A blast of sound hit Troy's head, like a tidal wave. Nothing, which came with it, sounded anywhere near recognizable. Pure white noise made more sense to his mind than whatever had just gone through him.
Most importantly, though, it hadn't come from his surroundings. That would have been irritating beyond all, yet Troy would have gotten some reasoning for it. But, instead, it had come from within his head. It had come from his brain implant.
“Adam”, Troy began, his brain still releasing figurative hissing, from the sensory bomb, which it had been hit with. “What was that supposed to be? Because, if it was you speaking, I think I may be having a stroke.”
He even added a less smart comment, in the end, so Adam would respond faster. Troy wasn't sure exactly why, but when there was a chance to correct him, the response was just a tad faster. Only a second, in the most but it was noticeable.
Yet, such a quick response was missing, with nothing coming within the first second. Nor in the next two. Or the next ten.
Even if Adam wasn't slightly infuriated, by Troy's badly sourced statements, he should have replied by now. He always replied, when directly asked. But, as time passed the thirty-second mark, nothing but only the silence was answering him.
Something was wrong.
“Adam?” Troy stated, now sounding as worried as he was. “Can you hear me?”
Nothing.
“If you can hear me, and you're just focusing on something with the description, forget about the task. The more important thing, right now, is for you to answer me, as quickly as you can.”
Adam was not answering. He should have. But, he did not do so. Was the earpiece broken?
Troy took out the earpiece, and the possibility of Adam answering with it. He studied it closely, checking for anything, that would indicate it was broken. Nothing on its surface was looking wrong, at least. It was as white, as it usually was, with no indents to see.
Dr Fidelis had stated that the innards were more important. Maybe, it had been broken, without anything on the outside indicating so? Troy rustled it, close to his ears, trying to hear anything other than his now sweaty hands along the small earpiece's surface.
Not a single thing, out of the ordinary, could be heard. Nothing, which made it seem like the earpiece was at fault. So, he just put in on his ear again, hoping to give it all another shot.
“If you are hearing this, try to communicate with me, in any way you can,” Troy said. If something wasn't wrong on his end, it had to be Adam's which was messing the whole thing up. “Maybe, it's one of those source-lines, that you keep talking about. You could have mixed them up, and you're just talking into the wrong one. If you would be so kind, could you try to do… something?”
A familiar screech came along. Not the one, which Troy had heard only a minute ago, but the one of Dr Fidelis' arrival, through the earpiece.
*I'm afraid he can't hear you, buddy*, Dr Fidelis said, his jovial voice having been replaced with one of focus and slight confusion.
Why couldn't Adam hear him? Had Troy messed something up, which cut off the communication? If so, why could Dr Fidelis still talk through it? The brain implant had some functions, which were controlled with your thought. He never used them himself, yet he could have easily triggered some emergency system-wipe.
“Could you explain why?” Troy asked, growing nervous. He needed to know.
Just after asking, the surroundings began changing. It was could be explained, be alike the normal environment changes. The materials, building up the viewable area, seemingly began melting. This included the trees, the ground, and the very realistically built animals. The wolves didn't notice this melting, their movements causing splatters of materials, as they took bites. Their heads were the first to lose form, with their bodies falling suit a few seconds later. It was the gazelle, which lasted the longest, of all things in the area. In the simulation, it had been on the verge of dying. The long moments granted, by the melting of the wolves, gave it the time needed, to die of blood loss. It laid still, till the moment, where it disappeared in one big swoop.
Troy didn't have the greatest of comments about it. He had seen it all countless times before. People got desensitized, after the first few real, blood spurts. It had just been a while, since the last viewing, when the gazelle had been felled. It had been brutal, to see, but he had seen many things like it.
But, now, it was all gone, replaced with the usual white space, which Troy had learned to respect. In this area, he could, at least, move more around, and physically touch everything. For the record, he took Dr Fidelis' reasoning, as the why they could move around, as bullshit. They could have easily touched it. He was just stopping Troy from doing so, so he wouldn't need to take it away when the animals came into play. The creatures in the simulations couldn't see him, of course. If that gazelle had been sprinting at him, hitting him full force, and moving on, as if nothing had hit it at all, Troy would have gotten serious injuries. So, it had been fair, in the last two tests, when he thought about that particular possibility. And, not all of the environments shown, would have granted him the possibility of walking on the ground. Without the barrier, watching the bird infighting, long up in the air, would have been utterly impossible.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
*I'll tell you when you get out of there.*, Dr Fidelis said. Troy became able to see the exit out of the puzzled room.
“We are not continuing?” Troy questioned, not moving his legs in any meaningful way. “I thought that we were on a tight schedule.”
*Oh, we definitely are, buddy. Yet, without the cooperation of our most important test subject, performing anything productive is impossible. Now, get out of there, while it still thinks it's inhabited. You do not want to be inside, while it does the mandated cleaning.*, Dr Fidelis answered, leading strongly up to Troy needing to move his behind.
He followed the advice, walking out of the puzzle room, into the world it stood in.
Outside of the room, Dr Fidelis was frantically pushing buttons. Dr Hale was just standing around, as always, yet had foregone even pretending to write down notes. She looked… not dreadful, as in a bad appearance, but her eyes just radiated it. They looked relinquished, with no force guiding them into action.
A sharp beep came from the screen. Troy could hear Dr Fidelis swear, his pressing of buttons picking up in speed.
“What's going on?” Troy asked Dr Hale. “Why did we stop?”
“Explain for me, Dr Hale,” Dr Fidelis ordered, his tone leaving no option of disobeying. Troy had already pointed the question of her, though, so his hard request didn't matter. “I'm busy with this.”
The direct order seemingly brought Dr Hale out of her daze, the eyes on her face coming back in focus. She seemingly looked over uninterestingly at Dr Fidelis, before realizing the situation before her. That snapped her back, right into their shared reality.
“Adam's not responding,” Dr Hale began her explanation of with. “We don't know why we don't know what triggered it. All we know is that he's rejecting every attempt of communication, which we are throwing in his direction.”
“Wait. He can do that?” Troy said, flabbergasted at the thought. Never before, had he even gotten an inkling of this ability. The connections were held by the earpiece. Adam shouldn't have had any control over such things.
“Apparently, he can,” Dr Hale stated. Troy was about to ask how, but she cut him off before he even got the chance to utter the first words. “And, no, we don't have any know-how. Dr Fidelis thinks that he's just cutting off the connections, which he is familiar with. Right now, he is sending nearly everything we have at Adam, yet, from those annoying sounds, being emitted through the speakers, you can clearly hear, that it isn't working, as intended.”
The first, sharp sound being heard earlier was nothing, in comparison to the pure torrent of beeps being sent out constantly. Dr Fidelis was picking up speed. If not with his movements, then with the attempts at reconnection.
“Do you think that it will succeed?” Troy asked. He, like the two others, didn't know, why Adam was doing it. And, that scared him. “We need to figure this out, as quickly as possible.”
He had the capability of pure isolation. Adam had even told Troy that he wouldn't be averse to it if the need called for it. Right now, for whatever reason, it could have been interpreted as such. Even the possibility of it filled him with dread.
“I don't know”, Dr Hale stated, not sounding like she took the current situation as seriously, as she should have. “I'm not an expert on the subject. The man at the computer is. If Dr Fidelis figures it out, it's figured out. If he doesn't figure it out… we'll just have to wait for Adam to make the first move.”
She didn't even mention the chances of him refusing to do so. Dr Hale took it as a definite.
“And, I'll have an even greater chance of doing so, if there are no distractions to make me falter,” Dr Fidelis cut in, not looking away from the progressively quickening screen. Images on it were shown for under a second, before being switched over entirely. Troy couldn't understand any of it, the pixel arrangement seeming random, in the least. Nevertheless, his slightly aggressive statement was taken as the ticket to getting out of there. First, though, he would have to get out of the skinsuit.
As he walked over to the curtain, ready to get into his regular clothing, thoughts began sprouting from inside his mind. Not of Adam's situation. That one had been on a full gallop, since the moment, where no responses were being heard.
No, his current invasive thought pattern was about Dr Fidelis' way of speaking. It had been aggressive, cutting, and not even sounding like requests. He was being ordered around, by a man, who was previously categorized, as one of the good-natured people, that he had ever known. Yet, new colours had been shown. And they weren't pretty at all.
Had Dr Fidelis always been like this? Had he just been hiding it all, behind a facade of being a good person? Troy had seen a facade break before, tore off, due to incredibly stressful situations. At those times, people had never gone back to their usual ways of expression. Or, maybe he had just never been able to see them, in the same light. It was usually darker.
Troy quietly put on his normal attire, not uttering any of his thoughts vocally. As of now, he wouldn't dare to do anything like it, in front of that man. Maybe, if the normal face appeared again. Until then, though, his opinions were non-existent.
“Am I to join Troy, in evacuating the area?” Dr Hale asked, not sounding as sure, as she usually was. It wasn't fear or anything like it. He could better describe it as being… tired. “So you can work better than you usually are.”
She wanted to get out of his presence, just as much as he did. Yet, from his response, it seemed her wishes were not to be granted, at this time.
“No. You're staying here, beside me, for the foreseeable future,” Dr Fidelis answered, not taking any time, to sound like he felt bad for her. “If Adam relents in his rejections, I need you to make him want to continue. You understand?”
Normally, the asking if she understood, would have been, where she could ask for clarification. Now, it was made to hint, how little, she had a choice in this matter.
“Yes, sir”, Dr Hale answered.
Troy had gotten the last of his clothes on and was ready to leave. Going away from the hiding curtain, he walked across the room, straight in line to the exit. On his way, he shared a glance, with Dr Hale. She wasn't happy. She wasn't angry. She wasn't sad. She was… nothing. She felt indifference, from the expression that Troy could parse.
The door opened automatically, as he got closer to it. That was good. He wasn't sure that he would have had the guts to ask for help. It could have disturbed Dr Fidelis in his work. Right now, that was the least pleasurable outcome.
Getting out, few thoughts were left for the subject of Dr Hale. He felt bad for her, yet didn't want to imagine her current situation. Maybe she was used to it, only the new inclusion of Troy, having put a temporary stop on it. He rather hoped that he had been the catalyst instead.
Now, where was he supposed to go? Troy wasn't sure, what time, that it was supposed to be. He had come out of the test early, having only been in there for little over an hour. How long was the test supposed to have gone fully? Usually, they just walked to the cafeteria in the same instant, they stopped.
Was their schedule created by, what times they needed to be at the cafeteria? Or, was their times at the cafeteria controlled, by what their current times at the tests, for the day, were?
Troy hoped that it was the last option, as he walked his usual steps through the hallways. He wasn't too sure, where else to go. Maybe his personal room. Yet, there wasn't anything to do there. And, he wasn't sure, when he was expected to be back.
It would be best, if he just went somewhere he could be found.