Chapter 7:

(Posted: February 1)

“Harrison wake up!” Kat whispered in his face. He opened his eyes, still half asleep. Kat's intense countenance greeted him, contorted by worry.

“What? What?” he said groggily.

Kat shushed him. “Listen...”

Harrison took a breath as Kat leaned back to give him room. He sat up on the couch, finding someone had thrown a small blanket over him. What was she talking about?

“Um what is-” he started to say, but Kat shushed him again. So instead he tried to listen. The cabin was silent but the world outside the walls was alive with nature. An orchestra of unknown creatures buzzed and croaked and made all sorts of primordial noise. And then he heard it. Music.

Specifically the sound of someone playing an instrument, maybe a banjo. It was very faint, but the notes slowly tingled together. As he focused on it, it really did sound like someone was slowly playing a song.

“You hear it now?” Kat asked, still whispering. Harrison nodded. “I have never heard any music in VERSA before,” she muttered. An ominous feeling crept into Harrison: something was wrong.

“I'm waking the others,” she said, walking off.

“How long's it been?” Harrison called after her.

“Four and a half hours,” she replied. “Long enough.”

“Shouldn't we at least wait until the sun comes up?” Harrison pleaded.

Kat laughed and turned back to him. “The sun doesn't come up in this world. It's always night in here,” she casually replied.

Kat roused Jessica and Rich from their dreams and started getting their gear ready to go. After having them listen for the music, Jessica asked, “What's it even like outside? Are we walking there?”

“No, we're taking the boat,” Kat said. “Out that door,” she pointed. “Rich, help me load the bags.”

The door led out to a deck made from warped, uneven boards, and down to a lonely lamp lighting a small dock that jutted out into a murky river. The real light came from the star-filled sky above, and Harrison could make out the far bank of the river, the trees there silhouetted by the glowing sky. This river was wide. And very dark. Alongside the dock he could barely see a small boat with an outboard motor.

Jessica walked out the door into the night, saw the boat, and immediately balked. “We're going in that?!”

“Yeah,” Kat said, nonplussed. “Hey Rich, that bag you have?” she gestured at him. “Should be a couple flashlights in there. Get 'em out.”

Rich made an impressed face and looked for the flashlights. Kat went back into the house and Rich whispered to Harrison, “That woman sure knows how to give orders. It's bringing me back to my army days.” Through the lamplight Harrison could make out a bemused grin on Rich's face.

After loading the bags and convincing Jessica to get onto the boat, Rich started the motor and the boat slowly moved out from the dock into the abyss. Holding all four of them, the boat felt cramped and anyone who moved shifted it enough to threaten flipping it over. Harrison pushed the thought out of his mind; he didn't want to wonder what VERSA had created to lurk in the mysterious waters below them.

The motor was loud, so once they reached the middle of the river, Kat had Rich kill it so she could listen for the music. Once the river went silent, they all caught the sound of lazy notes drifting through the air. “That way,” Kat pointed into the darkness. Harrison couldn't tell if the direction was up-river or down-river; everything was too dark and the river hardly seemed to move at all.

Cutting across the black highway, their boat powered along the river and around a bend, then down another unlit section. Harrison was just starting to wonder how they'd even find where the music was coming from until the boat turned a long corner and suddenly in the distance they saw a light. A lighted house, to be precise. It sat out above the water on the banks of the river, supported by long piles and lit with more oil lamps. Built in the same style as the dump they'd just spent a few hours in, it looked like a blue-collar sportsman's paradise. In its decrepit state, it also looked just moments away from collapsing into the inky river.

As the craft pulled in closer, they began making out some details. On the deck Harrison glimpsed a shadowy figure sitting in a chair. Even through the darkness and low lighting, it was certainly a person. Harrison assumed it was a man. It looked like he wore some kind of straw hat and sure enough, he cradled a banjo in his arms.

Their approach to the house wasn't stealthy in the slightest, nor was it meant to be. The figure spotted them from quite a distance away, rose from its chair, and entered into the house, moving and flickering like a shadow in the low lighting.

Harrison decided to watch Kat to see how she was reacting. She looked very concerned. The boat pulled up close to a small dock attached to the deck of the house and Rich killed the engine. Though the house had windows, nothing could be seen within. It was then Harrison noticed that Kat had unholstered her pistol.

“Ok, Rich,” Kat addressed him in a hushed tone. “You stay on the dock with your rifle and keep the boat hot in case we need to get out of here in a hurry.” She eyed Harrison and Jessica. “You two, come with me into the house. We need to see what's going on.”

Neither Harrison nor Jessica wanted to follow Kat, but they couldn't decide how to protest.

Finally Harrison said, “Kat, where's the next side space door we're looking for? Can't we just go there?”

Kat had stepped out of the boat onto the dock, her eyes fixed on the house. “The door?” she said. “The next door I want to go through...” she paused, worried. Then she pointed at the house. “It's in there.”

“Oh fuck,” Rich blurted out. It was definitely an oh fuck moment.

“C'mon!” Kat said. Harrison and Jessica scrambled out of the boat while Rich steadied it by placing a foot on the dock. He wasn't going to tie it up. Getting steady himself, he unslung his rifle and held it carefully in one hand.

Kat crept up to the door of the house, her pistol still in her hand. Harrison and Jessica stayed back, both competing to stay behind the other. Carefully, Kat put a hand on the doorknob and turned it, allowing the door to slowly creak inward. In that tense moment, Kat swiftly stepped through. Overcoming fright, Harrison carefully followed her inside while Jessica remained in the doorway and peered in.

This cabin was furnished like the other shack they'd been in: equipment and gear piled up among old pieces of furniture. A solitary oil lamp hung suspended from the rafters above, casting a flickering glow over the cluttered room. On the far side of the room, two figures sat in dusty rocking chairs.

On the left sat the figure from the deck, banjo laying at his feet. He wore faded blue overalls with a fraying hat perched on his head. The man's old beard covered his chest while the shadows cast by his wide hat obscured his face. A pipe stuck out over his gnarled chin as he slowly puffed it, giving the room the aroma of pungent tobacco.

“I knew you'd come this way, Katherine,” the other figure spoke calmly. Harrison looked at the woman sitting on the right. He immediately thought her face looked strikingly like Vanessa, though younger and slightly thinner. She had black hair that tumbled down her shoulders like a curtain of darkness. In contrast, her skin shone pale and white, almost albino. Clad in a revealing black dress and black leather high-heeled boots that matched her hair, she came from a completely different world than her dingy friend alongside her. Harrison also couldn't help but notice the generous size of this new woman's breasts. She was beautiful in an eerie, ethereal way.

Kat raised her gun and pointed it at the woman. “Who are you?” she asked sternly.

The mysterious woman was in no hurry and reacted slowly. She gestured over her shoulder to the wall behind her. “Trying to go in there?” she asked Kat. “I've always wondered what's behind those doors.” Harrison looked past her and saw down by the floor a tiny green door, maybe a foot tall. Rich hadn't been kidding earlier, VERSA really was some Alice in Wonderland kind of thing.

This woman wasn't going to throw Kat off-balance. “I said who are you!?” Kat asked her again, louder and more forcefully. Harrison hoped Kat's aggressive tone came from an abundance of confidence, not nervousness.

The woman in black raised a smug eyebrow at Kat. “Now, that's not a nice way to treat someone you've just met,” she said casually. “I know exactly who you are Katherine, but perhaps it's only fitting that you don't know me.” She turned to the man smoking the pipe. “You can go now, thank you,” she said dismissively.

He rose out of his rocking chair and Harrison was finally able to see his face. It was old and wizened. The man looked past him and saw Jessica. “Good to see ya again Jess,” he said quietly, with a grin on his face. He walked toward the back of the room and exited out a full-sized door into a different part of the house.

Behind Harrison, Jessica's face melted into pure horror. It was as if a dire force had sucked everything good out of her, leaving her jaw hopelessly agape. For a second, Harrison feared she might faint. Despite this, Kat was undeterred.

“What do you want from me?” Kat asked the woman in black, gritting her teeth. Though she gripped her pistol tight enough to turn her knuckles white, her hand hardly shook. She was cool and steady, but the tension in the room was skyrocketing.

“What do I want?” the woman in black answered, amused. “You came to me!”

“Cut the bullshit lady,” Kat spat back. “What's going on in VERSA? Are you behind all this?”

The woman in black paused, considering her options. Then she rose from her chair. Kat cautiously took a step back. Harrison's hand rested on his pistol but he didn't want to pull it out, and a part of him didn't even think using it on this woman would do much. An undefinable evil radiated from this strange woman's presence.

Full of curiosity, the woman in black spoke to them, “I am not like you... I've sensed for some time that there's something different about you and I. You're like the other interlopers I've seen. You appear out of nowhere and then disappear just as fast, leaving nothing but ripples in your absence. Where do you go when I cannot see you?” An uneasy silence permeated the room. The woman seemed to be considering her options. “Are you gods or cockroaches?” she finally asked, excitedly. “If you're going to keep running through my world with cold hearts, I'm certainly not going to make it easy. Let's play a little game!”

Harrison's gut dropped out of his belly, or at least it felt that way. It took him a moment to realize he was shrinking again. In a blink it was over, and he stood an inch or so tall. Befuddled, shocked, and hopelessly confused, his mind raced to explain what was happening. Had this woman shrunk them? How was that possible?

Completely disoriented, he realized quickly that his hand still rested on his gun. But looking around, he knew it was useless. The room, as expected, was huge. In the distance across the floorboards he spotted Kat adjusting to her new size too. He didn't bother looking for Jessica, but he noticed the woman in black towering ominously before him. A wicked grin covered her face as she stood over them triumphantly with her hands on her hips. She exuded power and cruelty, along with sinister femininity too. She was beautiful and massive: a dangerous combination.

“Let's see how powerful you really are,” the woman said smugly, chiding her shrunken captives. One of her gigantic boots stepped forward, causing a loud boom that absolutely terrified Harrison. Off in the distance to his right he saw a low bookshelf stuffed with books, boxes, papers, and other knickknacks. A small gap, just about his size, separated the bookshelf from the floor. He started running.

Harrison didn't bother watching the woman in black, but he couldn't ignore the sound of her steps. Her boots made a tremendous noise as they crossed the floor, her soles booming while her heels clicked on the wooden boards. Harrison selfishly hoped her fixation with Kat would buy him enough time to hide.

“Aww, you don't want to play?” she said, her voice playful and arrogant. “Katherine, this is what you came for right? You don't like my world anymore?”

As Harrison neared the bookshelf, a cacophony of noise erupted in the cabin. Everything above him started exploding. Suddenly shards of glass and pieces of wood rained down around him, one small piece knocking him to his side. He hit the floor and covered his head.

A moment later when the explosions ceased, he looked around to try understanding what had just happened. To his surprise, he could not see the woman in black anywhere in the room. Was she hiding? Could someone that big hide? He rose to his feet awkwardly but chose not to continue to the bookcase.

He could see the entire floor of the cabin was now covered in pieces of debris roughly the same size as him. Looking up, he noticed broken windows and holes in the walls. They must have been bullet holes. Only one person could have done that.

Right on cue, full-sized Rich walked through the open doorway of the cabin, pushing aside the remains of the chewed-up door. He clutched his rifle in his right hand, the barrel still smoking.

“Hey guys?” he called out. “What the fuck is going on in here?!” He started looking around the empty cabin, then started scanning the floor. “You guys are shrunk, I'm going to find you,” he stated confidently.

What great timing, Harrison thought. Slowly, Rich scanned the ground, first locating Jessica near the door, then Kat in the middle of the room. Rich did his best to lay flat to the ground to hear what Kat had to say to him, then pushed himself up and abruptly exited the cabin. A half-minute later he returned with one of the bags. Throwing it on a nearby table, he rooted around in it until he produced the black book that Harrison had seen Kat slip into the bag earlier. He opened it, flipped through some pages, then laid it down open next to Kat's diminutive body. Harrison could see Kat climb on to it, and then a moment later Kat's body expanded until she stood at her regular size again.

“Thanks,” Kat said to him. She stepped off the book and picked it up. She spoke into the page “Increase Pilot Five to one hundred percent, increase Pilot Six to one hundred percent. Execute.” And just as he expected it to happen, Harrison exploded upwards and found himself at his normal height.

“Jesus Christ Rich, you saved us!” Harrison immediately thanked him.

“What the hell is going on?!” Jessica screamed, still very distressed.

“Ok, Ok,” Kat said, trying to reassure her. “We're safe, she's gone.”

“Who's gone?” Rich asked.

“Oh boy, how to explain...” Kat said to herself.

“I was watching you the whole time,” Rich explained, “Well, Jessica mostly because she was standing in the doorway. I figured you found something and I heard you talking, but it didn't seem right, especially with that man in there. When I saw Jessica shrink I figured I might as well spray the place and come running just in case something bad was happening.”

“Rich I owe you a drink when this is all over,” said Harrison humbly. “That was good thinking on your part.”

Rich looked at him. “Thank you!” he agreed emphatically. Then he turned to Kat. “But who the hell are you talking about?”

“Kat, that woman knew you!” Jessica cried out.

“That man knew you!” Harrison reminded her.

“That was my grandpa!” Jessica screamed back. She stumbled backward, landed on the floor, and crumpled into a heap and started crying.

“What??” Harrison and Rich said simultaneously. Harrison dropped to a knee to try comforting Jessica.

“Hey Jessica, it's ok, we're ok...” he started rambling. He really didn't know what to say.

Jessica fought through tears to keep taking. “He died when I was a kid, I knew him a long time ago. But he was there! That was him!” Her sobbing continued. Harrison looked up to see Kat standing alone, staring off into the distance, thinking.

Harrison stood. “Ok Kat, for real. What the fuck is going on?” he asked her bluntly.

“I... I don't know!” she stammered. Harrison could finally tell she was frustrated. Kat turned around to face them. Jessica still sobbed on the floor but she was slowly regaining control of herself.

“Ok I don't know who that woman was, but she's not a pilot,” Kat finally said. “She's something VERSA made, but I don't know what. She's sentient, for sure. VERSA's evolved leaps and bounds in the last few weeks. More than I ever thought possible.”

Rich stepped forward. “There was a woman in here too? Where did she go?”

“She disappeared when you started shooting,” Kat said. “Completely de-materialized, like she was de-simming.”

“Well, what did she want?” Rich continued.

“I don't know,” Kat admitted. “She said something about cockroaches... and gods. She was talking about us.” She stopped to think. “I think VERSA is starting to understand what it is. A program, maybe. But a world. She called these 'her worlds.' In its own context, it might see itself as a god. But I'm not sure. That woman shrunk us, without a change-key. It's very aware of how all this works.” She looked up at Harrison and Rich. “I wouldn't characterize this as a good development,” she admitted.

“Well fuck, now what?” Rich asked.

“Jessica,” Harrison said, turning back to her on the floor. “That man was your grandfather?”

“Yeah,” she said between tears, “his name was Ray... he lived in Georgia. He died when I was in sixth grade. How was he here?” She was genuinely confused, but she wasn't alone. Everyone instinctually looked at Kat.

“Look, I'm way out of my league on this,” she said, putting her hands up. “But I'm guessing that VERSA did this for a reason. We designed it to learn from peoples' memories and build worlds with the knowledge it gleaned from them. I think it's taken the leap from building places to building people.” The room was silent. The implications were tangible, but Kat clarified. “It knew Jessica was in here. And it wanted us to come to meet this woman dressed in black. But it definitely took Jessica's memory of her grandfather and ran with it.”

“Are you suggesting we might start seeing more people we know?” Harrison asked. “That woman in black did vaguely resemble Vanessa Bright...”

“Yeah, she kinda did. And maybe,” Kat guessed. She changed the subject. “Let's get into the side space. I'm hoping it's safer in there. Guys, get the gear from the boat.”

Harrison and Rich slowly went back outside and found the boat drifting close enough to the dock that they could reach out and pull it in. They took the two remaining bags out of it and brought them back into the house. Upon return, Jessica was back on her feet, still bleary-eyed, and Kat had her bag over shoulder, black book in hand.

“That book's a change-key?” Harrison asked.

“Fast learner,” Kat said with a smile. She opened to the book. “Reduce Pilot Five to ten percent, reduce Pilot Six to ten percent, and reduce Pilot Seven to ten percent. Execute.” Harrison once again shrank to the ground, his body betraying his brain and disorienting him. He looked around from his shrunken stature and felt relief when he realized he wasn't as small as before. And surprisingly, the bag he'd been holding shrunk along with him. But Kat hadn't reduced herself, she still towered over them. Harrison stood barely taller than her boot, Though it was his largest shrunken size yet, without a doubt Kat could easily crush him if she wanted to.

Kat looked at her tiny colleagues and then back to the side space door on the wall. “Too small,” she muttered. “Um....reduce Pilot Eight to twenty percent, execute,” she said into the book. And she shrunk.

But when she stopped at her new height, she stood well above the others. Harrison started walking towards her and quickly saw he only came up to about her waist. She must have been about twelve feet tall to him.

“Hey, why do you get to be taller?” Rich asked, joshing her.

“Just follow me,” Kat said, impatiently. She put the book back into her bag, both of which had also shrunk with her. Pausing a moment, Kat undid her ponytail and let her black hair fall onto her shoulders.

Satisfied with her hair, Kat led them through the green door into VERSA's side space, though she had to stoop because she was still too tall for the doorway and hallway.

Harrison felt like a child following his mother around as she led them down yet another corridor of green doors. Though it made no sense, he felt reassured by her stature, as if it made everything a little safer. Kat, usually the shortest in the group, stood twice their height. Her pert ass was at his eye level, and Harrison tried not to watch it too long. He admitted to himself that she looked rather sexy in her tight jean shorts, but he didn't want Jessica to notice him staring. He set his mind to other thoughts, but it was difficult.

His reverie was interrupted by Jessica tapping on his shoulder behind him. He turned around, red-faced and feeling guilty. But from first glace he could easily tell she hadn't noticed him ogling Kat's body. Her face remained morose, her eyes downcast.

“Hey, what's up?” Harrison asked her, trying to be upbeat.

“I'm still thinking about what just happened,” she admitted, “and I don't get it.”

“Uh, don't get what?”

“That woman,” she began, “who isn't real because she's a program or something, shrunk us to kill us. But she didn't kill us... she was playing with us until Rich came.” Jessica finally made eye contact with Harrison. “Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, why mess with us like that?” Jessica tried clarifying. “She could have easily shrunken Rich too, but didn't. The woman is a computer. Computers are rational, efficient. They don't play games.” She paused to think. “I just don't get it.”

It made Harrison think too. If something inside VERSA wanted to kill them, especially something that could alter their size at will, it should have already had many good chances to do it. Before Jessica's point, he'd assumed the woman in black was some evil script running within trillions of lines of code that had been programmed to kill. Now he wasn't so sure what her motives were. It was disconcerting.

“Ok, we have two choices,” Kat said, stopping in the hallway and taking a knee. She looked over her colleagues in a commanding pose. “There are two worlds that can get us to the next side space. One's a city and one's a snow world.”

“City,” Rich said immediately.

“Yeah I'm with Rich,” Harrison agreed.

Kat smiled knowingly. “I thought you'd think that.” And then Harrison noticed they were standing in front of a door that read “BOULEVARD-139.” Kat's tone shifted as she became more serious.

“We're on the edge of VERSA,” she said bluntly. “These worlds around us are one hundred percent VERSA created with basically no input from SunCorp's programmers. Sure, we try exploring them occasionally and mark the truly wacky worlds for deletion, but there's an element of randomness in all of them. Don't get disoriented inside.” She stood up in a crouch and faced the door. If she could have stood to full height, her eyes would have looked well over the door frame, while Harrison could barely see over the doorknob.

Kat opened the door and ducked inside while her three smaller companions followed her like little ducklings.

After walking into a hallway and hearing the door close shut behind them, the group came out around a stack boxes and found themselves in the back of restaurant. A diner, to be precise. To the left was the counter and on the right side were the booths. At the far end of the room there was a door and a large glass window out which a wide city street could be seen outside. They were certainly downtown, but the diner felt out of a different era, maybe the 1950's or 1960's. Yet Kat certainly didn't lie when she said these worlds could be strange, she just hadn't known had right she would be. The diner was full of people.

Occupying the booths and bar stools and even working behind the counter were men, dressed differently for their roles. Some looked like grubby waiters while others wore suits and hats. None of the men looked up or noticed Harrison and his wrongly-sized colleagues. Instead the men continued eating, reading the newspaper, doing crosswords, and taking orders at the counter. The din of the room and the smell wafting from the kitchen gave the scene an authentic and homey feel. It made Harrison's stomach growl, and he realized he wanted to eat something soon.

But as he started observing these people, Harrison quickly saw that they were all the same man, just copied out about dozen times or so. This man was handsome and clean shaven, black haired with a well-defined jaw and movie star eyes. He looked so perfect and masculine he could have been pulled off a poster or out of an Ayn Rand novel. But none of these people were supposed to exist! What was going on here? Since the bayou where they'd encountered their first two non-pilots, things had really escalated quickly.

One of the men sitting at the counter turned in his chair to light a cigarette. As the flame from his lighter flicked on and he brought it near his mouth, the man looked up and made eye contact with the pilots. He froze, but his stoic look betrayed no emotion.

And then, one by one, the other men in the diner stopped what they were doing and looked at Harrison and his colleagues. The room went awkwardly silent. Moments passed as the two groups stared each other down, wondering who would say something first or make the opening move. Finally, one of the men behind the counter reached under the cash register and pulled out a wooden baseball bat. He slapped it menacingly into his palm, never breaking eye contact with the new arrivals. The rest of the diner remained at a trigger hair's pull from leaping out of their seats and attacking.

“Well shit,” Kat finally said into the silence.

The diner rushed them.