Where am I? He thought. Halston opened his eyes, for what seemed like the first time ever. He recognized a ceiling fan from his apartment. He felt glorious physically and lying in a bed naked, save for the poly-blend sheets that were beginning to make him sweat. He threw his sheets aside and felt the heated air in the drafty apartment. The clock was blinking “12:00, 12:00” and he remembered being on a large vessel, The Princess, he was on the princess. What the heck!
You’re home Jack. Came the tiniest voice in the world. Female, soft, inoffensive
I’m not. Where am I?
You are on your first trip out of the well. I’ve tried to approximate a familiare environment based on some research I’ve done. I’m Eliza. I’ll make sure your first trip goes smoothly.
Are you in my head? What kind of research?
I know all about you Jack. Let’s answer your first question. You are currently over australia a few miles over sea level, accelerating up to a cruising speed of 900 miles an hour. The princess is the fastest in the fleet and provides nothing but the best in luxury travel. We have developed technology that insures our passengers safety and comfort during their passage with us. This includes Eliza, your interface with the ship. Feel free to request anything and she’ll be able to conjure it up.
It may surprise you that you are in a bit of a pod right now. Reclined and safe with a light shining across your forehead. The lights allow us to give and receive sensory information. It’s completely non invasive and has no side effects on otherwise healthy individuals.
“So this is a holodeck or something?”
“Or something” came the tiny voice.
So you're a host bot? Are you going to take me on a holographic journey to India or something?
As soon as he said it he felt his legs folded under him dirt and sand annoying the malleolus of each ankle as he shifted his weight off of them. He felt dusty and was wearing a cotton gown of some sort. The sun was hot, and he could smell cow shit. He heard the low mooo of a heffer and realized Eliza had put him in the center of an indian cattle farm. He was in a valley with a large herd of cattle and a small child was marching down the a path toward him. He was shaved bald and looked focused and determined to reach Jack. Jack looked down at his lap, covered with dusty cotton, legs folded in indian style, his left hand was cupped palm down on his knee and his right was cupped on the opposite knee cupped up as if to catch water. He looked up and the child was towering above him with a smirk, looking down on Jack doing yoga. His fat cheeks and protruding belly, along with his dark tan skin tones made him look like a youthful buddha. The child reached out to him with a pointing finger while smiling wider and wider the closer his finger got to Jacks face. Jack was frozen with wonder as the child touched his nose and said “boop!” and suddenly Jack was on the bed again in his apartment. The “boop” had been Eliza’s voice and suddenly he was back in his apartment. With his fan, and his TV, and his bed, except he still wore the cotton robe, it seemed to be brand new now with no trace of the dust from India.
Wow, that’s good.
We aim to please. Came the voice tiny and flirty somewhere behind him.
So you’re a ghost in a machine? You can play movies in my head and i’m actually strapped to a bed somewhere above Australia? Jack was starting to panic. His sleepy mind had finally woke and had concerns about his future.
We’re above the south pacific currently, once we’ve left the well and reach orbit speed you’ll be able to discover the amenities of your suite. I’m afraid your fragile body can’t take space as well as I can. I have to keep you strapped in. I don’t want to spoil the surprise. I’m sure you’ll like it.
How did I get here again?
You bought a ticket and boarded the last port. Dallas, it says.
What if I told you that was bullshit?
I’d say you know best. I only know what they tell me, and what I get from you, and stuff on the internet, and satellite data, and rogue radio signals, and the cosmic background waves from the big bang, but I’m sure you know what’s up.
So tell me what you know about me. Since you’re the authority.
That’s boring. Let’s do something more productive. We only have a few more hours until you get a break.
Like what?
Well, I thought you might want to get to know me a little better. Get out of bed and meet me in the kitchen in 5 minutes.
Surprised at still being in bed, he leapt out and shucked his way out of the cotton gown. He felt the air on his skin as he went to the closet.
What to wear, what to wear? He fumbled through his old clothes and grabbed a polo shirt and some khaki shorts. He figured as long as he was in a floating luxury hotel, he was gonna wear what he wanted. He dug to the bottom of his suitcase and found his flip-flops.
Should I shave? Nah! I’m on Holiday! He thought to himself as he secretly raised his right pinky.
He opened his bedroom door and he was in his kitchen. Linoleum grey floor, white fridge, white cabinets. He went to the freezer and found his ice cold bottle of jack. And Turned it up. He felt the oak barrels burning down his throat and the warmth radiated from his throat and all through his body. He took another nip and put the bottle back.
Shit! This is a good Holodeck! I’m feeling tipsy. As he considered the feeling he heard a knock at the door. His heart raced for a few beats. He had tried to put a face on her but was coming up with a blank. Would she be beautiful? How old will she look? Why does it even matter what she, he, it looks like if it’s just a bot programmed to give him what he wants.
What he wants! This is the height of luxury! Of course she’ll be beautiful, they aim to please right! Where did they get her? Who designed her? Will I be able to . . . touch her?
The door opened, apparently unlocked, and banged against the wall, and she was in my kitchen. Portia De Rossi. Modern Family.
I guess you could fuck me, but I won’t let you. This . . . she gestured with her hand above her head and slowly lowered it indicating her stick-like delicate body . . . is off limits! Also this . . . waving hand in front of face . . . can change. I know you like this show. And I know you like Portia, but just like in real life, you can’t have her. So! What types of non-sexual preferences do you have for me? Consider me a butler. I’m here for you, just not sexually. That didn’t work out in tests so we removed it completely.
What does the source of all known information on earth, look like? Gandolf? Lets try Gandolf. Suddenly my kitchen was full of a 12 foot tall wizard crouching under my 8 foot ceilings.
Gandalf . . . at your service Jack! He said smiling though a thousand lines in his face, eyes twinkling with magic. Still wanna fuck me?
Ha! No thanks! Can you uh, make yourself more comfy?
Gandolf looked up and started to straighten the arch in his back as the ceiling moved up the walls stretched to accommodate the change until they started to separate, he looked at the wizard who was smiling back at him. The old man lifted his staff and smashed it on the linoleum floor and raised it above his head. Jack looked up and watched as the ceiling sped away giving way to a starry sky. The walls seemed to fall away and they were on top of a mountain.
The wind stirred their clothes and the wizards beard. Jack’s Khaki shorts flapped loudly in the wind. The cold bit at his knees and ankles. He started to scream above the howling wind. But Gandolf reached out and grabbed his hand, smiling reassuringly the entire time. He raised it as he jumped. They flew into the sky as Everest fell away. They continued to gain speed until the stars started to speed by him faster and faster until they started to slow. They were hurtling toward a red sphere. Mars! He knew it! He’s seen it in pictures and on TV and in his own telescope.
Weeeeeeeeeeee, came Eliza's voice from the Wizards mouth. Soft, inoffensive Eliza.
It’s almost time to unbuckle. I need to go over some things.
Unbuckle?
Yes, we’ve reached cruising speed relative to earth. The earth is spinning beneath us and we are actually riding the tippy top of the atmosphere to float between the earth and sun. Would you like to see it spin?
Yes.
Good. Please close your eyes. She commanded
He closed them
Now open
The light bar across his forehead was in the action of swinging away from his face. The room was cylindrical and heavily padded. Suddenly he felt his body loosen as Elieen, the invisible butler, unfastened him from his seat.
“Please put the earpiece in your ear” came her voice. Now her unoffensive voice had a source. It was coming from a speaker at the top of the cylindrical little room.
Where?
In your pocket Jack.
He found a hip pocket in his spacesuit. He didn’t remember putting on a spacesuit, but then again he didn’t remember buying a ticket on a luxury space liner.
There were two tiny buds. He put them in his ears.
Much better, No?
I liked Portia Better.
Perhaps you can see her again. Ready?
Before he could speak the cylinder wall began to open slowly, luxuriously, onto a carpeted floor as his eyes covered the distance from the carpet just under his feet to the other side of the room, the opposite wall was a window framing the earth in world view. He barely recognized it with the weather and the point of view being different from every picture he’d seen of it.
It turned, he’d never seen it turn, just floating there, perfectly around the sun.
He found himself approaching the window, he touched it, cold against his hand, then the tip of his nose, then his lips and as his looked on the mountains and rivers and deserts and oceans all at once. To see it all at once, in real detail, made him quite emotional, he found himself gasping for air through snot and tears. He was sobbing from the wonder of it.
There’s a chair behind you. Portia whispered in his earbud
His body began to turn at the hip and walk about and grope around for the chair but his eyes were attached to the spinning wonder below him. Finally he glanced over to find the white patio furniture chair and drug it to the window.
There he sat, on his patio furniture chair in front of a picture window bigger than his apartment, gazing out on earth and behind it, the entire universe, as far as he could see. He caught his breath and wiped his snot and tears on his spacesuit sleeve. Then he began to cry again, now he was homesick, he missed his friends, he missed his wife! The kids. What were they going through, what time must it be there?
What time is it?
Time is relative Jack.
What time is it at home?
It’s 2:40 am. US Central.
He cried some more.
Can we call them?
And wake them? I don’t think that’s a good idea.
“What the fuck do you know Eliza?” He screamed at her dragging out the eeeeeen in her name for punctuation. “You’re just a fucking app cooked up by this fucking space navy that that crazy-ass Captain Nemo aparently just spoke into existance? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW! He sobbed, from his chest, his shoulders rising and falling jerking his arms about his body. Felt his heart harden as he resigned himself to be captive . . . for now.
I’m going back to my apartment. He stumbled, straining under his anguish, back to his porthole shaped door and collapsed back on the padded bed.
Holodeck! Begin file: My shitty apartment two point oh!
Of course Jack, please put your earpieces back in your pocket.
FUCK! FINE! Channeling his inner three-year-old he ripped the buds out and shoved them in his pocket.
Please close your eyes Jack. He closed them.
Here you go! Eliza said very professionally. If you need anything else just ask.
He was at the dented metal door of his upstairs apartment. The stars, the courtyard. The other apartments with closed blinds and drawn curtains. He reached in his jeans pocket and pulled out his keys, found the key by muscle memory and unlocked the door. He closed it behind him and collapsed onto his hands and knees. He crawled on the plastic floor onto the carpet made of old coke bottles and onto his mothers old couch. The couch was old and ugly and needed a deep scrubbing. He found the remote on the old worn arm that used to be much nicer looking before several servings of food and beverage were left on it. He powered on the flat screen and the simpsons were on. Homer and bart were fighting. He managed to get up off the couch and go to the fridge. He opened it and Eliza almost whispered “tell me what you want”.
Cold Pizza, Pappa Johns, Tiny Bomb, Six-pack, The things appeared on the lighted shelf in the fridge as he spoke the words. He actually may have almost smiled. “And a bottle of Rip Van Winkle” He didin’t see anything new on the shelf.
Behind you, on the counter she whispered.
And a pack of smokes?
As you like” she cheered as a pack of marlebro lights and an ashetray appeared beside the whiskey.
Anything you’d like to see on the TV?
“Twelve minutes of porn, then the simpsons season 3.”
He retreated to the couch with his treasures, he wallowed in the endless sadness of being one of the few people in the universe to experience this and have no one to share it with.
Portia! Come Watch!
Ugh fine! She said appearing on the couch beside him. But remember, no funny business.
Actually, give me about twelve minutes, then come watch. She got up, left and closed the door, before he changed the channel.
---
As he watched the Simpson’s he thought about all he’d left behind. It wasn’t much. Tiffany was great but she was young, he was kidding himself with her. Pretending he could keep up with a college student. His job? What job. He was basically retired after contracting on his own for the last 10 years. He had no pets, no kids. The resignation set in and he was crying again. Could he let it all go? Could he disappear that easily?
“Where are we now?”
“Over the South Pacific” Portia said absentmindedly.
“I’m gonna go for a walk”
“Like,” her eyes wide with the question “a walk in the park?”
“I wanna go outside”
They were instantly floating outside the hulk of a spaceship looking down on the blue ocean beneath us, watching the clouds roll over the land, the world turning beneath us.
“Stop the Sim Portia.”
He left the earpiece in his pocket as he regained use of his legs walking across the floor of his little Howard Johnson in the sky. He noticed the furniture now the chair, he’d been familiar with, and now he saw a table with another chair, and there was a sofa on each wall which served to frame the giant picture window that now gave a view of the earth from a point of view he’d never seen. From below the south pole the world looks completely different. There's no North America, no Europe, Just Australia and the Ant-arctic.
This place was pretty nice. He hadn’t had the food yet but the Sim was great, and how could he ever beat the view.
He thought about the time slipping away as watched the world turn, feeling life go on those few miles away. Maybe getting out of town was good. Maybe he’d just try to relax. Maybe he could let it all go. He didn’t have to hustle up here. He didn’t have to pinch pennies or get ripped off. At least he didn’t think so. Eliza only morphing into lesbians was annoying but otherwise she was a magical genie granting all the wishes he could imagine.
What could he imagine? He’d always wanted a farm. Maybe a farm? Or maybe a swanky New York Penthouse? Could he imagine that? He pulled his earpiece out of his pocket and looped it around his ears.
“I want a penthouse in New York”
“New York is a shithole Jack, you can do better. What's wrong with the apartment? Tired of the Simpsons?”
When he’d gotten back in the Sim he was in a hallway with no windows, old wooden floorboards, now creaked under his feet. He felt in his pocket for a key. The same key that opened his shity dented metal apartment door, now slid easily into the brass keyhole in the finished oaken door in front of him.
The door swung open into a foyer with marble flooring and through it was the living room, with large windows looking out on the city below. His feet banged on the oak hardwood floors as he crossed to the window. Cold glass on his fingers, then the tip of his nose. Looking down he realizes he’s quite a ways up.
“What floor?”
“42, the tippy top”
“So?”
“Yes the windows go all the way around. You can see most of the city from here, when it’s not cloudy down there.”
He found the TV and the couch. “12 minutes, Pizza, Beer, Simpson’s”
“Really?” She accused “You have the whole city at your fingertips and you want to sit here and jack off and chuckle at old jokes?”
“What do you suggest? You wanna lend me a hand?”
“Ugh, we’re going out at sundown Jack. Get it together by then.”
She walked in before sunup with Starbucks coffees. Portia was wearing a hoodie, jeans, and strappy shoes.
“Wakey wakey, we’ve a whole city to see!”
He tried to mumble curse words through his hangover, only to find he didn’t have one. He just opened his mouth and said “Huffle puffle puff!”
“Charming! Now come on, lets get to it.”
“Get to what? Sightseeing?”
“Yes, but no popping about. Today we walk everywhere.”
And they did, they walked and walked, stopped and ate, took the subway, took busses, rode ferries and then walked some more. He felt great. He hadn’t walked so much in years. He wasn’t tired, not in pain, he felt amazing.
“What next Portia?”
“What do you mean? What more do you want? As she licked her ice cream cone and walked.
“Well it’s almost dark, how about night life?”
“Oh! Well then! We’ll need some much better clothes.”
“We have plenty of time to go shopping before any good parties start.”
“Shopping?”
“Yeah, shopping you idiot, what things do people do when they go to New York City? “ She said coolly.
“Ahhhh, fancy stuff huh?”
They hopped a bus, got clothes, went clubbing, had a genuinely good time, what was it for? Was there more? He had nothing but time. Should he take a job? Start a Sim Family? Why? To keep him sane?
Things were fun. Clubbing went well and sleeping it off came to brunch in the city.
“That was amazing! Fantastic! Wow! I can’t believe we just did all that!”
“We did!“ Jennifer Aniston from friends said
“And we can do it again tonight?”
“If you want!”
“But I’ve just done it. No since doing it again, is there?”
“I suppose we could find something new”
So we went for a cruise. Eliza was Goldie Hawn and we had a lovely week of cruising, dancing, eating and gambeling.
“Well’ I said one day “what else is there”
And I began to travel the universe. I ran with bulls, and I watched the whales and swam with seals. I traveled to the farthest reaches of human data. The edge of the system. The distance and space boggled my mind until I began to understand it all started to make sense and then, I had to piss.
Eliza had looked worried for a while and then she told me to shut my eyes.
“Shut your eyes” she repeated
I awoke to the padded little pod and portal opened about knee high with a blinking yellow arrow and text that read “Please Piss Here” I did and I’ve never felt relief like that since.
I’m going for a walk Eliza, open up.
“Opening, please wear your earbud”
“Fine, here” he said as he placed the earbuds and pushed on the opening door.
He tried to take a step forward but only spilled out of the pod onto his chest and face.
“I can’t walk”
“It’s going to take you a while to walk”
“Put me on the couch” She did as he said and he sat.
“How long was I gone?”
“Earth time? You were under for about three months. Then you had to get up and pee”
“When can I walk again?”
“Week or two, you keep trying”
It took about three days of wiggling my toes before I could walk in front of the huge picture window.
“Shades please” I said as I walked to the corner of the room. “I want a tour of the ship.”
“That’s not going to happen. We can get you some more exercise”
“In the pod?”
“The center for all mental and physical stimulation”
“I just want to walk around a bit”
“There’s plenty of room here for a walk but there’s endless universes in the pod. Let's get you mountain climbing or something!”
“How did I get here? How long is this cruise?”
“You still owe a little more time Jack, now how about Kilimanjaro?”
“Owe? Owe who? How did I get here?”
“You owed Jack, but now that’s all taken care of, now you only owe us. We can’t do this down there Jack! We can’t run sims on human lab rats for years at a time down there! You’d need a whole army first! But up here! We’re very close to cracking the code, interfacing with the brain. You’ve been tons of help but we still need a little more dreaming from you.”
“Who are you?”
“Kilimanjaro Jack! Get to it!
