Vyvani

Did I open my eyes, or had the world always been this way?

I look at my surroundings. Everywhere is bright and blinding. It is as if I am inside a glossy chamber of white polycarbonate—the uniformity of the color disorients me, as I cannot distinguish between the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. I rack my brain as I try to remember how I ended up here.

There is not much that I remember; only disjointed memories and scenes muddled in between the reality and the dream. I do distinctly remember that Akato had Kazin’s body in his trunk, because I recall the shock that I felt. It was in that moment I realized that I had been thrust amidst the waves of the workings of the world, the moment I began to truly understand the nature of the city I had been living in, merely shielded and blinded from its cruelties by my childishness. The Commissioner had fired off a few rounds, and I had been hit. I remember the car ride very, very vaguely. But then my mind just, in a way, shut down.

The strange thing is, I don’t even remember waking up. I’m just kind of here, as if I had been here all my life. It is almost as if I don’t even remember a life outside of this place, as if here was where my existence was writ from the beginning of my days.

I try to inspect the walls. They are as smooth as one would expect polycarbonate to be. There is not a single crack in them—not an iota of a smudge, nor even a lump in the surface. It is uncanny, this lack of irregularity.

“Hello!” I shout, only half-hoping for an answer.

Nothing, or so I thought. I hear a voice to my rear. When I turn, there is a woman there. She is dressed in the white gown of a researcher. She is wearing techSpectacles. She is tall, and her posture reminds me of a classical statue. She is poised and elegant, and elite intellectual in every sense, an upper tier resident of Handata City society.

“How are you feeling?” she asks me.

“Never better,” I reply. “Where am I? And who are you?” I cross my arms and take a step back.

She offers me an awkward smile that I suspect was meant to be comforting. “It’s no wonder Shora took you under her wing.” She outstretches her hand. “My name is Sabina. Sabina Son.”

My mouth drops to the floor. “Sabina Son, as in the leading researcher in algorithmic biorobotics and cybernetic psychiatry?”

She nods. “You got me.”

My reservations have dissipated, and I rush to her and shake her hand vigorously. “I had no idea you knew Shora on a first name basis. If I had known that she’d known you, I most definitely would have requested an introduction!”

Professor Son holds her smile, but her eyes have a strange glimmer to them.

“Speaking of Shora,” I say. “Where is she?”

“Not here,” Professor Son says. She takes a good, long look at me, her eyes flickering up and down. I can’t discern from the expression on her face whether she is weighing and judging me, or waging some internal war within herself.

“Is something wrong?” I ask.

The Professor opens an arm wide, inviting me to accompany her. She wraps her arm around my shoulders and leads me towards the wall. “Let’s ease you into this, shall we?”

I am irked by the vagueness of our exchange; and though I am burning with questions, this is Professor Sabina Son standing before me, so I decide that I will, for the moment, allow for this maddening ambiguity.

She leads me to the wall, but she does not slow down.

“Uhhh…” I chuckle nervously. “Uh…Professor? There’s a wall there. Professor? There’s a—!" I cover my face with my hands as she propels the both of us towards the wall with her long strides. What the shit, I’m thinking to myself. This woman is the foremost scholar of our generation, a crazy genius, so to say—and I’d thought the two words were complementary in her case, not mutually exclusive.

But we never hit the wall. When I open my eyes to peek between my fingers, I see that we are in the middle of a wide road. I don’t recognize this part of the city, but to the southwest I can see many of the familiar sights of Handata—the looming black disk that is the Vermeta Corporation headquarters, the five, silver towers of SHARD Corporation, and even farther to the south, the triple turquoise domes of Chunzanten Hall in City Center.

I glance up in confusion at Professor Son. “How’d we get here? Why is the street empty?”

“It’s always better to begin with what we know,” Professor Son answers. “So, you do recognize the city?”

“Yeah, this is Handata City.” I look around me. “I don’t recognize this part, though.”

“Well, you see, that’s because this part is unknown to the populace, for the most part,” the professor replies. “Come, I’ll lead you inside.”

We turn to look behind us, and for the first time, I notice seven immense towers—and I mean, monumental and gargantuan, both in width and height—far larger than any building I’ve ever seen in Handata City. They shimmer in the sunlight. I cannot tell if they are silver or transparent glass. Sabina Son urges me on, and I walk with her towards the towers, though my step falters in both my awe and reservation. Just before I enter the foremost tower, I glance back at the city. That is when I notice something strange.

These new towers cast no shadow on the ground.

But I don’t have much time to dwell on the fact before the professor pushes me inside with her.

She leads me into a large lobby. I am on the lookout now, and I begin to notice the strangest things. None of what I notice are totally unnerving, but there are still aspects of this place that are uncanny in nature which lead me to begin questioning the truth of the world I am in. There are angles in the wall that don’t work, but when I look back they have readjusted. The walls, floors, stairs, lifts, everything is too glossy, too new, too unblemished. As we walk, I attempt to leave a smudge on the ground, but the floor remains unmarred and unsullied, no matter how much I drag my step. Walking through a door takes time—I am not sure how to explain this one, but it almost feels as if it is…buffering.

“Am I in a VR pod?” I say, interrupting the professor, who by now has been engaged in a lecture concerning algorithms and humans. I stop in my tracks so she will fully understand my irritation. No more ambiguity, I decide. No more roundabouts. I want an answer now.

The Professor wears an expression of surprise, and my suspicions are confirmed.

“I’m in a VR pod,” I mutter. “Why didn’t you just tell me this? You could have saved me a lot of headache.”

Professor Son sighs deeply. “I’m not quite sure that that is the correct way to describe it. You are not quite right.”

I wave my hand. “Okay, well I’d still like out. I’m not one who’s really into gaming.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“It is…different, Vyvani.”

“How do you mean?”

Professor Son sighs again, and the depth of her breath is as if the burdens of all the world presses down on her shoulders. “Are you sure you would like to do this here, now?”

I nod. “I wanted to do this thirty minutes ago.”

“Alright then,” Professor Son says. “We’ll get right to it. Have you heard of the Crystalline Towers?”

“Yes,” I say, out of habit. “No,” I correct myself. “Is that where I am?”

“Yes,” she says.

I gesture upwards and around me. “Is that what all this is? The Crystalline Towers?”

“In this world, yes, these are the Crystalline Towers. But in the physical world, they look nothing like this.”

I cock my head. “Okay, well, take me to the physical ones then. We can talk about this over coffee or something.”

Professor Son shakes her head. “I’m afraid that’s not at all possible.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” I say, my voice tightening.

“Are you sure you can handle this, Vyvani?” The gentleness with which she speaks does not comfort me, as she intends—rather, I feel the sharp pang of fear.

“Without a doubt,” I insist in agitation. “I just got shot by green beamShot and survived.”

“Ok then,” Professor Son says. A tPanel forms in her hand, the pixels emerging from thin air, and I know, without a doubt, that I am in a VR pod. She pounds at the screen for a while, then looks up at me. “Here we go, Vyvani. I’m right here if you need me.”

“Okay,” I say in a singsong voice. I do not mean to come off as rude; this brazenness is to mask how afraid I feel at this moment. I want to see Shora. I want to see my family. I want to see if they caught Commissioner Akato or not. All these things take root in my mind with a terrible desperation.

The world around us suddenly collapses into little shards like broken glass. We are in a dark chamber now. There are hundreds of screens around us, as if we are in some security control room. This does not look at all like the real world. I have never really been interested in VR pods, but I can tell you that the menu room of any virtual experience does not look like this either.

I peer closely at the screens, and I realize that footage from security cameras is being played. I look closer. I see white-gowned scientists, dressed like the professor, going about their work in a laboratory. Some are coding, some are reviewing body-imaging scans.

Professor Son touches her tPanel, and one particular rectangle of footage is made larger than the others. She looks back at me.

“That’s you, Vyvani.”

I watch the footage and laugh incredulously. “What?”

“When you were shot by Commissioner Akato, it was green beamShot, which you seem to be aware of.”

“High radiation, low kinetic energy.”

Sabina Son nods sadly. My knees begin to tremble.

“The wound began spreading on your body. By the time Shora was able to get you to the hospital, the radiation had already spread to most of your organs. By the time they had you on the surgery table, the radiation had already entered your bloodstream. You were, at that point, physically, and legally dead. Too many of your organs had failed, for you to qualify for transplants, both organic and bioengineered. Shora made the only choice she could, to keep you alive. To give you a semblance of life.”

My strength gives out and I collapse onto the floor. “That’s not me,” I whisper.

“It is,” Sabina Son assures me. “That part of you is exactly what makes you, you.” She points. “That there, is the very foundation of life. Not the heart. The heart is but a battery, the body a vessel. The mind is where we truly reside.”

There’s a tank in the middle of the footage. It’s filled with liquid. In the center of that tank is a pedestal.

And on that pedestal is a brain.

Chips have been delicately connected to it by way of wires. Even more wires are connected to the tank itself.

“We now live in a world where we possess technology which may allow the mind to live on, absent the body,” Sabina Son says slowly. “And the research into this technology continues, to discover its restraints, its drawbacks, and its possibilities.”

I am speechless. I cannot think of anything. I want to feel nauseous, but I do not know if that is actually me or my mind just playing tricks on me in this phony, knockoff world. I leap to my feet and take off running. I don’t know where I run to, where I hope to end up, or what I wish to escape from, but I just keep on running regardless.

I am out of the chamber, then out of the Crystalline Towers. I can’t believe anything that the Professor is saying to me. I run, and run, and run down the streets, towards City Center, towards the corporate buildings that I recognize. There is no one there. Not a single soul in this whole, damnable place. I scream at the top of my lungs, look to the skies in my hopes to catch the sight of a single hovercar zipping through the lanes.

Nothing.

The sun begins setting. At least this counterfeit city imitates day and night. That much is still real and human.

I collapse onto middle of the street and bury my face in my arms. I remain there for a long time, sobbing, letting the tears fall. Are these tears even real? Is anything real anymore?

Soon I hear footsteps, and Sabina Son kneels beside me. She lays a hand on my shoulder.

“I want my family,” I whisper. I muster the courage to glance up at her. “I want my mom and dad.” I am afraid of the answer I think I will get. And I was right to be scared.

Sabina Son shakes her head. “They cannot know the existence of this place, or of this research. I’m sorry.”

“Then I want Shora!” I shriek. “Bring her here! I need to talk to her!” The angry adamancy to assail her with questions burn deep within me: why she thought it would be better to keep me alive as a lab rat in this place, than to just let me die as a whole human being. I demand answers, I demand restitution, I demand to know by what right she believed herself the arbiter of my fate. I am weeping, and my chest is heaving. Reality unveils itself before me like a terrible truth, and when I look upon it, I find that it is a burden which I am not cut out to bear, in this world that is nothing but an imitation of the truth.

Sabina Son removes her techSpectacles and rubs her temples, then the tears pool at her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Vyvani. Shora is dead.”

In that moment, everything I thought I knew, everything I had believed, all the pillars of my life crumble into dust. All hope dissipates, all future paths are screened by an opaque mist. I collapse into Sabina’s arms, wondering.