[Original Novel] Pressure 3: Beautiful Corpse, Part 7
Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
The girl narrowed her eyes. “All of it calculated to achieve the same result. An ever growing number of innocent people trapped within it, for whatever demented satisfaction it gets out of holding them there. It has its own headspace, you know. Yours is the school. Mine is the library we’re in now. That thing has its own headspace, more vivid than either of ours. It’s some kind of industrial building.”
Olivia’s eyes widened. “The foundry!” She must’ve known it by some other name because she showed no signs of recognition. “I dunno, maybe. Everything there was colorless, dry and dead. The machines were abstract and functionless. The only light from the windows and few working bulbs was wrong somehow, like a false light. Deep yellow, dark in a strange way, like it is not so distant from shadow. An imitation, maybe modified darkness. I felt soiled by it whenever it shone on me.”
The foundry. It had to be. “That’s where James is! And your father.” She nodded. “While listening to the faint sounds from the waking world I heard my mother talking with my doctor about my father’s disappearance. He’d been having strange dreams for several weeks before it happened. She was concerned he’d lost his mind and was hiding in the disused lower floors. I tried to cry out to her but my real body’s mouth won’t move. I don’t understand it. I’ve been in my own headspace for what feels like years, probing the other dreamers connected to it. But I just can’t wake up. Something prevents it. Maybe you can help?”
Olivia felt as a stranger in a strange land. This was the first time she’d managed to venture beyond her own dreams, and only by accident. If this girl, who’d become skilled at it over the weeks, months or years spent in a coma couldn’t do anything about her condition, how could a novice?
“I’ll try. If I can find my way back to the school, I should be able to wake up. I know where the medical center is, I can ask about you. What’s your name?” The girl hesitated, then meekly answered. “V...Violet. Now you!”
Olivia smiled, said that Violet was a pretty name, then answered in kind. “You’re the first one I’ve met that I feel safe talking to, Olivia. It’s exciting. For the first time in ages it feels like there’s a chance I might escape all of this. But there’s something I have to do before I leave.”
“Find your father”. She nodded. “I know I can get to his cage in that desolate place from here. I don’t think there’s any way to access it when I’m awake. Knowing what I know now, I can’t leave him where he is. Even if it’s the happiest he’s ever been. It isn’t real. It’s the projected fantasy world of something foul beyond description that exceeds any horror I imagined before I knew of it. If I could wake up now, if it meant leaving him here, I’d turn down the chance. Either he comes with me, or I’m staying too.”
It resonated with Olivia as she felt the same about James. But she knew too well that it could reach her in a waking state just as easily. The creature itself, in a flesh and blood sense, existed out there in the sea. Not just in this dream world. If by some method it could be permanently destroyed, she would have to do it from the Belusarius.
“I’ll return when I know more.” Olivia took Violet’s hand. It was ice cold, but she looked appreciative. “It was nice to have company. I have to admit, I’ve been lonely. If you find me in the medical center I want to know about it, but remember what I told you. I can’t leave this place without Dad.”
Olivia promised she wouldn’t wake her prematurely, and the two parted ways. Stepping through the glass orb, she returned to the small sandy island, located the orb which led to her primary school dream that she now understood to be her own mind, and passed through it.
Standing quietly in the darkened hallway lined with empty lockers, she reflected on what she’d learned. None of it offered any alternative to trading innocent lives to the creature in exchange for James. And now she knew that she was far from the only one aboard the Belusarius looking to bargain with the devil. Tears began to form. Before they could fall, the school faded around her.
She woke up in her office, and took several minutes to scrutinize it in order to ensure that she really was awake. One of the lessons she’d taken away from the dream was that it is pure fantasy to believe that things are at all as they appear to be. The more she discovered, the stranger her reality grew, and it was only getting worse the closer she looked.
The corridor from her office emptied out into one of the atriums. Each cylindrical tower was divided into twenty one circular floors, with the middle floors of every tower devoted to shared public space. Fountains, a small garden with a few saplings, that sort of thing, all for the psychological benefit of the crew.
The design aesthetic was the same everywhere. That was one of the major departures from city living. Aside from being at the bottom of the ocean, obviously. Minor variations existed from one atrium to the next but they all had the same contoured seating designed right into the rim of the fountain and along the outer wall, never intended to be moved, added to or otherwise modified.
Something bothered her about all of it that was difficult to pin down. The closest approximation she could come up with was irritation at the team of engineers responsible for thinking that they could account for every possible need of the occupants, like they were designing an ant farm or a zoo exhibit. The idea that the human animal is possible to understand and provide for so completely was repulsive to Olivia as a mental health professional who knew better.
Failure to anticipate that some would need bone saws and sewing kits was understandable, though. She’d forgotten what made her different briefly, as she often did, while navigating the atriums and corridors of Belusarius’ 11th floor, searching for the medical center. The reminder came in the form of a group of five crewmen, all with umbilicals training from their stomachs back to patches of shadow in the far corner. The man from last night was not among them.
One of them gestured to her and the rest turned to look. They made uncomfortably protracted eye contact. One of them slowly nodded. Simply acknowledging her as one of them? Or were they planning something? She nodded back, hoping it was the former.
The medical center had likely been beautiful when new. Everything made from curvilinear white plastic, now beige in places from accumulated grime. The color scheme still managed to evoke sterility and thoughts of the afterlife. The conventional one, anyway.
Everything in this place was intentional, a design decision made at some stage with the central purpose of preventing psychological instability in an environment especially conducive to it. Olivia reflected on the events which brought her to this point and felt amused at the thought of losing her sanity over something as trivial as deep sea confinement.
“I was wondering when you’d show!” It took her several seconds to place the chubby little troll in the white labcoat who greeted her. Finally she recalled him from when she’d undergone cursory medical examination upon returning from the ruins of the Tartarus.
“Actually I’m here about someone in your care. Violet?” He blinked. “Does she have a last name?” Shit. Shit! Pretending to be family was now off the table. “She’s the daughter of a colleague. Just curious to know how she’s holding up. I understand she’s been in a coma for some time now.” The short, pudgy man raised one of his bushy eyebrows as he sat Olivia down on one side of a transparent plastic barrier, then passed through a door to the other side. Which he locked behind him.
“I’m sure you realize, given your line of work, that such details are confidential. Very interesting case though. But then you know all about that, right? It’s why you’re here.” She sat up straight. Inwardly, her paranoia flared up. Sudden awareness of the situation she’d been led into, coupled with memories of the anomalous readings he’d taken when she first arrived only now entered her conscious mind.
“I just….her mother is one of my patients, you see. She talks about her daughter constantly, so I thought-” The little man, now safe behind the barrier, violently interjected. “Bullshit. I can’t prove it as I can’t get at your professional records but that’s not why you’re here. Spare me, will you? Do you see that camera up there?”
She looked at the little round camera he pointed to, nestled in the corner of the ceiling. “...Being that this whole leaky tub is a government project, naturally they didn’t choose the cheapest cameras, but the ones they had a hookup for from an existing subcontractor. Now, those cameras do fine for CCTV. But they’re also capable of thermal imaging. The CCD is the same as the one used in handheld units state employees use to evaluate the insulation of properties applying for energy efficiency certification. You can see where I’m going with this, right?”
Stay Tuned for Part 8!
Well that plan didn't work, I'm guessing her repaired body doesn't have a normal thermal image.
nice