Solipsis: Escape from the Comatorium (23 page)

“
I
can't,” Seth responds. “They cut the internet, cut the
cable. And I'm not allowed to go down to the important areas.”

“
Then
just shoot Lazarus in the head, I don't care, do something!”

“
I
don't have a gun, and I don't know that I
could
kill. I can't do anything out there. But if you want to heal your
wounds in a televator, I can help you with that.”

“
Fine,”
Renee replies. “Where is it?”

The
televator rests on the bottom, its door sways in the current.
Remnants of skyscrapers dot the lake bottom like the teeth of a sea
monster. Renee and Seth swim down toward the televator. Renee's
breath runs out. She starts to panic. Seth tries to keep her going
down, but she pulls away from him. She comes to the surface with
speed, like a submarine doing an emergency blow, she breaks the
surface at high speed. She breathes frantically and Seth comes up
behind her.

“
I
can't do it.”

“
It's
just imaginary,” Seth says.

“
You're
not plugged in, you don't know how real this is,” Renee says,
out of breath. “That's why you have to do it, No matter how
hard I fight. You have to take me there.”

“
Are
you sure?” Seth asks. Renee nods.

Seth
takes hold of her firmly. She takes a last deep breath. They go
under. Seth holds her with his arms, but his wings and legs do the
swimming, down, down, down hundreds of meters to the bottom.

Renee
holds her breath as long as she can, then it gives out. She struggles
against him, but he keeps going. They see the lights of the televator
up ahead. Renee struggles harder, Seth fights her, holding her wrists
tight. A figure emerges from behind the skyscraper.

A
barbed spine pierces Seth's wing. It came from a leviathan, a scaly
sea serpent. The barb rips back out, taking a chunk of wing with it.
The sea serpent swoops in for the kill. Seth pushes on toward the
televator, with Renee fighting desperately to get free.

The
barb takes out a chunk of the other wing. Seth's holy wings keep
flapping, but are far less effective. Buoyancy pushes them up, his
wings fight as hard as they can to push them down. The result is a
hover, just a few meters above the televator. The leviathan's giant
eel-like mouth slithers towards them, they're a stationary target.
Its gaping mouth beckons.

Seth
tucks in his wings, creating a protective cocoon around Renee. No
longer flapping, buoyancy takes over, sending them skyward in a
hurry.

Seth
and Renee come bursting through the surface. Seth immediately starts
flapping his damaged wings, trying to fly them to safety before they
fall back in the water. Renee finally takes a breath. The sea serpent
shoots out of the water, just ahead of them. Seth has to turn to
dodge the scaly spines lining its back. They make for the city,
flying low. His damaged wings make for a turbulent flight. The
serpent slithers across the surface of the water, gaining on them
quickly. The Leviathan spouts a breath of fire, about to engulf them,
but they reach land and keep flying.

The
leviathan gets to the land and its slithering grinds to a halt. They
get away, flying towards the city.

Renee
and Seth sneak into the ruins of the city of Solipsis. “There's
a televator in a building just up ahead,” Seth says. They sneak
through the rubble, moving quietly through the remnants of buildings.
“We have to cross here,” Seth says, looking both ways
down the urban corridor. They start to cross the street.

“
Wait,”
Renee pulls back, spotting an angel circling overhead. They stop in
their tracks and retreat back to cover, hiding just inside the broken
window of a virtual-pet store. Renee eyes the blue skies, waiting for
the patrol to disappear. “So who are you?”

“
I'm
Seth.”

“
I
know your name,” Renee replies, “Why are you doing this?”

“
My
dad's gone way too far. I believe most of what he says, but this is
too far. It's not his place to torture people like this.”

“
Why'd
you go along with it before?”

“
It
seemed like the ends justified the means. It seemed like the right
thing to do. I guess I didn't think that hurting virtual people
wouldn't really be that real. I didn't know how much pain you can
feel. And now that they've started...the torture. I just couldn't go
along with it anymore.

Footsteps
approach, a patrol walks down the street. Renee lays down as low as
she can get, laying across his armored chest.

“
How
old are you?” Renee asks.

“
Why?”

“
Well,
your avatar is a buff twenty-five year old, but how old are you?”
Renee asks.

“
What
does it matter?”

“
This
might be my last chance to do this,” Renee says. She closes her
eyes and kisses him on the lips.

“
You
know I can't feel that right? I'm just at a console.”

“
I
know,” Renee says, sitting up. “I think they're gone.”
They push on, crossing the street and making their way through
alleys, back doors, broken windows and fallen buildings.

“
The
televator is in the next building, just around that corner,”
Seth says. “You ready?”

“
Let's
just stay low and run fast,” Renee says. They scoot along a
brick wall and to the corner. They peer around and discover two
behemoths crouched over the fallen building. “God dammit,”
Renee mutters. The behemoths are trying to reach into the rubble to
extract the televator, but are unable to get it cleanly out.

“
Now
what?” Renee whispers, watching the clumsy monsters.

“
That's
the last televator I know of,” Seth replies.

“
Well,
then you're helping me get in it,” Renee responds.

The
televator is pinned between two monstrous hands, but it clips a steel
girder and slips. The fingers slam together as the televator falls.
The behemoth, frustrated with his clumsy controls, smashes his fists
into the side of the building. Seth flies up slowly, they have no
reason to suspect he's not on their side.

“
Having
trouble with this?” Seth asks, landing on the shoulder of one
of the giants. Without warning, he swipes his sword through the
monster's neck to decapitate it, but the sword isn't long enough to
completely sever the head. The monster reaches for him with its big
clumsy hands. Half of the behemoth's neck gapes open. Seth swipes at
the remaining neck, leaving only a small section of skin holding the
head on. Seth slices the last strip of flesh and the head crashes to
the ground. The monster is not dead nor paralyzed, just blinded. He
leaps from the headless stump and flies at the other behemoth.

“
Go
now!” Seth shouts. Renee emerges from the cover of a nearby
building, sprinting across open ground toward the fallen building
containing the televator. Seth flies into the face of the other
behemoth, but it smacks him out of the air. Seth crashes into the
ground and the behemoth stomps towards Renee. Seth gets to his feet
quickly, taking to the air. Renee sprints right between the monster's
legs, and into a crevice in the side of the steel structure. The
behemoth turns around to follow, but it greeted by Seth's flaming
sword slashing his neck wide open. Seth crashes into the behemoth,
falling to the ground. The behemoth raises up its fists to smash Seth
into a paste, but in doing so, its head falls over backward, hanging
by its spine. The monster can't see a thing. It stumbles, then falls
directly on Seth, crushing him. Renee climbs up a steel girder, up
the sideways floor of the over-turned structure. The decapitated
monster's head sits on the street, its eyes watch her every move. It
directs its headless body after her.

Renee
is nearly to the televator, but as she leaps for the open door, the
headless behemoth bashes the televator. Renee and the televator
ricochet off the behemoth's hand, through a glass wall, and tumble
into the street, right by the decapitated behemoth's head.

She
scrambles to her feet, racing to the only exit. She jumps for the
open door of the televator, lying on its side. The headless behemoth
grabs her. The giant hand holds her tightly. She struggles to get out
of its grip. It squeezes harder.

Renee
screams in pain as the monster crushes her. Bones crack. Ribs
shatter. Her torso is being ground into sausage. Through the pain,
Renee is able to get one arm free, then the other. She tries to pry
herself from the monster's grip, but it has her too firmly. Her
pelvis flexes, threatening to shatter. She stares at the open
televator lying on the ground just a few meters away. Defeated. No
help is coming. The behemoth squeezes harder.

Renee
grabs onto her own head with her free hands. She bends her neck into
an ugly position, breaking bones. She grips her own skull, pulling,
twisting. Ligaments tear, tendons rip. Blood vessels hold together
like rubber bands before tearing and spurting blood.

Renee
rips off her own head.

She
holds her head in her hands and eyes the televator. She's only got
one chance at this. Renee throws her own head. She floats through the
air toward the televator. The behemoth panics and tries to block her
head, but just clips her face, sending her tumbling. Renee's head
lands on the pavement right by the open door to the televator.

“
Shit,”
she says. Renee lays on her cheek. She jerks her jaw back and forth,
rocking her face side to side on the pavement. She rolls her head
toward the televator using only her jaw. But her head isn't exactly
round, and she gets stuck on the lip of a crack in the street. The
headless behemoth swipes at her, missing. Its head can't clearly see
her and thus can't direct its body toward her. The behemoth throws
Renee's headless body into the air. The body comes crashing down,
sending all of the sensations directly to Renee. She screams out in
pain. Her screaming rocks her head in the wrong direction.

Renee
reaches her tongue out, pressing it to the ground to get some
traction, she pulls her head forward. She repeats, sticking her
tongue out, and pulling herself along. Centimeter by centimeter, lick
by lick, she reaches the televator. The lip of the metal door frame
extends about five centimeters off the ground, quite a hurdle for a
severed head. Renee sticks her tongue over the lip, searching for
something to hold on to, she finds it seamlessly flat. She tries to
bite the lip, but can barely get her teeth to it. She rocks her head,
trying to get closer to get a better bite. She finally gets her teeth
around it, but biting down sends her head up and away from the door.
She finds herself looking away from the televator. The headless
behemoth smashes the street blindly, trying to crush her or send the
televator away. She has to get in now.

Renee
starts flapping her jaw open and closed as quickly as she can. Her
head dances and wobbles around the pavement. The shadow of the
behemoth comes over her as it prepares to stomp on the televator. A
last final flip of the jaw sends her head at the televator. The stump
of her neck clips the door, but she makes it in, coming to a stop
inside the shaded televator. The door shuts automatically and the
whole televator is rocked violently as the behemoth stomps on it. The
televator is indestructible in the physics engine, so trying to stomp
it results in the televator flying away at high speed. Renee floats
around inside the televator in zero-g as it flies through the air.

“
Destination?”
the televator asks. It's the best sound Renee's ever heard in her
life.

Glass
eyes open and adjust to the lighting. Its eyes flicker back and forth
silently, finding nobody around, just thousands of docked animatrons.
Her legs are bent, hanging just off the ground. She's suspended by
the docking mechanism in her neck. Renee extends her legs, pushing
herself up and free of the docking port.

Renee
tiptoes down the row of robots, heading for the stairwell. She hears
voices and footsteps approaching. She stops, finding an empty docking
station, she stands in it and closes her eyes all but a sliver. The
guards walk past without noticing. She waits for them to round a
corner before she continues on. She quietly heads to the stairwell.
Just before she gets there, the stairwell door swings open.