A Song of Spiders

Chapter 10 - The Twin Towers

Dex and Karma stepped out of the projection room. The lobby was now empty. They both glanced up in time to see Kane and Beal stride in. The men stood just inside the large open plan room and looked opposite directions to ensure there was no-one else in sight. Then they walked up to Dex and Karma wordlessly. Dex was raising his hands to speak when the security men drew stun squares swiftly and shocked them both unconscious. 

Dex woke up with a drilling pain behind his eye sockets. He was lying on a grey carpet in a huge open-plan office the size of a football field with floor to ceiling windows. He knew it was a be-movie: not only was it daylight, he could see a huge rectangular skyscraper out the window. He also saw Karma lying near him. She was starting to move too. 

‘Ten minutes, bang on schedule.’ said Kane cheerfully. 

‘Right, you little detectives, looking for your little clues to your little mysteries. Here's one for you. What was it actually like to be on 102nd floor of the South Tower on the morning of September 11th in the year of our Lord 2001? We'll you're about to find out. There's a fella called Felt who's a big movie fan and so we decided this’d be a good way to send you on your way to the other side.’ He crouched down and tapped Dex's foot. ‘Wakey, wakey’ he said ‘for an extra special surprise, we've turned off the failsafe, you'll soon feel the crush of a tower block on your heads, whoa! 8.46, right on time.’ Dex squinted, lifted his head painfully and followed Kane's gaze out the window. He heard the roar of airplane jets then felt and heard an explosion. He saw papers like confetti flying about outside. Tendrils of black smoke began to snake from the hole in the tower opposite. He could feel the heat from the direction of the windows. It felt like an open oven door. Then he saw people start to jump out of the tower into the blue sky to escape the flames. 

Kane said, ‘Well, that's our cue to go. Bye-bye forever, gutter rats’. Beal gave them a little wave.

The men blinked out of the be-movie. Dex slowly reach his hand towards Karma and shook her. ‘We have to go, we have to go’ he said. He got quickly to his knees and then stood. He was used to the odd sensation of his artificial legs not being sore or tired when he was and he was thankful for it now. He helped Karma up and looked around for a way out. A man with grey hair was telling everyone to evacuate immediately and pointing to a sign for the stairs. People started to go that direction. ‘No’ said Karma to Dex. She spotted the elevators and ran shakily for them pulling him along. 

Dex said quickly ‘We should take the stairs, Stairway A didn't collapse, we can just walk down.’ 

‘Why bother?’ said Karma ‘This isn't real Dex, I say we head down and just wait it out, when the towers fall in, what, an hour and a half or so, the simulation ends and we walk out of here.’

‘Didn't you hear him? We're going to die if we don't run. They've turned off the failsafe.’ He pointed at the window, his fear growing the more he spoke. ‘Look, they're jumping, we have to go.’ She grabbed his arm and turned him from the window. ‘Look at me Dex, this is not real, we are still in Time Tours in Dublin. This is just a projection into our brains. We are not 102 stories up in New York. It doesn't matter if they've turned off the failsafe. We're just in a be-movie room, this is all in our heads.’ she said, pulling him forward again.

Dex went with her, but slowly. ‘People can die in be-movies Karma, that's why they had to put in the failsafe. The brain can go into catatonic shock, people have heart attacks from the fear. They just stop breathing. They believe they are dead so they just die. I am not arguing this anymore, the next plane will hit in just 10 more minutes and we've to get down 20 or something stairways in that time or we will be trapped. I know this simulation very well, I worked here for months. Most people below the 80th floor survived and the lifts will stop working any minute now. It has to be the stairs or we may as well commit suicide and jump out there.’ He pointed at the window and the Kaneowing smoke.