“Sir, think of all the progress we have made. Think of the company,” the scientist says.
“Help me...” I whisper, voice hollow and raw.
Elon pounds his fist against a ta
ble, and tools scatter across the floor. “You turn him off, and I’ll make sure you never have a job in this town again. Do you hear me?”
The man throws what appears to be a screwdriver across the room. It hits the glass, cracking it.
“If Gerard was here, he’d save this project,” the man says. “He wouldn’t let our hard work go to waste.”
“Gerard gave me full responsibility,” Elon says. “And if you don’t trust me, you can leave right now.”
Elon’s right. Gerard knew exactly what he was doing, but right now, I can’t exactly speak for him.
My heart is racing, thumping at the rate of a small hummingbird or toy engine. My head throbs with an unbearable, unrelenting pain.
“Make it stop,” I scream.
“You see?” the man asks. “He’s in pain. He’s asking you to kill him.”
I don’t know what I expected. I guess a happy ending. You know, waking up with the woman I love, pussy wrapped around my cock. Was that too much to ask? Probably. But, Goddamn if I wasn’t going to reach for the stars a bit.
I’ve been through Hell and back. I deserve a better wake-up call than this.
The wiring, now visible as copper electrodes, digs in deep. Hot electrical currents flow through my veins, keeping me alive for the sake of the simulated planet I have come to understand as a home.
An acrid smell of plastic burning fills my nostrils. Something is about to explode.
“I’m fucking leaving, Elon. You’re out of your mind,” the scientist says.
The others agree in quick and low mutterings. Elon doesn’t seem to react. He appears to have given up.
“Fine. Leave then,” he says as they walk through the glass doors. “The captain always sinks with the ship. Always.”
He takes off a pair of blue surgical gloves and collapses onto a chair near my bed. The whirring sound of complex machines grows louder, but he doesn’t pay any attention to it.
Chaos. Everywhere. Is this how it is here?
“Help,” I whisper. “Ava...”
He wipes the beads of sweat from his forehead and sighs. “I’m sorry, old friend,” he mutters. “I thought Gerard knew what he was doing. He promised everything would self-correct. But there’s nothing I can do. I don’t know where Ava is. She never found the door to the other side.”
Tears form in his eyes, and I notice him biting his lip to stop from crying. “This project was a failure from the start. Playing God… that was Gerard’s idea. I was a simple carpenter, but he was always trying to expand. When he made Ava, I knew he had gone too far. He really loved that girl. So much so he wanted to give her her own story.”
He stands, shaking his head. He checks out a machine and groans loudly, hammering the edge of his fist against the screen, shattering it completely.
“What have we done?” he asks. “Not only will I lose you and the others. I’ll lose Gerard. My company will mean nothing. Just another space travel catalog for the wealthy elite to buy their toys.”
The entire room starts to shake. Smoke fills the room, and Elon quickly grabs a mask to filter out the fumes. “Don’t worry. I won’t leave you,” he says. “I know how hard this has been for you.”
“Ava...”
“Just know that I’m sorry. I’m just so terribly sorry.”
And then suddenly, it all stops. The sounds die down. The lights drop out. My body stops convulsing, and all the pain I just felt goes away.
At first, I wonder if I’m dead. But after a few seconds pass, I hear Elon’s scant breathing. “I’m sorry,” he says, again.