58

Introductory Text

You're in the real world now
Ben's Narrative Part 05 58th Post Posted 17 May 2016 at 20:56:48 EDT Link to original

Now I was standing in an elevator, my hands covered with blood, a dead tech lying on the floor and a helpless occupant lying on the gurney. The other two techs had hit the emergency button and hastily gotten off at the next floor. Understandable. I had tried to explain to them about the poison pellet in Karen's arm, but they didn't stick around to consider the merits of my argument.

I set the gun down on the floor. This wasn't good. A couple of Elian's fingers had gotten blown off, and there was blood all over me, not to mention the bullet in his head. Shit, what now? I had shot people before. I had killed them before. But this was different. They had given me mandatory therapy after the war. They might give me mandatory something else after this.

Karen was wheezing, her blind eyes wiggling in her head. The pellet. I should take care of that before anything else. I wiped my hands off on my nice white coat and rifled through one of the tech bags to find the C-knife and some local. This shouldn't be too hard. It was a lot like removing a rotted jack.

"I'm going to cut out the pellet. You ready?" I asked.

Karen's head jiggled in a way that could be construed as nodding. Good enough. I hastily gave her the local and cut a pretty sizable chunk out of her arm, and the whole elevator filled with a burning smell that was a welcome change from Karen's existing smell. After sealing the wound, I examined the shriveled chunk of meat. There was indeed a white pellet lodged in it like a little pearl. I put it in a specimen jar. I might need it to avoid death row.

"OK, you're safe now," I said, not really knowing if this was true. Her monitor still looked OK.

What now? I wanted to just get the fuck out of there. But there was certainly a camera in the elevator plus two witnesses who knew me. What would the camera show? Me suddenly leaping across the elevator and shooting a guy in the head. That wasn't good. But how would I even begin to go on the run? I didn't know the first thing about identity shifting. And hadn't I done the right thing? I had saved her life. I had the pellet to prove it. I was a hero. Right?

I felt like reporting this to my CO. This didn't make any sense. But I should report it to somebody. I called the emergency service on my set and told it what had happened. It told me that officers would be sent over immediately. I tried to explain about the pellet, but this seemed to confuse it. It asked me if the pellet was armed. After a few minutes of confusing crosstalk, I just hung up.

As I waited and the minutes passed, the elevator felt very small and smelly and stifling. The blood around Elian covered the floor, surrounding my shoes. I imagined the cops coming up on another elevator as slow as this one. Karen's head was still wobbling in its weird way, the gurney making little creaking sounds, little gasps coming out of her throat.

"Everything's fine. You're in the real world now," I found myself saying, half-heartedly going through my standard patter. Absurd. Nothing was fine. Then the thought finally occurred to me. Why had Elian tried to kill this girl? Who wanted her dead? This was an important question. Whoever it was wouldn't be happy with me. Looking at her lying there, gasping, I knew it wouldn't be much use to ask her verbally. But she still had good jacks.

It was against protocol to plug into a feed-head's jacks. We were supposed to be getting them used to face-to-face conversation. But protocol did say you could plug in during an emergency. This definitely qualified. I told my set to find her jacks' wireless presence. A flood of messages hit the set, a backlog from the last couple minutes:

"dont / dont / dont call police / bad idea / we have to go / go / go / police r coming / get out / go / go'"

"What?" I murmured as I saw the messages.

"'Q controls techs / controls police / police will kill u / we must go'"

"Who is Q?

"'the adversary'"

Shit, this was so similar to a feed narrative. It felt like I had played this one before. What was that one with Zack Okonkwo? Fatal Escape or some shit like that? Terrible story.

"Why do they want to kill you?" I asked.

"'i am 1 of the bred'"

The Bred? I had heard the name before. I wasn't sure if it was from the news or a narrative. I had a vague idea that it was one of those old art protest collectives, like Anonymous or The Weather Underground. Or was it a feed cult? I asked my set, and it gave me a summary.

"The Bred is an alleged group of exploit experts who are thought to have been kidnapped at a young age and trained by a shadowy group, variously identified as the Human Front, the Restoration Alliance or the New Organ. They are the subject of a number of conspiracy theories, most of which assert that the internet's Combined Governance Corporation has been taken over by a sinister force, which the Bred are struggling against within the feedrealms and infraspaces. These theories generally involve discussions of mind control, feed conditioning, information war and the possibility of a Fascistic Singularity. Occult Singularians regard the Bred as the leaders of the new twelve tribes of Israel."

"Is this real or is this part of a narrative?"

My set replied, "The Bred are featured in many narratives, but are purported to hard-exist. There is no widely accepted proof of their existence."

Karen interrupted. "'can i thru-gate ur set?'"

"What for?"

"'we must go now / now / now'"

I heard footsteps in the hallway. The elevator doors were still open, so I peeked my head out. The police were coming down the hall. A lot of police. In tactical gear. I intended to call to them, but that little lizard part of my brain told me to duck back into the elevator. There was a huge metal bang and found myself on the floor with the gun in my hand. A bullet had hit the elevator door frame.

Karen's messages unspooled onto my set. "'i know Q / ruthless / she'll spoof calls to emergency / multiple calls / say ur an active shooter / let me thru-gate / NOW / u want to die?'"

I gave her through-gate access on my set. The elevator slammed shut, and my stomach leapt into my throat as we plunged downward.