Atlas Alone

by Emma Newman

  The hammer tucked into my belt, the wrench in my good hand and the torch in my injured hand, I close the cupboard door, as kitted up as this level is going to get me.

  The door to the stairwell is on the other side of the lobby. I cross to it, put a hand on the door to check for any heat and then slowly push it open. No fire. Good. I couldn’t handle that again.

  It’s so dark in the stairwell, devoid of windows and electricity as it is, that I can’t see even the first step. Switching on the torch, I go through the doorway and sweep the beam up the first flight of stairs. It isn’t the slick of blood I find myself standing in that makes me yelp, or even the sight of the dozens of bodies littering the stairs. It’s their eyes. Open, all of them, and staring right at me.

  6

  I DROP THE wrench. It lands with a sickening spattering noise in the pool of blood. It’s flowed away from the bodies, slid in rivulets down the walls and still drips from the balustrade. “Shit!” I can’t help but look at them, my eyes darting from one face to another. As if the whole dead-body thing isn’t bad enough, they’re all people I recognize. I look away from them, up at the ceiling, anywhere that there isn’t blood so I can pull myself back together.

  “Okay, okay, okay.” I suck in a breath. Push it out again. In. Out. I can handle this. It’s just a game. A really fucked up unethical shit show of a game, but a game nonetheless. Anyone would be shocked. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I tell myself that three times, breathing deep.

  Sod the wrench—it can stay there in the blood; I am not touching that shit. I still have the hammer and thank God I didn’t drop the torch. As the shock recedes, anger takes its place. There should have been a warning, dammit! Even just a horror genre tag. What kind of sick bastard would make a game where you have to climb twenty flights of stairs covered with dead people? What the hell is waiting for me at the top?

  “B—” I stop myself from calling for my bear. I’ve never come up from a game because it’s scared me, and I’m not going to do that now. Another deep breath and then I look at the nearest corpse.

  It’s the woman who lived two doors down from me last year. I only recognize her because she came to my door once, asking if I knew how to use the food printer. She said it was a different model from the one she was used to, but it was a flimsy excuse. She’d obviously tumbled down a few rungs of society’s ladder and ended up in an apartment without a kitchen. I showed her, just so I had an excuse to see what her place was like. There were pictures of a fluffy white dog everywhere, displayed on the wall-art screens and arranged in photo frames that cluttered the tiny place up. She still had over a dozen boxes to unpack, but those pictures were up already. She noticed me looking at them and said, rather tearfully, “That’s my MuMu. Isn’t he beautiful?”

  I don’t remember what I said back, but I do remember how lost she seemed, even after I showed her how to print dinner. “And does the management company keep it . . . filled up? How does one give them access to the flat?”

  “It’s a communal system here,” I said. “There are tanks for each floor. The building management company maintains those so no one has to worry about access.”

  “Tanks?”

  “Yeah, that hold the protein and the chemicals they pipe through those nozzles to make your food.” I pointed at the plasglass cover. “They’re in there, the nozzles.” But then I realized her confusion wasn’t related to their position. “It’s like the water in the taps, right? There’s a giant system of pipes that run through the building, bringing fresh water to your sinks. It’s no different. Nothing to worry about.”

  She burst into tears and I just stood there, not knowing what to say to a woman I’d only met ten minutes before. “So . . . I’ll get going now . . . now you know how to use it . . .” I made it to the door and let myself out before she even noticed I’d gone.

  I saw her a few times after that, passing her in the corridor or stepping into a lift she was just coming out of. Each and every time she blanked me. Which suited me fine. I didn’t want to become her dog replacement, or her designated guide for life in the slums. Which they weren’t anyway, but she would have seen them like that.

  Now, looking at her body lying broken on the stairs, wearing the same cashmere coat she’d worn that day I showed her how to use the printer, I feel a flicker of guilt. I could have been a friend to her. But then again, she was obviously a walking disaster. She wouldn’t have been any use to me in that state. The guilt is extinguished. She’s dead now, anyway. My being around to listen to her crying about the life she had lost wouldn’t have done anything to save her.

  I tell myself that three times. Just to make sure it is true.

  There’s a space on the lowest step, next to one of her legs, that’s big enough for me to put my foot onto the concrete. Trying my best to ignore the bodies to my left and right, I look for a point on a higher step that I can reach without touching anyone.

  My gaze rests upon the man who was in a car one night when it was raining and who offered me a lift, which I declined because even though I was young, I wasn’t stupid. He’d looked so hurt. “I’m not like those other men, you know?”

  “Then you won’t mind if I say no,” I said. It wasn’t as if there was anywhere to give me a lift to, at that point, but the last place I’d been dossing in had become unsafe and I had to look like I was going somewhere; otherwise the authorities would have picked me up.

  “Can’t I at least buy you a meal? You look freezing.”

  “No, thanks.” I was starving. I hadn’t eaten for three days and had only drunk rainwater. In a society filled with food that required an identity to purchase it, I was in big trouble.

  “Listen, I work for an organization that helps people like you. People going through a hard time. Please, let me help you.” He rolled the car forward, keeping up with my brisk walk, even though it risked being flagged up as potentially criminal behavior. “Look. Here are my credentials.”

  He brought up his profile on the windscreen, flipping the display and dialing up the brightness so I could see it from the outside. I didn’t recognize the organization’s name, but it looked legit. Enough for me to point at a restaurant down the road. “You can buy me dinner there, if you want. But only dinner. Get it?”

  And he did. And he gave me his coat to keep. And there were no nasty sexual undertones to it at all. He called his husband from the restaurant to explain why he’d be late and asked him to join us. I was twelve and it was still a year before the nonperson policies became really hard-core. They talked to me. Gave me advice. Asked if we could meet every couple of days for a meal, just so they could check in with me.

  It took three months of that to convince me they genuinely wanted to help. Another three months before they asked if I wanted to stay with them. Then I ran away. I never saw either of them again. I have no idea if it would have been as safe as I’d hoped it would be. I just couldn’t make that final leap. I couldn’t trust them. No, I couldn’t let myself love them, or trust them. They would only leave me, or hurt me, in the end. So it was better to end it when it was still good.

  His dead husband is lying crumpled next to him. Staring at me, like the rest, and when I look down at that woman, she is staring at me too, even though I’ve moved. And it isn’t a glassy, empty stare. There’s an intensity to it, not of the living, but it still feels like they want something from me.

  “Fuck. This. Shit,” I say, and make myself look for the gray of the concrete steps, steadfastly avoiding looking at anything that could be a face. I gingerly pick my way up, from empty patch to empty patch, sometimes having to climb three stairs in a single step. Why did he code this experience into the game? For maximum psychological damage? To see how far up the stairs I could go before having some sort of breakdown? Well, I’ll show that bastard how strong I can be.

  I get up ten floors before I need to take a brief break, which I spend stari
ng up at the ceiling as I catch my breath. My theory about it being a leet server training game is gathering supporting evidence with each step. My body here feels like it’s at the same level of fitness as mine in meatspace. All sorts of explanations have raced through my mind on the way up here, but the one I’ve settled on is that this is some sort of test—or an initiation, maybe—for people approached to play on the leet server. They want to see what I can handle. Right? Whether I’ve got the chops to cope with psychological horror. Well, I’ll show those fuckers that it’ll take more than this to freak me out.

  Then, on the eighteenth floor, after picking my way through this emotional minefield, focused on those tiny islands of gray concrete so I can cope, I see a pair of shoes that makes me stop. I didn’t know I was afraid that she would be here until now, when there is a sense of bitter relief that I no longer have to brace myself.

  I tighten my hand around the torch, feeling the pain of the wound deep inside, beneath the numbed exterior. Good. Yes, I’ll focus on that.

  The shoes are electric blue, made out of an artificial material that looks like polished metal yet is flexible. The heels are low but spiked, and even though I can’t see them because she is lying faceup, I know there is a tiny shark logo on the back of each, near the top where it meets the rest of the shoe. I never saw anyone else wear a pair of shoes like those. Never saw them in online shops. Never looked for them though.

  I squeeze the torch handle as I force my attention to skim over the tight designer suit, the oversized jewelry, to her face. I used to call her the vampire, but only in my head. And only when she wasn’t around. Just in case. Her lips are deep red, her skin just as deathly pale as when she was alive, her black hair perfectly straight. When my gaze meets hers I start shaking. I can’t help it. I can’t undo all the knots she tied in me.

  “Ha!” I shout at her face, the noise bursting from me before I even knew it was coming out of my lungs. “I won! I won, you fucking bitch! You’re dead and I’m on my way to another planet and nobody owns me anymore, so fuck you!”

  The triumph doesn’t last long. She’s still staring at me, like she did back then, standing next to the Machine, ready to recalibrate me. What a euphemism that was. They had good words for all sorts of terrible things in that place. Realignment of values. Reaction refinement.

  “Just place your chin here, look at the blue dot.” Such a soft, gentle voice. Such a calm, reassuring tone, even though she knew what she was about to do to me. “That’s it. I’m just going to pop this into your mouth to protect your tongue. Open wide. That’s it. Now hold still while I strap your head in place. Don’t pull against the wrist restraints—they’re there for your protection.”

  The hammer is no longer tucked into my belt. It is in my hand. Then it is plunging down into her face. Again. And again.

  She doesn’t look like herself when I’m done; she doesn’t even look like a person anymore from the shoulders up. There’s blood spattered all over my hands. I can feel it drying on my face and throat. She’s not looking at me anymore though. That’s the most important thing. Good. Yes. That’s better. Time to move on.

  I get three steps up before my legs buckle underneath me and I can’t breathe. Wracking sobs seize up my chest and I drop the hammer and the torch to wipe my hands on my jeans again and again. There’s too much snot and there’s too much pain in my chest to even feel anything emotional, but slowly, slowly, things rise to the surface. The withering tendrils of the rage that took over, relief, exultation, but mostly a cavernous grief that I could fall into and never escape from, if I’m not careful. I’ve been so angry for so long, but I put that anger in a box and hid it away from myself so well that I forgot it was there.

  JeeMuh, I feel like shit. I cough a couple of times, wipe my nose on the bloody rag I stuffed into my pocket earlier and pick up the torch. I look at the hammer, the gore slowly dripping off it, the chunks of brain and skull, and then I’m heaving, like I need to be sick but there’s nothing to bring up.

  Just as a miserable whimper escapes my lips, there’s a thought that cuts through it all. Are we having fun yet?

  And then I’m laughing. Hysterically, admittedly, but it’s better than the rest of the shit that I’ve just splurged over these steps. I don’t even know what’s funny about any of this, but I’m doubled over, my hooting laughter echoing up and down the stairwell. It feels so wrong, so desperately inappropriate, and that in itself makes me laugh all the harder.

  I am a fucking monster.

  I have to blow my nose again, wipe my eyes, pick up the torch once more and then the hammer. I wipe the remains of her head on the trousers of a man who used to live in this building and never smiled once, not in all the years I saw him. Fair play, bro, I think. Not like there was much to smile about back then. Now he has filthy trousers to add to the misery, but at least I have a hammer I’m willing to hook into my belt again.

  When I get to the nineteenth floor, there is a new sound. Thuds and sounds of things being broken are coming from the floor above. This is it, then.

  Kam said he couldn’t get in . . . He didn’t mention the bodies in the stairwell though. I pick my way up the last flight of stairs, expecting to see some sort of barricade; even a wall of piled-up dead bodies wouldn’t have surprised me. But there’s nothing in the way of the door that leads to the top floor. There is, however, a security pad to the left of it, one that was never in the original building. Oh, so it’s a puzzle of some sort?

  Taking care to be as quiet as I can be, I get to the pad and examine it by torchlight. It has a touchscreen and looks too modern for anything that would have been installed in the original apartment block. I touch it with the pad of my forefinger, mostly just to wake it up and see what kind of biometric it wants to interrogate to allow me through. A string of digits and letters appears and I tut to myself. At first glance there doesn’t seem to be any obvious pattern. I hate these sorts of puzzles. They’re such a bollocks kind of hurdle when your APA can—

  Oh. Yeah. No APA to run a calculation for me. So this is what it’s like in Leetsville, then?

  At least it doesn’t want a palm print. I was worried it was going to make me drag one of the corpses over, or worse, cut off one of their hands to press against it. Same for a retina scan, though that sort of thing is so cheesy, I should have known the programmer wouldn’t have gone for it.

  I need to bring my brain back into gaming mode. Not dredging-up-irrelevant-emotional-bullshit mode. That’s no use to anyone.

  I frown at the numbers; it’s clear to me that I’m not going to crack this code and be able to input the last numbers and letters in the sequence without some sort of assistance, even if it’s just a bloody pad and pen. Then it occurs to me that there’s no obvious way to input anything, even if I did know what it was. I tap the screen again, hoping that some sort of keyboard will appear, or that it will trigger a v-keyboard prompt in my own chip. But no transparent virtual keyboard floats across my vision, and the screen doesn’t change. There’s just the string of characters and a logo.

  Okay, the logo is the most important thing here. It’s there for a reason. I don’t recognize it, which makes me even more certain that it’s a game element, rather than a bit of decorative detailing.

  It looks like a stylized globe with the North American continent featured prominently, rather than the usual view of multiple continents. Wrapped around the bottom of the globe are the letters CSA, but it’s not an initialism I’m familiar with.

  A quick flick around with the torch beam shows me that the logo is not present anywhere else on the door. Then the cam in the upper corner above me is lit up by the beam and I see that it’s active. Shit. I pull the bloody rag from my pocket again, find a bit that’s still damp and smear the blood over the lens, even though the big bad probably knows I’m out here already. It’s too small a unit for me to tie the rag to and is recessed into the wall. Just a piece
of chewing gum would sort it, but I don’t have that.

  What I need more is an APA that actually works so I can look up that logo.

  No, that doesn’t feel right. That’s me thinking about this like it’s a normal game, which it obviously isn’t. Taking a figurative step back, I consider the clue again. I’ve been cut off from my APA, so I’m expected to only use what I have at my disposal or what I can find in the environment, right? But the only thing that’s in this environment is all the bloody bodies.

  Oh shit.

  I laugh. “You clever, sick bastard,” I whisper, as if the game designer can hear me. Perhaps he can, for all I know. “You don’t want me to ignore the bodies, do you? You want me to look at them. Well . . . fine.”

  All of the corpses on the landing with me here are dressed in casual clothes. I need someone with a uniform. Or even just a badge. Something with that logo on it. Damn. They could be wearing a badge even with casual clothes. There’s no avoiding it. I start examining each one.