CHAPTER THREE
Alex detected muffled voices in the distance. They continued to clarify until he recognized them as the playful banter of the security officers and programmers. The grogginess swarming his facilities abated more abruptly than a full night’s sleep.
He sat on a woven cloth love seat in an all white room. White as if the entire world had been removed, leaving the backdrop of God’s reality. Carl shared the sofa with him, staring into the distance, his back stiff, his white hair camouflaged, his hands clasped between his legs as if awaiting a bus.
A man with a cross-fit body and shaved head occupied another love seat to their left. His physique indicated security officer. Shock intruded his senses; they all wore Broumgard shirts, blue jeans, and low-top sneakers. Had they been stripped and redressed since the injection?
Next to him, the officer’s right knee bounced; he smeared his palms across the tops of his thighs; his head swiveled as if he expected an ambush.
The rest of the employees gathered in the center of whiteness. Lacking objects to compare and contrast—trees, cars, desks—the distance became difficult to judge. They could be twenty yards, or two hundred yards from him?
Tara stood in front of the three men with her hands behind her back. She wore a snug skirt, a light pink business blazer with black piping. Her shirt, unbuttoned to mid-breast, exposed more cleavage then he would have thought her capable of gathering.
“Welcome, gentlemen.” She spread her arms as if about to start an open house, and then paused, peered at Carl. “Are you okay, Mr. Wright?”
Carl lifted his head. His red eyes glossy, as if medicated.
“Are you with us?” Tara stepped toward him.
“Umm…” Carl cleared his throat. “Err… I think so.”
“What kind of shit is this?” The man with the shaved head barked and stood. “Where the hell did you take me? And what kind of freaky drugs were in that needle?”
“Calm down, Mr. Robertson. You are in the Lobby, our main attraction here at Eridu. If you would please take your seat, I will lay out a brief explanation and then answer any questions you may have.”
“I ain’t sittin’ shit, lady.” He horse-kicked the love seat, knocking it a few inches across the indefinable white.
Alex inhaled sharply and looked to Carl, who stared ahead, perhaps oblivious to the mood change.
“I didn’t sign up for no freaky shit. Wherever the hell you took me, it was against my will and I want to leave. Now.” He stepped closer to her.
The volume of the crowd decreased; heads turned in their direction.
Alex stared at the employees. Would no one come to Tara’s aid? If this muscular man got physical, would Carl just sit there? Which left Alex, and similar options. Perhaps Alex could ask the guy to take it easy before being grabbed in an expert judo move and feeling his arm break?
“Mr. Robertson, you need to calm down and let me explain.”
“Explain my ass.” He stepped within a yard of her and pointed. “I fought for this country. Did shit for you you’ll never know—“
In the midst of his rant, Tara casually said, “Employee command, Tara Capaldi, halt Mr. Robertson, lower volume thirty percent.”
The man’s voice dimmed.
Noticing it, he hesitated before he continued, “Halt? I don’t think so. In fact, I’m outta here.” He pivoted to go, but as his foot extended, it met with an invisible barrier and went back to the ground. He shoved his arms out in a pushing motion. They connected with a wall of some sort.
Tara paced around the angry man as he kicked and tried all directions, finding himself encased. Meanwhile, she scooted the love seat back to its original position.
“Look lady, if you—“
“No. You look,” Tara snapped. Then to the air, she said, “Manual move, Mr. Robertson.” She placed her hand on the outside of the invisible cage and effortlessly guided the box containing the livid man until it butted against the love seat.
“You can either sit down and take some deep breaths or you can stand here for the next four hours and yell yourself hoarse. Those are your options.”
Mr. Robertson tested his new surroundings, and, discovering his mobility limited, swallowed, swiped his palms across his face. With a clearer demeanor, he said, “I mean, I just feel I’m entitled to know where I am.” He kicked at the invisible barrier one more time, much of his venom dissipated. That last one appeared more of a verification kick. “How is this happening?”
“All I need is your word you will relax, have a seat, and give me a chance to explain.”
Nodding, Mr. Robertson licked his lips.
“Remove halt of Mr. Robertson.” Tara motioned for him to sit.
The man nodded, bent, and slid his hands across his wide thighs as he eased onto the cushion’s edge.
Tara allowed a few seconds to pass, the chatter of the crowd returned, and then she spoke, “Monitor, orientation video.” On her right side, a rectangle, the size of a playing card, appeared. With one swift movement, it expanded to a seventy-inch monitor and displayed the company logo.
“Adisah Boomul assembled the Broumgard Group,” Tara began. “A Rwandan born American considered by many to be the first true hacker. Roughly twenty-five years ago, he wrote a program for ghost bots, commonly known as botnets, inadvertently spawning a class of cyber rebels.”
Alex had heard rumors of a godfather to hacking, but he didn’t involve himself in hacking. That was a destructive tool, black hatter stuff. Alex liked to build, expand, create. Nevertheless, he knew botnets were the most popular method for crashing the servers that allowed websites to function. A hacker would send out a wave of e-mails or instant messages to normal, unsuspecting citizens. When the recipient opened the e-mail or replied to the instant message, the ghost haunted their system.
To be an effective Internet troll, a hacker must be able to take websites offline. They need thousands of botnets, often tens of thousands of different IP addresses bombarding the URL simultaneously. This requires the cooperation and coordination of multiple trolls, each assaulting the target domain with their army of minions.
There were a few infamous hackers who claimed to have hundreds of thousands of botnets at their disposal, and whispers of an internet megladon who controlled millions.
Alex had written his own software to detect botnet activity and learned hackers tried to capture his IP address five to twenty times per year. When friends asked for copies of his program, they would call minutes after installation confirming they had unwillingly been a hacker’s slave.
To Alex, they were modern day Robin Hoods. Anonymous represented the people and targeted the power hungry. They were Davids fighting the ever dominant Goliaths. That was why his botnet program not only collected dust, but had been wiped from his personal computer—viva la revolucion!
Tara continued, “After a six year stint helping the Federal Bureau of Investigation secure their sensitive data, Mr. Boomul moved to his beautiful Lake Tahoe estate, where he began working on his dream child,” Tara waved her arms around, “The Lobby.
“Using his notoriety, Mr. Boomul pooled specialists from varying fields and different parts of the globe. With the funding of Roy Guillen, Broumgard’s controlling partner, a coalition was created with one purpose: to create a virtual reality simulator capable of transporting a person’s conscious to the limits of the human imagination.” She paused and then continued in a more confident tone. “And today, nearly twenty years later, you will experience our newest world.” The screen next to Tara changed to a football field. Players emptied out of a locker room tunnel onto a field of green stripped with white.
Behind the monitor, off in the distance, the crowd of employees grew restless. The occasional, “Let’s go,” and even a, “Hurry up bitches,” was overheard.
“In this particular world, Big Hitters’ Ball, players are assigned positions and given improved physical attributes equal to their counterparts: concentration, execution, and teamwork decide victory.” She let a beat pass. “Full contact, heavy hitting football is played here, ladies and gentlemen. So be ready for it.”
The screen showed a football player in full accoutrements. The guy ran to the linebacker position and went through a series of drills. In one, the linebackers charged at a runner and smashed into him with enough force to dislodge the runner’s helmet.
Virtual reality or not, Alex could not be involved in a hit like that—giving or receiving. His head would fly off; his spine would snap; he’d crumple into a pile of mush.
“Not to worry,” Tara added as the player on the ground got up and trotted off in the opposite direction. “In this world, nothing can cause actual injury. The Lobby removes your ailments. It imbues you with confidence; it connects you, on equal terms, with people of all ages and geographies. With each new world, it brings you closer to the dreams we all share.”
Mr. Robertson’s attitude seemed to have improved. He teetered on the edge of his seat, looking eager. Finally, he stood, hands raised in surrender. “So right now, I’m in a machine? The only one like it in the world?” He motioned to Alex, Carl, and himself. “And if we go down there with them, we will enter a football stadium?”
Tara waited a beat. “Yes.”
“And my knee?” Mr. Robertson lifted his knee and clasped it with both hands. “My injury from college will be totally healed?”
“Yes, all physical ailments are removed as soon as you enter the Lobby. In Big Hitters’ Ball, your entire physical makeup will be altered.”
Mr. Robertson stepped closer to Tara, still holding his hands up in the gesture of submission. “Well,” he clapped them together, “that’s all I need to hear, Ms. Capaldi.” He cautiously crept toward the group of people. As he neared Tara, he asked, “That’s okay, right? I can be done here?”
“Yes, that’s fine,” she said nodding past her, “Go ahead.”
He jogged down the corridor toward the rest of the employees, hopping on one leg as he went, testing its durability.
At Mr. Robertson’s approach, the crowd erupted into applause and catcalls.
Tara turned her attention back to Alex and Carl, “Any questions?” The screen net to her flashed a purple question mark.
Carl raised his hand slowly, as if assisted with helium. “Where are we, physically, right now?”
“Physically, you are sitting in your access station on the upper level of the Atrium.”
“What about, has anyone ever died or gone crazy after entering? Are there other worlds? And how are we connected?”
“Great set of questions, Mr. Wright. The answer to the first is, no. No one has ever died. I am happy to tell you we have not had so much as a headache reported. Second, creating worlds is a debilitating task. All of your work as programmers will be to that end. Currently, we offer three worlds: Big Hitters’ Ball, which we will visit today. Pleasure House 101, and our most interactive world, San Francisco 1968, where clients can spend eight hours each day enjoying the sunshine and atmosphere of the Bay area as it was in 1968.”
Alex considered the implications. The particulars aside, the software to operate complex machines, like an F-22 Raptor fighter jet, required millions of lines of code. What exactly would it take to populate a world? The five senses? Even something as trivial as the physics and texture of a blade of grass could devour terabytes of RAM.
“And as to your question of how we connect,” Tara said to Carl, then to the air, she added, “Monitor, run AD-11 intro.”
The screen flipped through classroom images: employees in lab coats; posters of the brain; anatomical replicas on countertops.
“Initially, the entire staff of the Broumgard Group focused on connectivity. Since our inception, a team of biologists, physiologists, and many others, headed by Dr. Bradley Finder, worked around the clock, postulating and testing a multitude of theories. After forty-two months, the team designed the AD-11, which is commonly referred to as, ‘The Marker.’”
The shape of the object on the screen reminded Alex of an anvil. He edged forward. His face creased in concentration.
“The Marker is two millimeters in diameter and near paper thin. Once a client is anesthetized, the Marker is attached to the back of the scalp.”
The screen showed a 3-D model of a human head. A transparent hand placed the Marker onto a shaved section on the back of the model’s cranium. It rocked a little from side to side, coming to life. Once activated, it stood on six legs and then a robotic arm extended from its body, cut and lifted flesh, then burrowed its way into the exposed wound.
When sufficiently enamored, a slight puff of smoke billowed out, as if it had sutured itself inside.
“Once situated, the Marker’s feelers deploy and lodge themselves throughout the brain, allowing it to interact with the electrical impulses and chemicals in the mind.”
The screen angled the transparent model’s head to a profile view. All at once, a dozen mechanical arms extended from the Marker, some drilling all the way to the frontal lobe.
“Do not let this alarm you,” Tara said, waving a hand in front of her. “These probes are microscopic,” she displayed her finger and thumb and squeezed them together in emphasis, “and can be instantly liquefied.”
“So we have these in us now?” Alex asked as he searched the back of his scalp, finding nothing out of the ordinary.
“Yes, you do. Again, it is a very simple, pain-free, needle-free experience to have the Markers removed.”
Alex pondered everything she said. It wouldn’t matter to him if this was a toxic induced hallucination or if some robotic implant lived in his brain. He felt great. Clean. A lightness occupied his chest that after minutes of analyzing, he realized, represented the absence of worry: him enjoying the moment.
Looking over to Carl, who scratched the back of his head, Alex weighed the advantages of visiting a bona fide virtual reality world as a new man versus a device being forced into his head. He wanted to be offended and upset, but to him, the tradeoff equaled a no-brainer.
A calming acceptance passed through him as his grin stretched into a smile. “Are there any more surprises?”
“None you’ll disapprove of.”
“Well,” Alex said, “I’d say I’m ready to go too.”
Tara stared a second, then shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”
After another beat, he stood and made his way toward the other employees.
“Hurry up down there, would ya?” Someone yelled as Alex passed Tara. He kept eye contact with her in case she wanted to add something. Seeing she did not, he increased his pace.
The cheers down the hall amplified with his approach.
Behind him, he heard Carl ask if he could still do the kickoff.
“Sure can,” Tara assured him. “Unless you want to wait out here?”
Alex looked back and saw them standing together. “I’ll sit with you. We can talk politics. I can explain the Defend Trade Secrets Act to you?”
Carl smiled and said, “No thanks.” He then jogged next to Alex.
The crowd jeered for them to hurry.
When Tara joined the group, everyone huddled close. Anticipation arced through the air as people flashed smiles and exchanged eager nods. She moved to the front and the chatter stopped outright. Facing away from them, Tara said, “Big Hitters’ Ball, group entry, updated player modifications.”
An ephemeral wave shimmered fifteen feet to her right. It continued to delineate until a visible object appeared. A tunnel, ten-feet wide, fifteen high, that resembled the dark concrete corridor at Soldier Field Stadium. The doorway looked solid, but wavered, like a hi-def television viewed from beneath still water. Peering around its side, its depth ended two feet back.
One of the security officers yelled, “Hook ‘em Horns!” and ran at the tunnel. His large frame hit the portal, froze in motion, and faded to nothing.
This set off a chain reaction. Everyone tumbled into the tunnel, most yelling and clapping.
“Go Trojans!”
“Raider Nation!”
Another hummed the Florida State Seminoles fight song.
Alex waited near the back. Each cheer amplified his charge. The shouts from all around him continued to jolt his excitement to the point where he finally chimed in with terse encouragement, “Let’s go team!” He then jumped in place and ran at the tunnel.
Meeting the entrance seemed to pause time. A tugging sensation, reminiscent of a panic attack, emanated from his core. A clenching in his stomach, a wrenching of his intestines, as if two hands had torn through the flesh and were squeezing his organs to the point of bursting. He tried to move his arms to fight away the pain, but found himself paralyzed.
He opened his mouth to scream, yet at that exact moment, he rocketed forward at the speed of light.
The pulverizing of his body, followed by the grinding of his entire essence, lasted three to four seconds; it left him panting and sweating. Clamping his eyes shut, he assessed himself to make sure he came through unscathed.
His second deep breath alarmed him to serious malfunctions. A healthy density, that boosted his confidence, weighted him from head to heel. More encompassed his field of vision, as if he were inches taller. He stood in a professional locker room. Rows of doorless mahogany lockers with golden name plates and hooks, stained benches, carpeted floors, and various offices along the outer walls.
His heart thumped in knocks powerful enough to bilge water from a sinking ship. Alterations reappropriated every component of him. His neck remained proportionate to his body, but a roll of his head revealed added girth. Without glancing, he sensed the enlarged circumference of his thighs, the growth in his calves.
His teammates stood around him, wearing orange and navy blue football uniforms, augmented by the full pads underneath, and matching cleats and gloves. A few players wore helmets, others held them in their hands. Athletes bobbed in rhythmic jigs. A palpable energy filled the room, melted into his skin, coalesced in his chest.
A broad man with orange hair hanging down to his shoulder noticed Alex looking at him, and nodded. Alex recognized him as Song, the Asian who orated from chairs. Except, this version of Song had gained a hundred and twenty-five pounds and fifteen inches in height. His face and his bright orange hair were the only two clues that the same guy from twenty minutes ago stood before him.
The players focused on a coach who yelled about pride and concentration; about never giving up; about keeping a level head.
The soft roar of a stadium crowd resonated through the concrete exterior of the locker room: The collective voices a susurration of energy, willing him with their cadence to perform in a game he had never before considered playing.
Like a boxer before a bout, Alex swayed his shoulders back and forth to the hum of the crowd. A powerful hand clasped his shoulder and turned him. The hand belonged to Jason Johnson, who wore the number twenty—a number assigned to running backs. This Jason stood the same height with pretty much the same countenance as the previously rotund one; nothing else remained. Black dreadlocks hung to his shoulders. His face had transformed from a round, greasy pie-eater, to that of a square-jawed Marine.
“So, what do you think?” Jason asked, then spread a wide smile revealing a mouthful of diamond encrusted teeth. “You’re gonna be fine, my dude,” Jason laughed. “You should see the dumb smile on your face.”
Was I smiling? Had I arrived that way? After a test of his facial muscles, Alex lowered his perma-grin.
The coach yelled and waved his arms,, directing everyone out of the locker room. “Let’s go! Come on, men! Let’s go, let’s go!”
“Dude, let’s go have some fun,” Jason said as he affixed his helmet, banged on Alex’s shoulder pads, and joined the mass exodus.
Alex had difficulty fitting his head into his helmet, but once completed, he fell in line with the group.
“One play at a time!”
“Don’t let Stevens get hot!”
“Aaaagggghhhh!!!!”
Alex’s first movement unveiled the totality of the virtual reality tune-up. His legs were as thick as corded lumber, yet light as air, almost pulling themselves forward. He held his hands in front of his helmet as he jogged. What he saw through the opening of his mask were two gloved crushers attached to arms etched with veins and subterranean muscle.
A couple of people asked if he had ever played wide receiver before or did he even know what that meant. The words sounded distant and irrelevant. He was too busy withholding the urge to sprint, leap, lunge, dive, grab, tumble. Had any human ever been as powerful as he was right then?
The set of steel double-doors crashed open, drawing in thunderous vibrations that rattled every bone and strummed every artery in Alex.
Once through the door, he hooted with all his might and loved that the frenzy snuffed out his voice. The open, outdoor stadium allowed the sun’s rays to blanket the eighty-thousand screaming fans with warmth. A steady breeze from his right carried the smell of freshly cut grass.
The realism of the attendants amazed Alex. He considered the possibility these people were really here, logged in somewhere, but there were simply too many for that to be true. As he took in the tumult of excitement, he spotted a section of fans wearing jerseys with the number eighty-seven, waving signs with his name on them. He double-checked himself, and sure enough, he wore number eighty-seven. Jogging to the sideline, he wondered: had anyone ever died from elation overdose?
“Everyone take your spot on the bench,” a voice said through his helmet. Alex watched all of his transformed co-workers obey the coach and he followed suit. Industrial water-spritzing fans oscillated behind the benches, tables of Gatorade in between, chanting cheerleaders beyond.
Three players from his team trotted onto the middle of the field and met three of the security players, whose uniforms were similar to the Dallas Cowboys: navy blue and white.
Jason, Song, and Denise (who now wore a flat top and resembled an Olympic sprinter), represented their captains.
The security officers won the coin toss. After a booming kickoff by Carl, the defense took the field.
Fans bellowed their approval at every snap. The spirit of camaraderie between teams never deviated as opponents helped each other up and congratulated one another on well-deserved plays. The crowd, along with Alex, loved every minute of it.
The security team drove the ball from the twenty, past the fifty, punted, and then the coach’s voice returned inside his helmet. “Okay, offense. Let’s get out there.”
Alex watched the offensive half of his team run onto the field. He had never been so eager to see a game played.
“Alex, that’s you bud,” Denise’s voice came through his helmet.
Yeah, I guess that is, he thought as he rose and jogged to join them. The thunderous bawl of the crowd refreshed his anticipation. He stepped into the team’s huddle.
“Alex?”
“Can you hear me?” Alex asked.
“Sure can,” Denise replied. “We want to open with a sneak play? The last thing they’ll expect is us getting your sweet buns involved right away. You run straight. Keep your eyes on the distance marker to your right. At twenty-five yards down the field, angle toward the center and look for the ball. If things go as planned, I’ll put it right in your hands.”
He’d played catch, but had he ever run a route and been targeted for a reception… No.
Starting in elementary, he stayed in the bottom three chosen for contact sports. Kids tended to think his silent nature meant stupid—it actually represented intense consideration and deep interest.
Clenching his fist, he watched as the muscles in his forearm bulged and reshaped the flesh. Lifting himself onto his toes, a power and dexterity he had only fantasized about coursed through him.
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
“That’s my boy,” Kole encouraged.
“Give ‘em hell,” chimed another.
The huddle broke with a ritualistic, “Break!” and a simultaneous clap.
A green circle of light waited in the grass, telling Alex when to line up. He jogged to it, checked his fan section, and finding them glued to him, imparted a salute. They reacted by jumping about hysterically, waving their signs of support left and right.
The green circle disappeared as he stood inside of it. He focused his mind and assumed what he hoped resembled a proper stance: elbows clutched to his sides, hands at right angels, knees bent, body tilted forward, supported by the balls of his feet.
His defender lined up five yards in front of him. The man talked trash, but Alex blotted out the words. He focused on the yard markers and visualized his route.
“Set. Hut, hut!”
Alex exploded out of his stance.
Utilizing his new body’s strength, he blew past his defender. The G-force of his strides quaked his cheeks. Wind whistled past the helmet’s ear holes. He heard the muffled contact of his cleats on the ground, felt the propulsion of his modified form.
Only one man remained in front of him as he slanted. Two more steps and he would turn and search for the ball.
It seemed his defensive counterpart had an intuition for what approached; he broke toward Alex at the perfect time needed to intercept.
Worry wormed into his focus. What if this plan had been a setup to hurt the new guy? A conspiratorial haze where they would snap his legs or shatter his ribs, and then heckle him about it not being real?
He pushed the speculation aside, focused on what he knew: his teammates had placed trust in him. Looking over his shoulder, he found the ball in flight.
Alex’s calculations came back inconclusive as to what would connect first, the ball to his hand or the defender’s launched body to one of his kneecaps. He held his breath.
The rotating pigskin glided within reach and he extended his arms. Every man, woman, and child in the stadium stood. The volume muffled. Time slowed. Only him and that chunk of spinning leather remained. It connected against his hands with an audible thump. His strong fingers secured it like a fly on a sticky-strip.
Instead of the roar he expected, the stadium fell silent.
Remembering the diving defender, the fans presumably held their breaths in anticipation of an impeding collision.
On a subconscious level, Alex pictured his opponent in flight, aimed at his knees. Using that blueprint, he hurdled the air. The toes of his drag foot scraped over the diving defender’s helmet. His opponent’s hand connected with his thigh and tried to wrestle him down, but Alex’s inertia powered through.
Alex sensed the attention of eighty-thousand fans.
His arms went out, found balance. He hopped twice on one foot, regained his form, and ran like Usain Bolt.
The crowd erupted.
A moment after Alex crossed the goal line, half of his teammates met him in the end zone to celebrate the perfectly executed play.
His eyes bloated as if pumped with air; his stretching smile accentuated the taste of the rubber mouth guard. He hadn’t been this full of wonder since he ran his first software program. A skiing game where two letter slalomed parallel down the screen forming a course. Using the letter S to represent a skier, the user attempted to navigate the course without touching the sides. That had been a great trick.
This equated to magic, pure and simple.
Jogging off the field, he pointed to his fans, causing some to stomp their feet and dance as if acknowledged by Elvis; others chanted his name, “Alex, Alex, Alex.” Looking away, he jerked his attention back—had a woman just lifted her shirt?
Every player on his team gave him a smack on the shoulder pads as he returned to his side of the field, and one solid one on the ass, courtesy of the masculine version of Denise.
In the spirit of the game, some of the members from the other team came over to compliment his play. Mr. Robertson, whose build had actually slimmed to fit his position, stopped him, and with all smiles, demanded a high-five before he returned across the field.