Solipsis: Escape from the Comatorium (25 page)

Renee
flashes back to a forgotten memory of her childhood. The memory is
more a vague feeling of emptiness than anything else. She looks
stunned at Gwen's face.

“
You're
an artificial consciousness. From conception to birth to now, you've
been simulated by a computer,” Gwen says. “Your father
and I digitally combined our DNA and then made a computer simulate
your growth.”

“
That
explains a lot,” young Renee says quietly.

Only
now does the memory become clearer. She sees the kitchen, Gwen leaves
her alone to think. Renee knows she's just a simulation of a person.
She wants to feel alive. She reaches for a knife in a block. She cuts
a line across her arm and winces in pain. It really hurts. She digs
deeper, it hurts more. It feels real. She takes the butcher's knife
and hacks hard at her wrist. It hits the bone and bounces off,
cutting a notch into her radius. She hacks harder and harder, finally
breaking and severing the bone.

“
You're
not a brain in a jar,” Seth says to Renee as she lays naked
under the covers. You're a computer simulation of a person. That's
why you could get out, you're not in the Comatorium. So when he cut
the neural net, you were still connected,” Seth explains.

“
I'm
what?” Renee asks.

“
You're
a simulated consciousness,” Seth says.

Renee
stares at him. She refuses to believe it. Her eyes start to glaze
over. She lies back down, facing the ceiling.

“
How
did you know how to make this thing?” Seth asks, examining the
small bomb. She doesn't respond. Seth looks to her, finding her oddly
staring blankly at the ceiling.

Renee
suddenly bolts upright in bed, screaming. “What the hell is
going on?” Renee covers herself up quickly. “Who are
you?”

“
Are
you serious?” Seth asks.

Footsteps
echo into the room from the dark hallway. Flashlights shine toward
the door.

“
Come
on!” Seth shouts in Renee's face, finally breaking her stare.
He takes her hand and they start fleeing for door. Just before they
reach the door, a cult member pushes it open and enters. Seth and
Renee quickly plant themselves on the wall beside the door hinge. The
cult member doesn't see them, instead focusing on Renee's docked
animatron. His flashlight hovers on the face as if he recognizes her.

“
I
got something here,” the guard says into a radio. The cult
member examines the make-shift docking station, the flashlight
follows the cables to the the SCP1 computer. “What the hell?”

“
Oh
good,” Seth says, announcing his presence to the guard who
turns around quickly, alarmed. Seth pretends to have just entered the
room.

“
What's
good?”

“
The
robot's in here, she must have run out of battery power,” Seth
replies. “Let's shut her off,” Seth says, heading for the
SCP1 displays.

“
Wait,
I don't understand,” the guard says. Lazarus pushes the door
open and enters. Lazarus looks at the SCP1 display. Seth starts
manipulating it, pretending to shut it off, unbeknownst to them, the
actual simulation isn't in this terminal anymore. Instead it resides
in Renee's new animatron. She sits in the corner of the room,
pretending to be powered down.

“
What
am I looking at?” Lazarus asks. “Simulated
Consciousness?”

“
That
must be how she got out of Solipsis,” the guard says quietly,
“she's an AI.”

“
A
real AI?” Lazarus asks incredulously, “they made a real
artificial intelligence? One that thinks it's human? My god. This
changes everything. No! Don't turn it off.” He smacks Seth's
hand away from the display.

“
Why
not turn her off?” the guard asks.

“
Don't
you see?” Lazarus replies. They don't see it. “Where is
she now? Where is her consciousness? It's not in this animatron, it's
not in a loading program, so where is she?”

“
A
different animatron? Maybe she's switching bodies when she's
recharging her batteries,” the guard suggests.

“
Well
then we better find that animatron.” Renee, in the flesh-bot,
slumped against the wall, might not have much time to run. Seth makes
eye contact with Renee as she plays dead. His intense eyes dart at
the doorway, urging her to run.

“
There
are tons of these things, she could be in any of them,” the
guard says. Renee jumps up and bolts for the door, escaping into the
hallway. She does it so quickly that they are taken totally by
surprised and don't even get a good look at her in the darkness.

Lazarus,
the guard, and Seth rush into the hall giving chase. They don't seem
to know that Seth is playing both sides. The clinks of Renee's
metallic footsteps echo ahead. They round a corner and find the
stairwell door slowly closing by itself. “Tell everyone,”
Lazarus shouts to the guard while running for the stairwell.

Renee
runs down a corridor of docking stations, surrounded by thousands of
lifeless animatrons. She hears shouting coming from all directions.
Renee jumps into a docking station, hanging her head on a docking
port, but not downloading. She remains conscious, playing dead, as a
dozen cult members search all the docking stations, shining
flashlights into the animatrons' eyes, looking for any kind of
reaction from the mechanical pupils. A guard looks right at her,
shines a light in her eyes, stares, then carries on searching.

Seth
comes along, pretending to search, he waits for a nearby guard to go
around a corner. “Okay, let's go,” he says, trying to
smuggle her out. Renee pushes her feet down, raising her neck out of
the port. Lazarus walks around the corner and Renee completely
freezes. Her body jerks and then dangles as if disturbed. Two cult
members follow Lazarus over.

“
Did
that one just move?” Lazarus asks Seth suspiciously.

“
I
bumped into it,” Seth quickly replies.

“
Gotta
be around here somewhere,” Lazarus replies. “You know, I
think this is why we are here.”

“
What
do you mean?” Seth asks.

“
This
AI! If I can convert her, save her soul, my God, what an
accomplishment.”

“
How
do you know she has a soul?” a guard asks.

“
If
she's a human, even a digital one, she should have a soul. The soul
isn't contingent on the physical body, it's supernatural. Don't you
see?” Lazarus's speech has a power of his cult members. “That's
why I'm here, that's why God has guided me on this mission. It's
rather poetic. Man plays God and creates artificial man. Then God
sends a missionary. I had wondered why God picked this mission, why
these people, they're all witness, but they rejected God, so why send
someone to redeem
their
souls?
This is why. She can be saved.”

“
That
still doesn't help us find her,” the guard mutters. “She
could be in any of these.”

“
Wait,
isn't there a diagnostic function on these things?” Paul asks.

“
I
don't know anything about them,” Lazarus replies.

“
Watch,”
Paul says, going to the animatron directly to Renee's left, a tall
attractive man. He opens the rubber panel covering its back and hits
a button. The animatron's eyes open, it stands up, removing itself
from the docking port, takes one step forward, extends both arms
straight up over its head, then returns them hanging at its sides.
The robot stands perfectly still.

“
Is
that it?” Lazarus asks. The robot turns its head toward
Lazarus, making eye contact.

“
I
can hear you,” the unpiloted robot replies. It then faces
directly forward, still, soulless.

“
That
was creepy,” Lazarus says coldly.

“
Return
to docking station,” Paul says. The animatron steps back,
re-docking. “It's just a diagnostic tool, it shows that the
muscles are working, it has balance, it can hear, speak, etc.”

“
So
let's just run the diagnostic on every animatron in here, and the one
that can't do it right is the one we're looking for,” a guard
says.

Paul
shows them all how to turn on the diagnostic program just meters away
from Renee. She keeps her eyes closed, but sneaks a peek here and
there. She's going to have to be able to mimic the soulless
diagnostic program exactly. Many cultists from elsewhere in the
station come to help in this search.

“
Once
you test an animatron, go ahead and put a slash in its forehead to
mark it,” Lazarus says. Box cutters are passed around. Once
they finally set off to do the search, they spread out, but Seth
stands in front of Renee, trying to keep anyone from testing her
first. The many cult members start doing the diagnostic test on
dozens of animatrons. Seth goes to Renee, pretends to be working on
the panel on her back.

“
You
saw how to do it right?” Seth whispers. Renee nods her head
very slightly. “Go.”

Renee
opens her eyes and stands up, freeing her neck from the docking port.
She puts her hands over her heads. A cult member walks by, looking at
each inspection, he stares at Renee. She drops her arms to her sides
and doesn't let her pupils stray from dead center.

“
Can
you hear me now?” Seth starts to ask, but before he can get it
out, the other cult member beats him to it. Renee turns to the cult
member, looks him right in the eyes. Stares coldly and says, “I
can hear you.” Renee keeps focused on him for a moment then
returns to staring forward.

“
God
that's creepy,” the cult member mutters, then approaches Renee
with box cutter in hand. He raises the box cutter in front of her
face, but before he slices her forehead, he notices something off. He
lowers the box cutter and stares at her eyes. Did they move? He
brings a flashlight up, shines it in her eyes. She stares forward.
Her pupils constrict, but don't move a millimeter. He raises the box
cutter up, jams it into the rubber flesh at the top of her forehead
then starts tearing across, splitting it open, physically cutting and
destroying hundreds of touch sensors. The pain is excruciating, but
Renee has to keep focused, staring straight ahead, making no
movement, no sound, no indication. The box cutter scrapes against her
artificial skull. Renee holds her breath, clenches her fists,
anything to keep from giving herself away.

Finished
with his slash, the cult member steps back. Seth reaches for Renee's
back panel to simulate telling her to redock and turn off, ending the
diagnostic program. “Ready to redock?” Seth whispers.

“
Wait!”
the cult member says insistently.

“
What?”
Seth jumps back from Renee. The cult member points his box cutter at
Renee's hand. It's balled into a fist.

“
Is
it supposed to do that?”

“
Yeah,”
Seth replies.

“
The
other ones don't do that.”

“
I
think it's different on this model,” Seth replies. The guard
stares at Renee and Seth.

“
Alright,
let's keep moving.”

Renee
pretends to redock herself and closes her eyes. She's marked as
clean, all she has to do now is wait for them to either give up
searching in here, or for the coast to clear long enough for her to
make it to the stairwell. She thinks through the next steps. Suddenly
a searing pain rips through her, Renee screams out in pain.