by Taylor Kole
Roy materialized next to him.
Both men stayed on edge. When entering a world from the lobby, a multiplayer portal remained open for twenty seconds after each person entered. Unless it was password protected, anyone could follow them in.
Though not a big deal, both men preferred to avoid being stalked by Alex’s admirers.
The moment passed, and they relaxed. Typically, when someone noticed Alex in a world, they were so consumed with their vacation they never shared more than a greeting or passing compliment. In the lobby section, however, they often bogged him down with suggestion requests or in-depth information about Lobby-related things he had never considered.
Roy approached the screens, selected intermediate, and the six windows swapped to a set of new options. He shuffled through them by swiping his hand right to left, briefly examining each, until he paused. "How does this suit you?" He pointed to an image with a gray wall of stone towering over an evergreen forest split by a lone road.
Alex agreed; anything would do. Given ten lifetimes, no one could experience a thousandth of the options offered inside the Lobby.
Roy double-tapped the screen, and the image expanded over the others: Poke-O-Moonshine.
Here, Roy selected gear, chose their pain threshold, and inserted reality modifications such as "Feather Fall" for those who would rather drift to the ground should they slip.
Judging from the scenery, Poke-O-Moonshine looked to be in the Western United States, an area Alex should know, as he lived there, but he didn't get around much outside the Lobby.
Roy selected Feather Fall, normal climber attributes, and for an instructor to be present.
Selecting those “cheats” six months ago, even if both men had internally wanted them, would have earned Roy a bit of razzing, but that time coincided with Roy's first brush with mortality in the real world.
During one of his post-Lobby sleep-a-thons, Roy had experienced a seizure and dangerous heart palpitations.
The vibrant, healthy Roy in front of him clicked "Accept" on the Poke-O-Moonshine image, making it appear translucent. Alex wasn’t ready to lose Roy, not by a long stretch.
"Ready?" Alex asked as he stepped forward.
"Allow me a brief word," Roy said. He straightened his posture when Alex faced him. "I'm sure you're aware, but I want to say it anyhow. I would love to visit with you and Rosa at your beach house."
Before Alex could reply, Roy continued. "I have a family of my own, as you know. The majority are Succubi, but there are exceptions. I often wish I could see them more. It's just… best-case scenario, I have five, six years left, and I’ll be damned if I'm not trying to spend them all free from fear and discomfort."
“I understand,” Alex said. He found Roy's attempts at circumventing the bi-weekly, forty-eight hour required break from the Lobby humorous. Alex understood both his friend's need to feel healthy and alive and Broumgard’s obligation to force people to live in the real world, at least partially.
Roy's constant submersion in the Lobby produced many debates in the Cutler home. Rosa insisted that as a friend, Alex should convince him to spend more time enjoying God's reality.
Alex would agree and let it drop, knowing her words were meant for him.
During his rare moments of introspection, he accepted he also used the Lobby as a way to avoid thoughts of mortality. The Lobby granted him peace from his bouts of pareidolia—a disorder where a person saw the faces of deceased loved ones in a crowd or heard their voices in nearby conversations.
His deceased brother, Simon, had been tailing him since high-school. Simon walked past aisles in grocery stores, called him from other rooms, and haunted his dreams.
Roy clamped a strong, youthful hand onto Alex’s shoulder. "I just want you to know how important you are to me. You and Charles are the greatest friends a man could hope for. And without this”—he surveyed their surroundings and kicked a few pebbles—"our age gap would have kept us apart."
Alex thought about that often. Unlike Roy, who had known Charles for a lifetime, the two men were the only friends he spent time with. He managed an uncomfortable, "Thank God for the Lobby, right?"
"You thank God?" Roy said with a raised eyebrow. "I thank Adisah Boomul, Brad Finder, and Alex Cutler. We'd still be on that mountain top if you hadn’t debugged the system. Don't forget that." Releasing his grip, he stepped away and vaporized through the screen.
Alex toyed with the pebbles at his feet and sniffed the strong mountain air of the modifier room.
He considered the Lobby a flawless existence, an ever-expanding paradise. Convincing the second half of the planet of this paradise was his top priority.
Remembering that goal always motivated him. Right then, he decided to allocate another fifty million dollars to those efforts. They needed it. Lobby opposition compounded by the minute, and the man at its center, Agent Andrews, was… special.
Forget that man, Alex thought. He then entered Poke-O-Moonshine for a day of perfected living.
Chapter Fourteen
Prior to remodeling his office for his new post, Special Agent Andrews had Googled the average office size for executives in New York City: 18.2 by 20.4 feet. He’d pictured that square footage with its desk, a chair, and an arena of space for each visitor to cross.
He’d had the builders add a foot in both directions.
He installed sound-proofing to the wall and a heavy oak door that sealed tight. In the silence of his office, he sometimes forgot dozens of his subordinate federal employees worked on its opposite side.
Since the Lobby embodied almost all disorders: every delusion, a furthering of anti-social behavior, and severe addiction, Andrews was honored to be selected as the head of the Lobby Oversight Committee. Before the LOC went live, he had pictured himself drowned with innumerable cases of psychological horrors brought on by the device. He’d fought for additional agents in preparation of the lawsuits brought on by brain damage caused by metallic arms slicing through tissue.
On that point, he'd overestimated. Same as with how he’d spend his time.
The majority of his hours passed unceremoniously, which made his decision to have a secluded office a good one; it helped hide that he didn’t do much throughout the day.
Nevertheless, it was important that his people pictured him swamped, instead of daydreaming about the revelations that would destroy Broumgard.
Booting a game of Freecell, he understood him being the only LOC applicant who was at Eridu landed him the job without any real competition.
His family name might have propelled him into the FBI, but his cunning and dedication had granted his many advancements. He’d sabotaged a boss and multiple peers. A pinch of blackmail had created an important vacancy. But hey, if you didn't want your wife and friends to know you liked viewing group sex pornography (focused on a half-dozen old men tagging the same young chick) for six hours every day of your life, you shouldn't visit the same sites from your office and home IP addresses, especially when a computer maven like Andrews sat in judgment.
The Lobby was the most complete paradigm shift since the internet. Agent Andrews coveted the prestige of having authority over it. He, of course, would never visit that electronic temptress. Oliver Wendell Holmes had said, "Once a person's mind is expanded with an idea or concept, it can never be satisfied going back to where it was." Only the Devil employed tactics with that depth of deception, meant to foster man's ego and remove the tenet of community, and lead to global loneliness.
Shaking his head as he uncovered an ace of diamonds and moved it to the top row, he marveled at how the masses missed the big conspiracy. Everything currently given media favor went in direct opposition to the teaching of our Lord. How could that be possible if the Bible wasn’t telling us how to live? Pharmacology polluted our temples. Claiming LGBTs were people capable of decency allowed a pardon for their corrupted lives. Websites, advertised in every medium, said, “Having marital problems? Use our services to commit adultery
or get a cheap divorce”; some even shared tips for killing a spouse. Media was today's apple, offering everyone a bite.
Few beyond Andrews noticed that normalizing sin corroded American exceptionalism.
Seeing through the scam helped him abstain from all degeneracies. He drank coffee because he wasn’t a zealot. He simply understood religion was the best foundation for a stable society, and Jesus, whether God or not, was the most influential person in history.
Agent Andrews was proud to have stayed unplugged from the Matrix. Like Morpheus, his job was to rescue others. He had minored, then majored in programming. He could have headed an Atrium and made the big dollars, received the faux adoration of the public. He could have chosen to wear the brain shackle and get strung out like so many others. Instead, he had decided to be a silent hero defending man from atop the lone agency responsible for policing the most destructive device ever conceived.
Alex Cutler's official title had him heading the Los Angeles Atrium, so Andrews had the LOC's international headquarters based in L.A., near the beast.
Clearly, the Lobby was eroding society. A portion of the public commuted from home to work and nothing more until they saved enough to escape. Who wanted to meet someone in real life, where you might have a zit, be bloated, or feel younger than you looked?
The Lobby was also killing people all over the world by starving citizens of previous tourist destinations. Who wanted to visit Jamaica when you could hop in the Lobby for a comparable price and be in Negril in minutes, guaranteed a vacation free of potential accidents, temperamental weather, or street beggars.
Why visit California in hopes of spotting a celebrity when, with the memory-suppressing options, you could become a star for two weeks—attending exclusive events, shooting your latest action film, or seeing the country during your promotional tour—all without remembering that in the real world, you were a no-talent car salesman from Vermont.
Fools all over the globe entered the Lobby and became variations of important people: biochemists who diagnosed a pandemic before it destroyed the population; drillers detonating a nuke on an incoming asteroid; Marines repelling hordes of alien invaders.
Gone were the days where one wanted to hit a million views on YouTube. Now they wanted to save the day, get the girl or boy or whatever, and bask in the adoration of billions. When their vacations finished, they popped back into the real world and relished an ego stroking powerful enough to warp a person's sense of self-worth.
Andrews was witnessing the deconstruction of civilization.
He moved the king of clubs to the recently opened slot on the screen.
Regular people who did nothing exceptional thinking they deserved to be singled out for praise, idiots believed they were brilliant, it made him sick. People had to know their roles. Life was about knowing your role, loving your neighbor, and obeying the law.
Despite this knowledge, a healthy budget, and a team of specialists, he had yet to conclusively identify any physiological or psychological health infringements imposed by entering the Lobby.
An ugly head would emerge someday, but when? Keeping faith in his duty, he focused on collecting data for that fateful day. Being the defender of mankind, the voice of the one true world, he would need facts when the final battle—played out in the court of public opinion—unfolded.
It was stressful work. Everyone knew the LOC opposed the Lobby, yet each week, hundreds of letters and emails arrived praising its existence. Average people might not appreciate that he watched over them, but their children would.
He placed the jack of spades on the queen of hearts, freeing up the eight of clubs and winning him another game. Closing the program, he wondered if anyone else on the planet had a win percentage of eighty-six at Freecell? Doubtful.
A lone file rested on his desk. As a way of keeping his hand on the noose they were weaving, he personally filed reports every few days. In this incident, a seventeen-year-old male from Tokyo had reported severe migraines since visiting the Lobby.
Each year brought hundreds of these migraines. Hundreds of cases for a litany of ailments: dementia, dizzy spells, insomnia, narcolepsy, paranoia… the list read like an encyclopedia of mental derangements.
The politicians didn't see the correlation when held up against tens of millions of vacations—maybe because opposing the Lobby equaled political suicide. That didn't mean Andrews toiled alone. Some of the most powerful organizations on the planet supported him. The heads of the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and the NSA all found the notion of an unmonitorable medium synonymous with Armageddon. He knew they silently worked as hard as himself.
He wondered if they played dozens of rounds of FreeCell a day?
If so, would even one come close to an eighty-six percentage? Doubtful.
When the day of exposure arrived, they would be his right hand, or he theirs—it mattered not.
For now, he bided his time. Patience wasn't his best virtue, but he knew implicitly that the Lobby, and specifically the phony golden boy Alex Cutler, embodied evil.
He just needed one domino to fall.
Leaning back in his chair, he opened another round of FreeCell. With seventeen more wins in a row, his win percentage would bump to eighty-seven.
Until the time came, he'd sit behind his solid oak door, file his reports, and fantasize about pulling the plug on the Lobby and wiping that smug smile off of party-boy Alex Cutler's face.
Chapter Fifteen
The Pacific Ocean didn’t feel real to Alex. He knew this was reality—that he was at his Malibu beach house, not inside the Lobby—but standing waist deep in the Pacific, facing out to sea, he frowned at the surroundings. The sound of the waves as they broke was too dull, even distorted. There was too much junk on the ocean floor: shells, seaweed, various rocks. The smell of salt was overpowering, almost offensive.
Wearing only shorts, holding the cord to a boogie board, Alex wanted to turn down the pungent scent, remove the tug of current around his legs, and have a smoother floor to walk upon.
“Let’s go out one more time,” Steve, Rosa’s brother-in-law, said as he waded past Alex, dragging his own boogie board.
Steve being here proved this was the real world? Or, had I taken a vacation with Steve and chose to suppress our memories?
Alex turned to shore. The beach was right. He saw Rosa playfully running after her three-year-old nephew. Two other children, six other adults, all Rosa’s family, helped prove this was the real world.
Alex took measure of how he felt. His lungs burned from fatigue, his shoulders were hot from the onset of sunburn—definitive proof this was real. He scanned the water for a shark fin, Steve hopped on his body board, and kicked.
Alex wanted to go out one more time. This was his first time bodyboarding, and it was enjoyable enough to repeat all day, but his legs quaked, even when standing still.
He took a deep breath and headed out. When the water got deep, he placed his weight atop his board, and kicked. He was more tired than he thought. He considered a brief nap on his board.
Steve rode a wave past him, yelling his enthusiasm. The shout, plus the smile on his face picked Alex up. He continued farther out.
Today’s waves were cresting at six to eight feet. The sky was cloudless, and the temperature was a balmy eighty-two degrees—the same setting Alex would have chosen in the Lobby.
Reaching a launching point, he bobbed on the sea for ten minutes, resting. Paddling to catch a desired wave, his arms felt like limp noodles.
When the wave broke, he rode it north. Bodyboarding was relative low energy and low impact (a reason the forty-pound-overweight Steve competed against him), but halfway to shore, Alex momentarily spaced out, and biffed.
He tumbled under the wave, two maybe three times. Disoriented, he flailed. Each effort stoked greater panic in him. The water was twelve to fifteen feet deep, but he found no footing and felt miles from air.
Remembering a technique from a surfing instructor inside
the Lobby, he calmed himself and expelled a breath. Bubbles always rose toward safety. He followed them up.
Alex broke the surface with nothing left in the tank. His feeble yell for help carried inches. During the ride, he had drifted a fair way to the north, far from shore.
Rather than panic, he rolled to his back, and filled his lungs to help buoyancy. His first kick towards shore reminded him of the board velcroed to his ankle.
He almost cried with relief as he reeled in his life preserver. Using the board, and every drop of his remaining energy, he turned off his mind and kicked until his toes banged sand. Even in ten inches of water, he continued to paddle until he reached shore.
He lay at the edge of the lapping waves for ten minutes before he heard approaching footsteps.
“Takin’ a little breather, are ya?” Steve was Italian. Hairy curls outlined his looming shadow. “Thought a shark got cha.”
Too tired to speak, Alex only shook his head. Not a shark, but death by drowning had been a real possibility.
Steve dragged Alex out of the water and plopped him on the sand face down.
Alex rolled to his back.
“You gonna be okay?” Steve asked.
The shame of being dragged motivated Alex to sit up, speak, and walk on his own.
Instead, he laid there and nodded.
“Gonna hit another wave. I’ll scoop you up after you’ve caught your breath.”
Steve went out an additional two times before enough of Alex’s strength returned for him to stand. In his kick to shore, he had wandered one hundred and fifty yards from their property.
On his approach, Alex saw Rosa with her nephew and two other children. They had dug a trench six feet up the beach and were working on erecting a castle.
Alex trudged to the picnic table and sat. One glass of lemonade, a sandwich, and a dozen shrimp replenished him enough to think straight.
