The Unincorporated Man (42 page)

Justin was just about to climb up the unmoving escalator steps toward the exit when a horrible thought struck him.

“Neela, how… how do I know I’m not still in the machine?”

Neela looked at him sadly.

He began to sweat. His face went ashen.

Neela took both his hands into hers and looked into his eyes.

“You will have to trust me, Justin. You’re not.”

“But how can I really know, Neela? How can anyone really know? I could still be stuck in there right now, dying and crapping and pissing, and not know it. This,” he said, pointing to the dilapidated structure around him, “could just be part of the program.”

“It’s me, Justin,” she implored. “The
real
me.”

He looked around some more and decided he had no choice but to trust her.

“It’s evil, Neela, the whole thing is… evil.”

Neela looked at him, nodding in empathy.

“Now, Justin…
now
you understand.”

7 Aftermath

I
t was only later that Justin realized what made the first two days after his visit to the virtual reality museum so unique—he’d been left almost entirely alone. Not only by his friends and associates, not only by the usual hordes of fans that were to be found around every corner, but also by the press. Even a few buzzing mediabots kept their distance. It seemed that all parties agreed to give the Unincorporated Man his space. Sadly, he was so absorbed by what he’d experienced he didn’t get the chance to enjoy the quiet time. And he was never to get another two days like it again. At least, not without going through incredible time, effort, and expense.

Trying to make small talk, Neela had explained to Justin the evolution of the VR dictates, protocols, and museum. She’d explained how Alaska had emerged as the sole power on Earth by virtue of having the largest intact population. And they managed that because most Alaskans, who’d never been known to suffer fools gladly, saw something horribly foolish in enhanced VR. In time more and more people looked to the Alaskans as a source of protection and rebirth, and it wasn’t long after that that the Alaskan Confederation was born. It grew fast and over time, it grew large. One of the first things the emerging Alaskan power did when it established control of an area was to insist that every person sit through a VR simulation comparable to what Justin had just experienced. Back then, Neela explained, the simulation was done on both adults and children. “But nowadays,” she continued, “it’s only done on children.” Children apparently didn’t rebound as quickly as adults, and it was not uncommon for it to take weeks for them to recover. (Neela was proud of needing only eight days before she was able to talk about her experience with a counselor.) So, she’d opined, Justin would probably only need a couple of days. He was, after all, a confident and assured man.

Justin needed about ten minutes. The first thing he did after exiting the museum was to drag Neela on a short trip to the L.A. orport.

“Where we headed?” she’d asked, feigning nonchalance.

“Luxembourg,” he’d answered stiffly, booking two tickets to one of the Terran Confederation’s oldest cities. Neela didn’t ask any questions after that. She went along. They made a beeline for their private t.o.p., sat down, and only had to wait a few minutes until the pod was lifted gingerly into the atmosphere. This time, Neela observed, there was no glee or wonder in Justin’s expression, no apparent sense of excitement that had always been evident whenever he flew. Even more interesting, he didn’t fiddle with the environmental data pad. This time he’d simply accepted the bland and nonchallenging default setting. He remained withdrawn for the extent of the flight.
Thank God it’s a short trip
, thought Neela.

As the t.o.p. came out of orbit and began its descent into the medieval citadel of Luxembourg, Neela made out the imposing rocks of the Pétrusse and Alzette valleys. It was obvious to her why those rocks constituted an almost idyllic natural defense for the ancient fortress built upon the promontory now coming into view. The t.o.p. landed gingerly, swallowed up by the old battlement. Neela and Justin quickly departed.

From the city of Luxembourg Justin instructed a driver to take them down south to the remnants of a small town called Galgenberg. As they flew, Justin continued his quiet brooding, barely saying two words to Neela. She was surprised, but more curious.
Everyone reacts differently
, she thought,
and given his recent sixty-hour ordeal he could easily have been catatonic
. She figured she’d take him back to New York and wait until he came out of his room, ready to talk. Of course, there was no person currently living who’d gone through the museum as an adult, so she accepted the fact that anything could happen. This little excursion was a case in point. If not a bit strange, considered Neela, at least it made for an interesting day trip.

They finally landed in the tranquil forest of Cattenom, just outside the once rustic but abandoned town of Galgenberg. The flyer situated itself on a grassy knoll about fifty yards from a moss-covered embankment draped in small rivulets of white, flowing sap. To the naked eye it appeared to be a little hill, but Justin knew better. The “hill” was in fact an overgrown entrance leading into the cold, twisting hallways of an ancient underground fortification quietly rusting away in ignominy. They’d arrived at the once famous gates of Galgenberg, one of the few surviving remnants of the disastrously ineffective Maginot Line. These gates, with their two turrets of artillery, were part of an ancient string of fortresses that had failed as a defense against Nazi Germany in World War II. But for Justin they’d offered a unique opportunity at the turn of the millennium.

“What are we doing here?” asked Neela, no longer able to contain her curiosity.

“Checking out a beta site,” he answered, again with no discernible emotion. Then he leaped through the walls of the vehicle and headed straight for the hill. Neela followed quickly. There was a slight chill in the air as the evening approached and a gentle but determined wind whipped across the knoll, making the blond parched grass sway back and forth to its sporadic rhythm. It took only a few seconds to traverse the twenty or so yards to the hill’s entrance. It was now more obvious from the exposed slabs of concrete that this hill was in fact man-made. There was a gated steel door that was slightly ajar. Justin looked back at Neela, tested the door, and saw that it was unlocked. “Hold on a minute,” he said, as he entered the darkened corridor. A moment later he reemerged. “Does the chauffeur have a flashlight?”

“Not exactly. But I think I know what you mean,” she answered. “How far into this ‘beta site’ do we need to go?”

Justin gave it a thought. “Not sure, but I’d say at least two hundred feet, uh, seventy meters, more or less.”

Neela nodded yes and proceeded back to the flyer. Justin watched as she talked to the driver while pointing toward the hill where he stood. The chauffeur went to the vehicle’s hood, popped it open, and pulled out a small cylindrical can. Neela took it and began to shake it vigorously as she started walking back toward Justin.

“Uh, what exactly is that?” he asked as she approached.

“It’s our version of a flashlight. Just point to where you want some light and it’ll take care of the rest.”

Justin shrugged. “How long does it last?”

Neela looked down at the can and read the label. “This one, three hours. Will that be enough time?”

“More than enough.”

They entered the bunker. The space they were standing in was some sort of antechamber, where one apparently waited before going into the underground passageway itself. Surrounding them on both sides were large solid slabs of concrete, and facing them directly was an old steel door with a large metal pinwheel on it. Justin tested it out. Other than the shrill sound it made as he turned it, the wheel still worked. He turned it some more until he felt the door release from the frame. He swung the massive slab of metal out toward him, and as he did it let out a deafening squeak.

“Could use a little oil,” he suggested, “but not bad for a four-hundred-year-old door.”

Justin pointed toward an ancient sconce where a carbide lamp had illuminated the way centuries ago. “There,” he said, indicating where the “light” should go. Neela approached and sprayed the antique light fixture with the can she’d received from the chauffeur. The area around the sconce began to glow, dispersing enough light to see at least three feet. Justin looked at the technological feat in admiration, and pointed to the next sconce. This went on as they went deeper and deeper into the network. In a strange way the tunnel was being lit almost exactly as a French soldier would have seen it nearly four hundred years earlier.

The tunnels were wide.
Spacious enough
, thought Neela,
that four or five people could walk side by side without bumping into a wall
. There was a moderately dank smell, but not too bad. The curved ceiling above was a patchwork of reddish brown hues, hanging flakes of dirty white paint, and pockets of corrosion. Positioned about two-thirds up on both sides of the wall were steel tubes of various shapes and sizes running the length of the passageway. As they walked deeper into the void, Neela could feel narrow channels embedded in the concrete beneath her feet. It was only when she looked backward to see their now illuminated path that she realized the channels were in fact rail tracks.

“It’s how they moved ordnance and supplies,” he said, anticipating her question.

“Just how big is this place?” she asked.

“This one section,” he said, looking around, “is part of a larger one that runs for about twenty-seven miles… which would be, I guess, around forty-three kilometers… but don’t worry, we’re not going nearly that far.”

They’d already walked about twenty yards down a long corridor. When they came to a T in their path, they hung a right and went another thirty yards, until they hit a long, wide corridor. They hit another T and went left another ten yards, at which point the tunnel split.

“Which way?” asked Neela.

“I’m thinking.” A pause. “It’s been a while.” He stood scratching his head. “Left,” he said, “definitely left.”

They took the left tunnel for another six or seven yards, and finally stopped in front of a section of wall that appeared to have been damaged by an explosion. There was a gaping hole behind which was a metal door—slightly ajar, facing inward. Neela noticed immediately that the revealed door was not of the style or shape of all the previous ones they’d encountered. On closer inspection Neela saw that the “hole” she thought was damaged was unfinished construction.

“This was one of your treasure vaults.”

“Correction,” answered Justin. “It was
almost
one of my treasure vaults.” He grabbed Neela’s spray can, entered the darkened room, and lit up the space. Neela followed. The room appeared to be a dormitory. Against the wall were two sets of rusted-out bunk beds. Justin took interest in the bed closest to the wall’s end. He started probing behind the bed frame.
A key perhaps?
thought Neela. After about fifteen seconds Justin sat down on the coil-spring bottom bed and let out a huge sigh of relief. He turned to Neela. Though the room was dimly lit, Neela could see a significant change in the man. Whatever had been bothering him was now gone.

“This was going to be a site for some of my emergency wealth,” he offered. “There are so many of these tunnels that it would have been simplicity itself to build a wall over a door and, I figured, who would ever really know? But the tunnels started to become major tourist attractions, and all it would have taken was one relative looking for Grandpa’s old barracks, and questions could’ve been asked. And even this out-of-the-way area could have been discovered.”

“Surely the odds of that were remote?”

“Incredibly remote, but I came up with some better locations, or at least I thought I had, and this, like some other locations, was abandoned.”

“So,” she asked, “why are we here, and why are you now human again?”

“Is that your way of calling me a grouch?” he countered.

Neela laughed. “Far from it. More like a moody son of a bitch… but today you’re allowed.”

Justin grinned. “I needed to be sure.”

“Of what? That your abandoned beta site was still abandoned?”

“No, that the life I’m currently in… right now… was, in fact, real… or, more specifically, not virtual.”

It took Neela a moment to process the information. “Ahh. You thought you were still in a virtual-reality simulation.”

He nodded. “I wasn’t sure. I needed a test.”

“Not to GC you, but…”

“GC?”

“Oh, sorry. Slang. ‘GCing someone’ means ‘to bring them down.’ ”

“Got it,” he nodded. “Grand collapse them.”

“Right… anyhow, like I was saying, not to bring you down, but all this,” she said, pointing at their surroundings, “could still be VR. How does standing here change any of that?”

Justin smiled like the cat who’d caught the canary. “VR needs to be programmed. It’s very intuitive, and can assimilate and incorporate data at levels I can’t begin to understand, but it cannot create an environment out of nothing.”

“Of course it can,” retorted Neela, “and while inside that environment all would be
real
.”

“No, Neela, it would
seem
real. However, if a person was in possession of knowledge the VR machine did not have, nor did any of its programmers, then it would be possible to test if your reality was, in fact,
real
.”

“So,” Neela said, trying to understand his logic, “you didn’t go to your main burial site because that one’s already been referred to in the press.”

“Exactly,” he nodded. “All my sites have. For this test I couldn’t go anywhere that I’d already been to or, by extension, that the VR machine and programmers could have access to. It had to be something that I and only I knew about. This was the best place.”

“Why couldn’t the VR machine just show you the tunnels?” she countered. “After all, they’re still a tourist attraction, and once it knew where you were headed it could have gotten the records and built all this very quickly.”

“Yes,” he affirmed, “but then it would re-create standard images of the Maginot Line, and this rubble and building material is pretty much as
I
left it.”

Neela put her hand on her chin and shook her head.

“OK, I think I’m getting it,” she answered, still not 100 percent satisfied, “but a lot could happen in the three hundred years you were frozen. Suppose that a tour group did find their way through here and recorded your little unfinished work. And just suppose the VR machine got ahold of that recording.”

Justin’s face lit up as he motioned Neela over to the bed frame he’d been probing around only moments before. He pointed to what Neela thought was a small blotch on the wall. However, upon closer inspection she could see that the blotch was a carved-out name in faded and barely legible letters. It read JUSTIN CORD.