“Is this my actual body or is this my real body?” Bjørn pointed to himself and then to the boy in the chair.
“If that girl sleeping is me, then how can the fake me walk around like a real person? I’m confused and terrified all at the same time!” Hilde stared in disbelief at her own twin sitting unconscious in the chair in front of her.
“The people who are awake and talking right now plus the village outside this hollowed-out tree are all just visions put in our real brains through these wires.” Stein pointed to the contraptions connected to each person’s head.
“Where is my lookalike?” Ingrid asked.
No one seemed concerned about Ingrid’s self not being in one of the chairs; they were too transfixed by seeing their own clones hooked up to wires in cushioned, high-backed chairs.
Hilde faced her own unconscious body and asked, “Goddess, she looks like me, but what in Freya’s gown is she wearing? She looks like a freak. What’s with the purple striped leggings? Wait-a-minute, I remember that word from somewhere. The girl who looks like me is wearing leggings, but Tuntre didn’t have those tight looking pants.”
“No it didn’t, but I like them!” Bjørn came over and checked out the Hilde lookalike.
Hilde punched Bjørn in the arm for his obvious pleasure eyeing the girl’s body in her tight clothing. Then she yanked him away from her twin and faced him towards Bjørn’s mirrored image.
“Let’s look at your body. What is that shirt you’re wearing?” She smirked at it. “What does ‘Star Trek – Live Long and Prosper’ mean?” Hilde was reading the words on Bjørn’s shirt.
“I don’t know, but I recall something vaguely about liking it.” Bjørn stared intently at himself in the chair.
“What is all of this?” Ingrid waved her hands across the room to indicate everything they were looking at.
“I don’t know anything about this. Loki came from a different universe, as I explained to you all before your amnesia happened again. He brought a story transporter from our world that my people used for entertainment, but I didn’t think it required the participants to be hooked up to machines for the story to work.” Stein looked confused.
“Your people?” Bjørn looked at Stein weirdly.
“I’m from the same universe as Loki, but we had already discussed this. I’m Loki’s brother.”
The other three gasped at this revelation like they were hearing it for the first time, but then the shock from Stein’s declaration ebbed as Ingird’s fogged memories began to clear.
“Wait a minute, I remember! I had a dream about Loki meeting me in the library and taking me out for ice cream, and then you showed up. I know Loki and I knew you before all of this!” Ingrid blurted out.
“Ice cream? What’s ice cream?” Hilde scowled at Ingrid.
“Never mind, but now I remember! We all had dreams last night about our lives before Tuntre. Something made us forget when we met up with Odin in Asgard. I recall you and Bjørn were dating, which means you kissed all the time and did fun stuff together. Actually, your name is Harlee, and Bjørn’s is Brian.”
Their faces turned red, but they didn’t seem displeased with Ingrid’s confirmation of the relationship, which only cemented their true feelings they had already expressed about each other before Odin’s arrival in Asgard.
“Why are only our memories returning?” Ingrid asked Stein.
“I wish I knew, but the fact that the bodies we’re walking around in aren’t actually real is a disturbing fact. I don’t remember how the virtual reality machines worked, but I can’t imagine Loki had the ability to hook so many people up to them without their cooperation.”
“Excuse me for being a little slow, but what is a virtual reality machine?” Bjørn asked.
Stein attempted to explain it to his friends. Since they could only recall a world where electricity didn’t even exist, it was a hard concept to get them to understand. “Virtual reality machines hook up to a person’s brain and mentally takes them to another place. It would be like being in a dream land except that it is better than just a night vision. In my realm, we have perfected the machine so that you can actually feel, taste, and smell the imagined place. On Earth, the virtual reality machines only help people experience things visually. On my world, we can also survive on the food our dream body eats in the virtual world. Many of my people use it as an inexpensive vacation. Since we can interact with other people on the same machine, a whole family could go to a nice beach and never leave home.”
“Since you said that you’ve explained this stuff to us before, we probably already discussed this, but you keep talking about your world and your people. Does that mean you really are a Norse god like Loki?” Hilde asked.
Stein laughed, “No, I’m not a god. I’m similar to you, but my galaxy is called Valhalla and yours is called the Milky Way. Without seeing outer space or having prior knowledge about the expanse, it would be hard for you to comprehend what I’m saying. Based on the Star Trek t-shirt Bjørn’s body is wearing, he does know something about it, but he just can’t remember it.”
“Why are we able to see your bodies in this virtual world? I remember something about virtual reality machines on Earth, and we can’t visit ourselves as if we have two bodies, one in the real world and one in the fake place. Are we supposed to be able to do this?” Ingrid asked.
“No, and that also has me bothered. All the other people in this room seem to be sleeping. In fact, look at their screen displays; they say ‘sleep mode’, but our screens say, ‘play mode’. These are the people in Tuntre. Look around and you’ll find your parents, but remember they aren’t really your parents. They are the people Ingrid and Loki invented to be your family in Tuntre.”
Hilde looked around the room and found her family, but she didn’t hug them or try to wake them up, so Ingrid thought perhaps her friend was starting to believe what Stein was saying even though it was far-fetched. Bjørn found his parents also, and he just stared at them like he was trying to get his memories back. Ingrid couldn’t find her own body, and she didn’t bother with her parents. Once Stein explained that they weren’t hers, she had no attachment to them. That would explain their lack of affection towards her in Tuntre.
Hilde and Bjørn seemed sad and confused. They were abnormally quiet and Ingrid couldn’t imagine what was going on inside their heads. The world they had accepted as theirs wasn’t and they still didn’t fully recall the truth, so this experience was almost as bad as fighting off creatures in the forest – almost.
While everyone stared at the coma-like people in silence, Ingrid’s mind couldn’t stop wondering why she wasn’t sitting in one of the chairs alongside her friends. She knew she was part of the virtual reality world and she was seeing it through a machine and not in person. Where was her body? Then like a lightning strike, a thought hit her and she gasped out loud.
“Freya’s gown, what’s wrong?” Hilde asked.
“I just had a crazy idea. Maybe I’m not in this room because I’m still somewhere controlling this story with Loki. I am supposedly the cause and cure for this, so if we find the true me, we may be able to find Loki and put a stop to this whole mess.”
“You may be right, but even though most of my memories have returned, there are still gaps of time I can’t recall. I feel like we’re close to having an answer but so far from the truth all at the same time.” Stein sighed.
“Screw it! I’m tired of standing around feeling helpless.” Hilde started to snap her fingers at her body, like she was trying to wake herself up. She then tried to shake her body’s arms and legs. Before the groups’ eyes, Hilde disappeared from the room as Harlee waked up in her chair.
“Whoa! What did you do?” Bjørn stammered.
Harlee began to pull off the wires attached to her body and stood up a little shakily from her prolonged seated position. “Stein said we weren’t real, so I wanted to get my actual self up and moving.”
Stein and Bjørn began to prod and
snap at their own bodies and received the same result as Hilde did. Brian stood up, wearing his jeans and Star Trek shirt. He looked bewildered, but a smile covered his face when he eyed Harlee. Stein also wore jeans and had a plain blue t-shirt that made his eyes even more vivid. Ingrid felt left out as she remained the scar-faced girl in clothes from Tuntre.
“Freya’s gown, or wait, that’s not what I used to say. Anyway, I remember who everyone is! I guess that I needed my real body back to fix my messed up memories.”
“Yes, and now I know that you are my girlfriend.” Brian grabbed Harlee and proceeded to kiss her while ignoring the other two people in the room.
Ingrid and Stein looked away in awkwardness, but then Ingrid grew tired of what she knew could last a long time from past experiences, so she cleared her throat and said, “I know you two are glad to be back to your normal public display of mushiness, but could we try to find my body? Also, I think we need to figure out where we are and how to get out of here.”
“Yes, I agree with Ingrid,” Stein nodded.
The two broke apart slowly, but their huge smiles weren’t going away for a long time. Ingrid thought, Leave it to them to find bliss in the middle of this craziness. I wish I could.
“We shouldn’t have been able to wake our bodies up out of the story transporter,” Stein explained. “Although – my biggest concern is how Loki managed to get us all here in the first place. I didn’t totally understand the way the transporter worked, even when all my memories were intact, but I thought that when Zoey typed on the transporter’s keyboard, she only created the program for the virtual world. I didn’t think it actually brought people into the story unwillingly.”
“So I didn’t force all these people into Tuntre? I just created that place and named everyone who would live there?”
“I think that is how it works. You basically wrote a script and the actors who played out the play are the people hooked up to these machines, but how did Loki get them to participate? How did Loki force us onto these machines and force you to become the Ingrid in the story while your friends became Hilde and Bjørn?”
“And how was this going to help him return to Valhalla?” Ingrid asked.
“I think there is more to this than any of us are remembering.” Brian held on to Harlee’s hand while he spoke. “The book Stein wrote for Ingrid said that Ingrid, who is actually Zoey, was to blame. It also said that she had to find Loki and destroy the book. What book? Stein makes this all sound like this is more than just words on a page. I think it’s some kind of computer program. Do we need to find the main computer and destroy it?”
In her limited world, where magic wasn’t real and fairy tales didn’t come true, Ingrid couldn’t imagine a computer that had created such terror for all of them, even though Stein said he was from another universe. But Ingrid already felt like they were involved in the impossible, so it didn’t seem like she had to stretch her mind too far to see other realities.
Only Ingrid had her attire and the bag that she carried into the Beyond – the others no longer had anything from Tuntre. The book was not in her satchel any longer, so she couldn’t read over the words Stein had written to warn and explain the circumstances. They all seemed to remember the short explanation well enough, but it didn’t make sense why she had all her things except for that book.
Everyone stared past each other while their own thoughts tried to make sense of what they now knew. No one seemed to be coming up with any suggestions on what to do next. Ingrid felt more insecure than ever in her virtual reality body. She wanted Zoey back, even if that girl had her own set of faults that Ingrid remembered criticizing.
Ingrid finally spoke. “It doesn’t seem like we’re going to find any solutions just standing here. Maybe we should investigate this tree. Maybe my Zoey body is in another room up those stairs.”
“Do you think we would still be able to go into Tuntre in our own bodies?” Harlee asked.
“I don’t know, babe, why don’t you give it a try?” Brian let go of Harlee’s hand and she walked towards the doorway that they had used to enter the trunk of the Yggdrasil.
When she tried to find the handle she gasped, “The door no longer exists!”
The group looked around the room and noticed that they were surrounded by gray metal walls which seemed more like a bunker of some kind than the inside of a gigantic tree. The only way out of the cylindrical room was up the winding staircase that was located in the middle of the sleeping people.
Chapter 17
As they began to climb the stairs, Harlee observed, “It feels freakily similar to the cave tunnel ladder that we used when we stumbled upon Asgard. Please tell me we aren’t going to be climbing back to Freya’s castle.”
“Yeah, except everything here is metal and sterile. No dirt or nasty creatures lurking around the next corner.” At least Ingrid hoped there weren’t any monsters – the lines between reality and imagination had seemed to blur a little for her.
“And we didn’t actually visit Asgard, my home planet. I suppose that was just a detour in Ingrid or Loki’s story.”
“It was full of plot holes, and a huge waste of time,” Ingrid mumbled.
Stein led the group as they went steadily upwards around the spiral staircase. Ingrid felt a little dizzy from the quick turns, like she was spinning on a merry-go-round. She remembered climbing stairs similar to this in a lighthouse tower, once when she was Zoey.
Everyone was out of breath, which made Ingrid feel smug. Their real bodies weren’t as fit as the ones they had in the story transporter, although Harlee and Brian were huge into sports and were fitter than Zoey ever was. Since their bodies had been devoid of physical activity while they sat in those chairs for who knows how long, Ingrid assumed they were all feeling the same exhausted burn.
“Anyone else getting tired out?” Harlee breathed heavily.
“Yes, but we need to see if there is another floor to this place. We don’t have any other options,” Stein answered.
“Now you know what I felt every day on our journey into the Beyond. I’m no longer the only wimpy marshmallow girl with no muscles,” Ingrid said contentedly.
The stairway seemed to never end as their feet made clunking noises on the metal steps.
Brian swore and then asked, “Ingrid, did you write this staircase into your story? If so, is there some kind of ending to it? I think you must have some kind of deep-seated desire to make all your friends suffer with these never-ending stairs and ladders in your book.”
“I’ve been trying to remember what I wrote.” Ingrid tried to catch her breath. “Since I’m still in my virtual body, not all my memories are restored. If I had written about a tower like this, I would have wanted to have an elevator to make the journey quicker and easier.”
“Now you think of that. Maybe there is one and we just didn’t look hard enough.” Harlee looked around for something that didn’t exist.
Just when the group didn’t think their wobbly legs could go on much longer, Stein abruptly stopped. They had arrived on a landing which was large enough for the four of them to stand on closely together. There in front of Stein was a gray metal door with a silver doorknob. He turned it and it wouldn’t move. Then he started to pound on the door and nothing happened. The stairs continued upwards, but no one wanted to keep climbing.
“Does anyone have something I could use to pick a lock?”
Harlee fidgeted with her braided hair and pulled out a bobby pin. “Will this work?”
Stein grabbed the metal pin from her hand and inserted it into the lock. The door unlocked and he was able to turn the knob.
“That pin is stronger than I would have expected,” Ingrid observed. “When did you learn how to pick a lock?”
“I’m not sure, but it doesn’t really matter now.”
When he opened the door, they were shocked by the darkness beyond. Tendrils of slimy black threads hung from the ceiling. Ingrid knew what she was looking at, but she didn’t
understand why it was there.
“Son of Thor! The Web followed us here!” Brian cursed.
“Is this from the story transporter or something else?” Ingrid asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine. Should we go any farther? I don’t know what to expect since some of us are no longer in a virtual reality state-of-mind.” Stein said.
They were all hesitant to go inside the black tentacle-filled room. The only sound that was heard was their heavy anxious breathes and Stein’s nervous habit of shifting from foot to foot. Ingrid remembered he had done that a lot when he had asked her out on their first date. The group no longer had their Viking weapons, or the confidence they had had when they were in Tuntre or the Beyond. Sure, they were doubtful before, but their Tuntre characters had given them survival skills they didn’t have in the modern world they came from and now remembered.
“Should we continue to explore this floor or go up to another one?” Brian asked.
“I think we should try a different floor. We don’t know how that stuff will react now that we aren’t in Tuntre. What would we even use to move it out of our way? None of us have any weapons,” Ingrid said.
Everyone agreed with her, and they began the tiring climb to the next door they stumbled upon. Ingrid had wished she had made her Tuntre character physically strong so this journey wasn’t so taxing. Since she mirrored her other self, Zoey, this journey would still have been tiring if she had gotten her own body back.
The next door they found had a red substance oozing from underneath. The coppery smell indicated that it was blood. Ingrid thought she was going to vomit from the sight of so much of it. Her nightmares as a child flashed back to her. She had a reoccurring dream of a boy who was decapitated. Her viewpoint was high in the sky looking down on a neighborhood of houses and streets. Everything was black and white except for the blood escaping from the boy’s head as it poured down each street. She had always been scared of horror movies and avoided watching them, so having such a vivid dream had been unexplainable. It also made her avoid potential nightmarish situations.
The Web of Loki Page 13
