The Children of New Earth (29 page)

“Hey, look at this.”

“I know, but we don’t have time to read it right now.”

“From what you’ve said, we have all the time in the world.”

I gave him a stern look, warning him not to let the Director know about our strategy. I’m not sure why I felt it was necessary, though. Some part of me knew we wouldn’t reach the top on the 3rd or 4th try, given what we were up against. But I didn’t want to burden the others with this concern, so I let Isaac to go on reading.

“September 17th, 2059”

9 years since all this started. I was one of the hopeful ones. I kept telling everyone it would be over soon. Even after the preachers and optimists gave up hope, I did not lose faith. I knew we would be saved. But I find myself wavering in my conviction. It’s just that it’s been too long. I guess 9 years is my breaking point. In a time like this I’d look to friends and family. Only problem is, none of them are still alive. Ah well, at least we’re safe in here. The Director’s made sure of that.”

That entry was from near the end of the war. I felt sorry for whoever wrote this, trying to imagine the despair they must’ve experienced. The most ironic thing was the Demon’s weren’t evil. They were just trying to wake people up; the casualties of the war were alive and well on the Charon, wondering why the rest of us hadn’t woken up yet. Isaac must’ve felt the same sympathy, and turned to several pages ahead, trying to find a more cheerful time.

“February 14, 2061

Today is a good day. We have a surplus of food, which is awesome, and a surplus of ammo, which is irrelevant considering the total lack of Demons. Lori and I made plans for dinner at the viewing platform on the 145th floor. The Director agreed to let us up there for a while. It’ll be the first Valentine’s Day either of us celebrated since…well, we try not to talk about that. Anyway, I think tonight’s the night. We’ve only been together about a month, but something about the apocalypse makes people not want to waste time, I guess.”

“Things are looking up for this dude,” Rachel said.

“How do you know it’s a dude?” Cora asked.

“Well, excuse me for making a perfectly logical assumption.”

“Go to the year 2075, see if you can find something about the Director going rogue,” I requested.

Rude.

“March 3rd, 2075

The Director’s been ordering a lot of Demon samples lately. We’ve lost at least three volunteers, and for what? A Siren’s corpse? It’s been over a decade, some of us just want to forget. He’s also requested experiments on the Neogens. Some of these people still think he’s on to something, that his research has meaning. I think it’s dangerous. We’re meddling in something we don't understand. I know our children are special. Carl is special. We should help nurture their gifts and put them to good use. There’s no need to analyze it. Leave that to future generations.”

No one knew the Director’s true intentions, but a few people supported them regardless. I guess there really is no limit to human curiosity. This world was normal for me, I was born in it. But I suppose for the Parents this must've been a very surreal experience.

“October 31st, 2075

The Director's gone too far. We’re no longer people to him, we’re like animals trapped behind a fence. All floors past 160 are sealed off, so our engineers can’t get in to fix whatever’s corrupting his source code. The doors to the outside are sealed, and defenses are are actually working against us, preventing us from leaving. And if that’s not bad enough, there’s a virus going around, like that disease that popped up just before the war. Half the Sanctuary is in a coma. I’m really worried about my family.”

Isaac spoke slowly and with hesitation during those last few sentences. “That’s the last entry,” he said.

We stayed silent for a moment. Up until now, the other’s had taken the Director’s word as truth regarding what happened. But this was the first piece of concrete proof.

Don’t be sad for them. They are happy in their own way. And that is all one can ask for, really. But it is quite a shame you were born the way you were. Neogens are incapable of accepting the gift I have created.

I could tell the others were deeply disturbed, and that reading the diary might’ve been a mistake. Isaac put down the diary and, putting our focus back on the mission, we pushed past the doors into the next area. This room had clean, white walls and was completely empty. All the ceiling lights radiated with full brightness, and the carpet was recolored in a brilliant red hue.

Go on. They way is clear.

Apparently, Micah was in no mood for the Director’s threats and trekked forward towards the single door on the other side of the room, about a hundred feet away. We were about to follow when suddenly her body disappeared in a burst of white and red. Seconds later, an earsplitting bang shook the room.

What the - ” Raphael, like the rest of us, backed away. But quickly overcoming the initial shock, we began to think rationally. The others knew I could reverse this, so we began to assess how to handle the situation for next time.

“Something hit her,” Aaron said quietly. “Insanely fast. So fast I almost didn’t see it.”

“Like a bullet?”

“Yeah but much, much faster. It ripped across the room from right to left, not sure where it came from or where it went.”

“The object accelerated and made impact long before we heard it,” Cora observed. “It was going so fast that it actually disrupted the movement of sound.”

“Much faster than sound. That much kinetic energy explains why she was totally ionized,” I said.

“Awesome,” Isaac said.

You do realize that she’s dead, correct?

“I suppose energy shields and quantum metal would be fairly useless here,” Jared noted, ignoring the Director.

“They would,” I answered. “Anyway I should probably - “

Before I could finish, Lynn morphed into a cheetah and leapt forward at blinding speed. But she only made it a few feet further than Micah before she too was disintegrated. Apparently, speed wouldn’t help.

Seeing that this iteration had clearly failed, I reset back to the holding chamber. I began to wonder why I always came back to this exact moment. Maybe this was the furthest I could possibly go. Maybe it was some kind of checkpoint in the simulation, the most recent state I could find. Maybe with some practice, I could reset even earlier, possibly before all this even started like Mark suggested. But I decided to worry about it later. This time, I told Isaac not to read the diary. I also explained to Aaron the nature of the super-fast projectiles. As such, he was able to focus on their movement and effectively avoid them. We reached the 24th floor and the Director cleaned up as he did before.

Go on. The way is clear.

Having explained to Lynn and Micah how they died last time, we allowed Aaron to go first. With his initial step, he turned his head to his right and abruptly leaned back. Seconds later, we heard an explosion, but Aaron’s body was still intact. Then, moving forward, he looked left and ducked slightly. This was followed by another boom. Apparently, it was a single projectile zig-zagging back and forth across the room. This continued as Aaron advanced. Each time he leaned, ducked, or stepped aside, we covered our ears in preparation of the inevitable thundering noise that followed. He eventually reached the door and turned around to face us.

“Alright, who’s next?”

We shuffled uneasily for a moment before Cora stepped up.

“I trust you. Let’s do this.”

She took a step forward.

“Duck,” Aaron said calmly.

She ducked, then continued after she heard the sound.

“Lean back…stop…ok go……stop again…go……duck…lean back…lean forward…ok now leap forward,” with each order, he turned his head, following the motion of the particle. “Take one step back, lean forward…stop…keep moving……aaaand there we go! Well done, friend.”

“Th-that wasn’t s-so bad,” she said, voice quavering and hands shaking.

The rest of us followed suit, including Mark, and Aaron led us all to safety with relative ease, much to my relief. I was afraid I’d go deaf if I had to hear another one of those bangs. Of course, I would do this over and over again until all of us made it to the top alive. But until then, I was happy whenever we all survived. And given the structured, determinant nature of the simulation, if we were successful this time, we would be successful again.

We climbed the service stairwell until we reached the 46th level, at which point the stairs abruptly ended again. Having no choice but to exit, we stepped out into a long, bright hallway, lit by small crystal chandeliers. On either side of us were shiny, wooden doors with numbered plaques. They were all locked, evidently requiring a unique key card to open. The carpet was a light grey color and dotted with oval-shaped black spots. The scent of fresh flowers on a new spring day lingered in the cool air. This level of luxury was something I’d never seen before. I assumed this was one perk of living in the capital Sanctuary with an AI taking care of you and a state-of-the-art defense system keeping the monsters at bay.

Halfway through the hall, the light carpet suddenly changed into a shade of black. I felt an intense heat below my feet, and before long, actual lava began to leak out of cracked below. It was clear we weren’t going to make it to the end of the hall, and so I reset before the molten liquid burned us alive. We avoided the trap by having Rachel create a floating platform for those of us who couldn’t fly. We were able to clear the hall before the lava levels rose too high, but there was no other doorway leading to any stairwell. Instead, we arrived at a blue-colored mat on the floor with an area of about ten square feet. Once all of us were standing on it, the mat began to glow and vibrate. The walls around us brightened until there was nothing but white light around us. Shutting our eyes, we waited in worried anticipation. When the vibrating stopped, we looked to see we were in an identical hallway.

“Dammit. Are we stuck in a loop again?” Lynn asked in exasperation.

“Actually, we’ve gone up,” Mark said. “Based on altitude difference, I can safely say we’re now on the 47th floor.”

“These mats only work for a single floor?” I asked.

“Yes. And they’re set up on alternative ends at each floor.”

“Well that’s both convenient and annoying, why would the Director allow that?”

It seems you have friends on the outside looking out for you. As annoying in death as they were in life. Do not think yourselves exceptional for having made it this far. The plane that brought you here? The dispersion of Demons around your Sanctuary? And now this? It wasn’t luck. There is no such thing as luck. True luck cannot be coded into a machine.

Could it be possible that some of the programmers on the Charon were assisting our ascent from the real world? That they somehow distracted the Demons back at Sanctuary, coded us a plane with enough fuel to fly us across the Atlantic, and give us teleportation platforms to climb this building? For the moment, I had no choice but to accept the idea, and was grateful for their help.

However, our boost in morale was short-lived. From this point onward, the traps became more and more difficult to counter, and I remembered the Director’s comment about overkill. I eventually lost track of the number of times I’d re-lived these moments.

On the 48th floor, a poisonous gas was released into the air, causing death within seconds. Aaron first saw it as a green mist pouring out from the vents. If it weren’t for his warning, I might not have been able to reset in time. Mark had indicated it was only toxic if inhaled, and so to counter, we simply held our breath.

On the 67th floor, we were attacked by a pack of genetically enhanced wolves. They had fiery red eyes and razor sharp claws. A green liquid frothed from their mouths and they growled with an almost mechanical intensity. Spawning mysteriously somewhere on the floor, they killed Raphael and Jared almost instantly. Aaron took down two before he was brutally ripped apart, and most of the others met the same fate. Rachel, protecting me with her Orb, gave me just enough time to reset. The next time, we formed ranks to deal with them systematically. However, before they attacked, Lynn morphed into a wolf herself, almost twice as large as our enemies. Through intense growling and barking, she subdued our adversaries, who ran back into their respective rooms whimpering.

The 80th floor was a huge maze physically inconsistent with the actual width of the building. Most corridors were rigged with various traps, such as trapdoors, wall spikes, crushing walls, and other such crude devices. We could avoid most of them, and when we couldn’t I had to reset and explain the trap pattern once again. I found myself wondering where the Director got his inspiration for such defenses, whether he came up with them himself or if they were pre-programmed by his human creators. I also realized how similar this was to a VRC simulation. Aside from the fact that this is was also virtual reality, climbing through all these levels didn’t feel like a quest to save mankind. It felt like a game. A strategy game where short-term objectives and checkpoints kept us going, not the end goal itself. But just as it is difficult to tell real emotion from that of AI if they manifest the same way, I suppose the motivation didn’t matter, as long as the job was done.

On the 91st floor, we came across an endless hallway. Literally. We saw our way up at the end of the hall, but as we walked forward, it seemed to be moving further away. I didn’t have to reset, but it took some time before we figured it out. The hallway was another loop but one that reacted with the flow of time, responding not to our position, but our acceleration and speed. The faster we walked, the closer it got, and vice versa. At first we concluded that we needed to reach a speed threshold to make forward progress. Jared flew ahead as fast as he could, but it wasn’t enough. Lynn, in both bird and cheetah form, was also unsuccessful. I then realized the only way was to get there instantly. Sighing to myself, I stopped time. Then I dragged each one of them to the end of hall, effectively moving at infinite speed. The others were only allowed a second of confusion and surprise before we were teleported to the next floor by our real-world benefactors.