Original short fiction: The Virtual Pyscopath, Part 2

When a virtual killer stalks a real victim in a virtual resort, does anyone actually care?

*If you haven't read part one yet, you can do that, here!*

Now presenting The Virtual Psychopath, Part2 !

No big deal, I thought. I waited until I could see him walk across the pool area toward the spa then took the elevator down to the third floor, where I had no doubt, he knew my room number. I’d left my laptop there. It was one of a few virtual amenities I’d opted for.

It was connected to my actual computer through a remote desktop. I wanted to be able to access my music and leave myself real world notes on my experience.

I flipped the wall Opacity dial to 100% and flopped onto the bed.

My head was pounding as the tension of my meeting released. Amazing how your body still reacted the same, even in this virtual state. Within a minute, my bio sensors had sent meds to eliminate the headache and I sat down at the desk. I wrote a detailed email to my brother, explaining the situation, just in case I couldn’t eject, then took a deep breath.

My nature didn’t allow for running away and I was having a hard time with not just facing this creep. I thought through my options for a moment.

Once I put in my eject code, I’d be able to choose to either come out of Holostasis completely, or reassign my remaining credits, minus a service charge, of course, to a new experience. Since he’d followed me here, I decided my chances were better in the real world and I was ready to get my body out of this crypt.

Fitting name, I thought, ‘crypt’, given my current circumstances. I opened a file that contained my trip itinerary and directions for various things to review the ejection procedure. I needed to make sure I remained calm, or the Holocrypt might engage the emergency protocol anyway.

It was just as simple as I remembered, think, or say my single icon ejection code three times to engage the process, then confirm and everything else would be automatic, “Once ejection is complete, you’ll find yourself gently deposited back onto the departure platform where you entered your holocrypt,” the instructions read. It sounded so reassuring, and except for Glenn, it would have been.

I stepped over to the window to take one last look at the crystal blue water and brilliant blue sky with a few wispy clouds dancing across it. It would be a cold day in hell before I was back here and I wanted to imprint the view.

I knew I could make prints of almost any moment in my experience once I was back in the real world, but I wanted this to stick in my actual memory, to be recalled on those dreary days that never seemed to end.

I logged out of my computer and powered it down, unsure if it might be accessible by anyone once I was ejected, and sat in the desk chair with my eyes closed.

“Ex, ex, ex,” I said, taking a breath between each syllable. I opened my eyes, nothing had changed. Maybe I needed to say them all consecutively. I tried again with no breath between syllables, “Ex, ex, ex.”

I sat with my eyes closed for what felt like several seconds, feeling no change. I was almost afraid to open them. When I did, the same brilliant sun was streaming through the window, I was still under! By now I was beginning to panic. I opened the laptop, rebooted it and waited, furious that a virtual machine should be making me wait.

I opened the file with a stab on the enter key and read it again.

“Should your Holocrypt fail to respond to your ejection code input, do not panic. Simply access the master code for your flite. You will find this code directly following your room number on the boarding pass we issued you upon departure, a digital copy of that pass is available here.” I read.

Okay, I took a deep breath and followed the link.

“Your master ejection code is Delta, Gamma, Exray, please verbalize
this code to ensure quickest response. We are sorry for the inconvenience, a message regarding your ejection protocol issues has been sent to the attendant and they are currently working to rectify the issue. Meanwhile, this code will activate ejection, thank you for choosing Multiverse VR Travel, where your pleasure is our reality.”

I closed my eyes again. I could feel my pulse and blood pressure on the rise. Two deep breaths, in and out slowly, “Delta, Gamma, Exray,” I said, calmly and evenly. My vision went dark. I opened my eyes to inky blackness, then a string of green characters began to scroll across in front of me.

:Unable to eject profile/c8w9mh, incorrect password, please enter current password to eject.

“Delta, Gamma, Exray,” I repeated, slightly slower and louder than before. Nothing changed, “Delta! Gamma! Exray!” I was screaming now, repeating the string over and over. After a few repetitions, the message changed.

:New protocol input accepted, now initiating VR rendering initiated, continue? Yes/no

This line blinked, then the ‘yes’ option became brighter for an instant and my sight returned. I was still in my room.

Glenn. It had to be Glenn. The light in the room changed, taking on a slightly greenish tinge. I turned to look out the window to find the sky, which was advertised to never change from blue and lightly clouded, to a dark, boiling gray. What the hell had I gotten myself into?

As I watched, the clouds opened up and hard rain fell, driving swimmers from surf, to beach, to hotel. Their tiny faces registered very real fear and many of them were yelling into the wind. I wondered how many were now finding out their ejection code protocol was failing.

Meanwhile, back in the basement, underneath hundreds of floors of better financed virtual travelers the attendant was paying exact zero attention to our plight.

Had he been at his station, he might have notice an uptake in nearly every Holocrypt in pulse rate and respiration. The system wide spike was being analyzed by the quantum computer and the gauge showing our condition was slowly moving to the top of green and nudging up against yellow.

But he wasn’t anywhere near the monitor. Instead, he was in the only corner of the basement that received sufficient Wifi bandwidth to watch nudie flicks without constant buffering, which happened to be catty corner, at the furthest point away from his station possible.

He kept an eye on one thing, an app on his comm that showed him when the elevator began to make its way down, delivering clients, or worse yet, supervisors, it hadn’t budged in two days. We were on our own, until our condition reached critical and Holocrypts began jetting off the floor to the ambulance bay.

The clouds were still delivering solid sheets of water when the hail started.

At first, just a light peppering against the glass. In a matter of minutes it went from marble sized hail stones, to golf balls, to baseballs and in the time it took for me to step into the hall away from the outside glass, there were hailstones the size of bowling balls, smashing their icy shells against the sides of the glass hotel. The structure shook.

The glass in the rooms on either side of mine had already given in and the icy sludge was quickly piling up inside them. The glass in my own room had already cracked when a solid, round, block of ice roughly the size of a beach ball smashed into the room like a wrecking ball, followed by icy winds. I could hear hail coming into the rooms on the other side of the hall behind me, and water was starting to leak from under the doors, there was nowhere to go.

Then, as quickly as it had started, the hail stopped. I moved into the room to get a better view. The sky had boiled over and out over the ocean, a circular ring of light appeared, with a bright beam of sunlight, superheating the water, until clouds of steam began rolling in and that’s when it happened, far out, near the horizon a white line began to rise and that could only mean one thing, tidal wave.

I looked around the room and the truth was horrifying, a solid wall of near boiling water seventy-five feet high was about to smash into a high rise tower made mostly of glass that was already filled with icy sludge.

I did some quick math, the weight of all of the wave water, combined with the melted ice would be enough to crush the building. I looked around the room and my eyes kept falling on the mattress, and then a bit of text from the VR brochure came back to me, “Each suite features a luxurious, memory foam mattress”.

I peeled back the bed spread and sheet to find the memory foam wrapped in a zippered rubber sheet. I tore the bed clothes off. It took everything I could muster to drag the heavy foam pad up to the edge of the shattered outside wall. I shoved until it was perched, half in, half out and then watched the wave coming in.

As it washed over the beach, I braced myself against the far wall of the room, until it swept up, close enough I could no longer see the leading edge of the wave. I launched myself across the room, landing butt down, feet first on the mattress, both hands gripping desperately to the back edge as my weight tipped the mattress until I was falling.

The wave below me, hit the hotel, curling up meeting the mattress as I fell, bearing it up in the salty, steamy, wave. There was rumble as my mattress craft carried me down the face of the wave and the hotel collapsed behind me.

The water receded tossing the mattress off into the sand. I’d escaped. Another wave would be coming soon and I had no idea where I would go, but for the moment, I was on a mattress, under a warm sun, on a beautiful beach. I took a deep breath and sat up.

Crawling from the ocean was a figure in a wet suit. Glenn lifted his diving mask and grinned, then leveled the harpoon gun he had slung over one shoulder at my chest, and fired.

You hear a lot about what it feels like to be shot. I wonder how that compares? As the harpoon entered the left side of my chest, halfway between my navel and clavicle, I knew.

It was targeting my biomechanical heart. I heard a crunch and felt a tear as the blade of the harpoon point tore the mechanical valve from my heart and shoved it out the back of my body, between the sixth and seventh ribs.

My vision went black, Glenn had won. A green line of characters scrolled across my view.

Emergency Ejection Protocol initiated, charging for defib, 3,2,1

When I woke, I was back on the departure platform, as promised. It took a moment for the haze to clear. As soon as the harness was released from my chest, I placed a hand over my heart. My chest seemed intact. The mechanical valve had been part of the story, I remembered that now.

"Damn, son! That mattress move was pretty badass!" Glenn Pool reached down to help me from the Hollocrypt pod. "I almost didn't get to you!"

I laughed. Back in the real world, Glenn was my foster brother and best friend.

He'd been right, a Holloventure vacation had been just what I needed it.

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