Kill Switch: Chapter 25
Debate on the Shore of The Rubicon
“I swear it was him,” I whisper to Yide.
She opens the flap and sticks out her head.
“It was the elf,” I say. “Had to be. The one X…”
And the mention of my best colleague’s name reminds me that he’s still tied up to a wooden beam, unconscious. I cross the tent, kneel before him, check his pulse, examine the knot on the side of his head.
“How is he?” Yide asks.
“Alive. But he’s probably going to have a headache when he wakes up.”
“Serves him right,” Yide says. “He’s been a nightmare all day. At one point, I had to kick him out of the tent.”
“He’s going through it,” I say. “All the withdrawals. We should probably give him some grace.”
Yide hugs herself and shivers. “It’s so cold in here.”
“I know,” I say, walking over to my cot. I grab the blanket and toss it to Yide. “Here, take this. I’m going to figure out this stove.” I open the door and look inside. The log is still, like, a piece of wood. There’s no fire or anything. No ash or coals. It’s weird. I poke the log again with the metal rod. I turn to Yide. “By the way, X isn’t wrong. You’re doing pretty good, coming off pharms and all. I mean, you’ve lost your cool a few times, but overall, I’d say you’re handling the withdrawals pretty well. Especially this being your first day.”
“It’s because this isn’t my first day,” Yide says.
I stand, hug myself, trying to get warm. “What do you mean, not your first day?”
“When I saw you that night, in your persy, all spazzing and shit, coming off Jaz, foaming at the mouth, well, Vonn, I was scared, you know? I mean, what if you had died? What if…” A wetness catches in her throat. “What if I had lost you?” Her voice breaks.
“You’re not going to lose me,” I say, taking a step toward her. “I’m right here.”
Yide swallows. She brushes a strand of hair out of her eye. “I know you’re right.” She smiles, flicking a tear off her cheek. “I’m being silly, ok, I know. It’s just…I was scared, Vonn, and I decided, then and there, to stop taking pharms, at least for a bit, to see how it was, because I didn’t want to end up all sprawled out on the floor. I had an epiphany, you know? Like, all these pharms, they’re supposed to make us feel better, to make us, like, not sick, but they just make us sick in a different way. You know what I mean? It’s like Elijah says in Burn It Down: the pharmas want to keep us sick, because that’s how they make their coin. They want to convince us that there is something broken in us. But really, what’s broken is the world we’re living in.”
“Which is why we have to burn it down,” I say.
“Exactly.”
“Yide,” I say. “I saw something today. Claudette showed me some footage. It’s hard to explain…”
“We saw it too,” Yide says, nodding toward X. “Claudette brought us to the tech tent. She showed us how the arcade is connected to The Without. It was…horrible.”
“Did they bring you to the derrick fields?” I ask.
But before she can answer, X lets out a bearish groan.
“You fuckers!” He yells. “Untie me!”
But we don’t untie him, because he refuses to promise that he won’t attack me again. Which I appreciate. Because, if nothing else, at least he’s honest about his limitations.
“You’re just going to have to be strong,” Yide says. “Same as Vonn, when he came off Jaz. There’s a reason they put him in a strait jacket and tossed him in a padded room. Raw dogging is hella gnarly.”
Which gets me thinking: what was Yide doing while she was raw dogging? Was she just, like, in her room, climbing the walls? Or did she go to one of those off-grid detox centers?
“This is bullshit,” X says, spitting meaninglessly on the ground. “Untie me now, or I swear, when we get back to The Within, I will cancel your ass. I will unlike every post. I will…” His gaze turns sharp. “Unsubscribe from your feed.”
Yide crosses her arms and snorts. “We’re not going back to The Within, X,” she says. “We’ve already crossed the rubicon.”
“Rube-a-what?”
“The rubicon,” Yide says. “It was some kind of river that this guy named Julius Caesar crossed, and once he crossed it, he couldn’t go back.”
X looks as lost as I am.
“Look, I read about it in a history book in The Vacuum,” Yide says. “Go look it up if you’re curious. All I’m saying is, we’re here, in The Without, and it’s not like we can just go back to The Within and act like everything is normal. It’s like Claudette was saying on our way here. What we’ve gazed can’t be ungazed.”
“I’m not talking about ungazing,” X says. “I’m talking about going home. I mean, they told us in the tech tent that we were in the clear, that Middle Management thinks we’re still down in The Within, going about our business. So it’s not like we have to stay here. Claudette even said we can leave whenever we like. And, judging from everyone’s vibe around here, I think they want us to leave.” X turns an eye toward me. “I mean, just imagine it, Vonn. Dinner at Taco Tim’s. A night at High Times. The DJ blasting ‘Goo Me, Goo Me.’ All the likes, all the viral gazes. The xTonic flowing. I mean, can’t you see it, man? Maybe a little nightcap orgy at The Underworld? And then it’s back to our perfectly air-conditioned, insect-proof persies, some Derrick 9 before bed, a nice relaxing sleep in our custom-fitted mattresses?”
I glance at Yide, eyes narrowed, like, are you hearing what I’m hearing?
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” I say. “I mean, are you telling me that you want to keep playing Derrick 9, now that you know that you’re actually killing real people?”
X looks away. His sullen eyes stare at a wooden beam for a long moment. He says to the wooden beam, “I mean, who’s to say that The Withouters don’t deserve to be killed? They’re vandalizing private property. Nobody is making them attack the derricks.” He turns back to Yide and I, strengthened by the sound of his own voice. “You know what I mean?”
“First of all,” Yide says. “Killing someone for vandalizing is a little extreme, but that aside, the point is that The Within is a lie.”
“You don’t know that,” X says. “It could be the other way around. Maybe The Without is a lie. Yeah, like, maybe all the footage was deep faked. You know what I mean? That’s the only explanation.”
“The footage wasn’t deep faked,” I say. “Elijah brought me to the derrick fields. I saw it with my own eyes, the derrick pumps going up and down, the cameras and the machine guns rotating on top. A drone flew overhead. It’s real, X. You might want it to be fake, but that doesn’t mean it is.”
X looks at the beam again, as if to consult with the wood. Then he turns back to me. “I’d have to see it to believe it.”
“You have seen it!” Yide yells.
“No,” X says. “Not like Vonn is saying. Nobody brought me to the derrick fields. Just…golden boy over here.” His voice is searing.
“Wait a second,” I say. “Are you jealous that Elijah brought me to the derrick fields and not you?” I roll my eyes. “Get over yourself, X. This is bigger than you. It’s not a popularity contest. It’s people’s lives at stake.”
X raises his head, as if to let my words ramp off his neck rolls and launch toward the ceiling. He glances at Yide. Then back at me. “So, like, what happened at the derrick field?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, like, did you see a bunch of Withouters getting killed?” His eyes light up, vibrating. “Was it, like, hella gnarly blood and guts? Like a proper episode of The Withouter Killer?”
“Not exactly,” I say.
X’s eyes lose their brightness. “What do you mean, not exactly? Didn’t you see Withouters getting popped?”
“No,” I say. “Nobody got popped. Nobody was down there. It was just the derricks going up and down, up and down, in and out, in and out.”
“Aha!” X yells. “What did I say? The whole thing is deep faked. It’s a ruse!”
“X…” Yide’s voice is quiet, almost sad. “It’s not deep faked. Vonn even said, he saw machine guns on top of the derricks. How much more proof do you need?”
But before X can answer, the tent flap swishes open.
I turn. The elf is standing there, holding a bow. He turns slightly to the side. On his back is a quiver of arrows.
His hand moves upward, toward the quiver.