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Category:
Science Fiction
Publisher: Wise Media Group
ISBN-10: 1629670030
Type: Fiction
Pages: 262
Copyright: August 2, 2013
ISBN-13: 9781629670034
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
A dystopian future, ancient pandemic virus and alien visitation merge within a virtual world of four reunited friends. Time is running out!
Don’t Catch the Bug in Space!
The year is 2040. Facing the threat of a viral pandemic, four friends will finally unite for an extraordinary reunion. Within an orbiting virtual world, the former seminarians will confront personal demons, while sharing ideas about the meaning of life, friendship, and love—including the existence of God. It is an allegorical dance played out in the microcosmic and metaphysical drama of the human condition. Can they return to Earth before the plague makes it impossible, dropping the curtain on existence forever?
2013 SciFi Finalist Foreword Book of the Year Award!
https://botya.forewordreviews.com/finalists/2013/science-fiction/
SciFi Nominee--Global eBook Awards!
Excerpt
The Last Seminarian
By
RM Damato
Cover Design by Sara Galvis
Forget Jesus,
The stars died so you could be here today.
– Lawrence Kraus
If there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him.
– Voltaire
The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.
– Marcus Aurelius
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 R.M. Damato
eBook formatting by ePubConversions.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.
Trademarked names appear throughout this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, names are used in an editorial fashion, with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark.
The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Part I
When the visitors first found the blue planet they doubted its viability as a second home. But it seemed habitable. Time ran out. Soon their own home would be pulled into the great, churning black hole that fed off the galaxy with suicidal appetite. There was no turning back to Cygnus. Scores of families survived the epic journey among the thousands of people who initially crossed hundreds of lights years to find what the common traveler called the ‘blue spec.’ After many attempts to contact the blue planet, the alien astrophysicists had given up contacting a planet that orbited a mediocre star in absolute silence.
Chapter 1
All in all is all we are
– Nirvana
Rico sat in front of his monitor at the age of 90 and waited. He waited for lunch. One more hour remained. It was not that he had to wait for someone to serve him. He made his own lunch. It was part of the ritual every day to wait for the precise time to do each task. His life had been reduced to one redundant routine after another. Routines anchored his sanity. Most of the time his tasks had become vile but he needed to stay focus on his schedule. The schedule carried him from the time he turned 80 into his nonagenarian decade. Rico thought it was all bullshit.
A long life, so far, was the result of exterminating his cigarettes at 15 and picking up a bottle of wine at 80. It also helped that newly available medication extended his life and reduced the carcinogenic poisons he had been exposed to for almost a century. Then, he firmly believed without proof, sex helped, too. For a while, he moved into a retirement community where the males were spread thin, providing him the lifestyle of a sole rooster in a large, aging and eggless chicken coop. After a long, blissful debauchery, fun ended when his physician ended his erectile dysfunction medication. The drug did not turn out to be the Fountain of Youth, but Ponce de Leon would heartily approve of its usage when Rico could access it.
In reality, the real Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine, Florida was a well of sulfur water that gave the tourists diarrhea. He wished the same fate since he suffered from constipation. A medical order to terminate his sexual adventures came from his physician daughter, Veronica, who worked at the Center for Disease Control in Washington, D.C. She explained that the erectile dysfunction drug interfered with some other medications he took to keep his kidneys alive and filtering the waste that was slowly killing his body. What good medical science gave him had soon been taken away.
Added to his sudden loss of a chemical libido, Rico blamed his daughter for his constipation, too. The experience depressed him to no ends, leaving him with thoughts like ‘what was the point of going on?’ Rico’s only escape, the Retirement Home’s lonely senior women, from his existential angst had been brutally removed from his life. Veronica forced him out of the chicken coup. So he moved into his daughter’s vacation home, under her medical orders, and received daily visitations from a nurse who was young enough to be his great granddaughter who strangely and annoyingly also reminded him of his long deceased wife.
Occasionally the nurse’s mother followed up with a visitation as a cleaning lady and Rico found the will to sacrifice his health and devour 20 mg of contraband erectile dysfunction drug. ‘If there is a will there is an erection!’ he thought. Why she decided to have sex with a chemically virile 90 year old was easy to understand. In an economically imploding America, cash did the walk and the talk. His lover never let on she was there for the cash and Rico allowed her to pretend with false virtue and protestations until she quickly finished him off. In the end, she gratefully took the money and he felt good about the whole encounter, quite literally. Best of all with the drug his constipation did not return. Despite his daughter’s prudish admonitions and the results of weekly medical tests, the drug did not seem to interfere with his kidneys’ function. In fact, he felt more energetic.
Researching his medication on the Internet and its interactions with other medicines, Rico uncovered what he had longed suspected. Veronica deceived him about the drug. He lied to himself that he had wanted to be fooled so he would not be too angry with his daughter. Of course, he was not surprised. He had played the same deception game with Veronica since she was a child. He told her once, when she was a young pre-teenager, that chocolate contained a certain amount of roasted cockroaches that fell into the tumbler during the fermentation process. The girl believed the story until she entered college. Since then Veronica always reminded her father of how his cruel lie had been denying her of the pleasure of eating chocolate for nearly a decade. He then reminded her that abstaining from the consumption of chocolate had reduced her acne and so-called baby fat. Despite her effort, she could not rid herself from the pimply plaque.
Rico was sure that she knew about his stash of erectile dysfunction medicine and she ignored it. He lied and it failed to convince her. She lied about the negative interactions of drugs and it failed too. Both of them pretended and a tolerant stalemate existed. This polite denial of passive aggressive behavior while secretly derailing the other person’s efforts to circumvent any prohibitions was one of the reasons why Veronica was divorced and he was not a grandfather. Like her father, Veronica’s behavior drove her last three-month husband to divorce court. At the moment, she was courting her fifth husband despite the fact that she had aged beyond childbearing years and would not ever accept the option of an ex-vitro pregnancy. On a personal level, Veronica was still like her mother and would not live an ascetic life like her father. Unlike others in society, Rico opted to live a personally counter cultural existence of self-denial. It sprung from his adolescent conditioning in a subculture long gone. ‘Another regret.’ thought Rico bemoaning his lack of any extended progeny.
Feeling his stomach growl Rico looked up at the digital display on his monitor which told him it would soon be lunch. Lately the news reports focused on private satellite launches, virtual reality advances and the upcoming presidential elections. He cared little about anything but his personal issues like lunch. ‘It came with age.’ he told himself. After lunch, he would have his weekly sexual escapade, an important scheduled event. The nurse’s mother arrived in the afternoon usually on time. Rico thought it was his right to enjoy the delights of flesh before it would eventually fall off his bones. His kidneys could stand or collapse in the process for all he really cared. Thinking about his date, he swallowed his dose of enhancements and turned his attention to the monitor before him, tilted in a 25 degree angle towards his comfortable faux-leather chair.
He watched the continuing special on the presidential election as he sat down. The news broadcast, if it could have been called news, continued to drone on with its political pundits’ endless debates. Last year one of the slighted pundits brought a Taser and attacked his opponent until security returned the favor with its own vicious form of cattle prod. The violence temporarily improved the show’s rating which most critiques thought had been too high brow before the fight. The recent violent exchange first appealed to Rico but then soon after disappointed him for the program had lost its objectivity. Again he made a miscalculation. No news organization could achieve nor maintain any objectivity. Rico had long discovered that he needed to watch at least five stations to find the half-truth.
On the Internet it was not worth the effort for the two major media outlets had long ago blurred out any differences between them. With his body enhanced remote, he placed the settings at automatic self-direction and the monitor adjusted itself to his posture as he stood slowly up. Walking was not too difficult yet but the initial push to stand up took more effort each year. The monitor tilted back and forth, reading and calculating Rico’s position and then a hidden arm moved it to the right where the lunch counter sat at a 45 degree angle next to his other lounge chair. He liked eating while standing up for the posture gave him a strange feeling of a bogus defiance against aging. Rico felt confident. An infrared detector sensed his body heat and positioned the monitor in direct view of his eye sight. When he reached the counter, an organically processed sandwich and cup of vegetable soup appeared through a small open door on top of the counter. The temperature of the soup met his expectation of not being too hot or too cold. ‘Goldilocks would have approved.’ Rico mused.
Bringing the spoon to his mouth, he wondered if the taste of salt in his soup had diminished over the years due to the gustatory decline of his taste buds or his daughter’s manipulation of the food processor’s ingredient calibrator. He knew it was probably the latter. Then it happened once again – he had mentally conjured up Veronica on the monitor. As he took a second slurp from his spoon full of vegetable soup, with even more vegetable bits, a journalist suddenly ended the inane debate over individual carbon excise taxes to the new global threat of a new plague. Veronica’s face appeared on the monitor, projected through a government computer cam that gave her an almost oblong appearance. Seeing her, Rico lost his appetite, knowing how she loathed public issue exposure.
Veronica’s face appeared almost pale and her green eyes looked dull. Her imitation salt and pepper hair had been pulled back into a bun and a hygienic blue net wrapped itself over her crown. She stared directly into the camera, expressing a passionate agenda of conviction that promised to take no prisoners. Rico had first seen that expression when he told her when she was three that a trip to the zoo been cancelled. Anyone on the receiving end of her disappointment or anger did not fare well. Her 50 years of mercurial anger cost her three jobs, four husbands and thousands of dollars of therapy. Focusing on the monitor again, Rico could almost read his daughter’s thoughts. Veronica had been interrupted in her research and ordered to give this interview. He almost felt sorry for the journalist. Then the feelings of condolences quickly faded when Rico remembered that this particular journalist had upset him too more than once in the past.
Remembering that incident, he hoped that Veronica would be in a truly foul mood. But he also noticed that her eyes seemed to gloss over with a small hint of moisture. Never seeing Veronica in such an extreme turbulent state of emotional dismay, Rico had misgivings and trepidation. He suddenly lost his appetite and decided to walk back to his chair. Unfortunately, the monitor remained motionless and the motion driver had jammed up. Failing to move it with his remote, he reached up and pushed it. It still did not budge. So Rico angrily returned to the counter. Picking up his bowl of soup, he threw it at the monitor. A sharp clang ricocheted against the monitor’s frame and reverberated across the semi-acoustic room as the polycarbonate bowl fell to the floor with a hollow, oscillating clang. Rico stepped on the bowl to stop the reverberating noise.
Looking up, he saw that the bowl’s contents had splattered across the room, sending bits of soup all over the screen. Yellow droplets of soup fell like long, viscous tears. Immediately he regretted the shot until he saw how the dripping soup vandalized his least-favorite journalist’s face. So instead he congratulated himself on his old-age marksmanship. The soup’s liquid vegetable left an opaque glaze over the screen opposite of Veronica’s image. He then realized he would have to clean it before his paramour did. The extra-chore could cost him more than a little money. ‘I don’t need the hassle,’ Rico concluded.
Promising himself to eliminate the possibility of inevitable recriminations from his cleaning lady, Rico watched Veronica who had been answering some questions. She had been speaking but he did not listen. Rico’s attention focused on Veronica’s expressions as he noticed that she seemed to have difficulty finding the right words to say.
The despised reporter, a middle age man in his sixties, wearing a cluster of small, multi-colored jewelry in his eyebrows, twitched his mouth from side-to-side, which moved his mustache from the right to the left and back again like some like an old, swaggering Key Stone cop.
“So you are saying that we have a real crisis?” the reporter pressed his line of questions.
“Yes.” Veronica muttered. “This nation state and the planet are facing a crisis. My colleagues and I are meeting with U.N. President Morales in the next hour to discuss our options.”
“And the American president?” the reported countered incredulously. “Does our government have any say?”
“It has escalated to a new level,” Veronica warned. “We do not know what we are dealing with. The president will be in conversation via satellite.”
The reporter let out a frustrated sigh that did not affect the adhesive stiffness of his black, dyed mustache. Rico then noticed that his bleach blond hair emitted an eerie visual glow from behind the yellow, drying soup on the monitor. The wavelengths of color shifted from a deep mustard yellow to the color of a bright sunflower. Rico regretted the monitor needed to be cleaned. What a shame!
“So,” the reporter almost spoke in a condescending tone. “Let me summarize. One day….”
“No,” Veronica’s shouting opposition interrupted him. The poll meter at the bottom of the screen spiked up. The audience loved confrontations. “Shut up and listen.”
‘Good thing the audio condenser was working,’ Rico thought taking a bite from his sandwich. He wanted to laugh at Veronica’s impassioned interruption but he stopped himself just before choking. Although her outburst amused him, he became more concerned not recently having seen her as intense as the time when he had forgotten to pay her prom fee in high school.
“This isn’t a normal virus!” she warned with a wide gesticulating swing of her arms. She unintentionally rapped the monitor cam hard, knocking it to the side. Instantly she up righted it. “You have to understand.”
Rico watched and began to whistle out loud. He knew she was in a rage but he felt his anger also climb knowing that the reporter had baited his daughter. Veronica’s reputation for passionate outbursts provided the news broadcast an excellent opportunity for hours of entertainment. She walked into a trap. As always, her feelings had suppressed her common sense.
“Go ahead,” the reporter courted her with a sarcastic grin. “Explain it, Doctor.”
His calm invitation masked the excitement of having a government research doctor lose her composure and maybe have a break down during midday broadcast doldrums. The reporter woke up that morning worrying about how boring this interview would be and how it would continue to hamper his career. He doubted the staff and editorial board who told him about Veronica’s rumored bad temper. Now, he possessed the old definition of a news scoop. Not only was there a potential viral threat which he doubted since the agency had been actively lobbying for more funds for weeks but he had something better than a mega-death wrestling match. Looking at the ratings indicator he silently cheered as the numbers of the audience continued to climb. The public loved watching confrontations and texted their friends to join.
“Okay,” Veronica took a deep breath and stared intently into the cam. “In Egypt, archeologists found a tomb in the deep caverns of the Valley of Death. This necropolis housed the artisans and engineers of the old civilization. In one area, many tombs were different.”
“The report said sealed differently,” the reporter injected.
“Let me finish.” Veronica demanded. The reporter tried hard to suppress his grin. “These tombs were isolated far from the rest. They had a special waxy compound added to the cracks in the sarcophagus. Whoever sealed it meant to keep something out?”
“And that something is the Mummy’s Virus?” the reporter finished her thoughts. He suddenly realized that he had coined a new phrase and reminded himself to immediately copyright it before another rival stole it. “It’s kind of like a Halloween story?”
“Why do you do that?” Veronica snapped harshly. The reporter could not hold back his large grin. “It’s not humorous!” she lectured him but the reporter’s smile barely diminished. “As I explained earlier, archeologists unsuspectingly released a virus when they broke the seal. The disease killed thousands in Egypt and went dormant in the past. This disease explains why there are gaps in the hieroglyphics of the period. Scores of recorded decades are missing. We have no immunity to this new contamination. When we analyzed those currently infected, we continued our investigation and trailed the illness back to the archeological site that is now quarantined. Now the virus has also been exposed to the general public before we could intervene. Calculating the rate of its progress, we have the potential of an international epidemic.”
Rico then saw the three-dimensional graph charting the progress of the disease. At the very moment, he had doubts whether it had been a good idea to have mortgaged his old home to pay for Veronica’s medical school tuition. His daughter will be the cause of panic on the street and doomsdays gurus preaching apocalyptic nightmares. Despite his regret, the disease would have still remained a threat with or without his daughter’s input. He just wished Veronica was not now in the middle of the turmoil.
“Soon,” Veronica continued, “We will all be infected. It will seriously impact our economy.” Veronica paused to catch her breath and then anticipated the next question. “The symptoms are similar to the flu magnified one hundred times.”
“So,” the reporter responded flippantly, “do we all panic?” He then smiled sarcastically. Veronica glared at him, seeming to want to hit him. Suddenly the reporter winced from a shout going off into his earpiece. Upon receiving a cacophonous castigation, he immediately changed his tone and expression. “Seriously, what can each citizen do to protect themselves?”
‘Son-of-a-bitch,’ Rico mutter, regretting he did not have another bowl of soup to throw at the monitor.
“The government will issue an advisory and…” Veronica’s voice continued to transmit without any sound. The camera then switched to the reporter who seemed to be listening to additional instructions from his earpiece.
“Sorry, doctor,” the reporter apologized and the screen changed to an austere blue room displaying several national flags in the background. A mahogany podium with the Presidential Seal stood alone in the room. A large team of reporters flanked the room and the Secret Service kept them far away from the podium. “We are expecting an emergency statement from the White House. The President will soon speak to the nation about the virus and our sources say….”
“Fuck you,” Rico shouted at the reporter and turned off the monitor. “And fuck the fucking mummies.”
Moving himself away from the monitor, Rico had completely forgotten about his upcoming afternoon tryst and instead thought about his daughter’s state of mind. He knew she would be enraged and he needed to call her. After stumbling through the kitchen area, he spotted the phone and recognized the flashing green light, immediately grasping its meaning. Veronica had left him a text message telling her father she would call him later.
‘Stand by?’ Rico sarcastically repeated to himself. He didn’t want to hear the president since he expected his daughter to fill him in with the behind-the-scenes information. Her take on medical stories covered more depth than 60 hours of satellite news broadcasts. ‘Now what do I do?’
Tossing his sandwich, Rico sat down in his chair. He felt deflated, very old and totally useless. It finally hit him that he was burden, especially a burden on his daughter. He knew he was dependent and could not take action any more. Anyway even if he could, how would he be able to help Veronica? Rico knew he did not even have the skills to help when he was younger. All of his life he had been a history professor at the local college. Now, he had no audience or anyone to share his ideas with. Rico had out lived most of his friends. All he could do was sit home and wait for the women to arrive like a latched-key child.
It had been a long time since he allowed himself to sit around and feel sorry for himself. Then, he quickly had come to the conclusion after retirement that he needed to make the best out of the situation. He tried tutoring and community services but he often felt too weak or too bored to continue any reliable and consistent schedule. Often, his afternoon girlfriend would say he needed to go to church. Any sanctified suggestion invited an outburst of laughter and a sneer that would cost him a romantic rendezvous. She called him the devil and left the house. He could not grovel to some unknown superior being that he felt did not exist. It was not reasonable to give up his independent thoughts and submit to a bronze-age god that was a character in a religious text. These thoughts killed his good mood and he decided to call the two women he was expecting and cancel his appointments for the afternoon. The smell of the drying soup would have to wait to be cleaned until tomorrow.
Rico felt like staying where he was and waiting for Veronica’s call. So he picked up his phone and sent two text messages to cancel the appointments. No one responded so he sat down and waited. While he waited, his anger and anxiety diminished and he slowly fell asleep. He knew that his caretakers would still come to the house; both the promise of money and the implied legal obligations of their contract impelled them to visit Rico. His last thoughts before falling asleep were about his daughter. Nevertheless, his nap didn’t last long. A long, high-pitch buzz boomed out of every electronic orifice and reverberated throughout the rooms of his home. It crisscrossed and echoed into Rico’s deep conscious, instinctively lifting him in an upright position like a doctor’s old-fashioned knee-jerk reflex tests.
Rico instantly clicked the monitor on and, trying to pull himself out of a deep nihilistic shock, he grasped the remote to turn off the buzzing noise. The sound remained and he continued to press the button in the hope that it would end the buzzing noise. But the noise increased. Realizing his efforts had become futile; Rico opened his eyes again and decided that one soup bowl had not been enough. This time he would use a frying pan or a crock pot against the monitor. Spaghetti and steamed meat would add a new flavor to the gustatory experience of watching a monitor and Internet broadcasts through the veil of chicken soup. Although he told himself to stand up, he could not move. His body remained frozen while his anger began to ferment. It spoke of an unconscious rebellion – a bad sign for Rico. For the last time Rico had decided that computers would be eliminated from his life. He would extract all electronic communication devices from the house and return to the only friendly and archaic form of communication letter writing. Then, as he began to feel life returning to his legs, another sound surprised him and pushed him back into his lounge chair.
“Rico,” a scratchy voice called. “Are you there?”
Rico looked the monitor but could not see a face. The voice, although it came out of the monitor’s speaker, seemed to be emitted from every direction in the room. The whole room and all the electronic devices had been converted to speakers with the sole purpose of pushing him to the edge of dementia. He then feared that he was experiencing a psychotic episode that was symptomatic of dementia.
“Rico,” the voice jumped up a couple of decibels. “Answer! Time’s running out.”
“Is it you God?” Rico scoffed. “Tell me you mother fucker.” He was convinced that he had lost his mind.
Suspecting the voice was further evidence of an on-coming dementia; Rico placed two empty soup bowls over his ears and closed his eyes shut as he had done in kindergarten when Mrs. Lee told him to clean up his spilled paint. The juxtaposing of the spilled soup and childhood paint gave Rico some hope that his mind could be kept intact.
“Take the bowls off your ears,” the voice boomed. “I don’t have time. We have to talk soon. Don’t be a jerk. I am not god.”
“Obviously,” Rico bitterly dismissed the assumption. “God would use a better word than jerk.”
The unnamed voice had not been as offensive as Rico thought it had been. For some strange reason, it had a familiar and friendly ring to it. Yes, Rico had been called a jerk from time to time but it never brought a smile to his face unless it had been used by an old, forgotten friend. The intonation of the words could only be uttered by one person.
“Bill?” Rico uttered, hearing his muffled voice through the soup bowl. “What the hell?”
“Your memory is good,” Rico’s friend observed. “How are you doing my friend?”
“Friends don’t scare the shit out of each other,” Rico barked holding up the soup bowls in defiance.
“Were you hoping the soup bowls would protect you from the big, bad wolf?” Bill taunted him. “Feel okay?”
“Yeah,” Rico told him holding the bowls on his lap.
For a long while, he thought all of his friends were dead. And suddenly one old friend had resurrected himself. Maybe his dementia had truly taken hold? If Bill lived, new challenges waited in the shadows of his decline
Rico knew exactly whom he was dealing with. His friend Bill started several entrepreneurial software companies and had become a billionaire. They spoke on and off up to his fiftieth birthday. Then, Rico never spoke to him again. Relations sometimes ended unexpectedly without any bad will. He had never asked his friend for money although Bill arranged to have reunions for years at his mansion or on his yacht. Rico always felt that Bill had a reason to be secluded when he retreated from society and he did not wish to bother him about his motivations. In fact, he did not want to be bothered, too. There remained an extremely private aspect to Bill’s personality that did not allow anyone to enter. Rico wondered if any of his children or wives could penetrate that wall. Maybe they never did.
“Why can’t I see your face and you can see me?” Rico challenged him. “Is there a virus in the system?’
“I have had some personal health glitches,” Bill said apologetically, ignoring the question. “But you know my mind is always good.”
“Yeah,” Rico agreed and tried to stand up in a dignified manner. Bill never spoke of his health in the past and Rico did not wish to press the issue. From past experience, he knew Bill would soon tell him what he wanted to know. “You wired the whole fucking place and can see me from every angle. Pretty cool software, you son-of-a-bitch!” Rico turned around in admiration, nodding his head up and down. “So you are still alive? How many more of us are still alive? I haven’t talked to anyone in decades.”
“Four only including us,” Bill stated. “I have all your records. Do you want to see some old friends?”
“Yeah,” Rico answered without thinking. He felt suddenly invigorated like a child being invited to see a travelling circus. “When? A couple of weeks?”
“Much sooner,” Bill spoke solemnly. “We are running out of time.”
“Aren’t we all,” Rico commented to himself. A feeling of resentment against Bill’s imposition swelled. “By the way, I don’t like the way you pry into my life. You sometimes really bother me, you know.”
“Don’t worry, Rico,” Bill assured him. “Your daughter will approve.”
“Shit,” Rico cursed angrily, looking to find the soup bowl he had laid down. He picked it up. “I thought so. Did you talk to her?”
“At least your paranoia is healthy,” Bill joked, again dismissing Rico’s question. “Why is your monitor screen so blurry?”
“Worried?” Rico taunted him. “About flying soup bowls.”
“Oh,” Bill tried to understand. “I see you are still easily riled. Must have been the news today?” Rico refused to respond, knowing that he alluded to his daughter’s interview and the government announcements at the CDC. There was a long pause and Rico fingered the bowl with his gnarled fingers. “Can you visit me this hour? I mean get way from your nurse without too much suspicion?”
“What else don’t you know?” Rico complained. “Where?”
Rico agreed quickly. Not because he feared his friend or felt obligated, Rico had been contacted at a vulnerable moment and Bill provided an escape from the melee he was experiencing earlier. Nothing could surpass the entertainment and creativity Bill could provide. His nurse, as Bill called her, could definitely wait. Ironically, at that moment, his caretaker was trying to reach him on his cell phone. Rico ignored the flashing light.
“An associate will pick you up,” Bill said. “Just be ready.”
“You mean an employee?” Rico corrected his euphemism. For some reason, Rico felt as if he were Scrooge talking to his Marley. “Are you sending me the ghost of Christmas Past?”
“No,” Bill gently corrected him. “An assistant. Very trustworthy young man.”
“You trust people?” Rico chided him, continuing to ignore the flashing cell phone. He hoped it would be Veronica.
“I do trust you,” Bill responded with a hint of humor. Rico understood the sarcasm and chuckled. “I have only four real friends.”
“We’re more like preserved friends in a pickle jar,” Rico joked. “Okay. But what’s the rush?”
“Like I said,” Bill repeated. “We are running out of time. Leave all your traceable devices behind. Anything that can find you. Bye.”
The communication terminated and Rico noticed that the recent surge of electronic noise had vanished. His cell phone ceased to ring too. Rico wondered if Bill’s electric show would spike his monthly bill. ‘Bill would get a bill,’ he laughed at his stupid joke.
But then, Rico felt some dread from the invitation. Bill could be trusted to a point but his manners were always serious and forceful. Rico knew he had an agenda. Rico momentarily suppressed his skepticism as he looked at the text message and time on his phone. Surprisingly, the message had come from Bill and not Veronica or his nurse.
‘The bastard gave me a half an hour!’ he spoke to himself. Then he looked up at the monitor. ‘Next time I’ll send more chicken soup his way.’
*****
After Bill ended the call, Rico left a message with his caretaker and texted his daughter with an excuse. He hoped that they would give him a couple of hours of freedom before they called the emergency Alzheimer rescue center. So, to insure his privacy, Rico, remembering Bill’s recommendation, left his electronic devices at home and his credit cards that contained a GPS chip. Nothing on him could be traceable as far as he knew. But he still carried his Taser and refused to go unprotected. He would have to ask Bill about the possibility of being traced with a Taser.
In exactly half an hour, the house buzzed to life again. Bill’s assistant had used the same technology to tap into every electronic device to announce his employer’s arrival. This time the sound came across in lower but consistent decibels. Rico had been ready for ten minutes, not needing to comb his nearly baldhead and only having to brush his prosthetic teeth. He wore his favorite black sport jacket, white shirt and low brim hat. Looking in the mirror he smiled, anticipating Bill’s reaction when he saw how his clothes imitated their austere high school uniform. Then he walked to the door and opened it. Instantly the subtle, low pitch buzzing stopped. Without greeting the assistant, Rico took the initiative to speak.
“So,” Rico announced himself. “Let’s go.”
The man in front of him seemed to be in his early thirties, if you lived in the 20th century but Rico thought he could have been in his late fifties since much age modification had been available for a couple of decades. He had a long hair tied back and a thin-line beard. His eyes were not visible. The chauffer wore Internet scanners, which shielded his eyes and prevented anyone from eavesdropping from behind while he manipulated information through the Internet using his retina as a guide. A thin, barely visible wire left the end of the glasses’ frame and entered into the rear of his skull. Under his black tailored suit, muscles flexed and rippled, showing off their artificially enhanced sinews. Like others who bought enhancers, the chauffer demonstrated the effects of a drug that reduced the appearance of age about twenty plus years.
Unlike most people, Rico had rejected the artificial enhancers, which were mostly cosmetic. Many elders rejected it but it had recently become a social stigma for younger people to reject them. The only medical enhancements Rico accepted were the ones that made him mentally and physically vital and healthy so he could enjoy afternoon dalliance and his books. Most cosmetic enhancements did not dramatically extend life and Rico only cared about the enhancements that did improve the quality of his life. For his critics, Rico showed off his adroit physical condition, like falling down and doing a straddle, when people called him out for being old. The demonstration always made matters worse. They would call him a freak. A ‘Fuck off,’ from Rico usually sent them scampering away. Waving the Taser helped too.
“Good afternoon, sir,” the chauffer said in almost falsetto voice. He stood his ground as Rico tried to push himself through the doorway. “You must leave all traceable devices behind.”
“I did,” Rico said proudly, deciding to wait. “You’re the assistant?”
The chauffer nodded and then pulled out a small-thin black device and lightly touched the screen. A second later, a red light flashed and a small message appeared.
“No traceable implants. Amazing for a man of your status? You have a Taser? I’m sorry,” the chauffer spoke apologetically; “you must leave it behind although it is a good idea to carry one.”
“It’s traceable?” Rico inquired. The chauffer nodded. Rico nodded back and mentally scratched off one of his many questions for Bill.
Then he took out the Taser and put it on the counter.
“Let’s go before I decide to order an implant.”
“Sorry, sir,” the chauffer tried to explain himself. “It’s common procedure.”
“And what would you do if I had a GPS subdural implant? Most old folks have them.” Rico challenged him. “Cut it out?”
“No,” the chauffer responded in a matter-of-fact tone. “Disable it.”
“Good to know,” Rico said sarcastically taking a look at his forearm where GPS implants were implanted for seniors and children.
The chauffer stepped aside and let Rico pass in front of him. Outside, the day seemed hazy and the streets appeared to be more busy than usual. No pedestrians were visible and in fact Rico had not seen a pedestrian for a least a decade. Everyone moved about in a vehicle and exercised in climate control park arenas. Only the extremely impoverished ventured outside and Rico’s home was far from the: challenged zones. The Earth’s environment had greatly improved in the last 30 years yet the culture rejected the benefits of cleaner air. It was not popular to be out because of old fears concerning UV and carcinogenetic chemicals in the atmosphere.
The only observable lives were birds, stray animals, and surface vehicles called grounders. The grounders moved slowly in both directions as their lithium battery motors whined loudly. Years ago, the advent of electric car caused too many unfortunate deaths since pedestrians and cyclists did not hear the vehicles. Artificial whining sounds had been added as a safety feature but they caused an unnecessary annoyance, especially to those with sensitive hearing. It reminded Rico of the same buzzing sound that had reverberated in his home less than an hour ago. As a consequence, these noises pushed people further indoors. Worse of all the whining noise would be audible in the grounder too.
The chauffer walked a little ahead of Rico who followed him around the corner of the house where an aerial hover sat parked. It was not a grounder. Only companies and the rich owned one since the cost was prohibitive. The only time an average person hired a hover was to call for a taxi or to rent one for important occasions like funerals, medical emergencies, or weddings, but hopefully not in that order. These flying cars, the hovers, operated with the same privilege Lear jets once did in the past century. Less extensive but more practical than a Lear jet within short distances, hovers were guided by a GPS at 100 to 200 feet above the ground, moving at up to 150 miles an hour. The driver, who was a pseudo-pilot at best, only controlled the hover at lift off and landing. Most of the flight followed a pre-programmed plan. Since the introduction of the hover, the amount of accidents in the air had become very rare.
As the chauffer approached the hover, the gull wing doors sensed their approach and opened automatically. Rico entered the passenger side and hooked on the safety belts. The chauffer then entered and spoke some commands into the console, first providing a password code. A slight vibration told Rico that the hover was operational. Unlike the grounder, a whining sound did not follow the start-up. Taking the lift handle into his control, the hover slowly rose to a hundred feet and the lift handle went suddenly limp in the chauffer’s hand as the GPS satellite took control at 150 feet above the surface street.
“I like your car, Bill,” Rico spoke out loud, hoping Bill was listening. He loved new modes of transportation, especially a hover. Rico even went so far as to suggest to his daughter that they purchase one two years ago. She hated flying so he still waited for her to reconsider. At his age, Rico would not be given a license. “Hello? Bill?”
No one answered. Although Bill did not respond, Rico believed he could be still listening. Further, he did not care to strike up a conversation with the chauffer, now a pilot, knowing that Bill would have given the pilot strict instructions not to answer any questions about the purpose of the trip. Nevertheless, the pilot probably knew little to nothing about the meeting. Rico knew that Bill would tell him what he needed to know and maybe not what he wanted to know.
The journey was shorter than expected for Rico had been caught up in his thoughts as he watched the bustle of traffic below him. The traffic was thick and he felt pleasantly pleased to be above the stressful confusion. He also thought about how wonderful it was that he had reached the end of his life and did not have to live struggling further against the competition and demands of neo-modern society. The increase of technology in the last 70 years had given him and others more avenues for enjoyment and productivity. But the negative effect was that technology cost more money and bundled away quality time.
In the United States, technology recreated a social pyramid scheme where those on top reaped the wealth and the privileges while those on the bottom or in the middle believed that perseverance and personal dedication would push them up to the top. Financial success awaited all who tried. It was just out of reach for most citizens. The regular citizen settled for imitation and cheap technology, which straddled him with the added debt of licensing and subscriptions. Rico harbored the belief that the smart ones were those who moved away from the delusion of meaningless competition for more toys. Again, he was glad he was off life’s financially challenged game board where most people lived in a merry-go-round of slave wages and inescapable debt.
A strong surge of acceleration pushed the hover up, parallel with the shaft of an obsidian building. The dark, tinted windows of the building reflected the enormous maze and confusion of the city. In the refracted reflections of the glass, Rico saw hovers flying in stilted angles across the framed glass like excited gnats caught in a beam of light. A jolt from the hover returned Rico to the present moment as the chauffer took control of the handle stick and briefly guided the hover over the top of a black tarmac roof. When the hover landed, another assistant dressed in black wearing the same dark, wired glasses met them. He waited solemnly for the gull-wing door to open. Offering Rico his hand, he respectfully backed off when Rico waved him off. Rico took a careful look at his new assistant and could not discern any differences in their appearances. They seemed identical in size and shape.
The new assistant gestured for Rico to follow him. Looking back, Rico noticed that his chauffer pilot remained in the hover, speaking into the console. When the new assistant led Rico to a red circle on the roof, a small tube-like apparatus rose through the roof. A circular door opened effortlessly and they entered. Once inside, the rotating, circular door encapsulated them in a dark, cylindrical carbon composite. This elevator made a soft decent in the dark obsidian monolith beneath them before a soft, white light illuminated the interior. Then the light gave way to three-dimensional images. A hologram created an illusion of floating through cumulus clouds. “Twenty-five,” the second assistant spoke calmly.
The elevator continued to descend before stopping. Slight jerky motions Rico he was riding in a less-than-perfect elevator while experiencing some simulation sickness. Rico was also experiencing vertigo. Fortunately, the hologram changed its background to a prairie of golden wheat briskly dancing side-to-side in the breeze. At the same moment, the elevator made a lateral move and rolled forward for several long minutes before coming to a complete stop.
Rico had heard about cross-transversal elevators but he never expected to ride in one. The door arc slid away and the assistant gestured for Rico to step out. He did so and the circular door swiftly closed behind him, leaving him alone in a comfortable room. In front of Rico, a monitor 15 feet wide seemed to be suspended in the middle of the room without any attachments. The monitor looked like a prop used in a magic show. Around the monitor rested several different lounge sofas and chairs. To one side of the room, there stood a table with food and refreshments, a small icon in the corner of the room labeled the rest room’s location.
If anyone asked how the room was decorated, Rico could not say how for sure? He was surrounded by a virtual wall where scenes from nature and landmarks, throughout the world, gracefully appeared and disappeared. When Rico first entered the room, he was watching the Grand Canyon as it moved around him in a 360-degree direction, recreating the experience of floating in air. This time he hung suspended over the middle of the giant chasm. Then the images changed to the giant water falls of Iguacu in Brazil. For a split second, Rico cringed as the waters broke over the falls, giving him the impression of experiencing a gargantuan deluge smashing over his body. Experiencing again a feeling of simulation sickness, Rico could not deny that the view was spectacular. He wondered if the real falls were as majestic as the simulated one. Nevertheless, the view stunned his senses.
“You never went there?” Bill’s voice suddenly spoke. His face was not visible on any monitor or in person. Rico looked around but he did not see his old friend, eliciting the same eerie effect that he experienced at home. “The virtual experience is beyond magnificent. Have you ever thought about virtual vacations?”
“No,” Rico retorted sarcastically. “I have a successful, old friend who can send me there on a hover. Right?”
The water falls continued to spray over the cliff and crash on the rock below. Then the scene changed to a coral reef in the south Pacific. A multitude of fish, crustaceans, eels, mollusks and sharks moved in the synchronized dance of life and death, evading and maintaining their existence against other life and all the lifeless threat from the sea. Rico often thought when he privately waxed philosophical how life was the inanimate world’s only temporary escape from its empty existence. Eventually it faced extinction and an absurd return to its original status of simple molecules and atoms. The existence of life on Earth gave the proverbial middle finger to the rest of the universe.
“Yes,” Bill agreed seriously. “But any person with resources can do that.”
Rico waited for the rest of his explanation, remembering how Bill liked to use dramatic pauses.
“I can share something unique,” Bill revealed.
“And I am supposed to say, ‘Oh, Goody!’” Rico answered dryly. He was tired of the dog and pony show around him.
The scene of the coral reefs shifted to a hyper plane’s view of space on the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere. A thin purple line divided the realm of oxygen and nitrogen from infinite vacuum. Rico watched with awe, trying to imagine what Bill had in mind with this effect. He always hoped to travel to space, in fact it had been a life-long dream. But he still did not wish to massage Bill’s ego. The less he said the more Bill would divulge. Rico remembered mentally fencing with Bill as a young man and he knew answers would come as rhetorical phrases or half-truths at best. In the end, Bill would always win the intellectual argument.
“Where are you Bill? Why are you hiding?” Rico questioned. He then waited a minute watching the Earth slowly rotate away from the hyper plane’s orbital position. “Are you out of town? Are you scared?”
“I can’t come to you,” Bill stated bluntly, expressing his annoyance at Rico’s taunt. “I can’t come to you but you can come to me. I called you here because I…died recently.”
At that moment, the monitor’s scene changed to Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano during a violent eruption. Lava spewed out and flowed down its side against a black and eerie night background.
“Okay,” Rico paused and tried to find some hidden message in his friend’s admission. He believed that the word dead had a special or hidden meaning. Dead was not dead, obviously. He believed that friend was using a metaphor. “This is Halloween…a trick or treat, right? Or you’re the second person who has claimed to have been resurrected from the dead.”
At that moment, Rico’s fingers tingled with anxiety and he wished he had the soup bowls in his hands. His friend’s monitor was in serious need of some hot chicken broth. Although Bill always enjoyed a friendly repartee, Rico hated playing word games.
“I am dead and the dead is now speaking to you,” Bill’s voice pitched up.
“And when will you give me the tablet, oh lord?” Rico continued to taunt him. “I don’t see any burning bush?”
Bill waited a long while before answering and the same images continued to play on the panoramic monitor. “My mind is in the computer,” Bill explained. “I was dying from cancer and I had it transferred before I expired.”
Rico wanted say “Bullshit” but became distracted by the changing imagery. Watching the scenery change to a stark Sahara knoll of undulating sand crisscrossing in ripples, Rico sighed in frustration and pulled his hat off, quietly wringing it in his hands.
“You don’t believe me?” Bill continued. “I understand. But you have to know something. I can’t stay like this for long. My memories will soon deteriorate and I don’t have a body to return to.”
Suddenly, a tropical hurricane lashed a shoreline on the monitor screen and Rico began to smile to himself. The irony of the situation and it correlating images was becoming ironically apparent, predictable, and pedantic. “Nice,” Rico dismissed, tossing his hat at the monitor in lieu of the soup bowl.
“It’s genuine,” Bill assured him. “We don’t have much time. We are dying again.”
“We?” Rico questioned further Bill’s half-truth mounted. “I am fine and I have my doubts about all this talk about ... living in a machine.”
He thought about the disembodying experience of entering into the silicon flash drives and organic prism of a computer system and its monitors. It all repelled him and fascinated him. Despite a small revulsion to join Bill, Rico wished on a deep level Bill could offer him a hyper-speed visit to the international space station if possible – but not in a simulator.
“You said we? Who are we?” Rico continued to press.
“Another,” Bill clarified.
“Are they all in there already? Who?” Rico demanded to know. Picking up his hat, Rico slapped it angrily against his thigh.
“Only one person,” Bill confided. “Juan.”
“Juan?” Rico repeated, recalling his old high school friend who suffered a coma after an automobile accident. “He’s still conscious? I remember him being a vegetable.”
“Yes,” Bill admitted. “Inside he is alive. I am giving him the life he never had albeit a virtual one. But he’ll suffer from the same consequences as me. His body has been cremated already. That’s why we must move along with my plans.”
‘Juan,’ Rico thought to himself. Their mutual friend drove off a Malibu cliff a couple of days before their graduation. The result was that they never had a formal graduation, only receiving their diplomas through a postal dispersal. The tragedy caused enough controversy to almost close his school. Rico tried to stop Juan, chasing him through the canyon when his car swerved off the road. They had all been drinking on the beach and Juan drank much more than the others.
The accident paralyzed Juan and placed him in a coma. He became the living dead – trapped in his body for 70 years. Some advocated taking him off life support but his Catholic parents maintained their faith that their son would recover, giving God a chance to heal him. Eventually, he came off life support in a coma. Most doctors and therapists said that there was a possibility that Juan could still see, hear, and think. Rico never witnessed it and overtime he, like others, slowly stopped visiting their friend whose parents continued to wait for God’s rescue. But Juan would never be paroled from the horror of his existence until Bill’s technology inserted itself into his life. This bit of news sounded apocryphal but enticing. ‘The transition to a virtual word must have been more than dramatic,’ thought Rico.
“And you expect me to take the same risk? And die in a machine!” Rico spoke accusingly. “I know I don’t have much of a life left but it’s a real life.” The monitor screen changed to a view of the Sequoia trees towering up hundreds of feet above the Sierra Nevada ridge line.
“You will be sent back with no problem,” Bill assured him. “My doctors checked your medical records. You will be able to survive the transition. Rico, listen, you can still live out there for a decade or more. We have only nanoseconds in here, which will seem like a week to you. Give us a try. Please. It will be our final reunion. Maybe we can set things right? It’s an opportunity.”
“And maybe have a graduation?” Rico chided. “How nostalgically nice of you for working on my guilt; that’s what you mean about setting things right? I am not responsible for Juan.”
Bill did not answer. Bill, like all their classmates, knew that Juan’s accident had a dramatic effect on Rico and Rico had blamed himself when he was young. But Bill never knew that Rico had come to terms with his guilt, deciding that Juan was his own agent of misery and destruction.
Rico continued to watch the giant trees as the sunlight pierced the thick canopy and wavered on the pine needle floors below. A black bear approached one tree and investigated its surrounding. Soon cubs followed the mother to another location behind another tree. Slowly they disappeared under the forest’s umber as if the deep shadows absorbed them into a nihilistic trench.
“And are there any other friends who will join us?” Rico asked anxiously turning his attention away from the forest.
Rico did not wish to again see Juan but felt that Bill might be hiding a special reason he would not be privy to unless he agreed to Bill’s terms. Instinctively, Rico thought the trip to the simulator might be a vicarious purge for old guilt and resentments. Memories of those feelings of guilt once again welled up as Rico turned his attention to the monitor. Studying the images of sequoias, he wondered how tall many of the surviving trees still existed for they had once extended themselves in every direction and for miles out in the woods of central California. The current surviving sequoias had been decimated by the global changes in weather patterns that brought parching draughts to the pacific coast. Once, when Rico was a young boy, some of the fallen trees even served as tunnels for passing cars and homes for animals and hikers.
“Mike,” Bill uttered. “I convinced him yesterday.”
The mentioning of Mike shocked Rico. He had thought his classmate had died years ago. He once heard that he had terminal cancer. Why did Mike survive the cancer and not Bill? Few people actually died of cancer unless it had metastasized beyond medical intervention. Bill’s explanations made him skeptical.
“He entered a Trappist Monastery and led a sequestered life. He wanted to be dead to the world after he retired from the diocese,” Bill added to Rico’s knowledge.
“Same old shit,” Rico mocked. “So my old classmate Mike will lecture me about spiritual bliss and repentance in the bowls of silicon chips and organic pixels. How wonderful! How ironic! Actually, it would be interesting to listen to his rationale for having a soul while floating in a memory chip. His explanation of how a god would permit the technological capture of his spiritual essence will be fascinating. This may be entertaining. Hey, how did you convince him?”
“I mentioned one word,” Bill revealed.
“Juan,” Rico understood. “You are a bastard. You pulled off the same trick. What if Juan had died? You know we wouldn’t go didn’t you?”
“Well?” Bill asked again. “What’s your answer?”
“How can I refuse the party?” Rico agreed and opened his crinkled cap and placed it on his bald head. “You know it’s awfully weird to have this mix of individuals from our past. We were all so different.”
“You forget,” Bill corrected him. “We were all the same, too.”
“Really,” Rico doubted. “I just want my body back and not trapped in the machine. How long am I staying in the machine?’
“For an hour your time,” Bill blurted. “But once you’re inside, it will seem like five days.”
‘Five days,’ Rico repeated to himself. The monitor’s scene changed once more to a brilliant sunset on some Caribbean beach with sail boats and palm trees in the background. “So, when do the games begin?”
“Tomorrow,” Bill told him. “I want to tell you that you are doing me a personal favor. Thank you.”
“Am I doing myself a favor, Bill?” Rico challenged him, remembering Juan’s accident and the tragedy both he and his friends experienced. Bill remained silent. “See you tomorrow. Time?”
“Be here at eight,” Bill announced. “You’ll have to sign some papers. We will put your body in suspension. I’ll contact Veronica later when you are transferred back.”
“Yeah,” Rico considered the possibility. “She will appreciate it.” Then he remembered the international health crisis. “What are you not telling me, Bill? Is this pandemic a part of the deal?”
“No,” Bill countered. “It’s all really about us only.”
“And what do you expect to find out?” Rico continued to press.
“The final outcome? We will be able to create that,” Bill told him. “This reunion will have open software parameters. Everything will be driven by our imaginations and feelings. We write the story in here. The conclusion…will be an open book. You’ll see.”
“And then you and Juan die?” Rico concluded. The setting sun on the monitors disappeared and went blank.
“We’ll make our arrangements,” Bill admitted reluctantly. “Maybe inside? It’s something for us to later talk about. Okay?”
“Mike will have his objections. Spiritually speaking. You know that!” Rico reminded him. “I bet you didn’t tell him.”
“No. I didn’t,” Bill reluctantly admitted.
“No,” Rico smiled mischievously, understanding the coming confrontations. “That will be part of the whole fun. Won’t it? And all the other things you haven’t told me or Juan either?”
“We’ll do our best. I am sure of it,” Bill said confidently. “You have to trust me for a change.”
“I can trust,” Rico misquoted an Old Russian adage. “But I won’t be able to verify. Will I?”
“See you later my old friend,” Bill signed off abruptly.
His sudden disappearance struck Rico hard. He felt that Bill had dismissed him like an elementary school student without any regard for his feelings or thoughts. A slow eruption of anger swelled with his chest as Rico tried to push it away. But despite his effort, the anger broke over his consciousness.
“That’s it?” Rico challenged Bill and a blank monitor. Only silence remained in the room. Rico took a look around the room, picked up an apple on a small table, and stood quietly in front of the monitor. He placed his hat on his head. “Hey! Fuck you, Bill. I hope I can kick your ass in a virtual world.”
Bill did not respond and the lounge door to the elevator slid open. No one stood inside. Rico took a last look at the blank monitor before stepping into the elevator and biting into the apple. He finished it when the chute pushed up through the ceiling and opened on the roof. The trip in the elevator was very different. In fact, it was ordinary with plain dark panels and a simple key lock that opened to a secure control panel. A bright light shone through the polymer ceiling and Rico could see his reflection in the panel’s reflective carbon surface. He looked at his sagging and aging body and wondered if Bill would replace it with a simulated young body. If Juan could interact with them, according to Bill, the possibilities would be endless and maybe intimidating or frightening.
Once outside, the same hover awaited him and the chauffeur sat inside behind the handle stick. Before entering the hover, he took a final bite out of the apple and threw it onto the tarmac. The pilot did not move or express any disapproval at his littering. He then sat down, attached his safety harness and watched the tarmac shrink away from underneath him. On the way home, Rico thought about Bill and what had just transpired. He played the words over and over in his head, trying to uncover some hidden message or clue.
Rico had never heard of or read about any institution or eminent person transport a person’s conscious to a machine. Bill told him about this impossible venture because Rico was too jealous to share it with anyone. Deep down, Rico wanted to know if he could meet his once dead friend. He would not jeopardize telling anyone of the experiment and sabotaging a chance to interact with Juan. Only his friendship and trust compelled him to return to meet with Bill and his friends who would try to make sense out of a tattered part of their youth. How many people would have that chance?
‘Don’t pay any attention to the man behind the curtain,’ Rico paraphrased a line from his favorite childhood movie. Rico knew he would have to pay very close attention to Bill’s antics and motivations. Tomorrow, he would pierce the mirror darkly and enter a virtual world, neither dead nor alive. Whether or not he resided in the computer for one real hour would remain to be seen.
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