Reprogramed

part 1

Gary is dragged down the halls of a sterilized looking compound. His head down, his body limp. This is not the boys first time hear. He knows where he is, he knows where he is going what he doesn’t know is what is going to happen when he gets there. He is being cared by two sentinels, four more stand guard.

A door is opened, Gary is thrown across the room and rolls along the floor landing on his back, stretched out and bloodied. A tall white-haired man stands over him, he has bronze skin and shinning green eyes. A black lab coat sways around his body.

Half aware Gary greats the man “hello K-62757”

The alien doctor explains “most people call me Kay.”

Gary chuckles as he is struggling to breath “you will need to forgive me, but I don’t think I will be doing that.”

Kay kneels down pulling a dermal regenerator out of his coat. Kay starts to repair Gary’s injures “Honestly now, how many times are we going to find each other like this?”

Gary calms “that depends, how many meetings are we on now?”

“Four” Key explains.

“I think a lot then.” Gary jokes.

“At some point in time you are going to be labeled a ‘defect’ and ‘recycled’.”

“you wouldn’t dare.” Gary challenges. “so, what am I being charged with today now?”

Kay starts down a list “you entered the Network building without a pass.”

“I paid for that already...” Gary explains

“you used illegal software to unlock the source code…” Kay adds

“you can’t prove that…” Gary protest

“then you made copies of files…”

“no, I didn’t…”

“and traded them through backdoor channels.” Kay concludes.

“And how do you know that?” Gary asks

“because every time a folder is copied, it makes a clone document with your PIN attached to it.” Kay clarifies.

Gary nods “I didn’t know that.”

Kay stands up offering Gary a helping hand “and why would you? Your HUD is locked, it can only be updated by the sentinels. And unless you could wrestle control of one of them away from Cilverant you would never be able to view subroutines.”

As Gary is pulled up to his feet the world takes on the texter of water. The office boils away and freshly paved roads and towers spring up around him. Gary jumps around in a circle flabbergasted. He looks left then right then left again. The streets are thick with men walking to work dressed in the classiest of clothes. Gary looks to Kay “where are we?”

Kay explains “Wayne Michigan.” Kay turns to start walking, his hands folded behind his back, he nudges his head ordering Gary to follow “the year 2000. ‘It was the best of times’ many people thought. ‘how could things get better?’ food was cheap, everyone had a car, the stock market was at a five-year high.”

Gary shakes his head; he is not buying it. “no, I mean, is this Reality/6?”

Kay expresses “this is Reality/5?”

“when did we get here?” Gary asks “I don’t remember plugging in.”

“More than a week ago.” Kay adds

“everything looks and feels so…” Gary stumbles on his words.

“…Real?” Kay asks

“Yes.” Gary looks around “I can smell the air; I can feel the heat. If Reality/5 was this stable, why did we start using 6 and 7?”

Kay waves a hand at Gary “because of people like you. The network became destabilized.”

“people like me?” Gary retorts

“Gary, earth is paradise. We can’t build a more comfortable reality. The only hardships are because of rouges like yourself scrabbling the program.” Kay tips his head up watching the sky “last time the network went down, Cilverant was off world. It took me a month to find the parts to jury-rig everything back together.”

“if everything is so great, why are there people like me? Rouges.” Gary asks

“Why do people skydive? Pilot vehicles off road? Forge real knives when they could just us photon-synthetics? Why do people sometime circumvent safety protocells and play games with synthetics more than strong enough to kill them?” Kay asks in return

“Yeah, why do we?” Gary tease.

Kay stands still for a moment; a low flying plain passes overhead. “Maybe it is because you want to know the absolute limits. Where are the boarders of reality? What happens when you poke the bear?” the building ahead of Kay shakes, the ground trembles, a spryer of flames fills the air and a wall of dust several hundred feet wide erupts all around them. A sound almost incomprehensible terrible brings Gary to his knees.

Gary coughs and shouts “Kay?” he stands up covered in dust. He stagers into the cloud searching for his guide.

Kay calls out form the blackness “Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost.”

part 2

Gary stumbles through the darkness until he finds himself walking into a wall. The smoke clears and he is back indoors. Shadows dance as lights flicker of a candelabra. Gary spins around. The room he is in is panted a dusk red. Artifacts are incased in glass. Plaques are set about offering explanations of the sights set before him.

Gary looks about shiftily “well this is a touch different form last time I was down here.” He takes a deep breath “ok, Kay, what game are we playing today?” Gary approaches the nearest display case, he leans up against the glass and cups his hands over his eyes as he looks inside.

A tooth is under the glass, six feet long, three feet wide at the base, stained yellow, with a razer tip. Gary looks at the plaque “tooth plucked form the mouth of a king.” He whispers to himself as he reads. “what is it you are looking for me to do doctor?”

Gary looks to the next case. This one has a oak staff in it with a bird head tied to it. Gary looks the sign. “handed to me by a queen.” He states. “ok, so we have a king and a queen, what of it?”

Gary approaches a painting. He looks over a stunning oil art of a women standing atop a wall, a staff held over head calling a storm. He leans in to look at the description of the painting “The Arms of the Prophets” Gary shrugs.

Next over there is a tapestry of a dog looking off into space. “Demon of the Flowers” the sign reads.

Odds and ends, trinkets of all kinds, this is a puzzle, the pieces are all here, all that is missing is an understanding of what it all means. Gary looks at the door in the room. Twenty feet tall, fifteen feed wide, forged of bronze. Gary squints. “I think I have seen this door in another program.” He squints “Pandemonium. Maybe?”

Gary’s eyes roll downwards. He spots footprints on the ground, he spins around looking up, there are lights on the ceiling, shadows are being cast on the ground, the footprints face into the room. and there are two lights attached to the door. Playfully Gary picks up a hand holding it in front of the light, he starts making shadow puppets as he seems to have no good ideas.

Of all the oddities in the world, Gary takes notice that he can interact with the shadows. As one hand touches the king’s tooth, the door makes a cracking sound, it wants to open but something is holding it shut. “what the bloody hell…” Gary whispers.

Facing away from the door, Gary brings both hands up, he makes his shadow grab the king’s tooth and the queen’s staff, Gary mimes pushing at the shadows. The door unlocks. With a mighty shove against nothing the door swings open. Wind and fog start to fill the room. Gary jumps up and down a few times having fun. “Right, now that seemed to do the trick, lets see what the old man has for me next!” Gary throws the tails of his coat like a cape the turns to run into the next room of the maze.

The door leads into a stairwell, steel banisters at his sides and stone walls. Gary looks up then down. There is no evidence of were the stars go. Gary flips a coin then points, he starts to ascend the steps.

He runs up two landings of steps before coming to a door, as he reaches for it the door breaks open. A beast stands in the doorway, a pig like head, a grossly broad body, wrapped in a plastic looking suit of body armor painted black. A club in one hand.

Gary hops backwards as the monster steps into the chamber, is oinks and holds the club overhead. Squeels come from the lower floors. Shadows move along the chamber. More monsters are coming up form the depths.

A chain sways from the monster belt. The monster swings its club, Gary sidesteps hiding behind the open door. Gery mounts his back to the wall and kick the door.

The door strikes the pig making it stagger. Gary take this opportunity to reach down and grab the swinging chain.

With chain in hand Gary wraps the rope around the monster’s hands, then around the banister of the stairwell. Gary pulls a screwdriver from his picket, with a swift stab and twist he tethers the chain to itself locking the beast in place as a roadblock.

Another door a floor farther up slams open, Gary starts to run but then stops for a moment to take in his surroundings “well this is a mite bit unsettling.”

Pigs in front of him, pigs behind him Gary sets his hands on the handrail, he vaults over it and falls to the next level down. The pigs nearly trip over each other as they as the push and yelp, they scream and wheel. The pigs move as a cluster. Standing on the railing Gary jumps up to the next floor pulling himself over the guard. With free-running on his side Gary has confused his would-be captors

As Gary is running up the steps he starts to run out of breath. He pushes open the next door he sees. Panting and wheezing he stumbles onto a skyscraper rooftop. Pig pile through the door, a dozen or more. Gary walks backwards, sweating.

Slowly Gary is pushed onto the ledge, he looks down, then over. He thinks hard. The pigs will kill him, he is sure of it. he looks down. Defiantly Gary smiles, he rases a hand overhead waving at the monster. Then… Gary takes one last step backwards; he drops off the roof.

Choosing between a leap of faith and being bludgeoned to death, Gary would rather go out on his own terms.

***

Gary’s frozen body lays on a table. Dr. kay stands over him, Gary’s skull has been cut into and his brain pulled out. Electoral wire plugged in here and there. Controlled shocks cores through the disembodied brain.

Cilverant walk up behind Kay. “is he awake?” the giant robot asks

Kay explains “he needs to be for the reprograming to work.”

Cilverant questions “what does a wake mind experience without the body to feed it?”

Kay shakes his head as he is watching the new programs get uploaded into Gary’s mind “you and I will never know, will we?”