Category: Neural Nets, Uplinks, and Wetware

He woke up in a dimly lit room. He could hear people speaking before he opened his eyes, and when he did he saw four other people in the room: two men and two women. All were wearing the same grey clothing. Uniforms, maybe. Looking down at himself he noticed he, too, was similarly attired.
“Hey,” one of the others said, one of the men. “A new one. You were right, Mac, there seems to always be five of us. You have a name, buddy?”
“I, I … can’t think of it,” he said.
“Fine,” the man said. “We’ll call you ‘Buddy’ then. I’m Hector.”
“OK, fine,” Buddy said. “No .. ah ..no problem.” He was confused.
The man named Hector turned to the others. “So why five? And what does happen when we go out there?” He pointed to the doorway. There was no door, only an opening. It was dark out there.
‘Buddy’ stood and faced the small group. “What the hell is happening” he demanded. “Who is responsible for this?”
“The usual questions,” the second man piped up. “Whose fault is this? What’s going on? Here’s the thing, sunshine – none of us has any idea. We’ve just been here longer.” The man turned away, walked to the door opening, and looked out. He spat out of the opening.
One of the women approached Buddy and offered her hand. “I’m Jo,” she said. “Hector has been here the longest. He’s just angry. Welcome to the group.”
The man recently named Buddy shook Jo’s hand.
“I … I have questions. Where are we? Who are you? What are we doing here?”
The second woman interrupted. “We don’t know. We know that we are here, wherever that is. We know that people leave through that door, and do not return. We know that there are usually five of us in here, and never any more. When someone leaves, someone appears. That’s what we really know.” She sat down in a corner.
Hector spoke. “We also know that when a new person arrives nobody sees them, and it always happens after someone leaves. And we all have weapons.”
Buddy checked. He had a pistol, and an automatic weapon slung over his shoulder.
“Who feeds us? Where is the bathroom?”, he asked.
“Are you hungry?” the second man asked? “None of us have been. Got to pee? Nobody has.”
Buddy realized that he felt no physical discomforts. She had some kind of point. It was neither warm, nor cold. He had no itch to scratch, no pain.
Suddenly the second woman, whose name he did not know, stood and went to the door. She did something to her weapon, and walked through the door into the dark. Buddy had no idea what he had just witnessed, but the others seemed to be not at all surprised.
“What just happened?” Buddy asked.
They all looked at him. Hector shrugged. “We don’t know. Every once in a while, someone leaves.”
“Why don’t we all leave. Right now?”
“We can’t. Try it. We’ve all tried it. Nobody here can go through that opening.” Hector walked over to the exit and then just stood about two feet from it. “No matter what I do,” he said, “I can’t force myself to go any further.”
“That’s crazy,” Buddy exclaimed, and moved over to the exit. Then he, too, stopped. “Damn.”
“Told you,” Hector said.
“Hey,” a female voice cried from behind them. “What’s going on? Who are you people?” They turned to find a woman, dressed as they were, eyes wide.
Hector spoke first. “Hi, I’m Hector. This here is Buddy, he’s new too. The other guy over there is Mac, the lady on your left is Babe. You would be?” He smiled at her.
She did not smile back. Her brows knitted, and then she said “That’s odd. Why don’t I know my name? What is this place?”
Buddy answered her first. “Nobody knows where we are, and I’m guessing that nobody showed up he with a real name.” He looked at Hector. “Did they?”
“Nope. I have named everyone in the room, except for the new girl here. What name do you fancy, kiddo?”
“I … I don’t know. This is all very strange. I don’t seem to know who I am.”
“That’s OK. We’ll call you …”
“Do NOT call me kiddo. For the sake of this little play, call me … Delores.” She looked herself up and down. “I seem to be in the military. I don’t recall that. I do know that this is an FN P90 personal defense weapon, capable of 900 rounds a minute.” She indicated her weapon. “You”, she looked at Hector, “are carrying an M32 grenade launcher, with a capacity of six 40 mm rounds. You, Buddy, have a Heckler & Koch HK G3 over your shoulder and a VP FDE in your holster.”
“We all know that stuff,” Mac said. “So what?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice shaky. “It’s the thing I actually seem to remember.” She started to cry.
Hector took her by the shoulder and started to talk to her softly, moving away to a far corner of the small space so the others would not hear. Buddy gestured to Max and Babe, who approached.
“Has everyone searched his place for another exit?” Buddy asked. “It seems to me that there is some purpose to this that we haven’t figured out. Perhaps we’ve been drugged. Maybe it’s some kind of test?”
Babe spoke for the first time. “The room has been thoroughly searched for other exits and weak points. I did it myself, for a while. Nothing. Grenades have been used on the walls. No effect. In fact, no injuries, which is a bit remarkable given the size of the room.” It was about 40 feet by 20 feet, with no significant cover anywhere.
Buddy frowned and walked over to the nearest wall. He started to tap on the metal, with his ear against it. He moved up and down, then along the wall, repeating the process.
“It’s a waste of time,” Max shouted.
“I have the time,” Buddy replied and kept at his task.
Hector returned to the group, who were quite close to the opening.
“Delores and I have had an idea,” he said. “We should make a huge uproar outside. Fire all of our weapons. She has some C4, it turns out, and I have grenades, and – well, if we fire them out the opening we could attract some attention.”
“Who do you think is out there?”, Babe asked, making a sour face.
“No idea,” Hector replied. “Someone, we hope. At least it would be new. Anything new would be good.”
“Knock yourself out. I’m not a part of this.” Mac walked away and sat down in the far corner. The rest of them moved towards the door into the darkness, and each took a weapon in hand. Delores tossed a block of C4 through the opening. She could no longer see it. She approached the doorway as closely as she could, but could not see the C4.
“It has to be only a couple of feet outside. Hector. Fire a grenade at it.” She backed away from the opening.
Hector fired. The weapon responded, but nothing happened outside. An explosion was to be expected. Nothing happened.
“Shit,” he said.
Delores reached for more C4. She froze. “I still have four charges,” she said. “I tossed one outside, so I should only have three. What the hell is going on?”
“Obviously,” Buddy said, “we can’t have any effect on the outside. At least, not until we can exit.”
Hector examined his weapon. “I still have a full load too.” He leaned against the wall and slid down until he was sitting. His head was in his hands. “Are we in Hell?” he asked. “Purgatory, maybe? Some kind of punishment?” He looked up at the small group. “Did nobody here ever go to church? Do you understand me?”
Silence, for a moment. Buddy spoke first. “I doubt that any of us remember if we went to church, or school, or anything. Am I married? Do I have children? Did I eat breakfast, for God’s sake? How do I even know what those things mean? I don’t know.” He sat on the floor too. Delores shrugged and sat where she was, but Babe was still standing by the opening.
“Hey, I can see a little out there. It’s getting lighter.” She got as close to the door as she could. The others stared outside through the dark fissure, that did, in fact, seem to be becoming less black and more grey with each moment that passed. Even Mac seemed fascinated.
“This is new,” he said. “New is good.”
“I said that first,” Hector whispered to himself.
“I can see a tree or something. And another building. Over there.” Delores pointed. The others got up and followed her indication. Yes, she seemed to be right, at least about the tree.
There was something moving near the other building, slowly and along the visible wall. Some sort of vehicle, with no lights. A truck or tractor, perhaps.
“Hey, check that out. Over by the building there. A tank!”
Yes, it could be a tank. Then there was a flash of light as it fired, and the vehicle became visible for a moment. A tank it was. They could not see it clearly in the gloom, nor could they see its target, but during the flash, they could see it plainly. There was a war going on out there.
Babe examined her rifle and rummaged in her bag for a few seconds. Then she ran through the opening without saying a word. Nothing prevented her.
“What. The. Bloody Hell.” Buddy shouted, and ran to the door. He could not leave. He saw Babe racing in a zig-zag fashion across the compound that was visible through the opening. The tank had moved on. She vanished in the relative darkness about forty yards away and was lost to him.
“Now,” Hector said, “we’ll get someone new.”
Before that happened, Buddy felt an urge. He checked the clip on his rifle and removed his pistol from its holster, cocking and replacing it. Then he walked to the doorway and exited the room that had been his prison.
Looking around he saw nobody else, but he ran towards the doorway in the structure across the compound. As he entered the building he heard the sound of a bullet bouncing from the metal by his feet. He kept running, up a flight of stairs and towards a window on the second floor. He was not out of breath, not at all tired. Nothing visible through the window. There was a window on the other side, so he went there and took a furtive look. Three people in brown uniforms were approaching at a walk, looking in all directions. One of them pointed to him and fired his weapon. Buddy ducked and moved along the wall to the next window. He saw the three running towards the door to his building. He had to get out. Obvious he was grey and they were brown, and they were on opposite side of something.
There was another set of stairs further ahead, and he ran down them two at a time. There were two doors that he could see, one ahead and one to the left. Someone ran through the door to the left. Someone in brown. He fired, not really consciously, and his weapon responded with fire, a terrible noise, smoke, and death. The brown person went down.
He kept running through the door ahead, and turned to the left, slowing at the corner of the building. He poked his head around the corner and saw a second brown clad person running towards the door that had just seen death. Buddy fired at him, and he, too, went down before he could reach the doorway.
What was the hell going on? Who were these people?
He heard a sound behind him. A man was kneeling in the doorway he had just exited and was taking aim at him. He tried to swing his weapon around but was too slow. He saw a flash and then heard a series of explosions. He felt nothing but dropped to the ground. In a few moments, his consciousness disappeared, and he was gone.
* * *

“Yeah, I GOT ‘im,” Jason screeched. “He got you, and I got him. Ya, ya.” Jim and Nick sighed. Their characters had been restored in the game, and they grabbed their controllers. “You are an idiot. You just got lucky. Watch this.”, Nick yelled.
“Dinner’s on the table,” came a voice from upstairs. “Come and get it. NOW.”
They set down their controllers and paused the game. “Coming mom,” Jason shouted. The three ran to the stairs.
“Next time,” said Nick as they ran up to the kitchen, “let’s be grey.”
“OK.”
END.
by Jim Parker