by Aaron Jay
Strength I’d never have expected from such a frail old thing bent me down. Her eyes bore into me. I was frozen in fear.
I couldn’t escape the knowledge that this being, witch or AI, had access to my mind. I had no secrets from this witch. From this AI. From whatever she was. She was unknowable, which is what my ancestors must have felt when they encountered a true wise woman. A brujo or an artificial mind that had access to my neurology was a distinction without a difference. I froze like a prey animal.
A timeless moment later she closed her eyes and I was set free. When she looked at me again, she was just a simulation of an old hag once again.
“No Miles. I can’t teach you now. You aren’t ready.”
“What? But I need to know,” I begged.
She nodded. Her eyes avoided mine and stared at a stone that jutted out from the heath.
“When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.”
“What does that mean?”
She avoided my eyes by staring at the stone.
“You are unable to see. I cannot teach, I can only show. Fate will offer you the opportunity to learn from me. You will know the moment when it reveals itself to you--if you choose to see it.”
With that, the program ended and I was logged out.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The land was barren and so was my imagination. I was trapped in a dead and desolate land by my enemies. The small harvest I could gather wasn’t enough. I couldn’t think of what else I could do. I just wasn’t smart enough. Pulling wasn’t smart enough.
There was only one person I knew who was smarter than anyone else. I had been avoiding seeing him since I came to the Pitts. Maybe longer than that. Now I really didn’t feel like seeing him. There is something cruel about the fact that when you are feeling like a pathetic failure, that is when you have to go and ask for help.
Go tomorrow. Just play for a day. Your father can wait for you for one day…
Why was the land still like this? Why was I still stuck in this blasted landscape?
I logged out.
The sound of sour lime
The smell of crashing rocks
The look of vinegar’s sharpness
The Pitts was just like I had left it. Girls, guys and anything else that might seduce you. I had resisted this for so long. I had done all that I could think to do. I had schemed and ran, died and fought, trained and studied and all for naught.
Out of all the ads there was one woman who drew my gaze. I couldn’t explain exactly why, of all the options grinding and offering themselves, this one woman grabbed my eyes.
It is nothing. It doesn’t matter. It is just a few hours of your life. A break may help you focus. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…
There was almost a glow or aura around her. She became the focus of my attention and I stopped seeing anything but her. A coppery light surrounded her and without any conscious thought I reached out and chose her.
I’m not going to get into details. It isn’t like I figured out something new that no one else had discovered before, so any interest you have is about cheap thrills. I’m a man like most men and she was something that acted like a woman. Or at least what men expect women to act like.
If I did tell you all about it, I would be doing one of two things. I could brag, which is stupid as she was programmed to act like I was Casanova mixed with Captain Kirk. Or I could try to titillate you. No thanks.
A day went by. At least a day in the Pitts went by. I thought to get out and go see my father. There was a flash of bare legs, a giggle and her hand traced its way down my flank and I lost another day.
You just need to get yourself together. What is a few days? Doesn’t this feel good? What is better than this? It is all you could ever want…
Wait until the end of the week: I told myself that this was a nice limit. I’d explore this new garden of earthly pleasures until the end of the week.
Maybe father won’t be able to help. He hasn’t been able to before. Put off learning the bad news. Till he says there is nothing to be done you still have the possibility of hope. Why rush to find out hope is gone?
Every now and again I would pull myself from these thoughts. I made to log out and a friend of hers would come over and then both of them would ask me to stay. Her friends came and went until she faded into the string of sights, sounds and sensations.
I lay back covered in sweat. I knew I should be focusing on something else… but my mind would turn to the endless variety.
I thought of Patricia. Why should I think of her? What was the point? Was this the kind of thing what I wanted with her? She could betray me. I had so much here that she would never offer.
That thought disturbed me and I ignored it.
Next day I finally decided I’d log into the Game. Maybe the land would have returned. If it hadn’t, I hadn’t lost anything by my indulgences.
Yes. Maybe the land is dead. If the land is dead you lose nothing here. You are only gaining pleasure. And what is wrong with that? What else is there?
The taste of a child’s cry
The sound of a splinter under your thumbnail
The smell of the darkness under a blanket
The land was unchanged. Grey and white dust undisturbed by anything other than a random breeze.
I had lost track of time but I knew we were well past the time when Brady should have stopped the fallow. But he hadn’t so all was good. I could go back to the endless party.
It was such a relief.
Isn’t it?
Thank god I have an excuse…
Thank god we have an excuse…
I can just give up at least for now…
We can just give up just for the moment…
Just for the moment…
Just for the moment… and the next… and the next… a lifetime of moments… live for today…
Despair felt like such a relief.
I began to log out. To head back to the Pitts. Just before I logged out, I heard a wolf’s howl out in the bleak, dust-filled distance. A wolf’s howl. That should mean something to me. I knew a wolf, didn’t I?
It was too late: the log out sequence was already engaged. I could figure it out next time I logged in.
Back in the Pitts I fell back into my pleasant distractions.
Sooner than I could have imagined, I was bored with the temptations this program offered. I knew that there were other, darker, more interesting things to explore. That I had hardly scratched the surface of what I could enjoy. Deeper levels of the Pitts beckoned.
What was that wolf howl?
I felt restless. I had been feeling more and more restless these last few days. No matter how much I indulged I felt like I needed more.
I hit the exit button on my pod. A small voice inside argued but I wasn’t listening to much of anything.
There is still more… tomorrow…
The pod opened.
The bomb shelter looked more foreign and odd and dull and ignorable than it ever had before. The real world seemed flat and dead. The smell and taste of the air lacked something. The colors were muted. My own body felt foreign.
I ignored all that and let my legs lead me out. I passed through one subterranean structure to another. Past rows and rows of pods. Each one reminding me that I could leave this dull, empty world if I just turned around.
Some of Lilith’s customers tried to engage in the pact of the mutual ignore. They wanted to pretend we didn’t really see each other. If we all pretended we weren’t in the Pitts, then somehow we weren’t. If we all agree to a lie, isn’t that the same as the truth?
Without my notice, my hand started scratching endless itches that only shifted under my nails and popped up somewhere else.
What was the point in this playacting? I sought eye contact with some guy making his way toward a pod farther back. He didn’t like it despite my friendly smile. Chuckles erupted from my mouth that grew into laughter as
I realized that I was now one of the people I found disturbing and creepy when I first came here. Before what? Before I lost my innocence? What was I losing?
You can’t lose something in a fake world. It is all fake… You can do anything here because here doesn’t really exist…
There was nothing wrong with what I had been doing. It was natural. Everyone did it. Look at all the pods!
I smiled and tried to greet all my comrades in indulgence. If we all agreed, there was nothing to be ashamed of.
Pod after pod went by before I made it to the elevator, each a testament to how normal I was.
Up in the lobby, Mr. Ruod kept his vigil over all of us down in the Pitts. His garishly red lips smiled and smiled. His eyes were warm and understanding.
“Wonderful! Wonderful! I can see that you understand now. Isn’t it just amazing? Your desire is our pleasure, your pleasure is our desire. Lilith doesn’t lie at all, does she? She gives us everything she promises and more. Wonderful!”
I nodded. She did deliver. The last… how long had I been gone? It didn’t matter.
“Community, identity, security. Everything anyone could want is here. You know, you don’t have to leave,” he smiled. It soothed and comforted me.
“I don’t have to leave…?”
“We have a special offer just for you. A wonderful offer. Just wonderful.”
His voice was so generous and concerned. Why had I left? I didn’t really know why I had ever left my pod in the first place. Something about a wolf’s howl… Mr. Ruod gave off such a comfortable, secure and caring air.
“A free week. All expenses paid by us. A fantastic vacation. Wonderful! A week of pleasure. A week where you can choose any one of our exclusive offerings. Special offers that you haven’t seen before. Now that you are really part of our community, there are things you can indulge in that you couldn’t before. Isn’t that wonderful? There is always more!”
My mind spun at the glimpses my imagination gave me of what he might mean.
“It is good for everyone to take a little break. What else is life for? And if you are happy, well, isn’t that a little slice of this world that is a little happier than it was before? No need to leave now, Mr. Boone.”
Mr. Boone. He had called me Mr. Boone. Mr. Boone was my father. I was just Miles. Numitor Boone, savior of humanity, was Mr. Boone. What of my father?
The spell this place was putting on me cleared for a moment and I shook my head. I was going to see my father. I had heard the howl of a wolf.
Ruod gave a little sigh of disappointment and frustration when I got up and stumbled past him and out of the lobby into the street. I half ran and half staggered away.
Walking through the empty streets, my thoughts began to settle. I would go see my father.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
There is no way I could tell you if I saw anyone or anything as I made my way to my fathers’ house. My eyes didn’t know what to notice as I lurched along until I came to my father’s block. All I could focus on was arguing with the part of me that was constantly muttering that we should turn back. That it was dull and boring and numb out here.
There was the old brownstone. It looked just like always, which was disturbing as my ‘always’ seemed so very long ago and far away now. I stumbled up the steps, sweaty and manic. ArchE opened the door before I managed to knock or ring as usual. These familiar things were like a blurry window into a past life.
“Stay right there, hotshot,” ArchE ordered.
“Excuse me?”
ArchE easily stopped my forward momentum with hands that moved in a blur. His reaction time was inhuman, which makes sense as he isn’t one of us. He went back to pretending to be human by taking in my disheveled and sweaty appearance and tsk tsking.
Keeping one of my arms clasped in one of his hands, his fingers convinced the nano of my shirt to pull back and his finger pressed on one of my arteries. I think he was reading my pulse and who knows what else. Then he started looking in my eyes from different angles.
“ArchE?” I asked. “Can I come in?”
His look was serious.
“You look like a few miles of bad road, kid. Sorry Miles.”
“Things have been going… I don’t know how things have been going, ArchE. I thought I did but now I don’t know anymore.”
“You took an implant,” he informed both of us, despite us both knowing it already.
“Yes. Weeks ago,” I acknowledged.
“Interesting. Not from your father, nor with his knowledge,” he said, leading me inside and into the parlor, which had the greatest security measures.
ArchE sat me in one of the overstuffed chairs, which extruded some straps that both constrained me and had sensors built in. An image of each of my eyes came up on a screen. It tracked my eyes’ dilation. ArchE was noting all sorts of facts my body was divulging: EEG, EKG, blood oxygen, blood chemistry.
He finished getting me set up and said, “I need to give you a Voight-Kampff test.”
Like I didn’t already know what he was working on. Everyone knew about Voight-Kampff tests ever since… since things like what happened to my mother.
Stating the obvious was how ArchE did his best to relax me. He wanted a good baseline for the test. Once it was all set, he began.
“It’s your birthday. Someone gives you a real calfskin wallet. How do you react?” he asked calmly.
“I wouldn’t accept it. I’d report them to the GMs.”
Actual animals were rare and nearly sacred in our sterile world. A gift of a real leather wallet would be like someone back before we killed the world giving an ivory pen set inlaid with black rhino horn and condor eggshell.
“You’ve got a little boy. He shows you his real butterfly collection plus the killing jar. What do you do?”
“I’d take him to the GMs.”
“You are watching some entertainment. Suddenly you realize there’s a wasp crawling on your arm.”
“I’d kill it.”
“You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down and you see a tortoise. It’s crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs, trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?”
“What do you mean? I’m not helping?”
“I mean you are NOT helping it.”
ArchE waited a moment to see if I would say anything more. Something inside of me didn’t like these questions.
“Don’t worry, it is just a test,” he eventually reassured me.
He pretended to look down at some notes as if he needed to read the next question. He was always so careful to keep up the pretense of human behavior. Was I so different? How much of my behavior was to reassure other people I was basically the same as them?
“Describe in single words only the good things that come to mind about your mother,” he asked.
“Talk about my…?”
I couldn’t. The little voice in my head, in our head, didn’t like to think of such things. I began to struggle. One of my arms moved without being under my control. Maybe I was and maybe I wasn’t the one who shouted and cursed at ArchE.
ArchE made his face look sad while he engaged the security protocols.
I blacked out.
When I awoke I was in my father’s office. It looked the same as it ever had. He looked the same as he always did in here.
I felt clear-headed and normal. I realized I hadn’t felt normal in quite a while.
On his desk, on the green blotter, was a glass jar that contained a hologram of the little coppery lizard Lilith had put in me. It would hold still for a moment and then would erupt, franticly scratching and scrabbling against the glass.
“We don’t have much time, Miles. I can only keep it contained for a short time.”
“Can you remove it? Get rid of it permanently?”
> “Yes. I can.”
“So why haven’t you?”
He leaned toward me over his desk as if trying to erase the space between us.
“I need you to want me to,” he said with more intensity and seriousness than I had ever seen his massive face express. “Just say the word and it is gone.”
Part of me wanted to just say, “Go ahead!” Part of me. Another part of me thought of how much better I felt in the Pitts. How Lilith had helped me. How if my valley would just bloom again, I would need my implant if I wanted to finish the quest. There was always tomorrow.
My father was looking at me, his eyes searching, hope and expectation on his face.
“Will it hurt?”
Without any hesitation he said, “Yes, Miles. It will hurt.”
My dad was never one to shade any truths. He still looked at me expectantly. He knew that pain wouldn’t stop me if I wanted the thing gone.
“Can you remove it later if I want?” I asked.
His face didn’t go cold. It didn’t turn away. There was no anger. There wasn’t even really sadness or disappointment. Any of those would mean that he was rejecting me. His face showed each of those emotions as they would appear if they could still include faith and love and acceptance in them.
“Yes. I can remove it later, Miles.”
Good. I didn’t have to get rid of it yet. He somehow saw that thought come to my mind. We both knew that having asked that question, I was not going to ask to have it removed right now.
He sighed and leaned back in his chair. The subject not closed but put aside for the moment.
“Why don’t you tell me what you have been up to,” he suggested.
And so I did. I told him of Aabid. I told him about the Tarrasquito and the prairie dog colony. The horrific mother lying in its heart. I told him of my tricks and plans. I told him how I saw Jude once again. I told him how my land was barren and dead. I told him about how I was trapped, and my escape back to my prison. I told him how someone finally got the joke of the Pit of Carkoon, which made him laugh. I told him of the three hags and alchemy and how I couldn’t master its final step. Of learning the axe and how to escape. I told him everything except those things I did in the Pitts.
