“Who here likes music?” They were back at the Matic house now, sitting on
lawn chairs in the front yard. Pacey had convened them, evidently thinking
it was funny that they tried to break out of the simulation by examining
blades of grass. While they were waiting to listen to his spiel, Mateo was
looking at the grass himself since he wasn’t around for that test before.
“I’m prepared to offer you a new home in a new dome,” Pacey finally started
to say. “It’s basically a city, though the residences are minimal. It’s all
about music. All the greats are there. Do you wanna see a live show with
Elvis Presely? We have that, as an android who looks, acts, and sounds
exactly like him. I can get you front row tickets. You can
always have front row tickets. Any show from any artist, past or
present.”
“What is this?” Marie questioned. “What are you doing here? Are you
seriously asking how we would like to live as prisoners?”
“I mean, would you rather I just decide for you?” Pacey asked. “Seems
weirder.”
“I remember you,” Leona pointed out, “but I don’t. You were...on a ship.”
Pacey sighed. “You were prisoners on that ship. You broke free, broke into
my lab, and tricked me into giving you my technology.”
Their memories weren’t all there yet, but the most relevant ones seemed to
come up when they were most needed. If they once had an adventure involving
a ball of rubber bands, seeing a rubber band ball here would probably bring
it back to the surface. But for now, it mostly had to do with their time on
Castlebourne, and now Leona and Marie’s brief stay on a ship commanded by
that Angry Fifth Divisioner who could not give his vendetta against them a
rest. “What are you talking about?” Leona asked. “I didn’t trick you into
anything. Yeah, I went in there to steal it, but you gave it to me instead.”
“You said that you were going to use it to protect a population in another
universe,” Pacey said.
“Yeah, and we did,” Ramses interjected. “The Ochivari can’t get in there
anymore.”
“Fair enough,” Pacey accepted, “but I told you not to use it for anything
else, yet you did, didn’t you? You created something called a slingdrive,
and you even managed to develop it enough for miniaturization and
interdimensional pocketing.”
Mateo stood. “You’re right, he did, which is why we should be able to leave
whenever we want. Right, guys?”
Pacey rolled his eyes. “I obviously put a dampener in the dome. You ain’t
goin’ nowhere. So sit back down!”
It seemed unlike Pacey to get all riled up and intense like this, so Mateo
did as he was told.
Pacey continued, “I don’t want to hurt you, which is exactly what would have
happened if I had tried to extract the technology from these bodies. I might
have asked you to switch to new ones, but that wouldn’t have solved the
problem of you having this technology. You would have rebuilt it.” He
dismissed it immediately as soon as Ramses opened his mouth to argue. “Even
if you promised not to. Something would come up, and you would have to break
our agreement. You already did! I asked you to use it once, then you
explored your options. You can’t be trusted, so I’m keeping you on this
planet. That is not in question. Your only choice now is which dome you want
to live in. Some are obviously off-limits, like The Bowl and The Terminal. I
thought Underburg was the best idea, because it’s pleasant, and inoffensive,
but I guess you didn’t like how nice it was. So I’ve come up with some other
ones, which is why I ask, do you like music? Melodome is the Music
City...the real one.”
“How do you have control over all of this?” Angela asked. “Where’s Hrockas,
and the rest of the staff?”
“They’re on the real Castlebourne,” Pacey answered. “That’s all I’ll say.
Even though I’m gonna erase your memories again once it’s time to wake you
up in the new dome, I don’t want there to be any memory of you understanding
where you are in the cosmos. I can’t delete memories, I can only cover them
up. It’s an ethics thing. I actually follow rules, even if I’m the one who
came up with them.”
“What are our other options?”
“Boyd,” Romana scolded.
“What?” Boyd asked her. “He has the power. I recognize power, I’m a
pragmatist.”
Pacey smiled with only a slight bit of relief, knowing that this didn’t mean
everyone was on board. “Well, you can also just live in the Palacium Hotel;
have any suite you want, whenever you want it. I’m sure you’re aware of all
the amenities, like the swimming pools, the game room, and the spa.”
“Boring!” Boyd complained.
“There’s also Tokyo 2077.”
“I’m not familiar with that one,” Olimpia noted.
“It’s what Tokyo looked like in the year 2077. Your lives would be as
interesting as you want them to be. I can even implant the Japanese language
in your brains, if you don’t already speak it.”
“I don’t like city environments,” Olimpia said. “What else you got?”
“You’re not seriously entertaining this idea?” Mateo asked her, shocked.
“He’s the bad guy here. We can’t just roll over.”
“What choice do we have?” Boyd posed. “As I said, he has the power.
Don’t antagonize the antagonist. Isn’t that one of
your rules?”
“Technically, it’s mine,” Leona said. “And technically I agree.”
“Et tu Brute?” Mateo didn’t know where that phrase came from. He just hoped
that he was using it right.
“Yesterday, we thought that we were hopeless because we were in a virtual
simulation, where we couldn’t even trust our own minds.” Leona paused
dramatically. “That doesn’t appear to be the case. So we are not hopeless.
Put us in whatever dome you want,” she said to Pacey. “We’ll get out again.”
“You’re welcome to try, but you won’t remember any of this.”
“Go on with your options,” Ramses spat.
Pacey wasn’t perturbed. “Canopydome might be nice. It’s a rainforest, but
there are nice places to stay.”
“What if we refuse to choose?” Mateo asked.
“Then I’ll choose for you, and you might not like it. And if you continue to
piss me off, you might really not like it.”
“We can’t just let him control us,” Ramses argued. “We have to fight.”
“You’re changing your tune,” Romana pointed out.
“It’s not hopeless anymore,” Ramses explained. “We’re physical, I didn’t
know that. I can’t tell you all what to do, but I will say that I’m
not going to choose my own prison. I reject it on principle.”
“I have a nice place lined up for you,” Pacey said. “Maybe pack a coat or
two.”
“Do your worst,” Ramses volleyed.
“He doesn’t speak for all of us,” Angela said, trying to be clear on her
concession.
“He speaks for me,” Mateo told him.
“Then you won’t all necessarily be together anymore,” Pacey decided. “But
don’t worry, because most of you won’t remember each other anyway.” He
glared at Mateo. “Most of you,” he repeated. “Some of you might even not be
alone.” He stood there for a moment, in apparent deep thought. “Okay, I have
your assignments. Go to sleep.”
His command was ineluctable. He said it, they did.
Mateo woke up with a start. It was dark, but he could see the foreboding
crooked lines of bare tree branches above him. He was in the forest. It was
soft and dry. He could not bring himself out of an intense feeling of fear.
At first, he thought it was due to a nightmare, but he couldn’t remember
having one. No, he was afraid of something here, in the real world. He
darted his eyes back and forth, but he daren’t move a muscle. Something was
around him, lurking...biding its time. He didn’t know what it was, but it
was incredibly dangerous. This whole world was dangerous. Even if he managed
to clear the most imminent threat, another would be right there in moments.
He was so uncomfortable, though, on a root maybe. The more he adjusted his
position—the more sound he made—the more enemies would be alerted to his
presence, and his location. They weren’t just enemies, though. They were
monsters. There were all monsters.
He could remember what happened now. The current antagonist dropped him
under this dome with full memory of all that happened in the dome before. He
even found himself being able to distinguish the true experiences from the
implanted memories that Pacey used to reinforce the illusion. As Mateo lay
there, still too fearful to make a move, he found his old memories returning
as well. His unremarkable origins in the 1980s, growing up with his adoptive
parents, being turned into a time traveler, unintentionally erasing himself
from the timeline, exploring space, fighting villains, changing the past. He
was Mateo Matic, husband to Leona Delaney, and father to Romana Nieman. And
he had to get back to all of his friends. Get up. Get up!
Mateo sat up, at first thinking it prudent to stay on his rear, but
realizing that to be the most vulnerable position. At least when he was on
his back, he was theoretically concealed. So he quickly shifted to a crouch.
He looked around, not seeing anything in the foliage, but knowing that they
were there. Pacey never specifically said where he would be sending him, but
there was only one place it could be, given recent developments. Hrockas
named this one Bloodbourne. Take every horror film killer, and stuff them in
one metropolitan-sized environment. That was the idea, to incorporate
visitors into a world full of real danger and violence. On Castlebourne,
there were safeguards in place, chief among them being every visitor’s
ability to have their consciousness transferred to a new substrate whenever
the old one became too damaged. It wasn’t so much an ability as a
requirement. It was just as illegal to let oneself die permanently and for
real as it was to kill someone else. According to Pacey’s cryptic words,
though, this wasn’t really Castlebourne; it was somehow just very similar to
it. Perhaps those safeguards weren’t around. The only thing to do now was to
find a way to survive.
Something was in the brush. There could be rabbits here, like that common
trope in fiction where that was what it turned out to be; a misdirect for
the audience to let their guard down just before the true jumpscare emerged.
Or it could be something genuinely frightening. Mateo didn’t want to stick
around and find out. There was no reason to approach the shaking leaves,
like the idiot protagonist in a movie. The only choice was to run.
Cautiously, but still quickly. He took off, deftly dodging tree trunks, and
avoiding getting his feet caught in exposed roots. Where was he running to?
Well, the scope of these domes were limited. They each had a radius of 41.5
kilometers. So if he just kept going in any direction, he would eventually
hit the wall. Now, whether he would be able to find an exit, or if there was
even one to find, was a different question. Either way, it was the only
logical way to go. Of course, he could already be next to a wall, and
running in the complete opposite direction, which would mean he would have
to travel the full 83 kilometers, but there was no way to know that.
Perhaps this was the wrong call. Maybe movie characters had the right idea
by investigating one unknown at a time. His running has evidently awakened a
number of monsters in the area. At first, only a couple of them showed up,
but then more. And more, and more, and more. Pretty soon, two dozen
creatures were chasing after him. He couldn’t run from them in a straight
line either, because some of them were actually ahead in his path. So he was
zigging and zagging, and desperately doing everything he could to avoid
being caught by even one of them. Then he saw something in the corner of his
eye. It was a human, and something about her figure made her seem less
threatening than the others, even though there were plenty of human killers
here. It was the mask, or rather the lack thereof. Most horror genre killers
wore some kind of mask, sometimes to conceal their identities, but also to
instill dread in their targets. For franchises, it was a way to become
iconic, and differentiate themselves from their competitors, even though the
formula was pretty much the same throughout all of them.
She wasn’t wearing a mask of any kind, and it didn’t look like she was
looking to attack him. No, it looked like they were chasing after
her too. Pacey said that not all of them would be alone for their
assignments. But it wasn’t Leona or Romana. Not Olimpia, nor either of the
Walton twins. Holy crap, it was Paige. Paige Turner, at an age that he had
never seen her before. “This way!” she cried.
She seemed to know what she was doing better than he. Mateo turned when she
did. They rounded a thick grove of trees, and found themselves coming up on
a cliff. He couldn’t see the elevation just yet, but based on the beautiful
scenic view beyond, it was probably pretty high. “You got a plan?”
“Don’t stop!” she replied.
He trusted her, though to be fair, it could have been a shapeshifter. Those
belonged in horror films too. Just as he leapt over the edge, she stopped
for half a second. This was just enough time for him to get ahead of her.
After she jumped, she reached for Mateo’s shoulders and held on, digging her
knees into his back. He wasn’t one to make a good guess at a falling height
even when he was in the middle of it, but it was surely over fifty meters.
He maybe could have grabbed some branches below to break his fall, but Paige
might get tangled up in them, so he stayed on the straight path, and just
let himself crash land on the relatively smooth ground below. He lay there
for a few minutes while the nanites flowing through his body started to
affect their repairs. It didn’t sound like she was worried, so the monsters
probably hadn’t taken a leap of faith behind them. Once he was healed enough
to move just a little, he turned over on his back. She was sitting next to
him, still catching her breath. “It’s nice to see you, Paige.”
“That’s not my name,” she responded. “I go by Octavia.”
