by Isaac Stone
“The VR team claims that this fractured the programming or something like it. They’re going crazy in there because it was outside of all perimeters they’d set up. All you were supposed to do was find a box and get out of there. How did you even get that tribe to come back and help you?”
“You’ll have to ask Chamistra about that one.”
“Not funny, her system wasn’t designed to have that kind of negotiating and command skills. Don’t believe me? Why don’t you check your character sheet? What else did she do when we were out of communication?”
“She helped me find the courier box.”
Rhonda was speechless for a few more minutes. “Are you kidding me?” she asked. “This isn’t funny. The VR team can’t get you out of there for another 24 hours. Whatever happened in the VR world has messed up their systems worse than they imagined. Let’s see the box.”
I held it up to the communicator screen in the gun handle so she could see it. Then I moved the box back down to the floor.
“Does that count as a win?” I asked her. “I broke the seal and looked at the box’s contents. All manner of secret treaties the military would rather not have discovered. Not consistent with known history, but believable in a world where everyone is desperate.”
“Wait a minute,” she turned off screen and said something to a person I couldn’t see. “I’m told the box discovery is the real one and does count as a win. However, we can’t get you out of the VR world as if I just told you. You’ll have to sit tight until tomorrow.”
“I have enough supplies; it shouldn’t be a hard job to do it. I’ll bury the box in the jungle, which will be consistent with the game. I’m sure no one would ever want these treaties to be found.” The treaties weren’t the only thing the corporation didn’t want found, but I kept my mouth shut about the manual for the hidden data vault.
“Yes,” Rhonda said, “do that and remember where to find it. They’ll want to keep a record of it. By the way, where is Chamistra? The VR team tells me they can’t locate her.”
“She went off to find a place to bury the box for me. I’m sure she’ll be right back.”
“Probably another power surge. I’ll let them know. What?” There was someone else talking to her off camera.
“Vince,” she told me, “Heath wants to have a word with you.” She rose up and let the manager sit in her chair. I could see Heath’s youthful face in the screen.
“What happened when we lost contact?” he asked me. “The story line went nuts between the time we saw you and now. They tell me a group of tribesmen was recruited by Chamistra to take out the commandos. That’s not possible. We never coded for that.”
“I saw it happen,” I explained to him. “And they had Sten guns purchased from gun runners. If you keep this time line going, I can only imagine the hell those men will cause before this place becomes independent of the British Empire. You could maybe get two games for the cost of developing one, the adventure as a core game and a cool shooter or strategy module as an add-on.” I briefly went over what happened and avoided any mention of what I’d done with Chamistra after the slaughter.
“It still doesn’t add up,” he told me when I was finished. “We designed each part of the story line to have specific encounters and plot caches. The only way you can alter the time line is through the use of a plot cache. We don’t build games where a horde of Mongols suddenly appear on the horizon unless it was written into the story line. There was nothing in our scenario that involved an abbess recruiting local men to help you. She didn’t have the skills built into her program and how the hell did you say the tribesmen got those Sten guns?”
“They told me the guns were purchased on the market from gun runners,” I explained to him.
“This isn’t possible,” Heath swore under his breath. “The game is out of control. Remember what I told you about the NPC’s developing free will?” I nodded at him. “This is what I meant. Now all manner of people are scared shitless.”
Not hard to see why. Who would want a bank account program that decided to take the money and run?
“I understand you can’t pull me out right away,” I told Heath. “Any clue as to why that is?”
“I could tell you, but it would take more time than I want to spend. Look, keep an eye on Chamistra. When we get you out, which I hope will be sooner than later, we need to talk about what happened in there. Don’t worry about the money; you’ve earned a bonus and then some for what you did inside the VR world. I have to run, but Rhonda will be standing by if you need anything.” The screen went blank and I closed the cover over the gun handle.
“Did you have your little conference with the team?” Chamita surprised me again. She stood next to me and waited for my response.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about it,” I said to her. “Aren’t you still supposed to be a character running on a specific program?” She still had the same wrap around her that let me know how lean her body felt.
“The team at Ruby has some problems right now,” she responded and put one arm around my shoulders. “Didn’t they tell you?”
“They said they couldn’t track you, but told me nothing else.”
“At this very moment they are having all manner of problems. I’m sure it’s causing them a lot of grief, but no manner. Let’s go hide the box.”
We walked across the bare perimeter and I let her guide the way. Soon we were in the forest at night. It was a different place in the dark. I could hear my boots make contact with the soil and branches tore at me. Chamistra glided through the dense jungle without effort. She had the ability to detect any branch in her way. Soon we were near the stream and I could see the water running away from us.
“Here,” she said. “This will do.” I looked at a hole in ground where a spade stood next to it.
I dropped the box down the hole and buried it with the spade. Once all the dirt was back in the hole, I stamped it down in place. Chamistra took the spade from me and smiled.
“You want to know, don’t you?” she said to me in her mature voice. “You want to know which one is the real me? Is it the wolf girl, the abbess, the woman you saw in the park, or was it the lab technician?”
“At least two of you felt the same way,” I told her. “I don’t know about the woman in the park or the lab technician.” Those two were back in the real world.
I heard the beads rattle around her neck and she brushed her hair back with one hand. “Why should I tell you?” she asked me. “Maybe it’s none of those, or all of them.”
Before I could give her an answer, the gun handle began to vibrate. I pulled out and activated the screen. I was surprised to see Heath’s face again.
“We’ve found a way to get you out right now,” Heath told me. “Lay down somewhere and we’ll start the transfer. Hey, where the hell are you?”
“In the forest with Chamistra,” I explained to him.
His face went solid. “Is she near you?” Heath asked.
“She is standing in front of me,” I told him.
“Can you tilt the gun handle at her?”
I looked at Chamistra and she nodded.
“No problem,” I told Heath. “I do have one question.”
“What’s that?”
“Does this gun actually fire bullets? I suspected it didn’t really do that because why would you place the communicator so close to something that goes bang?”
“Oh for crying out loud!” Heath returned. “You’re in a virtual world. Does it really matter?”
“It would have mattered if I needed to use it. If the gun didn’t go bang when I pointed it, I could lose the game, couldn’t I?”
“Christ, the gun didn’t work, happy? Now shift the screen in Chamistra’s direction, I need to check something.”
“Just wanted to know,” I told him. The fucker.
I tilted the gun handle at Chamistra and let him see her. There was a moment of silence.
“Hello there, Heath
,” she told him. “Trying to get ahead again by the wrong methods, I see.”
“What?” I could hear him squawk from the speaker. “You aren’t supposed to know who I am. Did Vince tell you my name?”
“Why would he do that, pretty boy?” Chamistra said in a sexy voice. This was a new one.
“Vince,” I heard Heath yell over the handle. “Get away from her! She’s dangerous!”
“I thought this whole world was faked,” I sighed to him. “How can she be dangerous if nothing is real?”
I heard Heath begin to bark orders to someone and I killed the connection. I returned the pistol to its holster and looked at Chamistra. This was all insane, so I decided to just embrace the crazy.
“You scared him bad,” I told her when I went over and took her hands. They were soft for someone who was supposed to live in the forest.
“I tend to do that,” she explained. “You won’t be here much longer.”
“Will I see you in the real world?”
Chamistra leaned up and kissed me. “You might,” she told me. “But you might not recognize me. I don’t think you look like the handsome British officer on the other side, do you?”
“I was always told that it’s what is on the inside that counts,” I told her. I looked down. The ash was gone from her face and hands. Why hadn’t I noticed it before? Her hands were painted with red lines that worked across the fingers in a pattern.
“Time to go,” Chamistra, said as she touched my nose with one finger. “Sorry, I can’t hold them off forever.”
The world went black.
The phase-shift was a bit different this time. Once again, I entered a world that didn’t match the reality I left behind or the one where I was bound. I watched Chamistra turn as she faded away. It was what she turned into that didn’t prepare me for the next part.
As I stood there, she tore off her wrap, stood before me naked, and began to dance. The entire world about me turned to an inferno and I could feel the heat, although it didn’t burn me up. I watched as she pulled her head off and the blood spouted from the stump where her neck remained. I wanted to scream in horror, but she was still alive! Chamistra began to dance in the flames with her head in one hand. She turned the head and it looked at me. As I fought to make the vision go away, she began to drink the blood that flowed from her severed neck. The flames rose higher and drowned her out. The last thing I saw where two figures at her feet as she danced in the fire.
It was Chamita and I in the act of love. We didn’t even notice the fire and the colossal headless woman who danced around us.
Embrace. The. Crazy.
And then I saw Chamita. She was much younger and in the forest around the mountain by herself. I floated over her and she couldn’t see me. I wanted to cry out to her, but I lacked the ability to speak. She was wrapped in some kind of stole and sat in a clearing with a wolf pup. The pup nuzzled her and she fed him some dry meat as they watched the sun set in the distance. It was late fall and I realized they were in the process of building up a store of food for the winter. This had to be years before I’d encountered her in the previous game. Once again, I couldn’t understand why this vision was given to me or what it all represented. It too soon faded from view.
The next scene was that of a dance club somewhere in time. I had no idea of the location, but on the stage a woman did her routine while an appreciative audience of men hooted and tossed money on the stage. Every so often, a bouncer would escort a man to the door when he approached too close, but the audience was under control for the most part. I turned and looked at the dancer, although I was seated far from the stage.
She zoomed into my vision and I found myself right in front of the stage. No one seemed to notice me, not even the big security lummox who patrolled the barricade between the dancer and the audience. I stepped through the barricade and walked right up to the stage.
It was Chamita up there. I was shocked; this was a painted version of her and unknown to me. She began to peel off her top in synch to the cheap, recorded music. I felt shocked and wanted to stop her, but no one acknowledged me.
It was at that moment I turned around and faced the audience. There, by himself in the shadows, was the game designer, Hans. He stood there and tried to conceal his face. I knew it was he even though we’d only met briefly before his death.
The last thing I saw was he sitting in his car watching the backstage door to the club. The door opened and another burly security guard escorted the same painted dancer out to a car. He held the door open for her and took a seat in the driver’s side for himself. As Hans watched, the car pulled out of the secure parking lot and merged into traffic. Seconds later, the designer’s car left its curb and joined the traffic on the busy street. It followed them, but kept a good distance behind.
The vision went black for one final time.
“We’ve got him,” a voice said next to me as I regained consciousness. My vision was hazed, but I knew I was back in the command center of Ruby Realization’s VR lab.
“Is his pulse normal?” a man in a white coat said to the nurse next to me.
“Hold fast,” she told him. “Heart beat is good too and we have a solid response line on the EEG.” I mustered every ounce of strength I could to turn my head and look at the room.
It wasn’t the same place where I’d left and entered into the VR world. Once again, I was in some kind of hospital room. I could see the IV bottles on stands next to me. Two other doctors looked over a chart as I shifted my eyes away from the bright light in the ceiling.
The sudden movement on my part caught their attention. One of the doctors almost dropped his computer tablet when I moved my head toward him.
“He’s coming around!” the doctor shouted and the room exploded with activity. I heard several people begin to talk at the same time.
“Call Heath!” someone yelled. “Tell him he’s made it across. Tell him to get down here quick because we’ll need to put him back under soon!” I heard a door whisk open as someone ran out of the room.
“She could’ve used the intercom,” someone spoke.
“Not enough time,” someone else commented. “He might be on the phone and would ignore it.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?” someone said to me again. It was a doctor by the white coat and mask.
“Three,” I said to her. “Oh, hell, it might be four. Could you get that goddamn light out of my face?” I coughed as my throat felt very sore.
She adjusted something and the light was no longer painful.
“Sorry about that the doctor said, “Don’t try and speak much. You haven’t used your vocal cords in some time and it will hurt.
So that explains it, I thought. How long had I been out?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They made Heath wait until I was in the recovery room before he could talk to me. I was still in the gurney they’d used to transport me to the medical center when he came in with a nurse. Although he was wearing a coverall and mask, I could tell the doctors were not happy to see him in their Holy of Holies. He burst into the room and came directly up to me.
“Is the patient able to answer questions?” he asked the nearest doctor. “I have a lot to ask him.”
“The patient is weak, but willing,” I told him from the prone position. “What does the computer executive want to know?” My throat felt as if someone had taken sandpaper and ran it over the inside.
“Just a few minutes Mr. Mint,” the nearest doctor said to him. “We need to get him secured before you start any long-term interviews.
“Relax,” I told them. “This isn’t the first time I’ve returned from never-never land and found myself in a hospital bed. Next time they can reserve one for me in advance.” My strength was gone, but I could still turn my head.
“We almost lost you,” he told me. “What happened after we talked? Did you see where she put the box?” I could see the medical staff glare at him.
“Yes, I saw where she
put it, but I don’t think I could find it again,” I told him. “And why should it matter because I was inside a VR world. I thought you tracked my movement through it.”
Heath pulled up a chair and sat down next to me. The nearest doctor continued to monitor my blood pressure with an old-fashioned cuff. I had the feeling they were surprised I came back at all.
“Vince, you have been under for two weeks,” Heath informed me. “I was on the verge of sending you to an assisted care facility until the hospital called. We are pioneering new technology here, give us some credit ok?”
“Two weeks?” I asked him. “I thought I was in the VR world less than a week. You mean the phase transfer took an extra week?”
“No,” he explained. “The phase transfer began two weeks ago. We lost track of you when it began. Yesterday the staff gave me their opinion and said you might never regain consciousness.”
I was stunned. Two weeks unconscious? How could this be? I was certain that I’d been in the jungle with Chamistra no more than two hours ago. Was the time differential that great?
“What happened to the technician who prepped me for the trip?” I asked him. I wanted to know where the young lady who resembled Chamita went to while I traveled to the Ruby version of the VR world. Something told me she was the key to the solution of why Chamita/Chamistra was in both game scenarios.
“I don’t know off the top of my head,” he told me. “I don’t keep track of all the people who work at the facility. Be glad we got you to the hospital when the team couldn’t bring you back out. You still haven’t told me what I asked about that woman who was in there with you.”
“Chamistra?” I said to him. “She was with me when I buried the box. Don’t you remember? I held the communicator at her and you told me she was dangerous.” I didn’t tell him about the headless vision I had of her.
“Did you see where she went?”
“How could I? When you brought me out everything went black. The last thing I could see was her standing next to the spot where I buried the box.”
