The Prometheus Objective

17

She cocked her head and those dark, pupil-free eyes widened as if taking in Orlando’s whole past, present and future.

“What the shit!”

He staggered back, hands raised. The woman’s smell came with her: foul, ancient like a newly opened Etruscan tomb. Her feet (Orlando noticed her feet only because he couldn’t bear to look at those eyes) were all black and blue toenails, scraped flesh and bruises like she’d been running (or sleepwalking) through a rocky wood full of thorns.

Her breath was just as foul, but when she talked, the words came out of an angel’s mouth: calming and smooth, almost like spoken over a breeze-kissed tranquil sea.

“Orlando. Be at peace.”

The word, ‘peace’, resonated through his body, into his heart, but didn’t really have any meaningful impact on his terror level. Despite what he’d seen, where he’d been — including some of the most frightening underground tombs, contending with booby-trapped statues and rivers of poisonous mercury, massive firefights and helicopter chases, Orlando had never known terror like this.

Whatever this person, thing, was in front of him, she chilled his blood and made his flesh crawled. Flesh that seemed alien; muscles and bones, and for a time-stopping instant he had a flashback to his pure, non-corporeal form: the element of merging with the infinite, being nowhere and anywhere at once.

She reached out, and in a flash, pressed her hand against his forehead, and her eyes turned bone-white. Orlando heard a choking cry from what seemed like miles away, and only dimly realized it came from his own throat.

“Waited for you. Don’t have much time…”

“Uhnnn?”

A kaleidoscope of colorful visuals exploded in his mind’s eye, a whirling cyclone of images like stock photos rushing past each other one by one: horrifying still pictures of this woman — as a girl, then older, aging as she stayed, forever in that one room, experimented on, probed, tested, poked, starved, immersed, electro-shocked and so much more…

Readouts, maps, an aerial view of a desert and desolate (yet familiar) mountain range, underground… to tunnels, a vast chasm, a robed figure…

And he was back.

The hand withdrew, and the eyes in front of him rolled back the white, turning a somber brown.

He blinked, and suddenly, his mind was at peace. “Who are you?”

The girl cocked her head.

“Or a better question,” Orlando suggested, thinking this through, “Who were you?”

“Someone.”

Orlando stepped forward, considering the woman, her face, her expression, her trembling body. “I know that, but do you remember? I assume, from what you’ve shown me, you’ve been here, a prisoner, a long time.”

“At first, not a prisoner.”

“Not?” He frowned.

“A volunteer.”

The monitors hummed, the news program sputtered, and the volume shrunk to barely audible whimpers.

“You were young.” He squinted, remembering the flood of images, and picked out one in particular. A teenager?”

“I had… talents. They recognized them. Not unlike you, Orlando, or your wife’s or children.”

“What do you know of them?”

“I was a conduit. A spirit trap, of sorts.”

Her head tilted, lolled sideways, and she grinned a horrid grin. “I could have trapped you, Orlando, just an hour ago, the way you were. But I already had one inside me.”

Thought so.

“You… you helped Phoebe. It was you, in the caverns. How—?”

“It does not matter. I was old. Ages too old. I needed a change.” She lolled her head around, gazing at the surroundings, then out the window to the flickering hall. “We must go.”

“Where?”

“To find freedom.”

She moved in jerky motions toward the door. Then it was open, and they were outside, in the shadows. “Come, Orlando Natch. Your destiny is out there, not inside with me, or any of these unfortunates.”

“But, where are we?”

“Does not matter. You know the place, or many like it.”

“Military? An air force base? But where?”

“Where is not important.”

They had traveled the length of the hall, passing many more doors, some ajar, some empty, others with sounds of whimpering, or words recited over and over.

“These others…”

“I will tend to them.”

“Aren’t you supposed to, I don’t know, not interfere?”

She turned back and grinned a lunatic grin. “That was before.”

“Before what?” This is sounding really disassociated. Like I’m in a video game and don’t have many dialogue options.

“Before they made me return to the flesh. Surely you felt it too, coming back from infinity? How was it for you?”

Orlando sighed. “I can’t imagine, then what you are going through.”

“Not so bad,” she said giddily, almost skipping around a corner. “Good to be back, but I have a lot… up here.” Tapping her head, she kept chuckling as they passed a lounge where two staff members were sitting cross-legged, rocking back and forth, listening to headphones. Drowning out the voices or visions?

They arrived at an elevator, and she pressed the button.

Orlando stepped to her side and waited. Waited in silence. Until he couldn’t any more.

“So… if you’re him — er, her — and you’re not on the sidelines anymore, you know what’s happening out there?”

“I do.”

“Do you know how to stop it?”

She shrugged as the doors opened.

He followed her inside. Turned and saw sixteen buttons. She chose the top one, but motioned to his keycard, which he dutifully swiped.

The doors closed, and he turned to stare at the silvery interior. Watched her out of his peripheral vision as they ascended. She tapped her feet, lowered her chin to her chest, and started humming.

“Okay, let me ask something else that’s bothering the shit out of me.”

More humming.

“While I was… there. Like you, like the you that’s now trapped in her, I saw things.”

A chuckle, like a little girl’s. “I bet.”

“What does it mean, what’s out there, beyond all this, then?”

More giggling.

“I know it’s not real.” Orlando turned to her, spread out his arms. “It’s all Matrix-y out there. In here, hell, everything. Everywhere.” He knocked on the metal door. “None of this is real?”

“It is real enough.”

“Says the crazy girl in an evil-Agent kind of way.”

She blinked at him curiously. “What else could be missing? It is life, it is existence. It is suffering, it is joy. Pain and sorrow, ecstasy and laughter, guilt and pride.”

“I get it, but what does it all mean?”

She smiled a red-lipped, stained teeth smile. “Is that not the point of life?”

“What?”

“To answer that very question?”

“So, is that it? We’re in a cosmic wheel sort of situation here? Try, try again until we get it right?”

“Maybe.”

“Sounds like you don’t have all the answers either. I figured you were an angel or something. I don’t think you were one of them. The original volunteers from the Custodian Program. Which means you were earlier.”

“Or later. Maybe time travel.”

“You’re killing me. Stop talking in riddles. What are you?”

“Something.”

“So then tell me, what’s out there, past all this? I got a glimpse, and I know that there’s something, a tangible, incredible, something beyond, and to those out there, we’re something else.”

“Stop thinking that way. This is real. We are real. Just a different reality, but real nonetheless. And what we — you — do here is not meaningless in any sense. In fact, it is all the more meaningful.”

Orlando sighed. “Like an open-world role-playing game. With different choices affecting your character and the world in different ways?”

“Exactly.”

“With one or two end game scenarios? Or millions? Infinite ones?”

She shrugged. “Something tells me there are not that many, and despite varying individual destinies, across differing realities and universes, there is one end in sight that you’re all rapidly approaching.”

“Okay so again, what’s out there?”

“All I can say is, it’s something wondrous.”

“You’re giving off a serious Hal vibe here.”

She just stared at him, and her eyes, if anything, swelled up even darker, fuller.

“You know, like from 2001, A—”

“Space Odyssey, Clarke’s masterpiece. I know it. I know him.”

“You do?” He scratched at the back of his head. “Uh, was he… one of us? I mean, I always wondered, with his prescience on ideas and shit, maybe…”

“Stay focused, Orlando.”

“Okay, so what? We’re all like playthings in a video game?”

“Or more like players.”

Orlando thought for a moment. “Oh, then… it’s a choice kind of thing. We chose this reality, this avatar type player that we’re controlling, but don’t know it? Immersed in the game.” He nodded. “I like it. It works.”

“Thought you would. But again, I am not entirely sure either. It is a surmise, based on the facts, and centuries of experience I gleaned from my other host.”

The elevator slowed quickly, and Orlando grasped the side as it came to a stop.

“Oh, and get ready, Mr. Natch.”

“What for?”

She turned to him, grinning and letting out a chuckle as she ducked to the side, flattening herself against the wall while the doors opened.

“The guards up here. Armed. And angry.”