Sidney's Hologram: Part 2

    (Continued)

5

    Already standing above me at the open lid of my pod is Cooper.  He places my virtual goggles back on my head.  "You didn't get the job done, did you?" he scolds disappointedly.

    "What job?"  I search my mind to no avail. 

    "The flash drive, you idiot!"  His knuckles clench, as his eyes become suddenly bloodshot and savage.

    "O no, shit!  I forgot.  I completely forgot.  I'm so sorry!"  I can't believe that in my excitement of tricking Sidney I forgot the overall mission.  What was I thinking?  

    "Kid," he sighs, relaxing his muscles, "don't ever let anyone tell you you're not as dumb as you look."

    "I don't know what to tell you, Coop.  Things just got crazy!"

    "Well, it's only gonna get crazier.  Come on.  Kendra will know what to do."  He takes a running leap, landing on the back of a passing Digi-Deus, as it marches down the clanging iron stairway.

    We find Kendra in her grime-painted junkyard sitting atop a scrapped pod.  She holds her chin in her hands as if in deepest thought, looking up to me as my footsteps through the strewn aluminum cans awakens her from her stupor.

    "I didn't succeed," I mutter shamefully.

    "I know," she responds.  "For it is written in the Akashic Database."

    Cooper shoves me aside with a jab to my solar plexus, leaving me fatally breathless.  "What do we do now?" he barks disdainfully.

    "The only way is the Mono Vision Tower," she replies in a tone of despair.  "But, sadly, a link of crysto-plasma cable is missing.  It cannot connect to the power supply.  It doesn't reach."

    "Certainly there's something around here you can use to repair it," I offer my pathetic attempt at help.

    "There's nothing here that can handle that kind of mega-wattage....  The only thing that can these days are within the Digi-Deus.  They're not giving up their innards without a fight to the death and not even Sidney, himself, could stop one of those bastards unarmed, as we are."

    I ponder every which way when it dawns on me, "What about another type of robot?  I know of two."

    Cooper gives me an odd look of strong deliberation, turning to Kendra to see any type of response in her visage.  "They are already dead," he adds.

    "Yes," she mulls it over with a nodding gesture of gradual assurance.  "That can work." 

    The Digi-Deus can be heard marching in the nearby street towards us, breaking asphalt clopping underfoot.  Ahead of them, from around the corner, darts a shadowy figure.  As the faint light draws over his face, I see it is Alex blocking our path.  He's out of breath, sweating buckets of yellow poison from every spewing pour.  He looks bedraggled and deranged.  Slowly, he trudges towards us, one lumbering foot at a time.  Raising his hand, it becomes apparent the chunk of brick he holds, as he heaves it at Cooper.  Before Cooper can react, his goggles are struck and shatter.  Instinctively, he tackles Alex, thumping him over the skull with sledgehammer fists.  Alex stiffens like a corpse, his eyelids fluttering and he begins snoring like an infant. 

    The Digi-Deus arrive from the dark distance, looking immediately over to Cooper, as he lifts himself from Alex's flaccid, slumbering body, its large gut heaving up and down in a struggle for oxygen.  The Digi-Deus see Cooper exposed without his goggles. 

    "Follow me!" Kendra orders.

    We hear the heavy-footed pace quickening with the stream of Digi-Deus tracking just behind.  Kendra leads us into a garage with a collapsing roof.  She draws back a black tarp to reveal two motorized vehicles the likes of which I have only seen in the propaganda films.  She tosses a few unknown items into a trailer attached to the four-wheeled vehicle.

    Hopping upon a dry-rotted pleather seat of the four-wheeled vehicle, Kendra straddles it like a white metallic elephant ready to charge through all obstacles.  "Joshua, you come with me," she directs.  "Coop, take the motorcycle and distract those evil bastards."  She revs the four-wheeler, waiting patiently and peculiarly calm while the garage door slowly raises by a clickety chain. 

    Cooper kick starts the motorcycle, and in a thunderous roar, gases forward with his front wheel popping up in the air like a noble steed ready for battle.  He races through the rows of Digi-Deus at the garage opening and flashes a middle finger back at them as he speeds away, them giving chase.

    Sitting behind Kendra, my hands clasped tightly around her thin yet washboard rippled stomach, I peer around her shoulder to recognize my childhood street.  "There it is," I call out in amazement, pointing at the stacked and packed complex.

    She careens around the corner, all four tires bald and sliding like socked feet on a linoleum floor.  Pulling a hammer and chisel from the trailer, she lashes open the double doors at the entrance and enters with a defiant posture.  I lead the way up the stairwell, proud of my newfound leadership.  There through the already opened door, past the naked floor dressed only in shadows creeping in and out of every interstice, is the closet space.  I see the two figures slumped lifelessly against one another.  Kendra wastes no time in dragging the two time-beaten bots to the middle of the room.

    Handing me the hammer and chisel, she says, "I'll let you have the honors".

    I begin to recall my parental units feeding me, clothing me, acting as parental as their software would guide.  "I don't know if I can."  I freeze in a flood of anxiety.  "These were my parents."

    "Oh," Kendra gives a gasp before molding her face back into a commanding countenance.  "They were not parents.  Parents raise their children into society.  They don't program their children into the Hologram.  It's time they make their sacrifice.  It's time you unplug from their influence."

    I cannot argue.  They turned me into mere code.  They helped to delete my memories and my humanity.  I slam the hammer upon one of their heads (whose head, I cannot identify).  The hammer handle vibrates my hand, wrist, and elbow in violent agony.  Lightening flashes just outside the window in a dramatic effect of the scene.  There is static running up my spine and the smell of rancid rains in the air.  Still, I hit harder and harder until decapitating the machine.  I then use the chisel to pry open its belly, its innards presenting an interwoven lattice of wiring, fuses, and circuits.  As I take all of life's frustrations out on the second unit, Kendra begins ripping cables from the guts of the first.  I swear I hear it ask, "Have you eaten, son?" in a motherly voice.  In its last vestige of energy, I hear the second unit mumble, "Is your homework completed?"  Then all is haunting quietude. 

    When all is said and done, our arms are filled with the bounty of the kill.  As Kendra and I depart, I look back to the crime scene seeing their massacred bodies gushing oil in puddles and I feel a certain freedom.  It's as if an unseen umbilical cord has finally snapped and I am now my own man....  Liberation at last!

    The four-wheeler glides across a glassy street before splashing down into numerous potholes, the trailer nearly toppling over time and again.  Finally, I see the tower stretching heaven-bound up through the gray canopy.  A smaller yet more impressive tower rises from its pinnacle like the skeleton of an iron pyramid.  Its cap proudly displays four dishes with their antenna shafts jutting out an image of virility and potential.  The rains fall hard upon my face, burning my flesh and blurring my vision, but Kendra's unspoken confidence assures me that it will all come to fruition in the end. 

    The tiled stairway to the top is slick as ice with rainwater bleeding through the wall's mortar, pooling beneath our feet.  The cables we both carry grows heavier with each step.  Still, we are determined.  There is no quitting.  There are no excuses.  This is the event horizon.  I bite my lip, silence my mind, and we continue without a break up the endless stories.  The first floor becomes the tenth floor, the thirtieth floor becoming the fiftieth and so on in forever repetition up the switchback staircase.

    Finally, we dead-end into a doorway that opens to a dark corridor leading to a spiral stairway upward to a hatch in the ceiling.  At this point, both of us are winded and suffering burnout.  Our muscles are beyond fatigue, our joints beyond throbbing.  Still, we trek our way upward, sky-bound, fighting open the hatch with the rains thrashing down upon us.  The growl of thunder welcomes us with a white flash scattering across the haze all around.  We see the satellite dishes hoisted formidably above us and the cut cable dangling between the steel beams supporting them.

    At the center of the roof is a glass control center where Kendra finds herself perfectly at home.  She amazes her eyes at the sight of the massive control board stationed before the pyramidal satellite tower.  Yet, she muses only briefly, as she quickly begins connecting the cables one to the other, creating a long strand.  She immediately climbs the tower in haste with the cable in one hand hanging beneath her.  The smaller she becomes in the skyward distance, the steeper the tower seems to reach. 

    She obtains the cut cord of the Mono Vision transmitter, wrapping her legs around a steel beam like serpents clinging to a tree branch.  She connects the makeshift cable strand, pulling a mysterious tool from her pocket, clamping them firmly together.  She descends faster than she ascended, gracefully sliding down with the flowing rains.  

    She pulls a set of thick rubber gloves from a pocket I never noticed upon her pants before.  "Here, put these on," she orders.  "When I tell you, hold the two cables together.  But DO NOT touch any part of your body or you'll fry!"  She points to the cable stretched out upon the rooftop leading from an enormous transformer with a menacing lever the size of my body.  I can already feel the power in my imagination that will be passed between the two cables.

    The gloves feel like water balloons on my hands.  The texture is quite interesting to the touch as it rubs against my fingers.  I take the Mono Vision cable and begin tugging it toward the transformer cable when a familiar voice shouts, "Stop right there!"

    Alex staggers out from some invisible hiding place, soaking wet, brandishing a sharpened piece of metal like a homemade machete.  I freeze solid as a granite statue, but Kendra huffs and puffs a preparative exercise while readying her hammer. 

    Alex slowly drags his led feet across the flooded rooftop with lightening cracking in the background.  He raises the blade, approaching closer, his hair dripping over horror-cast eyes.  Raising the blade ever higher, his intent is no longer in question.  As he stands toe-to-toe with me, a recognizable hand grabs Alex's wrist from behind.

    Cooper makes his dramatic appearance in his usual heroics, but this time Alex puts up a better fight.  They wrestle in the waters, both struggling for the blade when Alex thrashes it into Cooper's shoulder.  Cooper unleashes a ferocious scream, while Alex crawls backward to the ledge, instantly traumatized by the sight of what he has done.  Without hesitation, the blade yet penetrating his spurting meat, Cooper charges at Alex, bulldozing him off of the rooftop.  Nothing but a yell remains of Alex that falls silent, muffled by thunder as it recedes into the awaiting nowhere below.

    Cooper lies panting, testing the blade, but it's buried deep.  He strains a plea, "Connect the cables.  Show the world!"

    I grip the Mono Vision cable with all my life's tenacity and tug hard towards the transmitter cable.  It is stubborn, but I continue tugging and stretching with verve I have never experienced before.  Kendra inserts the flash drive into the motherboard of her newly adopted control center and runs to the transformer lever, anxiously awaiting her cue. 

    Yet, no matter how hard I pull, the cables are much too far apart.  We hear the buzzing and drone after drone appears above our heads.  A Digi-Deus torso emerges from the rooftop hatch and erupts to the surface, landing in a quake, other Digi-Deus following behind.  Watching this unfold, I tug and pull and stretch ever harder, but the impossibility becomes apparent.  Our actions have given away our presence to the electronic beasts.

    Cooper has pulled the blade from his shoulder and attacks with all the animalistic ferocity he can conjure, but nothing is sharp enough to penetrate the Digi-Deus' exterior.  The blade simply bounces off with a spark and Cooper is tossed to and fro by the demon bots, toying with him like cats to a mouse.

    It becomes obvious what I must do.  The cables cannot reach to connect, but I can.  I can fill the gap.  It's my time to serve a purpose to the real world.  So, I take off the protective gloves, I grab the Mono Vision's bared cable end with one hand.  Stretching out with the other hand, I take hold of the bared transformer cable end. 

    "Pull the lever!" I command in a vicious shout through the pattering rain.

    "I can't!  No," cries Kendra!

    Seeing Cooper's defeated body lying motionless, this nightmare plays forth but one option.  "I'm reconnecting, Kendra ... like you told me."

    "That's not what I meant," she implores.  "This can't be the way!"

    The drones circle like vultures.  The Digi-Deus flank us on all sides.  I keep a firm grip on both cables, accepting my fate.  Then I see it as I watch the raindrops splashing upon the spraypainted yellow faded numbers--317.  It must have been put there by some long ago construction crew.  Such a strange coincidence ... or are there any coincidences really?  This time for the first time, however, I'm seeing these numbers upside-down and I read the word that it spells....

    The truth had been there all along hiding in plain sight.  But, I guess sometimes it takes seeing the world upside-down to figure out what is right-side-up.  I nod to Kendra with the last words of "Outlive the lie.  Die for truth.  Now or never!"

    Understanding my plea, she morosely relents, knowing our bell has tolled.  She pulls the great lever halfway down, but her arm is effortlessly seized by a titanium hand and she is tossed aside like a cardboard cutout.  I don't know what to do, but I cannot let go of these cables.  I must hold on tighter than ever I've held anything before or ever again.  Cable in left hand, cable in right hand.  This cannot be how it ends.

    Kendra regains consciousness, battling the Digi-Deus with the revived strength of twelve men.  Yet, unfortunately, it is not enough, as she is subdued.  She punches, kicks, headbutts, and does everything in her power to fight her way free of their arrest, but it's all for naught. 

    A Digi-Deus turns to me and I know it's over, but I'll die clenching these cables.  Keep on keeping on, I tell myself.  If I'm going down, I'm going out holding tight.  If this is my conclusion, my final farewell, so be it. 

    Yes, it is indeed all over for me.  The Digi-Deus closes in.  The drones soar lower, ready to dismember me and render my entire being unrecognizable.  I know this is most certainly the end ... until I look over and see Cooper crawling, blood trailing a stream behind him.  In a last gasp of vigor, he lunges upon the lever, his weight just enough to pull it all the way down.  He remains lying upon the transformer, a voided shell of himself left behind to this cruel world in the sparks of the grand contraption and its wonderous powers.

    I feel the surge hit my core like an atomic bomb.  Somehow it doesn't hurt.  My mind provides me a fleeting moment of euphoria and I smile at the thought of Kendra's chapped, smokey lips meeting mine somewhere in the ever after.  My last vision is of the satellite dishes reanimated with a blast of technicolor upon the clouds, rolling the projection of Terminal Nil as it reflects back into every building and pod surrounding.

    As my sight fades to warm white fluorescence, I feel no fear.  I feel only the beauty of reality washing away the illusion from my soul.  And I can only hope the footage finds each and every eye opened wide and seeing once and for all.