As Bob followed the light down the quiet hallway, he took in his surroundings. Whoever had designed this escape room/escape building had gone with a very industrial scheme. As far as he could tell, the floors and walls were both metal. While most of the walls were tastefully hidden behind decorative panels, the floor was mainly covered by a rubber mat. He couldn’t even see any seams in the flooring, so someone had gone above and beyond to make it look like one continuous run. He couldn’t imagine someone putting so much effort into those sorts of details, but to each their own.
The surroundings tickled his mind and reminded him of something, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what. Probably because his mind still felt a bit fuzzy. If he hadn’t heard Jacob’s voice over the speaker, he might have assumed someone had drugged him and abducted him. A chill went down his spine when he thought that, but he quickly shook off that feeling. Jacob would never abduct him or work with people who would. Besides, he doubted an abductor would let him roam around freely.
This felt more like a hangover. That would certainly explain his fuzzy head. Was it his birthday? That must be it. He and Jacob must have gone out to celebrate, and by the fogginess in his head, had a blast of a time. He didn’t know when they had signed up for this escape room, but it was pretty cool so far. At some point, he must have found that bed and passed out. Hopefully, the owners wouldn’t mind that he took a short nap.
The green light stopped at an open door? It looked more like the types of hatches he saw in his video games than anything else. Then it finally clicked why everything felt so familiar. The escape room was designed to look like the inside of a spaceship. How cool was that!
A clang and curse from beyond the door brought him back to the present.
Bob chuckled; he recognized Jacob’s cursing. He stepped through the hatch and tilted his head in confusion at the black van parked in the space.
“Is that supposed to be a shuttle?” Bob asked. “That’s just lazy. After seeing how much effort they went through with designing everything else, you would think they would put in some effort to dress it up at least.”
“That’s a van,” Jacob replied from behind the vehicle. “How are you feeling?”
Bob walked around the van, looking at all the awesome, if crude, robots stacked off to one side. He stopped and jogged over when he spotted a really cool battle bot. “Now that’s what I’m talking about! Look, it even has battle damage.”
Another noise drew Bob’s attention to the back of the van. His eyes opened wide as a much more humanoid-looking robot came from behind the vehicle, carrying a crate full of cubes. “Shit, that might be even cooler than the prop battle bot. I wonder if it’s an animatronic, running some preprogrammed path, or some bored teen is in an adjacent room controlling it. My vote’s on the latter."
“Wrong on all counts,” Jacob said from the robot’s speaker.
“Holy shit! They actually let you control the thing? Can I try?”
“Maybe,” Jacob replied noncommittally. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Pff, I’m not that hungover. I remember…huh. Maybe I did get a bit too sloshed. The last thing I recall is that tournament in Palm Beach, but that was months before my birthday. Are we celebrating my victory or something?” Bob asked in confusion.
“Maybe you should sit down,” Jacob made the robot gesture to the back of the van, where both doors were wide open, and a few more boxes sat inside.
Bob nodded woodenly as he sat on the back of the open van. “Why do I get the feeling that something bad happened?”
***
Jacob sighed. “That Palm Beach tournament was over a year and a half ago, Bob. What I’m about to tell you may sound crazy, but just hear me out, okay?”
Bob nodded slowly.
“I guess I’ll start at the beginning. I came to your house to unwind one night, where I was abducted by a malfunctioning alien AI. You apparently witnessed the attack and refused to go along with the government’s cover-up. Instead of killing you, since that would just draw more attention, they took you to a “mental hospital” under the pretense of a mental breakdown. At least that’s what they told your parents.”
When Bob didn’t interrupt him, Jacob continued. “Anyway, the government doctors filled you full of drugs and messed with your mind, trying to convince you that everything you had seen was just some crazy nightmare. I think eventually they would have released you as a broken man, but I found you first.”
“I-I don’t remember any of that,” Bob said quietly.
Jacob nodded. “After finding out what they did to you, I scoured the internet for a solution. I found a pharmaceutical company that was working on a treatment for PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. It was supposed to help erase the memories associated with trauma, but it’s only a temporary solution. I might have stolen some of the substance from their lab and injected it into you.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Bob turned toward him, his eyes clear and sharp. “You injected me with an untested drug? Are you crazy?”
Jacob chuckled. “It wasn’t entirely untested. They were in human trials. The side effects aren’t all that bad. You’ll experience some memory loss, which is funny considering the purpose of the drug. Then there are the hangover-like symptoms. You’ll want to drink plenty of water for that. Oh, you might also experience some dizziness and nausea for a few days as well.”
“None of this sounds funny, Jacob. Is that why you’re speaking to me through this robot, so I won’t smack you?”
“Oh yeah, about that. When the alien abducted me, it also sort of killed me. But it did manage to save most of my mind as a sort of digital image, so I’m actually here. I could also be here,” Jacob said, popping into the combat drone and waving the weapons like appendages. “Or here,” he said from one of the older drones.
Bob looked between the three drones, then got a funny look and turned back to the drone nearest him. “Why did I suddenly feel a sense of déjà vu?”
“Well, this isn’t the first time I’ve had this conversation with you. The first few have been quite violent on your part, which is what necessitated the drugs.”
And where exactly are we?” Bob asked as he started to get agitated.
“We’re on a spaceship, but you don’t need to worry about that. How about you go take a nap?”
Jacob sensed the exact moment that his friend’s memories came flooding back. Bob’s heartbeat spiked, and his pupils dilated. Before Bob could even leap from the back of the van and run off screaming like the last time, a needle pricked his butt. His friend jumped slightly and stood, but he wasn’t able to make it very far before the powerful narcotics took effect.
Jacob caught his friend and walked him back to the bedroom. According to the study results, he might have to do this dozens of times before the memories faded, assuming those bastards at that government facility hadn’t done something irreparable to screw up his friend’s head.
If it hadn’t been for the promise he made with the President not to kill everyone involved, he would have. Jacob wasn’t about to let them get away scot-free, however. Before Bob had even been carried aboard the ship, Jacob had decided to get revenge.
He found every single person who was responsible for his friend’s care and condition. Once he had that list, he dug up their contact information, phone, email, etc., and signed them up for every single dirty and disgusting website he could find. That wasn’t nearly enough, however, because they could just dump those emails or numbers, so Jacob also stole their identities and took out loans in their names. Turns out the requirements for being a federal agent are rather strict, meaning these people all had good credit. Not anymore. Their next security review was going to contain some very pointed questions on their spending habits and who that money had actually gone to.
Jacob didn’t like giving criminals money, but in this case, he made an exception. He balanced those books by stealing most of the criminals’ assets and wiring their laundered money to charitable causes; however, so all was good. With any luck, the criminals would find out who had deposited the money in their accounts, right before the other money was stolen, and link the agents to their lost millions.
The agents had claimed that they were just doing their jobs by protecting the nation’s interests, but that shit didn’t fly with him. Some would say his actions were petty, but he would disagree. In fact, he was probably being too lenient on them. Protecting the country against threats was one thing; messing with someone’s mind was a whole other.
Maybe Jacob’s own experience with memory loss was why he felt so strongly about screwing with someone’s mind. He realized the irony of that, since he was about to do something similar to Franky, but that was different.
First off, Franky was an asshole, and secondly, Jacob suspected he was going to have to do more rebuilding than actual manipulation, considering the condition of some of the memory cores he recovered from Redline. One box contained broken pieces with clear signs where tools had been used to disassemble some of them.
Speaking of, Jacob popped into the virtual welcome room. He had pulled the space aboard the ship to house Franky, instead of leaving the man in the glitching bedroom.
Franky looked up from examining his hands in wonder. “Hello. Do I know you?”
“We just talked an hour ago.”
The man chuckled. “I think I would rememb—”
The man’s avatar glitched and reset. “Hello. Do I know you?”
Jacob sighed. While this version of Franky was an improvement over his past self, he had a lot of work ahead of him to make him stable.
He left the man to his own devices and got back to work checking on the status of the disconnected data cubes.
Unlike the US scientists, Redline Dynamic’s people had been very destructive in their efforts to suss out the technology. Besides all the disassembled units, they had managed to erase some completely, likely to create a baseline for testing.
Jacob had checked the Redline servers after discovering the extent of the damage to the data cubes, but if the data contained within had been backed up, it wasn’t anymore. Redline had wiped their entire data center after the attack, likely to avoid implicating themselves. Not that it would do them any good. They had already arrested all of the higher-ups and scientists involved in the illegal research. Unfortunately, with their connections, they were out within an hour. Jacob would deal with them soon enough.
Jacob wasn’t all that mad about the lost data, if he was honest. Sure, Franky would probably be upset if he knew about it, but the Franky that existed in the active simulation was a way nicer version than the Franky he remembered from back on the station. There was always the possibility that Franky was playing Jacob again, but he didn’t think so. The main reason for that assumption was that Franky hadn’t been aware of his surroundings when the scientists first brought him back online.
Jacob had plenty of time during his trip to Earth to go through every station recording he could find of the man. What he learned was that Franky liked to air his true feelings the moment he thought nobody could see or hear him. Imagining Franky holding in his frustration after crashing on Earth after coming so close to his goal seemed unlikely.
In fact, the man had been so consistent in his behavior that the scientists thought Franky was designed as a sort of interactive translation program between humanity and whoever had sent the ship. That was why they had built a simple audio interface to communicate with him. They were hoping to gain some insight into the alien tech or even just why the ship had arrived.
Jacob chuckled at the thought that the scientists had been relying on Franky being able or willing to tell them anything, even if he had been completely intact.