Mr. Ed wasn’t worried that Marty would send someone after him: he was still in the Moac state of mind, which meant that in his mind he was still in a city of a million souls and Martossa was simply on the outskirts. Even if there was something that he could be pinned on (which there wasn’t), he would have disappeared in the crowd by the time that the other person would have figured out that something wasn’t quite right.
Besides, it seemed to Mr. Ed that this Marty-character had some skeletons rattling in his closet as well, which would be something that would keep him from doing anything erratic. He wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with that same kind of violent temper that sometimes couldn’t be contained. Then again, stranger things had happened.
Mr. Ed had made his decision: he would stick around for a while longer. He couldn’t exactly figure out though why, but he had this nagging feeling that there was some unfinished business here. It was the other thing that a business man like him just couldn’t stand: loose ends. They always meant an angle for another man to exploit.
In a way Mr. Ed’s decision to stay was something out of character, because he would never, ever, act without at least some sort of premeditation. It started to look to him like it was a late thing to start doing things that he normally wouldn’t do. First there had been the day when he had stayed in the hotel room and he didn’t do much. Now he decided to stick around in a slow town for no apparent reason. It almost made him think whether he indeed was getting old, like he was told not too long ago, or that he had become weak, or maybe both.
1
Phyllis had read about the VR-world and the required VR-gear in September. She was instantly fascinated by the whole prospect of total immersion that it promised. When it went on sale in October she had bought a set of VR-gear on a whim. She had brought it along with her to West End Mansion in December, because she was sure that Jep would enjoy the new toy, although she was pretty sure that he already had one for himself.
What she had ordered was just the basic set with the headset and the motion detectors. She had also seen the cage which is like an upgrade: you wear a harness and you’re suspended with a thick elastic that attaches to the lower back. Other, more loose elastics are attached to most other joints and the whole body is in a suit that has a thousand pressure points that give a very real sensation of touch and contact. Those same points can also provide heat and moist sensations. They are also sensors that read a person’s physiological responses that the AI of the VR tries to manipulate accordingly.
This was what the ad said: The Cage promises complete immersion and it can simulate anything, ranging from flying to being on ground in a combat simulation.
*
“This is the shit,” Jep says when Phyllis showed him the set that she had bought, “I was one of the four thousand engineers, scientists, programmers, writers, anthropologists, biologists that worked on this project.”
“Really?”
“The entertainment value is obvious,” Jep said, “But the whole project was funded by the joint space agencies: they will use the most advanced one to train astronauts for deep space missions.”
“So being in a suit like this, it’s like touching those that are setting out to become the first settlers on Mars,” Phyllis said, “Pretty Cool.”
“Yeah… I worked on the technical side of the suit,” Jep says, “You have like a thousand of those pressure points and they need to be wired in a smart way, because else you would end up with a thousand wires and you would end up looking like a roly-poly with that suit, not to mention that it would be like really heavy.”
“We can’t have that,” Phyllis says, laughing.
“Basically we just looked at the human body,” Jep says, “The nerve system doesn’t have that much wiring, but it still makes things work.”
“Impressive.”
“It’s all group think,” Jep says, “We worked on it for over half a year, but by the end of it I can’t tell you that I did this or that. Apart from what I just told you.”
“So you think you’ll get it to work?”
“No problem,” Jep says, “The only thing is that the internet connection from here to the outside world is kind of bad from time to time.”
“You mean that it will start to stick?”
“Not exactly,” Jep says, “The audio is designed to stay intact at all times, but it’s just that other participants in the VR will become heavily pixelated: they will be reduced to a few large square cubes that have some magic in them.”
“Going old school,” she says, “Or like a blind-date….”
“It is,” Jep says, “Meeting people in the VR is just a start: think of the holo-deck in science-fiction movies. Just imagine:in some years every person can just have a VR-cage in their house and basically explore a whole new world.”
2
After the reunion on Rokset Island, Phyllis hadn’t used the VR-gear much. She played a game once, but she soon lost interest.
The VR-therapy might be a whole other story and it had been advised by Jep for her to consider when she was in need to talk things through with a third person. She had never entered therapy before and at first she had been kind of reluctant to even consider it in the first place. At the same time, she thought that it might not hurt.
*
On Phyllis’ side it took a while to load, but once it had she entered a room in a high rise in a big city. It wasn’t Moac or anywhere close. This city looked more like a place in The West. She had never really been one for life in a big city: besides a vacation she wouldn’t be able to live in a place like that, if she had any choice.
There was no one in the room yet, so she walked to the window to look out and to look down. She was higher up than she had ever been. Looking down made her feel strangely queasy.
“Miss Phyllis,” she hears from the far corner of the room, “You’re a blob, I’m afraid.”
“You are too,” Phyllis says when she turns around, “You look like a character from anold computer game.”
“I must say I get the same impression.”
“I was told it has to do with our connection on Rokset Island,” Phyllis says, “If it unravels, it turns into, well: this.”
“I see.”
“Or not at all….”
“We can still continue,” Mr. Ed says, “But it’s just that body language gives a lot of information. It will get us to open up or to close down.”
For a moment Phyllis asks herself whether she’s talking to a real person, but there’s something aboutthis guys’ voice that doesn’t sound artificial. There’s some sort of inhibition, like he’s keeping something back, but what exactly she can’t figure out as yet.
“Well, I don’t have much experience with therapy and all that,” Phyllis starts, “But I just have some things that I need to talk through.”
“Go on.”
“I think it will seem to you like the basic life issues: what am I doing here, am I on the right path etc etc,” Phyllis says, “And then I had this reunion with a fewold friends and, well, it didn’t end well.”
“How so?”
“Someone died,” she says, “Not one of my friends, but someone at the New Years party.”
“Where did you attend this party?”
“Right here on Rokset Island.”
Mr. Ed leans back and he thinks of the session that he had with Jep and how it would be impossible to bring that up in this session. Phyllis saw the blob move andby the sound she could hear that Mr. Ed was probably sitting back.
“I read about that one,” Mr. Ed says, “But I don’t knowall the details.”
Mr. Ed got Phyllis talking and he got her to reveal much more than she should have: she told the whole story about the history of West End Mansion, the story about AJ and his wive, the strange cowboy in the bar by the bay and finally what went down that New Year’s. She told all details, from the guy who yelled that they should get out of there, with almost everyone fleeing the estate, to the chase in the yard, how Jim got caught in a trap and how at one point they believed they saw the cowboy disappear into the night.
“Did any of you see that guys face?” Mr. Ed asks.
“He was running from us,” Phyllis says, “But by the way that he moved we could easily make out that it was him. He moved like a guy who wasn’t too much into sports.”
“How old was this guy?”
“Not old old,” Phyllis says, “I would guess late 40s, but he certainly looked older than his age.”
“I was just curious,” Mr. Ed says, “I mean, I read about it in the papers, but it just mentioned that there was something sinister about the whole thing.”
“It looked like there was,” Phyllis says, “The girl had an incision in her neck and it looks like that’s where the killer had let her bleed dry. He must have caught the blood, because there wasn’t any on the scene.”
“So there was this guy thatdressed up like a cowboy, and hekilled a girl and collected her blood?”
“And he had set traps throughout the yard,” Phyllis says, “West End Mansion really wasn’t a good place to be: before we went there, we had all heard the spooky stories. Then my friend Tony dug up some more stories and then this whole thing happened. Can you imagine something like that?”
It’s then that the connection kicks back in and the blocks that made up Mr. Ed slowly turn into more blocks, then more blocks, until he’s sitting across from Phyllis in high definition. Her first thought is that this guy is a little creepy and that she wouldn’t have disclosed as much if she had seen him before.
“You are Mr. Ed?” she says, not really believing that a character like him can be listening to people’s personal and intimate problems.
“That I am,” he says, “You sound surprised.”
“It’s nothing,” she says, “I had cooked up a different kind of mental image.”
Phyllis thinks: why did I disclose all those details to this creep?
Mr. Ed sits back and he studies Phyllis. It gives her a kind of cold chill, because it feels to her that he’s doing more than just reading her.
“It seems that we were getting side-lined just now,” Mr. Ed says, “What else did you want to discuss?”
“Well,” she says, not sure whether she still wants to bring this up, “How long have you been a therapist?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“I don’t know,” she says, “Just a hunch, I guess.”
“Quite a while,” Mr. Ed says, “Would it help if I turned back into a blob?”
“Point taken,” she says, and she realizes that she needs to give this guy a second chance, “This one has been bugging me for quite some time…. After high school I went over the pond to study and I returned to Rokset Island right after.”
“And how does that worry you?”
“Well, I don’t know,” she says, “When I met with my old friends for a reunion it seemed that except for me and a friend, everyone that has left after high school has stayed overseas.”
“And you worry about what could have been.”
“Right.”
“Well, let’s see….” Mr. Ed says, while still thinking, “It’s tempting to compare our lives to those of others, but I have learned over the course of my life to compare myself less to others than I used to do.”
“….”
“It’s a kind of self-defeat, because you’re not them and they will never be you. But I do understand this feeling that you could have made a different choice and how can you be certain that you made the right one.”
“And now you’re going to tell me that we’re less free than we like to believe that we are, etc etc.”
“In a nutshell,” Mr. Ed says, “I also live in the territories and this is where I have made my fortune. Were there times in the past when I asked myself whether I was doing the right thing? Sure. But it’s also about something else: you have to see things before you. By that I mean that you have to have this feeling that you have an honest shot at something great. And I have a feeling that you didn’t have that over in The West.”
“Maybe.”
“And even if we live somewhere else our basic tendencies stay with us,” Mr. Ed says, “I think that a very contemporary theme is that we all want to chase boredom from our lives by planning an activity for every minute of our day. Do you believe that would be any different if you lived somewhere else? Or what about this existential abyss that we all face from time to time: how do we give meaning to our existence? All those questions are more about life than about a place where you live.”
“What are you getting at?” Phyllis asks.
“Bottom line: you will never be completely sure.”
Mr. Ed sits back some more and Phyllis feels more relaxed.
“Now let me ask you something,” Phyllis says, “You made your fortune?”
Mr. Ed smirks, “I sure did.”
“How does that work?”
“You want to know whether I’m the real deal?”
Phyllis nods.
“Whatcan I say?” Mr. Ed says, “I made it as a business man and let’s just say that this is my way of making amends.”
Phyllis sees something in the eyes of Mr. Ed: this guy did something bad.
“Once in a while I mentor a group of people,” Mr. Ed says, “I figure I have something to give, since I have been very successful at what I do.”
“You don’t think you need special training for this?”
“For the extreme cases: yes, and that has to be a sort of calling, because I can imagine that’s like pouring juice down the drain, no offense,” Mr. Ed says, “I only talk to people like you and me.”
Phyllis thinks: people like you and me?
“You did give me some things to think about,” she says, “I appreciate your honesty.”
“You can call me Coach if you want,” Mr. Ed says, smirking, “Coach Ed.”
“One question for you though,” Mr. Ed says in plotting voice, “If there was a 15 foot fence all around that property: how can you be so sure that the cowboy got away?”
Phyllis realizes that she never disclosed that information and she says in a soft voice, “I guess we will never know.”
*
Later on she convinces herself he must have read it in the papers, or that she might have told it after all. Or maybe there’s anaerialphoto somewhere online that shows all the property belonging to West End Mansion.
*
That night Mr. Ed plays a violent computer game: he shoots thugs for a few hours until sleep kicks in.
Playing these kind of computer games was something else that he had picked up recently, after he had read something about mirror neurons. Playing the game tricks our brain into believing that we’re actually there and doing what the game character is up to.
The effect was too weak though for Mr. Ed’s taste, but it did help him to bring back certain old memories. The sound-track came first:Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba bad to the bone….
----
WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN NEXT WEEK? COMMENT BELOW!
NEXT WEEK MR. ED WILL MEET A NEW CHARACTER BY THE NAME OF MICHELLE... IT PROMISES TO GET VERY INTERESTING....... AVAILABLE FRIDAY FEBRUARY 1
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