The Solution (13 page)

There were
lifeless RMS in corners and bodies were strewn. Christopher M scavenged a few until he found a plasmagun and one fragment grenade. Neither Randal or Georgia thought to grab a gun. They were in far above their heads—as a matter of fact they all thought they might be drowning.  

The power surged again, and red light faded
around Randal and Georgia. Blackness fell around them.

Is that an angel made of mirrors? Randal wondered. He saw the thing in the blackness.

Bam-bam-bam! Plasma simmered in the air.

“
Go,” Randal hollered, “Let’s go!”

The blackness melted as the three of them ran, Christopher M blasting
two possessed soldiers along the way and threw the fragment grenade behind them, hearing a tinny explosion.

“I did it! Elaine!
I’m here and I took them out!” Christopher M yelled proudly.

Before Georgia could register, she watched
holes eat themselves into Christopher M’s chest. A particle beam from an RMS sliced and burned him in two. His charred halves flopped to the floor.

“Keep going,” Randal said.

They took a left, and ventured down the same corridor Dr. Temple walked a little while ago. Both noticed that not only had the walls taken on the fleshy textures, but it seemed more like heart tissue. Randal kept the insanity of it all at the back of his head.

When he and Georgia
turned the corner that lead to the control room, Elizabeth stood before them wearing a vulpine leer, and the angel made of mirrors flew above them in the black.

Elizabeth spoke, and i
t sounded like a million ancient voices. The sound was thunderous.

Randal and Georgia cover
ed their ears, but not their eyes.

“
You were my first love, you know,” Elizabeth said, “but that went horribly too, didn’t it?”

Breaths were taken.

Time was
inordinate, kaleidoscopic fractions. Everything was falling to pieces.

“I can
do so many things now. It’s really simple. I can change the world, too. I doubt you’ll ever be a part of it, though.”

Randal suddenly felt
the transparent, cold fingers poking into his bones and taking hold. Randal looked at Georgia just as her knees folded backward, hyperextend and both caps snapped. Just by the touch of Elizabeth’s thoughts.

Georgia landed
face first, screaming in pain.

Randal tried
to rush to Georgia, but the grasp on his bones tightened and he was held in place. As the flesh began ripping from his arms, he found enough strength to speak.

“Elizabeth, there has to be more to you than this.”

All Randal saw at that point was a mirrored flash and wings, and he was set free from Elizabeth’s grip.

He had set
his sights on setting off the Code Charge now and dashed for the control room, but after seconds Elizabeth again invaded his mind and prevented him from proceeding further. Looking down, Randal saw his face reflecting in broken mirror shards on the floor. 

NO! THIS IS WRONG!

“Stop this!” Elizabeth roared.

Randal was suddenly
released from the hold and ran to the control station.

He plugged in
the Code Charge in holo-console. If Alex was as smart as Randal thought he was, it wouldn’t take long for the Code Charge to go off, and mathematical destruction end this. 

On
his way back to Georgia he saw Elizabeth fading in and out of sight, changing her facial expressions a million times at fast pace, as though she was made of legions of personalities. The air around her glowed with malevolence, and her hues flickered through all colors of the visible spectrum.

Randal covered
Georgia with his body.

Whiteness.

Heat. 

***

“As we must do with any dream, Dear Friends, we wake from it, slowly taking in our surroundings. What I ask, has anything changed during our sleep? You must know of the Ultimate Reality, Dear Friends, and I will tell you all there is to know.”

Plum Charlie ended
the Net Speech, killing the glow of his holocomputer, gladdened that they’ve relocated to an abandoned safe-house outside the City. The room was furnished with two folding chairs and a plastic table. Ms. Bunny sat in the corner, wearing a pink feathered hat and a plaid dress, drinking tea and smoking a vanilla clove, watching the sun set with a twinkle in her eyes.

Alex Treaty walked
from the room, down a hallway lit with sunlight and into another room where Randal and Georgia lay naked on separate beds. They were hooked up to IVs and stolen cellular regeneration kits. The cardiographs showed their hearts beating with healthy rhythms. Orange sun shined through the window and the two appeared clean, whole, and painted.

Georgia slept.

Randal said, though it hurt to speak, “So…”

“Everything was encrypted beyond our means of hacking, but the
All is certainly not functional anymore. Thank you.”

“And Georgia?”

“Given technology and time, her legs will heal, man.”

“Okay.”

Before Alex left and closed the door
, he said, “You lived, man. It’s a truly Zen day.” Then Alex was gone.

Pretty wild, Randal thought. No more haunted
girls that have been imprinted on matter and want to demolish everything.
Wow it to the moon, Madame Dallas.
‘Effin wow it to the moon.

Everything was silent.

Following a dull, stretched minute a warm breeze spilled across the room, and Randal felt a sense of deep peace. He smelled tulips and rain.

###

Author’s Note:

Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the show. Creating this novella has certainly been a quest (many writers know how the ride goes). This tale was originally published under the title
Closer to Darkness
years ago, but now I feel the story is where she belongs. Maybe you got something interesting out of reading the Solution. All I know, it’s been a pleasure to know you’ve taken the time to read.

With love, until the next episode…

-T.A. Williams

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Cover Art Designed and Copyrighted by T.A. Williams

Published by Skeleton Tree Press

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How well do you want to know me?

Stan White tumbled through blackness, and what he thought were fingers erratically groped him. They slid about his skin like eels. Some felt like teeth, testing him to see if he could be eaten. Goosebumps arose on his body. Sporadic chills whipped his back, but these sensations were not at all caused by what he believed; his senses had simply been heightened to an unknown level. What he thought to be gropers and serpents were really atoms, and even though the molecules comprising this darkness might have been carnivorous, the only teeth tearing into him were those of dread.

Stan was alone in blackness. He was dropping, freefalling, like he was being flushed. There was no telling how far he had fallen, or maybe he was ascending. It could have been miles; it could have taken weeks to get there.

Suddenly he slammed into an oozy substance. He floated, bobbed up and down. A sort of liquid rushed him, and he was carried away by a current infused with tingling electricity. It buzzed in his very marrow.

As he flipped and fell within this freezing torrent of blackness, it eventually warmed, and a sense of calm washed over him.

A moment passed.

Then Stan was slapped by the blinding light of a distant, looming entity. He could not tell what it was, or even which direction it came from, but he could tell he was gravitating toward it.

His green eyes darted left to right. He wanted to get a bearing, and attempted to suppress a panic attack. He wanted to breathe, but he realized he was still inside the oozy substance. He swam upward, arms as heavy as lead, getting nowhere.
I have to get above! I have to breathe!
He paddled for what seemed to be miles, but there was no surface to find.

Emotions swarmed him, stinging him motionless, gripping like tentacles of a giant beast. He grew dizzy, spinning somewhere in this world.

He cringed at the emptiness of his taut lungs. His chest became numb. He could no longer fight the need for oxygen; his arteries begged him.

He inhaled and his lungs filled with the thick black ooze. Surprisingly enough for Stan, he did not drown. He freely breathed. His anxiety vanished. All of his pains ceased. After a moment he grinned, and he looked.

The oozy blackness was now decorated with spans of stars and galaxies. His grin grew wider into a smile. He was floating in outer space, wearing nothing but his flannel pajamas. He had always wondered exactly what zero gravity might feel like, and this seemed to be it.

Music played, but he did not hear the notes by ordinary means; he felt the music in his veins. Then his eyes dilated as he soaked in new colors of an unfamiliar spectrum. He saw the actual force of gravity holding planets in place around the giant yellow sun.

Distorted mantras suddenly ricocheted in his ears. Stan could not understand them, but he knew they called his name. He drifted closer to the great sun.

He grew weary and frightened as his feet hung over the sun’s surface. At first he felt no heat, but he kicked and wailed his arms in an attempt to propel himself backwards. It didn’t work.

Suddenly he felt it all. The light burned his eyes, sending hell to the back of his skull. His skin melted and his hair caught fire. He cringed as his irises boiled, but he was kept from disintegrating.

***

Stan changed the channel in his mind, coming back to reality, resurfacing. His vision was blurred, like looking through rain running down a window, until he slowly focused on the corduroy couch in the corner of his apartment. Then, he craned his neck and saw morning light seeping through the blinds over the kitchen sink. His attention drifted back to the kitchen table, where his Kona still streamed in a gray frowning-face mug tinged with the orange of the sunlight.

A brunette wearing a plum dress, sitting at the other side of the table, abruptly said, “Well? How well do you want to know me?”

Stan rubbed his eyes, “I think there was some sort of interference.” He blinked twice.

“No,” she said. “I was focused. I just had the Cortex Composer Eight installed a week ago. You?”

“Okay, yeah,” Stan said, thinking,
plugged right up my cerebellum, literally
.

She said, “I don’t think I was the one that—”

“Okay,” Stan stopped her short.

“Well, do you like me or not? I am a busy, busy woman. I can show you so much more. I have other places inside me—that was just a teaser, like a teaser movie trailer, you know. Or maybe you can let me travel inside you sometime.”

Stan creased his brows, saying, “I’m not sure. I like the part of you where I got to float in space, and the music in my veins, just not the boiling eyes and catching on fire. You could’ve sent me into a sunspot then let me get kicked out in a flare. You know, experience the magnetic forces, become the sun, be the heat—not be poached by the heat. I dislike heat. So, I don’t think we’ll be doing this again,” he said, “No.”

“Oh,” she said. Stan caught a flash of hurt in her deep brown eyes. He would have missed the frown if he had blinked. Then her face returned to a stern, unreadable façade. She was stoic.

Her faux leather black purse had been placed on the hardwood floor beside her, and not a speck of dust appeared to be on it. She snatched the purse, stood up from the chair, and walked out of his apartment.

Peachy, Stan thought, as the door shut remarkably quiet. He had expected a slam.
Maybe she’ll find someone who’s in to that. What’s her name? Ellie, I think. Other than that sentiment, Stan felt nothing at all for her. She was as gone and forgotten to him as water down the drain.

For now he simply wanted Kona. He took a long, slow taste and nodde
d. It was always interesting—always. Traveling inside someone’s “self.” One could witness many spectrums of a person using the Cortex Composer 8, which read and generated worlds within. Not all were so pretty. Each paraded varying sideshows of oddity and vivid streams of phantasmagoric accounts, and some people played like scenes from the
Grand Guignol Theatre
, others like
Disney
meets
Sweeney Todd
. There were unicorns in some, fairies, and shadowy creatures.