephen coolly. Stephen smiled at the man, his lips cracking, but the guard only stared. Turning, making his way along the frosty, slimy wall, Stephen sauntered away, his bony shoulders sagging.
The storage facility adjacent to the nutritive fluid pool was manned by crispers, and Stephen often sought refuge there. They stumbled around him, absently reaching for canisters. Rarely did they make eye contact. Here, mere inches from them, Stephen could make out the translucent skin and the veins that pumped blue-tinged blood. A peculiar, familiar odor gripped him, the smell of unwashed bodies tinged with industrial solvent. He made his way through them as best he could to the back of the facility, being caught now and again by a slow-moving or stumbling specimen. There, alone in shadow, stood a man a half foot shorter than himself.
Stephen did brisk business with the dayburner, allowing him the shelter of the stock room in exchange for the occasional dog meat or clothing the man may have come across. Known to Stephen only as “the trader,” he had come that day to cement a much larger deal. The man nodded toward Stephen’s mug, which he held in a vice-like grip amid the milling crispers.
“Empty?”
“As ever. ‘less you count the crunchy water,” Stephen confirmed.
“Barnaby?” It was the trader’s name for the hulking guard.
“He saw me ogling the nutritive fluid,” Stephen said. “He’ll be watching it for a few minutes anyway.”
“What you think he ponders?” The trader asked, pulling off a haggard, black leather glove with his teeth. “Think he wanks?”
“He’d have to,” Stephen said, smiling tiredly.
“But what’s he thinkin’ about?” The glove disappeared in the trader’s huge coat.
Stephen paused, thinking. “Toss up between the larvae and the female crispers.”
“Can’t tell a difference no how. Here, don’t let them catch you with this,” the trader said, lowering his voice. His smile was punctuated by brown, rotting teeth. He produced a curvy bottle from his oversized jacket, etched into which was a skull and crossbones.
Stephen nodded, smiling. It was a two-liter soda bottle, the kind that his father used to bring home on weekends, to the great annoyance of his mother. Before the ash descended from the skies.
“That’s the juice,” the trader said. “You know its name?”
“An — anarchy,” Stephen said, rolling the funny word around in his mouth.
The trader stepped out of the shadows, and Stephen frowned. He was nearly a crisper himself. A few wisps of jet black hair remained on his head, and his eyes were a sea of tepid yellow surrounding gray, dim irises.
“And this?” he asked, pointing to a long object that was propped up beside the door. It was sheathed within a soiled sheet.
“You found one!” Stephen gasped.
“You know what it’s called?”
Stephen’s mind worked feverishly. “Resistance,” he said slowly. The man picked up the object and pressed it into Stephen’s arms. A few crispers gazed in their direction, uninterested. Stephen pulled the sheet away from one end, revealing the long, black barrel of a sawed-off shotgun.
“How does it work?” he asked. He had held small weapons before, knives and sticks and even a baseball bat.
Stephen marveled at a handful of small red shells that the man pressed into his grimy palm. “28 gauge ammunition. You got two triggers here. One for each shell. Here, put it in your armpit.” The trader jammed the butt of the gun under Stephen’s arm and fed it several shells. “Pump it,” he said, smiling. Stephen did as he was told, and then hefted the gun in his hands.
“Happy?”
“Very,” he said. “You fired one of these?”
The man wiped his nose with a finger, flicking something pale yellow onto the floor. “Not here. But I get plenty of practice when I plug in.” Stephen nodded, rubbing the back of his neck as a chill descended his spine.
“So,” the small man said, “if that concludes my half of the transaction — ?”
“It doesn’t. Where’s my sticks?”
The trader smiled at him ruefully, producing a small metal tin. “Hoped you’d forgotten those,” the man said, handing the tin to Stephen.
Stephen opened the tin and pulled out a long, thin cigarette. Handling the joint delicately, he ran it under his nose and closed his eyes in delight.
“Easier to get in the colony. Suppliers don’t like sending goods outside.” The trader gave Stephen a measuring look. “They’re not an unwelcoming bunch, you know.”
Stephen’s eyes snapped open, and his jaw clenched at the invitation. “Got obligations here.”
The trader scoffed. “This job? You’re replaceable, man. Expendable. Who isn’t?”
“Not the job,” Stephen said bitterly. Then he smiled reassuringly. “But thanks. So how are you liking rat?” Stephen asked, changing the subject.
“No more than you do,” the man huffed.
“We agreed to five, I think.”
The trader held up a long, sickle-like finger. “Five of the fattest.” He turned to Stephen, eyeing him appraisingly. “You never, eh?” He jerked his head toward the nearest crisper and made several hand-to-mouth motions.
Stephen shrugged. “Thought about it on occasion, sure.” He didn’t meet the trader’s eyes.
“Utterly selfless bastard! Yeah, cush job like this… three squares — ”
Stephen brandished the mug in protest, punctuating his words with short thrusts of the wrist. “Hey, look, there’s a cart built into the wall brings me a cup of algae every four hours. Not exactly filling,” he growled. Forcing his jaw to relax, he let the mug fall and then leaned back against the wall, admiring the shotgun.
“Well, don’t be so picky. Meat is meat.”
Stephen watched as he sauntered forward, walking among the crispers. The small man pinched the skin of a few of them, frowning and shaking his head. “Scrawny little wharf rats.” The crispers paid him no heed as he walked among them. Finally, when he had cuffed and chained five of them, he walked them back to the door.
“Hell, the larva piss builds up in the flesh, anyway. Second generation’s better than none. Beats the hell out of standing by that pool with a growlin’ belly and an empty cup.”
The urban sprawl was, as always in the early evenings, abandoned. The crispers were either milling about in factories or were in their alcoves. He walked confidently through the streets, the sheathed shotgun over his shoulder. He held the clear liquid in one hand, by the cap. It sloshed noisily in the bottle.
Several blocks away, in his office, among the mold spores and mosquito larvae, his coffee mug lay shattered. He had, upon concluding his business with the trader, smashed it into his desk, rubbing the shards between his fingers. He only wished he could grind the true source of his pain into dust as easily.
As he turned the corner to his apartment, he finally recalled the phrase that his wife, Lilith, had painted on the mug long ago: “Stephen, my hero, my love.”
The slums of New York City woke early. The grimy gray streets were hidden below a heaving biomass. A cacophony of squeaks and hisses rose from it, forming an impenetrable wall of sound. Rats. Millions of them. Stragglers who had not heeded the government warning in time fell to their deaths, shrieking in terror. The rats bit into them, seeking the oily marrow of their bones.
After a moment, each victim was silent, but the rats swarming around them continued to gnash their teeth and hiss. The insatiable animals raged on through the streets, their coats a muffled red in the dull morning light.
Stephen sat in his tiny apartment a few stories above the mayhem, the sawed-off shotgun in his lap. A burning, stinking cigarette dangled from his lips. He bobbed his left knee up and down, up and down, breathing deep the sharp reek of the clear liquid that had been confined within the soda bottle just hours earlier. The chair he’d been resting on — easily fifty years old, though it was constructed of cheap aluminum — creaked beneath him as he stood.
Even his small but respectable collection of texts — to the right of the chair in a neat pile — was thoroughly doused. Having read all of them many times and having gleaned their insights into the old world, he no longer had any need for the tomes. That world, with its catchphrases and pop culture, was of no use in the void.
As he peered out at the morning feast, a fat man succumbed to the flood as if he had been swallowed by a brown ocean. Stephen marveled at how the super organism’s grating squeaks squashed even the man’s dying screams. A pudgy hand floated away from the submerged body, as if moving of its own volition. A group of rats were fighting over the morsel, and within a few moments, it was reduced to bone and tendon.
“Death by a thousand cuts,” he said, deftly removing the cigarette from his mouth and flicking it out the window. He watched it fall until it was caught by the wind, its solemn ember put out. When at last the remains of the cigarette reached the ground, even it was processed by indifferent incisors. Stephen hefted the shotgun to chest level and then rested it on the window sill so that it was pointing toward the gluttonous rodents.
The city’s morning smog met his nostrils, and he breathed deep. In the dank bed beside him, a woman stirred.
“They’re running again, already?” Lilith’s voice was brittle, as if it was made up of echoes that issued from a vitreous membrane.
Stephen whistled. “By god, it yet breathes. Did you two have a fight?” he said.
Lilith shot him a withering gaze. “You come home early for once. Where did you expect to find me?”
“They run the same damn day every week,” he said, grinding his teeth and ignoring her jab. “Gas-walkers came on earlier, raised the alarm.” He awkwardly pumped the shotgun.
Lilith sat up, gathering the sheets about her. “What is that smell? Gasoline?” She looked at all sides of the bed, as if she had suddenly found herself marooned on a dinghy in the middle of the ocean.
“Don’t know what that is,” Stephen said.
“Dammit,” Lilith snapped. “It’s fuel. Combustion engines, generato — ” She cut herself off with a sigh. “If you’d plug in every once in a while…”
Her dark, rheumy eyes latched onto the empty soda pop bottle at Stephen’s feet, then onto the black shotgun barrel.
“Why do you have that?” Lilith snapped. “What are you going to use that for?”
“I’m not gonna let them eat us,” he said, his jaw tight. “They call it ‘resistance.’” He glared. “You might want to try it.”
The screeches from outside died down; the torrent of rats was thinning. “Run’s almost over anyway,” he growled, removing another cigarette from the dented metal case.
“You’re about to burn the apartment down!” she screeched.
Stephen shrugged. “You don’t live here, anyway. Just your bones.”
He watched her as she held the drab sheets against her white, deflated breasts, her eyes flashing.
Turning back to the window, he pointed the barrel of the gun at a thoroughly worked-over corpse in the street below and pulled the trigger. The weapon dug into his ribs, emitting a thunderous blast. Stephen smiled, marveling at how such a small action could cause the rats to disperse and the corpse to jump as if momentarily imbued with life. The bang echoed off of the buildings across the street, and Lilith screamed, bringing a threadbare cushion to her head.
“I won’t let them eat us,” he snarled. Lilith sat whimpering on the bed.
A low, rumbling alarm rolled through the streets, and a red bulb in their room began to wink on and off furtively. “About time,” he muttered. From his high perch, he caught sight of three men in isolation suits entering the streets. Once they converged in the center of the lane, a green, thick gas issued forth from thin, white tubes on their wrists. On their backs, they wore tall, thick metallic canisters.
Rats fell in droves before them. The gas hugged the street like a rolling fog. The exterminators took their time, even taking care to spray some of the heartier, but staggering, rats directly.
Stephen hefted the shotgun and drew a bead on the nearest gas-walker, mumbling to himself. The man within the suit did not look up, but instead continued to march, waving his wrist back and forth. The billowing green neurotoxin wafted upward, tickling, and then burning, Stephen’s nostrils.
“Stephen, what are you doing now?” Lilith asked, her voice grating.
“What’s it to you?” he asked, jerking the shotgun toward the exterminators as he spoke. “You’re just coming down so you can go back in.” He scoffed, his nose wrinkling in disgust. “I can smell it working on you.”
“I don’t know what you want from me!” she shrieked. “Who said you had to be a dayburner?” She launched the pillow across the room, daring him to contradict her with her eyes. “What makes you think you’re better than everybody else?”
Stephen jerked his head toward her, tapping his temple with a long, gnarled finger. “Not better. I just like using this.”
She rolled her eyes. “You can’t kill a man with a shotgun at that range,” she said. “You need a rifle for that. Common knowledge,” she continued with a derisive hiss. “Not for you, I guess.”
Turning back to the window, his face twitched as he stared down the barrel of the shotgun. “Wouldn’t do any good anyway,” he mumbled. He kept it trained on the men, his finger tight on the trigger as they marched passed the apartment, indifferent. He watched them go, thinking of the five crispers he’d sold to acquire the weapon.
When he leaned forward so far that his torso was nearly completely out the window, Lilith said, her voice shaky, “You’d rather look at that filth.” He glared at her, catching her wiping something from her eye with a skeletal hand.
“Nothing to look at in here,” he snapped.
“Not in here,” Lilith agreed, glancing over her shoulder. The fingers of her right hand twitched violently, and she grabbed them with her left. Stephen followed her gaze and spat on the floor.
“Don’t even start,” he said.
Glancing back, and this time, mentally committing himself to watch the whole sad affair, he waited. One by one, people, many of them wearing black trash bags over their tattered clothing, appeared in the streets. The majority carried long metal spears. Many of the adults were accompanied by youngsters, who each held a bag, or box, or other sort of container.
“Don’t watch,” she said, as if imploring him to shut the curtains on an undressing neighbor. “Please don’t watch it.”
“What makes your kind so much better?” he asked with a flat chuckle. “Let them eat cake.”
Lilith covered her ears as the throng began to scream as one. Stephen watched stoically as two men grappled. There was a mad clash of spears and then a ripple in the sea of bodies as onlookers leapt back to give the combatants room to maneuver.
Stephen sighed. “I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”
“I know,” she said softly, bringing her knees to her chest. He cringed at the way her hips popped with the motion. Below, some of the shoppers had gone back to bickering over the choicest rodents.
“Civilian Nourishment Program Incentive Three. The running of the rats,” Stephen said with a muted flourish. “You really should see it at least once.”
Lilith lowered her head, bringing the palms of her hands to her eyes.
“No,” she said.
Stephen watched her for a moment, noting with disapproval her visible ribs and hips, her slightly translucent skin and the blue veins pulsing in her temples.
“How long this time?” he asked, casting an angry glance at the spot on the wall that Lilith had been looking at hungrily moments earlier. “Twelve, sixteen hours?” Then his lips curled upward, and he chortled humorlessly. “Why are you in such a hurry to leave all this?”
Lilith sat still, eyes down. Peering at her thin, protruding collar bones and twitching limbs, Stephen let the shotgun fall to the floor, and then one of his trembling hands settled on a pack of matches that rested on the window sill. He pursed his lips, striking the match and lighting a cigarette.
“Goddamn Nethead,” he said savagely. “Look at me,” he said. “You know so much. But you know what I know?” She did not look up. “You want to work in my nutritive fluid pool? I can arrange it. You’re this close.” He threw the match on the bed and it landed a few inches from her.
She watched its ember fade, her mouth agape. “It’s all I have, Stephen,” she said finally, her voice dripping with acid. She brushed the dead match off of the bed in a quick, jerky motion. Then she turned over, and planting her bony feet on the dingy brown carpet, she stood. Her joints protested as she tried to stretch.
“Don’t turn away from me. Don’t you turn away from me!” Stephen bellowed. He moved away from the window, away from the famished throng, and lit another match. Lilith walked helter-skelter away from him, following the wall, as he held the match aloft.
“I hate you!” she screamed. He watched her hobble away, and then she turned. He faltered at the frost in her eyes. “You said you loved me, but you abandoned me!” The match remained between his fingers even after its flame had reached his flesh.
“Abandoned you?” he said, his voice cracking.
He raked her with his gaze. Lilith’s buttocks were flat, and her vertebrae formed a vertical ridgeline along her back. Her legs bent at odd angles when she walked, and they were bespeckled by bed sores. He crushed the dead match in his hand, unable to sort the feelings that came in a mad, hot rush. Finally, he managed, “I don’t even see you.”
“It’s all I have, Stephen,” she said again, desperate. He crossed over to her, grabbing her by the shoulders and throwing her on the bed. She clawed at him as he climbed atop her, but he held her down easily. “Just let me go in,” she wailed.
“How many more trips you think you got before you come out of that thing Net-eaten? How long till I have to put you down like a goddamned dog?” Her frail, slightly translucent wrists shook in his hands. He knew that with the tiniest addition of force, he could snap them like twigs. His voice softened. “I just want to see you again.” It was the eyes. They had gone flat, glassy. “I want to know you see me,” he said.
Her eyes had been bright with hope once. Then the Administrator had started running the rats. It hadn’t been long after that Net chambers were installed en masse.
“I don’t give a good goddamn shit!” she shrieked, spitting in his face. He held her down, not daring to release her arms to wipe the stinking spittle off. Her fingernails were long and yellow and jagged. “What else is there?”
“You have me!” he screamed.
She went still. “You said there would be food here.”
After a few seconds, Stephen lowered his head in defeat and released her arms. At once, he felt her trembling fingers in his hair. Thick, heavy sobs shook him. She clutched his hair tightly with every cry, as if the sound caused her physical pain.
“I feel like I’m underwater all the time, when I’m here. And I’m screaming, and I’m just falling,” she said. After a moment, she whispered, “Come with me.”
“It wouldn’t be real, Lilith!” he cried, his anguish raising his voice an octave. “I just want us.”
“There can’t be an us in this void,” she said with finality. “Get up. You’re going to make me late.”
“None of it’s real, Lilith. None of it.” He kissed her just below the collarbone, his lips quivering. A curtain of tears obscured the pale, boil-covered skin he was kissing.
“Get off of me,” she hissed, using whatever strength she could muster to heave with her hips. He held her down easily.
“Remember,” he pleaded. “Remember before the rats. What we said.”
“Get off!” she wailed.
He rolled off of her. “Don’t come back then,” he said, staring at the moldy ceiling. “Let it finish you this time.”
She pulled herself up off of the bed slowly, avoiding his eyes. Stephen watched her amble to the corner of the room and press a small blue button with her thumb.
“We all die,” she croaked, turning to look back at him, “but at least I won’t die alone.”
A panel in the wall slid away, and a crescent-shaped chamber arced out toward her. Stephen watched her climb in and then rolled over on the bed where she had been lying. “Bitch,” he said into his arm. Then he lay in the stench of the gasoline and wept.
He came to in the middle of the night. Raising his head, his neck stiff, he peered around, taking in the blood red hues that the single, wall-mounted bulb provided. Pushing himself off of the stiff mattress, he shuffled over to the window and looked out. Just as he knew it would, the warm summer air brought up the stench of blood and guts and death. The streets would stink for days.
The city was black. Only the Net chambers, and the single red bulbs, were powered at night. “Herding sheep,” he said after a time, staring out at the void. He knew that the city’s populace, once again full on genetically-altered rat, and also probably the remains of unwary humans, would have all retired by then. They would be living their simulated second lives. Or, as he knew most of them preferred to think of it, their real lives. Lilith, he knew, was out there, somewhere, with them.
Slowly he ambled over to her chamber. He stood there, his thumb hovering over the emergency release button. He pulled his hand away and rubbed them on his tattered jeans. “All right, then” he said, his voice cracking. “Get back to it, and good-fucking-bye.”
He stumbled back toward the window, clearing his eyes. He waved a fat, swollen fly away from his face, and considered jumping. If he jumped, he knew, he would join his dead countrymen as well as the rats too skinny for consumption in a grisly display of death.
Abruptly, a searing blue beam pierced the dull red that enveloped his senses.
Turning away from the window, and taking a few paces toward the wall, he saw it: a laser that was embedded in his own Net chamber. As he latched eyes on it, it began to pulsate. He had never used the chamber and often wondered how many others there were like him. Purists. Devotees to the void. Cowards, he acknowledged with shame. Dabblers like the trader were commonplace enough.
This particular siren had called him this way several times before. The laser beam was the result of a simple motion sensor installed in the chamber. He imagined the chamber sending the observation to some remote server, tattling like a child: Someone is walking around at night. Someone isn’t using the Net.
Leaning against the wall, he grabbed a red-bathed metal canteen off of a chair and brought it to his lips. The water was tepid, but palatable. With the introduction of water, his stomach growled, and a sharp hunger pang ripped through him. It was no use, he knew. His neighbors would have taken the best rats hours before, and what remained would already foster the eggs of flies.
The next running of the rats would not occur for a solid week. Remembering this, and grinning wickedly, but without humor, he grumbled about the fact that he had not had eggs in a good long while. His last remaining trash bag felt damp in his hands as he retrieved it from a tall dresser, as if the mold that lined the ceilings had been exhaling on it.
As he reached the door, he looked at the soda pop bottle with its hastily fashioned skull and crossbones and wondered, not for the first time, if perhaps he was crazy. Even as he’d doused the last of the fire-giving fluid on their carpet many hours before, he’d known that the rats wouldn’t have time to work their way up to them. At least, not the majority of them. Not the horde.
Besides which, they were programmed to live only a few hours after escaping from the sewers. Between that and the gas-walkers, there had been nothing to fear. That was, after all, the Administrator’s mantra: Nothing to fear.
Why, then, had he doused the apartment? Maybe, he reasoned, the cold door knob clutched tightly in his hand beginning to hurt, it was the chemicals in the gas that the rats absorbed in their dying breaths. Maybe that was making him crazy.
The Net chamber pulsed its powerful blue gaze across the room again and settled on him, accusing. Though he had never sampled the nutritive ooze that was his charge, he knew how the reality-altering induction chemicals that laced it would rip into a human body and brain, leaving irreversible damage over time. Harmless if consumed and disseminated through blood, the induction chemicals required direct injection into the brain to act on it.
They all knew.
He peered into the cold blue laser beam, shielding his eyes with the hand that clutched the damp trash bag. He let go of the door knob, walking slowly over to the chamber. As he approached, the beam winked in and out three times. His crooked right thumb fit perfectly into his chamber’s single button. He was surprised by how soft and yielding it was. The crescent-shaped bed moved a few inches toward him and then stopped until he stepped sluggishly out of the way.
The first thing that caught his eye was not the lush blue interior or the soft amber lights, but the four-inch-long needle that occupied one side of the chamber. It rested on a thin, double-jointed, swiveling arm. The delivery system of the induction chemicals. The trader had once told him that it didn’t hurt. Not for long, anyway. Stephen shuddered.
It would, if he let it, steal from his brain its ability to tell reality from fantasy.
Having never been so close to a working Net chamber, he was taken aback at the waft of vanilla that was rising from it. Something else, too — perhaps lavender. He wrinkled his nose at the faint aromas, not altogether sure what to make of them.
A vision of Lilith in her own Net chamber came unbidden, her festering skin ulcers and chicken-skin flesh mingling with the fragrances. He wondered if those enchanting, warming smells, something so foreign and sweet, had been enough to drive her to break her promise.
Perhaps those aromas, virtually unobtainable anywhere else, were enough to make the Net’s victims forget about their writhing bodies. Forget that the chamber was eating them alive. That it would some day spit them out, raving and mad, and set them loose unto the world.
He had seen it before in the factory, in the great pens where newly minted crispers were held until they were given their programming.
“Enter when ready,” a soft, sensual female voice said, breaking his reverie. This lure was new. He stumbled backward, fumbling for the edge of the bed with his fingers. Finding it, he sat down and peered at the beckoning chamber. The blue laser raked his head quickly, and then faded.
“Considering suicide, Stephen? Why not come join us in the Net, instead?” He was stunned, wondering if some brooding artificial intelligence was assessing his actions and coming to a conclusion about his intentions.
“Who are you?” he asked groggily. “Are you a real person?”
“No,” the female voice answered coolly. “I am a simulation of intelligence.”
“Ain’t none on this planet,” Stephen said.
“Agreed,” the female voice replied immediately. Stephen crumpled the bag in his hands, forcing it into a tight, small wad. He sat in silence, the blue laser beam raking across his vision once or twice.
“How long does my wife have?” he asked in a low, pointed growl. “You should know, right?”
There was a pause, as if the AI was requesting permission to respond from a higher-up. “Her Net allotment is another seven months, Mr. Ferguson, so about three days, real time.”
“Three days,” he said, aghast, his worst fear confirmed. “Then she’ll be spat out. She’ll be out of her mind. Isn’t that what happens? What do I do if she attacks someone? Who has to stop her? I do.”
“No, that rarely occurs any longer, Mr. Ferguson. A team will come and remove her body from the premises, that’s all.” There was another long pause. “Stephen, you haven’t touched your Net allotment. Five years of a great life. A green lawn, steak for dinner every night. Free to pursue your passions.” When Stephen did not speak, the female voice said, triumphantly, “Enter when ready.”
“No!” he said savagely. “One of us has to remember.” Stephen stood, reaching for the greasy barrel of the shotgun he had discarded earlier.
He hefted it, his jaw quivering. “I don’t expect you’ll understand.”
He pointed the shotgun squarely at the Net chamber. The blast left his ears ringing and his eyes stinging from plumes of black smoke. Stephen’s head flew back, a raw cry tearing from his throat.
Charred debris flew across the room as the chamber belched a single orange flame that killed the infernal red bulb with a muted clink, plunging him into darkness. In the same moment, the air around him exploded as gas fumes met spark. A white foam spurted from a fixture in the ceiling, dousing the flames. The only light that remained was the soft amber glow within the ruined chamber.
A minute passed as he watched the chamber’s death throes, ignoring his left arm, which had been badly seared in the flash fire. The feeble amber light began to sputter, and in its final moments of illumination, Stephen saw something move within the chamber. His stomach lurching, he threw the emptied shotgun to the floor and leapt forward.
Golden nutritive fluid erupted violently from a ruptured tube. The tube undulated like a snake, and the hot broth it carried scalded his face and eyes as he opened his mouth to partake. He swallowed what fluid he could catch hungrily, writhing as he tried to keep up with the tube’s erratic movement.
During the fourth full gulp, a curious thing happened: all at once, he felt a peculiar sting, and his body went limp. The chamber’s long needle held his head at an odd angle. The induction chemicals wormed their way into his cerebral cortex, and he felt himself floating up and away. His cries of protest echoed in a vast, cold space and went unanswered.
In time, the smoldering apartment faded away, replaced by a brilliant gold sheen, and then a momentary blackness. His feet, deformed from years of being enclosed in boots that were too narrow, ceased their constant throbbing. His belly, never content, was for once, silent.
Vision returned to him bit by bit. First, he made out a sea of green, and in time, this resolved into a seemingly endless grassy plane. It was speckled here and there with thin stands of trees. There was a sense of vertigo, and then the grass took form beneath his feet, pricking him gently.
The sky, blue and rich in a way he’d never seen, shimmered into existence. White clouds — white! — blew lazily overhead. Stephen fell to his knees, bowing his head and closing his eyes. Even with his eyes closed, the sensory overload continued. Birds began to chirp, and somewhere very far away, a hawk called.
When his pulse had slowed, he wormed his long, knobby fingers into the earth, coming away with a mound of dirt and grass. This he held to his nose for what could have been hours, days.
So elastic was the passage of time.
When next he opened his eyes, the colors were all the more brilliant. A fox, its coat in full red sheen, danced in tall grasses several yards away. A perfectly yellow butterfly fluttered past his nose.
He was aroused from his trance by a soft sniffle from behind. Turning, he gasped, and stood up at once. Lilith held a dainty, whole and altogether healthy hand in front of her and shook her head. She sniffled again, her other hand to her mouth. Her fist clenched and her jaw quivered, but then she deflated, shaking her head.
“Why now?” she asked. “Why are you here, Stephen?” She jerked her head, her knuckles pressing her nose, catching a torrent of tears. She fell into his arms, striking him repeatedly in the shoulder with a milky white fist.
“I didn’t know,” he said, clutching her tightly. He pushed her away gently, marveling at her transformation. She was as she had been the day they’d met. He thought of his physical body somewhere, lying in a pool of hot nutritive fluid, surrounded by smoldering carpet and convulsing softly from the induction chemicals.
“Don’t leave me,” she sobbed. They stood together for some time, until finally she stepped away. Behind her, situated on a hill and surrounded by tall oaks, was a large bungalow. He was sure it hadn’t been there before. “Do you remember?” They had seen it once long ago, in a book, or a magazine. She tugged at him, but he held fast, staring at the house.
“You live here?” he asked.
She took his hand, her eyes softening with concern. “Not alone.”
“Who?” he asked. Her eyes shifted to somewhere behind him, and he turned.
And he fell.
They had discussed the prospect of children only once, early on in their marriage. Lilith had been healthy enough, and they had the prerequisite income. Then, shortly after being granted a license, Lilith had given birth to a baby girl. Nurses had taken the child away at once, with troubled, pitying expressions, before Stephen had a chance to see her. The official word was still-birth, but Stephen had long heard rumors of children of the working class being drafted directly into the service of the Administrator.
After that, Stephen had considered the matter closed, telling himself that they were better off without mouths to feed. He had never told Lilith that he considered his hands forever empty. Instead, he’d merely closed the topic to discussion. It was easier that way, he knew, for both of them.
“Stephen,” she cried, kneeling on the ground beside him. “It’s okay.” He found it difficult to look at them, but he couldn’t look away. They stood before him shyly, a boy and a girl.
“They look like us,” he managed.
Lilith smiled brightly, grasping his shoulder. Coming close to his ear, she said, “They’re from our genetic profile, of course. You remember the simulations.”
They could not exist. Yet they were, in that moment, undeniably real.
In time, Lilith cradled his head in her lap and smoothed his hair. They watched the children chase each other in the grass.
“You should have told me,” he said. “I don’t know their names.”
“I tried.” When the children walked cautiously over to them, she said gently, “Leslie, Jon… Let’s give daddy a moment.”
“No, let them stay,” Stephen said, captivated. He rose, clambering to his knees. He found himself cradling the older child’s face in his hands. “My girl,” he said, breathlessly. He grasped the girl’s strawberry blond hair and sunk his face into her shoulder. She patted him on the back with her small hands and kissed his cheek.
A moment later the children sat down on the grass a few feet away, looking expectantly from mother to father.
“Seven months,” Stephen said, again and again.
“Shh,” Lilith said. “We’ll make the most of it.”
Dinner’s main course featured, as the Net chamber had promised, a large, succulent steak. He saved the white strip of fat for last and then ate it with relish. Lilith watched him with satisfaction as he licked his fingers. “Who lives here, besides us?”
“The children, and anyone else we want. Our world is isolated from others, but we can invite people from other worlds in. Your brother’s been here twice. And my sister, once.” She stared at her plate. “I asked them how to get your attention, out there.”
He nodded when no words would come.
“I tried so many times. So many ways. It was so hard to think out there… like looking through frosted glass at something I loved, but something I hated too. You scared me. And all you saw was a corpse. And now here you are. But you didn’t even mean to come, did you?”
“Lilith — ”
“No,” she said vehemently. “It’s my fault.” She looked at him squarely in the eye and then took his hand. “It’s my fault.” Looking away abruptly, she forced a smile and said, “More wine?”
He squeezed her hand in turn. “I’m here,” he said. “I’m not goin’ nowhere.” They sat in silence for a moment. Lilith watched him soak everything in. “What?” he asked finally, with a smile.
“It’s like I haven’t seen you in forever. Not really.”
Stephen kissed her hand in reply. She laughed, biting her lips.
“How about soda? Can we have soda here?”
Lilith stood up, eyeing him coyly, and walked to the chrome refrigerator. “What kind?”
“Uh… the black kind?”
She withdrew from the refrigerator a black, two-liter bottle. “Cola,” she teased.
“There’s so much I don’t know,” he said, his voice tinged with shame.
“You have time.” She smoothed his hair. “You’ll learn.” His eyes fell to her ample breasts, and she stepped fully in front of him, catching the glance.
He forced his mind to focus on her and not on the thought that was gnawing at him: seven months, and then he would be alone.
“I put the kids to bed,” she said. He rushed her, pinning her to the wall and kissing her deeply. She tasted of youthful flesh, a flavor that his brain struggled to recognized.
“I see you,” he said softly.
They fell slowly to the ground. She looked up at him, smiling coyly, as he settled his weight on her. He absorbed the hunger in her eyes eagerly. There was a gleam there that he had not seen for a long time.
As their lips met, a peace fell over him, and he smiled.
The End
