by Taylor Kole
Two uniformed guards entered and stood sentry, replacing Alex’s excitement with angst.
“It’s okay,” Tara said. “The officers are here for first-time jitters.” She removed a compact plastic case from her pocket and withdrew a small metallic pistol with a glass vial, its fluid splashed about.
Toxin-induced hallucinations were back on!
One look at the pair of beefcakes helped him understand his current options.
“I’m going to give you a mild sedative.” She held the device, waiting for his redundant approval. “Trust me.”
“I guess I have to, huh?” he said with a half-smile and a bit of spite. This was life in a nutshell. Limitless possibilities around you, but only one actual choice, usually decided by another person.
“It’s a very small needle,” she said as she reached for his arm.
He closed his eyes and braced for the puncture, but it never came.
Tara was right, a ssmmaall…
His world went black.
Chapter Three
Alex first heard muffled voices in the distance. They continued to clarify until he recognized them as the playful banter of the security officers and programmers. After a few hard blinks, the grogginess left as abruptly as if from a full night’s sleep.
He sat on a woven cloth loveseat in an all white room. White as if the entire world had been erased. Carl shared the sofa with him, staring into the distance. His back was stiff, his white hair neared camouflaged, his hands clasped between his legs as if he were awaiting a bus.
A man with a CrossFit body and shaved head sat on another love seat to their left. His physique indicated security officer. Everyone seated wore Broumgard shirts, blue jeans, and low-top sneakers. Fear striked through Alex as he realized they been stripped and re-dressed.
Next to him, the officer’s right knee bounced. He smeared his palms across the tops of his thighs, and his head swiveled as if he expected an ambush.
The rest of the employees were gathered in the center of the whiteness. Lacking objects to provide perspective—trees, cars, desks—the distance was difficult to judge. They could be twenty yards, or two hundred yards away from him.
Tara stood in front of the three men, with her hands behind her back. She wore a snug skirt and a light pink business blazer with black piping. Her shirt, unbuttoned to mid-breast, exposed more cleavage then he would have thought her capable of gathering.
“Welcome, gentlemen.” She spread her arms as if about to start an open house, then paused, and peered at Carl. “Are you okay, Mr. Wright?”
Carl lifted his head, his red eyes glossy, as if medicated.
“Are you with us?” Tara stepped toward him.
“Umm…” Carl cleared his throat. “Err… I think so.”
“What kind of shit is this?” the man with the shaved head barked and stood. “Where the hell did you take me? And what kind of freaky drugs were in that needle?”
“Calm down, Mr. Robertson. You are in the Lobby, our main attraction here at Eridu. If you would please take your seat, I will lay out a brief explanation and then answer any questions you may have.”
“I ain’t sittin’ shit, lady.” He horse-kicked the love seat, knocking it a few inches across the indefinable white.
Alex inhaled sharply and looked at Carl, who stared straight ahead.
“I didn’t sign up for no freaky shit. Wherever the hell you took me, it was against my will and I want to leave. Now.” He stepped closer to her.
The crowd’s volume decreased; heads turned toward them.
Alex stared at the employees, expecting one of them to come to Tara’s aid? If this muscular man got physical Carl would probably just sit there? Which left Alex. Perhaps Alex could muster the courage to stand, maybe ask the guy to take it easy. That would probably end with Alex getting grabbed in an expert judo move and feeling his arm break. Maybe he would just stay quiet?
“Mr. Robertson, you need to calm down and let me explain.”
“Explain my ass.” He stepped closer to her and pointed. “I fought for this country. Did shit for you you’ll never know—”
In the midst of his rant, Tara casually said, “Employee command, Tara Capaldi. Halt Mr. Robertson, lower volume thirty percent.”
The man’s voice quieted.
Noticing the change, he hesitated before he continued. “Halt? I don’t think so. In fact, I’m outta here.” He pivoted to leave, but as his foot extended, it hit an invisible barrier and went back to the ground. He shoved out his arms in a pushing motion. They encountered some sort of wall.
Tara paced around the angry man as he kicked and pushed in all directions, finding himself encased. Meanwhile, she scooted the love seat back to its original position.
“Look, lady, if you—”
“No. You look,” Tara snapped. Then to the air, she said, “Manual move, Mr. Robertson.” She placed her hands on the invisible cage and effortlessly guided it until it butted against the love seat.
“You can either sit down and take some deep breaths or you can stand here for the next four hours and yell yourself hoarse. Those are your options.”
Mr. Robertson tested his new surroundings and, discovering his mobility limited, swallowed, and swiped his palms across his face. With a clearer demeanor he said, “I mean, I just feel I’m entitled to know where I am.” He kicked at the invisible barrier one more time, much of his venom dissipated. That last one appeared to be a verification kick. “How is this happening?”
“All I need is your word that you’ll relax, have a seat, and let me explain.”
Mr. Robertson licked his lips.
“Remove halt of Mr. Robertson.” Tara motioned for him to sit.
He slid his hands across his wide thighs as he eased onto the cushion’s edge.
Tara allowed a few seconds to pass. The crowd’s chatter resumed, and then she spoke. “Monitor, orientation video.” On her right side, a rectangle, the size of a playing card, manifested. With one swift movement, it expanded to a seventy-inch monitor and displayed the company logo.
“Adisah Boomul assembled the Broumgard Group,” Tara began. “A Rwandan born American considered by many to be the first true hacker. Adisah wrote the first program for ghost bots, commonly known as botnets, inadvertently spawning a class of cyber rebels.”
Alex had heard rumors of a godfather of hacking, but he didn’t involve himself in hacking. That was a destructive tool, black hatter stuff. Alex liked to build, expand, create. Nevertheless, he knew that botnets were the most popular method for crashing the servers that allowed websites to function. A hacker would send a slew of e-mails or instant messages to normal, unsuspecting citizens. When the recipient opened the e-mail or replied to the instant message, the ghost haunted their system.
To be an effective hacker, a person must be able to take websites offline. To do that, they need thousands of botnets, often tens of thousands of different IP addresses bombarding the URL simultaneously.
A few infamous hackers claimed to have hundreds of thousands of botnets at their disposal, and whispers rumored of an Internet megalodon who controlled millions.
Alex had written his own software to detect botnet activity and learned that hackers tried to capture his IP address five to twenty times per year. When friends asked for copies of his program, they would call minutes after installation and confirm they had unwillingly been hacker slaves.
To Alex, most of the hackers were modern day Robin Hoods. Anonymous, the global hacker group, represented the people and targeted the power hungry, most of the time. They were Davids fighting the ever dominant Goliaths. That was why his botnet program not only collected dust, but also had been wiped from his personal computer. ¡Viva la revolucion!
Tara continued, “After a six-year stint helping the Federal Bureau of Investigation secure their sensitive data, Mr. Boomul moved to his beautiful Lake Tahoe estate, where he began working on his dream child,” Tara gestured with her arms, “The Lobby.”
Behind the monitor, off in the distance, the crowd of employees grew restless. The occasional, “Let’s go” and even “Hurry up, you dumb bitches,” was overheard.
“In this particular world, Big Hitters’ Ball, players are assigned positions and given improved physical attributes equal to their counterparts: concentration, execution, and teamwork decide victory.” She made a fist in front of her face. “Full contact, heavy hitting football is played here, gentlemen. So be ready for it.”
The screen showed a football player in full accoutrements. The guy ran to the linebacker position and practiced a series of drills. In one, the linebacker charged at a runner and smashed into him. The collision dislodged the runner’s helmet.
Virtual reality or not, Alex could not be involved in a hit like that—giving or receiving. His head would fly off. His spine would snap. He’d crumple into a pile of mush.
“Not to worry,” Tara added as the runner got up and trotted in the opposite direction. “In this world, nothing can cause actual injury. The Lobby removes your ailments. It imbues you with confidence; it connects you, on equal terms, with people of all ages and geographies. With each new world, it brings you closer to many of the dreams we all share.”
Mr. Robertson’s attitude seemed to have improved. He teetered on his seat’s edge, looking eager. Finally, he stood, hands raised in surrender. “So right now, I’m in a machine? The only one like it in the world?” He motioned to Alex, Carl, and himself. “And if we go down there with them, we will enter a football stadium?”
Tara waited a beat. “Yes.”
“And my knee?” Mr. Robertson lifted his right knee and clasped it with both hands. “My military injury will be totally healed?”
“Yes, all physical ailments are removed as soon as you enter the Lobby. In Big Hitters’ Ball, your entire physical makeup will be altered even further.”
Mr. Robertson stepped closer to Tara, still holding his hands up in a submissive gesture. “Well,” he clapped them together, “that’s all I need to hear, Ms. Capaldi.” He crept toward the group of people. As he neared Tara he asked, “That’s okay, right? I can be done here?”
“Yes, that’s fine. Go ahead.”
Joining the rest of the employees, he hopped on his right leg as he went, as if testing its durability.
At Mr. Robertson’s approach, the crowd broke into applause and catcalls.
Tara turned her attention back to Alex and Carl, “Any questions?” The screen next to her flashed a purple question mark.
Carl’s hand rose slowly, as if being inflated with helium. “Where are we, physically, right now?”
“Physically, you are sitting in your access station on the upper level of the Atrium.”
“What about… has anyone ever died or gone crazy after entering? Are there other worlds? And how are we connected?”
“Great set of questions, Carl. The answer to the first is no. No one has ever died. I am happy to tell you we have not had so much as a headache reported. Second, creating worlds is a debilitating task. All of your work as programmers will be to that end. Currently, we offer three worlds: Big Hitters’ Ball, which we will visit today, Pleasure House 101, and our most interactive world, San Francisco 1968, where clients can spend eight hours each day enjoying the sunshine and atmosphere of the Bay area, as it was in 1968.”
Alex considered the implications. The particulars aside, the software to operate complex machines, like an F-22 Raptor fighter jet, required millions of lines of code. What exactly would it take to create and populate a world? Especially one that appeals to the five senses? Even something as trivial as the physics and texture of a blade of grass could devour terabytes of RAM.
“And as to your question of how we connect…” Tara said to Carl. Then to the air she added, “Monitor, run AD-11 intro.”
The screen flipped through classroom images: employees in lab coats, posters of the brain, anatomical replicas on countertops.
“Initially, the Broumgard Group’s entire staff focused on connectivity. Since our inception, a team of biologists, physiologists, and many others, headed by Dr. Bradley Finder, worked around the clock, postulating and testing a multitude of theories. After forty-two months, the team designed the AD-11, which is commonly referred to as ‘the Marker.’”
The shape of the object on the screen reminded Alex of an anvil. He edged forward, his face creased in concentration.
“The Marker is two millimeters in diameter and almost paper thin. Once a client is anesthetized, the Marker is attached to the back of the scalp.”
The screen showed a 3-D model of a human head. A transparent hand placed the Marker onto a shaved section on the back of the model’s cranium. The Marker rocked a little from side to side, coming to life. Once activated, it stood on six legs. Then a robotic arm extended from its body, cut and lifted flesh, and burrowed into the exposed wound.
When sufficiently embedded, a slight puff of smoke billowed out, as if the Marker had sutured itself inside.
“Once situated, the Marker’s feelers deploy and lodge themselves throughout the brain, allowing it to interact with the electrical impulses and chemicals in the mind.”
The screen angled the transparent model’s head to a profile view. All at once, a dozen mechanical arms extended from the Marker, some drilling all the way to the frontal lobe.
“Don’t let this alarm you,” Tara said. “These probes are microscopic,” she displayed her finger and thumb and squeezed them together in emphasis, “and can be instantly liquefied.”
“So we have these in us now?” Alex asked as he searched the back of his scalp, finding nothing out of the ordinary.
“Yes, you do. Again, it is a simple, pain-free, needle-free experience to have the Markers removed.”
Alex pondered everything she said. It wouldn’t matter to him if this was a toxin-induced hallucination or if some robotic implant lived in his brain. He felt great. Clean. He realized the lightness in his chest was the absence of worry.
Looking over at Carl, who scratched the back of his head, Alex weighed the advantages of visiting a bona fide virtual reality world versus a device being forced into his head. He wanted to be offended and upset, but to him, the tradeoff was a no-brainer.
A calming acceptance passed through him as his smile stretched into a grin. “Are there any more surprises?”
“None you’ll disapprove of.”
“Well,” Alex said, “I’m ready to go.”
Tara clapped with her hands near her face, “Let’s get to it.”
He stood and walked toward the other employees.
“Hurry up down there, would ya?” Someone yelled as Alex passed Tara. He kept eye contact with her in case she wanted to add something. Seeing that she didn’t, he increased his pace.
The cheers down the hall amplified with his approach.
Behind Alex, Carl asked if he could do the kickoff.
“Sure can,” Tara assured him. “Unless you want to wait out here?”
Alex looked back and saw them standing together. “I’ll sit with you. We can talk politics. I can explain the Defend Trade Secrets Act to you.”
Carl smiled and said, “No thanks.” He then jogged next to Alex.
The crowd jeered for them to hurry.
When Tara joined the group, everyone huddled together. Anticipation pulsed through the air. She moved to the front and the chatter stopped. Facing away from them, Tara said, “Big Hitters’ Ball, gro
up entry, updated player modifications.”
An ephemeral wave shimmered fifteen feet to her right. It continued to delineate until a visible object appeared. It was a tunnel, ten-feet wide, fifteen high, that resembled the dark concrete corridor at Soldier Field stadium. The doorway looked solid, but it wavered, like a high-definition television viewed from beneath still water. Peering around the portal’s side, its depth ended two feet back.
A security officer yelled, “Hook ’em Horns!” and ran at the tunnel. His large frame hit the portal, froze in motion, and faded to nothing.
This set off a chain reaction. Everyone tumbled into the tunnel, most yelling and clapping.
“Go Trojans!”
“Raider Nation!”
Another hummed the Florida State Seminoles fight song.
Alex waited near the back. Each cheer amplified his charge. The shouts from all around him juiced an electric current in him until he finally chimed in with terse encouragement. “Let’s go team!” He shouted, then jumped in place and ran at the tunnel.
Meeting the entrance seemed to pause time. A tugging sensation, reminiscent of a panic attack, emanated from his core. He felt a clenching in his stomach, a wrenching of his intestines, as if two hands had torn through the flesh and were squeezing his organs to the point of bursting. He tried to move his arms to fight away the pain, but found himself paralyzed.
He opened his mouth to scream, yet at that exact moment, he rocketed forward at light speed.
The pulverizing of his body, followed by the grinding of his entire essence, lasted three to four seconds; leaving him panting and sweating. Clamping his eyes shut, he assessed himself to make sure he was still alive.
He was alive, but felt totally different. This reality forced him to close his eyes and gather himself. His second deep breath alerted him that the new feeling was better. A healthy density, which boosted his confidence, weighted him from head to heel. Eyes open, his field of vision encompassed more, as if he were inches taller. He stood in a professional locker room. There were now rows of doorless mahogany lockers with golden name plates and hooks, stained benches, carpeted floors, and various offices along the outer walls.
