CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The encompassing white around Alex filled him with appreciation.
Clients arrived in the Lobby with psyche-altered version of themselves. Few appeared older than thirty, showed obesity, scars or baldness. Five eleven seemed a uniformed height for men; five seven for women. All of those generalities boasted exceptions. Also, people retained their base characteristics: face, eyes and hair color.
This feature turned the lobby section of the Lobby into a conglomeration of humans in their prime. With hundreds of healthy people stretching for miles in all directions, locating Roy by walking could take hours, draw unwanted attention. Luckily, Alex entered a fair distance from anyone else.
Before he voiced the locate command, a window appeared in front of him. He sighed heavily. "D. Johnson requests override."
Broumgard employees policed the white section. All employees possessed limited controls over clients, like with Tara over Mr. Robertson. If a client disputed their punishment (all did), the grievance went to a superior, if one entered the Lobby.
Alex's position as head of the company granted him override authority over all employees. He back-doored additional code to ensure his supremacy reigned indefinitely.
Alex pressed the icon to read the complaint. D. Johnson received a one-hour immobility ticket for shouting obscenities. A small window showed D. Johnson, a "young man" standing in the white. Two pals, who seemed to have vowed to wait, sat in chairs, playing chess. Forty-two minutes remained.
Subordinates considered an override of their ruling disrespectful. Alex pushed it anyhow. He hated the concept of Broumgard policing customers.
Grinning, Alex pictured the man realizing he'd been freed; all three of them celebrating before calling forth their intended destination. "Client item list. Chicago Cubs baseball hat, Ray Ban Aviators." In a blink, a blue Cubs cap and a pair of Ray Bans adorned his face, helping him travel incognito. "Client locator, Roy Guillen." A moment lapsed while he waited for Roy to approve the revealing of his whereabouts. After a brief pause, a square door with a still likeness of his friend on its front materialized.
Alex stepped through the teleporter.
"There you are," a young, fit Roy said as closed a novel and rose from an obnoxiously bright orange chair. He wore the same outfit every time he accessed the white of the Lobby: red-checkered shorts, sandals, and a hemp t-shirt.
Roy blamed the attire on the years he'd spent in San Francisco 1968.
Alex chalked it up to poor fashion sense.
People speckled this area, raising Alex's temperature. Unlike Alex, Roy moved about freely. His face wasn't splattered all over the television in conjunction with the Lobby.
"Charles intends to rendezvous with us tomorrow at five," Roy said.
Alex swallowed. He had hoped for more time to prepare a line. Lacking the accommodation, he steeled himself and said, "I hate to do this to you, but I'm set to log-out later tonight." Roy frowned, tilted his head to the side, "I hope it's nothing serious."
Was being a better husband serious? Alex wondered "It's nothing specific. No one's sick or hurt."
"That's all that matters. Charles will appreciate your absence. I had hoped to parlay your support, pressure him to accompany us to the launch of that new alien world."
Crap! Alex slapped his forehead. He had been following Cosmic Conflict's progress for the past eighteen months. A collaboration project between the London and Madrid Atriums. Coincidentally, the two locations headed by his old co-workers, Jason Johnson from Eridu, and Sean Flaska from Vision Tech.
Four times more traversable area than the Milky Way. Two hundred fourteen alien species— sixteen playable races. Warp speed. Atomizer guns. Planetary invasions on the regular. Total galactic anarchy. And he forgot about its launch.
Briefly, nanosecond brief, he considered going back on his earlier decision. In the end, he lacked the cruelty needed to veto.
"It's just, I want to surprise Rosa," Alex said. "Her family is visiting our place in Malibu and I need to at least make an appearance."
"Say no more."
Reaching its time limit, the chair behind Roy popped out of existence. Behind it, Alex noticed a couple ogling in his direction.
"Still up for rock climbing?" Roy asked as he followed Alex's gaze over his shoulder.
"Yeah, that sounds good. Maybe something less challenging this time?"
He overheard the female of the couple say, "That's definitely him," confirming he'd been recognized.
"World select, Rock Climbing," Alex said.
A portal with a panoramic view of Devil's Tower, the rock formation made famous in Steven Spielberg's, Close Encounters of the Third Kind appeared six feet to their right, in the direction of the curious couple.
Alex hurried to enter.
With nothing more than a slight tug against his person, he stepped into another lobby of sorts, the modifier room—standard for most worlds created after the global launch. This one resembled an underground aquarium: blackness engulfed the perimeter, pebbles littered the floor. Instead of an environment for aquatic life, a section of full-length screens with images of various rock climbing destinations waited.
Roy materialized next to him.
Both men stayed on edge. When entering a world from the lobby, a multi-player portal remained open for twenty seconds after each person entered. Unless password protected, anyone could follow them in.
Though not a big deal, both men preferred to avoid being stalked by Alex’s admirers.
The moment passed and they relaxed. Typically when someone noticed Alex in a world, they were so concerned with their vacation, they never shared more than a greeting or passing compliment. In the lobby section, they often bogged him down with suggestion requests, or in-depth information about Lobby-related things he had never considered.
Roy approached the screens, selected intermediate, and the six windows swapped to a set of new options. He shuffled through them by swiping his hand right to left, briefly examining each, until he paused. "How does this suit you?" He pointed to an image with a gray wall of stone towering over an evergreen forest split by a lone road.
Alex agreed, anything would do. Given a lifetime, no one could experience a thousandth of the options offered inside the Lobby.
Roy double-tapped the screen and the image expanded over the others: Poke-O-Moonshine. Here, Roy perused gear, pain threshold, and reality modifications such as "Feather Fall," for those who would rather drift to the ground should they slip.
Judging from the scenery, it looked to be in the Western United States. An area Alex should know, as he lived there, but he didn't get around much outside the Lobby.
Roy selected Feather Fall, normal climber attributes, and for an instructor to be present.
Selecting those cheats six months ago, even if both men internally desired them, would have earned Roy a bit of razzing, but that time coincided with Roy's first brush with mortality in the real world.
Alex hated recalling that phone call. During one of his post-Lobby naps, Roy experienced a seizure, and dangerous heart palpitations.
The vibrant, healthy Roy in front of him clicked "Accept" on the Poke-O-Moonshine image, making it appear translucent.
"Ready?" Alex asked as he stepped forward. "Allow me a brief word," Roy said and straightened his posture, "I'm sure you're aware, but I want to voice it anyhow. I'd love to visit with you and Rosa at the beach house."
Before Alex replied, Roy continued.
"I have a family of my own, as you know. The majority are Succubi, but there are exceptions. I often wish I could see them more. It's just...best case scenario, I have five, six years left, and damned if I'm not trying to spend them all free from fear and discomfort."
Alex understood. He found Roy's attempts at circumventing the bi-weekly, forty-eight hour required break from the lobby humorous. Alex understood both his friend's need to feel healthy and alive, and Broumgard’s obligation to force people to live n the real world, at least partially.
Roy's constant submersion in the Lobby produced many debates in the Cutler home. Rosa insisted that as a friend, Alex should convince him to spend more time enjoying God's reality.
Alex would agree and let it drop, knowing her words were meant for him.
During his rare moments of introspection, he concluded he also used the Lobby as a way to avoid thoughts of mortality. The Lobby granted him surcease from his bouts of pareidolia—a disorder where a person saw the faces of deceased loved ones in a crowd or heard their voices in nearby conversations.
His deceased brother, Simon, had been tailing him for over a decade. Simon walked past aisles in grocery stores; called him from other rooms; stalked his dreams.
Roy clamped a strong, youthful hand onto his shoulder. "I just want you to know how important you are to me. You and Charles are the greatest friends a man could hope for. And without this,” he surveyed their surroundings, kicked a few pebbles, "our age gap would have kept us apart."
Alex often considered that. Unlike Roy, who had known Charles for a lifetime, the two men tallied his BFF list. He managed an uncomfortable, "Thank God for the Lobby, right?"
"You thank God?" Roy said with a raised eyebrow. "I thank Adisah Boomul, Brad Finder, and Alex Cutler. We'd still be on that mountain top if you hadn’t debugged the system. Don't forget that." Releasing his grip, he nodded, and vaporized through the screen.
Alex toyed with the pebbles at his feet, sniffed the strong mountain air of the modifier room. He considered the Lobby a flawless existence; an ever-expanding paradise. Convincing the second half of the planet to that effect remained a top concern.
Remembering that goal always motivated him. Right then, he decided to allocate another fifty million dollars to those efforts. They needed it. Lobby opposition compounded by the minute, and the man at its center, Agent Andrews, was...special.
Forget him. Alex thought. He inhaled through his nostrils, and entered Poke-O-Moonshine for a day of perfected living.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Prior to remodeling, Special Agent Andrews Googled the average office size for executives in New York City: eighteen point two by twenty point four feet, and added one cubic foot to his schematics. He snuffed out distractions by installing sound-proofing to the wall; and a heavy oak door that closed with such proficiency he sometimes forgot dozens of his subordinate Federal employees worked on its opposite side.
Since the Lobby embodied the antithesis of God's will, Andrews signed on as head of the Lobby Oversight Committee to fight evil. He had pictured himself drowned with innumerable cases of psychological horrors brought on by the device. He fought for additional agents in preparation of the physical detriments caused by metallic arms corrupting tissue to lead men astray.
On those points, he'd overestimated.
The majority of his hours passed unceremoniously, which made his decision to have a secluded office a good one; it helped obscure the inner sanctuary's minimal workload.
He preferred his people picturing him swamped twelve hours a day, instead of daydreaming of the big break that would destroy Broumgard while playing computer games.
Booting a game of Freecell, he reflected on being the only LOC applicant who had boots on the ground in Eridu. He had landed the job without any real competition.
His family name might have propelled him into the FBI, but his cunning and dedication granted his many advancements. Sabotage played a role. A pinch of blackmail created an important vacancy. If you didn't want your wife and friends to know you liked viewing group sex pornography (focused on a half-dozen old men tagging the same young chick) for six hours every day of your life, you shouldn't visit the same sites from your office and home IP addresses, especially with a computer maven like Andrews sat in judgment.
The Lobby represented the most engaging paradigm shift since the internet, probably since the wheel, or fire. Agent Andrews coveted the prestige of having authority over it. He, of course, would never visit that electronic temptress. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Once a person's mind is expanded with an idea or concept, it can never be satisfied going back to where it was." Only the Devil employed tactics with that depth of deception, meant to foster man's ego, remove the tenant of worship.
Shaking his head as he uncovered an Ace of Diamonds, moving it to the top, he marveled at how the masses missed the big conspiracy. Everything currently given media favor went in direct opposition to the teaching of our Lord. How could that be possible if not by design? Pharmacology based its model on polluting our temples. Claiming LGBTs were people capable of decency allotted a free pardon of their continuing sins. Websites, advertised in every medium, said: having marital problems? use our services to commit adultery, divorce; some even shared tips for killing a spouse. Media was today's apple, offering everyone a bite.
Few beyond Andrews noticed that normalizing sin corroded American exceptionalism.
Seeing through the scam helped him abstain from all degeneracies. Even the true gateway drug: coffee. Spending thirty seconds reflecting on God's awesomeness supercharged Andrews for the day just fine. God existed. He rewarded the vigilant.
Agent Andrews considered his life an honor, himself a soldier, his sacrifices dubbed him a partial martyr. He could have headed an Atrium and made the big dollars, received the faux adoration of the public. He could have chosen to wear the brain shackle like so many. Instead, he decided to study the Word, serve God; to be a silent hero defending man from atop the lone agency responsible for policing the most villainous device ever conceived.
Alex Cutler's official title had him heading the Los Angeles Atrium, so Andrews established the LOC's international headquarters in L.A., near the beast.
Clearly, the Lobby eroded society. A portion of the public commuted from home to work and nothing more until they saved enough to escape. Who wanted to meet someone in real life, were you might have a zit, be bloated, or feel younger than you look.
Countless small nations lost their tourism. Who wanted to visit Jamaica when you could hop in the Lobby for a comparable price and be in Negril in minutes, guaranteed a vacation free of potential accidents, temperamental weather, or street beggars.
Why visit California in hopes of spotting a celebrity when, with the memory suppressing options, you could become a star for two weeks—attending exclusive events, shooting your latest action film, or seeing the country during your promotional tour—all without remembering that in the real world you were a no-talent car salesman from Vermont.
Fools all over the globe entered the Lobby and became variations of importance: biochemists who diagnosed a pandemic before it destroyed the population; drillers detonating a nuke on an incoming asteroid; Marines repelling hordes of alien invaders.
Gone were the days where one wanted to hit a million views on Youtube. Now they wanted to save the day, get the girl, or boy, or whatever and bask in the adoration of billions. When their vacations finished, they popped back into the real world and relished an ego-stroking powerful enough to warp a person's sense of self-worth.
Andrews knew, emphatically, he was witnessing the deconstruction of civilization.
He moved the King of Clubs to the recently opened slot on the screen.
Regular people thinking they deserved to be singled out for praise; idiots believing they were brilliant; it made him sick. People had to know their roles. Life was about giving thanks, not self-gratification.
According to scripture, and decades of empirical evidence, humanity flourished through servitude.
Despite this knowledge, a healthy budget, and a team of specialists, he had yet to conclusively identify any physiological or psychological health infringements imposed by entering the Lobby.
An ugly head would emerge, but when? With faith, he focused his resources into collecting data for that fateful day. Being the defender of mankind, the voice of the one true world, he would need facts when the final battle—played out in the court of public opinion—unfolded.
Everyone knew the LOC opposed the Lobby, yet each week hundreds of letters and emails arrived, praising its existence. Average people might not appreciate that he watched over them, but their children would.
He placed the Jack of Spades on the Queen of Hearts, freeing up the eight of clubs and winning him another game. Closing the program, he wondered if anyone else on the planet had a win percentage of eighty-six at Freecell.
A lone file rested on his desk. As a way of keeping his hand on the noose they weaved, he personally filed reports every few days. In this incident, a seventeen year-old male from Tokyo reported severe migraines ever since visiting the Lobby.
Each year brought hundreds of these migraines. Hundreds of cases for a litany of ailments: dementia, dizzy spells, insomnia, narcolepsy, paranoia...the list read like an encyclopedia of mental derangements.
The politicians didn't see the correlation when held up against tens of millions of vacations. Maybe because opposing the Lobby equaled political suicide. That didn't mean Andrews toiled alone. Some of the most powerful organizations on the planet supported him. The heads of the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and the NSA, all found the notion of an unmonitorable medium synonymous with Armageddon. He knew they silently worked as hard as himself.
Did that mean they played dozens of FreeCell games a day?
If so, would even one come close to a eighty-six percentage?
Doubtful.
When the day of exposure arrived, they would be his right hand, or he theirs—it mattered not.
For now, he bid his time. Patience wasn't his best virtue, but he had more than almost anyone else. He knew implicitly that the Lobby, and specifically, the phony golden boy Alex Cutler, embodied evil.
He just needed one domino to fall, bring the entire creation down.
Leaning back in his chair, he opened another round of FreeCell. With seventeen more wins in a row, his win percentage would bump to eighty-seven—an impressive feat in itself.
Until the time came, he'd sit behind his solid oak door, file his reports, and fantasize about pulling the plug on the Lobby, wiping that smug smile off of party-boy Alex Cutler's pretty face.