Maze: The Hunt for Freddy Bills: Maze, #2

By Tony Bertauski

The Maze is legal.

Freddy Bills is retired. Back in the day, he was fishing people out unreality tanks and pulling needles out of their heads. That was when it was against the law. Now everyone is doing it, including him. In fact, he dreamstitches unrealities for droppers to ride. He's one of the best. His plans were to fade into retirement, just him and his dog.

That was before someone from his past appeared.

A string of clues leads him to dig up a past long buried and forgotten. As evidence mounts, he learns the truth about the Maze and its true purpose. There's no escaping his past or future. He was destined to solve the Maze.

He just has to figure out why.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DeadPixel Publications
• Release date: Mar 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386937739

Book preview

Part 1

Reality is too abstract for the human mind.

There are only five senses to comprehend it. That would be like asking an insect to solve a quadratic equation. There just aren’t enough neurons. Bugs only know how to fuck, eat and fight. They’re good at that.

Human, too.

INTERVIEW

Why do you look at your hands?

The patient was staring at his palms like a mystic. He spread his fingers on the table and inspected each web of flesh for something hidden. His name was stitched above a stiff blue polyester pocket.

Fredrick? The doctor tapped his pen.

I’m sorry. What?

Your hands. Why do you look at them?

Fredrick swallowed a hard knot. It’s a, uh, a grounding technique.

For lucid dreaming?

Could I get some water?

The door opened behind the doctor. Someone put a plastic bottle on the table. The doctor watched Fredrick drink half of it, water streaking his shirt darkly. He put the lid back on very slowly, studying the details, listening to the plastic grind.

Are you dreaming now? the doctor asked.

It’s just a, uh, a habit.

A habit.

The doctor was familiar with the lucid dreaming technique, something about the hands that allowed the dreamer to realize he was asleep and enter a conscious state without waking. Sort of a litmus test for reality. But Fredrick seemed to be searching his hands for something else, as if the truth were written between his fingers.

The doctor wiped his glasses on his sleeve, leaving a smudge on the white polyester. He sighed heavily, pretending to read his notes. Fredrick Kaleb Billingsley, he thought. How many times have we done this?

Fredrick was staring at the doctor’s forehead when he looked up, searching for a hole where he thought a needle might be inserted. Eventually he would lean over the table and sniff the doctor, talk about the rancid odor of tank solution. That was the order of events every time they spoke. None of which existed in this world.

Only in his dreams.

Fredrick claimed to have just appeared in his cell, as if he was somewhere else and now he was here. The doctor had seen this condition before. No one wanted to be here, not even the doctor. The residents coped in whatever ways they could, although the doctor had to admit Fredrick was an original.

The middle-aged man stood up suddenly. His stance was aggressive. The doctor shook his head for the cameras. He wanted to let this go a bit further. Fredrick had never been violent, not in the interview room at least.

Fredrick began tracing a hairline crack in the wall. He followed it to the corner and then across the adjacent wall.

Was there a window here?

I don’t know, the doctor said.

He looked over his shoulder. Are you real?

What answer would satisfy you? If you really are dreaming, I’d still say yes.

Maybe you don’t matter.

Fredrick didn’t smile when he said that. He never smiled. Just a dead expression that never stopped searching. He stroked the wall with both hands, tracing the shape of an imaginary window as if he could draw one with his fingers. He picked at a crack until a paint chip fluttered to the floor. He put his eye up to it then followed an imaginary butterfly across the room.

What’s the scroll? the doctor said.

What?

"You mentioned a scroll. The doctor pretended to reference his notes. You said it was a personal assistant integrated with the nervous system, sort of like an interface with the, ah, the internet. Is that correct?"

Where’d you hear that?

We talked about it. Do you remember?

Memories are not reliable.

How else would I know?

Fredrick pulled a chair out. The legs scraped the floor. There might have been a smile tucked in the corner of his mouth, the doctor wasn’t certain. The staring match began.

I need you to understand that there is nothing in the world called the scroll, the doctor said. We aren’t wired to the internet; there are no virtual realities or sadistic mazes. This is as far as technology has gotten. This is it.

The doctor slid his phone across the table. Fredrick reached for it. It was code-locked, so there was nothing he could do. Except maybe splinter it against the wall. That would be new.

I understand this is difficult, the doctor said, not knowing where you are.

Fredrick doodled on the screen. The doctor considered unlocking it for him, showing him his email, searching a map of where they were, showing him photos of the ocean or something that would jog a memory. Fredrick talked about a prairie and a cliff, an ocean just off the interstate. If he could find something like that, maybe it would trigger a suppressed memory. Once a patient got a toehold on reality, he could start the climb back to sanity. The doctor was the rope in this analogy, a safety cord that caught the patient’s fall.

He has to do the climbing.

The doctor took his phone. They’d climbed a little more than usual today. Fredrick had searched the wall and looked for a window. That might be a sign that he was looking for a way back.

I know where I am. Fredrick raked a hand through his bright red hair, freckles shifting in the wrinkles across his nose. I know where I am.

The doctor jotted down the comment.

The phone was a black mirror, but he could see the greasy trail from Fredrick’s fingertips. He had traced a circle. It looked like he’d put a dot on the top of it.

That was new, too.

1

A fan spun in the window.

A Siamese cat with round eyes watched the blades, warped and twisted, turning at varied speeds. Bills watched them go round and round, stale air against his face, his hair plastered to his cheeks.

Long hair? he thought. This is now, right? This is real. Right?

He was ninety-nine percent positive he was awake. It was that one percent that caused him to lift his hands. He traced his smooth palms, the creases deepening as he clenched, then vanishing into an unblemished canvas. He spread his fingers. The backs of his hands were the same—no veins between tendons, no scars or wrinkles.

Consciousness floating like ice in the Arctic Ocean, Bills bobbed just below the surface, where he held steady—a delicate balance, a mental tightrope that required just enough presence to be aware but not too much. He didn’t want to wake.

Not yet.

He was at a small table hardly big enough to hold a chessboard. A pot of noodles bubbled on the stove. The walls of the apartment were pale yellow with writhing cracks, plates of plaster having fallen off long ago.

A man was in the corner like a child in time-out—nose to the wall. Black hair greased with comb tracks. He was tacking cards on the wall.

Tamberlynn.

That was the guy’s name. The details of the apartment were pulled from the day Bills had cracked the guy for fleshing little kids down the hall. There were still people like Tamberlynn in the world, morbids who pressed the flesh. Bills recalled shoving Tamberlynn’s face into the wall, breaking his nose where the plaster was missing.

Bills opened the front door. The stairwell plunged into darkness. A cool, humid breeze oozed out. The subconscious was down there. He closed it gently, careful to keep his eyes open, to stay here and now.

The human-eyed Siamese cat sounded sick.

He kicked the fan through the window and never heard it hit. The alley was a thin gray strip. Bills climbed the fire escape. The black-white-gray cityscape etched straight lines into the world. He took a long deep breath and imagined the cool tingle of oxygen, the taste of autumn, then exhaled.

Colors bled into the world.

Filled it with primary reds, blues and yellows, secondary greens, violets and oranges. The colors spilled like bottomless cans of paint. Bluebirds popped out of windows, butterflies from gutters. Fireflies slashed the steamy air like bright yellow lanterns.

He began his descent.

The sounds of nature deepened with each metal footfall, rust sliding off the railing. He reached the alley, where city life seemed normal—traffic horns blaring, cooks hitting cigarettes out back doors, the homeless searching dumpsters. They were oblivious to the taste of colors, the ring of feathered wings, the smell of words.

The buildings pierced the sky ceiling.

Despite solid footing, their edges swayed like ships in deep swales, prairie reeds in a gentle breeze. The details of base reality seeped in. That was what people liked about his dreams, the crossover of waking life, the implied realness of familiarity along with the surrealness of a dream.

There were no hard rules in his worlds.

The colors continued to bleed. He’d conjured this dream before, the details snapping into place like a puzzle solving itself, plucking them from the well of his subconscious.

There was a time when he’d grab the first person to fight or fuck. They were just figments of his imagination. But that was a long time ago, when he was a young puppet tugged by strings of hormones. Now he was old and tired and frankly just not interested in tormenting his creations, dream or not. He wanted something more.

To create.

An artist was dumping a vat of ink that wept across the gravel, the colors forming a face dissolved in liquid tar. Bills dipped his fingers in the puddle and flicked droplets on the wall. They bled into outlines of arms and legs, black at first. Then the details of humans—lifelike graffiti in two dimensions, twins with short hair and inquisitive eyes—stuck on the wall.

This was his favorite part.

The part where he breathed life into new players. It was his imagination, all of this. The world, these beings. He couldn’t explore it all, his mind was too vast. He wanted to know the extent of what he’d created. That was why he painted these twins on the wall.

Clones.

Bills ripped them off like posters. Their details inflated. They stumbled across the alley. One of them fell. The other duplicate stood on doe legs, eyes bright with wonder. The fallen one had yet to move.

This happened sometimes; his attempts to copy his selves would fail, nothing more than shells without sentience. The reasons for this eluded Bills. He could breathe life into his dreams but didn’t know exactly how it worked or why it sometimes didn’t.

He took the hand of the standing Self and spread his fingers. Inked between the index and pointer were sharp letters. Bane, it said. He named this one Bane. The one on the ground had the name Marcus.

And Marcus was dead.

Bills knelt beside him with a hand on his head and drew a deep breath, like he was inhaling his aborted creation’s essence. There was something so satisfying about it, like feeding himself with his own thoughts, recycling the life he gave. It was his life to take.

It was his dream.

Music thumped from the tattoo parlor. The artist stared with bulging eyes and said something that sounded like bubbles. Bills waved him back inside and the door slammed.

In the sudden silence, a red sliver knifed in the narrow gap between two buildings. He put his hand up to it, felt the warmth surge up his arm, felt his heart race into his throat. He slid his hands into the gap, the coarseness of brick on his knuckles, the edges of mortar biting his skin. It didn’t take strength to pull the buildings apart.

I am the rule-maker, the rule-breaker.

The world rumbled. The sound of tearing fabric filled the sky. Walls cracked and slid over the concrete like toys. Beyond there should be more buildings and roads, more people and city.

There was only grass.

A green breeze cleansed his tongue. And beyond and extending to the flat horizon was the ocean, the white tips on waves burning fire. The morning sun was cresting the world’s edge. It warmed him like embers from a glowing furnace, the light racing toward him.

Bills went to a short wall. Bane followed with Marcus cradled in his arms, limp and lifeless. They watched the sun rise. When it climbed above them, Bane dropped the body over the edge. The arms and legs waved about then snapped on the jagged shore. Not quite the burial he had in mind, but better than a speed bump outside a tattoo parlor.

Go, Bills said.

And Bane went. His duplicated Self hiked out into the dream, where he would explore. One day Bills would return to the dream and find him and collect the experiences he had gathered. This was his secret, the technique that made him a master dreamstitcher.

You are made in my image to keep the dream.

What would his journey be like? Would he doubt his reality, come to know this world as his base reality or nothing more than a dream? Would he know that Bills had conjured him up with thoughts?

A tremor ran through the dream.

Bills was suddenly staring at cracks in an off-white ceiling, his head cradled in a pillow slightly damp and sour. He lifted his hands and spread his fingers. The palms were deeply creased, the backs spotted with age and wrinkles.

He sat on his bed.

That was the difference between sleeping and waking. People just believed what was presented to them, accepted what their senses told them. But that little sliver of doubt, that one percent was the false foundation of a dream, was the key to knowing unreality. Bills was awake in the world of flesh and bone, one hundred percent.

Base reality.

He blinked twice. Data appeared in the periphery. The DreamStitcher app confirmed complete retrieval of what he’d just experienced. There were gaps to stitch together where his awareness had faded, but nothing that would disrupt continuity. Marcus was dead on the rocks, but Bane would continue painting the dream.

Bills uplinked for backup.

He slid into his slippers. His knee refused to straighten. He held onto the bed as his joints loosened. Molly was in the kitchen. Her ears were sagging, glassy eyes looking away from a puddle of vomit.

Oh, girl. Bills took a knee despite the pain. Not feeling well?

His scroll linked up with Molly and downloaded an analysis. The food hadn’t spoiled; there were no traces of dead bugs in her system or stray tissue that might’ve stopped her up. The scroll recommended a low dose antacid to soothe her stomach and a metabolism tweak to settle her nerves. Bills approved. Molly’s scroll released a packet. She was old.

Like Bills.

Go, go. He fluffed the blanket where she slept. Give it a minute.

The DreamStitcher app reported an analysis while he cleaned up the mess. The initials were good—validity scored high, vividity deep, and a favorable surreal-familiar ratio. The stitching of gaps—those leaps in dream episodes that could disrupt the fabric—were minimal. No scarring.

The experiential log continued to unwind.

That was due to Bane, as if Bills had handed the dreaming baton off when he woke. And waking time wasn’t synced with the dream. Unreality often unwinded much faster. All of that made for a more stable environment.

He examined the remaining data on a monitor while the coffee started. He liked the visuals off the scroll and outside his retinal impression. It didn’t crowd his vision as much. Sometimes it was claustrophobic to open too many streams on the retina. It was good to have space.

When the dreamcode was verified and cleared of viral, he uploaded into the Bowl. It appeared at the bottom of a long list, this one a different color, a queued update Bills wanted to review. Once he released it to the public, trippers could log in and ride his dream.

Unreality.

They were easier to build with digital animation software, but there was something about dreamstitched unrealities that forged a more vivid experience.

Bills had a string of them.

The fact that most of his unrealities were mirrored versions of base didn’t seem like big sellers. But riders loved it. They filled his accounts as fast as he posted. He didn’t need the money. His pension didn’t make him wealthy, but his unrealities had been ridden almost a billion times. That made up for a lukewarm career in civil service. He had more credits than he could ever spend on himself and a dog.

He poured a cup then fastened a strawtube filament across his upper lip. He inhaled flavored oxygen before opening the balcony doors.

Wintergreen forest.

Molly was far enough from the balcony that she didn’t need a straw, but she did have to pee. And he could use the exercise. His knee was as stubborn as a rusted hinge. He returned with a leash and scrubbed her ears, getting a fresh hit of her dog smell off her head. Cookie smell, his niece called it. Her head smells like a brownie.

Bills threw on his overcoat just as a text crawled out.

To: Fredrick Kaleb Billingsley

From: Madam Josephine Mary Trippett

It had been quite some time since he’d heard from her. That was the upside to retirement. He wiped the text and snapped the harness on Molly. He placed the straw alongside her muzzle and clicked the diffuser. She would get a steady hiss of unflavored oxygen, nothing that would throw off the scents of the real world. His vision beeped.

This time it was a call.

He was reaching for the door when it happened, and accidentally urinated a little. No one called direct, not even centis. And he was as legit a centurion as they came. He remembered the days when people would talk to each other on a phone.

An icon appeared in the corner of his vision, a woman with tight hair and full cheeks. Eyes that cut concrete. She was requesting a full frontal.

He ignored it.

Molly waited at the elevator. Bills limped after her. The doors opened and he stepped back rather than onto the elevator.

Morning, Bills, Jo said. I need you to look at something.

He had denied the call, but there she was, her image projected on his retina, standing against the wall with a sleeveless uniform and to the point.

I’m retired, Jo. He waved off the visual and stepped inside. And my dog has to pee.

I have a shell on the Upper. Her voice continued, the subtitles typing across his vision. A corp flat overlooking the Indi. I need all hands.

An icon appeared. She uploaded a link. He descended to the twentieth floor to let on an old woman wearing flexi-tights and spring shoes. He nodded a grim smile, switching to text.

Upper East End? his thoughts transcribed. Why are you on this?

Uppers enforced their own laws. They didn’t send problems to the ground. That was the first thing wrong with this request. In Bills’s fifty years on the force, when something felt wrong, it usually was.

Need a sampler, he heard.

There’s an entire division of them, he thought-replied. And they’re not retired.

Organic.

There it was. They’d flushed organics out of the force years ago. Bills was the last to go. Now it was all halfskins and specialty drones. But for some reason she needed an organic.

System picked you, she said. Unpeel the vid, Bills. You’ll know.

The icon flashed more insistently. Additional script rolled in as the elevator reached ground level. His contractor fee was pending. It was triple standard. Not that he needed the money, but that much was tempting just for the hell of it.

The elevator opened. He stood there in silence, Molly whining as the doors began to close. He put out his hand then stepped into the lobby. The microstraw hissed into his nostrils.

The silence in his head felt like she’d disconnected, but the scroll confirmed she was still there. So was the link. He sighed as Molly relieved herself on a tree box. The atmosphere was thick and hazy, the smell of hot plastic permeating the straw’s evergreen-scented oxygen. He shaded his eyes, the gray sky ceiling warm between the skypiercers.

Go, go.

The vid was a semitransparent overlay. He grabbed onto the tree box and brought up the visuals so that he could barely see the buildings and traffic.

He was in a flat.

It was the Upper, all right. A wide-open apartment without walls and with an expensive panoramic view. It was night. City lights stabbed the low-hanging sky ceiling. The floor was shiny and the furniture scarce. A lounger was facing Indi Park with a woman on it, hands folded over her lap.

She was young, maybe forties. Attractive. Short hair, a scar high on her forehead that could easily be removed. She was holding a pastel-colored envelope.

Come up for a sample, Jo said. Nothing physical. Don’t touch the shell or analyze flesh. Just give an assess. I’ll have a midlevel on site; he’ll make sure you follow proto. I need a prelim by midnight.

The shell’s personals listed in his periphery. Her name nudged his natural recall. It was familiar. He drilled into the memory archive.

I need to close this before it becomes something, she said.

It’s always something.

Molly tugged on the leash. A magflo pulled up to the curb and they climbed in. Bills didn’t want to get involved. Flesh crimes were in his past. But he couldn’t ignore this. He found the shell’s name deep in his memory archive.

Sunny Grimm.

The elevator slid up the side of the skypiercer.

The night sky glowed with artificial light, buildings impaling the cloud ceiling and disappearing into the troposphere as if one could take an elevator to the moon and back.

Below, railriders smeared streaking lights across the city, the long tail of public transport taking Upper East End workers home or hauling them in to clock. Not many workers in the Uppers these days, but there was still a need for organics.

Halfway to the top and he was eye level with levitating buoys that marked the private autotrain