Alex sat on the edge of the bio-bed in the BADGE infirmary. An older man in a doctor’s lab coat checked him over. The lights in the room were half-lit, some flickered. Bodies of people lay in beds, on the floor, and even on a counter. All wore Ren Wear glasses and had tubes running into their bodies. Burn marks marred the walls and the doors of the infirmary were half open.
Director Nova walked in, stepping through the half of the door that was open. EB rushed in around his legs and jumped up on the bed.
“Wow, you really made it. We were soooo worried. I mean, I tried some seriously stinky cheese, and yelled in your ear, and everything. But, I’m not a doctor. I may be old and magical, but I am no doctor. Wish I was. The ladies love a sexy doctor. I’d make a cute doctor, doncha think? I... uh... sorry.” He backed up, flopping his ears back as Nova came closer.
“How do you feel?” Nova asked.
Alex looked around. “I don’t know. This is a strange feeling. I know who you are and EB, but something in my head makes it hard to think of either of you as real.”
The doctor held up a tablet and showed him a complicated sensor reading. “You have residual psionic energy from the Ren Wear. It’s quickly fading, but it will still have some effects until it is completely out of your brain.”
Alex asked, “Who are you? Or... am I forgetting you too?”
Nova said, “No, you haven’t met. This is Dr. Parson. A civilian doctor helping us in this dark time.”
“Don Parson, nice to meet you.” The skinny, white-headed man held his hand out.
Alex took it. “Nice to meet you. Where is Dr. Henderson?”
“She is in bed 405,” Nova looked across the room.
Alex saw Dr. Henderson laying in a bed with the Ren Wear on her face. “What happened? I know everyone wasn’t wearing those things last I recall. You banned them. Or was that part of a dream?” He held his head. “This is making my head hurt.”
Dr. Parson administered a small hypospray of medication. “This will help.”
EB said, “Things went nuts, like totally horror movie insane. Everyone was like zombies and attacking and forcing those glasses on people and then those people did it and then more and we couldn’t stop and then Nova went down...”
“Slow down,” Alex said.
Nova asked, “Can he walk around?”
Dr. Parson said, “I think so. Interacting with reality might help hasten the recovery from the psionic energy.”
“Good.”
Alex quietly asked, “Where’s my baby?”
Nova and Dr. Parson exchanged concerned looks. Nova said, “Come with me.”
“She’s alive,” Nova softly said.
“If she dies, I will personally tear Drocha’s heart from his body with my bare hands.” Alex whispered this as a promise to her.
Nova held his shoulder. “Come with me. We have a lot to discuss.”
Alex spent a moment longer watching her and then rose to follow Nova.
“What happened here? Who attacked us?” Alex asked.
Nova walked with him into the ruins of the mess hall. “What was the last thing you remember?”
“I... I don’t know. I… I saw myself standing in front of my reflection. I was holding my baby. You were there. After that, all my memories are from the last three years.”
“Three years?”
Alex nodded. “It was three years ago that Ren Tech exploded...”
“One week.”
“What?” Alex paused.
“It was one week ago that we took down Ren Tech and unwittingly set off this.”
Alex paused and looked at the arboretum. “I should have realized it. I never even gave it a second thought that my baby was still a little one-year-old baby for three years. How was I so blind?”
“What happened in the dream world? What is everyone dreaming?”
Alex said, “The world is at peace. Everything is wonderful. No wars, no crime, no villains. Everyone is uncharacteristically happy. The only serious problem BADGE faced was locating you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, we all recalled you were there three years ago, but then vanished. Strangely, no one remembered EB, Gar, Strange Quark...”
Nova said, “That’s because they escaped capture. They’re just about the only staff I have left. Attackers forced me into their simulation, but they didn’t realize my brain is unlike a human brain—it couldn’t contain me. I slipped out. I guess that’s why it was always looking for me.”
Alex continued, “There was something terribly wrong, though. Everyone was tired all the time and hungry. We ate copious amounts of food, but no one could ever feel full.”
“I can explain that.” Nova started walking again toward the lift.
“What do you mean?”
Nova stepped into the lift with Alex. As it zoomed upward, he said, “One week ago, we had just sifted through the rubble of Ren Tech when something activated. Everyone on Earth wearing the Ren Wear was already showing signs of being brainwashed by it, but then they turned into a hoard. They stormed the streets, grabbing up Ren Wear from every retailer that still had any. The hoard forced those without Ren Wear to put it on. It was a riot. It even happened up here. Some students who secretly were still using them broke into the vault and got all the confiscated Ren Wear and attacked us.”
“Like EB said, zombies.”
“Worse, superpowered zombies. Captain Replicator used his powers to create hundreds of Ren Wear and they kept attacking for six hours, forcing those glasses on anyone who wasn’t wearing them. All this damage,” Nova ran his hand over a scorch mark on a wall," it was them fighting us. We didn’t want to kill our colleagues and friends, so it was almost impossible to stop them. Ninety percent of the staff and students were taken by the ren wear."
“Couldn’t you take it off of them?”
Nova stepped out of the lift into Operations. “We tried. It binds with the wearer’s brain and controls the synapses. Taking it off will render them brain-dead instantly.”
“We have to do something,” Alex said.
Nova gestured up to the screens on the main monitors. “Yes, we do. Or this is the end of humanity.”
Alex looked up at the screens to see a dark, dismal world. Cameras flicked from city to city, showing millions of people laying on the ground, all wearing the glasses. No cars moved, no lights were on, nothing was happening. Above them, hovering high in the sky, were dozens of the Ren Spheres, glistening in the gray cloudy day and dark, foreboding nights all across the world.
“Oh, my god,” Alex whispered.
Nova pressed a button, and it showed Gar flying with two people in his arms. A drone flying next to him was keeping up. “It’s getting worse. We don’t know the reason behind this attack, other than to neutralize the entire human race. But while they are stuck in that dream world, their bodies are slowly dying out here. They will die of starvation soon if we don’t do something.”
“What is he doing?”
“All he can. I have activated every BADGE robot across the world, even taking those from the Fight Clubs. Gar, Strange Quark, and Torrik are working to gather people into places where we can administer methods of keeping them alive. I have seven thousand units on the ground... we have 8 billion living in Ren Tech’s simulation. At this pace, we might save a fraction of the human race.”
Alex said, “I got out. Maybe others will.”
Nova shook his head. “We don’t know what happened to you. Something about you or your Ren Wear wasn’t right. You never fully connected to their system. You mumbled in your sleep, you even shed tears. Everyone else is comatose. We did everything we could to bring you out. You could help us get insight into what is going on in there. It seemed like a lost cause until you nearly died. For a moment, you broke free, but your heart was failing. Dr. Parson fought hard to save you.”
“I don’t know how much my knowledge inside that dreamworld can help. But, there is one element that I know is important. Gamer G is part of this plot.”
“Gamer G?”
“He has himself set up as a hero in there. The one who helped us deprogram Ren Tech three years ago. He is on the station working out of your office, at least in the dream. Gamer also tried to kill me when I realized it was fake. He isn’t just another victim, he is a crucial part of this.”
“That is the first bit of real new information we have had since this began.”
“There is something else...” Alex spent a long moment looking at the screens, quietly contemplating everything he experienced. “Gamer G said that something is interfering with their work. Slowing them down.”
“In what way?” Nova asked.
“I don’t know. He didn’t elaborate. But it was frustrating him enough to demand I answer them. I couldn’t tell them anything. That is when he tried to kill me.”
“If there is even a tiny weakness in this plot of theirs, we need to find it and exploit it. First, though, we need to understand what we’re looking at.”
Alex said, “One other issue. Ren Wear did not take Krystal, a sphere took her. Yet, she was with me in there.”
“Why was she in this simulation, then? Could this mean she’s still alive?” Nova asked.
“I don’t know, but I want to find out.” Alex stared at the video of the spheres hovering in the skies.
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