Alexander Plansky - Arcadia

Lewis forced a laugh, still fumbling with the Velcro underwater. “You people are mad. Completely. Fucking. Mad.”

Blackwell opened a small metallic case and withdrew a syringe and a vial of sedative. “It’s really all contextual, Lewis. It’s not a personal thing. I’ve got nothing against you, your girlfriend, or any of the patients I get here. And it’s not a business thing either, we’re not profiting from this. At least, not in cash.” He slid the needle into the bottle and drew the requisite amount.

Lewis’s fingers kept slipping beneath the surface, the last bit of Velcro restraining his right wrist remaining stuck. “Alright then, at least tell me one last thing. I’m not going to remember, and like you said, I’ll be dead soon anyway. Who actually funds all of this? The CIA? NSA? An organization so secret I’m not even supposed to know it exists?”

Blackwell approached him with the syringe and sat down in the seat with a sigh. “The thing is… I don’t really know. It’s above my pay grade. All I do know is that Andromeda Virtual Systems sends me a check every month and that that check clears.” He held up the syringe and smiled. “But it doesn’t really matter in the end, does it Lewis?”

Lewis stared up at the contraption that would soon begin beaming images directly into his mind. Reality would disappear, and he would slip into a nightmarish dreamscape from which he would never recover.

“No,” he said, as if accepting it. “I guess it doesn’t matter.”

Then, as Blackwell bent down to administer the sedative, his freed right hand shot out of the water and grabbed the technician by the throat.

The syringe slipped from Blackwell’s fingers as Lewis yanked him forward and he toppled into the pool. The man was not as nimble or quick-thinking in dangerous situations as his simulation counterpart. He immediately began floundering and pushing off Lewis as he scrambled for the other edge of the tank.

Lewis turned to his other wrist and tore the Velcro strap away, then spun around and wrapped his arms around the technician’s waist just as he got half out of the water. He pulled back with all his might and both of them toppled backward and sank into the three-foot-deep pool, water cascading over the sides.

Blackwell struggled violently, but Lewis put him in a headlock and held him beneath the surface while he gasped for air above the water. He channeled the anger from everything he’d just experienced – the nightmarish chase through Vegas, witnessing his girlfriend’s fake death, reawakening the trauma from his brother’s tragic accident, tormenting him with the specter of the infected astronaut – and used it to push the technician deeper into the water.

He began struggling harder, nearly breaking free. Lewis thought of every person this sick fuck had tortured over the past half a year, the horrible deaths he had caused, the families that had been impacted, and forced Blackwell’s head back down. The technician’s right hand reached above the surface and began grabbing at Lewis’s face. After a moment, the arm retreated underwater to assist its left counterpart in attempting to break Lewis’s hold to little success.

It seemed to take forever, but finally, the last burst of bubbles escaped from Blackwell’s lips, and with a few last twitches, the submerged body went still. Lewis let go and scurried back out of the water, wanting to get as far away from the corpse as possible. He fell onto the tile floor, turned over, and crawled away to the far wall where he sat breathing heavily for a good several minutes.

He looked at his hands, unable to believe he’d just killed a man. It didn’t feel like slaying an enemy in a video game, not at all. There was something unnerving about the way Blackwell had finally stopped moving, his eyes remaining open aimlessly beneath the water. He didn’t regret it though. The man had deserved to die.

Beside the desk with the monitors was a stool with his clothes from Friday folded neatly on top of it. A towel lay on the floor beside them. Still dripping water and being careful not to slip, Lewis made his way across the room, took the towel, and dried himself off. Still shaking and nervous, he got changed out of the haptic suit back into his own clothing. He saw his socks and shoes sitting beneath the stool, retrieved them, and slipped them on.

Once he was ready, he looked around the room for a weapon. A pistol lay on the desk, its barrel pointing toward the wall. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand. It was weird holding one in real life; not even the simulation had prepared him for it. He was worried he wouldn’t know how to use it correctly if the need arose. In games, firing was always triggered by a hand-held controller or the click of a mouse. Nothing like this.

However, he supposed that even aiming it at someone could be useful. They didn’t know how good of a shot he was. There appeared to be a little switch on the side that he assumed was the safety, and he shifted it in the opposite direction. Well, at least he wouldn’t make that rookie mistake.

He wasn’t sure what his next move was at this point. Blackwell had said they were getting ready to take Jenna back to Vegas, that she’d already completed her brainwashing. But he hadn’t; they weren’t able to make him crack in time. If he could get out, he could alert the authorities. Maybe they could place Jenna in protective police custody to prevent her from hurting herself or others until they could get her psychiatric help to undo the psychological programming. There had to be a way.

He needed to get evidence and get out of here. There didn’t appear to be any security cameras in here watching him, but they would probably have a guard do rounds once in a while just to make sure things were copacetic. Lewis’s phone had been placed on the side of the desk next to his wallet, but the rental car keys were missing. They must’ve parked the vehicle in the lot; they were going to have to drive it back to Vegas when they left with him anyway. The keys had to be somewhere else, maybe in the reception of the Entertainment Center.

Lewis took out the phone, opened the camera app, and began taking photos of the room, the Dream Machine equipment, images from the simulation still on the monitors, the haptic wetsuit, the syringe on the floor, even Blackwell’s dead body in the pool. He took everything from multiple angles. He created a Google Drive folder to share them with Richter, but there was no signal here.

“Damn,” he said, pocketing the phone. His primary goal was to get out of here now; he had the evidence he needed. But he’d have to get back into the main building to find car keys, whether they were his or one of the black Chevys parked out front. He went back to the tank, and, rolling up his sleeve, stuck his arm into the water to pull the technician’s ID badge off his belt. He shook it to get some of the water off, then looked at it. The man’s full name was Christopher Blackwell, and his official position was listed as “Director of Information Technology” at Andromeda Virtual Systems.

Lewis slowly opened the door and peered out into the hallway. There was a narrow corridor here that went off to a blank wall to his left with a fire extinguisher on it and came out into some kind of open area to his right. Taking one last look at the room, he shuddered and closed the door behind him.

He crept slowly toward the dimly-lit open area, staying close to the wall. When he reached the corner, he peered out. Nobody was there. At the other side, another hallway led off to what he assumed was the other Dream Machine room. Prominently displayed on the wall to his left was a black and white depiction of a galaxy and “AVS” in thin, black lettering below it.