The Metaverse: Virtual Life-Real Death

by William Kurth

  “Got it, sir,” Callum said around his phone.

  Argosi returned to the screen. The video had zoomed out, and Reynolds was back in the scene standing just to the left of the pole with the victims.

  Reynolds smiled sweetly again. “What you are watching is live. It’s happening right now in real time and your real world while I am here in my real world in New Polis. My image superimposed into the video from the Metaverse means that I am not physically present but everything else that you are witnessing is real and occurring as you watch it, orchestrated from in-world.

  “I must warn you. What you are about to witness is something that a significant number of you will find difficult to watch. These two human beings, Roland and Clemons here,” Reynolds motioned towards the two men.

  “Are going to be burned alive in a slow, methodical way. As you watch the skin melt from their bodies and hear the terrible sounds they will make, please keep in mind the reason for this slow, awful death is that their employer, Buchanan-Miller Management failed them. I hope that your company does not fail those of you employed by a corporation that has a presence in the Metaverse. Conversely, to the corporate officers watching, I hope that you do not fail your employees like these two have been failed by theirs. It remains our hope that we will soon be able to reach an accommodation with the corporate world specifically DLS which bears much of the responsibility. DLS has been issuing press releases that insist the Metaverse is safe to enter while ignoring what has been happening, gambling with lives if you will, that the authorities will somehow put a stop to what I am doing. Well as you are about to see for yourself nothing will stop what is about to happen.” Alex paused as two of the worker bots suddenly lit off the poles with a total of four nozzles each.

  Argosi looked carefully, trying to figure out what they were. Each nozzle was perhaps three or four inches in diameter. All four of the nozzles held by the two bots had a bright bluish-orange flame emitting from it.

  “Is that some type of flame thrower?” Parker asked.

  Callum looked up at them with the phone to his ear, covering the mouthpiece. “According to BMM, they are a road repair crew of two employees and seven bots. The flames are from propane asphalt heaters that are used to start the large asphalt melters and to heat the pavers and spot melt the asphalt. The three large square shaped devices were intended to ride over pavement, melting it.

  The two bots with the flaming nozzles moved closer to the other bots with the square asphalt melters, lighting each off. Each square was now a hot orange-red area of flames three feet by three feet. All five of the bots moved in closer with the flaming equipment to the victims whose bodies could be seen tensing but hardly moving, secured by their bindings. An orange glow added to the bright lights.

  “Oh my God, those bots are really going to burn them alive,” Parker said.

  Central Indiana

  Ed Roland had been wired to the pole with his coworker for more than an hour by his estimation. The heat of the day combined with the heat from the lights had warmed the inside of the mostly closed up barn to a less than comfortable level worsened by the humidity typical of a mid-summer Indiana day. He could feel the sweat running down his back as well as the occasional stream of blood from his arms and especially his mouth. He had long since quit trying to communicate with the bots or with Clemons. Every time he tried to talk the corners of his mouth rubbed against the gag of steel, cutting into him. Clemons had been more vocal but had gone quiet for quite some time now. Roland knew he was still alive as he felt him move now and then through the wire bindings.

  Roland could only move his eyes which he would strain as far as he could to the right and then to the left to see what the bots surrounding them were doing. Since assuming their positions around him and Clemons they had remained still, three of them holding the asphalt melters while the other two held the spot melters.

  All pointed towards them.

  Roland tried not to think about the asphalt melters too much. He did not know what the BTU capacity of each was, but knew that it could melt asphalt in less than five minutes. He was aware that the heaters with the double nozzle could emit a hot flame. He didn’t know who controlled the bots or why. He only knew if they lit off those heaters and placed them close that he and Clemons would melt a lot easier than asphalt.

  Roland heard the familiar whirring of the two traffic control bots designed to flag cars and link into their driving programs automatically slowing them for the work zone. These bots were smaller and tended to zip around the barn, and one or both would occasionally circle him and Clemons. Roland wondered who was watching them through their cams and controlling them. Roland saw both traffic control bots approaching. Each held a tablet out in front of it. One stopped directly in front of him, and the other went around to Clemons’s side where it must have stopped as it did not circle back around Roland.

  Looking at the tablet, Roland saw the image of a man he recognized. The Metaverse killer who called himself Alex Reynolds. Roland had been living a life of panicked terror since he saw the bots with the asphalt heaters. Seeing the Metaverse killer paralyzed him.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I apologize for your obvious discomfort, but unfortunately for you, that discomfort is only going to get worse.” Reynolds’s voice came from the bot’s speaker. God, please let this be a sick practical joke.

  “Your employer, BMM, has refused to pay the safe passage fee. They have pulled out their workforce from the Metaverse but continue to do business there remotely or without using a pod. They think they can trespass and ignore the sovereign rights of sentient beings.”

  Roland could hear Clemons trying to talk, his words barely understandable and muffled. Reynolds could hear them as well. He paused and smiled.

  “Ah, Mr. Clemons, I know that you want to try to reason with me. Perhaps plead your case or even beg for your life. Believe me, young sir, you will indeed beg. However, you should save that for the hundreds of millions of people who will be viewing you slowly roasted to death.” Reynolds ignored his muffled words and slid up to the other victim via the traffic control bot.

  “As for you, Mr. Roland, I have watched you studying what has been going on around you. You have been more stoic, but when the time comes you too will beg, truly you will do more than that. The both of you will screech like you never thought you could. My job is to prolong those cries to give the viewers a first-rate show.” Clemons tried to butt in, but Reynolds droned on.

  “I hope you don’t think I’m being cruel, or at least needlessly so. Your employer is the cruel one. They did this to you, put you at risk and now, because of BMM, you will broil until your skin hangs from your bodies like melted cheese. You will both have slow horrible deaths, live streamed to several hundreds of millions of people both in and out of the Metaverse and around the globe. The video, of course, will live on forever. Long after your skin has fried to a dried leathery material stretched over your skeletons.”

  Alex paused letting his words sink in. He looked away for a moment before turning back to the two terrified BMM employees.

  “Well, gentlemen it is almost time to start the show. We won’t be speaking again, although I will be watching and listening. I prefer to let the scene play out for itself but will be adding narration for the audience. The bots have informed me that they have several hours of propane available even at full intensity. We will do this in several phases. We don’t want the air so hot that you pass out from heat prostration so the bots will periodically extinguish the flames to allow the air to cool and give you some recovery before we begin again. Have to prolong your lives and keep you conscious for maximum effect. I’m sure you understand.” Alex beamed and rubbed his hands.

  The tablet went blank, and the two traffic bots moved away. A couple of minutes went by with nothing happening. Roland still hoped this was a practical joke, sick as it was. That hope vanished when the nozzles ignited. The bots lit the larger heaters several feet away. Even so, he could feel the he
at from them. The air temperature jumped dramatically; easily over 150 degrees in the space around the pole. Peeking into the cam of the nearest bot, he wondered if the live stream had started.

  Clemons gave out a quiet whimper. He hardly knew the guy; he had only been hired a month ago and on the crew a few days. Roland imagined that Clemons had the same fears that he had at this moment. He could feel Clemons pulling the wires that wound through both of their mouths as he tried without success to shake his head back and forth. Roland could feel the blood in his mouth as the movement of the steel wires cut deeper in from his coworker’s furtive motions.

  Roland closed his eyes wishing it all away but opened them when he heard the whirring noise as the bots moved in. As they moved closer, he could feel the immense heat from the melters. After moving a foot or two closer the bots holding the larger melters stopped. The heat from the pavers was heating the air to the point that it was so hot neither man wanted to breathe it in but had little choice. Already Roland’s clothes felt intolerably hot. Worse he felt the steel bands holding him and Clemons tightly to the pole warming.

  The bots with the multiple nozzles were positioning themselves at different heights around them. As they got closer, Roland felt the heat on him. So hot that it became unbearable and yet he had to bear it. He wanted to move away but he couldn’t. One of the bots moved a flaming double nozzle towards his head, lifting it up, so the flames just licked at his face momentarily before finding the tips of his fingers, just as the lower flaming nozzles glided past his waist, down his legs and stopped at the toes of his boots. Roland’s eyes shut tight. He willed himself not to scream but failed about the same time Clemons let out a bloodcurdling shriek.

  Abandoned Farm, Central, Indiana

  Clemons wanted only one thing, to pass out. He couldn’t take it anymore, and yet he had no choice in the matter. His mind raced. He wondered at what point does a person lose consciousness from pain? He never imagined such agony could exist. He knew most fire victims succumbed from the smoke long before the flames took them. Reynolds or whoever controlled the bots, however, saw to it that his clothes, hot as they felt did not catch fire.

  Instead, the melters and the propane fired nozzle heaters were brought close then moved back. They had started at his boots and his fingers then they shut down for a few minutes, allowed the air to cool then started again. The worst was when they neared his face; he could see the flames even through his closed eyelids. The heat so intense that he would spasm uncontrollably as his head could not move away from the heat source.

  The bots would burn one side of his face, then the other, then the front. Similarly, they moved up and down his body, burning him on one side then the other. Even the back of his body was not spared as the bots aimed the flame directly at the pole separating him and Roland. The flames would bounce to the right and left of the pole and onto their bodies. The bots would be on both sides moving the flaming nozzles from the back of their arms all the way down to the back of their feet. Then they would reposition to the front then moving up or down to a new spot and then repeating the path. His toes through his boots felt as if immersed in hot coals. So far the bots had only gotten close enough that they caused 1st-degree burns, like that of a bad sunburn. Now they were edged closer, going over his body again. He screamed, not just as a reaction to the unbearable pain but to do something. Anything.

  Roland’s screams frightened him more than his own. It was one thing to experience this pain yourself but to hear another human being react to the same torment you were feeling at the same time drove home the absolute horror of it all. What would be the worst part? He wondered.

  At several points since they started on him he hoped that maybe the worst was over. Then that hope would be dashed as he found out in the most terrible way that it could and did get worse. Hearing Roland’s screams reinforced that.

  Clemons, generally a happy-go-lucky guy, began to despair. He had held out hope, despite Reynolds’s assertion that he would die. Clemons forced himself to believe that somehow, someway it would be stopped. He now began to accept that this was truly the end. He was bound in a way that made escape impossible. He was conflicted wanting to live and fight for every breath and yet in such agony that it could not end soon enough. Saddened that soon his existence would terminate, and it would happen on a live stream in so public a way. Clemons prayed that no one he knew watched.

  A bot passed the flaming nozzles over the top his forehead and then over his eyes. He shut them tight, but it was almost as if the fire was getting past them and burning his pupils. The burnt smell of hair from his eyebrows and eyelashes filled his nostrils. He screamed so hard and so long he hoped that it would make him pass out. Instead, when he was out of breath, he inhaled superheated air, agony in a new place now.

  Maybe his lungs would give out, but instead, they only burned with each breath. Without warning, what had been bright orange light through his eyelids stopped and even though the air was still sweltering it suddenly felt cooler. Clemons opened his eyes. The propane heaters had been extinguished again. For now.

  MCT Lab, New Polis, Metaverse

  “Callum, can BMM reestablish the link with the truck and the bots? Take control of them and stop this or get a GPS reading?” Argosi more pleaded than asked pacing back and forth behind Wu as he listened to the two victims shrieking.

  Callum had a headset on now to free his hands to work, and to filter out the victim’s screams so he could concentrate. He lifted the headset off his left ear as he looked back at Argosi.

  “They’re trying, sir.”

  Argosi wanted to scream for them to try harder, but those were their coworkers and friends being burned on live streaming video. He knew they would be doing everything possible to get control of the bots.

  “Parker, Wu, anyone!” Argosi barked. “What can we do to jam or shut down the live stream? At least keep Reynolds from streaming it?”

  Wu looked up from the screen on his workstation which had a running set of lines intersecting other lines. The numbers along the bottom and the top were massive.

  “Commander, there are so many viewers who are linking to it and re-linking that it’s a huge tangled web. We would have to interrupt service to not just the whole of the Metaverse but the internet as well. If we could narrow it down, we could target it. Even with the super algorithm, I am using to sort them out it will be hours. Worse, the traffic is getting heavier. Perhaps two hundred million individual streams are going out or pulled in or linked to. At this rate, in the next few minutes, that number could double.”

  The screams and shrieks decreased in volume and intensity. Argosi looked up to the screen. The flames had gone out again. The victims were shaking but hardly moving as the steel wires holding them prevented that. The exposed skin of their arms and faces were red, burned to first and second degrees. Each victim was breathing heavily and other than moans and groans each was relatively quiet compared to a few seconds before.

  Reynolds stepped into view again.

  “For those of you just joining us, you are witnessing the slow broiling of two employees of Buchanan-Miller Management. A corporation that ignored our demands. Now two of their employees will soon be dead by a slow, fiery death. As bad as it may look and sound it will only get worse for them. Nothing will save them. But action can save you. Save your employees from something like this. I urge you to act. For those of you who have already paid, please enjoy the show without fear for yourself.”

  Reynolds turned to look at the two victims and then walked over to them. The video followed him over to Clemons and zoomed in on his face. His blistered forehead where his eyebrows had been being the most visible injury. He was blinking wildly. His eyelids were bright red like the rest of his face and missing their eyelashes. Even his eyes looked red. A stomach sickening low groan emanated through steel the gag in his mouth as his lips moved up and down like a fish that is trying to breathe out of the water. The camera panned around to the other victim. Roland w
as similarly burned, blisters had formed on his forehead, cheeks, and nose. He was gasping and moaning trying to say something.

  The screen then split in two with a close up of both victims faces followed by narration from Reynolds.

  “Please continue to watch. It is going to get better, or worse depending on your point of view.”

  With that, the melters lit off. The orange glow and pale faces of the victims told the viewer what was about to happen next.

  Abandoned Farm, Central, Indiana

  Clemons breathed deep; the relatively cool air was a relief but the fear that the flames would soon be on him again remained. He could hear Roland moaning and then realized that he was himself doing the same thing. He thought it unseemly, and Clemons didn’t know why he did it. It offered no comfort from the agony of the burns, yet Clemons couldn’t stop it.

  Even though the flames had gone out, the heat was retained in the wires binding them. Everywhere the wires touched continued to burn. It was slightly better where there was clothing that provided some insulation. The thick metal gag of twelve wires was scorching. Clemons continued to feel them searing into his cheeks and his tongue. He tried to push down his tongue as far as he could but could not long hold it there before it would bounce up and touch the hot steel gag which would sear it again.

  He heard the whirring of the traffic bots. They were circling them, and one stopped directly in front of him. He looked into the cam, wondering what others watching might be thinking at that very moment. Were they enjoying the show? Horrified at it?

  He found himself embarrassed by being in this predicament. His suffering was very public. He knew that torment was about to get worse as the flames of the nozzles ignited. The bots turned them to the melters which also lit off. The air temperature jumped 50-100 degrees.