Thomas World (39 page)

The use of a BCI in conjunction with an immersive simulated environment caused great controversy after widespread reports of addiction were reported, and led to the introduction of a bill by U.S. Rep Tom Mix (HB 3141) to limit or ban their use. The bill gained additional attention when it was made public that one of the simulation's creators, Thomas Phillips, was “locked” inside the game. According to a team of physicians and mental health professionals, Phillips has experienced a repeating story of his own design since March 1, 2032, or over three years as of this writing. Phillips' body is bedridden and he is fed with an IV. He—

“Thomas?”

Someone is behind me. I turn around and find Sophia, wearing a light blue T-shirt, nothing more.

She is beautiful. Her skin so smooth, her features sharp and soft all at the same time. Her eyes are blue and bright. Her smile is electric, radiant, her teeth are pearlescent. Her blonde hair is the color of flax and the texture of silk.

She's a screenwriting professor.

She has said all the right things, has made me feel at home even though she's not the woman I have come to know over the past year.

Sophia isn't real.

She blinks at me innocently.

I stand up.

“Thomas?” she asks.

Remember the woman on the road? The violinist, Sophie Trudeau? She asked me,
What happens when the androids decide they don't want to play along anymore?

Ever since all this began I've been worried only about what was happening to me, and why I had been chosen for this great adventure. Even as the story wore on, when it became clear that everyone around me was a two-dimensional character, I hardly cared about what it meant for them. I'm not sure I've done one selfless thing since all this began. It's all been for me.

Because I built this world.

I remember once (or at least I think I remember), many years ago, when Gloria came home from work and found me drunk, stretched across the living room couch, listening to loud music in the dark, depressed because another one of my screenplays had been rejected. She sat down and rubbed my head and carefully explained her opinion about my work. She had never done that before, had never been so bald in her criticism, and to be honest I was not prepared to listen.

Your stories lack humanness
, Gloria told me.
You don't let your characters feel anything. Even in the most basic action thriller, the Hollywood crap you hate, the protagonist experiences something, even if it's clichéd and overwrought and stupid. The emotion is still there. Your plots are always exciting and thought-provoking, but the people within them might as well be robots. They don't feel anything or care about anything or anyone
.
And I don't know why that is, because
you
certainly seem to feel things.

Gloria went on to suggest that I write a story populated with real human beings, characters who loved and hated and longed for people, who were devastated by loss and thrilled by accomplishment and so on. She said if I tried to find truth in my characters, instead of putting them through the motions of some convoluted plot, I could separate myself from the thousands of other writers who all churned out the same soulless films hoping to hit it big. To her, the only way I would ever be able to do this would be to leave my computer behind, to go out into the world and learn the stories of real people. She suggested I volunteer for charity work, join social groups, play teams sports instead of golf, anything that would put me in touch with actual people.

But instead of leaving my computer behind, I have apparently crawled inside it. I have no idea what is real and what isn't. I'm not even sure who I am, because I certainly don't remember writing any “dynamic” films.

Still, the imperfect Creator is me.

“Thomas,” Sophia says again. I had forgotten she was there. “Look at me.”

“I'm sorry,” I say.

“What are you sorry for?”

“Everything.”

“Baby, what do you mean?”

“I've used you. All of you.”

“The FBI agents are outside,” she says. “They have been tracking you across the country. They're going to frame you for murder and lock you in prison so they can keep an eye on you. So they will continue to have a reason to exist.”

My characters are rebelling against me, and I don't blame them.

“But that's not going to happen, baby. If you die or otherwise get stuck in a negative situation, the game will reset itself.”

I hardly know what to say or do.

“Baby,” Sophia says. “There's something I have to tell you.”

“Who does? Me? You?”

“You're sick, baby. Very sick. You're in pain and you don't know how to leave the game.”

“You mean I'm physically ill? Or mentally?”

“They said I'd never be able to talk to you again. I had given up hope. But Dick finally found a developer who could rewrite the code and patch me in through this character.”

“Patched in? You mean you're Gloria? Like for real?”

I reach for her, but she steps away from me.

“Gloria?”

“Baby, this is going to be hard for you to understand. You have to listen to me very carefully. You have to stay calm, okay? You don't want to make things any worse.”

“What? What is it?”

“Baby, my name is Gloria, but I'm not who you think I am. You've got me mixed up with someone else.”

“What?”

“The person you remember meeting in college, those memories are of someone else.”

Something falls into place, like tumblers in a lock. I think I know what she's going to say.

“You met a girl in college. Her name was Sophia. You fell in love with her. She was dating someone else, a young man named Jack, and you guys became close. She almost left Jack to be with you.”

The skin on my back is itchy, like I'm sweating, like ants are crawling up and down my spine.

“But, Thomas, she didn't. She didn't leave him.”

“But Gloria. I mean, we're married, right? How—”

“Thomas, no. Not anymore.”

“Sophia is some online person I met. She isn't real. How—”

“Baby, you have it mixed up. You were married to me. Gloria Knudson. We met after college and were married for ten years. But you…you could never let Sophia go. Even after she married Jack and had the twins, you kept her in your life. I tried to understand. I loved you so much, and even though I knew you cared for her, you were always so sweet to me. You treated me so well. I was willing to accept that life, because even though it wasn't perfect, it was good enough. I just never knew how unhappy you really were.”

“What do you mean I was unhappy?”

“You only optioned the one screenplay. That really ate at you. But the real problem was Sophia. Do you remember the bar? The banjo? The music you played?”

“Of course I do.”

“Baby, it never happened.”

My neck hurts. I feel like I'm going to throw up.

“The reason Sophia's parents came to visit that weekend was because she got engaged. Jack asked her to marry him while you were still learning to play.”

My hands have begun to shake. Gloria is crying.

“You made all this up, this world you're in right now. You wrote a Dynamic Film where Sophia really did leave you for Jack, but you tried to fit it into your existing life. You tried to make me her, Thomas, but you got confused. You see me but you remember her.”

“Gloria—”

“Do you know how much that hurts? I loved you, baby. I chose you among all other men in the world…and it turned out you didn't want me. You only wanted her.”

I open my mouth but nothing comes out. I want to apologize. I want to kill myself. I never got the chance to sing? Gloria (Sophia?) never saw her father play on stage with me? How could I have hurt my wife like this? This woman who doesn't look or feel like my wife?

“I am so sorry, Gloria. I don't know what to say.”

“There's nothing you can say, Thomas. The person I'm talking to didn't hurt me. You're in this machine, and you have no idea what you did.”

My hands shake so badly that I finally shove them into my pockets.

“Anyway,” she says. “I'm not here to hurt you back. I'm here to help you.”

I look down at the floor. I can't bear to look in her eyes.

“Help me how?”

“The doctors asked me to do this because they thought it would be easier for you. They think there is a way to get you out of the machine safely. The first time they tried, you went into convulsions. They were going to sedate you, but I told them not to. I told them to hook you back up, and it worked. How would sedation be any better than this?”

“How many times have I gone through? How many times has the game reset?”

“Over a thousand.”

My blood is ice. My veins are glaciers.

“The doctors think they can make it work this time, but there's no guarantee you would be the same as you were. You're a very rich man in the real world, Thomas. You have a lot of resources at your disposal. But there's no guarantee you could lead a normal life. The doctors say you will be prone to hallucinations and you might develop something like paranoid schizophrenia. In fact they think you may have already been sick before you went into the game, which is why things have gone so wrong.”

“I was crazy before I ever hooked myself up?”

“Not crazy. Just sick. It's okay to be sick, baby. It's okay to hurt sometimes.”

The way she's looking at me, with such compassion even considering what I did to her, how I abandoned her, hurts my heart. It makes me hate myself. It makes me want to die.

“What about you, Gloria? How are you? In the real world?”

“I'm okay. We were having problems for a while, Thomas. Way before you and Dick started the company. We were separated when you started the company. We were going through a divorce when you plugged in and never came out.”

“And—”

“I've met someone, if that's what you're asking. But it's for the best, Thomas. I'm sorry.”

“Gloria, I don't know what to say. I'm so sorry.”

“You don't have to keep saying that. I know you are. This isn't about me. I know that. It's about her.”

I look away from her again. It hurts so much to know what I've done to her, but it hurts just as much to know that I've lost Sophia. That I never even had her in the first place.

“I invited Sophia to join me,” Gloria says. “I thought it might help you. She wanted to, but she was also worried about being hooked up to the machine. Dick and the technicians tried to convince her it was safe, but in the end she declined. She says ‘hi' and wishes you well. She and Jack have four children now.”

I'm not here. This isn't happening.

“So,” I eventually say, “I can leave the game and take drugs and maybe hallucinate, or I can stay in the game and definitely hallucinate. On an endless loop.”

“No, Thomas. There is a very good chance you would recover. Your
Ant Farm
game, believe it or not, has led to advancements in brain research. There's no guarantee, that's all. There is a chance something could go wrong.”

I don't like either of those choices, but what can I do about it? Apparently nothing.

“There is another option,” Gloria says.

“There is?”

“You are in version 3.1 of the game. There have been several code updates and releases since you first hooked up. In this version, the secondary characters somehow retain vague memories from previous instances of the game. They have become more self-aware than they were originally designed. They have been developing a way to stop the game from resetting itself. That's why Runciter and the FBI and everyone are after you.”

“Can't it be reset in some other way?”

“Maybe, but that probably wouldn't stop them from remembering. Does it ever happen to you? These memories?”

“I think maybe it does. I don't know.”

“I hired someone to write you a new story. He's a famous screenwriter. He's a fan of Philip K. Dick's work, like many people are. Your game has changed the world, Thomas. I can't say if it's better or worse, but it is definitely different.”

“What is my new story?”

“The one you always wanted. Where you and Sophia live happily ever after.”

Gloria is crying again. I reach for her and this time she doesn't resist. I put my arms around her body. Her shaking body. I don't know how to be with her. I want to love her, to make her pain go away, but I can't. I don't even know her.

And then I have a thought, a crazy thought. Maybe I'm being paranoid. Maybe I always have been.

“Can I ask you a question, Gloria?”

“Sure.”

“Is my name Thomas Phillips in the real world?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And my partner is Dick Stanton?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Well, isn't that sort of a coincidence? Our names being Phillips and Dick? Even Thomas, since he was Philip K. Dick's fictional alter ego?”

“It's part of how you had the idea,” Gloria says. “Your names are what brought you to his work. It's why your stories so closely follow his. You even told me once, when you were high on Ambien, that you believed you really might be Philip K. Dick. That's part of the reason we think you might have been sick even before you hooked up to the game.”

“But your name really is Gloria, right?”

She pulls away and looks up at me.

“Baby, yes. Why are you asking me this?”

“Well, I can understand why all the characters here in the game have these names.”

“Yes?”

“But why do we? If we're from the real world?”

“Thomas,” she says. “It's just a coincidence. I just told you.”

“Is it?”

“Thomas, not everyone in the real world has a name related to Philip K. Dick. I promise you that.”