“She is almost ready,” he whispered. “Almost prepared. At last.”
Celeste was cuffed, hands and feet, to a stainless-steel chair illuminated by a beam of light so bright she could not see the details of the room she was in – if it was a room at all. Squinting against the fluorescent intensity, she could see only darkness beyond the circle of light. It might’ve been a small room. It might’ve been a stadium space. Something in the air deadened sound – she’d found that out when she tried shouting. A large space would echo. A small space would not. But the sound seemed to travel no further than the glow of her prison. Approaching footsteps were followed by a voice she knew.
“You have done well, Walker. You went beyond even our own projections. We are very proud of you.” It was Breda’s voice though she couldn’t see her.
“I had nothing to do with it. It’s something you put in my head. I remember.”
“There is nothing in your head, Walker. It’s all you. You are the neuroseed. Everything that has happened. You have been here all along. What you experienced was a schematic of life. A false reality. In your terms, a trace, if you will.”
Celeste said nothing.
“We were never hunting you. You were ours all along. Going through the motions of a pre-designed life. You have been grown and cultivated for a purpose that you can now fulfil. There was no revolution. There never was. It was a simple delusion we created to inspire you. Push you towards the moment when you would sync in with our reality.”
“I had a mother and a father. I remember them.”
“Along with all the other mothers, fathers, lovers, and what-have-yous from your time as a chaser? Do you know which ones are yours, for certain? A person can recreate themselves as and when they see fit. You could be a v-born believing it was once human or a human remembering she is v-born, but I think you comprehend this all ready. Do you know where you are?”
“No.”
“This is a conceptual Faraday cage. Reality, such as it is, does not penetrate here. No truth exists in this space except that which we create. You’ve always wondered what’s at the heart of the Flood. Well, this is it: a point where our world and the Flood do and do not exist, kept in perpetual balance like the singularity of a black hole. Let’s call it a paradox point. The sum total of reality here may be your own perception, and I, a product of your imagination.”
“Why would I create someone to torture myself?”
“That is a question men and women have been unable to answer for centuries, and yet they still do it to themselves, time and again.”
“You know if you add enough pressure to a black hole, it will collapse,” Celeste said.
“Perhaps. I don’t understand how it works myself. I’m a businesswoman, not a lab geek. That said, no-one quite understands it. It’s a breakthrough, the likes of which we will not see again for another few thousand years or so.”
“So why use it for me?”
“Because this was the safest place to keep you while the simulation ran its course. This whole affair has been conducted for a certain end. One that I’m not privy to, but I know it’s in there, inside your head. And, before they take you away from me, I mean to find out what it is. That might sound peculiar but even sub-routines can become curious.
“You know that torture is not the worst thing I can do to you, yes? Isolation is. You know all that you are perceiving is an illusion created by the paradox point. I can take it all away and leave you without light, space, sound, or feeling. It may only last a second, but for you it will feel like an eternity.”
Celeste was plunged into darkness.
There was nothing left – of anything. She was falling and falling into depths that were not depths. There was no up or down, left or right, in or out. Everything was still and in ferocious motion at the same time. She was abandoned by all things, except a lingering sense of self. She had no mouth, no eyes, no skin but inside the space she tried to remember as being her skull, she screamed and screamed and screamed. The darkness was silent, rushing, thunderous void. It howled around her, weighed down upon her, made her try to breathe, though she had no need to. She was suffocating without a mouth. Here was abeyance and absence complete. A permanent state of waiting and unbeing. No journey could begin or end here. The lifeless moment before the universe was born made incarnate. Eternal. Infinite. Empty. Nothing.
Time and light returned hard, bright and far too loud. She gasped and swallowed greedily at the air.
“You see how subjective it all is, Walker? I can leave you out there indefinitely. There is no such thing as forever, but I can make it feel so. Would you like to go again?”
“No. Please.”
Breda plunged her back into the darkness. She didn’t know how long she spent there. It felt like a lifetime. When she came back, she was sure less than a second had passed. Less than the time it takes to breathe. When she came back, she couldn’t stop the tears. Their violence burned her eyes and scalded her face. She was shaking, and her body was spasming, even though she had not been harmed. She didn’t want to go out there again.
“In the old world,” Breda said, “they would isolate someone for weeks, months, even years to achieve this. Seconds are all we need today, Walker. Less than a second even, and we have you the way we want you. Give us a whole second and we can remake you before you even know what has happened. Flesh is ephemeral. Hope is our copyright. Love is a patent and redemption has been sold off. History no longer exists, only fragments of opinion, conjecture, and falsity circulating for people to endlessly swallow and regurgitate like animals eating their own shit.”
Celeste could taste blood in her mouth. Her tears were gradually ebbing away. She spat at Breda. Her sputum described a glistening arc through the over-lit air and tumbled into the dark beyond – where it fell with a thick wet sound onto the ground. Her tormentor was not there though the voice still came from the same direction and distance.
“Schrödinger’s paradox, Walker. I am here and I am not here, until you prove otherwise. Like I said, men and women have been making up their private mental torturers since time began, giving them faces, voices, and names. You are no different. Breda died some time ago. We merely scraped out her consciousness and uploaded it to the Flood. She did not choose to torment you. You chose her as the voice of your tormentor.”
Celeste heard a click – the sound of disconnection.
For a moment, she saw blinking LED eyes and outline of her Mickey Mouse telephone writ large upon the darkness before fading away. This time, it didn’t even ring.
“Who’s out there?” she asked.
No answer. Nothing – but the dark.
“Who’s out there?”
After making her throat raw from shouting, Celeste wept again – and waited.
There was nothing more she could do.
A face materialised, wasted and tired. Grace. Celeste wanted to put her hand to the face and feel its soft contours, even now, after all that’d happened.
“Grace, is that you?”
“It… it’s me… ”
“Are you alive?”
“No, I’m dead. I’ve always been dead. I died young. Found my way here as a trace. Not sure how. I wanted to see the man in the moon.”
“They used you,” Celeste sobbed, “used your trace. All that was left of you. To get to me. I’ll get to the moon, Grace. I’ll do it for you.”
“I told you that you’d get there.”
“I will. I’ll find a way.”
“You did. You’re already there.”
“What?”
Grace faded out. Celeste watched her go. A ghost in retreat.