Chapter 11:
(Posted: February 19)
Harrison didn't know where to start or what to think. A minute or so passed as he lingered in the afterglow of his own survival. Had he negotiated his way out of death? He felt like a badass. Or had the woman in black been in control the entire time and gotten exactly what she'd wanted from him? Now he felt like a stooge. But either way, he was still alive.
As the euphoria of the moment faded, Harrison realized he was alone in a dark jungle with absolutely no supplies or tools. Even his clothes were dirty; his pants had a few holes in them and he'd already sweated through his shirt a couple times. And the current jungle wasn't doing him any favors either. Though the sun was down, the air still felt oppressively humid and warm.
His first goal was to find the others, if they were still alive. He didn't know if he could do it in the darkness though. And even in the light, hadn't Kat said it would take them hours of hiking at regular size to cross this world? He could be lost in here for days until someone discovered his body back in the lab and pulled him out of VERSA manually.
But then he remembered what the woman in black had made him agree to, and realized he needed to de-sim as soon as possible. He was in a jungle, there should be plenty of fruit in it, he thought. He'd just have to keep biting into each one he found until one was an out-key.
There were so many things he needed to accomplish tonight, but he realized he needed to rest too; he hardly slept in the bayou world and since then he'd been running on full adrenaline. Considering his fatigue, it made him think back to earlier to when he lay upon Jessica's thigh, and he found his lips inadvertently smile at the memory. Without a doubt, he would have fallen asleep on her eventually. It was a wonderful thought... wait, was he developing feelings for her?
To get his mind off of it, Harrison started walking absentmindedly through the jungle. The hatch to the cellar was nowhere nearby, so he guessed he'd been dumped off randomly somewhere else. Prepared to continually push foliage out of his way, he found many of the ferns and leaves reached just above his head. This must have been a big jungle! Or... maybe he wasn't full-size. He stopped to consider it. He'd been half-size in the room with the woman in black, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. Looking around now, the darkness prevented him from truly observing his surroundings. Deciding he'd come back to the topic later, he continued walking.
Harrison quickly became aware of the sounds of the jungle and his skin crawled when he thought about what might be lurking out of sight. Not generally a squeamish person, he couldn't help but conjure in his mind the worst possible creatures. Real rain forests already had giant spiders and beetles in them, would VERSA create even worse? And that didn't even include the wild boars and jaguars that inhabited them too. He could be walking into a deathtrap and he wouldn't even know it until it was too late.
Making a quick decision, he scrambled up the large roots of a nearby tree. He was getting off the ground. Finding a bizarre combination of snaking roots and low branches, he began to pull himself off the jungle floor. Wondering again what his true height was, this tree seemed big to him but it could have really been any size.
He found he'd picked the right tree; it was relatively easy to climb and within a minute he looked onto the jungle floor from a height of fifteen or twenty feet. Or maybe half that, depending on his size. Either way he felt considerably better. But as he tried to find a comfortable place to sit, he realized staying in the tree long-term, or until the sun came up at some indeterminate time, would be impossible. The branches were too narrow, and there wasn't a safe place for him to doze off or even wait without the continuous need to hold onto something.
Disappointed, he turned away from his study of the tree and tried peering through the jungle around him. He wasn't above the canopy, and in fact he was pretty sure he was still below it; no stars appeared overhead, just the faint outlines of leaves. And scanning his horizons he saw nothing but a patchwork of shadowy trees and branches. Until he saw the light.
Very faint and probably a long way off, he caught a glimpse of something through the jungle. He couldn't tell if it was electric illumination or fire, but it was something. And hoping like hell it wouldn't be dangerous, he realized tonight he was going to find the source of that light.
Carefully climbing back down from the tree and hoping to spot an apple somewhere, Harrison reached the ground and started walking in the direction of the mysterious light. He couldn't see it from the ground, but he carefully made sure he didn't deviate from its general direction.
After about ten harrowing minutes of tramping through the dark jungle alone, he saw the light from his level, still far away, but now able to guide him. As he approached it closer, it looked more like an electric lamp, unflickering and steady. And when he got close enough, it surely was a lamp posted on the side of a corrugated green wall. He'd discovered a small building in the middle of the jungle.
Reaching the structure, he walked around it to try finding a door. Coming around to the other side, he found the rusty door of the building, and much to his dismay, he only stood as tall as the doorknob. So he really was small. Dammit.
He reached up and twisted the handle and found the door unlocked, so he pushed it open. Though it originally looked larger, he discovered the building only contained one windowless room. A small wall-mounted light bulb lit the space, illuminating a room that looked like someone's forgotten living space. It contained a small table and a chair, dusty bookcases, stacked-up wooden crates, and even off to the side he saw a matrix of car batteries hooked together, proving the scant power keeping the lights on. But the best thing lay in the corner: a dirty cot.
Harrison didn't care that it looked disheveled and unclean. He was spending the night there. After first glancing around to make sure there weren't any kinds of fruit lying about, he took off his shoes and approached the cot. Not finding a light switch to darken the room, he simply climbed on top of the bed, lay down and closed his eyes. It took him some time, but he eventually drifted off into sleep.
“Well look who the fuck it is!” a man's voice said, drawing Harrison back into the waking world. Harrison's eyes fluttered as he regained consciousness. Standing over him was a middle-aged man with a mustache, propping a rifle up on his shoulder. Rich grinned down at him.
“Jesus, you scared me there for a moment,” Harrison told him, relieved to see his friend.
“I scared you?” Rich retorted. “You're the one who got kidnapped and carried off by his giant ex-girlfriend! Most guys don't come back from that!”
“Well, I'm alive.”
Rich looked over Harrison's half-sized body. “Well, at least you regained some of your size while you were gone.”
“Where are the girls?” Harrison asked, remembering them. He sat up in his bed.
“Don't worry, they're right outside,” Rich assured him. “You've got a hell of a lot explaining to do,” he added.
While Rich snooped around the room for supplies, Harrison climbed down from the bed and found his small shoes. Once ready, he triumphantly walked out the door into the bring daylight. Jessica and Kat, both regular size, stood in the jungle nearby chatting, but stopped when they saw him. Both of their mouths fell open.
“Holy shit!” Kat exclaimed, as if she'd seen a ghost.
“Harrison!” Jessica squealed out in delight. She bounded over to him, causing him to pause as he watched her huge form lumber towards him. She was nearly twice his height, so he braced himself. Before colliding with him, Jessica pulled him off the ground and wrapped her arms around him. “I can't believe you're ok!” she told him, embracing his little body. “What happened to you? Where'd she take you?”
The air mostly squeezed out of him, Harrison promised to tell her everything if she'd put him down first. Jessica complied, and Harrison regained his breath. Looking down, he noticed some dusty old work boots on her feet that looked very out of place.
“Yeah it was all we could find last night,” Jessica explained, noticing his gaze.
Rich came out of the building behind Harrison. “I found two cans of beans but that's it,” he said, showing the group. Finding his duffel bag nearby, he tossed them in. From the looks of it, Harrison guessed Rich's bag was almost empty.
“Harrison, I still can't believe we found you or that you're even alive,” remarked Kat, walking over. “But we still have a lot of walking to do today, so let's get going.” She looked down at Harrison in dismay, but she tried covering it up with a smile. His short stature was going to slow them down.
“How long was I gone for?” Harrison asked. The other three looked at him in surprise.
“About nineteen hours,” Kat answered. “We spent one night without you. So yeah, we're running out of time.”
“Woah,” Harrison muttered. The woman in black really must have dilated time somehow. His conversation with her couldn't have lasted more than 30 minutes. Looking around at his three towering colleagues, he asked, “How'd you all get big again?”
“Kat came and got us,” Jessica explained. “She came back about an hour after you disappeared and took me and Rich to a cabin she knew about. They had a change-key there, and some food, luckily.”
“Did you bring the change-key along?” Harrison asked hopefully.
“Sorry buddy,” said Rich. “We... couldn't really take that one with us. Was kinda built into the wall of the place. It was actually a shower handle.”
Though Harrison was confused as to how that worked, instead he asked “Can we go back real quick and enlarge me?”
“Sorry Harrison,” Kat cut in. “There's no time. That place is hours behind us now.” She put her hands on her hips and leaned over him, like she was talking to a little boy. “But don't worry, there will be another one before we go through to the side space.” She may have meant it to be reassuring, but it sounded condescending. Kat was still just wearing her black sports bra, so when she leaned towards Harrison he had to avert his eyes from her cleavage. Had she done that on purpose?
“Let's go everyone,” Kat said, standing back upright. “Rich, I'll carry the bag. Follow me.”
And without another word, everyone started marching through the jungle.
“Ok Harrison,” Jessica said, walking right behind him, “what the hell happened to you?”
Harrison rubbed his chin and started to think. The stubble growing on it caught him by surprise. Wow, VERSA even had his hair growing over the last 24 hours? It never ceased to amaze him how thorough the programmers of this sim were.
After the quick distraction, Harrison thought about his encounter with the woman in black. He immediately rejected telling the others about the deal she'd forced him to agree to. And there was no way he'd share his suspicion that she was following their every move. Finding an out-key and leaving her behind as soon as possible still remained his highest priority.
Deciding to tell them mostly the truth, Harrison recounted his abduction by Hailey and his meeting with the woman in black, culminating in her letting him go. Trying to characterize her accurately, he suggested she was probably some all-powerful entity created by VERSA that was still discovering the limits of its power. Threatened by outsiders, she'd chosen to repeatedly attack them, he explained. And then he deviated from reality. Harrison told the group he'd brokered some kind of truce with her, on the basis that once they'd found “DOS PALOS-153” they'd leave VERSA.
“She's rather moody though,” Harrison added, “and she might change her mind. I got the impression that she was kind of bored too, so it's possible she might throw more obstacles in our way.”
“Well hopefully she doesn't send another army of clones at us,” Rich said from the back. “This M4 is the only firearm we have left.”
“What about the submachine guns?” Harrison asked.
Rich laughed. “I blew all that ammo on your girlfriend, Harrison!” He chuckled. “I think I just wanted to see what would happen...”
Harrison then shared with the group his theory about the side space. The woman in black clearly didn't use it and she suggested that she didn't even know what it was. Though she seemed all-powerful, it may have been that the side space was outside of the realm of her control. If they needed to hide from her, that would be the place to do it.
“So Harrison,” Kat addressed him, turning her head back. “Do you think we'll see her again?”
He stayed silent. He knew she'd be back, at least for him. “Um, hard to say,” he lied. “I hope she's finally ready to leave us alone.”
As the sun reached its peak in the sky and the jungle air turned to soup, the group found themselves beginning to walk uphill. Harrison looked up at the few shards of sky he could see through the jungle's canopy and noticed a billowing plume of smoke rising from a distance in front of them.
“Hey Kat, are you seeing all this smoke up ahead?” he asked her. He felt silly trying to get her attention at his height; her ass was directly in front of his face.
“Yeah, that's the volcano,” she replied calmly.
“Volcano?” Rich shouted from the back. “You're leading us towards an active volcano?!”
“Yeah, it's where the door is,” Kat explained, starting to pant from the slope of the climb. “There's like a research station or something at the base of it. It's in one of the buildings.”
Harrison started to pant too. His legs were half as long as the others', so he'd already covered what to him felt like twice as much ground. Jessica though, walking directly behind him, displayed a miraculous amount of patience with him. Yet despite his own struggles, the three giants became fatigued too. Rich and Jessica's shirts were completely damp with sweat. Everyone was miserable.
“Really wish I wasn't in these pants right now,” Rich complained as he huffed and puffed through the jungle, rifle still slung over his shoulder.
“Keep your pants on, old man,” teased Harrison.
The sweat kept pouring out of their bodies as they kept walking. Slowly the density of the jungle peeled back and the group began encountering small meadows and clearings.
“Is there any water in the bag?” Jessica asked Kat. Opening the bag and searching through, Kat finally held up a half-filled bottle.
“No water but half of this energy drink.”
“I'll still drink it,” Jessica replied.
“Save some for me too,” Rich added.
“And me,” echoed Harrison. He watched Kat hand Jessica the bottle, out of reach above his head. Kat looked down at him.
“At least you only drink half as much,” she commented with a smirk.
Tired, exhausted, and dehydrated, an hour later the group made it to the complex Kat had mentioned. Noticing the buildings up ahead, Kat confirmed it was the right place. They could now clearly see the volcano rising above their heads, angrily billowing smoke and threatening to erupt.
“Looks like we got here just in time,” Harrison said, watching the smoldering mountain.
“I think it always does this,” was Kat's reply. She was panting heavily with her hands on her knees.
“Ma'am, I'm assuming you know where the change-key is?” Rich had come up to Kat's side.
“Yeah, this one's a book. It's in a library or an office or something,” Kat explained. “Lets see if we can find some water first.”
It always felt a little creepy, Harrison thought, walking through these depopulated worlds. They approached the compound which consisted of a few deserted buildings. Someone had painted them a drab olive green color, the structures silently clinging to the rising slope of the solitary mountain. Once lush, the ground below Harrison's feet had yielded to lifeless dirt.
Rich unslung his gun just to be safe. Kat peeled away from the three of them to investigate a building on the right. She peeked her head up to look in some windows, trying to remember where exactly they were going.
“Let's check this building over here,” suggested Jessica, pointing to the left. Harrison decided to follow her; he wasn't going to be left alone at his current height.
Pushing open a door, Jessica entered a building that looked like a dormitory. A hallway traversed the length of the structure, connecting to about a dozen small rooms with beds. At the end of the hallway, Harrison and Jessica stumbled onto a small kitchen. A dented water cooler sat in the corner of the room.
“Jackpot!” she exclaimed. Without looking for a cup, she stepped over to the spigot of the cooler and released the water directly into her mouth. As she awkwardly bent over, she absentmindedly stuck her ass out right into Harrison's face.
“Save some for me!” he teased her. As he glanced at her butt that she'd practically pushed into his face, he wondered if she realized what she was doing.
She pulled herself up. “Damn that was good,” she panted, savoring the hydration. Harrison stepped up to the water cooler; he didn't need to bend over at all, the spigot was right at head level. He flipped the tab and began suckling the water. It wasn't even cold but it tasted wonderful.
“Ugghhh...” he moaned out in delight when he'd gotten his fill. Jessica watched from high above, amused by his antics.
“Wow, you're greedy,” she said.
“You drank more than me!”
“That's 'cause I'm bigger,” she replied playfully, jabbing her finger into his chest to punctuate her point. Harrison realized that he disliked Kat's treatment of him when he was little, but somehow found Jessica endearing no matter what she did. She had certainly gotten used to always being taller than him. Come to think of it, he realized, after all his time in VERSA he'd never been larger than her, or anyone, for that matter.
“Let's go find Kat,” she suggested. “It doesn't look like there's any food in here. Maybe she's got the change-key already.” Harrison glanced around the kitchen. There were no cabinets but a couple of empty bowls lying on the counter. Hanging from the ceiling was what looked like a banana hook, but no bananas. He'd have to find fruit somewhere else.
In another building they discovered Kat in a room with a large table surrounded by bookcases and research equipment. There were books scattered all over the floor, but that was mostly due to Kat flinging unwanted books over her shoulder as she looked for the change-key.
“Find it yet?” asked Harrison.
“Not... yet...” Kat replied without looking over. “It should be red, but I don't see it here.”
“Could someone have moved it?” suggested Jessica.
Kat shook her head. “Who? It's just us in the sim right now.” Well... Harrison thought, thinking about the woman in black and his ex-girlfriend from before, that might not be entirely true. It crossed his mind that the woman in black might not be done playing with them yet, and thwarting their exit out of this world seemed like her type of move.
“Check those drawers over there,” Kat asked Jessica and Harrison, pointing to a desk along a wall. Jessica moved over to the drawers, but Harrison turned around and headed out of the room to explore the rest of the building. He walked through a room with charts hung up on the walls and another containing a telescope pointing out a window toward the volcano. Finally, he opened another door near the end of the building.
Looking in, he observed a lounge-like room that had large doors leading out to the veranda that encircled the building. They'd all been left open to allow a breeze to blow through the room. Full of couches and tables and a lonely ceiling fan spinning lazily up above, it looked like a relaxing place to spend an afternoon. Potted ferns occupied the corners and a mounted boar's head graced one of the walls.
But occupying a coffee table right in the middle of the room was a bowl of apples. Harrison couldn't believe his luck! Well, until he noticed a pair of booted feet resting on the table next to them.
Sitting at full-size on a couch with her feet propped up in front of her, Harrison saw the woman in black casually reading a red book. Having heard the door open, she looked up, and spotting him, smiled. His veins went cold.
“Well, you did pretty well for yourself,” she commented with a grin. She held up the red book. “Were you looking for this?”
Damn, she had the change-key. They needed that book. No, he really needed those apples. He stole a glance at the bowl of apples and then looked back at her, his face still betraying his surprise. Noticing this, she frowned, then looked down at the apples.
“You weren't thinking of leaving, were you Harrison? Remember, you made a promise to me.”
It didn't make sense how she could know about the apples unless she'd read his mind or memories. He was trapped. So hopelessly trapped. She patted the couch cushion next to her. “Come join me up here,” she said cheerfully.
“Uh... hi,” he finally said as he reluctantly walked over to her and climbed onto the over-sized couch. He stole another look at the apples. They were close, but she'd be able to grab him away from them in an instant if he lunged out. He didn't want to imagine the consequences of that.
“Well I'm glad you found your friends,” the woman said to him, closing the book and bringing it to her lap. “I decided it would only be fair to let you out somewhere nearby them.” She looked at his small stature. “Shame they didn't want to change you back to normal though.”
“Um, they do,” he said, trying to stay cool. Every moment he spent around her made him nervous as hell. “We just need that book though.”
“This book?” she asked, holding it up in front of him. “But it's blank. What good is it to you?”
“It's how we change size,” he said. She looked at him with a sour look on her face.
“That's so... inefficient,” she finally admitted. “You hiked all this way here just for this stupid book?”
Who was she to judge? Harrison wondered. Though she wasn't acting like a psycho-killer anymore, she was still an ass and a supreme nuisance. “Yes, we need that book,” he admitted sternly.
“Huh,” she responded, understanding him. “So if this happened,” she said, holding up the book. It suddenly disappeared from her hand. “You'd be pretty angry?”
Harrison's eyes ballooned in dread. She'd deleted the change-key! They needed it to get through the next door!
“Wha... what'd you do?!” he stammered. “Bring it back! We need that!”
“Harrison,” the woman in black reassured him, putting her big hand on his shoulder. She leaned in to him, putting her breasts close to his face, certainly intimidating him with her body. “If you need to change something in this world, you don't need a silly book.”
Her tone was incredibly friendly, which to Harrison made it that much scarier. Swallowing hard and looking up from her breasts to her smiling face, he asked, “What do you mean?”
The woman in black chuckled softly, and moved her hand up to his head. She ruffled his hair playfully. “You're so funny!” she said. “If you wanted to change yourselves, you should have just asked me!”
Well, that was what he'd been afraid of. She kept telling him they were friends when really she wanted to endlessly meddle with him. His and the others' lives were a game to her. She made the rules, called the pitches, and ultimately decided who would win.
“Your friend Katherine wants to go through the little green door in that building over there, right?” asked the woman in black, pointing through an open door at another building. “Does that lead to the side place you told me about? I'd like to go in there too, but I can't.”
A noise from the hallway snapped him out of their conversation. “Harrison?” he heard Jessica say, “Where'd you go?”
Oh no. He did not want Jessica to find him in here sitting peacefully with the woman in black. But just as the thought crept into his mind, Jessica stepped into the lounge. And noticing him sitting on the couch with the woman in black, the color drained from her face.
“Jessica! Run!” was the first thing Harrison could think to shout out.
“Now, now,” the woman in black interrupted, grabbing Harrison. “Jessica, please come in,” she kindly instructed her. “Harrison, that is no way to treat a lady!” she scolded him.
Jessica stayed frozen in the doorway, unsure if staying or leaving was the safer move. The woman noticed her dilemma and said, “You're so scared all the time! Come in and spend a little time with me.”
“Let him go,” Jessica demanded sternly. Her threat caught the woman in black by surprise. She removed her hands from Harrison.
“Oh, he willingly came in here and sat next to me!” the woman in black explained in amusement. “He's certainly not my prisoner. Well, not this time anyways,” she admitted with a smile. Harrison cringed. The casual reminder of her dominance was insulting.
“Jessica, she has the book,” Harrison desperately informed her.
“Give it back!” Jessica demanded immediately. The woman in black did not look pleased.
“Do you have no manners?” she asked. “You didn't even ask kindly.”
Harrison watched Jessica's face. She looked understandably stressed, her eyes darting back and forth between Harrison and the woman. In her mind, she was quickly trying to come up with a plan.
The woman stood up from the couch, rising to face Jessica at the same height. “Before you rudely greeted me,” the woman told Jessica, “I had just offered Harrison my help. But now I'm not sure you deserve it.” Harrison wondered if she was actually offended or once again just playing with them. Did she have feelings? Could they even be hurt? Harrison found it somewhat ironic that the most advanced artificial intelligence in the world might have thin skin.
“Why would you even want to help us when you've tried to kill us?” replied Jessica, trying to catch her in a lie.
“Don't be so conceited,” the woman argued back. “You can't blame me for trying to defend myself. You came into my world unannounced with those guns and hearts of yours.”
It was then Harrison remembered the bowl of apples sitting on the coffee table in front of him. He quickly looked up at the woman in black as she spoke to Jessica. Her attention might be distracted enough that he could leap towards the table and grab one of the apples. Refocusing his eyes on the apples, he committed to his gamble. His arms tensed as he coiled himself, ready to jump out of his seat.
And then the bowl blinked out right before his eyes. The apples disappeared! He withered back into the couch in disbelief as the out-keys vanished right before him. Now so distracted, he didn't even realize the woman in black had stopped talking. She was looking down at him now.
“Harrison, you disappoint me,” she told him sadly. “You said you wanted to help me...”
Acting quickly, he pulled himself off the couch and landed with his feet on the floor. He looked up at her, hoping to save himself, but also trying to cover up the deal he'd made with her. He began pleading.
“Yes, I do! I swear, we're here to help! All of us, not just me. We just need to get to that place I told you about. We're so close, please give us the book! I'll behave, I'll be nice! I'll do whatever you want! Please!” And then without thinking, he reached out and embraced her. Well, her legs mostly. His head rested right below her waist. Fear overcoming him, he begged this god for mercy.
“Aww Harrison...” he heard her coo. She lowered a hand and started rubbing his head, gently pushing him into her. Burning in shame, Harrison could only imagine Jessica's reaction. “I'll give you your book back,” the woman finally said. He heard her turn to speak to Jessica. “See, he asked nicely,” she told her smugly.
Kat's voice echoing from the other end of the building interrupted their scene. “I found it!!” she bellowed. The woman in black immediately disappeared, leaving Harrison holding air and Jessica staring in utter disbelief. Kat shouted again, “I can't believe I didn't see it before! It was right in front of me! Guys let's get going!”
Harrison turned to Jessica who still stood in the doorway. She looked flabbergasted. And confused. And very, very angry.
“I'm sorry, I...” he quickly apologized before losing his words. Switching thoughts, he desperately begged her, “Please don't tell the others!”
Still not speaking, Jessica looked like she was fighting to keep her mouth shut. Narrowing her eyes, she shot him a contemptible look. He could practically taste the disappointment and loathing she harbored for him. Her withering glare destroyed whatever pitiful amount of self-confidence he still possessed.
Harrison started to open his mouth to vomit out excuses but she stomped away, out of the room and back towards Kat. Then he heard her voice. It was painfully cheery.
“Kat that's great! Let's find Rich and we can finally go!”
Harrison stood in the lounge, feeling dejected and used. The woman in black had played with him like a yo-yo. And Jessica had seen everything. Unlike last night when he'd been wandering the jungle by himself, now he was truly alone.