Solipsis: Escape from the Comatorium (29 page)

When the ref drops the ball, the
match starts up again. The ball flashes a bright purple blast
whenever hit, ricocheting with greater speed every time it is
touched. At face-off, the ball is hard to manage, but after minutes
of stalemate, the ball is downright volatile, hitting nearly orbital
speeds. Their jets can't thrust them nearly as fast as the ball, so
the game becomes predicated on positioning, reading the spin of the
ball, anticipating its destination in three dimensions and beating
your opponent to it. Once you do that, it's extremely difficult to
maintain possession of the ball. You can catch the ball by using your
stick to slow it down gradually, gently. If done right, the ball
won't ricochet off, but instead, that energy bubbles to the surface
of the plasma, sparking and streaming off. Blue is exceptionally good
at this maneuver. He catches the ball gently, then fires it off,
aiming for the invisible wall to bounce the ball on goal. Good at
ball-handling and bounce shots, he made it all the way to the finals.

Renee's talent is in another
area. She has learned to control the jets to a degree that nobody
else had yet reached. Her ball-handling and shot accuracy weren't
quite up to par, but when other players tried to get positioning, she
would slip past them, pulling off complicated maneuvers. Most people
keep the same orientation through the game. They maintain a sense of
up and down, keeping their feet pointed towards Earth. Even though
the game is in three dimensions, people are just not able to take
advantage of that added dimension. Renee however, had long-since
abandoned that bias. She spins and twirls around her opponent,
slipping by, confusing and disorienting them.

Blue scores with his deadly aim,
tying the game. They fight for a rebound off the invisible boards.
Blue gets wise to one of Renee's moves, he keeps track of her as she
tries to spin over him. He figures out her trick and manages to get
the board, sending the ball down to her end. They rocket away, toward
the other goal. Renee drops her next trick on him. They collide,
Renee makes it look accidental, but in reality it was planned. The
collision sends both of them tumbling wildly. Renee quickly recovers
with just a few short bursts, but Blue takes several seconds just to
regain his bearing and null his rates. By the time he is able to
regain control, the plasma ball is in the back of his goal.

“
How
did you get so good at that?” Blue asks.

“
Practice,”
Renee replies.

“
What's
your name?” Blue asks.

“
Renee,”
she says. The ref pulses into the circle, ready to release the ball.

“
Patrick,”
Blue says, opening his visor for the first time.

The next volley lasts nearly
twenty minutes. With the ball growing more volatile with every hit,
they battled for control, for position, but nobody could score. The
volley finally stopped on a penalty. Renee slashed Patrick with her
stick, leading to a penalty shot taken from center-space. He scores
easily, hitting the goal dead on.

The match continues for hours.
Renee reaches five points first, 5-4, but Patrick quickly ties it
back up, then takes the lead when Renee misjudges a bounce, giving
him an easy shot. 6-5. Facing elimination, Renee needs to tie it
quick. She corralled the plasma-ball, dribbled it against the
force-field, giving it more energy with each successive bounce, then
fired it directly up, against the other wall. She flies around
Patrick, receiving the fast bounce pass from herself and one-times a
fantastic goal. 6-6. After an hour, the score is 14-14. After another
hour, it's 19-19. They don't tire physically, just mentally. While
they figure out each others' techniques and find ways to counter
them, the goals are increasingly the result of mistakes and not
skill.

“
Draw?”
Patrick extends his hand at the face-off circle. Renee looks him
over.

“
I
want to win,” Renee replies.

“
Yeah
but, at this point, who wins is basically just up to chance.
Eventually one of us will get lucky or someone will make a mistake.
It's inelegant.”

“
Tell
you what,” Renee says, suspicious, “offer me a draw when
you have the lead, and I'll take it.”

The ref releases the ball and
they fight for control. The ball squirts out between their sticks,
heading nearly straight down. They follow for the rebound, but
collide, sending them both spinning wildly out of control. Before
either of them regains control, the lasers turned on. The ball had
somehow gone in a goal. But which one? They both look to the
scoreboard plastered on the moon. Red 20, Blue 19. They head back to
center-space.

The ref prepares to drop the
ball. “Wait,” Renee interrupts. “You're right, it's
inelegant. If I score on this round, it'll just be victory because of
that blind luck. That's not the way a great match should end. Draw?”
Renee extends her hand.

“
Draw.”
They shake on it. They split the title. After the match, Renee and
Patrick become regular sparring partners in this game and others.
After this meeting, they were rarely seen apart.

“
Renee!”
Patrick shouts, his animatron races toward her and Lazarus. Lazarus
turns and fires as quickly as he can. The burst strikes Patrick's leg
and hip. His damaged hydraulics lose control and he tumbles to the
ground. He keeps coming, crawling toward Renee.

A
cult member jams his gun into Patrick's back, near the battery, about
to kill this animatron. “Wait!” Lazarus shouts. Lazarus
motions for other cult members to help him. They drag Patrick's
animatron, leaking hydraulic fluid leaving a blue trail of robot
blood. They prop Patrick against a vat, sitting right across from
Renee. Patrick locks eyes with Renee. Lazarus jams his gun against
Renee's chest.

“
Her
brain is in there,” Lazarus says, “If I shoot her, she
dies. This is real.”

“
Don't
listen to him,” Renee says.

“
If
you want her to live, then put in this password,” Lazarus says.
Paul takes the touch screen and holds it up to Patrick.

“
What
are you talking about? I don't know any password,” Patrick
says.

“
Well,
if that's how you feel,” Lazarus says. He holds his gun up,
aiming at Renee's chest.

“
Wait,”
Patrick quickly interrupts.

“
Put
it in,” Lazarus says.

Another
animatron bursts through the retreating lines of cult members, he
runs for Lazarus, but is shot and goes down in hail of sparks,
face-planting on the metal grate. The fight grows closer.

“
If
you don't put that password in, in five seconds, Renee will be dead
forever,” Lazarus says.

“
Don't,
okay, don't kill her, I'll cooperate, but I don't know about any
password,” Patrick says, seeming to be sincere.

“
Patrick,”
Renee gets his attention, “don't. I'd rather die.”

Paul
jams the touch screen in front of Patrick. The password is a
four-digit number. Renee has entered the first three digits already:
2-0-1-_

“
Two
zero one, what? I don't know this,” Patrick says in a panic.

“
Alright,”
Lazarus says, turning to Renee.

“
Wait,”
Patrick says. Patrick's brain finds the appropriate memory. “I
know the password...”

“
Don't!”
Renee shouts.

“
Three,
two,” Lazarus counts down, aimed at Renee. Patrick hits the
last number: 2-0-1-
9
.
He hits enter. The password is correct. Paul tears the control panel
away from him and rushes to Lazarus's side. They quickly work through
the menus to the Neural-Net shutdown. Renee's defeated eyes lock with
Patrick's.

“
I'm
sorry,” Patrick says.

The
retreating cultists arrive at the central node, the wave of
animatrons, led by Medved, have even more weapons now. The cultists
retreat and form a circle around Lazarus and the central node. The
noose tightens.

“
Go
back it's in that menu,” Lazarus shouts at Paul.

Renee
reaches out with her nearly lifeless hand, grabbing Lazarus's ankle,
clenching with all the power her hydraulics she can muster, she locks
the hand in place like a vice. He can't move. “Let me go!”

“
Fuck
you,” Renee says. Renee squeezes Lazarus's ankle harder, it
makes crunching noise. Lazarus pushes the gun against Renee's chest.
She simply smiles back.

“
Turn
it off!” Lazarus shouts at Paul as he frantically navigates the
menu, trying to find the Neural-Net controls.

Peter/Medved
breaks through the perimeter and sprints toward the central node. Two
cultists are in his way. He fires, running out of ammo after only a
few shots. The first guard goes down, but the second turns to fire at
Peter. Peter throws the empty gun at him. The guard tries to duck out
of the way, but the gun hits him in the shoulder. He winces as he
tries to raise his gun back up to bear. Peter dives through the
guard, crushing him to death in a flying tackle. Peter spots Lazarus
just ahead, fighting against Renee's death grip. It feels like
slow-motion, he gets to his feet and step-by-step, accelerates
towards Lazarus.

Lazarus
spots this assault coming. He jams the gun into Renee's chest. “Let
go!”

Renee
squeezes even harder, crushing Lazarus's ankle. Blood spurts across
Renee's face and Lazarus's leg buckles in pain. But...it's not blood.
Renee examines her hand; it's covered in hydraulic fluid. Renee looks
up, locking eyes with him. “You've been vivisected,”
Renee says. “You fucking hypocrite.”

“
It's
just a prosthetic leg!” he shouts, “now let me go!”
Lazarus sees Medved coming right for him. He has only a moment to get
out of the way.

“
I
think I got it!” Paul shouts excitedly.

Renee
eyes Medved's impending assault. “Time's up,” Renee says.
Lazarus yanks against her death grip. Medved leaps toward him, about
to crush him. Lazarus shoots Renee in the chest.

Renee
wakes up in an infinite white space.

What
happened? Am I dead? Is this the real purgatory. Wait...I don't have
a soul, I can't possibly be in heaven or purgatory. I simply cease to
exist if I die...right? That's if souls even existed in the first
place. What if souls are real, who's to say that I wouldn't have one?
A soul is already a supernatural thing, so why does it have to follow
scientific logic? Real DNA, simulated DNA, what's the difference?
Maybe I do have a soul. Or this is just the loading program. Yeah,
it's probably just the loading program.

Okay,
so he shot me. But then Medved probably got him. So we won. I hope
Dad's okay. No, he'll be fine, he was out of the tube for only a few
minutes, they could save him. They're probably restoring a bunch of
vats right now, a lot of them had to be hit. That's why they aren't
doing anything for me yet, those brains need to be re-set. Once they
fix them up, they'll fix me. My computer must be working if I'm
thinking. I think, therefore my brain computer is still working.

So
it won't be long, they'll just have to plug my blade back into the
system. We won. It's over. No wait, Solipsis is still under their
control. Right? They had someone on the inside. Once we retook the
station, we could figure out who the administrator is and just unplug
them. So they're figuring out who it is. They're probably doing that
right now. Fixing Solipsis, getting everyone out of hell. That's why
it's taking so long.

Renee
lays on her back in the infinite white space. Satisfied that it won't
be long before she'll be woken up into the real world, victorious.
She keeps waiting. Longer and longer. This goes on for minutes,
hours, she can't tell.

Renee
finds herself back at the age of thirteen, walking with Patrick,
hand-in-hand, across the top of the skybox over Solipsis. They appear
to be walking on air, but an invisible boundary keeps them aloft
above the clouds.
This
was the first time we held hands, the first time we acknowledged
anything more than friendship.