Maze: The Essence of Sunny Grimm: Maze, #3

By Tony Bertauski

Fans of Neuromancer, Inception, and the Matrix... the mind-bending conclusion of the Maze.

 

A name was tattooed on his finger.

 

Marcus woke in a cell. No memory of how he got there or what his name was. Just a tattoo. There were others like him. They called this place unreality. They told him this was where someone was hiding him.

 

Clues lead him on a journey in search of who he is, who he was, and why someone did this to him. Each time he finds someone connected to a mysterious symbol, something inconceivable happens. Something even the people who live in unreality can't explain.

 

Micah and the investors built the Maze, a massive alternate reality that feeds on the players who enter. But now someone is pursuing them. One by one, the investors begin to vanish. 

 

When clues are left behind, Micah suspects who it is that's taking them. It's someone from a game played long ago and a promise she made. He believes she wants to avenge all those responsible for what they did to her. And her son. But she wants something much more than to destroy the Maze. He must stop her before all hope is lost. He thought she was dead. But he was wrong.

 

She was only waiting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DeadPixel Publications
• Release date: Aug 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393668077

Book preview

Part 1

This isn’t me, this isn’t you, the toothless madwoman would crow. This isn’t me, this isn’t you.

1

Before The Maze

He looked seventeen.

A black suit with a thin tie, he stood inside a circle painted yellow, the letter H stenciled in the center. The wind threatened his umbrella like a kite clutched in a child’s hand. Fog enveloped the buildings; humidity coated his cheeks.

Gooseflesh rose in pale white bumps. His senses so crisp he could smell the traffic below, could see the sharp outlines of birds overhead. He resisted the urge to leap onto the ledge, such urges within reach for the first time in years.

He studied his hands, smooth, spotless. Scarred white tracks on his knuckles, perhaps leftovers from a fight or desperate escape. His only discomfort lingered in his forehead. For that the price was paid. But he wasn’t immortal.

Just a thief.

In the distance, the thop-thop-thop quickened his pulse. He closed the umbrella to locate the sound. His breath came in choppy strikes that almost matched the thudding call.

Sir, if you’d step back.

The boy handed the man his umbrella. They stood at the edge of the platform and watched the sky. A dull gray form coalesced from the east. Black windows reflected silvery fog that swirled in the rotor system’s wake.

The boy held his hat to his head.

He knew what she would look like. He’d seen the photos, but that was so long ago. So much had happened. And so much could go wrong. He clutched the lapels, the skinny tie fluttering over his shoulder. The rotor thumped in his chest. The helicopter hovered over its target, mirrored sunglasses looking out the side panel. The windows behind the pilot were black and reflective. He hardly recognized himself as the landing skids touched down.

That would take some time.

A man climbed out, remaining slightly hunched as he reached back. The boy took a step forward. He couldn’t breathe, saving his last breath when a slender arm reached out of the cabin. A red skirt hiked up a long leg. A bare foot touched the concrete.

She looked his age.

A beauty whose African skin contrasted his pale Scandinavian lineage. She didn’t recognize him. She had seen photos as well. But here, on the rooftop, in the flesh, it seemed unreal. She was ushered over. The men at their sides stood back as she slid her warm hand into his. They stood at arm’s length.

How could I forget?

He pulled her close. Cheeks damp and stretched thin and faded. There on the skyscraper, engines whining, they began to sway, dancing closely as if they’d never been apart.

2

Micah

Sir—

Micah lifted his hand. The words were underwater. Thick fluid pooled in his ears.

His arm was dead weight. The effort was remarkable, as if his bones were iron rods. The doctor pushed up his sleeve and inflated a cuff around his bicep. A nurse fed a needle into his other arm, the veins a blue road map beneath thin skin.

The prick burned like the glowing tip of a branding iron.

Closer, he said.

The nurse mounted a second IV bag before pushing the wheelchair to the glass railing. He beckoned—fingerprints puckered in swirling ridges—until his toes touched the glass.

The nurses placed sensors on his scalp and chest like medical leeches. His robe fluttered open. They placed another blanket on his lap. He didn’t want to waste another word to stop them. The brisk wind pulled the flesh around his eyes and scalp. He relished the discomfort.

Base.

A hairless prune of a man slumped in a wheelchair, with countless assistants keeping his heart in working order, veins pulsing. Base was a toothy reality. It would be a couple of weeks before he bloomed into a man who walked and talked like the doctor pricking his tired skin. Two weeks was an eternity. But he knew time’s secret.

Time was a fucker.

It played an eternal joke. A stream that didn’t flow. Wind with no direction. It didn’t exist. But with any good dream, blink your eyes and you forget. Time is just another fucker.

He tried to blink the city’s buildings—its clotted streets and flicking lights—into focus. His eyes, though, were nearly useless.

But he could smell her.

Through fouled nostrils, through olfactory senses long stained by putrid solution, he breathed the city’s exhaust, her breath a reminder of what humankind could do with bare hands and growing minds. Dominate Nature. Make her heel. No more did the demands of hunger and survival limit humankind’s creativity. He was the pinnacle of what the human race was to achieve. He was the very top.

And never tired of the view.

Colin stood over him. Mr. Connick—

A moment, the doctor said.

She answered for him. It could wait, just for a moment—just this moment—while the nurse reached under his robe to wrap bands to massage his calves and circulate cold blood slugging through constricted arteries. The kneading was painful.

A smile creased his lips.

The salty taste of blood beaded in the corners of his mouth. The doctor dabbed it away, then, with a warm cloth, wiped his eyes. It would be days before his sight returned, before he could see the details of traffic, of people going about their daily, futile lives.

He sank into the chair as she pricked his finger.

This world, this base reality, was a cruel foundation upon which dreams were built. It was harsh but just. Honest. Where fire burned and old men ached. Nothing was moved by thought or whimsy. In this realm, he was a prisoner.

The laws of physics declared it so.

This body would end. But even that was an illusion. There was no someday, no past or future. Time, the great fucker. And no greater was its illusion than in base.

There was an afterlife. Perhaps not like the Christians proselytized. No pearly gates or bearded old man. There was purpose to life, but not the eternal pleasure promised. Heaven and hell didn’t exist.

Just eternity.

There was no up or down, no directions to find heaven. Not even within. Micah would profess he didn’t understand how anything existed. There was no way to comprehend it. But he, among humankind, even among his acolytes, understood that ignorance was, in a strange way, freedom. The shallowness of understanding freed them from the depth of suffering that the universe demanded. Life was hungry.

Insatiable.

He leaned forward. The nurse tried to stop him, but the doctor encouraged it. They held his frail arms.

Good, the doctor pronounced. Good.

It was these moments he wondered who made this world. Base didn’t spring from his mind or, for all he knew, any other mind. But it came from somewhere. It wanted something.

Is this just another dream? Did it want to know itself through us, to share the splendor of earth and sky, to lead us to know what it’s like to create our own reality?

You need to come, sir.

Colin Griffin was stout and direct, a former Marine with honor. If Micah could reach for his mind, he would find a rich treasure of emotions and thoughts, he would know what was so urgent without asking. Base, however, had its laws.

A convulsive cough threatened brittle ribs as he fell into the wheelchair. The nurse held out a towel. He spat a wad of scarlet mucus.

Exhausted, he nodded.

The staff was present and waiting, their faces blurred in the slur of solution seeping from his tear ducts. They greeted him with what he assumed were smiles.

The elevator went down.

The doors opened to a larger room that took up two floors. The elevated ceilings accommodated a network of cables and gods of technology, where more staff who had greeted him only an hour before was waiting. He was pushed toward the altars of creation.

Four tanks.

They were side by side, massive, upright and bubbling. Behind them were four more, dark and still. The one to the right was empty, the solution drained. It would be flushed and sterilized and ready, in a month’s time, for him to climb into its viscous depths.

The one next to it held a nude woman, her skin faded sickly brown. Dova’s limbs floated in the microscopic seaweed that kept her buoyant, sipping her senses. Her mouth agape, eyes half-lidded, seeing nothing of this world. Her vital signs registered on the glass.

The next tank held Mr. Nelson, a man now a slim reminder of his younger days. Hairless in the current, plump lips open, mouth and lungs full. It was the fourth tank that was of concern.

The vital signs were blank.

A tech had ascended rungs attached to the side. More techs were on the hydraulic lift, the motors whining on the platform’s descent. A cable and harness swung free. Micah couldn’t discern how many of them were on it. He wiped his eyes. They lifted a limp form onto a gurney.

What’s…

Someone began chest compressions. Mucus flooded from her mouth and nostrils like a pump expelling sewage. Her puckered flesh glistened. They wiped her down and wrapped her still form, pushing the gurney with a crowd of medical assistants.

What happened? he blurted.

The reports came in torrents, information waterfalls, like attempting to grasp fish with his bare hands. They garbled in his ears. He caught one then another, but his synapses were still muddy. He waved them off and motioned.

It was sudden. Colin stooped next to him. No malfunction.

He knew this day would come. It had been decades preparing for just this moment. After all the experiments, they still weren’t there.

And now this.

No answers in biofeedback, no signs of organic failure or abnormal activity. It was sudden.

Like a light.

Techs scrambled at their stations. The vital signs of the occupied tanks normal. Several discussions of how to proceed swarmed. And Micah sat in the wheelchair, useless. There was nothing he could do in this state. Not like this. Not here.

Prepare my tank, Micah said.

It’s not ready, sir.

The reserve, then.

It’s too soon, the doctor said. There’s a risk—

Prepare the goddamn tank!

Time might be an elusive fuck, but it still ran the game. He could feel it eroding base reality, seconds like pebbles from a once immovable monolith. He’d worked too hard to watch it crumble. Too many depended on him.

The crew was in motion despite the objections. A tank in the reserve lit up. Light cast shadows through the empty tank he normally occupied, refracting shadows, casting dappled light on Dova’s dark form.

Technicians stood him up and dropped his robes. They worked the harness over his shoulders. His flesh chafed beneath the rubber material. Colin waited on the platform, snapping the cable in place.

The hydraulics whined. The mechanical rise lifted him toward the ceiling. The burping solution grew louder. Colin lifted him like a child, placing his quivering legs into the bath. Microscopic tendrils massaged his calves like minnows nibbling algae from slick rock, penetrating his pores until he felt nothing below his knees.

The surface roiled.

The slack was pulled from the cable. The harness bit into his waist. They held him steady. Micah drew several breaths like a boy gathering courage to step off the high board. His chest expanded with his final breath of base reality.

Weightless, he submerged.

The tendrils swept around him, caressing, searching every pore, networking every nerve. Sensation faded until he was bodiless. Eyes open, his final breath burning, he saw a dark form bobbing in the tank near him.

Solution gushed over his tongue.

It rushed into his lungs like a murky thief. Quickly and mercifully, it stole the last of his senses. The timeless floating in nothingness moved through stillness. He left this frail body and found another one waiting, one infallible, one that was home.

He entered the Maze.

Columns as thick as oil refinery pipes surrounded a slab of smooth marble with swirling patterns of quartz and graphite. The cold surface seeped through his bare feet.

The horizon, distant over rolling hills, was dark in all directions. The sky above was blue. Here no sun would rise or moon glow. Here no day and night existed, where the sun never rose or set. Where time had been tamed.

Yet as long as he was a point in time and space, he would never comprehend the entirety of existence. Only to give up his true identity could he know. When he didn’t exist, would he truly be free?

But he was not willing to die.

The image of Ms. Flynn loaded onto the gurney—fluid pulsing from her nostrils with each compression, the milky film on unblinking eyes—was not something he could accept. He imagined being yanked lifeless from the tank, wheeled to a medical room, where they would pump air into flat lungs, slice open the corpse.

How did this happen?

Dova was in her most elegant form: slender in a white dress that fluttered with each step, sheer material revealing the curves, contrasting with flawless ebony flesh.

They’re sifting biofeedback. He ran his hand through thick white hair. We need to locate her duplicates.

They’re gone, Micah. Her plump red lips accentuated the sharpness of her cheekbones. All of them.

What?

Every one of her clones, in every world. She snapped slender fingers. Her essence erased.

There must be—

She doesn’t exist anymore, Micah. Not a trace.

So it was. Death in base was death in the Maze. There was no existence in this realm without the other. But the disappearance of all her duplicates wasn’t logical. They were linked to her original presence.

How could they disappear?

Their thoughts mingled and merged, the nature of their separation merely semipermeable. The marble slab grew colder. Permafrost crept down the pillars and spread over the verdant hills sweeping the dark horizon. The blue sky fractured in panes of tilted glass. A man, tall and athletic, appeared in the open-air temple.

Mr. Nelson regarded them with narrow eyes.

You bloody fucking idiot, Micah said. This is no time to freeze the Maze.

One of us is gone.

To stop the Maze was to risk a tear in unreality, could seed doubt in players, collapse the fabric of its entire existence. It must always contain one of them. The Maze must breathe.

Where were you, Mr. Connick?

What? Micah said.

When Ms. Flynn vanished, where were you?

Vanished? She’s dead, Mr. Nelson.

Where were you? His voice baritone. The moment she died.

Micah had cycled out about the same time that the event transpired, but the details were muddled. Transition into base was a messy expanse.

What are you asking? Dova said.

Mr. Nelson smiled with dead, lazy eyes. The atmosphere wrinkled with a flurry of thoughts. The open marble stage was suddenly filled with people. The vine-wrapped columns turned into brick walls and dusty windows. A sign threw red light into the cobbled street.

Tattoos.

A familiar crowd filled the darkened street. Shoulder to shoulder, they sang songs, lifted drinks. Confetti streamed from windows. Most of them were NPCs—objective constructs merely created for the game. Over time, some would achieve sentience. It was an unexpected evolution of the Maze—the object that believed it was human became conscious.

Something from nothing.

The historical event unfolded around them, partygoers oblivious to their presence, just as they were unaware of the woman wearing sequined robes that shimmered like her hair.

Ms. Flynn in goddess apparel.

What she wore when she administered games. It is appropriate, she would say, to inspire. Should she wish them to see her, they would not forget the way the sunlight surrounded her, the way dust and debris swept itself from her path. It was dramatic, but she’d earned the right.

They all had.

The crowd chanted a countdown. A glittering ball lowered between buildings, light reflecting like her outrageous getup. She was focused on a desperate man pushing his way through the crowd. Sweat-streaked, ruddy cheeks and eyes scanning, shoving people, ignoring taunts. It was the game.

His twenty-second cycle to find his daughter.

He would fail again and again. Perhaps, after a thousand more cycles, he would give himself to the Maze. Show them a way to survive without that fallible body on base. Sever the tether without real death.

Ms. Flynn watched with concern. But it wasn’t for the helpless father. She looked down at her bare feet on the brick pavers.

She was cracking.

It started with a single line, a fissure giving rise to two. A splintered pattern penetrated her robe, turning the sparkles dull and lifeless. She turned her head, as a robin listened for the worm.

Then vanished.

The scene stopped. Expressions frozen in jubilation, arms locked, mouths open. The father’s desperate search etched into his eyes.

No biofeedback. No transposition. Just gone. Mr. Nelson twirled his finger. The scene retraced. Bodies moved back to their positions. Ms. Flynn reappeared full of cracks, eyes staring to the side the moment before she vanished. Why were you here, Mr. Connick?

Bodies obeyed Mr. Nelson’s thoughts, stepping away from his line of sight. A path cleared from a narrow alleyway next to the tattoo sign, red light splashed over a figure huddled against the wall.

Micah’s image was cloaked in shadows.

His black suit swallowed the light, but his chalky hair appeared beneath the brim of his hat like a dusty wig that couldn’t be contained. The memories returned. He’d come to watch her.

What are you implying? Dova said.

I’m observing the fact that Mr. Connick was present then cycled out—he twirled his finger again, the scene moving back and forth—the very nanosecond it happened.

I didn’t trust her, Micah said.

So you took her.

Micah’s laughter echoed. And why, Mr. Nelson? Why would I compromise the very thing we’ve worked decades to accomplish? The Maze is too large for the four of us. This very thing could bring an end.

Yet you were here. He raised his thick eyebrows. He approached with heavy footfalls. And someone took her.

How could someone take all of her? Dova said. Every duplicate at the same instant? It’s not possible.

There was no answer. Clones were linked but maintained their own sentience. Perhaps they would fail with the death of the original mind, Ms. Flynn’s death, but so instantaneous? It had never happened in the entire existence of the Maze.

This only amplifies, Micah said, meeting Mr. Nelson in the street, the urgency that we find a solution to our mortality. You are wasting time with accusations.

Wasting time? One of us obsoletes and you minimize your presence. She was looking at you, Mr. Connick. The moment she was taken, she sensed your presence. She turned toward you.

The ground trembled. The scene of men and women moved back and forth. Micah’s image in the shadows synced with Ms. Flynn’s disappearance and reappearance. The men drew their essence from the Maze, concentrating what was dispersed throughout the many unrealities they inhabited. A standoff that would result in nuclear annihilation. And everything it built.

We need to analyze the entire scene, Micah said. Sift every character on the street, in the buildings and vehicles, NPCs and sentients. Cross-reference Ms. Flynn’s activity and send it back to base, let them prioritize. He glanced at the fragmented sky. The Maze needs to breathe, Mr. Nelson.

Is that what you want?

Someone is responsible for this! And whoever it is would expect us to assemble. Do you understand? The Maze is vulnerable.

The standoff continued. Micah looked around. If they remained at the temple to deeply analyze the entire scene, they would be there too long. But Mr. Nelson wasn’t leaving. Micah couldn’t blame him. With this evidence, he wouldn’t either.

I didn’t take her.

Who is this? Dova said.

The tattoo sign cast scarlet light deeper into the alley. Someone was behind Micah’s image. He was wearing an overcoat, hands in his pockets. Watching, as Micah had been doing.

He wasn’t a mere NPC. This was a duplicate of an original player. He was a base mold, the identity built from an actual male human in base reality, a man who was a detective. His identity evolved in the Maze, barely resembling the one in base, had taken a name that was a variation of his original.

Freddy Bills.

Dova pulled the figure out of the shadows by the lapel. She began searching his pockets.

Seconds passed as they sifted his data. There were millions of Freddy Bills duplicates. The threads were many and wide, but he had not participated in any of the games Ms. Flynn had conducted. He had reached for Ms. Flynn, a mental outreach of thoughts, an invitation to merge minds. Perhaps that was why she looked.

Micah. Dova held Freddy Bills’s hand. Between the fingers, a name was inscribed.

Marcus.

Curious. Why would it have Marcus tattooed between the fingers? Dova opened his coat and found a small piece of paper in a pocket.

It was a square.

Three sides were sharply cut. The fourth was torn. A circle was drawn with a thick marker. Several thinner lines appeared like shattered glass, spidering to a point in the center. The pattern a bullet would make passing through a windshield.

The circle was frequently used as a clue, symbolizing the eternal nature of the Maze, the illusion of time. No beginning, no ending.

Freddy Bills didn’t belong in this Maze. There were instances of bleedover, where two unrealities shared objects or persons. But not symbols. Perhaps he’d brought it with him. Why is he here?

Rewind, Micah said. Continue.

They stood back. Freddy Bills moved backwards down the sidewalk, dodging rowdy groups and drunken partygoers. Hands in pockets. He went a block without looking up, staring at cracks in the concrete, mouth set grimly in a crop of black and gray whiskers. He moved toward the curb.

Stop.

He stood in front of a parking meter. A flyer was posted with gray duct tape. It was a white sheet with sagging corners, puckered from rain. Find your way out was handwritten in marker. Tabs were cut along the bottom for the interested to take. No number to call, no address.

Just a symbol.

One of the tabs was missing. Rewinding the scene further, Freddy Bills reattached the small square and continued walking backwards.

They ran his presence through analysis and found nothing out of the ordinary. He was a duplicate in this unreality. He lived alone, worked in law enforcement. Had a dog. As if completely unaware of his beginnings, that his dull life had no purpose.

And then this. He comes to a New Year’s celebration, takes the symbol, and stands behind me. And witnesses Ms. Flynn’s disappearance.

What’s this doing here? Mr. Nelson ripped the flyer down.

Micah took it from him. Rewind.

The world moved backwards. The flyer fluttered on the parking meter. Vehicles sped in reverse. The streets emptied; the sun rose and set, again and again, inhabitants coming for work, tourists clogging sidewalks. Over and over. They stared at the flyer, the colors brightening, the ink darkening, as days wound back. No one stopped to read it.

And then someone.

She wore a long coat that waved at the knees near the tops of high leather boots dull with age. Her hair was long and the color of dusty earth. She walked past, tore the flyer off and paused. Then continued backwards.

Stop.

They studied her from all sides. Her clothing wasn’t out of place. But she wasn’t an NPC. Not a duplicate or a player.

She was nothing.

That was extraordinary. Every being in the Maze could be read, their history programmed into their thoughts and memories. Micah could peer into their past with a glance, merge minds to know their secrets, where they came from, where they were going. Their purpose.

She’s blank, Micah muttered.

She was looking down. Micah ran the scene forward, watched her post the flyer, and stopped it when she paused. A knowing smile had reached her lips. She was looking straight ahead, right into Micah’s eyes.

She knows I’m looking.

Micah refused to believe that thought. This was a past event. Yet she paused to look at nothing in particular, her green eyes—dark bands spoking the irises—exactly where he was now standing.

Run physical features, Mr. Nelson said. Upload to base and cross-reference with Ms. Flynn, starting with facial modifications, subcategorized by eyes, nose, lips…

Micah looked closely at the eyes. They were unique enough that they should garner a hit. But it was something on her forehead, partially obscured, that grabbed his attention. He brushed the hair aside. Just below the hairline, a jagged horizontal scar.

Dova saw it, too.

Access Grey Grimm, Micah said.

Stop. Mr. Nelson held up a hand. The buildings and images shimmered. There are 31,868 identities associated with Ms. Flynn’s disappearance, extrapolating 2.3 million links to her past. This needs more vetting before drilling one event, Mr. Connick.

An anomaly, Mr. Nelson, is standing in front of us.

Physical features are weak. A probability of 0.000039% that someone would have a very similar scar exists. Extrapolated over the entire population makes this unlikely. Mr. Nelson studied the woman’s forehead. Her essence is the only conclusive evidence.

The probability increases with this. Micah held the scrap of paper and pointed it at Freddy Bills. Fredrick Billingsley was involved in the Grey Grimm game. And his duplicate was present during Ms. Flynn’s disappearance. It bears further inspection.

Mr. Nelson scoffed. Sunny Grimm doesn’t exist. If she did, she wouldn’t wear the scar.

Unless she wants us to know. Micah hid that thought. It was circumstantial. All she did was pause. But she was looking at me.

This—Micah lifted the woman’s arm—has no identity. Yet somehow she demonstrated intent by placing a symbol in this game, a symbol this duplicate, this—he gestured at the tattooed finger—"this Marcus took before taking his place in that alley. This is more than circumstantial, Mr. Nelson. Sunny