“To where? Your last address is temporary, a caretaker position for a school. You have a record of moving a lot.” Doctor Carol steepled his fingers.
“Nothing illegal about that.”
Doctor Carol produced a thick blue folder. Papers were stuffed in it haphazardly. He produced a large piece of construction paper, considered it.
“Would you care to comment on this drawing?” Doctor Carol asked.
He turned the paper. The drawing depicted a flying saucer with a bulbous bridge that looked like the top of the Starship Enterprise, with round view portals like ones on an old submarine. In one of the windows, a little bulbous grey head with enormous eyes peered out. Its hand waved, with little squiggles indicating motion. The skin of the ship was colored silver, with the crayon strokes all within the lines. The starscape the little saucer flew past was decorated with Saturns, moons, and asterisk-shaped stars, all different colors. Smears of black filled the spaces between.
“Looks like a kid drew a UFO,” Jeff said.
Doctor Carol nodded. “But you drew this, Jeff. When you first got here. So tell me about the aliens.”
***
Jordan examined the new program’s game lobby. It was a thing of wonder, a mesmerizing display that engaged all of her senses, showing her a multitude of pathways in which she could spend her leisure hours. She quickly realized there wasn’t just one game but hundreds, with many more tagged as coming soon.
She saw portals to chase sims, hunting games, building and design fantasies, exploration, social interaction, music and art tours, and adventures into every genre imaginable and some she had never considered. She felt a tug any time she even hesitated to consider one of the choices, as if the games themselves were connected to high-powered suction lines.
One game labeled “Escape” featured a mysterious derelict space station floating around a dark green nebula. When Jordan paused to admire the compelling title graphic, she was almost drawn into the game, as if it had its own gravitational pull. This was accompanied by a sense of dread inside her gut and goosebumps up her spine, like she was eight years old watching Night of the Living Dead for the first time. All the game’s doing, she understood. Yet it took an act of will to not enter the game.
Not everything was scary. One game boasted a tour of the pastries of the galaxy. Her mouth watered and she could smell baking cake and something akin to cinnamon. Another sim would place her on a grav bike on a variety of low-G worlds. The thrill of the ride came surging through from the vermilion expanse of rock formations whipping past the game window. Other games boasted vacation getaways with views and leisure activities on a thousand different worlds.
Too much. Jordan took a virtual step back. Just then Shannanon sent a message.
“You’re in!”
“Yeah. Made it. There’s so much here. It’s overwhelming”
“Ignore the lobby. We’re inside Dawn of the Rising Fantasy: Moon Queen’s Plight: Epic Champion Edition.”
“Found it. But it says Part Two.”
“I guess Part One never got out of development. Doesn’t matter. Log in, human!”
So Jordan went to find Shannanon’s game, and it appeared in an instant. Just considering the window to the game world gave Jordan the rush she craved, and the sensation was more than she could ever have hoped for in a game that she hadn’t even played. The thrill of combat. The excitement of discovery. The magical notion that anything was possible within this new world, and evil was something that could be vanquished with the application of brute force. And she would step into the shoes of someone not herself, where she would leave her weaknesses behind in exchange for the signing-on bonus of the ability to dual-wield a variety of sharp objects.
Why not? Just ten minutes.
That was when her personal contact list opened. A notification informed her that Jeff Abel had entered a game.
Jordan frowned, opened his profile. This couldn’t be right. Jeff hated games. Not only was he playing something, but it was one from this very catalog. And according to Shannanon, none of these were even on the market yet, open only to those invited to the Beta. How would he have ever heard of this? But he was now playing something called “Doubt and Apprehension.”
She was about to message him when it happened. She entered the game Shannanon was in without having actually made the final decision to play. Maybe she had touched the portal to the game world. Perhaps she had executed a mental misclick.
She would check with Jeff soon. For now she was prompted to prepare herself, as she was a new player entering Dawn of the Rising Fantasy: Moon Queen’s Plight: Epic Champion Edition Part Two, and she would stay logged in just long enough to customize her new avatar.
Ten minutes, and not a minute more.
PART TWO – DARKER PLACES TO PLAY
CHAPTER 13
The tablet was still in Jeff’s cell when he returned. This couldn’t last, as a cleaning crew must come through on a regular basis. Still, Jeff hadn’t been frisked once. Where were the screws with their cell shakedowns and body cavity searches? No one had bothered even asking if he had seen the missing computer. Maybe the nurse hadn’t reported it stolen. But such luck wasn’t a normal part of Jeff’s life experiences.
Jeff held the device and checked its power level. The login screen showed it at 50%. A knock came at the door. Jeff shoved the tablet under his pillow. Another male nurse entered.
“Jeff Abel, time for your medicine,” the nurse said. He took another pill-filled paper cup from a cart in the hallway and handed it to Jeff along with another bottle of water.
“Thanks,” Jeff said. He waited. The nurse waited. Bottoms up.
“Lunch is in an hour,” the nurse said and moved along, leaving the door open.
Other patients walked around in the halls. It was 10:30 a.m. Jeff had already had his morning session with Doctor Carol. So after the ten o’clock hour, patients had liberty within the confines of the hospital walls. Minimum security but still locked in and supervised.
Doctor Carol’s questions had been pointed during their session, inquiring about Jeff’s belief in aliens, whether Jeff had seen any, and whether Jeff had been abducted. Jeff had played stupid. Until he could figure out what was actually happening, he concentrated on sounding as sane and grounded as possible. But didn’t most mentally ill people do that?
The pills did their work. Jeff felt fuzzy, and he wanted to sleep. He fought through the haze and went out into the hallway. The clean, tiled hall had six patients wandering about, one with a wheeled IV stand with an enteral feeding pump and a bag of yellowish mush on a hook. A tube ran from the pump to under the patient’s gown.
“Don’t stare,” the man with the pump said.
“Sorry,” Jeff said and continued to stare.
“Where’d you get that?” the man said, pointing.
Jeff looked down and was surprised that he was carrying the tablet under one arm as casual as can be. Jeff tucked it under his pajama shirt. This was beyond careless. The pills must have completely short-circuited his brain.
The man winked. Jeff put a finger to his lips and gave a demonstrative shush before moving on. In the rec room he went to one of the bookcases and grabbed a couple of magazines. Sunset and Fishing Times. He didn’t see Wired, National Geographic, or the Economist. The cover article, “Halibut Heaven” looked especially intriguing. He took the magazines back to his room, put the tablet between them, and arranged them on his nightstand. He placed a pack of tissues atop the stack. Neat enough if someone came in to change sheets and towel, yet flimsy if anyone spent ten seconds looking around. It would have to do. The drugs made him hazy enough that he might walk around with the tablet balancing on his head if he didn’t hide the thing.
He went to the cafeteria and sat at his table. The kid was there. Zachary joined them and put three coffees down. He handed one to Jeff and one to the kid.
“They regulate our doses of drugs by the milligram,” Zachary said. “But we can have
all the coffee we can drink. How much caffeine is in each cup, I wonder?”
The kid appeared listless. He stared at the coffee for a moment, then said, “That stuff tastes like tobacco juice.”
“Hmm,” Zachary said. “And have you ever had tobacco juice?”
When the kid didn’t answer, Zachary said, “I didn’t think so.” He turned his attention to Jeff. “It may make you have to pee a lot, but it helps with the meds.” He toasted. “This is cup number twelve for me, and it’s not even lunch.”
Jeff drank. Jeff was a man of few vices. He had quit drinking when he and his wife split, a prophylactic measure against becoming a reclusive alcoholic. He never gambled or smoked. But he spent good money for good coffee whenever possible, preferring his own fresh-ground drip to anything found in a chain store. His wife had taken his French press when she left him. He also learned to settle for anything brewed up in a local doughnut shop, diner, or greasy spoon. Sometimes even these could surprise you with their quality. Bad coffee when fresh could be palatable. This brown liquid with the sheen of motor oil wasn’t good and wasn’t fresh. Maybe it was tobacco juice. Jeff drank more.
After a few refills, the fuzz in his head did indeed subside.
Big Albert and the nurse with the missing tablet showed up, making their rounds, paying no special attention to Jeff.
Lunch was served. Philly cheesesteak sandwiches that were actually hoagies with orange nacho sauce dribbling from between the buns. The ham/turkey/baloney/substitute mystery cold cuts made a poor stand-in for grilled flank steak. Jeff ate.
“So how do we get out of this place?” Jeff asked as they finished lunch.
“You got somewhere to go?” Zachary asked.
Jeff thought about that, then said, “Would be nice to get some fresh air.”
“Outside is a privilege, not a right.”
“And how does one attain to this privilege?”
Zachary made a gesture, demonstrating there was nothing up either of his nonexistent sleeves. He raised a hand as if he were in grade school.
“What’s up, Zachary?” Big Albert said.
“We’d like to go out to the courtyard, please,” Zachary said in a childish tone.
Big Albert checked his wristwatch. He took his radio, said something into it. After a minute, another attendant walked Jeff, Zachary, and the kid downstairs and through doors that needed a card swipe to open. They were outside in the grassy central courtyard. The attendant sat on a bench and kept an eye on them. Another attendant stood near a closed gate set in a tall metal mesh fence that connected to the front of the building.
The sunlight felt good and the air smelled fresh.
“This is the part where we circulate around the yard and plan,” Zachary said. “I’m the explosive expert. You be the tunnel king. The kid will provide intel.”
“I want to be the explosive guy this time,” the kid said.
“All right, fine,” Zachary said. “And I’ll be Big X. All escape attempts are to be cleared through me, understood?”
***
The yard turned out to be very uninteresting and didn’t inspire any spontaneous escape attempts. The two attendants watched them constantly, as no one else was in the yard. The fence would be difficult to climb as the spaces in the mesh were barely big enough to get fingers inside. The building itself also acted as a formidable barrier. Jeff examined the concrete of the walkways and the dirt patches in between. He could discern no pattern to any of what he saw. After their tour, the three patients were invited inside.
Next came nap time. Attendants herded the other patients into the hallways from the rec and dining rooms. Back in his cell, Jeff wanted some tablet time but couldn’t help but put his head on his pillow. He had started drifting when he heard a knock at the door.
“You have an afternoon session with Doctor Carol,” Big Albert said through the door. He opened it. “You got that?”
Jeff sat up on the bed. “But I had one this morning.”
“You’re on the schedule in an hour. It’s group. Get some rest.”
***
Group started late, as one of the patients had to be escorted in by Big Albert. The kid and Zachary weren’t present. Five other patients and Doctor Carol sat around Jeff in the chairs in Carol’s office. With little prodding, the five each talked and talked and talked. Sharing, his wife would have called it. Oversharing, Jeff called it.
When it came Jeff’s turn to express himself, he realized he hadn’t been listening.
“What was the question?” Jeff asked.
“Why don’t you start by introducing yourself to the group?” Doctor Carol said.
The room fell silent. The others looked intently at Jeff, as if he were about to tell them what they needed to do to escape a burning building. One nervous man held out an old flip phone for Jeff to take.
Jeff looked around and said, “Hi, I’m Jeff.”
“Doctor Carol, he doesn’t have the phone!” the patient with the phone said with a whine.
“It’s okay, Henry,” Doctor Carol said. “Jeff, why don’t you take the phone?”
Jeff took it, looked at it. The thing felt light and was made of hollow plastic. It was not a real phone but a toy. And it wasn’t a phone at all, but had the words “Star Trek” written on it.
Jeff turned the communicator in his hands, opened it. Stickers inside detailed each button within. The mesh screen earpiece was solid with a sticker on either side providing the visible texture.
“What’s this?”
“That is a symbol of this group’s attention,” Doctor Carol said. “One person speaks, the others listen. You have the phone, so you speak. We will listen.”
Jeff passed the phone to his left. An older man with wide eyes took it.
“Myron, why don’t you give that back to Jeff,” Doctor Carol said.
Jeff got the phone again. Maybe Myron didn’t want it, either.
“Let’s have Jeff tell us who he is before he passes the phone,” Doctor Carol said. “Please, Jeff, why don’t you share something about who you are? It will help break the ice with our group.”
“I already told you my name.”
The doctor gave a pleasant smile and waited. He had on a new tie. It had Bill Watterson’s character Calvin drawn on it, wearing goggles and brandishing a ray gun.
“Tell us a little about yourself,” someone in the group said.
“If he’s not going to go, I want to be next!” Myron said. His voice sounded like he was speaking through a throat full of mucus.
“You’ll have your turn, Myron,” Doctor Carol said. “Jeff has the phone. It’s his turn to talk.”
Jeff fiddled with the toy communicator. It had no moving parts but the tab hinges connecting either half. The plastic seam along its side was solid. He sighed. He looked at the faces staring at him, searched for some sign that these weren’t actually people, that some tic or gesture would betray the fact that they were part of some hallucination or ruse. The men in the circle revealed nothing. So Jeff started talking.
“Seems everyone heard that I’m the alien guy, and they’re right. I believe in aliens. They’ve been in the news. I’ve also seen them, thousands of them, and some are here on Earth right now. I’ve been to their world and thought I wanted nothing more than to come back home. That still may be true, but I need to find the lost visitors here on Earth, get back to my best friend who’s also an extraterrestrial, stop a psycho alien Grey from getting away with whatever the little bastard is scheming, and figure out how to transport back to the alien city. Where I work as a cop, by the way.”
The group sat in silence. Myron’s jaw hung open. Then Henry started to clap.
***
After the thrill of group, Jeff wanted more coffee. Whatever drugs coursed through his bloodstream made him sleepy. He wanted to take a nap again, and he fought off the feeling as best he could. He wandered down the hall. Other patients were once again in the rec room. Some talk show blasted from the
television set. Jeff continued into the dining room and found one of the stainless steel coffee urns in the dining room still had coffee in it. He took a sip. The brown liquid hinted at once being warm. Jeff hadn’t believed it was possible for the stuff to taste worse, but now he would testify to the fact to anyone that cared to ask.
“Heard about your alien problem,” Zachary said. “Talked to your group about it.”
He stood behind Jeff with his own empty cup. He filled his with coffee once Jeff moved aside.
“I thought group session was confidential,” Jeff said.
“It is for the doctor. But what else do we have to talk about but the cathartic crap that our fellow guests gush?”
Jeff put his coffee down, got a glass, filled it with ice from the ice machine. He took two half-and-half containers and poured them over the ice. He took two sugar packs and dumped them in. Then he poured the coffee in, took a plastic spoon, and stirred.
“That actually looks pretty good,” Zachary said.
Jeff tasted it, made a face. Some things were past doctoring. He offered it to Zachary. Zachary took a sip and nodded approvingly. White milky coffee clung to his whiskers.
“So aliens?” Zachary said. “This I’ve got to hear.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“The talk shows are still on, and I’ve got nothing else. I don’t care if you make something up. Talk to me.”
The kid drifted in. He looked at what the two were drinking, and got himself a glass of water. Some of the kitchen staff circulated through the dining room, setting tables for the supper service. White plates and steel-colored plastic flatware atop napkins were placed at each setting, with yellow and red condiment bottles in the center of the table.
“So you actually saw an alien?” the kid asked.
Jeff waited for one of the kitchen staff to finish restocking the stacks of paper cups by the water dispenser. Once the man left, Jeff cleared his throat.
House of the Galactic Elevator Page 13
