Nick closed his eyes and commanded his MindWave to enter the multinet, with the intent of finding his way through the mobile network servers to Peggy's phone.
Instead of a navigable world, Nick found himself in a vast dimensionless darkness, filled with luminescent arrays of numbers and images. He tried turning his head and shifting his eyes, but his view didn't change. He realized he wasn't seeing with his physical body. Somehow the images were being projected directly into his mind.
He tried to move his consciousness around, but he couldn't feel his own physical existence within the dizzying endless blackness. He had no concept of his own location, or even of up and down and forward and back.
Nick ordered the MindWave to turn off, yet nothing happened. He thought back to his physical body, sitting on his bed in a room in Manhattan. He willed his hand to reach behind his neck and unplug the MindWave, but he couldn't control his limbs anymore. He couldn't sense them, even. He was disconnected from himself.
He cried out, but speech had left him.
There was no way back. He felt a chasm of terror engulfing him as he realized he would be trapped in this chaos forever.
And then she was there. A beautiful redheaded college-aged woman, dressed in a luminescent white silk gown that accentuated her statuesque figure. She stepped out of the blackness, giving form to formlessness, lending order to chaos by virtue of her very presence.
The beautiful girl raised her palm towards Nick, and in that instant he saw that he, too, had an existence, a physical body amidst the nothingness.
He had a voice, too. "Thank you, thank you!" he cried. He clasped his hands in front of him in a gesture of exaggerated gratefulness and relief.
"Let there be light," she said with a slight smirk. Behind her, a sun rose above a nonexistent horizon, briefly illuminating her red hair to a golden yellow halo.
And then Nick found that he and the girl were submerged in water, and the sun's rays were piercing down from the distant surface. Nick was a poor swimmer, and in a panic, tried to pull himself upwards.
The girl watched in silence as he struggled to stay alive.
Out of the murky waters, an immense shark swam towards him. It opened its mouth, exposing row after row of jagged teeth, each as large as Nick's fist. The shark's layered gums were bright red, engorged with blood, in contrast to the pitch black of its deep throat.
Nick had lost sight of the girl. He tried to scream, and his mouth and lungs filled with salt water and he choked. The shark swam closer, its maw looming around him.
But then solid earth pressed Nick upwards. He was forced down on his back by the speed of his ascent. Soon, the surface of the water broke over him and he felt the sun's warmth on his face. He opened his mouth and gasped for breath.
He looked around, and realized that the shark had been brought to the surface with him. It flopped and thrashed in the mud, opening its gaping mouth in a silent scream.
The shark's skin changed from grey to brown, and the shark rose up off the ground on legs that appeared beneath it. In a moment, it had transformed into a tyrannosaurus, which leered down at him.
Nick scrabbled to his feet to run away, but tripped and fell on his side. The dinosaur bent down, ready to rend him with its jagged teeth. Nick flinched away, knowing he was helpless. The monster roared, and Nick retched at the stench of rotting meat rolling over him.
Before it could bite him, the tyrannosaurus sprouted bright white fur, trimmed short in some places and grown into bulbous layers in others. Its horrendous roar became a falsetto yap. The dinosaur had become a toy poodle, not even as tall as Nick's knee.
The poodle had a leather collar studded with emeralds and attached to a golden chain. Nick's eyes followed the chain until he saw that the mysterious red-headed girl was holding it as a leash. She stood calmly, beholding him with a broad smirk, head cocked to one side, clearly amused at his distress.
He got to his feet, and she allowed him a moment to take in the scene around him. They stood on the rocky peak of a mountain, whose slopes were covered by forests. Birds flew through the air and deer ran between the trees. In the distance, fields spread across the hills and a city rose from the plains. The sky was clear and the sun bright, and he and the girl were standing in the shade of a massive apple tree.
"Welcome to the new world, Vinicius Lal." She held out her hand towards him. "Or should I call you Nick, like everyone else?"
Nick carefully extended his hand towards hers. "Who are you?" he asked.
"I'm Laura."
"Laura," he repeated as he hesitantly took her hand. "But who are you?"
"What you really want to know is how I did this."
"Yeah."
She smiled and spread her arms. "In this world, we are like gods. We create, we destroy. We do whatever we want."
"This world? The multinet? You're telling me we're the gods of the multinet?" Nick asked. "Like, webmasters?"
Laura repressed a laugh, but then her tone became very serious. "It's much more than the multinet. We are in a new world, created at the nexus of reality and imagination, existing on the boundary between ideas and objects. I call it the ether."
"So," Nick paused to choose his words. He didn't know whether he was asking stupid questions of a genius, or talking to a dangerously insane person. Probably a little of both, he decided. "You have a MindWave, too? And you're saying the MindWave lets us do this kind of stuff? Live in the ether, be gods?"
"The MindWave is the instrument of humanity's apotheosis. It makes us divine."
"Making a simulation of the world doesn't mean you're divine. It just means you have a fast computer and a good imagination."
"The scope of our divinity is not just confined to the purely imaginary," responded Laura patiently. "I know that you were born on June 6, 2030. I know your mother is a chemist from Rio, Brazil and I know your father is a genetic biologist from Amritsar."
"That's not that impressive," said Nick, furrowing his brow and speaking guardedly. "My parents are pretty famous. And I'm sure I can find your profile online somewhere, too."
Laura responded in the Rio-accented Portuguese of Nick's mother. "Would you easily be able to speak the language of my ancestors?" She paused and switched to his father's Punjabi. "I think no mere human can learn two languages in an instant."
"Whatever," said Nick. "I've seen simul-translate software before. Or maybe you're a language whiz. But I don't see your point."
Laura waved her hand. The wind kicked up, blowing three leaves off the apple tree that shaded them. The leaves swirled in midair and blended together, creating three-dimensional genetic diagrams that floated in the breeze. "What's this?"
Nick stared at the shifting shapes. "Wow, those are the genetic models my parents used at Langar Foods." Nick himself had struggled to understand the science that was the foundation of his parents' global synthetic food company, but weeks of study had only given him a vague understanding of the simpler concepts involved. He looked at Laura with a new respect. "Where'd you learn that from?"
"I didn't learn it," Laura answered, with evident contempt for the idea. "I know it. I know everything. Regular humans have to learn; they struggle for years to master a single discipline or to understand a single field of knowledge. But their expertise is always limited, their knowledge is always incomplete. I – we – have a purer form of knowing, a knowing that is spontaneous and complete. It separates us from normal humans, it makes us greater, more powerful."
Nick resisted the temptation to snort skeptically. Given that he'd become alienated from all of his real world friends, it wouldn't be wise to also alienate his first new MindWave friend. Instead, he opted for offbeat humor. "You sound like you're trying to use your MindWave to create a new religion. Do you want a tax exemption or something?"
Laura looked at him intently and narrowed her eyes. "You'll learn to accept your nature, Vinicius." And then she melted into the breeze blowing past the mountain peak.
The sun sank beneath the horizon and the breeze turned into a powerful gale that tore the leaves off the tree. Nick heard thunder, and as the mountain shuddered he realized it was the sound of the rock beneath him tearing itself apart.
The ground supporting him fell away and he stumbled backwards, falling deep into the void.
Nick shook his head in confusion as he found himself sitting again in his room, the fans in his MindWave making a loud hum as they cooled down its racing circuits. Laura had freed him from being lost in the ether, but hadn't done anything to make him feel less queasy. He pulled the internet cable out of the connection jack in the back of his skull as if it were a poisonous snake that had bitten him.
He tried to stand and realized he was too dizzy. His MindWave told him his blood sugar was low and he was dehydrated. As he crawled weakly towards the kitchen, he remembered that the doctors had warned him that the device used liquids and sugars from his blood stream to cool and power itself. Hunger and thirst were the implant's normal side effects.
***
"Whoa, back up!" Sarah was lying face down on an examination table in an open-backed hospital gown staring up at Willy. "You want to stick what in my what?"
Dr. Vivian Lee, who had just entered the room sized up the situation and stared sternly at Willy with her arms crossed over her chest. "Is everything all right, Major?" she demanded.
Willy scowled. "What I said, Sarah," he stated very deliberately through gritted teeth, "is that Dr. Lee would like to implant a small device in your brain." He eyed Dr. Lee until she went back to her business of programming the surgical robot.
"You never said anything about brain implants before!" screamed Sarah. "How the hell do I get out of here?" She'd built a lot of rapport and trust with Willy during the last eight weeks, but she was scared by the implants and angry at him for withholding so much from her for so long.
Suddenly feeling vulnerable, she rolled over and self-consciously pulled the back of her gown together while she looked around the room in vain for some less revealing clothing.
Willy's features twisted into his characteristic guilty expression. "I'm sure you realize there's no way out of this clinic for you. We're three stories below the ranch, the exits are secure, and for fifty miles in any direction it's rugged desert terrain. Now, I'm sorry about keeping the implants a secret, but I didn't want to scare you unnecessarily. There was no way to be sure if you were going to get any implants until you and Michael won the final part of the competition."
"This morning was the first time since arriving at this damn ranch that I woke up without feeling afraid I didn't belong here. I didn't even have nightmares about – about my past." She felt her fingers closing around her necklace. "And now you're saying you're going to mess with my brain?"
"It's just a small device. Nothing to worry about for a competent surgeon like Dr. Lee."
"Thanks Willy, it's nice that at least now you're being honest about totally screwing me. So did Dr. Lee invent this brain implant thing?"
Willy looked troubled for a moment. "No. But she did modify the designs Rad stole from the original inventor so that—"
Sarah shrank away from him. "You're implanting stolen brain implants in me? You can't even cough up the cash for the real ones?"
Willy sighed and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Sarah, there were smarter and more athletic people in the competition, and you beat them all. You're so good at playing superficial, at preoccupying yourself with your pretty blue eyes and your rebellious teenager game, that even you believe your own act. But deep down underneath it all, you're a tough girl. Right now you're scared and angry, but you'll be all right."
She shoved his hand away. "Screw your psycho-babble Willy. If you think I'm preoccupied with my looks just drop the brain implant and give me a boob implant instead!"
They both watched in silence as Rad Jaeger and Dr. Lee reentered the room. Dr. Lee turned to a table and filled a pneumatic syringe.
Rad walked to the bed and stood behind Willy. His voice was patronizing. "For once, you'll get what you want, Sarah. Your role will require a full suite of cosmetic enhancements."
"Enhancements? A full suite of – are you saying I'm ugly? Did you actually just tell me I'm ugly?"
Her tirade was cut short by a vision of her mother. Why are there three of them in the room with you? her mother choked through the gash in her throat.
Sarah knew she had to get out of the clinic. She pulled herself to her feet and pushed between Willy and Rad. "I'm finding Michael and the two of us are going to get the hell out of here."
Willy stood and together with Rad held onto her shoulders.
"Let me go!" She struggled but all she accomplished was to tear open her delicate hospital gown, which slipped to the ground at her feet.
"Sarah, I'm sorry but we can't let you go." Willy was averting his eyes from her naked body. Sarah sobbed and tried to retreat back to her bed but the two men held her immobile.
"Hurry up, Lee," barked Rad. Even though he was addressing the doctor, his eyes were fixed on Sarah.
Sarah realized that Dr. Lee had slipped behind her. She screamed, twisted, and kicked at the doctor but missed. Now she was off balance and Rad slammed her into the wall and then forced her down face first on the mattress. Lee ducked down and injected the contents of the syringe into her shoulder.
Sarah smiled as Rad let go of her and Willy helped her sit up on the bed. What had she been so angry about a moment ago?
Rad stood staring down at her. "Why does it have to be teenagers?" he muttered. Sarah wanted to ask Willy why Rad was so upset.
Willy was busy draping a sheet over her body. She didn't understand why he was so uptight about her nakedness. "Come on Willy, relax. We're buds. A little skin is nothing to worry about."
She was so sleepy it was hard to think straight. They could settle all of this just as soon as she took a nap. "Good night, Willy," she whispered as she lay back down.
Willy was wiping something out of his eye and didn't respond.
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False Idols (and its sequel Do No Evil) are available for sale elsewhere but this novel is free on Wattpad.
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