Dex and Karma stepped out of the projection room. The lobby was now empty. They both glanced up in time to see Kane and Beal stride in. The men stood just inside the large open plan room and looked opposite directions to ensure there was no-one else in sight. Then they walked up to Dex and Karma wordlessly. Dex was raising his hands to speak when the security men drew stun squares swiftly and shocked them both unconscious.
Dex woke up with a drilling pain behind his eye sockets. He was lying on a grey carpet in a huge open-plan office the size of a football field with floor to ceiling windows. He knew it was a be-movie: not only was it daylight, he could see a huge rectangular skyscraper out the window. He also saw Karma lying near him. She was starting to move too.
‘Ten minutes, bang on schedule.’ said Kane cheerfully.
‘Right, you little detectives, looking for your little clues to your little mysteries. Here's one for you. What was it actually like to be on 102nd floor of the South Tower on the morning of September 11th in the year of our Lord 2001? We'll you're about to find out. There's a fella called Felt who's a big movie fan and so we decided this’d be a good way to send you on your way to the other side.’ He crouched down and tapped Dex's foot. ‘Wakey, wakey’ he said ‘for an extra special surprise, we've turned off the failsafe, you'll soon feel the crush of a tower block on your heads, whoa! 8.46, right on time.’ Dex squinted, lifted his head painfully and followed Kane's gaze out the window. He heard the roar of airplane jets then felt and heard an explosion. He saw papers like confetti flying about outside. Tendrils of black smoke began to snake from the hole in the tower opposite. He could feel the heat from the direction of the windows. It felt like an open oven door. Then he saw people start to jump out of the tower into the blue sky to escape the flames.
Kane said, ‘Well, that's our cue to go. Bye-bye forever, gutter rats’. Beal gave them a little wave.
The men blinked out of the be-movie. Dex slowly reach his hand towards Karma and shook her. ‘We have to go, we have to go’ he said. He got quickly to his knees and then stood. He was used to the odd sensation of his artificial legs not being sore or tired when he was and he was thankful for it now. He helped Karma up and looked around for a way out. A man with grey hair was telling everyone to evacuate immediately and pointing to a sign for the stairs. People started to go that direction. ‘No’ said Karma to Dex. She spotted the elevators and ran shakily for them pulling him along.
Dex said quickly ‘We should take the stairs, Stairway A didn't collapse, we can just walk down.’
‘Why bother?’ said Karma ‘This isn't real Dex, I say we head down and just wait it out, when the towers fall in, what, an hour and a half or so, the simulation ends and we walk out of here.’
‘Didn't you hear him? We're going to die if we don't run. They've turned off the failsafe.’ He pointed at the window, his fear growing the more he spoke. ‘Look, they're jumping, we have to go.’ She grabbed his arm and turned him from the window. ‘Look at me Dex, this is not real, we are still in Time Tours in Dublin. This is just a projection into our brains. We are not 102 stories up in New York. It doesn't matter if they've turned off the failsafe. We're just in a be-movie room, this is all in our heads.’ she said, pulling him forward again.
Dex went with her, but slowly. ‘People can die in be-movies Karma, that's why they had to put in the failsafe. The brain can go into catatonic shock, people have heart attacks from the fear. They just stop breathing. They believe they are dead so they just die. I am not arguing this anymore, the next plane will hit in just 10 more minutes and we've to get down 20 or something stairways in that time or we will be trapped. I know this simulation very well, I worked here for months. Most people below the 80th floor survived and the lifts will stop working any minute now. It has to be the stairs or we may as well commit suicide and jump out there.’ He pointed at the window and the Kaneowing smoke.
Karma looked genuinely sad for a second, then said. ‘Dex, I have to tell you something I've never told anyone before. I've done the Titanic sinking without the failsafe.’
‘What?’ he said, ‘Why?’.
‘I wanted to die. I was in a very dark place a few years ago. I've kind of blacked it out. But one night not really in my right mind, I hacked the be-movie and stepped in.’
‘You did that?’ He was lost for words for a second. ‘Did you stop it in time?’ He could see the pain in his friend’s eyes.
‘No Dex. I was freezing to death in the sea. Then something just happened, it was like I suddenly didn't want to die anymore. I just felt a burning and angry fierceness to live. I can't explain it, OK? The second I had that thought, the program bugged out and turned off. I was back in the be-movie room, not dead, but with a bitch of a migraine.’
She sat down on a random office chair, with her hands between her knees, just staring out at the morning sky.
‘I just realised that living was harder than dying. But that I wanted to anyway, just to, I don't know, spite God, or something. I don't know. Show I was not going to give up, no matter how bad my life was. It was still mine and I was not giving it away.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Look let’s just get out of this, then we can talk about it. OK?’
Dex said ‘I had no idea you had gone through that, I am so sorry.’ He wondered how he could have not seen what his friend had been going through. He realised she had more strength than he had ever seen in her before. But also fragility. So he said ‘OK. I trust you. Why don't we just sit here and wait for the simulation to end?’
Karma considered. ‘No, I think we need more time to prepare for this. If we stay here, the next plane will hit in the next five minutes or so. Let's go down to the ground floor. God I feel very sick, hope I don't faint.’
They painfully walked together as fast as they could to the elevator. Dex pressed the down button. It did not light up. ‘Shit, we're locked out.’ said Dex, his panic rising. ‘We can't interact with anything in here, Shit.’ They stood frozen with shock, not knowing what to do.
Then they heard footsteps behind them on the soft carpet and turned to see the grey-haired man again. He stepped up beside them and pressed the button to call the elevator. It lit up for him. Dex took Karma's hand and they smiled at one another in relief. The man continued unaware of them.
Dex took a deep breath and exhaled ‘I’m trying to remain calm, there’s voice in my mind screaming for me to get out of here. The thing is, I know the be-movie walls and floors will be able to simulate enough mass that we will actually think we are being crushed if we stay here. Then at the same time I know these towers are not real steel and concrete. Just have to calm the feck down. Finally, the elevator.’ he was starting to hop up and down with impatience.
The doors opened. They looked behind them and could see more smoke rising from the other tower now. Following the grey haired man, they went down to the 72nd floor, changed elevators and got to the ground floor in about 3 minutes. They stepped out into the lobby.
‘Feel bad...’ Karma suddenly dropped to the ground beside him.
‘Help, she fainted I think.’ said Dex. A crowd was starting to gather at the windows, but nobody reacted. Some people were looking out at the other tower. He heard someone say ‘small plane crashed into the tower’.
Karma was not moving. He patted her face a little and tried to wake her. He looked around for a clock and found one. It was almost nine.
He shouted ‘is there a doctor here, anyone got smelling salts?’ He laughed in panic and babbled ‘I don't even know what smelling salts are’.
He looked down at Karma's pale, still face and spoke to her. ‘This was like a nightmare. What happens if you die in a nightmare? They say you die in real life.’ He looked around him and added ‘But you can control a dream and even wake yourself up.’ He sat up and rubbed his eyes and slapped his cheek. ‘OK, I’ve got to think.’ He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘How do I wake her? he shouted. His voice echoed in the large lobby.
‘I am in Dublin, Ireland. This is just, like, REM sleep, or something. I have to disrupt the signal of what is currently controlling my thalamus.’ He felt at a loss. Then his face brightened with inspiration ‘sense of smell, doesn’t go through the thalamus.’ He tugged off his smelly shoe and held it over her mouth and nose. ‘I just hope I am doing this in real life too, or we are seriously fecked Karma.’
Karma coughed and woke suddenly. She immediately started to try and stand up ‘feck, how long was I out’ she said.
‘Not long, but we've only got--’ Then they felt what seemed like an earthquake. The south tower had just been hit above them. Pieces of metal from the ceiling started to pound into the ground around them. He heard shouts of surprise and shock around him. Everyone was running for the exits, he pulled on his shoe and they got up and sat on a waiting area beside a palm plant. ‘Shite, I feel like I’m having an out of body experience.’ He was looking at himself looking at himself looking at himself in an endless loop. He looked at Karma, feeling scared again.
She seemed very alert and said ‘Dex, we can't die here, this is just a simulation, we have to believe that. You have to know that. We've been in these simulations thousands of times. They are not real. We are real and we have to live. We have to fecking survive this together.’
Suddenly she grabbed him and kissed him frantically. First he was surprised, then he thought of Rachel, then he felt himself suddenly let go of all his fear and doubt and it was just her, Karma. She was warm and real, they were utterly lost in each other. He heard her breath, saw her eyes flutter. They fell together and some timeless time later, the towers fell with them.
Dex opened his eyes. They still seemed to be in the lobby of the tower. Karma sat up, they had been lying on the wide bench together. ‘Let's go’ she said gently, with a soft smile at him. They walked down an escalator. He looked around him. Everything looked ghostly like it was no longer there. The virtual world around them seemed indistinct like they were in a thick fog. They stepped outside. The air was full on an eerie greyness, and everything was silent.
‘This is Liberty Street, I think.’ said Dex. They walked slowly and started to hold hands. They saw a sign for the subway and stepped in.
Suddenly, they were back in the time travel lodge. The clock was ticking on the mantelpiece above the fire. Their dragon and rabbit stirred and started speaking at once to them about messages.
They sat a few more minutes, in shock. They had escaped the be-movie and were still alive, somehow. ‘I’ve just made out with a girl and survived being murdered. That was not the same as any be-movie at all.’ said Dex, still bewildered but elated somehow.