A steady beeping fills my ears, like one of those noises you hear on doctor Shows. Why am I hearing that? I should be on short final for the runway not hearing a drama TV show.
I try and open my eyes, a gunky film is keeping them closed, with some effort I manage to get them open. Light fills my vision, blurry and unfocused the world comes rushing in. My head throbs, and a dry coppery taste permeates my mouth, I click my tongue hunting for moisture.
I’m in some sort of hospital room, the beeping noise is the heart monitor off to the side. Why is it so annoying though, I try to block some of the light with my hand. Nothing happens, am I tied down? I try and struggle, but I can’t seem to move at all. Cold ice fills my veins, why can’t I move I try lifting my head up. It feels like an elephant is sitting on forehead, I struggle but finally manage to look down at myself. I’m lying in a hospital bed with some thin blankets covering my body. The room is fairly small, there is a window pointing out to the city below. It looks to be sometime at night, the sparkling lights of the city are visible through it.
What the heck? I don’t see anything holding me down, I try to struggle some more but nothing happens. I try shouting, “Hello! Is anyone here I need help, what’s going on!” a woman with brown hair tied up in a ponytail comes in, she has on a pair of light blue scrubs. Her face looks concerned. “Oh, you are finally awake. How are you uh feeling Mr. Bartholomew?” I try to open my mouth to talk but my throat is to dry, nothing comes out but a raspy gasp of air. “Here let me get you a glass of water.” She walks over to the sink in the room, fills up a paper cup from one of the cabinets. Walking over she holds the cup under my lips and tips it back so I can drink. Cool soothing water floods down my mouth and into my throat.
“My throat feels better thank you.” I manage to say still raspy.
“That’s something at least, I will inform the doctor that you are awake. He will go over your condition and what happened.”
With that she tosses the empty cup into the trash and leaves the room again.
I try again to move some of my appendages, willing them with all my collective thought. Move damn it move! I can feel my face flushing with blood as I try and force my body to move. Fear and desperation fill my mind as I strain to even lift a finger. Please, please move please I chant in my head.
While I continue to struggle the door opens again. This time an elderly man with white hair, tons of wrinkles, and a white coat comes in.
“Mr. Bartholomew, I am glad to see you are awake, you have been out for about three days. I am Dr. Mullton and you are currently in the hospital, you were in a rather nasty aircraft incident. I don’t know the details, but I can say you are very lucky to be alive right now.”
“What’s wrong with me Dr. Mullton, why can’t I move?”
He pulls up a small stool next to the bed and sits down. Looking down at his clip board he says. “You have been paralyzed from the neck down, from the X-rays and scans we have done, your spinal cord has been irreparably injured. In all honesty it’s truly amazing you’re with us, we don’t know if there is any way to recover from this.”
He rubs the bridge of his nose and sighs. “I am sorry, we can try physical therapy and some surgeries, but the damage is so bad I don’t know if that will even do anything.”
I look down at my body, I will never fly again, and I can never experience the gift of flight or drive or even feed myself. I deep feeling of despair floods my mind, how will I cope with something like this? Is this even going to be a life worth living?
“So” I whisper out “What is going to happen to me? I don’t have anyone to go to. No real friends, or family.” When I was twenty-two my mom died from overdose from a cocktail of drugs. My father whoever he is, abandoned my mom before I was born, and she never mentioned him, and I had no brothers or sisters.
“Well, that is the interesting part Mr. Bartholomew. There are some people here with a rather unique prospect for you. But first, someone else is here who can tell you more of what happened with your incident.”
From outside I see Brandon come into the room. He has black bags under his eyes, and he seems haunted and a stressed. His normal smile is gone, he’s hunched over, and he is still wearing the same cloths he had on from my solo.
“Really glad you’re awake Alex.” Brandon says with a weak smile. “I’ve been worried sick and have not left the hospital since your crash.”
“What even happened?” I ask. “I don’t remember a lot, just a white blur and then spinning.”
“Well, from what I saw on the ground a flock of birds flew across your flight path on approach. There really was nothing you could do about it, so it’s not your fault.” He leans back against the wall and looks up at the ceiling. “Then the passenger wing came off where the birds hit. I swear in all my years flying I’ve never seen anything like that happen. Normally they just dent in the wing or cave in the windows. I have no idea how the entire wing came off.” He looks back down at me.
“The FAA is looking into the incident and reviewing all the data. They should have a better answer in a few more days.”
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
I lay there shocked; a bird strike was all it took to knock out my dreams of flying. I knew that bird strikes were always a possibility, but you only heard about them on the news or in incident reports for other people. That was never supposed to happen to me.
“I’m sorry about your plane Brandon.” I pause mid-sentence I can feel tears welling up behind my eyes. “I should have been more vigilant and scanned the area better. I was so intent on my checklist and keeping everything perfect.”
“Don’t you dare blame this on yourself. No one is perfect, even pilots with thousands of hours make mistakes dumber than this. If you’re worried about the plane it was insured, but that hardly matters.” Holding back my tears with a gulp I say, “Well that’s a relief about the plane, I guess. What happens next?”
“Well.” Doctor Mullton says. “Remember I said there were some people here to see you? They have a proposal for you. I will go and get them.” He gets up and pushes his stool back under the counter and walks from the room. “I’m going to head out Alex.” Brandon says. “Just holler if you need something, I’ll be by my phone if you need anything. I will let you know if I hear anything else from the FAA.” “Thank you, Brandon.” I say, then Brandon leaves the room too shutting the door quietly behind him.
Shortly after he leaves a man, and a woman enters. The man is wearing a black suit and tie, and has his hair is held down by a metric ton of product. The woman is also in a black suit but has a skirt and her hair is buzzed short. Both have a very serious no nonsense air about them. The man has a very large stack of papers in his hand.
“Who exactly are you guys? Are you with the FAA?”
The man walks over to the side of the bed, and the woman walks right up behind him like a living shadow. They are both very tense and high strung, like they are robots or something.
“Mr. Bartholomew, I am Mr. Anderson, and this is Ms. Grey. We represent a company that is conducting research on virtual cerebral integration, in short, we want to study your brain and possibly help you with your condition. Before I tell you more, I need you to sign this NDA. I could read it aloud to you or you can take my word it just assures your silence for what we are about to discuss.”
Study my brain that definitely sounds scary, but possible help after the doctor just told me there was no help? Could they help me get back into an airplane, back to traveling and seeing the world? No brainer for me then, bad pun brain. If I don’t take a risk, what am I loosing, sitting here in a hospital bed for the rest of my life while a nurse feeds me, and I can’t so much as scratch my nose.
“Okay, I’ll sign the NDA, or I mean how can I sign it without hands? And this does not commit me to anything yet though right?”
Mr. Anderson pulls over the little table tray thing on wheels, dropping the giant stack of papers on it. “We have that covered, your verbal consent was witnessed, Ms. Grey will provide a notarized stamp and sign for you. And no, this is just the start, so we can share our proposal with you.”
Ms. Grey began flipping through pages, signing seemingly randomly and stamping after each. Meanwhile Mr. Anderson locks the door, he removes something from his coat pocket and places it on the counter next to the door. He presses a button, and a moderately loud static noise fills the room. “Noise canceller, encase someone has a recording device and prevents anyone from listening through the door.” He explains from my curious look.
“So, Mr. Bartholomew.”
“You can call me Alex.”
“Right, Alex. The company I represent is called Cerebral Interactive Dynamics or CID. We are taking patients with injuries that prevent them from living a normal life and integrating their brains into one of our game worlds. There they can live their life in full VR with no restrictions and in most cases do things they could only ever dream of in this world.”
A pause of silence followed. Where we both stared at each other. “I will let that sink in for a moment Alex.”
So, what they are offering me is to become part of a computer game? I mean I’ve heard of the new age VR games. They have been out for a few years now, but I’ve never really been a gamer. The real world and its splendors have always been far more appealing to me. But now? With my paralysis being permanent my exploration and freedom are gone.
“Mr. Anderson, how real is this VR? Does it look like a video game with graphics and stuff? I’ve never really played video games, so I doubt I’m even any good at them.”
“Well, that’s the thing Alex with you being integrated into the VR program it will seem so real that you will never even know the difference between the VR and reality. Here I can give you a small demonstration of what to expect.” From his suit he pulls out a small tablet. “This is a recording a sample from one of our other patients who has been integrated. Now know we have multiple VR worlds to choose from this is just one.”
He brings the pad over and holds it in my view.
The pad lights up.
It’s from some one’s point of view, they are holding a sword and a shield. It looks like they have some sort of helmet obstructing some of their sight. They are in a cave with flickering light coming from torches on the walls. The person is moving slowly, trying to be quiet. Everything looks like real life, every detail is captured perfectly, and I can even see specs of dirt floating in the air being kicked up by their feet.
The person rounds a bend in the cave. An enormous cavern opens up before them, gold and jewels fill the entire area. It’s breathtaking with its brilliance and shine. “Yes!” The figure whispers under their breath. “The long-lost treasure of Arkmendal!” Not quietly enough because from hoard of gold and jewels a mound begins to rise. Rivers of gold flow off the form as it rises up to the ceiling. A dragon of immense proportions towers over the person’s view. Its scales a bloody red, menacing horns and fiery eyes look down at them. “You have come to steal my hoard manling! Prepare for death!” It roars out at them! The person drops their weapons but instead of fleeing they brings their hands together and begins chanting in some obscure language. Bright diagrams of light start coalescing around their hands weaving in and out forming complex symbols in a circle. A portal of blackness with flames flicking out, opens in front of the dragon, and out comes a monstrosity! It’s as tall as the dragon, it appears humanoid with giant bat wings, a demon of some sort. It immediately lunges at the dragon. Grabbing it by the horns, it smashes the dragons face into the ground, a sword materializes in the demon’s hand. In a swift slice it removes the dragon’s head. Blood and bone chunks splatter all over the pile of gold. The demon lifts the severed head up and starts chewing on the meaty bits dangling down. The sound of crunching and smacking fills the cavern, the person ignores the demon and runs into the hoard stuffing as much of it as they can into a bag.
Then the screen goes blank.
“Well Alex what do you think? Real enough for you?”