by Jeff Pollard
Renee looks up at the large sun and the fingers of fire spreading across the skybox.
He's the administrator. But he can't be the administrator, he'd never have himself vivisected.
The angels' frozen armor begins to thaw under the bright sun. Renee walks around to Lazarus, picking him up, frozen like a mannequin. She carries him toward the catapult to hell.
“What are you doing?” Lazarus asks.
“I'm going to torture your ass in hell,” Renee says
“Torture me? You moron, I'm not vivisected, I'm just sitting at a computer.”
“Nice try,” Renee says simply.
She kicks the lever and the catapult swings into the air and flings them toward the icy peaks and to hell on the other side. They fly through the mountain air, they aren't going to clear the peaks. Renee rides him as they slam into the jagged mountain. Lazarus is crushed by the impact, in a lot of pain. He tries to get away, but Renee pins him down. She hugs him, her body acts like a heat sink, soaking up all of his thermal energy. Water vapor condenses and freezes right out of the air all around Lazarus, freezing him into the snow-packed rocks.
Renee picks up a rock and holds it over his chest. She slams the rock against the breastplate, the cold metal has become brittle and cracks. She smacks it again, breaking off his armor like it was made of glass. She smashes the rock against his sternum, cracking his ribs.
“Give up your admin privileges,” Renee demands.
Lazarus starts laughing.
“What's so funny,” Renee asks.
“You have so much evil in you,” Lazarus says. Renee thinks to the ticking bomb hidden in the Comatorium, it ticks down through 20 minutes. It's poised to blow up the entire Comatorium and kill everyone in it.
“Give up!” Renee shouts. She smashes the rock against his face repeatedly, breaking his nose, busting open his lip, tearing a hole in his cheek. She relents for a moment. He spits a bloody clump of cheek at her.
“I locked the admin privileges I couldn't give them up if I wanted to!” Lazarus replies with a bloody smile. “You can't win.”
Renee is overcome with rage, she repeatedly bashes in his face, then drops the rock and punches him as hard and fast as she can. Lazarus laughs through the beating, seeming to enjoy it.
Renee stares at her gleeful victim. He's enjoying this. “Give them up!” Renee shouts.
“I told you, I can't! They're locked. I can't give them up.”
Renee sits upright, wiping her bloody, bruised hands off on her pants.
“Well...If you die you give up admin privileges,” Renee says.
“And you can't kill me here. I'm immortal you idiot,” he says.
“Right. I can't kill you,” Renee says slyly, “but you can.”
“What do you mean?” Lazarus asks.
“You think heaven awaits you when you die.”
“Of course it does!”
“So you were planning to die at some point,” Renee says.
“I can live forever down here.”
“Yeah...but you don't want to,” Renee says, “You have to have a way out of here.”
“What's your point?” Lazarus says.
“You knew eventually you would have to die,” Renee says, smiling, “You knew you might be captured. We might very well return the favor and send you to the hell you made for us.”
“What are you talking about?” Lazarus says dismissively.
“You have a self destruct,” Renee says happily.
“I don't,” Lazarus replies seriously.
“Yes you do,” Renee says, laughing. “I can see the plug-in you installed.”
“Dammit, how did you turn the display system back on?”
“Just a little trick my mom taught me,” Renee says. She picks up a sharp rock and stabs between his ribs, piercing a hole into his lung.
“I don't have a self-dest-” Lazarus says, but it interrupted when Renee presses down on his chest, expelling the air from his lungs through the hole in his chest. His words become nothing more than a gasp for air. The hole in his chest wheezes as he talks. “I swear I don't.”
Renee carves out a chunk of his sternum with a sharp rock. She picks up the bone and jams it in his mouth. She slaps him across the face.
“How about now? Still don't have a self destruct?” Renee asks. She punches him in the throat. “How about now?”
He chokes, spits out his sternum, takes a deep breath, and smiles at her. “Do your worst.”
Renee is taken aback by this reaction. He must be in intense pain, but he seems to not care, actually, he seems to downright enjoy it.
“Neuroscientists don't like to use the word evil,” The voice booms through a glass atrium that's playing host to a neurological conference, “so I will say that I study the minds of psychopaths.”
The debate plays back in her mind.
“Those with more advanced psychopathy are obsessed with power, not just in terms of being presidents and dictators, but in social situations. They like to humiliate others, they like to abuse their power, to teach people lessons, to feel in control. Nearly all of these psychopaths exhibit serious sexual dysfunction. They fixate on their own desires, unchecked by empathy, they relish in sado-masochism. They derive sexual satisfaction from either inflicting pain or having it inflicted on them.”
“You've used all of man's baser instincts against him,” Lazarus shouts, “You're offering up every last indulgence, lust, gluttony, you've taken a selfish, short-sighted society and given them anything they could ever want. You're a slut, guiding them away from the lord, away from virtue, down a path to an empty life; a godless, never-ending detour into hell. I'm just showing them the way.”
The cold wind whips up in Renee's reddened face on this mountain peak. “Come on! Torture me. Bring it on!” Lazarus smiles at her creepily. Renee then starts tearing and ripping her own clothes off, exposing much of her skin. She straddles him, leaning in close, pressing her cheek against his.
“What are you doing?” Lazarus demands.
“What have you been doing, dirty boy?” Renee whispers in his ear. She licks the hole in his cheek. Renee whips him, then tears his frozen arm from the ground, and makes him grab her breast. Lazarus's eyes go wide.
“You're trying to make me sin!” He exclaims.
“You want to sin,” Renee whispers in his ear, “You want this so bad!” Renee tears off his armor cod piece.
“Stop!”
Renee whispers, “And we're not even married. How naughty.” Renee whips him again, while she sits up right, straddling and rubbing against him. “You want to fuck me don't you?”
“You'll damn me to hell you bitch!” he exclaims.
“That wasn't a no,” Renee says. She rubs her breasts in his face.
“I'm not a sinner!” He says with his eyes clinched closed.
“Then I guess you should self destruct before we sin too much,” she whispers. “You wouldn't want to go to hell would you?”
“Oh god, oh god, oh god!” he says.
“Go ahead,” Renee says seductively, “I've been a bad girl, you can punish me.” She turns around, sticking out her ass. “Just give me a spank.”
“Oh god no!” Lazarus exclaims. Lazarus mentally opens the menu display and finds the self-destruct button, hovering over the button in his mind.
“Come on, just a little spank, you can do it.” Lazarus shuts his eyes. Rene turns back, laying down across him, pressing her body against him. “Did I mention I'm a virgin,” Renee whispers in his ear.
“Leave me alone!”
“Do it already, don't make me get weird with this,” Rene warns.
The world turns upside down. Lazarus has reversed gravity. Rene reacts quickly, grabbing onto Lazarus as he's anchored into the ice. All across the virtual world, everything that's not nailed down falls upward into the sky. The water from the lake splashes skyward. People, rocks, buildings, monsters, all flying into the sky, destined to crash into the skybox above.<
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Rene hangs onto Lazarus. He laughs, thinking she'll fall away, leaving him stuck in the ice. But his plan fails as the very mountain itself begins to fall apart. The rock he's frozen to comes loose and they take off toward the heavens.
Rene loses her grip as the wind rips her apart from Lazarus and the rock. Experienced with zero gravity and free-fall, she maneuvers through the air, sending her flying back at him. She grabs a hold, planting herself onto him. Rene reaches toward his crotch, looks him square in the eyes and says, “are you going to fuck me or what?”
Suddenly his whole body shudders. Renee looks closely into his eyes. He squints in pain.
“Yes! A Xenon Shock! You did it! You're dying,” Renee exclaims. “I'm so proud of you,” she coyly slaps him on the cheek.
“Don't you see how evil you are?” Lazarus chokes out.
“Shh shh,” Renee whispers in his ear. “Don't worry your little head, you've got just about oh, eight minutes before you die. Maybe we should spend your last few moments sinning, that way we can make sure you go to hell.”
“Leave me alone you demon!” Lazarus shouts. The rock tumbles, heading closer to the ceiling of the sky-box. Debris already resting on the ceiling gives the only visual cue that shows the real distance to this wall.
They begin slowing down. Lazarus reversed gravity again, arresting their fall. When they come to a stop, not far from the top of the world. Lazarus turns gravity off. They float in place, along with many others dotting the sky.
Renee floats beside Lazarus, whispering in his ear, “You know there's no god right? You've wasted your entire life. Now you're going to simply stop existing. It's just too bad. I wish we could have kept you in here to be tortured forever.”
“I'm going to heaven,” Lazarus says, clenching his crying eyes closed. “I was doing God's work! Leave me alone!”
“So god wanted you to kill yourself in here, is that what god's plan was for you? If that's what god wanted from you, I'd ask for a refund. But the truth is that there is no god. There's nobody coming to save you. It's over. You tortured and killed people because of a delusion. How's that feel? Your life wasn't just wasted, you used it to do evil, to hurt people. The world is better off with you dead.”
Renee pushes the rock away. Her world is completely in ruins. She takes a deep breath. She's done all she can. Her eyes roll up in her head and her body goes limp.
40
Renee's flesh-bot animatron sits propped against the central node, unconscious. Deep voices echo through the Comatorium. There's a small explosion somewhere beneath the node. A metal panel flies up in the air and clatters to the ground. A blue flame flickers out of the open panel for an instant and snuffs out. Paul races over, jumping into the hole. Lazarus's vivisected brain and nervous system had been hidden beneath the node in a maintenance tunnel. The vat was a temporary solution, made of flimsy plastic. Paul discovers Lazarus's brain and nervous system lying at the bottom of the tunnel in a puddle of cerebro-spinal fluid.
“Get the kid, hurry!” Paul shouts up the tunnel.
Paul climbs out and the panicked guards hold Seth in front of him.
“We've got maybe six minutes. Go fix him!”
“I don't know how!” Seth says. Paul pushes a pistol in his face. “I really don't!” Paul looks to the guards, but they are more panicked than he is.
“She knows how,” Paul says, rushing to Renee's unconscious body. He takes a hold of the cable connecting her to Solipsis.
“No! You can't just yank her out, you could put her into a coma!” Seth protests. Paul yanks the cable. Renee doesn't wake up, makes no movement. “God dammit! You three, get down there and get him out of there!”
Seth and the two remaining cult members climb into the hole.
Paul picks a nearby vat and fires a bullet through the base. The glass breaks, flooding the ground in fluid. He reaches in and tears the brain and nerves out, tossing them aside.
In the hole, Seth holds Lazarus's brain up to a cult member on the ladder. They delicately pass everything up: brain, spine, nerves. They keep passing the wires that are connected to the bundles of nerves and terminate at a base unit, the connection to Solipsis. They raise Lazarus very carefully.
“Put him in,” Paul points to the new vacancy he just created. Seth sets his father's brain into the cradle. Brains need to be suspended in fluid, if you leave it sitting at the bottom of a jar, or resting against any hard surface, it will slowly warp the brain out of shape, causing serious complications. These cradles can temporarily hold the brain and prevent damage, but the brains have to be fully restored to a suspended state within a day or so.
“I don't know what to do next,” Seth says.
“There's that gel, put that gel on,” Paul says. Seth searches the insides of the vat for a hose. “Quit stalling,” Paul says, pushing the pistol into the back of Seth's head.
“Got it,” Seth pulls out a hose, aims at the top of the brain and hits the button. It shoots a blast of air, further drying the brain. “Oops.”
“If he dies, I'm shooting you in the head,” Paul says.
“Hey,” one of the cult members says, “umm, what happens if the eight minutes runs out?”
“He loses admin privileges, they get back control of the whole station,” Paul says.
“What does that mean exactly?”
“A thousand pissed-off robots looking for us,” Seth replies.
“What do you mean us, you traitor,” Paul says. While Paul's looking away, one cultist takes off running. The other one doesn't look to keen on staying either.
Renee's flesh-bot opens its eyes. Her body remains completely still, except for her eyes which scan the room. Seth keeps working on saving his father's brain, but he's panicked, flustered. Paul is growing more and more desperate as time is running out.
“Why won't she wake up!?” Paul shouts, looking to Renee. He's shocked to discover that she's staring at him. “She is awake!” He rushes to her. “Fix him. You have to save any patient that's in front of you. You have to!”
“I can't move,” Renee's speaker says without her mouth physically moving.
“You drained her hydraulic fluid, remember?” Seth says.
“Right,” Paul says, trying to think of a solution, and fast.
“It can be any fluid, right,” the last remaining cultist asks.
“Yeah, as long as you don't need much precision,” Renee says without moving at all. Paul doesn't want to listen to her. He kneels next to her, peels open the skin on her back, finds the hydraulic port and unscrews it. Paul drags her a few feet to the nearest vat and props her up against it.
“What are you doing?” Renee demands. Paul ignores her, firing a shot into the base of the vat. It springs a huge crack, not shattering. The viscous fluid pours out and along the cracking glass. Paul desperately uses his hands to corral some of the fluid into the hole in Renee's back. Renee starts to gain some ability to move. She immediately reaches for Paul's neck, grabbing it as firmly as she can. He recoils from her, his neck slips through her oily fingers.
Paul points his gun at Renee's chest. “Fix him.” Paul and the cultist drag Renee towards Lazarus. Laying on her belly, barely able to move, Renee and Seth get to work. Renee spots a pistol lying underneath a dead robot only a meter away. She eyes the gun while she delicately feeds Lazarus's spinal column into the spiraled grooves of the cradle, careful with all the wiring. Seth pours on a continuous stream of neuro-protective gel.
Paul's eyes are totally fixated on Lazarus's brain. The neural-connection unit, where all the wires end, has an activity monitor on its side. The NCU is still wired to the central node. Lazarus is still alive, but his brain activity is deteriorating.
Renee eyes the bad guys standing behind her in the reflection of a vat in front of her. Then her eyes dart back to the gun to her right, hidden beneath a dead robot. She continues to work through this, setting the brain while he pours on the syrupy neuro-protective. Paul leans over them, tearing up, h
e's overwhelmed.
“How long has it been?” Paul demands.
“Maybe seven minutes,” the sole remaining cult member replies.
“Is it fixed yet!?...Well? Is he!?” He jams the gun against Renee's neck.
“Just pay close attention to the NCU, that'll tell you how he's doing,” Renee says without looking away from the neuro-cradle and the delicate nerve grooves.
“I don't know how to read this.”
“Is it spiking a lot?”
“I don't know if its a lot.”
“Let me know if the pattern changes,” Renee replies. A light on the side of the NCU turns on, accompanied by a shrill beeping. Renee looks back, seeing Paul and the cult member paying total attention to the NCU, staring into the brain wave pattern, hoping, praying, willing it to improve. Renee slowly reaches her right hand out toward the fallen robot, and the pistol beneath it. She gets a grip on the base of the gun. Seth's eyes meet hers, he has noticed where her hand is and realizes what she's about to do. His wide eyes are afraid of what's about to happen, but he will do nothing to stop her.
Renee yanks the gun out and rolls over onto her back in one fluid motion. She raises the gun clumsily, her arm barely has the strength to lift itself. The gun sits loosely in her hand. Paul and the cultist instantly try to retreat. She lets loose a hail of gunfire. Paul fires a few rounds blindly behind him as he ducks behind a vat. The cultist keeps running for the exit.
Renee struggles to sit up. She reaches out for Seth to help her, but he's been hit. He's in shock, looking at blood pouring out of his stomach. Paul fires around the vat, it hits Renee in the left shoulder, disabling that arm. Renee jams the pistol into the hole in her shoulder, holstering it. She pulls Seth along to the central node, taking cover behind it.
Seth is barely conscious, in serious pain. She hears Paul's footsteps as he maneuvers behind vats, trying to get a clean shot.
“Save Lazarus or I'll kill you and your boyfriend,” Paul shouts from behind a vat. He and Renee make eye contact through the vat.
