Beyond the Stars

Simulation Terminated

Simulation Terminated

With those two words came the realisation that I wasn’t alone anymore.

Immersed in a virtual Earth, complete with scents and sounds, Enigma’s programming integrated every sensory organ. I could feel a razor glide across my cheek when I shaved every morning, smell the heady scent of pine when I took a stroll through the park, taste the salty sweetness of maple cured bacon on wholemeal bread, slathered with butter. My mouth watered at the thought.  But I wouldn’t be having breakfast on virtual Earth today.

Enigma could only be terminated from outside the pod. Although conscious, I was paralysed by the chord attached to my temple area and would remain motionless until someone retracted the microprobe from the frontal lobe of my brain. This meant Enigma would cease controlling my breathing in exactly two minutes. If they didn’t hurry up and remove the probe, I’d suffocate.

I could hear muffled voices, indiscernible how many, though I could tell one was female. She fussed around the tank, tapping the glass and calling for me to open my eyes. I wished I could.

“Are you sure he’s alive?” a male asked, close enough to my face that I could smell nicotine on his breath. “His chest isn’t moving.”

The female replied, “I assume so. The monitor shows his vitals are good. I guess we’ll find out shortly, it’s disconnecting in just under a minute.”

It means you have a minute to disconnect me from it! I wanted to scream.

At twenty seconds Enigma began beeping. My heart rate increased in time with the beeps.

“Warning. Life support termination imminent,” Enigma stated.

The woman swore a blue streak and ripped the dialysis tubes from my arms, cutting off the nutrient-rich, oxygenated blood, everything I needed to survive long term stasis. Luckily she was more careful with the skull cap and withdrew the probes before disengaging the remaining electrodes.

My first breath was ragged and deep. Muscles twitched, turning into cramps across my abdomen and down my legs and arms, protesting at not having been used for I don’t know how long. It hurt. Shivers followed, increasing the pain to an unbearable peak.

When I woke again, we were bouncing across rough ground in a growling beast of a vehicle with nothing but a couple of roll bars and a blanket to protect us from the sand and grit thrown up by the wheels. Small bits of debris stung my face, the only part of me exposed above the blanket they wrapped me in. I tried to wriggle deeper under cover, but no part of my body wanted to co-operate. In an attempt to distract myself from the sandy irritation, I focused on their voices.

They were arguing about me. About having another mouth to feed and whose responsibility I would become if I survived.

“You pressed the button that turned the machine off in the first place,” the woman huffed. “You found his pod.”

“We’re going around in circles, Rose. The bottom line is you saved him. That makes him your responsibility until he repays the debt or dies.”

“But it’s your fault that I had to save him!”

I grunted, testing my vocal chords before replying, “Look after myself.” Only the words didn’t form. My tongue and jaw refused to work so it sounded more like a moan.

“Evening, sleepyhead,” Rose said cheerfully, tugging the cover up to shelter my face a little. “Hang in there a few more minutes. We’re almost back at base.”

I caught my first glimpse of her as she turned away, leaning between the front seats. It was too dark and my eyes too unfocused to get a decent look, but I got the impression she was slim, her pale skin a stark contrast to the gloomy interior of the vehicle.

“Camp is over the next hill, Jake. Can we discuss this later? He’s awake.”

“There’s nothing to discuss. You pulled the tubes out. That makes him yours,” a male insisted.

They used the blanket covering the vehicle as a makeshift stretcher to carry me into an old building, laying me on the dusty floor beside a campfire.  Strange smells assaulted my sensitised nostrils, but beneath the smell of burning wood, lingered the distinct aroma of death and decay. A reminder of why I attached myself to Enigma in the first place.

I wanted to skip the harsh reality that followed on the heels of The Great War – poverty, disease, death.  Skip ahead to a time when Earth had healed herself from the damages inflicted by mankind, one nation against its neighbour.

Rose sat down beside me, lifting my head onto her lap so she could feed me sips of something from a cup.

“It’s just water,” she said at my refusal to drink.

I could smell it was stale, but I tongued the drops dripping from my beard onto my lips out of reflex, and knew instantly that drinking it would make me ill. In my fragile state I couldn’t afford to be ill.

“Come on, old man, you need to drink something,” she coaxed.

Old man? I thought. You can’t be much younger than me.

She set the cup aside, having given up trying to force me to drink, and stroked my head. It felt strange, yet oddly comforting.

Visions of the dying invaded my dreams. Vivid images of bodies piled into mass graves, screaming and crying out for someone to help them. An ancient version of me staggered away, leaving them to their agonised fate. I woke with a start.

Raising a hand to swipe away the moisture running in tracks across my temples and into my ears, I stopped mid-motion and stared at someone else’s hand. The fingernails were long and yellow, the skin old, withered. It wore my wedding ring, inscribed with mine and my wife’s name.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this when I woke. I’d slept too long.

I begged Rose to take me back to Enigma, let me return to the Earth I’d called home for the past eighty-odd years.

She agreed after I told her how to reset the program so it would learn about me. How I could live on through Enigma’s programing long after my body failed.

You can keep your real life.