The Block

by Ben Oliver

  “Dr. Price?” I repeat, the name sparking something in my mind, something big and obvious and—for some reason—I can’t seem to grasp it.

  “That’s right,” Molly continues, “he saw the end coming years before anyone else did. He started evacuating people from the city one or two at a time. He set up a false irradiated barrier at the edge of the Red Zone, and while the real radiation began to recede, no one knew.”

  “Dr. Price,” I say again, more to myself this time.

  Why would a sicko like that want to help anyone, let alone Regulars? This thought comes flashing into my mind, and I almost remember something important, but it flies away from me.

  We exit the bar and find ourselves in the hotel’s lobby. A computer-generated man in a maroon waistcoat stands motionless behind a varnished wooden check-in desk. The floors are carpeted in beige, and extravagant furniture is dotted around. As we pass by the check-in desk, the man comes to life.

  “Welcome to the Purgatory Hotel. Don’t let the name fool you; it’s a great place to stay. Would you like to check in?”

  I hesitate instinctively as he speaks to us—but Molly tugs me forward. “Later. Come on, I want to show you my room,” she says. We pass by without answering and the check-in man snaps back to his original still position.

  “Purgatory Hotel,” Malachai muses, “I’ve heard of that. Wasn’t Purgatory Hotel a video game in the 2020s?”

  “Dr. Price had to act quickly when the end came,” Molly replies. “There was no time to write an entirely new program, so he ripped the code from an old VR video game and used it as a base. Everyone laughed at him, you know, told him that his hypothesis was impossible, that it was ridiculous.”

  “I have a lot of questions, but hiding out inside a video game … this is undeniably pretty awesome,” Malachai says, looking around at the grand old place.

  We walk over to an old-fashioned elevator, the kind with an ornate iron gate covering it, and Molly presses the button.

  There’s a semicircular dial above the elevator doors. The mechanical arm points from floor twenty, to nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, until it gets all the way to the ground floor and the rickety thing jerks to a stop.

  A very, very old man slides the gate open and silently ushers us inside with a grin on his face.

  Malachai leans toward me and whispers, “That dude is creepy as hell.”

  I nod, but follow Molly as she steps inside.

  “Floor fourteen, please,” Molly says. The unnerving old man nods his head slowly and reaches out a long, shaking finger to press the button.

  He slides the grate shut as the elevator begins to crawl skyward.

  “Each new resident of Purgatory gets their own room,” Molly says, glancing suspiciously at the row of buttons beside the old elevator attendant. “So far we’ve had to code four new floors onto the hotel to accommodate everyone. The thing is, we don’t even need to sleep … or eat, or drink, or anything, for that matter. It’s just nice to have your own space.”

  “What do you mean you don’t need to eat or drink?” Malachai asks.

  “We’re all dead,” Molly replies.

  “I’m sorry,” Malachai half laughs as the dial above the door swings to seven, then eight, then nine. “Did you say we’re all dead?”

  “Yes,” Molly replies, “in the real world, we’re dead.”

  “You’re going to have to explain that more—” Malachai starts, but his words are cut off as the lights in the elevator begin to flicker and then go dark.

  “Oh shit,” Molly mutters.

  I hear the creaking of the old cable that is holding us up, and then a snapping sound, and we’re plummeting downward.

  “Fuck!” Malachai screams as we’re thrown against the roof of the plunging elevator.

  The lights of each floor flicker through the gaps in the door as we fall faster and faster, illuminating our terrified faces as we drop. Except, it’s just Malachai and me who are terrified; Molly looks bored.

  I scream, waiting for the impact.

  And then it comes. Our bodies slam against the floor and the world turns gray.

  But I don’t feel any of this.

  The initial shock of falling had scared me, but there was no real sensation other than the psychosomatic impression of dropping brought on by the visuals. And when we hit the ground, I could feel myself mentally tensing for the impact, but it didn’t really come.

  I open my eyes. The world is still in black and white, but now the words GAME OVER are floating in red across my field of vision.

  “What the f—” I begin, but then suddenly I’m snapped back to the hotel bar.

  “Sir, would you like a drink, sir?” the drawling voice of the bartender asks.

  I whip my head around and look at the elderly barman with the gray hair.

  The jazz music swells, and the double bass plays a descending run.

  “Dammit,” Molly says from farther along the bar, “I hate it when that happens.”

  Malachai comes storming into the room from his respawn point. “What the hell was that?” his exasperated voice calls out.

  “Come on,” Molly replies, walking back toward the lobby.

  Malachai and I look at each other, shrug, and then follow.

  “So, what was that?” Malachai asks again as we walk quickly to catch up.

  “Purgatory Hotel was a horror game,” Molly says. “There are still some elements we haven’t been able to take out yet: monsters under beds; faces at tenth-story windows; the elevator failing one in every ten times you use it.”

  She presses the button and calls the elevator down once again.

  The old elevator attendant reappears, welcoming us in with his eerie smile.

  “You’d better not drop us this time, you old bastard,” Molly says, pointing at the old man’s gray face. The lift attendant’s smile grows slightly. “Floor fourteen,” Molly mutters.

  The button is pressed, the gate is closed, and we ascend toward floor fourteen.

  “So,” Malachai says, “can someone please explain to me how, exactly, we’re dead?”

  “Your physical form is in a cryochamber in an old arcade in the Red Zone. All the blood has been sucked out of your body and the capillaries in your brain have been filled with deionized water that conducts electricity. The rest is far too complicated for me to understand, but, basically, yeah, you’re dead.”

  “I don’t want to be dead. I didn’t agree to being dead!” Malachai says.

  “Hey, this kind of dead is better than the kind of dead that Happy wanted to make you,” Molly replies.

  “But how dead are we talking? Like, not-coming-back dead?”

  “There’s a ninety percent chance you’ll come back,” Molly tells him.

  “What?” I say. “Ninety percent? As in there’s a one in ten chance we won’t wake up?”

  “That’s right,” Molly replies, “but Dr. Price is always working on improving the Safe-Death system.”

  “Safe-De—” Malachai starts, and then throws his hands up in despair. “This is madness.”

  Dr. Price, I think, where have I heard that … ? and then the thought just disappears.

  The elevator comes to a stop, successfully taking us to our destination this time. The attendant slides the rattling old gate open and we step out into the spookiest corridor I’ve ever been in. The wallpaper is spotted with mold and hangs off at the corners, there are stains that look like blood on the carpet, the lights flicker ominously, and I hear screams coming from behind the rows and rows of doors.

  “The screams aren’t real,” Molly says, shrugging at the desolate architecture before us. “The rooms are actually pretty nice.”

  We walk down the corridor, our virtual footsteps making exaggerated walking sounds on the video game carpet.

  The lights in the corridor snap off and on three times.

  “Ah,” Molly says, “that means the Mosquitoes are now out of range of the arcade. We’re perfectly safe again.�
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  And at her words something tries to come to the front of my mind, something that Molly had said … As soon as the Mosquitoes retreat, get out! There’s something wrong … Had she said that? Or was that just a dream from a long time ago … I can’t remember.

  My thoughts are broken up by the sounds of creaking floorboards and slamming doors.

  Something isn’t right here, I think, but dismiss it.

  “This is mine,” Molly says as we approach room 1408.

  The door swings open as we get close to it, and when we walk inside, I see that Molly was right, the room is nice, large and bright, the net curtains blowing lightly in the breeze from the outside. But when I look outside, there is nothing but a black void.

  “Let me show you something,” she says, sitting down on the pixelated couch in front of the enormous, old-fashioned television screen. “This thing has hundreds of old movies from the twenty-first century, loads of TV shows and music too. It’s awesome.”

  “Yeah,” Malachai says, a perplexed tone in his voice. “That’s great, but shouldn’t we be … you know … doing something?”

  “You’ll have a room just like it once you check in,” Molly says, ignoring Malachai’s cynicism.

  “Check in?” I ask.

  “Yeah, once you decide to stay, they’ll assign you a room, you can join the party, make friends. Day and Shion are here,” she tells me. And there’s a strange quality in her voice now, similar to the woman I met at the bar when I first arrived. Hadn’t I also heard that strange detached tone in her voice outside?

  “That’s great, Molly, but what about out there?” I ask. “What about reality? What about Happy, and the Regulars that are still alive? What about the end of the world?”

  Molly smiles, but there’s no happiness there.

  “You should meet everyone,” she says, getting up and moving swiftly.

  She walks out of the room and back into the unsettling corridor. I’m about to follow when Malachai puts his arm out, and even though I can’t feel it, it stops me from moving forward.

  “Dude, what is going on?”

  “I don’t know … This isn’t what I expected,” I admit.

  “What the hell is this place? We find the Missing and this is what they’re doing? Listening to smooth jazz in the Overlook Hotel?”

  “We don’t know that,” I say. “We don’t know that they’re not planning their next attack on Happy, that this isn’t just their downtime. Malachai, they’ve found a way to cancel out the need to sleep. I’m sure they’re working on something. Let’s give Molly a chance to explain.”

  Malachai lowers his arm. “I hope you’re right.”

  “Come on,” I say, following Molly out into the corridor.

  “This way,” she says, smiling brightly over her shoulder. She leads us slowly, dreamily, back to the elevator, where the silent and weird old man takes us down to the second floor without incident.

  Molly exits the elevator and turns left. Malachai shakes his head as he follows. I feel like shaking my head too, but Molly is my sister. I know her, I know her spirit, and I have to believe that she’s part of a team that is planning to bring Happy down.

  Molly leads us down another desolate corridor. We pass by a terrifying-looking man with gray skin and yellow eyes who peers at us and slams the door before we get too close.

  “Ignore that stuff,” Molly says, grinning back at us, “just an NPC. Harmless.”

  “NPC?” I ask.

  “Non-player character. A character from the old video game. Come on,” she calls, “keep up.”

  She comes to a door and knocks three times; a few seconds later it opens and a pixelated version of Shion opens the door.

  “Look at you,” she says. Her voice is just as distant as Molly’s. “Still alive at the end of times.”

  She steps forward and hugs me. I reciprocate the gesture but feel strange knowing that neither of us can feel it.

  “I’m so glad you’re finally here,” she says. “Molly’s been out there in the real world a few times looking for you and your dad. I told her it was a bad idea, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  My dad? I’m about to ask what Shion means, but then Day appears, walking slowly past her mother and hugging me.

  “Luka,” she says, “so great to see you.”

  “You too, Day,” I reply, and it is good to see her, and her mother, Shion. They had saved my life in the days following my escape from the Loop. And yet there’s something strange about her too—she seems as though she’s in an almost-trancelike state, just like the rest of them.

  “How did you all get here from the vault?” I ask, trying to shake off the unsettling feeling that is coming over me, even though I’m fighting to just feel happy that my friends are alive … well, sort of.

  Molly, Day, and Shion share a look between them, and then Shion speaks.

  “I can’t really remember it very clearly,” she says, her voice like a soft piano melody. “We didn’t all make it, I remember that. There were twelve of us who attempted the walk from the financial district, but only five of us made it to Purgatory.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, knowing what it’s like to lose friends.

  “The worst part is, they would’ve felt every moment of it,” Day adds. Her words are awful and sad, and yet her face shows no emotion at all.

  “What do you mean?” Malachai asks.

  “We walked six miles on Crawl—it felt like it took a week to get across the city. In reality it took less than two hours.”

  I know all about Crawl. The medic drone had used it on my mother to slow down her inevitable death while my family tried to raise funds to treat whatever she was dying of. It’s the same drug that they mixed with hallucinogens and fired into prisoners trying to escape the Loop. Crawl is a drug that clones used to mix with Ebb to make the hallucinatory experience feel as though it lasted longer. It slows down brain chemistry, heart rate, and the respiratory system. I nod slowly, realizing how that could hide a person from Mosquitoes and other scanning devices. Clever. But at the same time, Crawl slows the user’s perception of time right down, making every second feel as though it lasts a minute, every minute like an hour.

  “Have you met Dr. P?” Day asks brightly, abruptly changing the subject and tone, as if she’d never referred to her friends who died on the way here. “You have to meet him; he’s a genius.”

  Something strange is going on here, a voice pipes up inside my mind again, but I don’t have time to dwell on it as Molly continues the appreciation of the mysterious Dr. Price.

  “He saved all of us,” Shion adds. “He built this place. This wonderful place.”

  I look from Shion to Day to Molly, trying to hold on to this creeping feeling of dread. “Can we meet this Dr. Price?” I ask.

  “I’ll take you to him,” Molly says, smiling warmly at Day and Shion, who hug Malachai and me in turn once again, and say their goodbyes before closing themselves inside their room.

  This time, when Molly leads us back down to the hotel’s bar, we take an old wooden staircase that winds downward toward the sound of the galloping beat of the band. When I look over the banister I catch a brief glimpse of a silver-eyed corpse looking back at me. She scuttles away into the darkness before I can fully register her presence. An NPC … I hope.

  We reenter the bar and Molly leads us to the back of the room, toward the stage where the expressionless band play soft jazz. Malachai and I follow. Some of the people in the booths, and those slowly swaying together on the dance floor, smile at us as we pass by.

  We come to the last booth of the row at the back of the room, where a very old man sits alone, eyes closed, listening to the music.

  “Dr. Price,” Molly says, and the man looks up at us and smiles.

  Right away, I notice that this man is not like the others—he doesn’t have that faraway, dreamy look about him. He is present, sharp.

  “Molly Kane, my favorite survivor,” he says brightly. “You were
gone a little too long this time. I told you, never leave Purgatory for more than an hour.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Price,” she replies.

  “Not to worry,” he replies, his smile even warmer now. “You’re back now. How are you?”

  “I’m wonderful, thanks to you,” she replies, and clasps the man’s outstretched hands in her own.

  “And who are these two handsome young men?” the man asks, turning toward Malachai and me.

  “This is my brother, Luka Kane, and this is Malachai …”

  “Malachai Bannister,” Malachai says.

  Dr. Price’s eye widen at the mention of our names, and he looks at us each in turn, his smile widening.

  “Mr. Kane, Mr. Bannister. Tell me, what is it like to have the ability to heal almost instantly?”

  “How do you know about that?” Malachai asks.

  “Oh, I know all sorts of things,” he says. “It’s lovely to meet you and it’s wonderful to have you here in our little community.”

  “Dr. Price?” I say, the name sparking once again in my mind, and—finally—I remember Dr. Ortega saying something about an Etcetera Price. “As in Dr. Etcetera Price?”

  “The very same,” the man replies, flashing a charming smile.

  “All right,” Malachai says, “can someone please explain what is going on? Did I really die? Am I still in the Block? Is this the Sane Zone? Have I lost my damn mind?”

  “Sit down, son,” Dr. Price, says, and Malachai slides into the booth. “You two as well.”

  Molly and I join Malachai, and the three of us sit facing the old man.

  “This is Purgatory,” he says, opening his hands. “A place I created to keep us safe from the artificial intelligence that wishes to destroy humanity. It runs off technology from a bygone era and so is undetectable by modern equipment. Of course, the problem remained that surveillance drones scan for signs of human life, and so I had to devise a way in which a human being could live without showing signs of being alive.”

  “Safe-Death,” I say.

  “That’s right,” the old doctor replies, smiling brightly at me. “They all called me crazy, called me names like Dr. Oxymoron and Victor Frankenstein. The thing is, I didn’t want anyone to know about my discoveries. I kept all my data offline, all my notes hidden, all my experiments unrecorded. It was my assistant, Dr. Soto, who revealed my findings to our superiors at the Facility.”