Solipsis: Escape from the Comatorium (17 page)

A
steel plate pushes from the opposite end, pushing the trapped people
towards the platform like toothpaste from a tube. Renee fights
towards the plate, getting as far from the platform as possible. It
pushes slowly, as it takes time for each person to be judged and
catapulted. This goes on for a day. As the plate approaches the
platform and only a few dozen people remain to be judged, Renee takes
a deep breath and dives into the water. The plate pushing along the
prison has a small gap between the bottom of it and the bars. Renee
tries to squeeze beneath the plate, it's a very small opening. If
only she could ignore the need to breathe, knowing that it's just an
illusion, she could hide and avoid being sent to hell. She comes up
for air. She tries again, but feels the burning in her lungs, and
comes up for air. There's only a handful of people left. Renee waits
for the angels to be distracted. She gets an opportunity and dives
under the water. She jams herself under the plate, kicking and
pushing, she squishes herself between the plate and the cage. She's
trapped, unable to come up. She tries to push through to the other
side of the plate, but can't.

She
tries to remain still, holding her breath. She watches as the last
pair of feet disappear and the cage is empty. She remains hidden from
view, beneath the waves. “Mind over matter,” she thinks
repeatedly.
It's
not real. The pain, the air, the water, none of this is real.
She tries to let knowledge overcome her senses. She sends her mind to
anything else.

Meditating,
dreaming.

Renee
sneaks through the Comatorium, amongst the thousands of vats, hiding
in the watery shadows. She sets a bomb down, turning it on, and
watching a few seconds tick down to zero. Shouts come from not far
away; bad guys chasing her. She holds the bomb tightly as it goes
off. A purple-blue explosion rips through the entire complex
instantly, helped by the Xenon-Oxygen atmosphere. Renee and several
vats around her are instantly destroyed. The flames reach out to
every nook and cranny and then just as instantly die out. For a split
second everything seems fine. But the pressure in the room spikes so
severely that every single vat shatters, releasing a flood of
cerebro-spinal fluid that fills the room knee deep. Renee's shattered
animatron lies in pieces. Her burned head smiles for an instant, then
turns to agony as she starts to feel the effects of the Xenon Shock.
She's freed everyone from hell by killing them.

She
did it.

She
simply can't do it.

Renee
inhales water, thrashing and straining to get free and go up for air.
She breaks the surface, gasping. Surprised angels immediately spot
her. She thinks about taking a deep breath and trying again, but
gives up. She keeps breathing, trying to make her lungs stop burning.

Renee
is yanked from the water and thrown onto the judgment platform. She's
barely conscious. She coughs up a gallon of water. A spear forces
Renee into the catapult seat. Lazarus sits in judgment of her.

“
That's
funny,” Lazarus says, looking at a display in front of him.
“You don't seem to be on file...what's your name?” Renee
looks around for a way to escape. A guard angel shoves a flaming
sword near her face, she can feel the heat coming off of it.

“
Renee,”
she says quietly.

“
Your
last name?” Lazarus asks, peering inquisitively at this teenage
girl.

“
Descartes,”
Renee says simply. Lazarus's eyes squint menacingly at her. He
ponders her existence the way a human considers the life of an ant
before crushing it.

“
Any
last words?” Lazarus asks suspiciously.

“
I
think therefore I am,” Renee says defiantly.

Lazarus
glares at her indignantly, then motions to the angel. He pulls the
lever. The catapult accelerates her in an arc. She's crushed into her
seat by the extreme forces, her face sags. Then the chair disappears
and she's flying hundreds of kilometers per hour, toward the
mountains. The jagged icy rocks beckon. In the split second before
she gets to the peak, Renee spots several people lying on the peaks.
They didn't quite clear the mountains and are now frozen into the
ice. The rocks comes up to meet her. She's not going to make it. Her
left arm scrapes the tip of the peak, tearing open a wound, but she
continues past the mountain and tumbles down the far side, just
meters off of the rocks, falling past.

At
the base of the mountains, a valley opens up, with a wall of fire and
spears separating the mountains from the fiery hell. Renee flies over
the wall of fire. She's coming in on a hellish scene. Small volcanoes
spew lava, making hell a constantly changing, fluid place. Black
craggy rocks stick up from the ground like menacing stalagmites.
Renee is coming in for a very hard landing on fresh rocks that hide
bubbling lava below. This isn't going to be pretty. She is caught by
a large net. It captures her and slows her down to a not so gentle
smack against the rock.

The
net recoils back into the air thirty meters high. Renee is stuck in
the net, and realizes that dozens of other people are too. This net
is gigantic, covering acres of hell, and is made out of an edited
kind of rope that is unbreakable. They all slowly crawl across the
net towards the four corners, kilometers apart. There's a tower at
each corner, complete with a thirty meter tall ladder. The people
flow across the net to the ladder.

A
ring of a dozen suns line the horizon in all directions.

Renee
crawls toward the ladder. Another person lands on the net, throwing
Renee and everyone in turmoil. A person at the edge of the net is
thrown off, falling thirty meters to the thin crust of rock. The rock
breaks and he falls into the lava. Molten rock pours down his
screaming throat and the hole fills over and begins to harden. Renee
crawls for the ladder. A panicked man desperately tries to crowd onto
the full ladder.

“
I
have to get out of here!” He shoves his way onto the ladder. He
starts climbing down too fast, stepping on a woman's hands, she falls
on the person below her. The man falls creating a snowball effect
that clears the ladder, sending them into shallow lava. Renee laughs
out loud. Everyone around her stops and stares, disturbed.

“
What's
so funny?”

“
You
people! You're all running around like chickens with your heads cut
off. It's ridiculous,” Renee says. In the wake of the emptied
ladder, a flood of people rush to fill the void and crowd the ladder
again in seconds. Renee shakes her head and watches another avalanche
of humanity take out the ladder. The pile of fallen people crowds the
bottom of the ladder. Renee marvels at the panicked hopeless people.
She crawls away from the ladder. She gets to the edge of the net,
watching the mountains, waiting for a new arrival. A person comes
flying over the mountains, screaming. He crashes into the net, far
away from Renee. The shock stretches the net down toward the ground.
Renee waits till the net gets as low as it will go, then leaps,
landing on a hardened section of lava. Her right foot breaks through,
but she lands face first. She yanks her foot from the ground and
screams in pain as it has been covered in molten rock. The red rock
quickly starts to cool and harden, burning her deeper and deeper.
Renee crawls on, dragging her foot behind her. She struggles
mightily, but has to stop, exhausted. She lies on her back, staring
at the orange sky above.

“
Welcome
to hell,” Renee mutters quietly to herself. She stays put, with
no more will to fight, and no idea where to go or what to do.

Renee
lays on her back, looking at the orange sky. She stares at it,
mesmerized by the many suns. A fluttering of wings approaches. An
angel lands nearby, walking towards her.

“
Here,”
the angel says, holding out a bible towards Renee. She doesn't move.
The angel sets it on the ground, then takes off and flies away.

“
They
think they're missionaries,” Renee mutters, picking up the
book. She contemplates burning it, pissing on it, tearing it to
shreds. She settles on throwing it away as hard as she can. She lays
back down.

“
You
can think of a way to beat them,” Patrick says. Renee opens her
eyes and sees Patrick standing over her, silhouetted against the
orange sky of hell.

“
Are
you really here or am I imagining this?”

Patrick
kneels down beside her, putting his hand down on the porous black
rock. “If you were imagining me, would I know that?”
Patrick replies with a sly smile. “It seems rather presumptuous
to assume that an imaginary friend would have meta-cognition.”

“
How
do you know it's even possible for us to fight back?” Renee
asks. Patrick helps her sit up.

“
Because,
there's gotta be a way, this can't be it. The whole world of
Solipsis, every last person, cast into hell for eternity? I can't
believe it. Come on, get up, we have to carry on.” Renee again
doesn't budge. Patrick gives up. He sighs and lays down beside her.
They hold hands, looking up, hypnotized by the swirling flames in the
sky.

“
There's
no property of the universe that requires there to always be a hope
or a chance. It's entirely plausible that we have no hope at all.
We're like sailors stranded at the bottom of the ocean in a dead
nuclear submarine, praying for a rescue, but we were doomed from the
moment the accident occurred. There's nothing for us to do.”

“
How
do you know there's nothing you can do?” Patrick asks.

“
We
can't fight back in Solipsis, they can respawn and we can't. And even
if we could somehow defeat them, there's nothing for us to win. Even
if we somehow killed them and took back control of this place, they
still have control of the computers, and we can't get to Earth to do
anything about that.”

“
But
you've always been good at solving problems,” Patrick says
hopefully.

“
It's
an impossible problem,” Renee says simply, lying back.

“
Maybe
you just aren't thinking about the problem in the right way,”
Patrick says.

“
Meaning
what?” Renee asks. He doesn't respond. Renee turns her head
towards him, pressing her cheek into the craggy rock. He has
vanished. Renee sits up, immediately feeling woozy.
In
the realm of the computers, they have us beaten. But they still have
to maintain control. The only way for us to get out of here is to
change their minds. How do we change their minds?
Renee's
eye find the bible.

Renee
awakens on the desert floor to an angel walking towards her. “Want
some water?”

Renee
sits up and refuses with a shake of her head. “You look
familiar,” Renee muses. Her eyes search the face of this angel.
“Seth? Right?”

“
Yeah,”
he replies quietly. He sits across from her holding a clay jar of
cool water.

“
You
remember me?” Renee asks.

“
Yeah,”
is all he says. His eyes dart toward the fresh volcanic rock.

“
Why
are you doing this?” Renee asks.

“
Because,
in the long run, it's for the best. A little pain and suffering for a
few days or weeks is nothing compared to eternity in hell. If we can
convince these people to accept Jesus, then we can save their souls
forever. Can't you see that's a worthy cause?”

“
Who
are you trying to convince?” Renee asks.

“
Are
you ready to come to the lord?” Seth asks. Renee glares at him.

“
Maybe.
I have some questions first,” Renee says quietly. Seth seems
very uneasy. “What convinced you it was true?”

“
I
have felt the presence of the lord personally,” Seth says.

“
I
don't mean on an emotional level, I mean philosophically, logically,
what made you consciously believe it was real?”