by Kyle Kenze
Moles in holes. The echo of Red's phrase startled me. Was she real or invented? How could I know?
“So,” I said. “The Air Force, being pro-active, has decided to create a technology that will give people confined in post-nuclear bunkers an illusion of a larger world.”
“Exactly.” He steepled his hands again, a faraway look in his eyes. “It wasn't such a terrible place, was it?”
“No,” I said. “It wasn't terrible. It was actually pretty wonderful. Still, it would be better if it wasn't needed at all.”
His eyes snapped back into focus. His jaw shifted. He hadn't told me everything, only the minimum he thought I might believe. And now he knew I knew it.
“General Angleton. Please. Respect my intelligence. I already know there's a lot more to this project than providing a Star-Trek-style holodeck for the survivors of nuclear war.”
“Major, you will never discuss this possibility with anybody else. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir. But may I at least discuss it with you?”
He folded his arms over his chest. “Go ahead, Major.”
“The virtual reality isn't really intended for the survivors of the final war,” I said slowly. “It never was.”
“If you're waiting for me to deny or confirm, you may be waiting a long time.”
“Your plan is to prevent war, not to patch together a few remnants of humanity after the end.”
He stopped breathing, but he never blinked. Not once.
“And what better way to prevent war than to isolate certain...” I considered my next words. “Certain overly aggressive elements.”
“Careful, Major Blount. I advise you to be very, very careful.”
“I won't share any information about what I saw or experienced, but I have to talk to someone, and you're the man elected to debrief me. I'm not interested in making careless public accusations, but you should know that a person can figure it out. I figured it out.”
Angleton leaned forward. “What do you think you figured out, Major?”
“I know exactly what you're building here. A honey trap. The ultimate prison. A prison so beautiful those overly aggressive elements you worry about will never know or care they're in prison.”
To spell out much more would be crossing a bridge too far. Some things must remain unspoken. A military coup was something we all believed could never happen north of the Rio Grande.
And yet...
What if the military saw a civilian government marching us toward a nuclear abyss?
Would they sit back and wait?
Or would they step forward and take action?
“The billionaires have had it their own way for too long,” Angleton said. “The second cold war is not a war between nations. It's war between the few oligarchs who control almost all of the world's resources... and then there's the rest of us. Whose side are you on, Major? The side of the few? Or the side of the many?”
I didn't even breathe in reply. He was finally talking, and I wasn't about to utter a single, solitary syllable that might stem the flow.
“The virtual reality we're creating isn't such a bad place. You said it yourself. The guests aren't exactly being thrust into agony. They can have everything they want. All the girls, all the space and freedom. They can do anything, be anything. They won't even know the rest of us are still out here in the real world. It's the cleansing apocalypse they always wanted, and they don't even have to fly to some bunker in New Zealand to get it.”
“The virtual reality isn't quite solid yet,” I said. “The men sent there would figure it out just like I did. They would force you to reset. They'd find a way to escape back out into the world. Just like I did.”
“I know that, son.”
Son.
I was no longer the Air Force Major. I was once again the experimental lab rat.
“We're working on it. We'll fine-tune it. And one day, one day soon...”
“General, I don't want you to think I don't support this project. I do. And I will happily go back if you need me to. As many times as you need me to.”
“That is a very heroic offer, Major Blount.” His voice was dry. “Especially since you already understand the risk of addiction.”
Oh, I understood the risk of addiction, all right. My very blood throbbed with the desire to fall back into that world.
My three girls. So beautiful. So perfect.
Where would I find them out here in reality?
“You are indeed a hero, Major Blount.” Angleton seemed to mean it. “And that's why I've decided against recommending you for further travel. It's far too dangerous. Our programmers are making enhancements and improvements to the simulated reality every day. And the more real it gets, the more dangerous it gets. Any given person can only go under so many times before they develop a severe dissociative disorder. From here on out, we intend to conduct our experiments solely on undesirables.”
Those lucky, lucky undesirables. Who would they be? Prisoners? Power-mad billionaires? Inconvenient and incompetent politicians?
“We are humane men,” he said. “We're not out for vengeance or for punishment. We don't want to torture anybody, and we don't object to our prisoners being happy. Indeed, their happiness makes them easier to manage.”
I didn't know whether I felt admiration or horror for the audacity of his vision. “What will this world be when it becomes known that serial killers and corrupt politicians get sent away to their own private universe to live like kings?”
“A better one. A world where prisoners never want to escape. A world where bad guys willingly go away and never come back. We won't have to hunt down serial killers and child predators anymore. They'll come to us. Eagerly. Happily. Begging for the chance to live wild and free in a virtual world where they can live out all their sick fantasies without the threat of being hunted down and strapped onto an injection table.”
“And the billionaires?” I asked.
“Getting rid of them will pay for itself. It'll be a service, an expensive one. The ridiculously rich with more money than sense will line up to pay good money for the opportunity to play tourist in the world of their choosing. They'll be warned about the chance of addiction, but such men are arrogant. They will assume they can't be addicted. That they can't be trapped. And so they'll walk willingly into their cage.”
“As I said before, a honey trap.” I nodded again. “I think a part of me suspected it all along.”
He gestured at a bottle of five-hundred-dollar single malt. A male server had brought it in along with two expensive crystal tumblers.
“A toast, Major. To another successful mission.”
The server poured a finger into each glass and then retreated. We sipped. It was definitely the good stuff.
“You've done well,” Angleton said.
“Thank you, General.”
“What comes next after the Air Force, Major?”
“Some traveling, maybe some consulting...” Honestly, I didn't know. “Maybe I'll go back and finish that degree.”
Maybe I'd wander around the world looking for the women who starred in my virtual reality. If they had counterparts in the real world, Los Angeles would be the place to start.
And then I had one final, terrible thought.
How did I know that any of this was true? How did I know I wasn't one of the serial killers or corrupt billionaires?
Couldn't this moment of congratulation be its own illusion?
Couldn't all the moments I remembered be mere simulations?
Had I lived another life, a darker life? Was my real life lost to me forever beneath the endless layers of beautiful fakes?
If the Air Force could create realities, they could delete them too.
Epilogue
Eighteen months later
After war, a man has a strange sense of unreality when he finds himself in a civilian setting. How did I get here, sitting on this white wrought-iron chair at a white wrought-iron table on a sidewalk
in sunny Los Angeles? A cute redhead with a diamond in her ear and a too-short black skirt did a bunny dip to avoid flashing her thong when she put down my latte.
Had I seen the redhead somewhere before? Her flawless skin was the color of cream. No freckles, no pores. A starlet's skin. Probably I'd seen her in some bit part on TV.
The latte was excellent, although I wasn't sure when I turned into the kind of guy who drank lattes. That felt as unreal as anything else. My touchstone was the scar on the side of my head, the invisible scar underneath the shaggy hair I'd let grow a little too long to make sure it stayed invisible. I touched it now, and there was no doubt about the scar. It was there. Jagged, a little raised, an enduring reminder of the second time my F-16 went down.
There were scars on my chest too, four long stripes like some animal's claws. No one had ever quite explained where they came from.
What the Air Force did explain, over and over, was that my reaction time wasn't quite as good, that it would never be quite as good, that I could no longer stand up to the G forces flying an F-16 entailed.
That was real, too. As real as the scar.
Well, as they say, freedom isn't free. And this was freedom. The endless choices of coffee drinks. The endless leggy girls in too-short skirts hoping to make it big in Hollywood.
The redhead's milky thighs flashed in the sun like an after-image of heaven.
On a beautiful day like today, all the tables were taken long before noon. Red glanced at me, clearly wishing I'd go away and leave my spot free for somebody drinking more than a latte. I had another minute or two before she'd start dropping hints. Despite the traumatic brain injury, I could still read all the tiny social cues. Hell, I could still win at poker.
The trouble was, I had nowhere to go and all day to get there. I'd lost all direction since my honorary discharge from the Air Force. It felt like I was still waiting for my real life to begin.
Maybe I'd head back to Vegas. I'd already substantially increased my net worth on my last visit. Hmm.
Two girls strolled by arm-in-arm. A brunette and a blonde, both pretty, but such different types of pretty you wondered why they were together. A brunette with classic shampoo-commercial bouncy, jouncy hair. A bad attitude suicide blonde with dark make-up smeared around her eyes.
“Mind if we sit here?” The blonde pulled out a chair and sat down before I could answer.
The brunette, smiling, did the same. “Hi.”
“Have we met before?” I asked. “You look familiar.”
“Do you come here often?” asked the blonde.
Both girls burst into giggles. This was a pick-up. Fine. I was abundantly free to be picked up.
“What's your stand on the topic of three-ways?” asked the brunette.
I grinned. “I think a three-way can be a beautiful thing with the right participants.”
“Are we the right participants?” Blondie batted her eyes.
“Maybe. We could try it on to see.”
That fast, I was throwing cash on the table so the two of them could haul me off to their little cottage near the beach. How did I get so lucky? I'd been in the right place at the right time, and everything snapped into place. Sometimes, life just worked out that way.
Everything fit.
I fit.
No need to travel to Vegas. I belonged right here in LA. The sun shone on my face, and I had a pretty girl on each arm.
This world was my oyster, and I was going to live forever.
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If you enjoyed this story, don't miss my first novel, The Harem at the End of the Galaxy. In the far future, humanity faces extinction if the last surviving women don't reach back in time to scoop up a real man. Clayton Parks, a low-level civilian contractor working in the Pentagon, is the lucky guy. Fortunately, he's eager to prove he can rise to the occasion... over and over again.
About Kyle Kenze
I'm a regular guy from Texas who used to work in a cube in a well-known space center in Houston. It was less thrilling than you might think, but I got pretty good at filling in the slow parts of the day with my own private sci-fi fantasies. Now it's time to share my twisted stories with the world at large.
My first series, The Harem at the End of the Galaxy, is now a complete novel available in audio, paperback, and Kindle format.
