What is wrong with me? What is
wrong with the world? I used to have friends, but they changed, they turned,
they turned fucking strange, that’s for sure. And how can you really understand
that? Somebody else, when they go weird, turn... alien. Their minds twist and
turn, become a labyrinth of misunderstanding. And what was once friendship is
shattered, broken, and words are said and bitterness is rife and it’s just
broken, snapped, shattered beyond all repair...
Husband. I had a husband...
Dex. Dexter. Dexter Colls.
Kat drifted, and she drifted for
a long time but felt neither hunger nor cold, neither thirst or the need to
piss or shit or do
anything.
She wondered idly if she drifted an hour, a
day, or millennia. It all felt the same. Filled her with an emptiness.
Then, a thought. An idea.
It seemed
wonderful
to
her.
An absolute epiphany.
Children. Toffee. Molly. Husband.
Dexter. Must find them... must find them all...
As if kick-starting a crashed
motorcycle, Kat’s engine came back to life. Blood started to pulse through
veins, the world filled out with colour, and the bone forest below started to
accelerate. Trees whizzed past, getting faster and faster and faster, like some
great mad rollercoaster of bones and Kat looked down, and she
was
on a
rollercoaster of bones. She was seated in a pelvis, clutching rails made from
snapped and welded ribs. The wheels were moulded spinal discs which gave the
rollercoaster carriage an eerie, rocking, shifting motion as it rattled over
the track. Kat grasped the ribs tightly, as if her life depended on it, and
strangely it did not feel strange, or creepy, in any way. She realised she was
on some kind of track flowing over the forest of bone trees, and she half stood
to glimpse the track... it was a length of bowel, grey and pulsing and urging
the pelvic CAR onwards. Kat sat back down again. She didn’t feel surprised.
As
long as I get to where I want
to be...
And where is that, my sweetness?
To Molly and Toffee, my beautiful
children...
She slammed along, bone-rattle
and bowel-squidges filling her senses. Still the skies battled above her, and
this was so surreal it had to be
(had to be)
created by drugs. What else
could do such a thing? Hmm?
She stood in a garden. Around
her, huge towering flowers and plants drifted gently. The sky still raged, but
silent now, as if seen through a great glass screen. Above, the bowel track
veered off and disappeared, taking with it the rattling bone carriage which
stretched out and out and out, like a conveyor belt of giant pelvic bones.
Kat breathed in the perfume. It
was beautiful.
“Mommy! “
“Mum!”
They ran to her, hair flowing,
and she gathered up her children and held them tight and now nothing mattered
in the whole world, the whole universe, the whole of creation forever and ever,
Amen. Because they were with her, and back to her, and safe, now, safe in her
arms. And even if they were insane, they would all deal with it together. And
even if they were dead, they would deal with it together.
Katrina pulled back slightly,
tears gleaming wet against her cheeks, and she ruffled Molly’s dark hair,
straight razor-cut fringe above her serious features. Then she turned to
Toffee, who glowed like flowers, like rainbows, and ruffled her hair as well,
and Toffee beamed and was happy that she was with her mother again.
They huddled, for minutes, for
hours, for days, for weeks, until finally they emerged from the loving family
embrace to realise one horrible thing –
”Where’s Daddy?” said Molly.
“Yeah, where’s Dad?” said Toffee,
her face falling.
“I’m sure he won’t be far,” said
Kat, holding her girls tight.
“Where are we?” Molly stared
around, at the eight-foot flowers and ferns and bushes. They were everywhere, a
screen surrounding the trio, a seemingly impenetrable forest of colourful alien
foliage.
“We’re in a forest,” said Toffee.
“An alien forest!”
“Listen,” said Kat, but both
girls were staring around in wonder. She shook them a little, and their gazing
eyes snapped to her face as if dragged by elastic. “Listen,” more gentle now, “what’s
the last thing you remember?”
Both girls scrunched up their
faces. Finally, Molly said, “I remember being in bed, asleep. And then... then
we had breakfast. Toast and chocoladdo mocoladdo.”
“And I had Weeny Wopsy Popsy
Burgers!”
Kat frowned, but her own memories
would not return. She remembered kissing Dexter, and then... and then rolling
around under the covers of the bed, giggling, drinking wine, getting jiggy and
down to the business. And then a tight embrace and a tumbling down into sleep.
“Shit,” she said.
“Mum!” gasped Toffee.
“It’s okay,” said Molly, voice
gravelly. “Mum and Dad say that all the time.”
“But it’s rude,” said Toffee. “A
swear
word...”
“You may be wondering why you’re
here?” came a soothing female voice. The voice was everywhere at once, but not
over loud. It was soothing, but not weak. It was powerful, but not overbearing.
It was the voice of Control.
Kat stared around her. “Who are
you? Show yourself?”
“I am a sentient section of the
Monolith Mainframe. I help run Theme Planet. You may call me SARAH. I am here
to help.”
Kat stared around herself
suspiciously, still cradling her children. “Okay, SARAH. What the hell are we
doing here? Wherever here is?”
“Some very powerful enemies have
stolen you away,” said SARAH. “The Theme Planet is a place where reality and
fantasy merge so very, very closely. You have become detached from the reality
of your bodies, and your enemies have made sure your spirits are lost in a
deviated version of one of Monolith’s
Theme Planet Recreational FunFake
Reality
systems.”
Click, click.
“Oh,” said Kat, frowning, head
twisting. “Is that...
real?”
“Of course it is, Mom,” hissed
Molly. “FunFake VR is one of the biggest-selling most popular attractions of
Theme Planet! They sink you in these gelanium vessels, and insert needles into
your brains, and away you go...”
Kat stared around her once more,
unsure, disturbed by speaking to some vague and vacuous voice. “Can you show
yourself, SARAH? I can’t grow accustomed to some ghostly presence whispering in
my ear. Just call me old fashioned, but it creeps me out.”
There came a shimmer in the air,
which parted, and there stood a tall, gaunt, beautiful woman. Her skin was a
shimmering silver, and she wore a long, ankle-length silver dress which hugged
her figure. Her hair was long and black, her eyes black portals into another
dimension.
“This is the best I can do, here,
amongst the enemy,” said SARAH.
“Amongst the enemy?”
“Yes. As I said, they have
deviated the program. I am here as a Safety Representative of Monolith
Corporation. It is my job to guide you safely home. Back to your bodies,
without violation.”
“And you know where our bodies
are?”
“We have people working on it,”
said SARAH, and the avatar smiled. Katrina didn’t feel very convinced.
“So even if we escape here, we
could be in very real physical danger?”
“Yes.”
“Why not just kill us here?”
“I think there was an error. This
place was not the intention of your captors. They were seeking information
using hacked Monolith terminals. I fear they may have been of Earth origin,
linked to Earth’s Oblivion Government. However, whatever the case, this is the
situation now, and I have been sent to help recover you.”
“Great!” said Molly. “Our very
own dangerous adventure!”
“Shush,” scowled Kat. “What
happens if we get hurt here?”
“You are hurt in reality,” said
SARAH.
“And killed here?”
“Again, killed in reality.”
“Why can’t you just whisk us away
and wake us up?”
“It does not work like that,”
said SARAH. “The systems built on Theme Planet are massively complex
organic-interactive digital integrators; they become a part of a rider’s mind.
Entwined. And you are lost in that mesh. I have found you, found all three of
you, for your powerful interpersonal links have drawn you together - but by finding
you, I have lost myself. We must work together to escape this... Hell.”
“And if you die?” said Kat,
somewhat harshly.
“I am reborn back in the Monolith
Simulator.”
“No worries for you, then,” she
snapped.
“Not so. The adverse publicity
for Theme Planet if something untoward were to happen to you or your children
would be incredibly negative. It could massively damage sales in the Quad-Gal
arena. Theme Planet and Monolith Corporation pride themselves on non-injury,
non-death holidays. After all, we’re as safe as safe can be. We do not wish a
financial downturn.”
“Poor fucking Theme Planet!”
snapped Kat. “Wouldn’t like to lose you some dollars now, would we?”
“Please,” said SARAH, face
pleading, “I am here to help. I am your only hope.”
“And what about my husband?” said
Katrina, eyes cold. “Who gets to help him?”
“He is free of this cycle,” said
SARAH. “He was not caught in this mesh.”
“What, so he’s out there, free of
this shit?”
“Yes,” said SARAH. “I would
suspect even now he is trying to find your physical entities...”
“Physical... you mean our
bodies?
Bloody hell, machine, he might think we’re dead!”
“That is a possibility,” said
SARAH,
“Where
are
our bodies?”
“That has not yet been
determined.”
A warm breeze blew, and the ferns
shifted. Kat’s nostrils twitched.
But by God,
she thought,
it feels
so real! I feel so... alive!
Distantly, there came a strange clicking
noise. Hollow, metallic, rhythmical.
And SARAH reckons that if we die here,
in this fucked up virtual world, then we die back in the real world. Because
everything has been screwed up. Our kidnappers have fucked up! Just totally
brilliant!
“Come on, girls,” said Kat.
“So you’ll let me help you? Guide
you?”
Kat turned, eyes burning, one
hand on the shoulder of each girl. “Yes, SARAH. For now. Girls,
cover your
ears. No arguing, just do it!
Listen, SARAH. If you lead me astray, if you
try and fuck with me or my children, I swear to any cold hydrogen God willing
to listen across the vastness of the Four Galaxies that I’m going to fuck you
up, fuck the Theme Planet up, and fuck the Monolith Corporation up worst of
all.”
“Such aggression,” said SARAH,
portal eyes filled with infinity.
“Better believe it,” snapped
Katrina.
SARAH gave a simple nod, and
gestured with a hand. A corridor opened within the forest of high ferns, and
Kat led her children into the jungle. Behind them, SARAH followed.