Access Universe

By R. S. Hill

On the eve of a catastrophic system crash that erases all of her subject data, Silver Rainwater, a promising but unmotivated graduate student, receives an invitation to join the players at Access Universe. With her graduate school funding hanging by a thread, her boyfriend’s chronic cheating, a complicated Native American heritage and a relentless past all stressing her out, Silver takes a chance on the game. She quickly earns thousands of dollars completing simple online challenges. Soon her friends, wise Uncle Neto, her mother’s escalating addiction and her integrity take a back seat to Neiman Marcus, Jimmy Choo, a chauffeured limousine and an exotic vacation to Hawaii. As the quirky central computer at Access Universe encourages her to play and seems more human every day, Silver slips deeper into the game. When she is ambushed in Hawaii by a player with “untouchable” status, she begins to regret the choices she is making. Ironically, Silver finds herself in the unique position to teach the central computer, a rogue artificial intelligence (SNIS aka, Sneeze), the difference between right and wrong and how to make ethical choices. When that same “untouchable” threatens her life and a good friend ends up dead, Silver and Sneeze must work together to redefine what it means to be human in a fast-paced, technology driven world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R. S. Hill
• Release date: Oct 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005004347

R. S. Hill

R. S. Hill was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1964. His passion for storytelling began while listening to his grandfather spin tall tales about gigantic rats, ferocious sharks, and the man who caught a missile in his teeth.Hill lives in Tucson, Arizona with his wife and two children.

Book preview

heading

It looks like there isn’t a soul around for miles, but I feel their eyes watching, waiting to see if I will sink or swim. To those judging eyes that swirl in the delirium of my mounting paranoia, I must look like the last woman on the planet—an experiment gone wrong, a low-yield investment about to implode. And while it is true that I could still catch an early start, get some work done, and redirect this crash course, it’s also true that this slacker thing I’ve got going on is consuming me. So I scroll through my iPod, searching for that tune that will calm my nerves and alter my fate. It isn’t there. I check my phone for texts. Not even Travis is awake at six thirty in the morning. Sadly, those industrious spam jockeys have already infiltrated my university account.

Damn it, I shriek like a benign but feral cat, once again shocked by the mounting rage I manage to bottle up inside. I want so desperately to finish what I came here to do, but I can’t, haven’t, and probably won’t. I am so running out of time. But I just sit by the fountain near the student union and do nothing. Honestly, I’ve never seen campus so dead. It feels creepy, and I sense Karma in the air. Misfortune, that testy bitch, is stalking me. She’s out there! I just know it. And so my thoughts go berserk. Like Sonic Hedgehog, they ricochet across an elaborate minefield wired with unresolved deadlines, family drama, the love of my life, and a jumble of memories, dreams, and nightmares that swirl in my sputtering hard drive. This neurotic terrain seems endless until my thoughts come full circle. Once again I’m teetering on the edge of the biggest deadline of my life. The expanse before me is too great to cross. I’m running out of time.

Now panic creeps up. I can’t breathe… I’m gonna pass out… I’m so stressed… I’m getting fat again… Desmond is late… Again! I’m supposed to be working, crossing the expanse, meeting my obligations, but I just can’t bring myself to finish that damn catalog! I’m so screwed. So with nothing left to do but wait for my inevitable failure, I try to will sunshine and eighty-degree weather into being. In my mind, I pay homage to all the spring flowers Mother murdered over the years. Something would piss her off: a call from her condescending mother, a delinquent bill, an unwanted memory, or yet another failed attempt at sobriety. She’d rush out of the trailer, buy half a dozen wildflowers, trap them in lifeless dirt under the brutal Sonoran sun, refuse to water them, get smashed, and watch them die. Soon that smoky stink is upon me. It is so harsh and so real I want to puke. The ashen memory set adrift by that smell is relentless. It stalks me, haunts and drives me closer and closer to collapse. It finally releases me when a car horn sounds in the distance.

Unsure of how fifteen minutes could have passed so quickly, I check my phone for signs of life. No texts. No calls. No important e-mails; just the usual Viagra discounts, replacement- window peddlers, that Access Universe place I swore I deleted, and those magazine subscriptions I signed up for but never paid. I really need a new smartphone, but I still have three months on this lame contract, so I can’t get the phone I want with the upgrade I have. So I go back to begging Mother Nature for sunshine, a warm breeze, and the sound of the ice cream man cranking up the road that leads to Mother’s trailer.

But the winds of the present slap hard and force me to embrace yet another cold-ass morning in Cincinnati. Days like today make me regret my decision to escape Arizona for the overrated and frigid Midwest. But my career has become more important than creature comforts though not quite as necessary as the technology that drives them both. I need to get my priorities straight because Desmond has taken me for granted again. All things considered, I remain patient when it comes to Desmond. Though I hope I’ll never be as pathetic as the nursemaids, sluts, and second-string mommies my age, I can’t say I’m proud of what I’ve become. Don’t get me wrong. I realize that men have commitment issues that make a heterosexual woman want to munch the rug. Individually, there appears to be hope for some guys—though the idea that there is a diamond in the rough may be the very trap that inevitably snares the best of us. Collectively, men are lost and so dreadfully afraid of being connected to anything—except football, golf, video games, and porn. Their fascination with the heinously horrific, insanely gruesome, perverted and hedonistic, big-boob-bang-bang-shoot-em’-up multimedia farce is enough to make a girl wanna go Columbine at Hooters on a Thursday night. Yet despite this harsh insight into the opposite sex, I’ve managed to fall for the wrong guy again.

The expanse! Shit. I recall my dilemma. So screwed. Reluctantly, I take another gulp of bland coffee and wait for Desmond instead of going to my lab and working. What’s wrong with me? Well, being a psychology graduate student, I should have an adequate explanation by now, but self-analysis studies have revealed that the correlation between self-ratings of skill and actual performance in most domains is moderate to meager. Often, other people’s predictions of a person’s outcomes prove more accurate than a person’s self-predictions.

I catch a whiff of that weird mud smell. During my first year at Raynard that smell really bugged me. It seemed so unnatural, too moist for a desert chica like me. Fortunately for my continuing education, Dr. Carrigg explained that the smell I had come to detest was, quote, condensation and decaying matter intertwined in a sensual yet essential reconfiguration of the earth’s precious soil. My response, get over yourself, could have been career suicide. Conversely, my little quip set off an eruption of repressed laughter that became the foundation for a wonderful professional relationship with one of the world’s foremost authorities on dream psychology. His response, I don’t get out much, Silver, hit back with a level of sarcasm and humility that instantly gained more of my respect. Unfortunately, my lack of productivity is putting a strain on that wonderful relationship. Dr. Carrigg has given me one more week to produce something, or he’ll be forced to pull my funding. As of five o’clock this morning, I have exactly 162 hours to finish the professor’s dream catalog or my graduate school career and access to the American Dream are history.

After I played with my phone for a few tedious minutes, a figure appears from behind Zander Hall. He moves toward me at hungover slug pace. At first, he reminds me of a pathetic penguin waddling across an Arctic vista searching for something he doesn’t truly understand the importance of. The man approaching looks suddenly menacing, so I stand up. A woman-chopping pervert could so ruin my day. When I fully recognize him, he seems suddenly angelic—a reflection of all things good. Desmond possesses this aquatic strut that makes me weak. God, he looks good. I want him, but I can’t let him know that. So I suppress my cravings and prepare for his bullshit. Poised to catch the excuse he is certain to throw, I have become his prisoner. Poised to accept him no matter what he says or has done behind my back, I have neither the strength nor the will to escape his bullshit. I know at this moment that I should turn and run. I know at this moment I should never listen to his lying ass again. But alas, my American Dream is not only about research grants, fame, and the awestruck respect of an academic community into which I will never fit, it also includes a sexy lover who can make me beautiful children. Even in the morning, with his close-cropped, velvet-smooth hair all full of lint, his face creased by wrinkled sheets, and the smell of skanky weed on his breath, he looks unbelievably cute.

Hey, Sil. He moves in for a peck. I step back. I must show him that I can be mad at him. He needs to know that I am onto his shit. He needs to know that I’m not letting him slide for standing me up last night and then being late for coffee this morning. He must know that I have power no matter how terrified I am of the power he has over me. I-I forget to set my clock.

His lame excuse pisses me off, so I cut to the chase. Were you fucking someone else last night? His abrupt, lingering, and awkward silence confirms my disheartening suspicions. But then, of course, he says, No, like I asked him if he wanted sugar with his coffee. I know I should walk away and never listen to him again, but weakness invades my body when he suddenly appears hurt by my accusation. Then he changes the subject and again demonstrates that he does not want to truly connect with me. He starts talking about some digital dance game he saw on YouTube, and then he suddenly remembers that Travis picked up some pretty good weed.

We can do a QP together? he shyly and so cutely suggests. This means he smokes and I shell out all the cash I have left for the month. He goes on and on about the weed. Finally, I drop my guard. Why fight it? I’m doomed to fail anyway. Eventually, the relationships, the illusions, and all the plans come tumbling down. Dreams or no dreams, some people get left behind.

As we walk in silence, our footsteps sound all wrong. Instead of sloshing in the cold damp grass, they scuff and slide over dusty desert earth. Again my senses rebel in order to remind me of the past that will never let me go. My mind drifts back to that place from which all my nightmares spawn. Flanked by dehydrated ocotillo, the dusty, unpaved road leads to the storage shed behind my mother’s trailer on Uncle Neto’s land. It is a road I want to get off, a road I’ll never forget. Behind me I hear Mother’s slurred words moaning something about it all being her fault. Her voice is hoarse, tired, destitute, and divided somewhere between what she was, what she could have been, and what she became. I hear death in her voice. Once proud, beautiful, courageous, and strong, it has been beaten down by fate, deceived by the American Dream, and forever trapped in a shroud of racial diversity too many still aren’t ready to embrace. I turn to see if she is there, but the road behind me is the same as the road in front. I just want to get off. Please. Let me get off.

Now Grey Chapel, in all its Methodist flamboyance and dreary gothic charm, towers over me. Hoping to shield my sinner’s pride from the mighty Protestants, I agree to loan Desmond money for the weed. The last thing I need is a Ziploc bag full of what Desmond calls, colossal chrizonic, but my boy really wants it. And more importantly, when he’s stoned, he is an even better lover. I see us together, feel him inside me the way only he can be. But when I press my body against his then shove my trembling hand underneath his armpit to clutch his ample bicep, he remains cold and unresponsive. His eyes gaze blankly ahead. This scares me, so I suggest something we can do together. Coffee?

He mumbles, Sure.

Minutes later, I check my phone. It’s just after seven. Travis hasn’t responded, that text slacker. At least Access Universe still loves me. Delete. So we stand in line at a mini-Starbucks, waiting to be served. Finally, the sleepy-eyed girl behind the counter snarls, Yeah. I wonder what her deal is. I look to my boyfriend for support, but as usual, Desmond is eyeballing some undergrad who’s managed to pour all the junk in her trunk into a pair of size zero Daisy Dukes in the middle of February. Maybe she works at Starbucks, I tell myself in order to remain calm. Then it dawns on me. I have to order something. Large t-triple mocha. Skinny.

That wasn’t so hard, sleepy girl mumbles under her nasty-ass morning breath, and I cannot believe my ears. How dare that chunky, dye-blond ho make condescending remarks to one of the top graduate students in the entire frickin’ college? But just as I begin to think like my roommate, Kendra, so I can come up with a body-slamming comeback, I realize that I have a bigger problem. That slut Desmond has drifted across the food court and—right in my face—is pulling on the stringy fabric hanging from Daisy’s Dukes. Kendra says that Desmond, like most men, lost his capacity for logical thought at puberty. Now he possesses only dick-dar. Dick-dar is a super-duper dick-thinking radar that suppresses logic and compassion when a female Desmond hasn’t screwed becomes available. So, like Captain Kirk, Kendra roars, Desmond is on a five-year mission to boldly screw like no man has screwed before.

Six fifty-seven, please.

I surrender my last six bucks and let the Starbucks hussy off with a menacing frown because I have bigger problems. Despite my sincere humiliation, I have to admit my guy has serious cajones to go hitting on some half-naked hooch right in front of me. Now the world seems smaller than ever before. Like a nightmare that will never end, I watch him score the digits then snap his fingers at me like my name is Stripe. I want to hurl my triple mocha into that gorgeous face, but I can’t. I won’t. Finally, after the irrational firestorm churning inside me briefly subsides, I casually ask, Who was that?

Who?

Her.

Oh, her?

Yes, her.

Some chick in my family studies class.

Family studies? Really? They have classes for that?

Uh, yeah. He never gets it when I jab academic elitism in his face. In fact, his little mind frequently stalls in the wake of anything intellectual. So I push on. And…

We gotta do some project together.

What kind of project?

School stuff.

I’ve had enough. Let me guess, condom research? Desmond appears mildly shocked then a bit annoyed. That makes me feel a little better, and he senses it. Then those wonderful eyes morph into that deranged, psychotic glare. I’ve seen this look before. He looks like he wants to pound my spineless ass with an Oxford psychology dictionary.

Gender Roles, he growls. Now, can we drop it?

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In time, I break from random reverie and hear Kendra in her room, working on new designs. Effortless jazz creeps under the door from her room and makes me feel inferior. If I could look down on myself like some bored angel passing judgment on a sinner just for scalps and giggles, I would look no further. My room is lit by the laptop Dr. Carrigg bought for me off one of his many research grants. It’s an HP and has like eighty gigs of hard drive, seven gigs of RAM, the latest processor, a webcam, and plenty of other stuff. It’s great for surfing the web and gaming. By the way, I’m a bit of a video game junkie. Oddly enough, I like to blast and crash my way through the more violent T and M teenage-boy games. While I have graduated to multiuser platforms, I’m still a novice with games like Call of Duty, anything Halo, or Assassin’s Creed. My favorite game of all time is Duke Nukem: Time to Kill for PS2.

Anyway, I’m an angel, looking down. Scattered around me like petrified seed pods from some ancient mesquite tree, shoes and paper litter murky hardwood floors. Covered with boxes and crates filled with copies of journal articles, videotapes, textbooks, CDs, flash drives, and more shoes than Emelda Marcos, my room looks like a shrine to some dead researcher with a tasteful shoe fetish. The important people in my world, a cardboard collage that covers an entire wall, are Tupac and Biggie, Sherman Alexie, Malcolm X, Wes Studi as Mauga, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr., Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Missy Elliott, Madonna, Aaliyah, Pink, Rage Against the Machine, Mary Shelley, Maxine Hong Kingston, and my favorite stud Duke Nukem. Today they seem gloomy, like they’re mourning the loss of someone close. Perhaps they know something I don’t. Then Desmond’s face and that hard body flash me again. Maybe something bad has happened to my boy. He disappeared while we were at the student union, loading up on caffeine and chatting, though he wasn’t listening. All of sudden, he got up, said he’d be back, and never returned. I looked all over the food court and in the arcade. I even made some skinhead check the men’s room. Then I realized that Daisy and her Dukes were also gone. I got really mad, livid, actually. I skipped my only class, road my bike home, and crawled into bed. I stared at the ceiling, thinking of ways I could kill Desmond and maybe get away with it for just over an hour, before I drifted off to sleep.

Now I recall something from my sleep. The dream fragment sparks the distant memory of a confused Native girl and that smoky stink. I find my cell phone resting on top of a mound of potato chip wrappers and useless junk mail that Huey, Kendra’s Nazi Siamese, rips to shreds and leaves in small piles to mock my advanced organizational skills. The Native girl and the awful smell won’t leave. I have to escape. So I hit the function key on the phone and press 1.

The Verizon number you have reached is not in service. Please check the num— Desmond never pays his phone bill. Now there is no way to stop the negative feelings the nightmare inspires. So I wrap my arms around myself and hold on. In time, I’m shaking, feeling like a loser that angels spit on from above. Then something inside me snaps, again. That taut rubber band gives way, and I scream. It’s a dreadful, hysterical scream. The brass clock on the wall rings like a fucking death chime. In the echo of my scream, fear and shame surround me until I see only red. Within the confines of my paranoid delirium, I again accept that I am going to fail. I will not make my deadline. I will get left behind.

Make it stop! Make it stop! I think I shouted. I chuck my phone at the wall. It doesn’t break. Cheap Samsung crap! Then someone calls my name. Who’s in there? For an instant, I think it’s the Native girl. Maybe I can help her escape.

It’s me. The answer comes from the sun-rotted shed where I just know something terrible is happening to her.

Who are you? I shout back, suddenly unsure of just where I am.

You better open this door!

Kendra? Before I can think up a story to explain my hysterics, the door is kicked open with a crash.

What are you doin’ in here? Kendra is pissed but mostly concerned.

Uh… I… Kendra looks like she wants to slap me silly. I-I threw my phone, okay? Sorry.

Oh, is that all? Her sarcasm is epic. I thought I heard screaming. Must have been someone telling you to stop lying to your roommate.

That’s sooo funny, Kendra. I get smart with her like no else can, but she sees right through me.

What’s the matter, Silver? This isn’t the first time you… Ya know. Tears come like the monsoon, sudden and heavy. I cry on her firm chest for what seems like an hour. She tells me the same thing I’ve heard a thousand times. You gotta quit that boy.

When I can finally look into her beautiful eyes, they are so serious, so determined. I tell myself that the look must be a sistah thing because mi Indio-negra madre had the same look a long time ago. Kendra’s father is black; her mother was white. Her father had to raise her on a teacher’s salary after his brilliant psychiatrist-wife died in a car accident. When he started drinking and lost his job, Kendra had to become invincible in a world that didn’t quite know which box to put her in. Kendra has overcome some pretty messed-up ghetto shit. Unlike my mother, Kendra didn’t drown her hardships with cheap booze, skanky Mexican weed, and worthless vatos. She used them to drive herself to the brink of success.

I’m okay, now. She knows I’m lying. I love Kendra so much and want to be strong like her, but I’m not.

Maybe I’ll get something to eat.

No, she barks.

Just one small—

We’re on a diet. Remember?

Yeah, but—

But nothing.

You don’t need to diet, Kendra.

Yes I do.

You’re built like Flo-Jo.

Well, you know what happened to her? Kendra’s eyes roll, and I laugh hard. It feels good. She hugs me and offers to stay longer, but I know she has a lot of work to do, and unlike me, she will do it. Her proposal for a new line of winter accessories could land her a serious job designing clothes in Chicago or maybe even New York. Unlike Dr. Carrigg, her marketing professors are uncompromising fashion moguls who are about as forgiving as a pack of tortured pit bulls hunting Michael Vick. Once Kendra’s door closes and the jazz comes back on, I tiptoe past her room, ease down the stairs, glide past the front door where ice-cold air bites through my paper-thin socks, and slip into the kitchen. Before I know it, I’m in the refrigerator, rummaging at a hundred miles per hour. An old piece of fried chicken, that Kendra will not eat because she hates cold food, looks like heaven. Before I can stop myself, one chicken leg, two slices of bread, three tablespoons of peanut butter, three fingers of strawberry jelly, and a cup of banana yogurt vanish. While I lick grease and jam off my fingers, my eyes fill with tears. Since I’ll never lose a pound, I begin plotting a clandestine trip to the convenience store for Grippo’s potato chips and Milk Duds. I will get fat again, and that’s just the beginning. Failure is waking from a long winter’s nap. Almost everyone that knows me has huge expectations—well, except for Desmond, I suppose. He has this way of seeing past the promising graduate student to the paranoid halfer he likes to screw now and again. Those vicious green eyes burn holes in my skin, melt my bones, and sear smoldering fissures in my aching heart. And when I think that right now he is probably with Daisy, touching her the same way he touches me, life doesn’t seem worth living.

During times like these, I feel so exhausted. Defeat creeps into my bones, and I am possessed by the body of an eighty-year-old abuelita. Every muscle shrinks, but the fat swells and swells. The weight of my family’s expectations descends upon me. It forces me to find something strong to support my massive girth. I plop into a chair at the kitchen table. My head slumps into my hands. A thick haze in my mind seems to distort my vision, and pulls my eyes shut. Something is burning. Standing alone in the corner of a dusty shed, that little Native girl is holding a headless Barbie doll in one hand, a cigarette lighter in the other, and is bleeding from her nose. Stinky smoke fills this place. It smells like reservation death. There is nothing surreal about this scene. It is the most vivid image I have seen of her in some time. The pain in that little girl’s eyes is deep. Not long ago, that brown-skinned Barbie meant everything to her. Now a thrusting, senseless pain, a nail being driven into my body, comes to me from her. Our insides are burning. The shed is falling apart, being reconfigured by some unseen force. There is no escape. We were foolish to come here.

Dude, wake up.

Desmond’s lovely eyes gaze at me, my salvation and my curse. Reality floods my senses. That disgusting smoky smell lingers. I recall the dark stories that came to me from my Apache-Yaqui uncle, who has been a better father to me than his brother who disappeared to California (or somewhere) after I was born. Raised Yaqui, Uncle Neto says our family is connected to the old ones, which is why Yaquis do the Deer Dance every Easter. He says once the old ones get a hold of you, they don’t let go until you see what they want you to see, do what you must do.

You were dreaming?

Desmond, I whine like a junior high slut, and remember Javier, my first boyfriend.

You don’t look so good.

Thanks, Desmond. I sober up fast.

You want to talk about it?

No. I perk up. I’ll just take a shower and fix my hair.

He laughs. I mean the dream.

Oh, that? No.

Why not?

What do you care? I recall I am pissed at him. There weren’t any hoochie mamas wearing shorts three sizes too small in the middle of February in my dream.

I see.

Do you?

Um… Well—

He doesn’t. I mean, I don’t think you really care about me. I can’t believe I said it.

If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be here. He always manages to say what I want to hear just when I think I have him knee-deep in his own lecherous shit. That’s when I see him as a warm, tender, and caring person that will save me from myself. Isn’t that what love is all about? But in a few seconds, I feel guilty about not sharing my dream with him. I made a promise to myself that I would be more forthcoming with my dreams. I have learned from research and personal experience that continued first-person analysis of traumatic events dramatized in dreams can become problematic, even for a PhD candidate.

Can we talk about it later? I am a little conflicted about thematic identification and premonition validity. Desmond’s mouth hangs open, and his left eye twitches. His face reminds me of the time he thought Picasso was a type of pizza at Domino’s. So I suggest we shower together, and he agrees.

In the shower, I can smell her perfume on him, but as he washes my back and strokes my breasts with a moist cloth, our smell returns. He gets me so hot just washing my tits I have an orgasm. A minor tremor so to speak, but a massive testament to the power he holds over me. I want him inside me, but he isn’t going to give me that because he knows how bad I want him. And though it is a mild form of torture, it reveals two things about Desmond Hunter. First, he is a masta playa, and I respect that. Second, though he owns my ass, he puts me on a pedestal because he takes the time to fuck with me (my mind that is). So I test him. I drop to my knees. I really just want him to make love to me, but we’re not that simple. He lifts me up, kisses me lightly on my forehead, and turns off the water. Though he has successfully resisted me, I feel good about myself because he’s as hard as a rock. He steps out of the shower, and he offers me a towel. I saunter onto the bath mat like some Victorian waif that just got her dumb ass played. I don’t really care. Desmond is back, and for the moment, I have all his attention, and that makes me feel good.

Wrapped in soggy towels and lounging on the bed together, we are the perfect couple. Though I want to ask about the girl he’s been with, I don’t. I just think I need to hear from his mouth who is the better lover. So I decide to change the undeclared subject. Do you still want to hear about my dream?

No.

No?

Nope.

You bastard. I slap the skin above the scar on his knee harder than I wanted to, but he deserved it. Desmond doesn’t flinch as a red welt flares over the scar where his career-ending injury was semi-corrected.

Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I feel like shit.

You were mad.

Now I feel awful. I rub his scar and kiss it, because I know that for him it is a reminder of yet another exploited scholarship athlete who got left behind. But soon, my tiny healing pecks escalate into passionate kisses, scraping bites, and sloppy licks. My heart flutters. My breasts turn to stone as I make my way up his leg. A voracious hunger overwhelms me. I start ripping at his towel, trying to free the bulge. I must prove to him that I am the better woman! He stops me. I struggle, but he’s strong.

Why are you rejecting me? I snarl.

I’m not.

You are! You always do!

I do not.

Do too.

You reject yourself, Silver.

That caught me off guard. What did you say?

Nothing.

Nothing? Tell me!

That’s why you won’t tell me about your dream. You’re afraid of what it will show me. You’re the super psychology grad student. Figure it out. That no good, lying, cheating, smug bastard