Chapter 6:
(Posted: January 26)
He was looking out a window over an infinite ocean. Through the glass pane and reflected in the dazzling sunlight, he could see his ghostly reflection staring back at him. He wore the same white t-shirt and sweatpants he'd gone into the sim with. Peering at his reflection, he saw a tired man staring back at him. His earlier time in VERSA had made this day feel much longer that it actually was, and if he'd been in the real world right now he'd have been in bed. Harrison mulled it all over; he shouldn't be doing this right now, he should be sleeping. Could you even sleep while in VERSA? He didn't know the answer to that and so many other questions about this new reality.
He stood on a concrete floor in a room that was surrounded by floor-to-ceiling glass walls on all four sides. Far below him in every direction he could see an endless expanse of water that stretched out to the horizon. He couldn't tell if the room was suspended in the air or part of a building, but the ceiling was concrete too, with a few bland lights affixed to it. But they weren't needed as the sun beat down proudly through a clear sky. The room felt like a glass box, but at least it came furnished with couches and chairs like the other entry room he'd seen.
Jessica stood across the room, gathering her bearings and adjusting to the brightness coming in from outside. Harrison caught her attention. “At least this room has a view,” he said. She gave him a tired smile.
Harrison moved to one of the couches as Rich's body suddenly appeared near another glass wall. This time he'd ditched the safari outfit and wore just his regular khakis and shirt. When he came to his senses he stared out the window, sighed deeply, and said to no one, “Fuck this place.”
“How are we supposed to get out of this room?” Jessica asked, coming over to Harrison and sitting on an adjacent couch. “There's no door. We're trapped in this box!”
It occurred to Harrison that she was right. He started speculating out loud. “Do you think this might have been some kind of trap?”
“What, so they can kill us?” Rich said, turning to the two. “Fuck if I know.” He exuded the type of disdainful apathy only a grumpy middle-aged white man could perfect.
As the three waited for Kat to come in, Harrison tried taking stock of everything in their room, which turned out to be not much. Three red couches, two pairs of chairs, a coffee table, and two end tables. The floor was plain gray tiled concrete, but off to one corner one tile was mysteriously painted red. As he grew bored, he spent a few minutes watching the ocean far below them. There must have been a breeze outside; he could see small whitecaps form sporadically on the glassy water.
“Well look at this,” Rich said, hunched over one of the end tables. He'd pulled open a drawer, and out of it lifted a red book. “I bet this bad boy is our ticket out of here.”
Before they could decide what to do with it, Kat suddenly appeared in the room. She quickly oriented herself and said “Sorry I took so long.”
Though she wore her glasses and her same clothes, for the first time Harrison and the others saw her standing on her legs. Still the same person, the three of them now beheld Kat without the wheelchair. VERSA seemed to turn everything upside down.
“Don't need these anymore,” Kat said to herself, taking off her glasses and tossing them carelessly onto the floor. They clacked away, immediately forgotten. Well, now she really looked different, Harrison thought.
“How're you going to see?” Jessica asked, surprised.
“There's no bad eyesight in VERSA,” Kat explained, without really explaining. She looked at Rich holding the book. “I see you already found our change-key Rich. I'll take that.” She bounded across the room and snatched the book out of his hand. Rich looked a bit surprised, maybe from her boldness, or maybe from they fact that she seemed so capable on her legs.
Now standing, Harrison could tell Kat wasn't a very big woman. She was short and skinny, shorter than Jessica by a few inches he guessed. She wasn't unattractive, though certainly not a natural beauty like Jessica, but she bore the attitude of a person who spent her life unnoticed by most others. Her confidence in herself, on the other hand, had not withered under the inattention.
“Alright, over here everyone,” she instructed, signaling them to come to a corner of the room. They all slowly stood and walked over to her. “Come in close,” she affirmed.
Curious but obedient, everyone huddled together. At his feet Harrison spotted the red tile. He suddenly had a vision of where this was all going. Kat began flipping through the book, then stopped at a page. Her voice, when she spoke, was all business.
“Spoke Seventeen, grant access to Pilot Five, Pilot Six, Pilot Seven, and Pilot Eight. Execute.”
As expected, the group suddenly shrank. When Harrison recovered, his floor was the red tile. He realized quickly he wasn't just small; he was really small. Not microscopic, but close. Maybe ant-size. Definitely the smallest he'd ever been. The concrete floor, which once looked smooth, now looked horribly scarred and pockmarked like the surface of the moon. To close the distance between himself and the others he'd have to not just walk but climb in some places too. At least he could faintly see his colleagues in the distance.
As he started walking toward some indeterminate spot halfway between everyone, he couldn't even process the rest of the room around him, it was simply too big. The furniture was a range of mountains and the ceiling was simply sky, or maybe outer space. The red book that Kat had just dropped was an insurmountable mesa off to his left.
The group of four miniature humans eventually drew closer to each other. Harrison could clearly make out Kat, who'd stopped walking and was now bent over trying to grab something on the ground. He got even closer and realized she was tugging on a handle of some sort. Before he could get over to help her, she yanked it up on her own and he realized she'd just opened a hatch in the floor. He gathered around it as Rich and Jessica arrived.
“Are you kidding me?” said Rich, peering down.
Below the aperture of the hatch, a smooth ramp led down into an abyss. “Yeah, it's a slide,” Kat said. “Who's going first?” Her question was met with silence. “Ok fine,” she said, stepping over. “Don't keep me waiting too long.”
She dropped down feet first and within a second was gone. The slide didn't look dangerously steep, but Kat had accelerated away quickly.
Rich looked at Jessica and gestured his hand. “Ladies first?” he said with a grin. Jessica rolled her eyes but managed a smile.
“Hey if you're too chicken Rich, I'll do it,” she said confidently. She stepped over the hatch, paused, and then dropped in. As she disappeared, Harrison and Rich heard her start screaming.
“Well it looks fun,” Harrison quipped. “You better not land on me at the bottom,” he told Rich. And with that he jumped down into the slide as well.
He started going fast, real fast. The slide felt more like a tube with high-sloping walls cradling his back. But he couldn't see any of this because the ride was pitch black. He could hear the echoes of Jessica screaming in the distance. She was either terrified or enjoying herself. Or both.
Harrison tried guessing the slope of the slide as he whizzed through who-knew-where, but it kept twisting and turning and doubling back on itself. The ride was actually quite fun once you got used to it, and the material he slid on felt slick and didn't catch, tear, or chafe his clothes either. He couldn't figure out what it was made out of, but it really didn't matter because none of it was real.
After a short time a small light appeared up ahead, first dim but then growing brighter. In an instant he shot out into a bright room, tumbling into a pit of pliant, soft foam bricks. Recovering from his voyage, he flailed around in the tank until he could find an edge to climb out. He saw Kat and Jessica standing nearby. A moment later, Rich came tumbling out of the pipe too.
Harrison instantly noticed the room was a part of VERSA's side space. White walls, linoleum floor, completely plain and nondescript in every aspect of appearance. At one end of the room a hallway formed, and peering down it Harrison saw the usual infinity of green doors.
“Did everyone have fun?” Kat asked dryly.
“One hell of a way to make an entrance,” Rich commented, grunting and climbing out of the pit.
“Follow me,” said Kat, abruptly turning and heading down the hallway. The other three lagged behind at first but caught up to her.
“Kat, now that we're in, can you tell us what exactly we're doing tonight?” Harrison asked.
Kat intently looked at each door she passed. “Yeah, let me find a certain world and I'll explain everything,” she replied. She seemed irritated he'd try bothering her while she was focusing.
Harrison noticed some of these doors had names stenciled onto them, but now with the postscript “17” which he figured referred to whatever spoke of VERSA they were in. Trying to think back on it, he realized he had no idea how many spokes VERSA had. The scope of this program was stunning.
“Here it is,” Kat said. She opened a door that said “EQUIPMENT-17.”
“What world is this?” asked Harrison.
“My favorite world,” Kat said, smiling. “I made this one myself.”
It wasn't so much a world but a room, about the size of a warehouse. Stacked full of boxes and racks of clothes off to the left, on the right the room sported all kinds of tools and firearms neatly mounted on racks, beaming shiny and new.
“Holy shit...” Rich's voice trailed off.
“This is a staging room I made for journeys into VERSA, to prepare for exploring and interacting with the sim. You were supposed to visit one of these with Kevin so he could eventually demonstrate the physics engine that we built...” She caught Jessica's eye, who had just been reminded of what she did earlier that day. Kat didn't finish her sentence.
“I was right!” Rich said, looking at all the guns. “You guys really did rip off The Matrix.” Kat responded to him with a scowl.
The four of them fanned out into the room like kids in a toy shop on Christmas, but Harrison still had little idea what they were supposed to prepare for.
“Ok so what's up?” he asked, spinning around to face Kat. “What are we really doing in here tonight?”
Kat stopped walking and turned to him. Casually, she pushed a strand of her black hair out of her face. With a sigh she started speaking.
“I can't remember exactly when I saw it, but about a month or two ago I found a world in VERSA that shouldn't be there,” she began. “Well, actually, I never went in it, but I remember seeing the door in the side space. Honestly, my memory of it is a little fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure I remember how to get there. I've done a lot of exploration of VERSA in my time, especially on the outer edges, investigating new worlds VERSA spooled out and marking most of them for deletion later. But this door was different and felt... familiar?”
Rich and Jessica were now listening too. Kat noticed. “Look, if what Jessica said is true about seeing a person, I have no idea what VERSA is conjuring up now. We always had a fear that maybe one day VERSA might start outpacing what we tried programming into it. And now that Kevin's dead it makes me really wonder what's been cooking in these worlds for the last few weeks. It's been a while since I've last been in, and even longer since I went deep into the newer edges.”
“Wait, but what was the door you saw?” Rich asked.
“Oh yeah, the door.” Kat said, remembering. “The door said 'DOS PALOS-One-fifty-three'.”
“That's Leo Starr's house!” Harrison exclaimed.
“Yeah I know,” Kat answered. “I have no clue what's behind that door. I wonder if it might be something Leo added personally and hid in a remote part of VERSA. But now I'm wondering if he's really ok. Maybe he put it there so I'd find it and come looking. I'm worried about him.” She stopped speaking for a moment, her attention drifting off. Harrison could sense her fondness for her boss in the way she spoke of him.
Kat snapped out of her daydream and continued. “Normally I'd just ask him myself, to see if he programmed it in there, but even I haven't personally spoken to him in months. If I could visit him up the mountain I would, but SunCorp security won't let anyone up that road anymore. They say he's just reclusive, but I know he's too gregarious to shut out his friends like that. Whatever is going on in Dos Palos these days is weird.” She pursed her lips. “Really weird.”
“Wait, doesn't his daughter live up there too?” Harrison said, trying to remember what he'd been told. “Does she know anything?”
“You mean Claire? She's a dumb bitch,” Kat sneered. “She doesn't know anything about VERSA but thinks she's an expert. She comes down the mountain every so often to meddle in our work and say her dad is real proud of us, but if anything she's part of the problem.” Sighing in annoyance, Kat looked away for a moment and stared out into rest of the warehouse.
“Ok let's gear up,” she finally instructed. “Let's fill a couple of those small duffel bags over there with stuff like knives, rope, anything else useful that might help us in a pinch. Everyone should grab a sidearm and holster too, we need to be prepared for anything. Throw some ammo in the bags too, some worlds in VERSA aren't always the friendliest.”
Jump-started by her orders, Rich immediately went to work getting things organized. Harrison and Jessica cautiously followed him.
In the meantime, Kat grabbed a bag and walked over to a crate. She lifted the lid off and grabbed a couple things out of it. She held them up for everyone to see.
“Out-keys for whenever we want to leave,” she said, showing off some apples. “I'll pack five just in case we lose one.” Harrison watched her slip them into a bag, but then he noticed something else. Kat tried to be furtive about it, but he spied her take a small black book out of the box too and stuff it deep in the bottom of her bag.
Looking back at the task at hand, Harrison didn't really know where to start. So like any man, he wandered over to the firearms first. Everything from pistols to automatic rifles lined the racks that sprawled down the length of the room. There were hundreds of guns in all shapes and sizes. He tentatively picked up a small pistol. He'd never shot a gun before.
“You want that one?” Rich asked him. He'd somehow snuck up behind him.
“Um, I don't know really...” Harrison sheepishly admitted.
“That's a bitch gun,” Rich bluntly told him. He took it from Harrison and put it back on the rack. He grabbed another one. “This is your gun. Glock, nine millimeter. FBI, Navy Seals, SAS, and cops everywhere get boners for this gun. It's yours,” he said, dropping it into Harrison's hands.
“Thanks...” Harrison said, flinching. “How do you know all this?”
Rich had started turning away, but he looked back. “Kid, how else do you think you get to work for the Pentagon testing out new weapons?”
“Oh.”
“And I was in the army for five years, but whatever,” Rich added, finally walking away.
The four of them packed up three bags. Kat instructed them to take some of the dry food they found along with energy drinks and water to stay awake and hydrated. If they were in VERSA for a long amount of simulated time, they would eventually experience natural body functions like hunger, drowsiness, and unfortunately the need to go to the bathroom too.
Kat insisted everyone take a firearm, so Harrison put on a holster with his Glock in it while Kat also took a pistol. Rich instructed Harrison where to find the safety on his Glock while Jessica professed that she wouldn't use a gun under any circumstances. After a tense conversation, Kat acknowledged giving her a gun might do more harm than good in a firefight. Maybe to compensate, Rich slung an M4 rifle over his shoulder and threw a couple MP5 submachine guns into one of their bags, along with a few boxes of ammunition and extra clips for all the guns.
“Last thing before we go,” Kat said, surveying the squad. “Make sure you're comfortable in your clothes. There's stuff on the racks over there if you want to look through it and get ideas, but there's a wardrobe there that'll change you into whatever you want.” Three confused faces stared back at her.
“If you interact with one of these,” Kat continued to explain as she opened the doors to the large cabinet, “VERSA can change your appearance, much like when you first enter the sim. I'll show you.”
Kat stepped completely into the large box and closed the double-doors on the front of it, sealing herself inside. Once they sounded shut, she flung them open again and stepped back into the room wearing a completely different outfit. She wore hiking boots, jean shorts that showed off her legs, and a small short-sleeved flannel shirt. Taking a hair tie off her wrist, she put her hair up in a ponytail. “See?”
“Damn that's cool,” Rich commented.
“How does it work?” Jessica asked, stepping forward.
“Just put an imagine of what you want to wear in your mind when the doors close,” Kat said. “VERSA fills in the rest. It's not exact, but it's good enough.”
“Alright, let me try,” Jessica said, stepping into the cabinet. She closed the doors, waited a couple seconds, then opened them up. Harrison practically gasped when she stepped out in a formal dress, lacey and white. Around her neck hung a beautiful diamond necklace, and it even looked like her face had makeup on it now.
“Um...” Kat started to say.
“Oh I just wanted to test it,” Jessica explained, laughing. “Lemme change into something better.” She slipped back inside.
Jessica returned wearing a tight white t-shirt that did a very good job highlighting the shape of her breasts. Below it, her exposed midriff showed off her bellybutton and taut stomach. She wore skinny jeans on her legs and finally tennis shoes on her feet. Unlike Kat, she let her blond hair down.
“Better,” Kat said.
“Wow, it even worked on my nails too!” Jessica noticed in awe, looking at her fingertips which VERSA had painted bright red.
Harrison used the wardrobe next and changed into jeans. Kat was right, it was surprisingly easy to use. He felt his consciousness blip out for a moment in the darkness as VERSA re-clad him. Unsurprisingly, Rich couldn't be convinced to get into the wardrobe.
Kat showed the other three a wristwatch she's picked up in the room. “I'm setting the stopwatch on this so we have a frame of reference for time,” she explained. The time of day didn't matter while in VERSA, but Harrison surmised how easy it would be to lose track of the passage of time back in the real world.
“If it's about nine-thirty p.m. back home,” Kat started speculating, “depending on how long the time flows here in VERSA, until four-thirty a.m. which should be our drop-dead bail-out time... I'd say we have between forty-eight to seventy-eight hours in here, roughly.
Figuring it was his time to say something, Harrison said, “Kat, I think I speak for the other two when I admit we're all really tired from today. We've all been awake longer than normal from being in VERSA for a few hours earlier. Are we going to have a chance to catch a little sleep at some point?”
Kat pursed her lips, her sign of annoyance. She thought for a moment then answered, “Yes... um, I know a place we can get to soon. But I'm only giving you guys five hours.”
“Ok then,” Harrison agreed.
“After that, no more naps and I'm making you all drink energy drinks,” Kat said. “Let's roll out.”
Walking through the side space of VERSA, Harrison, Rich, and Jessica followed Kat to an unknown destination. The duffel bags they'd packed were small enough to carry over one shoulder, but unfortunately weighed quite a bit. Kat took the bag with the apples, Harrison took another with supplies, and Rich carried the last bag with the extra guns while he slung his rifle over his other shoulder. After a few minutes, Harrison heard Rich breathing heavily; the guy may have been in the army, but that was a long time ago now.
After zig-zagging through the nightmare of corridors, Kat stopped them at a peculiar door painted bright orange instead of green. “This way,” she motioned them through. They walked into an abjectly dismal subway station, just a dirty room with a platform and an empty track. The sign on the wall read “Station 17,” and the cracked and stained concrete walls had been covered in illegible graffiti. The whole place smelled like urine and garbage. A few lights suspended from the ceiling struggled to illuminate the squalor.
“Wow, is this world supposed to be New York City in the eighties?” Rich joked.
“Wait here a minute on the platform,” Kat instructed. “We need to get around VERSA fast.”
Sure enough, about a minute later, the sound of an incoming train echoed through the tunnel. And right on cue, a dirty subway train rolled into the station and stopped. Its doors jerked open and the four packed on board the same empty car.
Much like the condition of the station, the car was old and stained, filled with ripped seats and questionable odors. Affixed to one wall was a map of the system, but it was blank, save for one orange dot in the middle labeled “Station 17.”
“Does this go anywhere?” Harrison said, observing the map.
“Yes, excuse me,” Kat said to him, stepping in front of the map. Below it was a simple button and intercom labeled “In Case of Emergency.”
Kat pressed the button and spoke into the intercom, “Spoke One-twenty-one, grant access to Pilot Five, Pilot Six, Pilot Seven, and Pilot Eight. Execute.” She clicked off the intercom.
With a chime the lights in the car flashed and the doors rolled closed. Harrison looked at the blank map again. Materializing before his eyes, an orange line snaked out from the “Station 17” dot and connected to a new dot labeled “Station 121.” The car lurched forward.
The train began accelerating until it finally plunged into a dark tunnel. Rich said to Kat “You're telling me with all the billions of dollars SunCorp has poured into this project, this dumpy subway is the best thing you could make to connect everything together in VERSA?”
Kat shrugged her shoulders. “Leo wanted it this way.” Everyone looked at her skeptically. “What? He's an odd guy,” she added defensively.
It wasn't very long until the train slowed down and pulled into a new but equally depressing station. “Ok this is how close we can get on this thing. I know a few worlds we can cut through to get to Spoke One-fifty-three,” Kat explained. They hauled themselves out of the car and over to a door on the far end of the platform that was once orange but had been desecrated by what looked like years of dirt and graffiti. Sure enough though, when it opened Harrison glimpsed another endless hallway of green doors.
Searching through the hallway, Kat finally found a door that read “BAYOU-121.” Opening it and passing through, the door led them into a cozy wooden room that resembled a ramshackle cabin. Stuffed with a few chairs, a rusted bicycle, netting hanging from the ceiling, and fishing paraphernalia all over the place, the abode really looked like it could have been right out of the Mississippi delta. The pitch-black of night crept into the room through some windows, but it was held at bay by a few dim, cozy oil lamps.
“Let's rest here,” Kat said. “I'll set an alarm on my watch and wake you all up. Check the other rooms, I think there's a bedroom or two in here. And also the couches right here.”
Jessica opened a door along one wall and peered into a bedroom. “This is hardly a bed,” she said, disappointed. A busted mattress with straw sticking out of it rested haphazardly on the floor.
“Whoever built this place was really on a budget,” Rich laughed, surveying the rustic shack. Harrison found it strange to think that the place had so much character but lacked an occupant. With so many decorations strewn across the walls and floor, it really looked like someone called it home.
He kicked off his shoes and laid down on a couch. Just lying down and resting his eyes felt wonderful. Immediately he knew that even with the oil lamps burning, he would easily fall asleep. As Kat surveyed the house, Harrison propped his head up on a ragged pillow and drifted into sleep. The house soon grew quiet, and within minutes the only sounds of the night came from the croaking frogs and chirping insects of the strange bayou beyond.