Solipsis: Escape from the Comatorium (34 page)

Gwen
laughs maniacally, not believing this mirage of light and color. It
can't be real. She navigates the menu with her mind, discovering that
her admin privileges have been reinstated.

She
searches the menu, finding:
System
Restore
.

The
stockades vanish, the ground changes around them, morphing into a
green field. A
ll
of Solipsis transforms back to the state saved six weeks ago. Gwen
activates a manual reset of all avatars, sending everyone to loading
purgatory that they individually control. Gwen stands in her loading
space, immediately she steps into the televator and instantly finds
herself at home. The house is exactly as it was. An instant later,
the televator door closes and out comes Medved.

“
Medved!”
Gwen says, holding back tears of joy. They hug, reunited, their world
safe. “How is this possible?”

“
I
don't know what happened,” Medved replies.

“
Where
are Renee and Percival?” Gwen asks. They look to the televator,
hoping, praying.

“
You're
deleted.”

BANG.

Paul
hits the floor.

Foot steps approach, clinking
across the wet grated floor. The footsteps clearly belong to an
animatron, too metallic to be human. Renee's glass eyes dart to the
edge of her rubber eye sockets, but her damaged neck can't raise her
head. The feet stop right in front of her, a hand reaches down and
picks up the bomb, stealing it from her grasp. The figure presses a
button on the bomb, then tosses it several meters over her shoulder.

“
What
are you doing!?” Renee asks, trying to roll over and discover
the identity of the animatron. Renee gets a clear look at this
miraculous savior. But it can't be. It's her. It's Renee's original
animatron, the one that looks like the real Renee, not this flesh-bot
she's been wired into.
“
Who
are you?” Renee asks of the person piloting her own animatron.

The able-bodied Renee bends
down, taking the gun away from Paul's limp hand. She walks away,
heading for the central node.

“
Who
are you?” The speakers in the flesh-bot's throat crackle. The
animatron returns, there's blood on her hands.

“
I'm
going to need your help. Seth is in bad shape, and I can't carry him
by myself.”

“
Then
I need hydraulic fluid,” Renee responds.

“
I'll
be right back.”

“
Wait!
Who are you!” The animatron disappears without an answer. Her
footsteps echo through the cavernous Comatorium and disappear through
a door that used to be sealed. It is eerily quiet. Movement catches
her eye. It's Paul, crawling away, his right arm hangs limp,
paralyzed from the gunshot. He slinks away, staying low, leaving a
trail of blood.

Footsteps approach. Renee can
only hope it's her animatron and not a remaining cult member. She
listens closely for the metallic clink in the steps, not sure if she
can hear it or if it's wishful thinking.

Renee's animatron returns with
two bottles of hydraulic fluid and a repair gun used to patch
hydraulic leaks with hot acrylic glue.

“
Paul's
alive,” Renee's speaker chokes out, her mouth has lost all
ability to move. The animatron yanks the gun from her side and looks
around, seeing nobody.

“
Shit,
where'd he go?” Her voice is exactly the same as Renee's voice.

“
I
don't know,” Renee replies. The animatron gets to work patching
Renee's hydraulic leaks. She then begins to pour in a bottle of
fluid. As she does, Renee can feel strength returning. “Who are
you?” Renee asks again.

The animatron is reluctant to
answer, tries to pay attention only to accurately pouring the
hydraulic fluid.

“
Please,”
Renee pleads, her mouth has started to move with her words, but
jerkily and with a slight delay.

The animatron reconsiders,
looking into Renee's eyes. “I...” Renee's animatron says,
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“
What!?”

“
I'm
Renee,” Renee's animatron says. “Who are you?”

“
I'm
Renee,” the wounded flesh-bot responds suspiciously.

“
That's
all of it, is that enough?” She tosses the empty plastic bottle
aside.

“
Let
me see,” the flesh-bot tries to stand up. Her weak legs wobble
and rattle, but she steadies herself and the strength seems to return
slowly. “I think I'm good.”

“
Come
on, he's in bad shape,” Renee's animatron replies, leading them
to Seth. He's unconscious, bleeding badly from his stomach. Each
robot claiming to be Renee takes a side, they bend down to pick him
up.

“
On
three. One. Two. Three.” They lift him up and begin to walk
sideways toward the control room door.

Seth
wakes up on an operating table. Two figures stand with their backs to
him, scrubbing their hands to prepare for surgery.

“
I'm
dying, aren't I?” Seth says, surprising the figures.

Renee's
animatron approaches, “You're going to be fine.”

“
I
don't believe you,” Seth replies, in a great deal of pain,
having lost a lot of blood.

“
Trust
me,” Renee tries to comfort him, and presses a gas-mask over
his nose.

“
Wait!”

“
What?”
Seth's response is muffled by the mask.

The
flesh-bot
Renee steps up, “First tell me what the hell is going on.”

“
He
doesn't have long, we need to vivisect him,” Renee says,
pressing the mask back down on his nose and mouth.

“
I
made a copy,” Seth is barely able to choke out an explanation.

“
You
what?”
flesh-bot
Renee
asks.

“
Just
shut up and help me,” Renee commands.

“
I
made a copy,” Seth repeats, starting to lose consciousness.

“
Which
one of us is the real one?” the wounded flesh-bot asks, but
Seth's consciousness has vanished.

“
We
don't have time to debate, just get on the other side and help me.”

“
Help
you? No, you're going to assist me,” the flesh-bot replies.

“
With
those clumsy hands, you'll kill him.”

“
Why
should I trust you?”

“
Because
we're the same person! You heard him yourself, he made a copy.”

“
So
which one of us is the copy?” the flesh-bot asks.

“
Does
it matter?”

“
Yes!”

“
Why?”

“
You
know it's you, you're the copy,” the flesh-bot replies. “See!
The computer is inside me, that's the original.” She points to
the blade computer that simulates her inside a rubber panel.

“
That
doesn't prove anything,” Renee replies, picking up a scalpel.

“
Yes
it does! Where's your computer? It's sitting in a room somewhere,
that's the copy!”

“
Are
you going to help me or not?”

“
You're
going to help me,” the flesh-bot grabs at the scalpel, Renee
yanks it away.

“
You've
only got one good hand, just get over there.”

She
relents, walking to the opposite side of the table.

“
Start
the sedative,” Renee says. Flesh-bot Renee finds a plastic vial
in a small refrigerator built into the wall. She attaches the vial to
the IV and squeezes in a precise amount that heads directly for his
blood stream. “How's the transfusion? Do we need another bag?”

“
No,
it's good.”

“
Alright,
I'm making the first incision.” Renee presses the scalpel into
his skin, but in an instant her body goes limp and collapses to the
floor with a sickening crack of metal on tile. The scalpel clatters
across the floor. Flesh-bot Renee timidly steps around the table,
finding the other her completely unconscious, unpiloted.

Renee
stares at the fallen robot in shock. “Paul unplugged her,”
she mutters to herself. Renee turns over her old animatron, digging
for the gun pinned against her hip. She gets the gun out, checks the
safety and the chamber, then looks to the door.

Is
he coming for me? Why unplug her? Did he just turn her off, or did he
take the blade with him? Maybe he's leaving the station with
her...with me. To keep for himself? To put in a new hell? To show the
world what an abomination I am? He's not getting out of this place
alive.

Renee
hangs another liter of blood, connecting it to Seth's IV. He's going
to have to wait.

The
small, leaking flesh-bot sneaks down a hallway, holding a pistol in
her weak hand. Slick drops of blue hydraulic fluid dot the floor in
her wake. She heads toward the room where her computer brain had
resided. With any luck, he's still in there and she can take him by
surprise.

Renee
approaches the door, peeking through the dark window, seeing
nothing.. She tentatively pushes the door open, sweeping her gun
across the room, finding it empty. Two blade computers are missing
from the bank. One is inside her. Paul has the other.

Renee
turns around, facing the door in the dark room. He could be anywhere.
No animatrons have yet awoken. The Neural Net is restarting, but will
take several minutes to come online. Renee will not have any help.
She steps into the hall, pistol first. She listens for any faint
echo, hearing nothing. She walks quickly, heading for the stairwell
at one end. Once inside, she hears a thumping sound dripping between
the narrow flights. She rushes up the stairs, slowing at each landing
to see if the sound is coming from this floor or one still yet above.
She gets to the top floor, at the edge of the glass atrium. Violent
waves wash high up the pyramid. The water slithers back down,
sticking to the imperfections in the glass.

Renee
slowly opens the door and steps into the atrium. A helicopter hovers
just meters above the platform at the peak of the pyramid.

Paul
runs up the spiral staircase in the center, his quick heavy steps on
the metal stairs reverberate like a crackling snare drum. He's
carrying the blade computer with him. As he comes around a spiral, he
sees the flesh-bot looking up at him. He hesitates, but takes off
running with even greater haste. Renee runs after him, touching only
every second or third step. She holds onto the spine of the stairs
with her left hand, keeping her tucked in close to the center of the
circle. Renee practically flies up the stairs.

She
reaches the top, where the stairs emerge onto the top platform. He
has beaten her to the top and could simply be waiting behind where
she will emerge. Renee takes very slow steps, leaning her head as far
forward as she can. The gray sky emerges slowly, one half-step at a
time.