Collection
R.I.C.A. pt. 4, Benjamin McEwan
“For years you have been watched!” Elise cried out. The townspeople gathered around her in front of the church. Their eyes were milky and blinking erratically, a consequence of being prematurely pulled out of enforced dreams. Elise had always wondered how the corporation was able to forcefully lock up an entire village each night. The answer lay in a new development — instead of controlling brain signals with magnets placed inside headsets, the entire bedroom would be built to contain hidden magnetic arrays within the walls.
She remembered breaking into the first house, making her way to the bedroom. Immediately upon entering the room her mind began to fog up. She fell to her hands and knees as her limbs suddenly felt as though they were comprised of solid iron, only barely managing to crawl back out of the room. She knew the hill was not insubstantial, and that it would take some time before Toby and Mitchell could make it to the control tower — so she knew that she would have to bypass the magnetic room before them if there was to be any hope of drawing a large enough crowd.
Elise ran back through the house. Passing through the kitchen she grabbed a few fridge magnets and stuffed them into her pockets. She was about to leave and attempt to raid another house when she noticed a glass door leading into a small back garden, at the far end of which was a wooden shed.
She lunged down by the door and began frantically attempting to pick its lock. The door was stubborn however, and in her frustration she placed too much tension on her tool and broke it clean off at the head. Lacking any other option, she picked up a nearby chair with metal legs and rammed it into the glass. It bounced straight off, yet she was undeterred. She tried again, this time swinging the chair at the door, making sure that the sharp edges of the legs hit perpendicular to the glass — it cracked. She swung again. The cracked spread wider. With a final swing she shattered the glass entirely.
The shed door was wooden and partially rotten so she kicked it down easily. As she had hoped — inside was a bike, and above it a row of helmets. One of the helmets was significantly older than the others, with a smooth round shape. She picked it off the wall and placed one of the magnets against it, to which it stuck strongly.
Donning the helmet she attempted to breach the bedroom once more. The effects of the magnets were undoubtedly still present, yet were mitigated just enough for her to stand up and move with some difficulty about the room. The bed was stationed in the middle of the room, its occupant still sleeping soundly, with a large wooden headboard that stretched from floor to ceiling. With some effort she was able to remove a panel from the headboard, revealing a small control panel behind it, and with minimal options or time to comprehend exactly what she was looking at, she slammed her hand against what appeared to be an emergency stop — and the world suddenly became clear again.
“You have been manipulated! Your dreams have been studied and catalogued!”
Tired faces stared back at her. Minds that needed to adjust back to reality — some of them likely having been torn by the cord from some alternative fabricated life.
“We are here to set you free, our people are working to bring an end to the tyranny of Ever-Lucid!” The whirr of a helicopter could be heard in the distance. “You can hear for yourselves — they have come to silence you, they have come to purge your memories of this night and place you back under their control, they have—”
Elise dropped dead on the ground. The crackle of a shot rang out a few seconds later. The pooling blood glistened under the light of the dropped flare.
On the hill overlooking the town, a group of armed soldiers clad in thick black kevlar emerged from the tall grass and aimed their rifles directly at Mitchell.
He dropped the gun, and stood up with his hands in the air. The soldiers beat him back to the ground, then forced a mask onto his face. A gas came pouring into his lungs, and in moments he was asleep.
***
The headset lifts from K’s head, and he stands up to join the other agents at the control desk.
“I will admit, their plan wasn’t half bad,” K says.
“The plan is still missing,” the agent next to him replies.
“Yes, well, we can extract that information in due time.”
“I think not. It is well and truly annihilated.”
“Are you suggesting that they used the headset in that shack to remove key memories?”
“I see no other possibility.”
K observes Mitchell. He is only a few meters in front of the desk, strapped down tightly in a surgical bed with a bulbous mass of wires and metal engulfing his head.
“Then I suppose we must take a more traditional approach.”
K walks back to his headset, and re-initialises the interrogation.
***
Mitchell sits on the bed in the corner of his apartment.
“I know I’m dreaming,” he states, before looking up to see K seated on a chair some distance in front of him.
“Yes, we kept that information with you this time.” K does not move a muscle, he is sat still as concrete, his eyes staring piercingly into Mitchell’s. “But you are aware that we can take it away at any time.”
“Go ahead.”
“Are you sure? You have no comprehension of the places we could leave you.”
Everything goes black for a moment. Suddenly the two of them are standing in a small concrete room. The walls are discoloured, and the floor is rough and agonising to stand on. The low ceiling bears down upon them, and a single drop of water falls to the ground every minute.
“Another effect we have mastered—” K continues “—is that of time dilation. How would you like to spend a hundred years in this box? Two hundred? Shall we make it a millennium?”
“It’s not a very creative punishment,” Mitchell replies drily.
“No, but it is an effective one.”
The world shifts again. Mitchell stands in the forest amongst trees he recognises. A strong wind rushes over him and the carpet of fallen leaves on the forest floor begins to rustle. Swiftly the pileup is cleared and a metal hatch is revealed.
“You weren’t able to get every important memory out of your mind in time it seems.” The hatch opens, and the whirr of a helicopter can suddenly be heard in the distance. “You did well, that we can admit. The bullet shattered Elise’s cranium and left us little to work with, and Toby’s brain was so thoroughly manipulated that it had practically melted — in an entirely literal sense.” The helicopter was overhead now. “But what did it get you? Soon Siobhan will also be dead, and you will be alone. You will spend uncountable days in a concrete box knowing only that you have failed and that you have nothing to go back to.” A spotlight comes bearing down upon them, bathing K in an overwhelming white light. “You need only tell us why you are here. Why were you chosen to live? It is implied information, not hard data — this we know, for if you were oblivious to your current purpose then you would not be your collected self.”
Mitchell does not stir. He says no words.
***
Siobhan can hear it now. The rhythm of the blades cutting through the air. She sits under layers of concrete, in a room filled with countless radios, receivers, oscilloscopes, record players. The sum total of her life after leaving Ever-Lucid.
She reaches under the desk and retrieves a large canister of petrol. She douses the equipment, the records, the room itself, and onwards to cover the entire bunker. Returning to her room, she lights an antique old lamp and places it under her chair — concealing its presence with a cloth. After this task she simply sits down once more.
Footsteps reverberate from above. A soldier’s chatter comes echoing down the entrance shaft. There is a moment of silence — then an explosion.
The hatch is blown open. The black suited riflemen begin to descend, flooding into the bunker and working through its rooms. They come closer, and closer, until finally Siobhan is looking down the spider-like lenses of a night-vision headset.
“Don’t move! Hands up!”
Siobhan complies readily. Another soldier steps in with a radio strapped to his chest. The voice of K comes blaring through.
“Dr. Bechtel, six successful years hiding from Ever-Lucid is a new record, you should be proud of yourself.”
Siobhan does not speak.
“This is Dr. Bechtel, yes? Mastermind behind the second generation headset and the long-term simulated reality experiment?”
“Do not associate me with such things.” Siobhan retorts.
“You cannot run from the past, Siobhan.”
“I have not been running, Kimberly.”
“I have your dog. He has been most useful.”
“He certainly has.”
One of the soldiers presses forwards.
“We should make this swift,” Kimberly continues, “You will come back to Ever-Lucid and you will be reprogrammed such that you are subservient to our needs and you will subsequently continue your research.”
The soldier steps forward again. Siobhan kicks over the lantern. The room is alight. A shot sounds — blood oozes from her stomach. The soldiers scramble to exit the bunker.
She drops to the floor, the fire searing her skin. She crawls through the blaze to reach the dropped and crackling radio. With her dying breaths, she speaks:
“I remember Kimberly, ten years ago suddenly sitting atop the most important scientific paper in the world. I remember Kimberly, seven years ago when he talked Dr. Caldera into forcing her own daughter into the dream study. I remember Kimberly, when he discarded the broken Caldera and assigned me to the cursed project. I remember the faces of the subjects on the day the system shut down and the collective hallucination was annihilated.” The air is thick with smoke now, the roar of the fire louder than anything else. “I see Kimberly now — a man who sacrificed all of humanity for a false goal, and who I know will search fruitlessly through my ashes for answers he will never receive.”
In the interrogation room, in the deep recesses of an Ever-Lucid facility, K begins to shudder in his chair. The agents scramble to extract him, yet the system refuses. All around them their infrastructure begins to shut down.
In the dream, Mitchell sits amongst the leaves with a smile wide on his face. The warped and distorted voice of Toby echoes around them. The simulation begins to collapse. K is lifted from the ground, suspended in the air — choking. His white suit and mask begin to flake away.
“Toby’s mind was always one to reject M.C.E.T.” Mitchell explained, “So we uploaded the best imprint of his brain that we could make in five minutes in a shack to your system. Doing so created a rogue AI with one singular goal — to find someone it recognised.” Mitchell held his arm up. “Here I am, Toby.” He turned back to K, “The poor guy has now cut a hole straight through your infrastructure, and I expect he’s ready to make plenty more damage.”
In reality, K’s body contorts under his headset. He wails a painful, guttural scream — and dies. The Ever-Lucid facility, and all worldwide Ever-Lucid products and infrastructure, shut down promptly.
EPILOGUE
A bunker lies sealed, hidden deep in the English countryside and buried under a mound of dirt. Inside, four beds are neatly made. Clothes are folded and packed into drawers. Dishes and cutlery are organised in the cupboards of a spotless kitchen. On the archway above the entrance, just before the shaft to the surface, a single photo hangs:
Four figures on the beach, awash with the golden glow of a sunset; restful expressions adorning their faces.