Solipsis: Escape from the Comatorium (16 page)

Renee
runs as fast as she can. Her stride seems to become longer and
longer. Her stomach churns with vertigo. Something is not right. She
seems to hang in the air between steps, as if she's being pulled up
by a balloon that makes her weigh less. A vendor's cart on the side
of the street accelerates down the street seemingly by itself, just
ahead of Renee. Everything on the street starts moving in the same
direction. Renee takes a last step then finds, in total panic, that
she doesn't come back to the street, she's in free-fall, along the
street. She tumbles through the air, unable to control her fall.
Medved is right behind her, unleashing a fearful roar.

Gravity
has been turned ninety degrees. Everyone and everything falls across
the city. The pursuing angels dive at them. The street is a dead end,
a towering glass and steel structure awaits them. Medved grabs Renee,
holding her tightly. Everything not bolted down falls sideways across
the city, toward hell.

Medved's
back crashes into the third story of the glass building, cushioning
the blow for Renee. The pursuing angels flap their wings to come to a
hover just overhead. Renee scrambles to her feet, helping Medved up,
he still carries Gwen's terrified head in his paw. They start running
up the side of the building and the angels fly in pursuit. The angels
cut them off, landing several stories further up the cantilever of a
skyscraper.

Rene
and Medved run back toward the vertical street. The angels run after
them. Renee looks up and finds skyscrapers tumbling like dominoes,
falling toward the mountain range and the hellish scene below.

Suddenly
a chunk of a skyscraper crashes into the building they are running
on, shearing off everything above the sixth floor. The angels
disappear in an explosion of glass and steel. The collision rocks the
building to its core. Renee and Medved lose their footing and fall.

Renee,
face down, catches her breath, then something catches her eye.
“Look!”

It's
a televator. Resting on the inside of a window inside the building,
perched over nothing. It can't be too long before that glass breaks
and the televator falls. The glass wall they're on cracks like a
spider-web. Renee carefully moves to the sheared off edge of the
building. She climbs down inside, clinging to anything she can.
Medved gets to the edge but stays put, afraid to climb down with the
abyss beyond. Renee seems unfazed by the heights. She climbs down and
gets down to the televator. She delicately puts her feet on the metal
supports surrounding the window the televator is on. The glass creaks
all around.

“
Throw
her down!” Renee shouts up to Medved. Renee prepares to catch
Gwen's head. Medved's sweaty bear paws prepare for the delicate toss.
Renee spots another chunk of building falling toward them. It's
almost in slow motion, threatening to crush Medved in seconds.

“
Now!”
Renee screams.

The
buildings collide in a crash of glass and steel. Renee hits the deck,
covering her head. The building plummets beneath her. Medved is
nowhere to be seen. Renee just hears the whistling of the wind as
she's perched above an infinite canyon. That's it, they're all gone.

She
tiptoes to the edge of the skyscraper, sits down with her feet
dangling over the edge. She watches pieces of the city fall silently
into the abyss.

“
Renee,”
a muffled, weak voice says. Renee at first thinks she's imagining it.
Then it persists. Renee delicately feels across a steel support,
avoiding the cracked glass, lifts up debris and finds her mother's
severed head. Renee sits down and holds her mother's head in her lap.

“
It's
okay,” Gwen says softly. “It's gonna be okay.”
Renee wishes she could believe her. She looks around for the
televator, spotting it delicately perched, jutting over nothing,
miraculously balanced on two protruding steel beams. Renee stands up,
taking small careful steps across crackling glass. She reaches the
beam and gets ready to tight-rope walk one of the beams.

“
Just
don't look down,” Renee says to herself. She closes in, walking
ever so carefully. The steel beam is incredibly thin, not quite as
wide as Renee's shoes. She tries to keep her focus on the beam,
without letting herself see past it and to the hell beyond. Renee
can't extend her arms to help balance, as she holds her mother's head
tightly with both hands. Renee takes a bad step, slipping, she
catches herself, but leans out to the side. She regains her balance,
holds still, catching her breath.

“
How
was your date with Patrick?” Gwen asks. Eight meters.

“
What?”
Renee is totally surprised.

“
How'd
it go,” Gwen asks.

“
Bad.”
Five meters. “What's it matter now, the world's ending.”

“
What
happened?” Gwen asks.

“
I
know what you're doing,” Renee says, taking another careful
step. “People perform better when they don't concentrate as
much on what they're doing.” Two meters. Renee is almost there.

“
Just
trying to help,” Gwen says.

“
Don't
worry, I got this,” Renee says as she takes another determined
step. “I don't panic.” The next building over gives way.
Fifteen stories of steel and glass falls away at a tremendous rate.
It leaves a vacuum in its wake. Renee's perch flexes and rebounds,
vibrating like a tuning fork. Her shoes lose traction due to the
vibration. Her feet start to slide, she flails in the breeze, trying
to keep her balance. She's about to get it under control, but her
foot slips, she's bent over the side, about to lose her balance,
leaning further and further.

Renee
accepts her fate. She is going to fall. Rather than spend this last
moment in a futile attempt to regain her balance, she stops fighting
her fall, turns toward the televator and tosses Gwen toward the open
door. With her mother's head floating away in slow motion, Renee
reaches for the bottom of the beam as she falls. Grabbing on just
barely. Glass shards lining the beam cut into her palm. Blood
trickles down her arms. The shards threaten to rip her hands wide
open and send her into the abyss. The skin of her hand begins to
give, ripping open.

Gwen
reaches down and grabs Renee. She reaches out from the televator,
fully bodied again. She tries to pull Renee up. Her bloody hand is
slippery. Gwen has trouble keeping her balance and pulling. She reels
Renee in, bringing her up. Renee reaches for the televator for
leverage, but the televator slips, sending her off balance. Gwen
loses her balance, and they fall, plummeting toward the mountains in
the distance.

They
pick up speed, hitting terminal velocity. The pounding wind is cold
and dry, immediately causing their skin to crack and bleed. They fall
for minutes, hands gripping each other for dear life. They fall past
the remnants of the suburbs. The mountains grow beneath them. But the
lake is still intact, seemingly sideways. They see skyscrapers
floating in the lake. Once they are over the lake, they suddenly
turn, falling toward the water. Gravity is still normal here. They
head for the water at high speed. In the instant before impact, they
see thousands of people clinging to debris, treading water, some
floating, seemingly dead. At this speed, water might as well be
concrete.

Storm
clouds pump a torrent of rain onto a lake. There is an enormous steel
cage, mostly submerged, rising just a few inches out of the water.
Thousands of people are in this cage, just barely able to pin their
faces to the bars, keeping just an inch or two above water. The waves
threaten to drown them at any second. They've been there for days.
Renee is alone in this sea of people. Her feet strain to keep her
perched on the bars under water. She occasionally slips, plunging
under the waves and frantically trying to get back above water. She
sees some kind of structure sticking out of the water. She slowly
pushes through crowd toward this structure. As she gets closer, she
can see angels standing on this platform. Renee pushes closer. She
sees many more angels, some circular device, hard to tell what it is,
and a lone televator. She spies on them for some time. There seems to
be a head angel, sitting on a throne. Two angels walk to the
televator, open the door, and yank someone out.

Renee
pushes through the bars, trying to make out the figure. It's her
father, Percival. Renee pushes her face against the bars and sees
Percival come to his feet, before the head angel, sitting on a
throne. Percival is shoved into a seat on a big circular device.

Percival
comes face to face with the perpetrator of this attack. He tries to
make sense of the facial features mapped onto this perfect angelic
body of muscle and armor.

“
Lazarus!?”

“
Why
are you doing this?” Nellie asks, looking up at Lazarus. His
golden armor brightly reflects the red suns.

“
Hey
I never really had a choice,” Lazarus replies, “I don't
have free will, remember. You've been leading souls astray long
enough Nellie.”

“
My
name is Percival.”

“
You're
a woman, don't try to pass off your delusion. You couldn't avoid
God's judgment forever Nellie. It was inevitable.”

“
Judge
not, lest ye be judged,” Percival says defiantly.

Lazarus
laughs, shaking his head. “Is that the best you can do? You
don't even understand what it means. That phrase doesn't mean that
you shouldn't judge,” Lazarus begins to lecture, “It
means you shouldn't judge unless you're ready to be judged yourself.
I'm not only ready, I'm eager for God's judgment. I can't wait for
the day that I stand before the lord and answer for my actions.”

“
How
do you know you're doing what god wants? All I see is you torturing
innocent people.”

“
Innocent?
Really? Innocent? You've been engaging in polygamous sex-changed
bestiality. Look me in the eyes and tell me that's what god wanted
for you,” Lazarus says.

“
Polyamorous,”
Percival corrects.

“
You
thought you could live forever, you thought you found a loophole. So
I had to come down here and make hell real for you.”

“
Just
kill us. If there's a hell and we really belong there, then that's
where we'll go. Don't torture us.”

“
I
can't murder,” Lazarus says, “I'm not a sinner like you.
I'm here to save souls. To show you the error of your ways, and to
bring you to God. I'm not a killer. I'm setting these people free.
Every last one of them, a lost soul, they're going to see the light.”

Percival
looks back at the sea of souls in purgatory. He starts to tear up.
“Just let us die,” Percival says quietly.

“
Come
on,” Lazarus says, “you're not seeing the beauty of it,
the poetry. Sinners create a false heaven, a prophet comes to show
them hell, thus saving their souls so they can go to the real heaven.
It's better than Shakespeare; it's biblical.”

“
What
if you're wrong?” Percival asks.

“
What
if you're wrong Nellie!?” Lazarus shouts. “You've used
all of man's baser instincts against him. You're offering up every
last indulgence, lust, gluttony, you've taken a selfish,
short-sighted society and given them anything they could ever want.
You're a slut, guiding them away from the lord, away from virtue,
down a path to an empty life; a godless, never-ending detour into
hell. I'm just showing them the way.”

“
And
what if you're wrong?”

“
I'm
not wrong,” Lazarus replies simply. “Any last words?”

“
Just
let us die,” Percival pleads.

“
I
condemn thee,” Lazarus nods to an angel. He forces Percival
back into a seat on the circular device. The angel pulls a lever, the
seat is actually part of a large catapult. The steel arm swings
around, flinging Percival at high speed toward the icy mountain tops.
He disappears over the peaks, flying to hell on the other side.

“
Next.”
Angels pull another person from limbo, through the televator and set
them on the catapult. One by one, Lazarus judges each person, cites
charges against them, using information from their profiles, condemns
them, and sends them catapulting over the mountains to the hell on
the other side. Once they finish with those who were in limbo, they
start on people in the sea, yanking them out, one at a time. They're
all about to be trapped forever in a literal hell. Not even death can
set them free. Renee pushes back from the bars, trying to get away
from the platform, away from the angels.