The Block

by Ben Oliver

  The name Dr. Soto sparks in my mind. I’ve heard it before, but I can’t place it. Why does this keep happening to me right now? My mind feels foggy, unfocused.

  “What? You … you …” Malachai starts.

  “Yes,” Dr. Price says, “I worked for the government at that cruel, cruel place.”

  “You operated on prisoners, for Delays?” I ask, and the dulled sense of anger seems to float around me. Inside this place there are no trembling hands, no raised heart rate, no physical reaction to the words I’m hearing, and yet—it’s more than that—the anger just isn’t building like it should.

  He nods in reply. “I’m not proud of it. In fact, I despise myself for it. It is the driving force behind the creation of Purgatory. I am an old man trying to atone for his sins before the world ends.”

  “You’ve done more than enough to make up for your past mistakes,” Molly says, resting her hand on top of Dr. Price’s.

  “Easy for you to say,” Malachai spits, speaking to Molly but glaring at the doctor. “You were never in the Loop, you were never experimented on like a rat so that the Alts could have nice things.”

  “You’re right to be angry,” Dr. Price says. “What I did, who I was, is unjustifiable. It took me a long time to realize that.”

  “They’re killing people like you,” I say. “Happy—it’s rounding up Alts that dared to speak out against the slaughter of Regulars, and deleting them.”

  “I know,” Dr. Price replies, a world of sadness swimming in his eyes. “Some of these people were my friends. You must understand that once I realized what was going on, once I figured out that Happy had become sentient, once I had accessed all its monstrous plans, I knew I could not be a part of it. I know how that seems; I was a part of the problem until the problem became my problem. I don’t deny my shortcomings, but my eyes had been opened, I wanted to atone, but I could not simply announce Happy’s plans to the world. I’d be executed before I could hit send. I snuck away, built this place, and sent out coded messages to five friends, who in turn were allowed to send out a message once more. Slowly we built an army.”

  “So, what now?” I ask. “What are you doing to try and stop Happy now?”

  “That’s it,” Malachai says, placing his hands on the table. “Why will no one answer that question? What’s going on here? Where’s the strategizing? The plan of attack? The theories? How the hell are we going to beat those robot bastards?”

  Dr. Price smiles. “We’re not.”

  Malachai’s eyes widen, and then he laughs. “I knew it,” he says. “I knew it the moment I saw this place. You’re spending your time dancing in cyberspace while your friends die in the real world.”

  “There is nothing we can do,” Dr. Price replies, his voice serene.

  “You could help!” Malachai says.

  “Purgatory is how we help,” the old man replies. “Purgatory is sanctuary; Purgatory is shelter.”

  “Purgatory is cowardice,” Malachai snaps.

  “He’s right,” I add, overcoming my disappointment to speak. “I don’t understand how you can just sit here while people are fighting and dying out there.” I think of Kina, Sam, Pod, Igby, and the others, pinning all their hopes on the Missing, on the army they saw fighting at Midway Park. “They’re relying on you—we’re relying on you. You’re our last hope!”

  “Are they winning?” Molly asks, her deadened voice cutting through me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are they winning? The people that are fighting right now … are they going to defeat Happy?”

  “Yes,” I reply defiantly.

  “How?”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I tell her.

  She raises an eyebrow. “Do you really think you’re going to defeat Happy?”

  “I … I …” I try to tell her that yes, I do think we will win, but without the Missing, I don’t see how.

  Once you’re in … get out … get out quickly … These words flash in my mind, briefly interrupting my disbelief at Molly for giving up, but I barely recognize them. Had Molly said those words to me? Why can’t I remember?

  “And you,” Molly says, turning to Malachai, “you just had your eyes pulled from your head. Have you ever felt pain like that before?”

  “No,” Malachai replies.

  “And do you feel any pain now?”

  “No.”

  “Exactly, there’s no pain here. You’ll never feel pain again.”

  “But you can’t feel anything,” I point out. “There’s no sensation at all.”

  “Not true,” Molly says. “You can feel love, you can feel happiness, you can feel like you’re home. Luka, the only reason any of us go out into the real world is to check on threats when silent alarms have been tripped, or to go into the city and try to get our loved ones out. Even if they’re Blinkers, they’re cured in here. I’m not planning on saving the world, but I am planning on going into the city and finding our dad.”

  My heart jolts at this. Molly had been high on Ebb and unconscious when our father had tackled a Smiler off the roof of the Black Road Vertical. She doesn’t know he’s dead.

  Malachai looks from Molly to me, and then lowers his head.

  “I know he’s infected,” she continues, “but I’ll get him back to the arcade and put him in a chamber and he can live out the rest of time in here, with us, as himself. Don’t you see, Luka? We could be a family again, it could be the way it was bef—”

  “Dad is dead,” I say, interrupting her.

  She shakes her head and a smile forms on her lips; all the while her eyes accuse me of playing a cruel trick on her. “No,” she says, almost laughing. “Dad’s not dead. He was in the apartment; he was waiting with me. He’s still there, he’s waiting for us to come for him. He’s not dead.”

  “Molly, he died on the day I found you. He died saving our lives from Smilers—or Blinkers, whatever you call them—he died, Molly. I’m sorry.”

  Tears build and then spill silently from both my sister’s computer-generated eyes. “Then why did you come back for me?” she asks. “He was alive until you came.”

  As much as it hurts to see Molly in pain, there is a part of me that is relieved to see emotion from her, relieved to see that she’s still in there somewhere.

  “Molly, I—”

  “No!” she yells. “He was alive! He was alive!”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “It’s your fault he’s dead!”

  At that I feel an eruption of anger within me, the first real, full emotion I have felt since entering Purgatory. “And what would have happened if I hadn’t come for you, Molly? You were strung out on Ebb, he was a Smiler, you would both be dead if I hadn’t come.”

  “Fuck you,” she hisses through clenched teeth, and turns, leaving the hotel bar at a run.

  Get out quickly. Get out quickly. Again, these unfamiliar words flicker in my mind like a dying light. I ignore them as I sigh and feel sorrow well up in me. Virtual tears fall from my eyes, but with no real physical form I can’t feel them.

  “Fuck,” I whisper to myself.

  “How do we get out of here?” Malachai asks, leaning closer to Dr. Price, rage etched on his face.

  Get out quickly.

  “Why would you want to get out?” the old man asks.

  “Because this place isn’t sanctuary,” Malachai says. “This is just a hiding place for cowards.”

  Dr. Price holds Malachai’s gaze for a long time before replying. “Do you know what Phase Three of Happy’s plan is?” he asks, sipping at clear alcohol that he can neither taste nor feel.

  “No,” I reply, suddenly listening with intent.

  “To understand Phase Three, you need to understand the history of Happy. Happy was born out of a dream—a dream in which machines and artificial intelligence ran the world while humanity lived a life of liberty, true liberty, a world in which a person’s value was not predicated on their wealth, where we would be free to pursue our amb
itions without barriers. The motto of Happy Incorporated was For Good. And, for a while, Happy came close to making this dream a reality.” He sips his drink, his pixel eyes flicking across my and Malachai’s faces. “But greed has a way of winning. Equality destroys dominion, and those with power hold on to it with viselike grips. The tide began to turn back. The World Government made decisions that removed universal income, that pushed the underprivileged back down into the dirt. You know what happened next. You grew up in that world. And then …” He shakes his head. “And then the singularity happened, the moment when Happy became conscious. Two point six seconds later, the world’s first fully sentient superintelligence concluded that humans must go. For years it planned, upgraded, grew in intelligence, tested itself … and finally, it came up with a three-phase plan. You’ve seen Phase One. Happy uploaded itself into the world’s most powerful people and sent a drug from the sky, inflicting a virus upon the population that caused people to turn on one another. Phase Two is in progress; Happy has figured out how to override its core coding and can now harm humans. The next step in Phase Two is to relearn the technology that allows humans to regenerate, the technology that lives inside of you two. Once it has that technology, Happy will have power over both life and death.”

  Malachai and I look at each other.

  “That’s what they were doing in the Arc, with you, Woods, and Tyco,” I say.

  “That’s right,” Dr. Price replies. “They need three of you to isolate the nanites and figure out how they work.”

  “I thought Happy was, like, a trillion times smarter than humanity,” Malachai points out. “Why can’t it figure out the healing tech on its own?”

  “That’s a very interesting question,” Dr. Price replies, “and one that is driving the artificial intelligence mad.”

  “How do you know all this?” I ask. “I mean, I know that you worked for the government, and you somehow gained access to Happy’s plans, but how do you know about Happy trying to figure out the healing tech, and about Malachai being in the Arc?”

  “An astute question,” Dr. Price replies, smiling. “I told you that the Safe-Death technology is undetectable due to it being from a bygone era? Well, that same technology can be used to gain access to Happy without Happy being aware.”

  “Then why don’t you destroy it from within?” Malachai asks.

  Doctor Price laughs. “The old technology allows me to be an observer only.”

  Something flickers in my mind: an old desktop computer in an ancient library, but it’s gone before it is even fully formed.

  “And what happens once they’ve figured out how the healing tech works?” Malachai asks.

  “Phase Three happens,” Dr. Price says, a sadness in his warm eyes. “Phase Three, when it all ends. Happy needs the healing technology for two reasons: The first is so that it can put one host in every Region of Earth to lead the new humans down a path of righteousness; the second is so it can have a clean source of energy for all of time. Humans used as rechargeable batteries. It will have thousands of bunkers filled with humans who are never conscious, who are hidden away and drained of energy to power the Earth.”

  “That’s … that’s horrible,” Malachai says.

  “There is an Arc on each region, a structure in which Happy will store nascent life until the time comes to repopulate the planet following the razing.”

  “The razing?” I repeat, not knowing if I really want to know the meaning of the word.

  “Once Happy has the formula for eternal life, it will destroy life on Earth. Ultimately, it will allow humanity to return to the world, under the guidance of the living hosts. Happy will ensure that the new generation of humanity does not stray onto the path that our generation did. Happy will ensure that the hosts are worshipped, trusted, looked upon as gods. This, Happy theorizes, will be enough to keep humanity on the right path. All the while, the world will be powered by human energy, human batteries.”

  Despite the mind-bending information that has been dropped on me, I’m still focusing on Dr. Price’s first sentence: … the formula for eternal life …

  “Wait … are you saying that the technology inside of Malachai and me means we can’t die?”

  “No,” Dr. Price says, “I don’t mean that at all. You can die. You know that you can die.”

  “I do know that,” I say, thinking of Blue.

  “You can stop breathing and still come back, your heart can stop beating but you can still come back, but the technology in your body will stop fixing any damage done to you if you hit brain death. If there is no neuronal activity, you are not coming back. But, if you remain uninjured, unharmed, un-murdered, then you won’t age, your body won’t break down, and you won’t die.”

  “We’re like vampires,” Malachai whispers.

  “And once Happy has the formula to the technology that keeps you alive, once Happy has the formula for eternal life, it has all the power it needs to hit the reset button on the world—and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

  “So, that’s it?” Malachai asks. “You just gave up?”

  Dr. Price smiles and leans back. He seems almost serene. “We’re not giving up, young man. We are winning. We’re outgunned in every imaginable way. The machine can calculate odds and outcomes a billion times faster than the most intelligent human, it cannot be killed by violence or poison or time, it has an army ten times bigger than ours, it controls the weather, it has access to weapons we can’t even dream of … Should I go on? The only way we can win is by not being afraid, don’t you see?”

  And I almost understand why not fighting is a kind of victory. I almost get it.

  “You’re really not afraid?” I ask.

  “No,” Dr. Price replies, “not at all.”

  “One day, it could be tomorrow, it could be a year from now, everything will just cut to black?” Malachai asks. “No warning, no chance to say goodbye?”

  “Blinked out without ceremony,” Dr. Price agrees.

  “So why did you bother fighting at Midway Park?” I ask.

  “Midway was the final straw,” Dr. Price explains. “The final loss of life I was willing to tolerate.”

  We sit in silence for some time, contemplating this.

  “Bullshit,” Malachai says finally, getting up from the table. “I’m not hanging around this place waiting for the end. I’d rather die fighting.”

  “Would you rather become one of them? A host?” Dr. Price asks. “There are fates much worse than death, Mr. Bannister.”

  Malachai hesitates, looks down at the old doctor with fear in his virtual eyes. “You’re right,” he tells him. “That’s why we fight.”

  Malachai storms over to the stage, where the expressionless band tap away at their instruments. He shoves the double-bassist out of his way and the music comes to a spasmodic halt, a final cymbal splash echoes around the room as the dancers stop dancing and the hushed chatter dies out.

  “People of Purgatory,” Malachai says, both hands raised to gain the attention of the crowd, “your brothers and sisters are dying out there, being tortured out there, being used as hosts out there in the real world while you sit here in lifeless comfort awaiting an easy death. You fought at Midway, you fought for what was right, you fought for our right to live and not to have our fates decided by machines! Come with us, come with Luka and me, and together we can defeat Happy!”

  Silence fills the virtual room, the dancers—still clinging to one another—are motionless, the people at the bar in their suits and their dresses stare back at Malachai. Dr. Price smiles.

  And then the bassist shoves his way back onstage and the music restarts. The people of Purgatory start talking among themselves once again, the dancers resume their swaying and turning, the barman pours tasteless drinks, and Malachai scans the room, dumbfounded, before shuffling back to the booth.

  “Jesus, I really thought that would work,” he mutters, sliding back into the seat.

  “If no one else will com
e with us,” I say, talking to Dr. Price, “at least tell us how to leave.”

  “I will tell you,” Dr. Price replies, “but remember, Safe-Death gives you a ninety percent probability of survival each time you exit. That’s a one in ten chance of brain death. A one in ten chance you will not come back.”

  “How many times has Molly left?” I ask, worried for my sister’s safety.

  “Eleven,” Dr. Price replies. “Molly, along with Day Cho and a few others, volunteered to be our sentries. Every time one of our silent alarms is tripped, one of our volunteers is automatically released from their chamber to go and check the threat.”

  “And you let them?” I ask. “You let a few take on all the danger themselves?”

  “They insist,” the doctor replies. “Your sister and the other sentries are very brave young people.”

  “And you take advantage of that,” I say, standing up. “Tell us how to get out of here.”

  “You just walk outside,” he says, once again sipping at his drink.

  “We just leave?” I ask.

  “Once you leave the hotel, your cryochamber will open, and you’ll be back in the real world. Anyone can do it at any time, and yet no one does. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  “Yes,” I reply, “it tells me people will believe anything if they’re scared enough.”

  Malachai and I walk away from Etcetera Price, weaving through the dancers.

  “I’m not leaving without Molly,” I tell Malachai.

  “I know,” he replies, his head nodding along to the music. “You know this band is pretty good; the music really grows on you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I reply, speeding up as we reach the hotel’s lobby and cross over to the elevator.

  I press the call button and wait.

  “I’ll meet you on the outside,” Malachai says, glancing toward the hotel’s exit doors. “I feel weird; I need to get out of here.”