But still just a program.
If Owen was a simulation, then who knew what could go on in there? Who knew if the present and the past were even the same online? He’d relived his own past, after all, over and over again in the dreams. He’d been right there in Tomasz’s too.
And if Regine’s death had been a mistake in the system –
Maybe the system needed to fix its mistakes.
Maybe it could place her back to a time just before her death, so she’d go through it again, but properly this time.
Be properly killed.
There’s a sudden flash of blue on the screen. LETHE INITIALIZED, it blinks. In the image, the Driver has placed a breathing tube in Regine’s mouth. Probably how they get Lethe into your body, Seth thinks.
It was going to make her forget. It was going to make her forget him and Tomasz. It was going to wipe all this away from her.
And then it was going to kill her. Just to make the world work.
“The hell you are,” Seth says, pressing LETHE INITIALIZED. A screen pops up beside it. PAUSE INITIALIZATION? YES/NO.
Seth stabs YES. “How do you like them apples, you piece of shit?”
In the image, the Driver turns.
And looks right back into the camera.
As if it’s looking right into Seth’s own eyes.
And then it begins to run.
Seth listens for footsteps. He hears them, approaching fast, from around a corner on the right, some distance away.
Which is where Regine must be.
Seth’s breathing increases, his heart pounding again. He has no weapons. Nothing to fight it with. If it reaches him, there’s no way he can overpower it.
But maybe he can outrun it. He used to be a pretty good runner, after all.
He jumps down from the platform, racing down the rows of coffins. All that matters in these immediate seconds is to keep the Driver away from Regine, away from whatever process is about to kill her. He takes a turn at the far end of the room, heading now in the general direction of the Driver’s running footsteps. He ducks as he sees it turn the corner. Seth stops by a coffin, ready to run wherever the Driver might chase him.
But the Driver isn’t coming for him. It’s moving down the central aisle, past him, not even looking –
Heading for the display screen.
“HEY!” Seth shouts, standing up. “OVER HERE!”
But the Driver keeps on. It reaches the platform and immediately starts pressing the display, no doubt recommencing the process on Regine.
Seth looks around frantically for something, anything to throw at the Driver, anything to even slightly slow it down. But there’s only coffins, stretched wall to wall and around every corner and disappearing into further recesses –
He has a thought. That first coffin he’d opened, now back in place like nothing ever happened –
It’s a caretaker, he thinks. That’s what it does. It cleans up messes.
He reaches down to the coffin he’s leaning against and tries to find the seam, struggling like last time to get his fingers into the lid, forcing all his weight up, straining against its resistance –
And he nearly falls over again as it pops open. A short man is inside, wrapped in bandages, lights sailing through his coffin, doing their mysterious processes. Seth looks over at the Driver.
Which is looking right at him.
It turns back to the screen, its fingers flashing wildly over the display.
The coffin in front of Seth starts to close.
“No!” Seth says, trying to catch it. But it comes down with implacable force, no matter how much he struggles against it. The Driver goes back to programming whatever it needs for Regine.
“Shit!” Seth lets go of the lid. But then he gets an idea. He reaches into the closing coffin and grabs the man’s arm. He drapes it over the lip of the lid and steps back. The lid keeps closing, closing, closing, threatening to crush the man’s arm –
But as soon as it touches the man’s skin, it springs back open.
“Ha!” Seth says, triumphant, and looks up.
The Driver is looking at him again.
And it starts to move toward him.
“Have to fix them all, don’t you?” Seth shouts, scampering away. He stops at another coffin. He’s got a sense of the lid now, and this one pops open easier and faster. It’s an old woman, and he drapes her arm over the lip, too.
He sees the Driver at the coffin of the man, putting him back in place, then pressing a particular spot on top of the coffin that lights up a small display across the metal surface. The coffin closes immediately.
Seth looks down at the coffin next to him and presses the same spot. The display appears on the coffin’s lid. “So that’s how it works,” he says. There’s a box labeled OPEN FOR DIAGNOSTIC? He presses it. The lid lifts, revealing the sleeping body of a middle-aged black man. Seth takes the man’s arm, drapes it over the lip, and runs away as the Driver approaches.
Seth moves fast down rows of coffins, stopping randomly and opening first one, then another, repositioning the inhabitants and moving on. The Driver is behind him, tending to each coffin in turn.
It’s doing it faster than Seth can. It’s catching up.
Seth rushes to the next and opens it. It’s a tiny, pale woman. “I’m so sorry,” Seth breathes to her, and he reaches his arms under her, lifting her out of the coffin and setting her gently onto the floor. Her coffin starts beeping and flashing with warning lights, some of them running along the tubes still attached to her. Seth takes a handful of them and hesitates a moment.
“It’s to save my friend,” he says to the woman’s unconscious form. “You probably won’t remember anything anyway.”
He yanks the tubes on the coffin end. They come out surprisingly easily. Sprays of gels and liquids fly out in a wave as other tubes spark, one of them burning Seth’s hand. He hisses and drops the tube –
And barely avoids the Driver as it arrives next to him, its baton up and blazing, ready to fall –
Seth tumbles out of the way, the baton smashing into the floor and leaving a scorch mark. The Driver stands over him as he moves back, the baton ready again –
But it turns to the woman. She’s now in an increasing puddle as the liquids from the disconnected tubes spill across the floor.
Seth takes his chance, jumping to his feet and starting to run. “I’m sorry!” he shouts back at the woman as the Driver picks her up, places her back into the coffin, already reconnecting tubes and pressing panels with blinding speed –
Seth keeps running. He turns the corner the Driver had come around and slows down, amazed at what he sees.