Fletcher took a breath, and that was the damn thing about it all. The air was clean, the air wasn't choking, the air actually smelled OK. The new hydrogen economy was burbling along, there was an excess of power in most places in the First World, and the pollution and smog and the particulates in the air were slowly going away.
He took another deep breath, felt the cleanness of the air, even though traffic was humming along on the nearby four-laner. Progress laying its heavy hand. He walked out to the parking lot, his wrist trembling a bit. It was just an odd muscle reaction, that's all, for he knew that somewhere in the bowels of the Corporation, some Human Resources type was monitoring his movement. So what. Monitor away.
The parking lot was about half-full and he saw two people, walking away to another cube of a building. They both had V/R helmets on, and they looked like characters from some 1950s cheesy science fiction movie, stumbling around an alien landscape. What was alien, of course, was what was being seen in the V/R helmet.
There were little heads-up displays inside the helmet that allowed wearers to see where they were going in real-time, but NewsNet stories kept reporting V/R wearers walking into traffic, or going off the end of a pier, or falling off a mountain trail. Part of the experience.
Fletcher came to a little island of grass and two real trees in the centre of the lot, where a square brick building ran some sort of HVAC support for the complex.
He'd scoped out the place after he had first been hired – the only place in this part of the Corporation's archipelago that had trees – and at first found some moments of comfort there, decompressing after the first sim runs. Now it was a destination, a place to take some breaths and be away from people.
He ducked under the branches of the oak tree, and went around the brick building to a half-hidden area with a maintenance service ladder there. Keeping it easy, he climbed up two storeys, probably violating a half-dozen OSHA regs by climbing without proper gear, but so what. The roof was flat, except for some sort of bulky air intake system at the other end, and his feet crunched a bit on the roof covering as he stood up. He looked up at the night sky, shook his head, and went over to the air in take system. Under an overhang he pulled out a blanket roll – protected by a sheet of plastic – and he unrolled and lay down and stared up at the orange night sky.
Progress. Science fiction. A lot of the books he had read in those free libraries in Montana had been old science fiction tales from the 1950s and 1960s. Real hard science stuff, all predicting a world of science and progress, imagining cities in space and colonies on the Moon, Mars and Venus. He wasn't sure why, but those old tales had appealed to him, as he read them in the quiet reading rooms of the library, turning the brittle, yellowed pages. He had liked the old predictions, the old enthusiasms, about what science and progress would do.
He shifted his weight and folded his arms across his chest. Fletcher was no luddite, no anarchist, no flatearther. Hundreds of millions of people lived safe, secure, and healthy lives, all thanks to science and progress. That was the truth, and no amount of hand-wringing could change it. And yet… and yet…
Fletcher blinked his eyes, looked up at the night sky. A couple of lonely stars managed to blaze their way through the orange light of what passed for night. All those wonderful tales of progress had missed the boat. There were no cities on the Moon, Mars and Venus, and the only city in space was the decommissioned hulk of the old International Space Station, waiting to burn up in the atmosphere one of these days. A few probes had ambled their way through the solar system, but that had been it.
Science and progress had turned inward, creating new realities, creating entire new worlds, all within this old globe. And what was out there… Damn it, he'd seen the signs when he was younger, camping out by himself, seeing the glow on the horizon, the lights from the malls and the highways and the security zones and everything else, hounding away the night, making the day's hours stretch and stretch.
Astronomers had complained, and those complaints had been outdrowned and outnewsed by scandals, wars, and the latest V/R stats. So there you go.
But Fletcher remembered. He remembered those nights out in some woodland meadow, hearing a stream gurgle by, watching the great wheel of the night sky whirl about him, seeing lots of satellites and aircraft, sure, but also seeing the occasional meteor streak by. That had been a sight to see.
His pager started vibrating. Time go back to work, back to Room 19. For yet another night, there had been nothing up there. The orange sky and the few stars, and no shooting stars, no comets, nothing. Just the real reality, obscured by everything that helped support the new virtual reality.
Fletcher got up, rolled his bedroll and put it back in its hiding place, and went to the edge of the roof, knowing that in a few minutes, the drugs would enter his system and he would go to work, help create a program that simulated what it had once been, not so many years ago.
He took a breath, put his hands on the metal ladder, looked up again at the sky.
"Tango Charlie Charlie, end program twelve," he said, his voice soft. "End program twelve."
Nothing happened. The sky was still orange, the stars were still gone.
His voice got louder, almost plaintive in its plea: "Tango Charlie Charlie, end program twelve. End program twelve."
Fletcher shook his head and started climbing back down.
No. It didn't work. It never worked.
But he always kept trying.
Brendan DuBois
Brendan DuBois is the award-winning author of 11 novels and nearly 100 short stories. He lives in New Hampshire, U.S., and can be found online at www.brendandubois.com.
