by D Miller
Hector looked at Omo. 'Please don't say anything,' he said. He picked up the radio, he had an urge to talk to Britnee, to ask her if she was there, if she had unambiguously enjoyed fulfilling her destiny, or had she changed her mind at the last moment, just when it was too late? He blinked rain out of his eyes.
The birds huddled together, regarding him seriously with their cross-eyed gaze.
Omo took the radio from Hector, he threw it away and put his arms around him. 'Dude, it's going to be OK. You'll see.'
The birds circled them. They laid their heads against Hector and Omo and cooed gently. Hector stepped back from Omo, he nodded his head. The night roared.
'It's the monster,' said Hector, 'he's out. He's coming for me.'
'It's all right dude, he can't hurt you.'
The roaring was closer.
'He's always wanted me, I know it. He got angry because he couldn't get me but now I've let him out.'
'Baby he can't hurt you.'
The birds hopped about cawing, having gained Hector's attention one of them made a 'follow me' gesture with his head. They started running, and somehow managed to launch themselves into the air.
'Come on,' said Omo.
He and Hector ran after the birds, the monster roared behind them. Hector began to see something light ahead of him. The birds were landing by it. The monster roared again, he was right behind them. If Hector turned round he would be able to see him. Wherever the birds wanted them to go he wasn't going to get there in time. The monster roared in Hector's ears and pushed him to the ground; he landed on his knees. Omo knelt down by Hector.
'Dude, it's OK.' He put his arms around Hector and pulled him close, the monster roared around them. 'He can't hurt you.' Hector looked at Omo, he wanted to tell him to run away but Omo kissed him. 'I love you, I won't let anything hurt you.' The noise of the monster had blown past them.
Hector looked out to sea, the monster's roaring was dwindling away over the waves. He turned to Omo.
'You love me. You made the monster go away. I love you. I don't love you because you made the monster go away. I mean, I'm not shallow, I loved you before that. Ages before that. Well not ages since it's only been a day, it seems longer, in a good way I mean–'
Omo pulled Hector close again.
'Baby I love you so much. The monster is dead. He couldn't hurt you because he's dead.'
'Dead? I don't understand.'
Omo released Hector and stood, he held out his hand and helped Hector up. Hector felt something butt him and looked down at one of the birds, perhaps the one he had first met on the cliff earlier that day. It seemed a long time ago. The bird pointed with its beak, Hector looked – the white thing he had seen was some steps made of some white stone, ten of them, leading down into the earth. Omo looked at them too.
'I think we have to go down there dude, I think it's our way out of here.'
'Out of here to where? Why do I need to be brave? Is the new place worse than this island? Why don't we stay here? We're together.'
'Baby listen to me. In the real world you are shut in a malfunctioning medi-unit with a man who was badly hurt. Now he's dead and you're trapped inside the nightmare of a dead man, and we can't get you out because the medi-unit won't accept our commands because it thinks we are terrorists and we can't break you out because it is hardened against attack – it can defend itself. If you stay in there you will die because it has shut off its water supply in case we poison it, so soon its water tank will run dry and you will die of thirst. But you can let yourself out. There's some patient controls in the unit. You can use them to open the door, but you need the code. The code was randomly generated by the program. The man who programmed the door to open only for the code doesn't know what it is.'
'Four three one two?' said Hector.
'Yes, our comms people couldn't do much, but they thought they'd done enough so that the code would be woven into the dream by the program making this reality.'
'That doesn't sound so bad. Wake up, put in the code, leave. You'll be there? We'll be together.'
'You have a tube down your throat. It's giving you water.'
'OK. Pull out tube, put in code, escape.'
'You have a hood over your face and head, giving you air. The unit is filled with this medical gel stuff.'
Hector swallowed. 'Anything else?'
'You haven't had any protein drinks for about a week. You might feel quite weak.'
'Anything else?'
'I love you.'
Hector nodded. 'Let's go.'
Omo reached out and took Hector's hand. Hector looked up, into the dark and cloudy sky. The rain drizzled gently onto his face.
'I can think of one advantage of being shut in a gel filled container with a dead monster. At least it won't be fucking raining.'
They walked towards the white steps. The three birds walked silently with them. Hector stopped. He looked down. The grass stopped abruptly where the white steps began. As the steps descended a stone wall ascended on each side, rising at the bottom to support a lintel above, set into the ground of the island and completing the outline of a rectangle of darkness. To either side and behind the lintel the normal grassy surface of the island continued undisturbed. The white stone glowed. Hector looked at Omo, he nodded and they started down. At the bottom Hector stopped and looked back, the strange birds huddled at the top.
Omo looked back too. 'Goodbye Rama,' he said, 'and thank you.' Hector looked at him, 'Long story dude,' said Omo.
Hector looked again at the birds, they looked back with their nearly crossed eyes. 'Goodbye,' he said, then he turned away and together they walked into the darkness.
Chapter 34 – President Dex
Robbie woke up. Thank God it had just been some terrifically complicated dream. He had not murdered any robots, or helped anyone else to. Relief washed away his guilt and shame. He blinked his eyes and put out his hand to Omo, finding that his arm encountered resistance from the air, it seemed to be pushing back at him. His body felt weighed down, somehow. He blinked again, why was the world coloured green? His throat was sore because there was a tube stuck down it. He was shut in a box with a dead man. It hadn't all been a dream. Relief now battled for supremacy with panic and claustrophobia. He felt around, his movements slowed by the liquid gel he was immersed in; a large tube in front of his face was pumping air into a hood that covered his entire head, he guessed that the tube down his throat was being fed into the hood through the air tube. He heard and felt a banging, he jumped, it was the monster. He had followed him back. The banging continued, a dull clunking sound that reverberated through the liquid like a sluggish bell.
In one movement, without even being aware he was going to do it, he pulled away the hood, choking slightly as it caught around his neck before ripping and giving way. Doing this pulled on the tube down his throat, he retched, then he let go of the hood and felt for the tube, pulling it as strongly as he could. It felt all wrong, feeling something come up from his stomach, entering and extending his throat then the feeling of release as it bulged through his throat and crested into his mouth. He let go of the tube as he started to cough, and tried to take a breath, then he stopped himself and spluttered in panic. The urge to breathe and cough was immense, filling his body. He felt and looked around him for the hood, his movements were slowed by the resistance of the gel. Without thinking about it he opened his head torch and instantly saw the hood, floating up trailing bubbles. It was surprisingly high above him, and its whiteness glowed against the dull green background.
He sat up and tried to stand but collapsed back onto the floor. He tried again, this time forcing himself to go slowly against the weight of the gel. Stopping himself from coughing was agony. He sat, then pulled his legs towards him, and controlling his strength and pushing steadily with his legs, he stood. The hood was now floating just above his head, streaming air bubbles. He raised a hand to it, pulled it slowly towards himself then putting his head back inside and his mo
uth right up to the air tube he gave way to the powerful urge to cough. He coughed for some time, as his lungs rejected the gel he had breathed in. Finally the coughing started to subside. He took a deep breath, then another one. He was in control. He would find the code panel and put in 4, 3, 1, 2 and he would be reunited with his friends. It was all good. 'I can do this,' he told himself. Something bumped into him and he screamed.
Suddenly Robbie felt angry. When would this nightmare be over? Hadn't he gone through enough? He lowered the mutilated hood and looked down towards his hips where he had felt the contact. A human body floated there, naked, with tubes coming into and going out of it and a breathing mask clamped over its mouth and nose. The body had been beaten and burned. Robbie looked closely at the bruised face. It was boyboy. He was, beyond any doubt, dead. Robbie shuddered. He straightened up, he was facing a round metal wall that terminated one end of the unit; looking behind him he saw a similar metallic wall at the other end. It was as if he was in a sealed section of a very large pipe that was big enough for him to stand in, and long enough for him to lie down in plus a bit. The banging started again, he could feel reverberations in the gel, was something going wrong with the unit? Turning his head to one side he saw that one entire half of the tube wall, longways, from the floor to the rounded ceiling above him, was white, opaque, and glowed softly providing low light. It looked like it could probably be cleared to allow sight of the room outside, or used as a viewing screen by the tube's occupant. Were his friends on the other side? Turning his head to look the other way, he saw along the back wall medical equipment including a medical support position, consisting of a person sized horizontal platform, with two curved metal bands arching above it, and integral supports to hold the various tubes attached to the patient. It was designed to allow the patient to be held in place while floating, preventing pressure sores and allowing the gel to do its healing work all over the body. The metal bands were open, boyboy had been released to free float – was it because the unit had detected his death, or had the medi-unit malfunctioned and killed him?
Robbie looked again at boyboy, sensing something out of place. It was a wire, a cable, that seemed to end in boyboy's head. Robbie bent slowly forward and down to look. Boyboy had a socket above his ear where his hair would hide it. A jack was plugged in. Robbie supposed it must be a games socket, for immersive play. Rex had written the program that interfaced with their brains and the old bot's and took them into a peaceful and beautiful world. Had he learned how to do this by writing games programs for President Dobbs and boyboy that would, that would… Robbie could imagine what Dobbs and boyboy would use such a simulation for. Poor Roberto. With his eyes Robbie followed the cable back to an instrument board above the medical support position. There was another cable plugged in next to the first, he followed that forward, until he realised it was heading straight for him.
He felt around his head and found a jack in his ear socket, he slowly pulled it out so as not to provoke a reaction in the gel that would unbalance him. He let go of the jack and it floated freely; he now saw it was attached to the hood, he could have saved himself some agony if he had known that to retrieve the hood all he really needed to have done was to pull the jack out of his ear socket and use its cable to reel the hood in. He pointed his head torch at one end of the unit, and then the other, looking for the code panel. He could not see it. Was he trapped in here? Was Omo wrong about the code panel? Oh God oh God, he couldn't think any more. The corpse bumped into him again, suddenly streams of bubbles broke from its stomach and it started to sink. Robbie supposed there were more disgusting sights in the world, but he couldn't think what they would be.
'The medical support position,' said a voice in his head. Of course, the controls would be within sight and reach of the patient. Conscious human patients would not tolerate being locked in a box. He turned slowly to face the support position, which placed the late boyboy right in front of him, having sunk to knee level, blocking his access. Moving in slow motion, so as not to provoke a counter reaction from the gel, Robbie slowly raised his right leg as high as he could without touching boyboy. It was not quite above the corpse so he swung it out to the right, away from his body and slowly slowly extended it forward until he could allow his foot to lead an approach to the ground on the other side of the deceased. He ended up with boyboy clamped between his scissored legs. Shuddering, and holding the hood behind him, hoping the bubbles still streaming from it would give him some forward momentum, he leaned forward and slowly raised his left leg, bending it at the knee and scraping it over boyboy as he brought it forward. He needed all of his gyroscopic stabilisers to keep from falling down as he tried to reunite his legs on the other side of boyboy while the corpse bobbed and the gel churned in his wake.
Something occurred to him and he checked his inbox. He pinged and tried to signal for a secure connection. Nothing worked. Poor Omo. Was he panicking and thinking that Robbie couldn't get out? Robbie took one more step. Slowly he raised his foot, the corpse bumped into the back of his calves and he jumped, bringing his foot down too hard he pushed the gel and it pushed back. He let go of the hood and floated his arms out by his side, trying for balance, slowly the gel subsided. Inch by inch he shuffled round, then slowly lowered himself until he was sitting on the platform, with boyboy's corpse bobbing next to him just below knee level.
As he sat, a metal pole extruded itself from the ceiling and slid down towards him. Reaching his eye level it unfolded a textual interface. Robbie studied it carefully. There was a small display screen and below this four rows of large black buttons, the top two rows had white icons designed to be easy to see. One was a person, he tapped it, the screen read, 'Failure to connect to medical operative.' Another button had a door icon, he pressed it. The screen said 'Door opening is not recommended at this time.' Below the text two buttons appeared, one said 'continue' and the other 'exit'. Robbie touched the continue button. 'Opening the door will terminate treatment. This is not recommended in your current condition.' Below this was a continue button and an information one. Robbie pressed information. 'You died 74 hours ago. Your condition is rated as very serious.' Robbie pressed continue. 'Before door opening can proceed you must confirm that you have read the terms and conditions.' Robbie ticked a box that said he had read them. He pressed continue. 'Opening the door will end your treatment and the legal responsibilities of this medi-unit and its manufacturers and operators for your condition. Do you wish to proceed?' Robbie pressed continue. The screen cleared. 'Enter code:' after this message a cursor blinked. Beneath it a single button said 'Enter'. There were no number buttons on the enhanced text screen. How was he supposed to input a code? He looked again at the black buttons beneath the screen. Of the four rows of five, the bottom two rows were blank. Were these the number rows? Were the numbers starting with zero on the highest row and running from left to right, then continuing on the bottom row? What if they started on the bottom row not the one above? What would happen if he put in the wrong code?
Robbie thought, everything reflects light. Everything. He closed his head torch and switched on his night vision. Robbie looked at the black buttons again, numbers glowed palely at him. The humans hadn't done a good enough job of removing them, he could only make out 4, 5 and 9, but it was enough to tell him where the other numbers must be. He moved his finger to punch the first key, controlling his impatience. The banging started again, he ignored it, touching in turn 4, 3, 1, 2. He tapped enter. The screen cleared, leaving only a blinking cursor. Nothing happened. No machinery whirred into life, no trumpets blared, no angels started to sing. The corpse emitted more bubbles from its ruined abdomen and sunk a little more, bumping his calves while the banging continued. 'If only I could find the person responsible for this,' thought Robbie, 'perhaps, just perhaps, I could punch them? Just once, but really hard.' Some humans believed God was responsible for their destiny, Robbie saw the disadvantage of that belief now, you couldn't cut bits off God and feed them to sharks. No,
he would like a person to be responsible, say President Dobbs, and he would like to find him, and punch him. Perhaps even more than once. Twice, even three times.
He stood slowly and tried to shuffle sideways to escape from boyboy. The top of his head felt cold. The corpse bumped his calves again like the world's most grotesque dog. He felt an itch on his scalp and slowly reached up to scratch it, his hand breaking through the gel and into air. He supposed he could blame boyboy for his predicament, at least the President's loyal boyfriend had the virtue of being present, and Robbie was fairly certain that he could take him in a fight. He scratched his scalp, feeling the gel draining slowly from his hair. The problem with boyboy was that Robbie had no intention of touching him, although the corpse didn't seem to share his reluctance. The further problem was he wanted to punch someone who fell down, and perhaps even begged for mercy. Boyboy wasn't much for begging for mercy when alive, and he certainly wasn't up to it dead. Robbie touched his forehead, it felt cold and the draining gel was making him itch. He slowly looked up. Doing so brought his nose just out of the gel, and into the air pocket forming above him. He could hear a faint hissing. The gel was draining from below and air was being pumped in from above. Oh yes, yes, yes. And probably when the pressure inside equalled that outside the door would open. He felt like dancing, but decided against it since it would probably make the mortal remains of boyboy touch him once more. He lowered his head and waited.
Waiting he remembered his terror at being forced into the medi-unit. His memories of Hector were fading, and those of Robbie were rising. He remembered something else too, with a jolt of sadness, followed by dismay. He would have to tell Omo. The gel was at chest height, he raised his arms and looked at them, he could still see fading bruises, how long had he been in the unit? It couldn't have been a year. Were the children missing him? What was the last thing he remembered?
