When a bargain package virtual reality vacation goes wrong, one man must face off against a maniacal killer, alone.
This story was part of a project I started a while back on my blog. My goal was to post 21 stories in 21 days. I managed to get 13 done before life interfered. This is one of them.
My basic premise was built on a vacation that is experienced in VR while the traveler is in suspended animation. It's the old idea of dying in a dream. If the killer kills you in here, are you dead?
Now Presenting, The Virtual Psychopath, Part 1
The screen went black, then a green Command Prompt script appeared, :Unable to eject profile/c8w9mh, incorrect password, please enter current password to eject.
My heart stopped.
I struggled to surface, which I knew was impossible, not without the ejection protocol. It might be days before anyone realized there was a problem here. I’d opted for the value package, which meant that my Holocrypt was one in a very long line, of twenty ranks that spanned the basement of a massive 600 story high rise, each floor another amenities level.
At this level, there was one attendant, if you could call him that. I wasn’t even sure he was being paid beyond the glorified broom closet he called a service apartment and all the ramen he could eat.
Day three of my vacation and it might be my last. Damn my brother. This was all his idea, “Take a holocruise, it’s cheap, it’s all expense paid, you’ll feel like you spent a month on the beach when it’s over and you’ll still have most of your vacation pay to upgrade to a larger pod. So, there I was, trapped inside an egg-shaped blister of polycarbon and Plexiglas, hooked into feeding tubes, catheters and monitors, everything I needed to just lay back and enjoy a relaxing vacation.
What my brother didn’t know. Could not have known, or even imagined, was that there was a killer on the loose in the Virtuasort I’d selected for it’s ‘Cayman Island’ experience. What was worse, was that I knew the guy.
As soon as I had consciously blamed my brother, I had to be honest, none of this would be a problem, if…
Look, I just needed a break and it was one little lie on one little medical form. I hadn’t revealed my mechgen heart valve. There was a good reason. See, these eggs are all equipped with cutting edge life support, and even here, in the bargain basement, where the seat cushions are thin and the food fluids aren’t genetically balanced for your system, they inspected these things. They were safe. No one had died, except…
I’m not beating around the bush here, I just don’t want to think about it! Okay, here is the problem, in holostasis, which is basically a drug enduced stupor that heightens suggestibility to improve the VR experience, in holostasis, if you suffer a severe emotional or imagined physical shock, it will typically throw your heart into arrhythmia. This is dangerous enough for someone with my coronary hardware, but in here, it’s deadly. Couple that with the fact that, if the arrhythmia lasted past a certain point and did not stabilize, a defibrillator would be activated, along with the emergency evac protocol.
So, as my egg was automatically lifted onto the overhead conveyor and shuttled to a waiting ambulance, the pod itself would shock my heart, which, in all likelihood, would kill me.
That one check box didn’t seem to matter. After all, I was going to be laying on a beach, sipping imaginary Coronas and hopefully hooking up with some other virtually hot vacationer at some point. What could go wrong? “Check here if you know of any reason you should not submit yourself to the Holocrypt experience” followed by a long list, including, artificially coronary supplementation.
It was none of their business, an invasion of my privacy, frankly, I argued. Besides, my brother insisted, email worked from VR into the real world, so I could just message him if there was a problem. That thought was most chilling of all, having seen my brother’s inbox grow to over 5000 undeleted messages.
Had I checked that box, I would be on the top of a downtown hotel, experiencing their “Real sand beach and wave experience” in the real sun, sucking down real booze, just like every year, instead, I was trapped in here with Glenn and he had somehow changed my passcode. The passcode was simple, a single number, or letter, mentally repeated three times would activate the ejection protocol. I’d be gently coming out of my stupor right now if it weren’t for Glenn.
Glenn Poole had worked for me once, well, I had supervised his work for our mutual employer, to be more exact. He was an asshat, a fact that he readily acknowledged, almost wore as a badge of honor, and I’d fired him for it.
I’d let it slide when he continually took people’s clearly labeled lunches from the breakroom fridge. I’d even recommended counseling and brought him back on probation after he’d defecated in a fellow supervisor’s office trash, --a move several of us admitted we admired, she was much worse than Glenn—but when he had called a press conference, on his own, to reveal scandalous photos of our boss cavorting with a hooker, that turned out to be his wife, it had to be done.
Even then, the decision had haunted me.
But Glenn, Glenn could not let it rest. I’d had a restraining order on him for the past five years, after repeatedly catching him going through my trashcan looking for what he kept calling, “The smoking gun.” Now, somehow, he’d managed to join the same Holocrypt ‘flite’ I was on, had found out which Virtuasort I was staying at. I hadn’t seen him in two years and now, he was here.
I’d been at the hotel bar, trying new cocktails, something I rarely do in my real world, when I heard automatic gunfire. At first, I hadn’t really panicked, after all, there are regular reminders that this was VR. Like, for instance, last night, in the disco, a woman I truly believed was a hooker came on to me, and when I hesitated, a graphic had popped up over her head, reminding me,
“What happens in the Holocrypt, stays in the Holocrypt.”
I turned on my barstool to find that some nutbag had managed, against protocol, to find a black market code hacker to get him a virtually real, 50 caliber machine gun and was wasting half naked guests by the pool. More than half of them I knew were likely “bots” since they’d been in the same deck chairs every day since I got here, but one guy I’d met at dinner was not, and I watched as he clasped his throat, blood pumping into an unbelievably large pool around his knees, which had hit the pavement.
My drink stalled, midair, the straw an inch from my mouth as the shooter turned towards me and pointed. It was Glenn Poole. He grinned, then walked on, wasting a cabana boy on his way to the elevator.
Even at that point, I was more annoyed than scared. I knew that Glenn would undoubtedly be found out and yanked from his Holocrypt, likely even spend some time on house arrest and mandatory medications, but that wouldn’t happen until someone came out of VR, reported him, and they sorted through what amounted to decades of VR mem-scenes, to find out who the killer was.
Most of these people would either immediately reboot to a new Virtuasort to finish their vacation, or receive credits in exchange for the unused portion of their trip. But I wasn’t going to take this lying down. I slammed the glass on the bar and walked toward the elevators.
Glenn got in before I could reach him and as the doors closed, he smiled, directly at me, so I watched the numbers on his elevator until they stopped. Floor 12. I waited to see if it would move further, it didn’t. So, I climbed into another car and headed up.
The hotel the Virtuasort was modeled after was in, pretty much, the exact location the VR showed us, and known for it’s views. In fact, each floor only had one wall, along a center hall, that could be made opaque, to protect the privacy of the guests. Without these walls activated, you could see clear through and out to 360 degrees of tropical paradise, so spotting Glenn was not a problem. He stepped into a room at the end of the hall, his weapon over one shoulder.
I marched down the hall, wishing I had a black market connection to provide me with an RPG right about now. Watching Glenn’s virtually flaming ass blowing out the glass side of the hotel and falling to the beach 12 stories below would have made my day. I stopped where I knew he could see me and waited.
He mopped blood from his face and arms, then took off his shirt and removed a clean one from a hanger. Either Glenn had spent the time since I’d last seen him, 20 hours a day in a gym, opted for surgery, or both. He’d been a pasty, doughy IT guy, past his prime at 30. Maybe he’d gone in for virtual enhancements, my VR self was 20 pounds lighter, but otherwise looked the same.
My brother had tried to convince me to go in for a Holloventure pack and play a superhero, or spy. It was a popular option, but I really just wanted to relax. If I’d had the millions it cost these days to travel by jet, I’d have picked a real world place as close to this as I could afford. I was boring.
Glenn buttoned his shirt, hung two fresh ammo belts over his shoulders, bandolier style and smiled at me over his shoulder. He’d known I was watching the whole time. He opened the door and stepped into the hall.
“Well, hello, Michael, did not expect to see you here,” he said, smoothly chambering a round.
“Bullshit. We both Know that’s not true, Glenn, I am the reason you’re here, but this ends now!” I said, as calmly as I could. I’d heard the injuries in VR hurt like hell, although the system muted the pain and I was not at all excited about getting shot, but I thought I could talk him down, or eject before it got to that. “Glenn, it’s sick, man. You came here to what? Get even? This is VR, the worst that happens is I lose a few minutes of my vacation for a reboot.”
“I think, Michael, you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that. I intend to hunt you down. I’ve got a full week and no one is getting out of here alive, which, with your heart condition, I’m guessing will make you a real world fatality,” Glenn said, calmly with a smile.
“Seriously? You know they’re going to catch you, right?”
Glenn laughed maniacally, “Wow, you never did think much of my skills. I guess you’ll just have to learn the hard way. When they find the mem-scenes in question, what people report as a virtual murder will look more like they were rebuffed from a bad sexual proposition. No, in fact, that’s exactly what they’ll find. Everybody wants me.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was almost flattered that someone would go to this much trouble to get to me, but my blood was starting to chill. In hindsight I could see that Glenn’s actions were not some desperate cry for help, or the behavior of a garden variety bully, he was a psychopath. He had chosen a virtual setting for his venue, but the result would be the same. Unless I ejected before he could get to me, or I managed to end his virtual existence, his plan just might work.
“Look, Glenn, I didn’t come up here to cause a problem. So, how about you send that little toy back wherever it came from and let’s go have a beer and settle our differences like civilized men,” I suggested.
Glenn’s chuckle was so low, it almost sounded like a growl, “No thanks, Mikey. I’m gonna enjoy this.” He looked at his watch, “I’ve got a salon appointment in about five minutes. Stick around. I’ll get back to you in about an hour. I think you’ll enjoy what I’ve got planned.”
Glenn walked down the hall, machine strapped over his rippling shoulders and climbed into the elevator. He made a gun with his fingers, pointed it at me and pulled the trigger as the doors closed. I started breathing again.
**Read the exciting conclusion tomorrow, here on Steemit! ** Here is part 2! https://steemit.com/story/@markrmorrisjr/original-short-fiction-the-virtual-pyscopath-part-2
Like my writing? Great, check out my scifi on Payhip. The Origin Dime Chronicles is an original novella series with three episodes so far, the third will publish in Sept.