Solipsis: Escape from the Comatorium (4 page)

The eyelids of the robot slide
open with a slight metallic noise. The glass eyes flicker from side
to side, then connect with Gwen's.

“
Gwen,”
a speaker embedded in the head, behind the metal and rubber jaws,
begins speaking. The mouth follows along, but isn't exactly synced
with the words. “Tell Peter the anesthesia is wearing off.”
Gwen jumps back, planting her back against the wall, terrified by
this inhuman thing. Peter leans over Nellie.

“
Umm,
Nellie, we're done,” Peter says.

“
We're
done?” Nellie asks. Her robotic animatron sits up slowly, a
slight mechanical whirring emanates from her torso. She raises her
right hand in front of her face, clenching and releasing her fist.
She touches the tips of her fingers across her face and an uncanny
giggle vibrates out of the speaker in her skull.

“
How
is it? Is everything wired up correctly?” Peter asks.

“
Not
at all,” Nellie responds with a huge smile across her face.
“But my brain will learn the new controls. We need to turn all
the touch sensors up. A lot. Everything feels numb.”

Nellie starts to turn and put
her legs over the side of the table. “Wait wait, just sit,
we've got to calibrate all your muscles,” Peter interrupts.

“
There's
something I need to do first,” Nellie says, putting her feet on
the floor.

“
Be
careful,” Peter cautions.

She carefully shifts her weight
onto her legs. She holds onto the table, then lets go, standing on
her own. Her rubber body is completely bald and naked. Nellie takes a
step forward with her right foot, then follows with her left foot,
keeping them close together. She holds her balance as slight
mechanical noises beneath her surface betray the amount of effort it
takes just to stand still. She inches along toward the glass cylinder
at the end of the room. The cylinder is eight feet high and filled
with cerebro-spinal fluid.

“
Don't
touch it,” Peter says, “you don't have your coordination
yet.”

Nellie stops and allows her
glass eyes to rise up, following wires until they meet up with
nerves. The nerves flow together like a series of tributaries leading
to the brain.

“
That's
my brain,” Nellie says. “I'm on the outside looking in.”

Nellie turns to Gwen and takes
careful steps with her unsure feet toward her. She opens her arms and
Gwen meets her with a powerful hug.

“
I
did it Gwen. I made it.”

Gwen hugs her back, but doesn't
know what to make of this thing.

Renee
wakes up feverishly. She is fourteen years old now. She catches her
breath and reaches to her nightstand. There is a stack of worn out
dream journals containing years of nightmares. She looks through the
dated journals, but not finding the current one. She frowns. She
hears hushed words echoing through her door from downstairs.

Percival,
Gwen, and Medved sit around the kitchen table and talk very quietly.
Renee sneaks down the hallway, listening in. “How would you
have turned out if you grew up in a world with no consequences?”
Percival asks.

“
She
doesn't understand what's happening,” Gwen says empathetically.

“
She
has to figure it out on her own,” Medved says. “We all
agreed on that.”

“
That
was then!” Gwen persists.

“
She's
come so far, I don't want to risk trying to tell her again,”
Percival says.

“
I
just don't think I can lie-” Gwen stops as she notices Renee
watching.

“
What's
going on?” Renee asks. Medved and Percival utter brief excuses
and busy themselves, preparing for work. Gwen remains at the table,
looking unnerved. “Something wrong Mom?”

“
No
honey.” Gwen collects herself. She eyes Percival and Medved as
they leave through the front televator. “How are you and
Patrick doing?”

“
Fine,”
Renee says.

“
Just
fine?” Gwen asks. “He's not pressuring you into anything
is he?”

“
Mom!”

“
Just
doing my job.”

“
Well,
when I have kids, I'm not gonna spy on them,” Renee snarks
back.

“
I
wasn't spying. Just listening in.” Gwen says, eyeing Percival
as he leaves. “So what's on the agenda for today?”

“
We
picked a couple of units on philosophers for this week. I think
Socrates and Bacon and that utility one.” Renee says.

“
Utilitarian.”

“
Right.”

“
You
know what, you should look into also?” Gwen tries to sound
spontaneous, but her words feel practiced. Renee picks up on this,
but doesn't know what to make of it.

“
What?”

“
Look
into Descartes.”

Renee
and Patrick, also fourteen, sit close together at a wooden table in a
great library. Above them is an intricate glass spire that seems to
go on forever. The crystalline spire refracts and reflects so much
light that it casts a wonderful but muted light evenly across the
entire library. There are no shadows. Touch-Holograms float in front
of Renee and Patrick, presenting information in a fully interactive
sphere. Besides these two, the library is entirely devoid of life.

“
My
mom said we should check out the one on Day-Car.”

“
How
do you spell that?” Patrick flips across several tabs looking
for Descartes, but while he's doing this, Renee puts her hands on his
thigh. She faces forward, but her eyes spy on his reaction. Renee
leans closer to him. She wants to kiss him. Or more accurately, she
wants him to kiss her. She leans close, but he nervously flips
through more tabs. “Is this it? Des-cart-es. Does that say
Day-Car?”

“
Hey,
her name is Rene.”

“
That's
an ugly woman,” Patrick mutters.

“
Okay,
so it's a French dude,” Renee says. Renee scoots a little
closer.

“
Rene
Descartes is most famous for the expression 'I think, therefore I
am,” Patrick says. “Related: Solipsism, the belief that
only one's own mind exists and everything else is an illusion.”

“
Whoa,”
Renee replies.

“
Whoa
indeed.”

“
That
would be awesome,” Renee says.

“
Awesome?”

“
If
my mind was the only thing that exists. That makes me god,”
Renee says, relaxing back into her chair.

“
I
don't want to be god,” Patrick quips.

“
Why
not?”

“
Then
it wouldn't matter what I did, it's all fake,” Patrick reclines
in his chair also. Renee leans her shoulder on his.

“
All
that matters is what is real to us,” Renee says, leaning in
close.

“
Well,
I think-” Renee doesn't want to hear what he thinks, she kisses
him eagerly.

“
So...how about that
Descartes guy,” Patrick gulps. He sits up, trying to focus back
on the information cloud.

Did
I ruin it? Was I supposed to let him make the first move?
She looks back to the hologram with a sigh.

“
I
think, therefore I am,” Renee reads, “Cogito, Ergo Sum.
Latin just sounds-” she stops mid-sentence.

“
What?”

From
Renee's point of view, a visual display has appeared around Patrick.

Patrick
Campbell, location: SR-45, Age: 28, Male.

She's
never seen anything like this before.

“
What?”
Patrick asks again.

Renee
focuses in on one piece of information. “How old are you?”

“
Fourteen.”

Stunned,
Renee runs for televator.

Back
home, Renee runs from the televator and up the stairs to the
top-floor glass observation dome. She finds Medved lying in a very
large recliner, smoking a pipe fit for a bear. He's giggling and
watching a kind of light show on the glass dome. Medved also has an
aura of information displayed around him.

Medved
(Peter), location: AT-14, Age:68, Male.

“
Hey
honey bear,” Medved says, “Something wrong?”

Renee
runs to her room and stands in front of her large mirror, but is
afraid of what she might see. She takes a deep breath and faces the
truth:

Renee,
location: SC-P1, Age: 14, Female.

“
SC-P1?
What the hell is that?”

Her
name lights up in a different color. Renee thinks hard and makes the
selection change to SC-P1.

SC-P1.

Xenon
Shock? Yes / No / Unsure

Temperature:
N/A.

Oxygen
Content: N/A.

Last
Maintenance: N/A.

Request
Maintenance?

Advanced

Exit

What
the hell is going on?

Renee
sits on the couch, reading a novel on a touch-hologram. She's not
really reading, she stares through the hologram to the televator. The
televator door closes by itself, then reopens. Gwen appears:

Gwen,
Location AF-29, Age: 71, Female.

Seventy-one!?
Gwen sees the shock in Renee's eyes. Gwen simply puts a finger over
her lips, then walks past Renee. Percival emerges from the televator.

Percival
(Nellie), Location AA-18, Age: 73, Male(Female).

Gwen
walks up the stairs as Percival arrives. He looks to Renee a bit
suspiciously. Renee buries her face in her book and tries to hide the
realization that her father is a seventy year old woman.

Percival
grabs his coffee and heads for the televator. Renee stalks after him.
She slides up against the televator pressing her ear to the cold
metal. She hears his muffled voice say: “Animatron one.”

The
televator door re-opens with no Percival inside. Renee jumps inside
and quickly closes the door behind her. She holds her breath for a
moment before meekly saying, “Animatron one?”

“
I'm
sorry, you have no animatrons selected,” the televator voice
responds. Renee is defeated. “Would you like to use a default
animatron?”

“
...yes?”

A
robot, genderless, bald, wakes up hanging by its neck in a docking
station. “Where am I?” it speaks in Renee's voice. It
extends its legs and undocks. Looking around, the robot discovers a
giant warehouse filled with other animatrons resting in identical
docking stations.

Her
clumsy feet take tentative steps onto the concrete floor. She walks
down the row of docking stations, looking at the lifeless animatrons.
Some are generic, like her. Others seem to be exact copies of people.

Renee
comes to the end of an aisle and realizes that there are dozens more
aisles. There must be thousands of robots. A few people stand about
forty meters down this main aisle. Displays appear over their heads,
showing their names. She scans the displays but doesn't recognize any
of the names.