by Chris Wright
He caught up with the crowd of people ahead, all of them standing there static, motionless as if they were mannequins. They all looked like they had stopped mid-motion as they tried to escape the horrors rolling towards them. Danny ceased his sprint and walked between them, all of them frozen, solid forms stuck in a moment in time, and he was able to pass around them all. What was happening now? He had been living one insane moment after another. The last few days were like the most demented nightmare you could ever have, but it was one he couldn't wake up from. He looked into the eyes of each of them, seeing straight into their terrified soul. He blessed each one of them, still confused as to why time, for him, had slowed to the point of stopping. He heard a far-off crackle, getting louder and louder, but he couldn't tell where it was coming from. It sounded like it came from up ahead, could it be another creature closing in on them? Or a saviour, the reality-creatures arch nemesis ready to do battle?
Danny looked behind him to see that Brandon was long gone. Where he had been was just a growing continuously pulsating blue creature, a sky web behind it, merging together in what could have been one last assault, joining forces to gulp down the last morsel of his reality. He noticed time very slowly beginning to return to its normal passage. He wasn't sure how long these moments in between the normal passing of time had been for him, but he guessed it was easily five minutes. Knowing he now had no more time to waste, he began to turn ahead again to get as far from the reality gulping team as he could, while he could. The faint sound in the distance was getting exponentially louder, closer. He was only running towards it as he couldn't run the other way. As time grew faster and faster, the creatures twirled closer, sucking matter into itself, consuming all. Ahead of him he saw what was making the other sound, a small tear in the window of his dimension. He was stuck, nowhere to run, creatures behind, a crack in the universe ahead. This all seemed so ludicrous he could hardly compute any of it in his mind. There was no way to fight either foe, all he decided to do was head for the one that may be the better way to die, which was a hard choice.
Does he choose option A, a slow excruciating strangle of blue ripping tentacles, that sift your body parts back into its original building blocks or option B, a doorway to probable nothing-ness. This made most decisions in his life seem rather trivial. Part of him wanted to go out like a man, all guns blazing, sacrificing his body to the insatiable appetite of the reality-munchers, but he didn't want to give them the satisfaction of that.
So here he was, running for his life as fast he possibly could to escape being eaten from reality, running to a tear in the fabric of his dimension. This was possibly the most unusual weekend he had ever had. He ran quicker and quicker, but the creatures behind seemed to be catching him. Looking at the tear ahead of him he noticed it had grown in size and the loud sounds were gaining tempo, hypnotic, bassy throbs. The creatures worked their way through more confused and horrified victims, flashing tentacles whipping their grip closer and closer to him.
The whole of reality was now beginning to pulse and throb. It was vibrating violently either side of him, clashing in a crescendo of synthetic snarls and ground-shaking blows, Danny stood helpless in between. The tear in reality swooped closer to reveal a gaping void ready to snatch Danny up into its unknown destination. The pulsing of his surroundings now converged to contain both the sights and the sounds Danny had been running to and from. The intensity was now too much to bear, the pulsing flowing through him threatening to tear his DNA apart. He closed his eyes and screamed in denial, pulse after pulse throwing him back and forth. There was a sudden boom, a lingering resonant cavernous boom, followed by a series of crackles and then complete silence. He opened his eyes and there was darkness, complete darkness, but he felt that he wasn't alone.
“It's okay now Danny” said a voice from somewhere around him.
Chapter Six – The Elite
Somewhere
Danny's vision slowly started to return. The darkness gradually receded, to bath his view with what looked like an ordinary room. He was sat in a chair, slightly reclined, and around him were light coloured walls and soft furnishings. The room was illuminated by a small lamp sat on a table to his left. He looked around the room in confusion. Where the hell was he? A moment before he had been facing two different kinds of death, but now was sat down in a relaxed position. Was he in Dr.Monroe's office again? It looked different to last time, but it could have been a different room Dr.Monroe used.
“Dr.Monroe?” He called out.
He had heard a voice before. It wasn't Dr.Monroe's and he couldn't tell where it came from, as he was the only one in the room. He told himself that what he just encountered must have all been part of his delusion, and none of that really happened. There were no shadow figures, no monsters that climbed out of another reality, it was all in his head and he had been having some therapy here in this room. He called out Dr.Monroe's name again.
“Dr.Monroe isn't here” Said the same voice he had heard a few moments before. It wasn't a voice he recognised, and it was hard to determine if it was male or female, it almost sounded genderless.
“Who are you?” Asked Danny, trying to remember how he had got into the room.
“Relax Danny, you will have many questions and it will take some time, my name is Auton”
What kind of name was Auton? He had never heard that before. He tried to get up but found that some kind of invisible restraints were holding him back. What was going on? Why was he being restrained? Two important questions to him that he made sure he yelled immediately at 'Auton'.
“I'm afraid it's necessary for now Danny, until you have recovered fully” Auton said, “Please don't be alarmed, everything is okay”.
“Where are you?” Danny shouted, “I can hear you, but you must be in another room”.
“Yes, I am in another place” Auton replied, “Please try not to fight anything I do, it's important to make sure you recover quickly”
Recover from what? What was this Auton talking about?
“How much do you remember?” Auton asked.
Danny relayed everything he could, he knew it all sounded completely crazy, but he was past caring about how things sounded. After all, on top of the madness he felt he had experienced over the last few days, he was sat in a room he didn't recognise, with no idea how he got there, being restrained by something invisible, talking to someone he didn't know.
“You remember nothing then” Auton replied, sounding almost upset.
Nothing? Everything Danny just told Auton was 'nothing'? Danny then heard a slight sound, not sure what it was or where it came from, impossible to pinpoint, but it definitely didn't come from inside the room.
“Relax Danny, and close your eyes”
Danny refused to do such a thing unless he was told why and what the hell was going on.
“It's important for you to remember everything, so please relax and close your eyes, everything will be fine, please trust me” Auton said.
He found it hard to trust someone he didn't know, who was magically restraining him, but duly closed his eyes and took deep breaths. Everything was going to be okay and this would all make sense soon, he told himself. With his eyes closed he stared at the back of his eyelids, into a deep penetrating darkness. There was a sudden small shift in his concentration and it felt like he was being pulled, but in all directions at once. Then all of a sudden, he started getting images flashing into his mind, what were these? It started with him in an unknown room, in an unknown location, people around him. His seeing got clearer and he began to recognise them, they were his friends, all of them, but dressed differently with their demeanour more sour than normal.
Somewhere else
A tall red headed woman with glasses stood up in front of him, as if to address a crowd. In reality, as he looked around, there was only him and his friends sat there, so it was hardly a conference.
“We are at cross-roads in humanity” The woman said, “and only people like us can mak
e a difference. I have used all my resources possible to bring you together, every last cent I had has been poured into this. It is a legacy I want our children to thank us for, a better future for all, but it's going to be difficult”
Danny looked around the room again and his friends were all there listening intently, whatever this woman was saying seemed important to them all. It was all so strange to him, it felt like he must be glimpsing the future. How could he be seeing this? It was another level of confusion that Danny struggled with. The main thing that comforted him though was that his friends were all there, still alive. None of them had succumbed to an untimely reality wrenching death. This still added more confusion though. Had everything he had witnessed the last few days never happened? Could he believe the 'future' he was seeing? He wrestled with this internally, it distracted him so much he was no longer listening to the woman speaking, as his mind worked overtime to try and establish some link between the events. This eventually made the whole of the image he was watching fade back away, and with a sudden jolt he opened his eyes.
Auton's Room
“What the hell was that?” Danny shouted angrily.
He wasn't sure why he was angry, but guessed it was the continual confusion he was having at his whole life turning into a topsy-turvy roller-coaster of strange moments he couldn't understand.
“Please relax Danny, and let things be, it will make things much easier” Auton instructed.
“Why am I seeing the future?” He asked wild-eyed, “Everyone was okay there, so the creatures didn't get us. I don't know if any of this is real, this is too much. Who was that woman?”
“You need to see everything yourself Danny, but take your time. The woman you saw is called Sheryl, but you need to see the rest yourself, please relax”
Danny sat there for a minute, still riddled with doubts about absolutely everything that had ever happened to him, and also it seems, everything that ever will.
“If I continue, will you release these restraints?” He asked Auton.
“When you are no longer in a heightened state of confusion I will”
He had no reason to believe or trust this person, but what choice did he have? He sat for a minute or two, trying to calm himself down again. Sheryl. He couldn't remember anyone called Sheryl, but if he was being shown the future then they may not have met yet. This was weird to him again, but he took this weirdness over any dimension-jumping brute any day. He eventually closed his eyes and the same shift occurred, transporting him back to the room he had been in before.
Somewhere
“Danny” said Sheryl, looking towards him, “Do you think you'll be able to calculate the margins of error and the best angles for maximum sun exposure? Obviously, you'll need all the data from Dave and Emma, but do you think you can find the best possible trajectories?”
Danny had no idea what she was talking about.
“Err, yeah, sure” He replied, not wanting to look stupid.
His future self probably knew what all this meant, so thought it was best to go along with it. As he replied to her, he seemed to have a flash of other very brief memories. It seemed to be quick flashes of something earlier than this moment, but it was so fleeting he couldn't catch them properly. He did have a sudden recollection of who this Sheryl was though. He had no idea how he knew, but suddenly realised that she was an influential and successful billionaire. How did he know this? Pieces of the future were dropping into his mind, which was already confusing enough, without them being shown to him out of order. The visions he was seeing continued jumping in and out, forward and backwards. He was only seeing fleeting moments and missing others, so that the whole narrative wasn't making sense to him. His concentration kept lapsing and his visions faded, only to be jolted back to him suddenly. He heard something about them being underground and then Sheryl mentioned attacks. Underground? Attacks? Damn thought Danny, were the reality-eaters back? He really needed to know more. This didn't sound good. He lost concentration again and more of the meeting whizzed by, his brain unable to process much. He was suddenly fully aware and focused once more, realising he had missed most of the conversation. Sheryl called a close to the meeting and they all took off in different directions. Danny waited a moment, still disorientated. He then grabbed Mateo's shoulder and wanted to ask what was happening, but changed his mind at the last second.
“What is it Dan?” He asked.
“Just glad you're okay” He said, trying not to sound too weird.
“Yeah thanks man, you too” He replied with a grin.
Danny stood there, looking around at his surroundings. The room was dimly lit. It had white walls and there were strange contraptions dotted around the worktops. There were a couple of different entrances to this room and Danny made sure he investigated each one. They appeared to be long tunnels, and he got the impression they were actually underground, so it wasn't just a figure of speech. He took a deep breath and the scene changed around him. He was no longer in the tunnels, he was above ground. He was stood in a sprawling metropolis, one he didn't recognise. The buildings and vehicles looked normal, but also somehow soulless, like they were stripped of any individuality. Is this the future again? He thought. He took his time to wander around, trying to get clues as to why he was here.
The people were all walking by, almost robot like. Were they robots? If he was seeing the future it could be possible. They all continued their routines, looking like a nest of worker ants, blindly following patterns that looked like they had already been laid out for them. All of a sudden there was a loud explosion and Danny looked over to see a building had burst into flames, spewing forth shrapnel indiscriminately. Shards of metal and glass showered the passers-by, whose robotic behaviour was thrust to the side, as they ran away in panic. Danny looked around horrified at the helpless innocent victims. There were many casualties, most of them lying lifeless on the pavement. Sirens started up in the distance, the cars on the road moving out of their way chaotically.
Danny felt another sudden tug and the view before him started to dissolve. He found himself sat on a rock, looking over a serene landscape of rugged hills and forests. He took another deep breath and a flood of events came back to him. A lot of things were starting to make sense, slowly. Each little revelation, however tiny, began to fill in a jigsaw of events. These must have been the future events that led up to why they were all sat underground in that room. Not all of the pieces were there yet, but it was all slowly starting to take form.
Remembrance
And so, he gradually remembered. It started as a new gimmick, another example of mankind's inability to stop tinkering with technology just because they could. The internet had been a wonderful tool, abused by some, but overall had benefited most. Nothing much happened for years, but there were always those who knew it was going to be taken in directions that most people hadn't foreseen yet. There would always be someone with an idea on how they thought they could improve it.
The 'improvements' came from the wealthy 'Elite'. They had the money and the resources to back serious research in the cutting-edge ideas, whether they were good ideas or not. The internet had helped them expand their businesses and ideas across borders that would have normally been closed, it allowed them to gain more and more money, gain more and more riches. Technology continued evolving and it was theoretically now possible to wire the internet into someone's neurotransmitters in their brain. The mechanism to do this was close, and the wealthy did all they could to make sure it would succeed. For them, there was so much to gain.
The breakthrough finally happened and no one even knew. The wealthy 'Elite' used human guinea pigs to test this technology, perfecting it, making sure it was flawless for when it hit the market. There were a few casualties along the way, due to complications in the operational techniques, or the hosts rejecting the implants. One person went completely insane in a matter of minutes. The guinea pigs had all signed disclaimers though, there was no legal stone unturned, and the tests an
d experiments continued unabated and well out of sight or knowledge of the general public.
By the time news of the new 'Neuro-Net' product hit, there had already been teasers of this new technology being deliberately leaked, every move done to make sure it was as sought after as possible, as its anticipation reached fever pitch. They priced the implant and procedure at a ridiculously high price to start with, knowing that the richer ones in society were going to pay whatever it took. The egotistical richer class thought it would give them an edge over their competitors and other people, feeding that narcissistic drive they had. The interface was seamless, the internet fed back into the brain at lightning speed. All someone had to do was think about something they wanted to know and the answer was instantly there, no feat of memory required. People who didn't know how to fly aircraft could suddenly just sit in the pilot's seat and off they went, automatically, the internet drip feeding them the information they required each moment of the day. This is how they had always planned it. Get the masses to become obsessed with something, to pay whatever they could and then make them addicted to it. Lower the price and let the rest of society feel like they could now be kings too. It was perfect, and some people knew it was too perfect. Only a few out of the millions though, the rest were caught up in the frenzy of this exciting new technology. These people carefully avoided it at all costs, knowing something wasn't right, mankind weren't meant to be gods.
