Simulation
And there she was.
Carolanne Mckenzie stood across the hall,
past the low-walled cubicles of the office, next to the water cooler. She stood
chatting idly with Suzanne, her fire-red haired friend from accounting. By all
accounts both were similarly attractive, but for Rob Crusoe there could have
been only one standing over there. One that mattered anyway. He watched her
from afar in his cubicle, the way she raised a slim ivory hand with its red lacquered
nails towards her crimson lips when she laughed at something her friend said.
The way every two minutes, like precision clockwork, she unconsciously raised a
hand to flip the right side of her brunette, shoulder length hair back into
place. The way her azure blue eyes sparkled in humor in the story both were
engrossed in. As he watched, she bent towards the cooler, still animatedly
talking, her wolf-grey skirt-suit pulling tight across an ample frame. Rob
swallowed hard.
Then Suzanne was gone in a blink of
that ruby-colored bob of hair and she was alone by the cooler, idly sipping
water down between her perfect white teeth.
This was it. This was his chance.
Rob got up.
He smoothed back his auburn slicked
hair in what he hoped was a casual way. The blue business suit he wore over an
ironed snow-white shirt was strikingly immaculate, it could have been new. He’d
just picked it up from the dry cleaners that morning. The circumstances couldn’t
have been perfect. Rob sauntered over, hoping the swing of his polished
burgundy leather shoes hid the slight tremor in his hands. They felt so awkward
and gangly hanging there, so he stuffed them in his pockets.
Too soon he was there, standing just
beside the cooler. She was just turning back towards him, the polystyrene cup
empty in her hand. That perfect hand. This close up he could smell that angelic
scent of her, vanilla, with just a hint of something spicy he couldn’t quite
place and likely never would. She noticed him standing there and her eyes came
around towards him, almost in slow-motion.
“Hey Carol, How’re you-“
“Robert Crusoe.” She interrupted
bluntly. He blinked. She knew who he was!
Her eyes were glassy, with a
far-away hypnotized look to them.
“Yeah, haha. Say listen, do you
wanna maybe-“
“You need to wake up.”
He faltered. “What?”
“You need to wake up, Robert. This
isn’t real.”
With that she turned on her heel and
promptly strode away from him. The white polystyrene cup was still clutched in
one hand, though empty. Rob frowned in consternation. What the hell had just
happened? Wake up?
His shoulders slumped. What a
disaster. So close and with the perfect opportunity, and he’d bungled it. He
didn’t even know how. Defeated, he clomped his way back to his desk and stared
at the stack of waiting papers in his in-tray next to the bulky white monitor
of his computer. None of it seemed fair. He’d had his eyes on Carolanne for
months now. All his planning, daydreaming, for nothing.
Work didn’t seem very alluring
right now. He raised a cobalt-blue sleeve and checked the expensive silver
wrist-watch on his left arm. Twelve thirty-two. Might as well go on break. He
plodded away from his desk and through the maze-like warren of cubicles that
cluttered the third floor, towards the silvery elevator next to the stairs. He
slumped inside, alone, depressed. When the bell rang for the fourth floor he
almost didn’t budge. Almost.
Striding across the open white
linoleum interior of the break room- a glorified corporate-owned café-
something bright and colorful caught his eye in his peripheral vision.
Something stark and yellow. Turning he saw across from him a bright colored
bulletin pinned to the noticeboard with bulky black lettering that he couldn’t
quite make out. Rob made his way over, his remorse forgotten momentarily.
As he drew nearer he made out the
words on the bright square of yellow paper and he stopped dead, puzzled. WAKE UP was printed in bold black text
in the center of the poster. A feeling of unease crept over him and he shivered
slightly. Wasn’t that what Carolanne had said? He shuffled over closer to the
notice board. More type below the heading came into view in the same black
font, but smaller. Times and dates, venues. It was a rock concert advertisement
of some kind. Rob sighed at his own foolishness. Just a coincidence.
He turned and made his way over to
the glass-cabineted counter of the café and browsed the selection of cakes, slices,
tarts, muffins and bagels there. The cashier, an ageing kindly-faced woman with
her hair in a bun and an apron about her smiled politely as he requested a
cuppachino and one of the chicken cranberry bagels. And one of the mint
chocolate slices please. It’d been a rough day.
He dug into the breast pocket of his
suit, fumbling for his wallet as the café server waited patiently at the
register, his food sitting neatly upon a wide plastic black tray and the coffee
steaming in a cardboard takeout cup. He extracted it and removed a twenty,
double the cost of his lunch.
“Keep the change ma’am.” He smiled
at her. She gratefully accepted the note.
“You need to wake up Robert.” She
said, still smiling.
His heart skipped a beat. “I’m
sorry?”
The old lady blinked. “What was that
honey? I didn’t say anything.”
“Y-yes you did. You said to wake up,
just then.” She raised an eyebrow.
“You look pretty awake to me, hun.
Try that coffee though, it’ll give ya a kick. Stop you from hearing things.”
With a bemused apology he took his
tray laden with food and left to eat at one of the bare white tables scattered
around the break room. The metal chairs seated around them were cold, so he ate
quickly and took his half-finished cup of coffee with him back to the elevator.
He didn’t look around. He didn’t notice the bright yellow poster had vanished
from the noticeboard.
The elevator door pinged open and
Rob walked back out into the hustle and bustle of level three. People chatted
and made conversation over the phone with clients, or noisily clattered away on
keyboards. He liked the background noises, it was familiar and reassuring.
Helped him think. He dropped back into the red material-backed wheeled office
chair in front of his desk and set down his coffee carefully in front of him.
Then he noticed a presence behind him at his door and turned.
It was Pete, his long-time friend.
Pete Walinski was a balding hawk-nosed rake of a man, tall and lanky, today
dressed in a pale yellow shirt with a horrible orange and red striped tie. He
grinned welcomingly at his friend in the cubicle, a wide expanse of teeth
showing below a pair of oversize bottle thick glasses that his over enlarged
eyes peered through.
“Mornin Rob!” He said jovially
“How’s it hangin?”
Rob grinned at Pete’s perpetual
enthusiasm. His eccentric manner and positive disposition was infectious and
one of the reasons they’d been such good friends over the last five years in
the office. He worked just down the way on the same floor, and had a habit of
visiting from time to time, like now.
“Hey Pete.” Rob grinned. “It’s
actually nearly one in the afternoon though.”
Pete just laughed. “What’s been
going on?”
Robert sighed. “Nothing good Pete. I
had the weirdest conversation with Carol. I was fully about to ask her out and
then… Well I don’t even know, she just up and left.”
Pete sighed too, in sympathy.
“That’s too bad my dude. But hey! Have
you heard of the new company software update? Just got it now, it’s pretty
neat.”
“Uh, no, I haven’t actually. Are you
sure? I thought we only update annually.”
Pete nodded enthusiastically, wide
smile returning. His owlish eyes were bright.
“Yeah man! It’s called. ‘For the love of God Robert you need to wake
up’. Pretty neat new features.”
Robs blood turned cold in his
veins.
“Uh w-what did you just say it was
called?”
Pete blinked, his smile fading.
“It’s called Domino, Version one point three. You okay Robby?”
Rob shook his head as if to clear
it. But he knew he’d heard perfectly fine.
“Yeah, sorry Pete. Long days and late
nights, you know the drill.”
“All good man, hey I’m headed back
now but ill chase up Bill from I.T. to hook your system up. Can you believe
we’re getting upgraded before those nerds in accounting?”
Pete walked off down the carpeted
isle between the cubicles. Rob put his head between his hands and breathed
hard. What the hell was going on? He raised himself again and reached over for
his computer mouse. Might as well get back to it.
His suited right arm bumped the
quarter-full cup of coffee and it spilled in a wide arc, across his desk. Rob
hissed a swearword, low enough that the adjacent cubicles wouldn’t notice. He
scrabbled around, hunting under his desk for something, anything to mop up the
spreading mess. There was nothing. He raised himself up again, and that’s when
he noticed it.
The silence.
The background bustle and hum of the
working office had ceased as instantly as a light switch being thrown. The
eerie quiet filled the room and Rob shivered as unease settled to the bottom of
his stomach like a film of silt. Slowly, he got up and looked over the low wall
of his cubicle office.
All the other cubicles were empty.
Computers sat awake and waiting, monitors paused mid-action as if their users
had suddenly vanished. Nothing in the entire level moved so much as an inch.
Office chairs didn’t rattle or squeak. Keyboards didn’t clatter. Phones didn’t
ring, weren’t answered. Paper wasn’t ruffled around, because there was no one
there to read the words upon them. The floor was inexplicably, suddenly devoid
of the dozens of workers who’d been there just moments before.
Stopping his slow turn from the
middle of his cubicle, Rob took a step out, confused, looking around as if at
any moment the rest of the staff would suddenly spring out in some surprise
gag. They didn’t. He started to get seriously spooked out. The only thing he
could hear over the thudding of his heart in his ears was the footfalls that
mimicked it as he paced quickly across the carpet towards the silvery elevator
doors at the far end of the level. The dinged open loudly, conspicuous in the
devoid, still air. He climbed inside. The ground floor, the lobby. There would
be people down there, there always was. And at the front desk security monitors
to show where everyone had gone. The bright red LED numbers rolled by for
several uncomfortable moments. Nobody stopped the elevator on its way down.
With a sharp Ding! The doors parted again,
and he practically leapt out into the wide, modern lobby area of the ground floor.
White marble tiles stretched away
from him towards a huge glassed-fronted entranceway that let in streaming
bright sunlight from outside. A wide, rotating door was set in the middle, its
revolving glass panes hanging depressingly still though it was a busy part of
the day. Rob jerked to a stop and looked around, over the long waist-high
reception area. The leather-backed sleek chairs of the lobby staff were turned
slightly in every which direction but were vacant. The lobby was silent and
empty, as deserted as the floor he’d just departed.
Something outside caught his eye. It
was a man, in a dark grey nearly black business suit, elderly and balding, the
shiny peak of his some with its rear in his direction. Rob ran forward and
shoved through the large revolving glass doors and out into the sunset. He
strode hurriedly towards the man, just off to the left of the entrance. A
slight breeze blew and ruffled the fellows coat, but he didn’t move to adjust
it. He stood stock still.
“Uh, hey there! Excuse me, do you
know where everyone is?”
The man didn’t budge, nor turn his
head towards Rob as he approach.
“Um, excuse me…” Rob reached out to
nudge the man’s arm to get his attention. He obviously hadn’t heard the first
time. The man didn’t respond. Didn’t even twitch. He remained stolidly still,
staring forward and away from Rob. Slightly irritated, he made around the man.
His lines and wrinkles were deep in
a kindly face. The spectacles he wore were square and modern, thinly lensed
unlike those worn by Peter. As Robert came around, the watery grey eyes behind
them didn’t move. He didn’t make any sign of acknowledgement whatsoever.
“Hi, sorry…” He began again but he
stopped.
Not a hair on the man’s head was
moving in the wind. He stood there, still as if carved from metal. Unblinking.
Rob raised a hand and waved it in front of his face, the long shadows cast from
his fingers splaying across the old man’s eyes. Nothing. Not even a flutter in
his face. Robert looked around. He could see more people now. The buildings
entrance opened onto a wide, brick pedestrian avenue where traffic was not
permitted. Tall glass buildings, not quite sky scrapers rose across the other
edges of the avenue, intersected by the walking place. In the centre was a
single, simple stone fountain. The water in it was held suspended, as if frozen
mid-jet, sparkling.
There was a woman in a dark brown
overcoat leading her daughter dressed in a bright yellow windbreaker by the
hand. Across the square, a teenager was rolling along the brickwork of the
ground, left leg poised mid-push upon the ground. Another man, younger, also
wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase strode confidently across the area,
coming from or to one of the tall buildings to wither side. All were completely
stock-still, perfectly frozen in time.
Robert breathed heavily. “What the f-“
“Robert Crusoe.” A smooth voice
asked. He whipped around at the sound.
There was another man there, very
different looking than the others. He was dressed in an impeccably tailored
suit of the purest white material. His tie and shirt also were brilliantly pale,
and it almost hurt Robs eyes to look at him. His hair was stark white, as were
his eyebrows upon a thin, yet handsome face. No lines creased his face, not
even at the corner of his eyes, nor around his mouth as he spoke. Even the very
irises of his eyes were blank, devoid of all colour, pale.
“I-who are you?” stammered Rob. The
figure before him gave him more chills of unease.
“I am the system administrator, or
more precisely, the person you see before you is his avatar in this reality. I
have been sent to retrieve you. Though I admit, it has taken some time to
breach the barrier.”
Robert blinked. “Retrieve me? From
where? What barrier? Hey, do you know where everyone is?”
The man nodded in a serious fashion.
“In a way I do. Not the people here. They are mere projections, constructed
within the environment. The people without, however, are very anxious for your
revival.”
“Enviro- wait, revival?”
The man nodded again, quite sincere.
“Yes. You have been stuck here for some time, I’m afraid. Some seven hundred
and forty-seven days real time. There was a server malfunction, you’ve been in
the same memory loop now for… and incalculable amount of cycles within the
system.”
Rob took a step towards the man, his irritation
rising. He wasn’t making any sense, and he had to find the other people. This
clown was slowing him down.
“Look buddy, you’re not making any
sense. Either spit it out or get out of my way. Something freaky is going on
and I intend to find out what.”
The man looked at him for a minute
in silence. It stretched so that Rob began to fear that he had frozen in time
too, just like the others scattered around the broad avenue.
“You’re in a memory sim, Robert. A
detailed reconstruction conjured by your own brain in our artificial reality
system. It’s a standard past-time for many, but again, something happened, a
glitch in our server software. We have only been able to reach you now. You
have loved ones waiting. Carolanne has especially been remiss these past years
while you remained within the system.”
The white being acted as though that
explained everything. In fact, it only raised more and angered Rob further.
“Carol? You know where she is? Tell
me! What’s all that crap about memory?”
He nodded in that simple way of his.
Direct. “Yes. She is outside the simulation, in the real world, awaiting your
return. She has been very insistent on sending through messages, trying to get
your attention, though we doubted very many would get through. You’ve been
stuck here, in the memory of the day you two first went on a date, the same day
she agreed to it. October third, nineteen ninety-three. You were reliving it,
perhaps to revisit or reexperience the events. Again, it is very common. You
have been reliving it constantly for nearly two years now. Every time, starting
anew with no memory of before as the feedback loop cycles again. Please, you
must come with me, there is little time.”
He extended a hand, so white it
almost seemed gloved in bleached leather. Rob stared at it.
“None of this is real?” He
whispered.
“Oh yes, it is quite real. Only it’s
a memory from your past, re-cycling through your nervous system utilising our
virtual reality system synched directly into your brain. Now, if you’d take my
hand.”
Robert looked up into the inhuman
face.
“I’ll get to see Carolanne?” He
asked.
The administrator nodded. “Your
wife. Yes.”
Robert reached out, slowly,
hesitantly. Then he grasped the pale digits in front of him firmly.
As his hand connected, the woman
dressed in the brown overcoat leading the child across the avenue looked up.
“NO ROBERT! DON’T!” She screamed,
too late.
The world around him faded into blinding
white. There was a sharp explosion of pain from behind his eyes, rocketing
through his brain. Then nothing.
Several minutes later, Robert Crusoe
opened his eyes and woke up.
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