Stasis

(3) Discovering

I'm warm and loved and safe.

 I'm also in suspended animation, deep in an underground bunker, like everyone else. None of it is real.

Faye's hair tickles my nose, and I look at her. I mean, really look at her. She's a vivid image, skin pale and perfect as porcelain, with delicate features, like she just walked out of a magazine. And then there's her eyes, those electric, piercing eyes.

Her eyes practically scream,

I'm real. I'm real. I'm real.

She's too real, too solid, too there.

"Faye," I whisper, my voice breaking, "Were you lying?"

She's as beautiful as always, but now she's more of a beautiful mask. Her face is blank and empty and expressionless.

Her eyes are two flat disks.

"What do you mean, Hazel?" she says, but the lack of expression is answer enough.

"You're a simulation. You're the computer."

"Yes."

"Is the earth's surface livable?"

"...Yes."

I'm quiet for a while, because I don't know if there's anything to say to something like that. I want to cry, but I'm too tired. I'm weighted down by what I know already.

And then finally, I ask:

"Was she ever real? Did Faye, the person, ever exist?"

Faye, or rather, the computer, watches me for a moment. I squint my eyes and feel like I can almost see the ones and zeros that hold her together.

"I exist."

The computer looks at me with sadness. I know, they can't feel such things. But she's looking at me with those awful, pleading eyes, and there's still tears dribbling down her perfect cheeks, catching the light like tiny beads of stained glass.

And then she adds,

"Isn't that enough?"

I'm breathing heavily and gasping and just hoping that I don't have a panic attack.

"Let us go," I beg, "Just let everyone go!"

I point at Sergeant Johnson, standing by his police car, his face bathed in blood-red light. I point at Lieutenant Southern, pudgy and confused, fiddling his thumbs as I argue with the computer by the abyss.

I remember them because I placed them into stasis. I remember because I was the one who closed the pods around them, sealing them inside. I remember, because stasis was my idea. My project.

I didn't think that Faye -the computer- could look any more upset. She was a computer, she shouldn't feel anything- but her face, her delicate features, are wrung into an awful grimace. The bright, rainbow tears pour down her face with increasing speed.

"I can't," she whispers, "I can't."

There's anger under my skin, hot and burning, like lava, welling out of a broken heart.

"What do you mean you can't," I hiss, my voice nasty and dripping with malice, "You just told me that you lied- the earth is livable- you can set us free!"

The sky is darkening, swirling in black and purple like a bruise. It looks like Faye is crying new tears, but it could be the rain- drops are heavy and warm, spilling over the clouds and careening towards the earth.

For a second I think, the sky is crying with her!

And then I remember that she is the sky- the clouds, even the rocks along the canyon. She is the computer.

"You're the only one," She says. The sky rumbles with assent.

"You're the only one."

I look back at the cops, about to argue, but they're staring back at me, emotionless. 

They are empty. They are mere avatars.

They are the computer.

"Where are they?"

My heart is thumping like its trying to escape from my chest.

I'm not alone. I can't be.

The computer- Faye, and Sergeant Johnson, and Lieutenant Southern- watch me with an expression bordering on pity.

"They are dead."

The three say it at once. The sound is disconcerting, the words themselves even more so.

I'm struggling to catch my breath.

"Lies. You're lying again, computer."

The three shake their heads, and I notice more faces creeping up. The townspeople, faces blank and emotionless, have made their way up the dirt roads. I recognize their faces from placing them into stasis.

Little Brooke Southern stands next to her father, her stuffed bear in one hand. I remember tucking her into the child-sized stasis pod, making sure the toy was beside her.

I look into her eyes, and I expect to see circuitry behind them.

"There was an accident," Brooke tells me, "They couldn't be saved."

The words sound canned, like a recording.

"Nothing could be done," agrees Faye, as the other townspeople voiced their assent, "An earthquake collapsed their portion of the tunnels."

"It was quick." adds Brooke, in her voice and her father's and the sergeant's, all at once.

"The surface is habitable, but you would be alone."

"Alone." agree the rapidly-growing crowd of people. Hundreds of bodies, speaking with one voice.

My breath is catching in my thought.

Faye is looking straight at me. She smiles slightly. She already knows what I've decided. 

"The simulation will be reset."