Vita Aeterna

by Jay Allan Storey

  Even if I got away from them — where would I go? I didn’t even know where I was. I didn’t care. I had to try. We reached one of the examination tables and Chuck swept his hand towards it. The guards let go of my arms so I could climb up. I put my hands on the table. There was still a guard on either side of me. I swung my legs up onto the table like I was going to lie down, but then I didn’t stop, I just pushed myself off the other side. That put the table between me and the others.

  I took off and started running. I could only see one exit. I had to run in a wide circle to stay out of the reach of the guards, and by the time I got to the door they’d caught up with me. One of them took a flying leap and tackled my legs. I fell forward. My head bounced off the floor and I was gone.

  ☼

  Days, then weeks, went by. Three times a day some orderly-type, always accompanied by at least one burly guard, would bring me a meal — the only bright spot about being here — it was actually real food rather than FoodCorp packets. Other than the guys who worked there, I never saw another soul.

  The part about letting me go was bullshit, but the part about testing was true, at least so far. They still hadn’t said anything about what they were actually after. They hadn’t done anything bad to me (though I had a sickening feeling they were going to). They’d taken blood samples, urine samples, hair samples, and done body scans. Everything they did was slow and deliberate, like they were worried about making a mistake.

  The rest of the time I was trapped in my room. One night I had a dream — about my dad. It was just after my mother died. I was about eight years old. Already most of his hair was gone, and what was left was completely gray. He was apologizing.

  “I was selfish,” he said, his face already lined with defeat. “I knew I wouldn’t be around to look after you, but we wanted a child. I always thought your mother would be there after…”

  I woke up, the dream still fresh in my mind. I thought about my mother. The fact is, I don’t remember much about her. Once in a while I’ll have a flashback. It’s never an actual image — I don’t even remember what she looked like. When I try to visualize her, it always comes out like one of those interviews on HoloTV where they blur somebody’s face to hide their identity.

  I never remember her face, just the little details you’d think weren’t that important: the warmth of her body as she tucked me into bed, the rhythm of her voice as she read me to sleep, even the smell of her hair as she bent down to kiss me good night. At least I tell myself I remember — it was a long time ago.

  Living without her’s not terrible. It’s just — emptiness — like nothing’s there. And I don’t miss her. You don’t miss what you never had, or at least don’t remember having, I guess.

  I wondered what my dad was doing right now. Would he be able to take care of himself if I wasn’t there?

  In all this time they still hadn’t told me what my Appraisal was. At this point I wouldn’t have believed anything they said anyway.

  Every day the goon in the uniform, who I’d nicknamed ‘Brickhead’ because of his square, angular skull, would show up at my room. We’d march along a series of antiseptic white corridors and through a series of doors. Sometimes Chuck would be with him. Most of the time we’d be alone. Some of the doors were secured with biometric panels. Either Chuck or Brickhead would unlock them by pressing an index finger on the sensor.

  There’s dozens of labs in this place, but we almost always ended up at the same one. Twenty minutes later Chuck would show up. They’d force me down on the exam table, and the sessions would begin. By the third week I figured they must have done every test, probe, and scan it was possible to do.

  They were preparing for something, and it was pretty clear I wasn’t going to like whatever that thing was.

  CHAPTER 9

  Walter

  I hadn’t been able to use the HUD since I got here. The building must be shielded somehow, and the staff either had theirs turned off or were using some frequency I couldn’t read. It was horrible, like having one of my legs cut off or something, or like being deaf or blind. The world didn’t seem normal anymore. It was like somebody had erased part of it.

  That’s why I nearly shit myself when Brickhead was taking me on my usual jaunt down the hallway toward the lab, and an image suddenly floated in front of me. It was a hologram, a standard projection like anybody would have in their living room, but produced by my HUD. Even more shocking was what I was looking at. It was the old guy I’d seen when I was Cam-surfing and broke in looking for a trophy.

  It’s hard to describe what he looked like. The closest I can come is that he looked dead. He wasn’t dead, but he looked dead. Like the life had been sucked out of him. He looked like a corpse that was somehow reanimated and still walking around. I jumped when I saw him. I checked to make sure Brickhead hadn’t noticed. When I glanced over, the goon gave me his usual sneer, like he’d like nothing better than to beat the living crap out of me. I had enough sense not to let him know what I was seeing.

  “I mean you no harm,” the image spoke in my earpiece. His voice was tired and weak, like every breath was an effort. “I’m your friend.”

  Maybe he was some kind of plant — put there to make me think there was somebody I could trust, though you’d think they’d use a guy who didn’t look like he was about to drop dead to do it. Anyway, why should they care whether I trusted them or not? I hadn’t figured that out yet.

  “I can see and hear you,” the image said.

  I gave him the finger.

  “Yes, I saw that,” he said.

  “Just testing,” I said.

  “What?” Brickhead turned and glared at me. Luckily, he hadn’t seen my finger gesture.

  “Nothin’,” I answered. Brickhead gave me a shove just for good measure, and we continued.

  “Sorry for contacting you now,” the image said. “I only had a small window of opportunity when the monitors were down. My name is Walter. They can’t know about this.” He inclined his head toward the guard. “I’ll contact you again.”

  My mind was racing as Chuck performed yet another barrage of tests. Who was this Walter guy? Was he for real, or were Chuck and the gang trying to mess with my head? And what was wrong with him? If he was as out of it as he seemed, how did he manage to contact me without them knowing?

  Again, nothing much happened. More blood samples, urine samples, hair samples, body scans. When it was over they took me back. I was confused. I hadn’t seen any more of Walter (or seen anything at all on the HUD). I started to think it was some kind of dream. When Brickhead shoved me back in my cell I was so stressed out I just collapsed on the bed.

  I closed my eyes, hoping to get some sleep, but images kept swirling through my head: my dad, Richie, the Lost Souls, Cindy…

  I thought back to a couple of months ago, when Cindy had snuck me into a HoloSurround chamber in the Corp Ring. She’d picked out the ‘Rustic Farm’ track, kind of a hokey, girl track, but I didn’t mind. It was the first, and probably the last, time I’d ever experienced something like that. It was like a dream, but I remember every detail.

  We entered the chamber, and the lights went down. When they came up again, it was mid-afternoon on a blazing summer day in the country. A breeze was shaking the branches of the trees surrounding the gigantic field where we stood. Little parasol-shaped dandelion seed pods wafted through the air, dragonflies buzzed overhead, crickets hummed in the tall grass. It was like the first summer of the world, like it must have been for Adam and Eve on their first day in paradise.

  Cindy took off, and I chased after her. I flew across the field, and nearly lost my balance in the chase. Ahead, Cindy giggled and raced toward the old barn on the north side. She turned back and glanced at me, her face glowing with an inner light. For a fraction of a second, time stopped, like God had taken a snapshot and captured this one instant of joy and happiness — Cindy’s backward glance frozen in place, her smile like the rays of the sun overhead. It was like I
paused in midair, feet off the ground, lips parted, the laughter caught forever on my face.

  I remember studying the frozen scene like I was some kind of ethereal being, floating above it all.

  I still can’t believe it, I thought. I can’t believe that she’s in love with me.

  The moment passed and time started up again. My feet touched the ground and I caught up with Cindy near the barn. She giggled as I wrapped my arms around her and gently guided her down into the long grass.

  She ran her fingers through my hair and gazed into my eyes, inviting me in. Without thinking, I leaned down and kissed her. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before, like she was all that existed, like the world began and ended with her.

  We lay for a long time without speaking.

  Finally I said, “Let’s make a pact.”

  “What?” she laughed.

  I hesitated, petrified that she’d say no, or even laugh at me. “That we’ll always be together.”

  “Really?” she answered.

  “Do you love me?” I said, dreading the response.

  “More than anything,” she gazed into my eyes and smiled.

  “And I love you,” I said. “So it’s settled. We’ll be together forever, no matter what.”

  She sat up and looked at me. “But what about my dad?”

  An image rushed into my head of her father’s bloated, red face glaring down at me in contempt.

  “He’ll come around,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

  “And Appraisal,” she said. “What if we’re not compatible?”

  “You sound like you’re trying to get out of it.”

  “No way,” she said. She twirled a lock of her blond hair around one finger. “If we really love each other it doesn’t matter. I don’t care — do you?”

  I felt better. “No, I don’t care,” I said.

  She lay back down and put her head on my shoulder. “Let’s be in love and stay together forever, no matter what.”

  I wanted this moment to be frozen in time, like Cindy’s backward glance.

  A knocking sound snapped me out of my day-dream. At first I thought it was at the door, but then I realized it was in my head. I sat up on the bed and rubbed my eyes. My HUD fired up again and there he was.

  He told me he was a prisoner, just like me.

  “How can you see and hear me?” I whispered. I still didn’t really believe anything he was saying, but it’s not like I had anything better to do.

  “The building is wired with microphones and cameras,” he said. “They want to monitor what you’re doing. I’ve devised a hack that diverts their feed for a short period.”

  “You’re the guy I saw before,” I said. “So, we’re in the building I broke into?”

  He nodded.

  “Sorry I didn’t help you before,” I said, looking at the floor.

  He shrugged. “There was nothing you could have done…”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “More than twenty years,” he answered. “When I arrived, I was the same age as you.”

  I cringed. “What! What multiple are you anyway — point five or something?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. He looked down and shook his head sadly. “No one’s ever told me. But I don’t think my apparent age has anything to do with my Appraisal. They did experiments…” He swept his hands along either side of his body.

  “They did that?” I swallowed hard. I still didn’t really believe him. “So, what am I doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “They’ve never told me anything. Every day they take me to a room, perform their tests, and bring me back.”

  I shuddered, imagining the past three weeks stretching out for twenty years.

  “They’ll do anything to get whatever it is they want,” Walter said, yanking me back to the present. “Kill, maim, cripple for life. Nowadays they only do the preliminary tests here. Soon they’ll move you somewhere else — somewhere with much heavier security. You must escape.”

  “You’re telling me,” I said. “But I’ve been studying this place for weeks. There’s no way out.”

  “There’s one way,” he said. “And I know what it is.”

  “If you know a way out, why haven’t you escaped a yourself?”

  “It takes two,” he said.

  “So nobody else has been here in twenty years?”

  “There have been many.”

  “What happened to them?”

  He smiled sadly. “This facility is being phased out, and some were transferred to the new one, as you will be. I’m so broken that it’s probably not worth moving me. The experiments take a great toll. Some didn’t survive. For some reason they have been more careful with me.”

  “They’ve hardly done anything to me so far…”

  “Then you must be very special indeed.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Escape

  Walter and I talked for a week or so, mostly at night, after all the poking and prodding was over. So far, my luck had held out. They still hadn’t done more than a few minor tests. We never talked for very long. Walter figured we had about ten minutes at a time before Chuck and the rest figured out that something was going on.

  “For twenty years I’ve studied them,” Walter said one night. “It took years to modify my HUD controller and produce the first hack — that gave me access to their system.

  “Luckily, I had lots of time,” he gave another one of his sad smiles. “Sometimes their experiments made me sick. After one I almost died. Most times I felt well enough to work. I never gave up on the idea of getting out of here.” His right hand clenched into a fist. “I have vowed that, one way or another, I will escape this place.”

  We went over his plan in detail. I still wasn’t sure I trusted him, but I had nobody else, and no other prospects.

  He lifted a shaking hand to scratch his cheek. “Are you sure you’re in shape to get away?” I asked him.

  His mouth formed a hard line. “Don’t worry — I have enough strength to do what’s necessary.”

  “They’re going to shit themselves when they find us gone,” I said, smiling.

  He nodded and gave me a strange look. There were still some details he hadn’t explained, but he told me I’d understand when it all went down — that I should just play along.

  Finally the day came for the escape. Brickhead was herding me down the hallway, as usual. Walter said that the routine was that Brickhead would lead me to one examination room, and just after that, Chuck would lead Walter to another (they didn’t need Brickhead or any other goon for Walter; he was too old and decrepit to put up much of a fight). That way, Walter and I would never actually see each other.

  This time, as Walter had instructed, I dragged my feet and stalled. Brickhead was getting pissed off, but I ignored him. It was a fine line, slowing as much as possible, but not so much that he’d figure out that something was up. He pointed to a closer hallway on the right instead of the regular one further away on the left.

  “We got something special planned for you today,” he smiled.

  I’d be around the corner and out of sight in a few seconds if I didn’t do something. I started acting like I was out of it. I staggered and veered over so that I bumped right into Brickhead.

  “What’s your problem?” he snarled, shoving me away.

  I pretended to get mad. I stopped and turned to face him.

  “You looking for a beating?” he said. He put a hand on the club on his belt.

  I stared at him for a few seconds, stalling, waiting as long as I dared. Then I started walking again, as slowly as I could get away with. Out of the corner of my eye I finally saw Chuck leading Walter into an examination room we’d passed already. I didn’t dare look or I’d tip off Brickhead, but when he was turned the other way, I stole a glance. Since that time I first broke in, I’d never actually seen Walter in person. His expression was a weird mixture of fear, anger, and deter
mination. The corner of his mouth curled up in a loopy smile. He gave me a barely perceptible nod.

  A few seconds later there was a loud shout and both Brickhead and I turned back to see what was happening. Walter was wrestling with Chuck. I saw a flash of light reflecting off a metal blade. Brickhead started running toward them. I ran after him. I got closer and saw a scalpel in Walter’s hand. Chuck was trying to disarm him.

  Walter broke away from his grip and slashed the side of Chuck’s neck. Chuck screamed as blood spurted out. He forgot about Walter and tried to stop the flow. His hands were covered with blood. Brickhead was almost there. I was right behind him. I stuck out my foot and he went down hard. I jumped forward and landed on his hips, and something cracked. He screamed, flailing around like a dying fish.

  I looked up and saw Walter grab a pair of cutters from the cart beside the examination table. Chuck was lying on the floor, blood still spraying from his neck. He was barely moving. Walter lifted Chuck’s right hand, stuck Chuck’s index finger in the jaws of the cutters, and snapped them shut. Chuck screamed again, for the last time.

  Walter stood for a second holding the severed finger.

  “Come on!” I yelled, gesturing at him.

  He just shook his head and gave me another one of his sad smiles. He held up the finger and pointed at me.

  “No!” I screamed.

  Brickhead staggered to his feet and there was something in his hand — a gun. He pointed it at Walter. Walter tossed the finger at me just as Brickhead fired. A patch of red bloomed on Walter’s chest and he went down. I caught the finger and started running.

  The finger was covered with blood. I wiped it off on my gown. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I ran. I could hear Brickhead’s limping footsteps pounding after me. I heard a gunshot, and a hole was blasted in the wall above my head. I got to a corner and flew around it, finally out of his sight. I reached the inner doors and fumbled to press the finger against the scanner. The access light went green and the latch clicked. I flung the door open and tore down the hallway. A siren started blaring.