Rebel's Construct: Sim-Verse: Book 1, page 5
CHAPTER 10
TAVEN CAME THROUGH the portal and found himself standing at one end of a long city street. Small two- and three-story buildings greeted him on each side with their humble charm. He tried to place them, put them in a historic context. But this wasn’t history, it was a constructed world, he remembered. And there was a mixture of contemporary and older elements: new, bright shining vehicles—though none of them were being driven; they were all parked on one side of the street—and the buildings with orange-red stucco walls with Spanish tile roofs seemed to be early twentieth century.
The air felt warm and dry, and Taven squinted from the midday sun. Up ahead, he could hear people: quiet chattering and clinking of cups and silverware.
He suddenly felt a rush of nerves at the prospect of running into someone, interacting with a stranger, a veritable lucid Hudson colonist.
Taven realized he was standing in the center of the street, and he shifted over to the sidewalk and began moving toward the sound of people. As he did, he saw into the windows of the buildings he passed. He expected to see people or, at least, their shadows, but buildings were dark and empty. He wondered if they were really used or were just uninhabited props for this world.
Moments later, he glimpsed the source of the sounds. It was people, alright—approximately two dozen of them, and they all seemed to be armed. Some carried pistols in holsters. Others had automatic rifles or energy weapons with slings over their shoulders. Some sat out on the street in what looked like a sidewalk café, except they were sprawled out onto the road, blocking it. No wonder there was no traffic, he thought.
Just then, one of the Hudsonites seemed to spot Taven. The big muscular man was leaning up against a pillar that supported the pergola covering half of the outdoor seating area. He had long dark hair and wore sunglasses that hid his eyes, and in one hand he held a half-empty bottle of some clear distilled drink.
Taven couldn’t help but feel intimidated by this drunken Samson character who gestured to one of his nearby companions that they had company.
Two other ruffians stood by Samson, forming a defensive line as if Taven represented some threat to the men who were a head taller and fifty pounds of muscle heavier.
“Hello. My name is Taven. I’m—”
“Not from around here,” one of the men interrupted.
“That’s correct. I’m from outside the construct. I’m not a Hudson colonist at all. I’m here to warn you. Your ship is in danger.”
The three men remained expressionless, and Taven wondered if they were really sentient, whether they might be computer generated as well.
Finally, Samson spoke, “Huh. That’s a new one.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Taven pleaded. “I’m a foreman on an astro-mining ship, and we accidentally hit the Hudson.”
As if a switch was flipped, the three men roared in laughter. “I would’ve liked to have seen your face when you did that,” shouted one of the men before taking another swig of drink.
“This is serious,” Taven said with a more assertive tone.
The three men stiffened, seeming to recognize the challenge in his voice. Samson said, “Yeah, what are you going to do about it?”
“Look, it’s not like that,” Taven said, waving his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying you don’t have long before the ship is going to lose orbit and crash.”
“Into what?” said a nearby woman who looked like she was half pirate, half biker.
“Well, I don’t exactly know what yet. But it’s going to happen,” Taven said.
“Sounds like a scheme by Richardson and his bunch,” said another bystander.
“Exactly! This is the kind of stunt they would pull,” Samson said.
“No, no, no,” Taven insisted. “I’m not kidding. This is for real. Look, I need to talk to someone in charge.”
“Take it up with Cat!” Samson yelled, and the whole joint laughed in chorus.
Realizing this was going nowhere, Taven broke off from the main group and approached some of the people sitting at the tables in the street. But as he did, he had the sudden understanding of what it was like to be a street peddler, a vagrant begging for his supper. Because each table he approached waved him off, and most wouldn’t even look him in the eye. Their only answer, if they responded, was the same: “Take it up with Cat.”
Taven was the end-of-the-world doomsday preacher, and even in this simulated universe, no one listened to Chicken Little.
Just as he had accosted the last table, he heard a sound in the distance. It was only vaguely familiar, like something he’d heard in a movie. But apparently, all the café people recognized it, because everyone moved inside or took cover, unsheathing their firearms at the same time.
Taven, in the middle of the street, turned to locate the source of the sound. The rumble came from a small single propeller airplane, the kind he’d seen in museums and old black-and-white films.
He squinted again, the sunlight trying to blind him, but as the small blip in the sky came closer, Taven thought he could make out its pilot, someone dressed in Red Barron garb with helmet, goggles, and scarf.
Right as his confused mind generated the first instinct to ‘do as the Romans do’ and take cover, the solo pilot ripped up the sidewalk with heavy machine gun fire.
Taven tried to run, but the once slow seeming plane was now close and moving near the speed of sound. The fighter plane strafed the café, riddling everything in sight with bullets.
Taven felt the white-hot lead tear through his legs and torso, pummeling him to the ground.
As the plane flew away, Samson and his cronies ran into the street and fired their weapons toward the attacker.
“Take that!” shouted one of them.
“Yeah, there’s more where that came from,” said another.
When the cacophony of gunfire ended, one of the gangsters spotted Taven. “Look! Richardson’s plan failed after all!” Then the whole crew burst into laughter.
Taven was too hurt to even comprehend the cruelty of this moment. He reached his hands to his belly and felt the warm blood oozing effortlessly from his wounds.
He tried to move, but something was badly wrong with his legs, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at them. He was dying. Bleeding out. The pain was too real and the horror too strong for Taven to be comforted by the fact that this wasn’t real life. He couldn’t really die in here, could he?
Taven tried to breath with what he figured must be a collapsed lung while futilely covering gaping wounds with his hands. The problem—one of his problems—was that he had more wounds than hands, and this game of whack-a-mole was one he couldn’t win.
Writhing in agony, Taven spotted movement far down the street. He shouldn’t have cared, except some part of him recognized the figure, told him to care. He gazed intently at a woman crossing the road.
Suddenly, it hit him. It was Ferah. What was she doing here? he wondered.
“Ferah! Over here. I need your help.”
His cry was faint, and she didn’t seem to notice him. He wondered why she was so distant and why she was dressed in the brown short skirt she wore. She was gorgeous, but none of that mattered right now. He tried one more time with all that was left inside.
“Ferah! Help!”
This time she seemed to hear him. Halfway across the street, she slowed but didn’t stop as she turned her head and smiled knowingly in his direction.
Taven’s head spun out of control, and the pain that had become his dominating truth slowly released its grasp of him as he slipped out of consciousness.
CHAPTER 11
WAKING UP WOULD be the wrong word for it. It was more like someone gradually turned on the lights from dim to bright. And while it happened, Taven was barely aware, barely conscious of the whole thing.
After what seemed like hours—during which Taven wasn’t bored, wasn’t scared, and didn’t care about the passing of time—he was suddenly back in front of the mirror in his new home. As soon as he became conscious, he instinctively crouched as if to take cover and grabbed himself where his wounds had been.
Then he saw himself in the mirror, and he felt a moment of joy and relief that what had seemed so real was no more. He couldn’t help but pull his shirt up again. This time it was to be sure his wounds were gone. They were, and quickly his attention turned to admiring his magnificent physique that would be impossible in the real world.
On the mirror before him, a written message appeared.
VIOLENCE DETECTED IN PREVIOUS ITERATION.
DELETE?
OR
SAVE?
Taven stared at the words, trying to make since of them. Yeah, there had been violence alright. More violence than he’d ever experienced. Until then, the most traumatic event he’d had was the accident that had given him his scar.
Apparently, the construct allowed him to change his very memories. If an event was too traumatic, he could simply delete the memory.
Although it was tempting, Taven decided to keep what had happened. He needed the information he had gathered. He pressed SAVE, and the mirror returned to normal.
Taven exited the bathroom and suddenly felt the urge to eat. Was it mealtime already? It certainly felt like it had been several hours since he entered the construct. He decided he would test his environ.
As he approached the refrigerator, he drew up the image of an Italian sub with all the fixings, the kind he’d had from Gus’s in Montreux. The owners there had been of the old guard, doing things the way their parents and grandparents had done it with all the unhealthy cured meats and oil-infused pickled peppers.
He held his breath as he opened the refrigerator door. Sure enough, wrapped in white deli paper was the spitting image of Taven’s dream sub. He grabbed it like a greedy scavenger and retreated away from the fridge in hopes of finding a safe place to eat it.
He crashed on the couch in the living room, which ordinarily would be a big no-no back home. ‘Think of the crumbs,’ a voice in his head said. ‘Don’t get grease on the cushions,’ spoke another admonishment.
He smiled, knowing that if this construct was consistent, he could make any mess he could imagine, walk out of the room, and it would all be gone the next time he entered. Or, at the very least, he could trash this place and leave the aftermath to whomever when he left the construct.
His pure joyous moment suddenly waned in its intensity, tainted by the question: How was he getting out of here?
No answers came, except that if things got too far off track, Ferah and Mack would pull him out of the pod.
Ferah. How had he forgotten her? He recounted his vision of her, far down the street with a seductive dress and that smile. What was she doing inside the construct? he wondered. She must have entered through another pod. But why? What would prompt her to come in after him?
Maybe there’s something wrong, he thought. Maybe they couldn’t wake him, and she had taken it upon herself to rescue him.
But that didn’t make since either. If she was there to help, why hadn’t she come to his aid as he bled out?
Taven put down his sandwich on the coffee table. Gone were all the good feelings it had given him, and so was his appetite. He rose and headed for the door. He had to get answers. What choice did he really have?
He entered the doorway, and after the room came to life, the message screen appeared like before when Cat had given her welcome speech. Taven wondered if he’d get the same dumb message every time he entered the door, but he was glad to see Mack’s face appear on the screen instead.
“Boss-man, I hope this gets to you. We tried to find a more direct way to communicate, but this programming . . . Stevens says it’s really cumbersome to alter and that there are all kinds of safeguards in place to maintain the rules of the game.”
Taven felt comfort hearing Mack’s voice. He was an idiot half the time, but he had a good heart and was surprisingly resourceful at times.
“Anyway,” Mack continued, “this is the best we could do. If you’re getting this, you need to find someone who calls herself Cat. She, apparently, runs the joint.”
Taven’s spirits were quickly dashed. He had seen Cat. She was a talking head and didn’t answer direct questions. “They don’t realize she’s an avatar or CGI or whatever,” Taven said.
“Find her if you can. She’s your best shot at reaching the rest of the Hudson colonists,” Mack said. “We’ve also figured some things out about these different constructs you can enter.”
That would have been nice to have known before hand, Taven thought.
“There are restricted and unrestricted constructs. Basically, the unrestricted constructs are the wild west where anything goes.”
No kidding.
“The restricted areas each have their own rules, most of which should be listed in their descriptions. We can’t exactly tell how things look to you in there. But there should be markings of some kind warning you about what those places are like. Well, that’s all we got right now. Wish we could talk directly. We’ll keep working on our end and let you know what we discover. Mack out.”
The screen blipped, then changed to a different screen:
RESPOND?
SAVE?
DELETE?
Taven selected RESPOND. Suddenly, his own face was on the screen and a blinking red light indicated he was recording a message.
“Got your last message. I’ve seen Cat. She doesn’t respond to questions,” Taven said. “What do I need to do if I can’t find her, or if she’s an automaton? Taven out.”
He selected the SEND MESSAGE icon at the bottom of the screen and waited. The screen acknowledged he had sent the message. Taven wondered if they would respond immediately. Why wouldn’t they? Why couldn’t they have a live chat, even?
Taven stood with his arms crossed for what felt like fifteen minutes. He didn’t exactly know how long he’d waited because he didn’t have a clock or time keeping device with him. The wall consoles didn’t have any either. Now that he thought of it, Taven couldn’t remember seeing clocks anywhere in the house. Even that period piece, the microwave, didn’t have the iconic blinking digital clock. Strange indeed, he thought.
After giving up on an immediate response from Mack, Taven started investigating different constructs on the wall consoles. There were thousands of them, he figured. And most had restrictions.
He found one that was listed as Fulbright 12. It had restrictions, but he didn’t know what they meant. They read:
FULBRIGHT 12- ANON ??? !!!
“Can’t be any worse than getting strafed by a fighter pilot,” Taven said as he selected the construct.
The lights flashed, then blackness, and finally there was nothing but bright, blinding white light. He felt like he was somewhere, his feet finding purchase on some invisible floor, but the whiteness, like an opaque mist that choked out all visual senses, enveloped him.
“Hello,” he said, meekly.
“We are one. We are many,” said a male voice nearby.
Taven stopped moving. He felt like he was standing right next to the voice, and he was afraid he would run into the stranger. Slowly, he groped with his hands for the hidden man, but—defying logic—there was no one.
“I am Taven. I come from outside the Hudson.”
“There are many ways to carry a conversation. I don’t find your input to be aggressive,” he said. “Limits are what make us free.”
“Yes, well. That’s all fine, I guess. But there’s danger out there,” Taven said.
“Of course, there is,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”
“But you aren’t getting it. Don’t you want to know about the ship?”
Suddenly and without warning, Taven was back in the room inside the door. “What the…”
He looked at the construct listings. They were the same except Fulbright 12 was faded out. He tried to select it, but it didn’t respond. He was locked out, it seemed.
“Whatever,” he said, perplexed. He found another restricted world at random.
CANTERA 5- :) ??? !!!
He chuckled at the antiquated emoticon and noticed this one had lines through question marks and had exclamation marks. “What the heck?” he said, selecting the listing.
Like before, he flashed through to another construct. This one was different. It didn’t have the all-encompassing white light. Instead, it looked like an old underground subway system that had had its rails closed off, leaving a hallway with concrete floors, fluorescent lighting, and damp subterranean air.
Taven stood at the foot of a flight of concrete stairs. He glanced up. They seemed like they went on forever. He turned around and looked down the long hallway. It too seemed to go on endlessly, but he had the sense he was supposed to go that way.
As he stepped forward, doorways on both walls became visible. They didn’t look like the old hinged wooden doors of his house or even the automatic doors of the St. George. Instead, they were like the door that had led him here; it was translucent, alive with digital potential.
He noticed there were lights above the doors. So far, they had all shown two red lights. Red’s the universal color for no go, Taven thought.
Then, the next door appeared to be different. Its translucence was more vibrant, and he thought he could actually see inside its compartment. Above the door was a single blue light.
“Might as well try it,” Taven said as he reached his hand to the doorway. As he expected, he was dematerialized and reconstituted all in the blink of an eye. Now, he sat at a booth as if he were back at Gus’s. Across the table from him sat a figure cloaked all in black with a hood and robe. The lighting wasn’t good, and Taven had trouble making out the person’s face in the shadow cast by their hood.
“Hello,” Taven finally said.
The figure raised their hands and lowered the hood, revealing an older woman with white hair. She smiled bravely and stared into Taven’s eyes with a directness and intensity that unnerved him.
“Hello,” she said softly. This was the first older person Taven had seen on the Hudson. It made sense, he thought, that not all the passengers would be young. Then again, there was no way to know this person really looked this way outside the construct. She could be ten years old as far as he knew.
