A U T O M A T | Chapter 13

Saturday, March 17h, 2029

SARAH

As I hit the bed I'm out cold. Instantly my mind's eye flashes me into a large mansion. I fade into the building. I fade through the walls and enter a posh-looking bedroom. On the bed is undoubtedly a younger Lindsey. I can recognize her deep blue eyes immediately. She looks to be about my age.

There's a knocking at the door. Lindsey looks up, "Come on in! I'm just doing some homework." The door opens and an older man walks in. He's got Lindsey's dark hair, but it's trimmed short to his head. "Oh, I thought you were Aaron. What do you want?" she says, her tone harsh.

"Well, that's no way to talk respectful," he says, a slight amount of harshness returned.

"I'm busy with homework."

"You're going to take a break from that," he says, stepping into the room further, letting the door close behind him.

"No, I'm not. I'm already behind and I need to get this done."

"It can wait," he says, coming closer to the bed.

"No, it can't. This is not happening again." Lindsey doesn't look back up to him.

The man grits his teeth, "I own you. Do you think you would get any experience with anybody else?" He grabs down to his crotch, "Do you really think any boy would do to you what I would? That he would show you love? Not on my watch." He starts unbuckling his pants. She stares at him for a second before backing up. "Go ahead, scream. "Scream all you want. It makes me harder. Boys like it when you scream."

She doesn't answer; she's got tears in her eyes, a look that screams louder than anything I've ever heard. Just then I hear another pair of footsteps behind me. I see a boy who looks a few years older than Lindsey—probably around seventeen or eighteen. He's got somewhat long shoulder length blonde hair that's almost golden. Their mother must be a blonde. "Dad, what the fuck are you doing?" He screams out.

"Aaron? You're supposed to be at your damn practice! What the hell do you think you're going to do with your life if you keep skipping?" He's scrambling to get his junk back into his pants.

"Aaron, help!" Lindsey cries out, and that's all it takes because he runs and jumps onto his father, getting a good swing at his nose. This makes him back off of Lindsey, who scurries to the other side of the room, pulling her skirt back up all of the way. Aaron is latched around their father's neck from behind who is shouting all kinds of obscenities. He backs into the dresser against the wall and knocks him off his back.

"You ungrateful good for nothing..." her father says under his breath.

"Mom will never let you near us again!" Aaron screams getting up.

He smiles at this, "Your mother's not going to be back until the fifth of November from her business trip, remember? I'm the one keeping you fed and clothed!" He kicks Aaron twice in the gut. "I'm the one keeping you alive!"

Lindsey looks around herself, she finds the end of her bedpost and sees it's splintered from the chaos. She rips it free from the post, which alerts her father. He begins to turn around and that's when she winds up her swing. He doesn't see it coming, the post slams against his temple, a nail used to keep it tight to the bed digs into his cheek and I can see blood drip down the side of his face as he falls over, unmoving.

Lindsey runs over to Aaron's side, helping him up. "Aaron! Speak to me, please!"

He coughs and wipes his lip—blood had burst from them, "I'm sorry...I wasn't faster."

"It isn't the first time."

"We need to leave. I can't stand it here anymore," Aaron says.

"You suggest we run away?"

"We have to, there's no other choice right now. He's right about one thing, Mom doesn't give a shit about us, and he sure as hell doesn't give a shit about us."

"Okay, but we need to gather some things, we can't go out with nothing."

"We're going to need to leave before he wakes up. It's okay, we can get stuff when we're out there, I still got my card, you?"

"Yeah."

Aaron nods his head. The dream begins to shift and mold into a new vision. The posh bedroom is replaced by a small living room, probably that of a cheap motel room. I see Aaron, a tiny bit older, logged onto a laptop on the bed and Lindsey crunching with several sheets of papers by her side.

"Could you come over here and help me with this? I don't get taxes at all," Lindsey says.

"Can't."

"Please?"

"Linds, please, I can't pause."

"I need to figure this shit out because you won't. And if we don't figure this shit out we're going to be kicked out, again."

"I already did seven hours of homework online and I can't focus on more papers right now," he says without looking up from the screen.

"And yet you can focus on that new game? What ever happened to saving up?"

"I haven't bought anything yet, Lindsey, so please get off my back."

"But will you?"

"Yes. Okay, you want me to say it? We're fucked, Lindsey. I want to be able to tell you different, but bills keep piling up, the rent's due, and the bastard killed our cards so we're left with jack shit."

"Maybe I could go back and apologize," I say.

"Lindsey, no, that's the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. You brained him with a bedpost and I'm not letting you go within five hundred feet of that guy. Plus, he'd probably send the cops after me."

"Well what do I do, Aaron? You said that living with him wasn't much of a life, and I agree with you, but what is this? This isn't much of a life either, and all we have to look at is debt and more debt."

"I don't know Linds. I don't know."

The dream changes before me again, but more subtle than the last time. I believe some time is passing. I see Aaron lying down on the outstretched bed like I'd seen him in the last part, but now he's wearing this weird helmet on his head. It looks almost like a motorbike helmet, but it's got all of these cords strapped into the back that run down his side. Lindsey stands at his side, upset and tears streaming down her face.

"Aaron! Please wake up! I need you here, I need you!" She cries into his chest.

The small TV on the other side of the room comes into focus and I hear the reporter on it, "...both of which have not responded to the claims that the ever so popular virtual reality video game, Elysium, has had a casualty count of over 4,000. Players of this game are unable to log out or exit the game, our reporters are working hard to figure out why this is, but we have no information to report as of this time. We suggest all of those who know anybody who is currently inside of this game to make sure they are still alive. Do not and I repeat do not remove the helmet as there is some sort of failsafe built into the helmets that will attempt to fry the brain of anyone who is wearing it when it is deactivated by any means we can find."

"God, what do I do what do I do what do I do..." She says, pacing around the room. She then looks to the helmet attached to Aaron's head and I can see her eyes scanning the boxes next to it, the boxes that probably came with it.

"Aaron, I'm going to get you out of there. Looks like I'm going to need to make a pit stop to Aurora," she says. Aurora? Like, where Andy came from?

The scene changes again. I'm outside of a large building this time. I recognize it as a Technodome. My mother told me about this place—it's basically the only company left in the country that develops technology that isn't outsourced from England, and of course the only one is located in Aurora because of it's low effect of the government shut down.

I see Lindsey popping off the lid of a sewer outside of the Technodome. It all fast forwards and fades into the interior of the building. She's going to steal a helmet so that she can help her brother out. I see her sneaking through the hallway she originally came through with a package in hand as she stuffs herself back down the way she came. The alarms start going off. "Stupid police are probably after us anyway," I hear her whisper as she makes her escape. The world around me fades back into the motel room. I see her lying next to her brother, helmet over her face just as Aaron's is. The two of them are together inside of Elysium.

~...~

"Just make sure you bring a coat, it's chilly out," my mother said. I'm back at my house, standing in my living room beside the bookshelf which stands against the wall behind me, the air is silent. My mother sits as she had earlier this morning. I turn to see myself standing on the other side of the room.

"Mom, it isn't that cold out, I don't really need a coat."

"Just please wear a coat honey, you don't know how cold it'll be until you actually step outside."

God, I feel so stupid for being so difficult. If I'd known that was the last time I was going to see her before all of this…I would have—"Okay, okay. I'm going," I say. I watch myself walk out of the room. My mother turns around and looks at her computer longingly.

"Okay, I have to…I have to today. I have to do this," she repeats to herself over and over. She closes her eyes for a second and then the closes the laptop, shaking her head quietly.

"I can't do it just yet…I just can't…" she whispers to herself and I can see a tear start to fall from her eye. It falls from her face onto the floor below. I can hear myself coming back into the room and in a split second my mother picks her head back up and wipes her eye, her check still stained with the tear's trail.

I see myself run back into the room with the white coat. Back downstairs like normal and I kiss my mother on the cheek.

"There, I've got the coat on, I'll need to be getting out soon before I sweat myself out of it," I say.

"Yeah, you and your jokes." She says, trying to pass off her wiping off her cheek by itching it. "You'll be thanking me when you remember to grab a coat someday because I keep telling you."

"Okay mom, I'll keep it in mind. I really have to go now," I say.

"O-Okay dear, stay warm," she says with a disappointed look on her face. I leave through the door and then my mom wheels herself into the kitchen, cursing silently under her breath.

I look over to the closed computer and then I walk over to it. I hesitate, but then I slowly put my right hand on top of the computer. I can feel it. I open up the laptop. The display turns on, showing a password screen. I know my mother's password is my birthday, 06182013. She doesn't really seem to get that putting birthdays as passwords aren't really the safest idea, but then again, who is really around to hack into computers nowadays anyway?

The desktop loads up rather quickly and I can see that one window of Internet Explorer had been minimized. Internet Explorer? I don't use the computer much, but even I know that that hasn't been relevant since like, 1990 or something. I shrug it aside and click it open.

Friedrich Adata (17 January 1920—18 June 1999) was a German-born scientist from Akira Namaguchi and Otis Adata. He is most recognized in the field for his discoveries on the Human Genome Project. He brought forward the theory of the ninth chromosome reaction. His discovery led to widespread fame, so much so that Friedrich had been invited to over ten different countries to present his ideas, several of which agreed with his findings.

It was documented that Friedrich returned to Germany to form a research group after all of the excitement in 1950.

He gathered ten men and women of varying intellects and performed experiments on them, such as the Schröder Experiment, named after one of the test subjects, Ken Schröder. These tests were performed in total secrecy and only one of the ten test subjects had survived the whole ordeal, Sonja Von Kleist.

Von Kleist seemed to have an unending affection for Adata, as the two were married in the weeks after the end of the testing. Adata's involvement in the deaths of the nine others was unclear until 1998 when various diaries of the experiments were found years later by a son of one of the deceased, Kasey Schröder.

He released the documents to the public and Adata was tried for his crimes. Von Kleist testified that it had been she that had performed the experiments in an attempt to free her husband of any charges, but mention of her in the diaries had quickly proven her wrong.

Adata was found guilty on January 23rd, 1999. He was sentenced for execution on June 18th, 1999. Sonja Von Kleist was said to have disappeared after the guilty verdict and no one had ever heard from her again. Friedrich Adata had one son with Sonja Von Kleist throughout their life, Jack Adata. Friedrich had been 55 when he'd born a child and Sonja only 47. Friedrich Adata was promptly executed on June 18th, 1999 at the age of 79.

The screen cuts out—a glowing white light emanates from it like some sick and twisted alien creature just hopped out of it and left its residue in the form of UV radiation behind. It seems to pull me in, the lights beginning to flicker and wane around me. The room begins shaking and I cannot move. I don't want to move. The light calls for me and I walk in willingly.

I see a man.