Chapter 4:
(Posted: January 19)
Three unlikely travelers set out into the maze of doorways, accessing the side space the same way Sujay had shown Harrison and Rich.
“What are all these doors?” Jessica asked, just as perplexed with VERSA as the other two had been the day before.
“Sujay described them as connections into other parts of VERSA,” explained Harrison. Saying it made it sound more true, but he was hardly any more of an expert than Jessica. He watched her for a moment. She didn't seem distraught anymore from what she'd done to Kevin. Although she'd killed him in the sim, he hoped the fact that he wasn't really dead was calming her nerves. Though with every passing minute, it felt stranger and stranger that Ernie hadn't pulled them out of VERSA yet.
“What are we looking for then?” Jessica asked as she saw Rich looking intently at every passing door. By now Harrison felt hopelessly lost; he didn't even think he'd be able to find the door they came from considering how many twists and turns they'd already taken.
Rich stopped for a moment but kept looking down the hallways. “Well, I was sorta looking for the door we went through yesterday, as a frame of reference. It's the only place we know that has those special apples that can get us out.”
“Oh yeah, but Sujay said other things can get us out too,” Harrison replied. “Though I guess he didn't tell us what... maybe we should go into a random door?”
“Um maybe,” Rich said. “What about this one?” He pointed to a nearby green door. Stenciled onto the front of the door was “FOREST-85. “You think there are apples in there?”
“Open it and take a peek,” Harrison suggested. Rich grabbed the doorknob, turned it, and pushed the door open. From over Rich's shoulder Harrison could see little besides darkness.
“It's a forest alright,” Rich said, stepping back and closing the door. “Fucking nighttime though. I'm not going in there.”
“How about this door?” Jessica said, pointing at another door across the hall from the forest. It read “PLAZA-85.”
“Yeah, try it,” Harrison said. Jessica opened the door and stepped though. Harrison followed her by instinct.
Sure enough, he stepped into a large plaza that looked like it could have been in the heart of some old European city. He stood under another colonnade, this one ringing around the entire square and only broken by alleyways and streets that ventured out into the depths of the city. Around it, buildings of all sizes surrounded the open space, but all of them looked old and worn. Shuttered windows and sagging red roof tiles hung over the square. An overcast sky boxed them in above, and the whole city looked gloomy and neglected. The emptiness of it all felt as if a plague had washed through the city and removed all its residents.
“Huh, interesting world,” Rich said after following them in. Behind him, the door closed shut.
“Wow, who built all of this?” wondered Jessica out loud. She took a few steps out from under the colonnade into the dejected square.
“Who knows? VERSA? Sujay? No idea how this sim actually works,” Rich answered, though Jessica had already seemed to stop listening.
“Uh, I don't see any fruit here,” Harrison commented. He walked back to the door which was set into a dusty wall. He tried the doorknob. It didn't turn. “Hey guys....” he shouted out, “I think we're screwed.”
Rich looked back and immediately knew the door was locked. “Shit,” he yelled out. “What the hell! I thought Sujay said these doors didn't lock?!”
“Hey that's what I thought too. You think it's working right?” Harrison tried pulling on the door harder. It didn't budge.
“Fuck this is just great,” Rich admitted sarcastically. He looked like a pouting safari master. It was bizarre. “Jessica, wait up!” he called out to her. Jessica was already walking towards the middle of the large square, so he briskly followed her while Harrison chased after him.
The three of them convened near the center of the plaza where a large marble fountain stood, adorned with angelic figures but conspicuously missing the water that would have made it beautiful. Instead, its basin held a blanket of crumpled old leaves. They started discussing a plan.
“Ok so we can't go back the way we came,” Harrison said. “I think we need to stay together, but let's see if we can get into these buildings.”
“Maybe there's someone in here that can help us?” Jessica suggested, sitting down on a nearby bench. She looked tired, but they hadn't been in VERSA even an hour yet.
“No, there's nobody here,” Rich explained. He told her what Sujay had said about the lack of human-like inhabitants in the sim.
“Some of these buildings must have doors right?” Harrison said, looking around. “Or maybe we should head down one of these streets?”
Jessica looked over the buildings. “Let's head there,” she pointed. Both Harrison and Rich turned to look over the square and saw a tower rising in the distance. It looked like it was a few blocks past the plaza. “We can get a good view if we climb it,” Jessica added.
“Alright then, let's go,” Rich agreed. They left the plaza and started walking down a street that appeared to lead in the right direction.
The city they walked through began reminding Harrison of Venice, but without the canals. The whole place seemed hundreds of years old and the architectural style was certainly beautiful in a quaint, old-world kind of way. Even the tower that loomed larger ahead of them looked like the campanile of a Gothic church.
Walking down the street, the trio marveled at the buildings. Some looked like storefronts with large, empty display windows, while others stood completely shuttered. Harrison noticed a sign attached to one, but instead of English the sign contained letters of some mysterious language. He figured it could have been gibberish VERSA made up in an attempt to replicate a memory it found in someone's mind. Everything about this world unsettled him.
Rich absentmindedly tried opening a few of the doors they passed by. None would open for him, but Harrison didn't mind too much. None of them looked like the green door that had led them into this world-- and would presumably allow them to escape again. But even if they did get out of PLAZA-85, where would they go?
A few minutes later they arrived at the base of the tower. It was attached to a much larger, cathedral-like building, as Harrison expected it to be. A set of large wooden double-doors stood at the base of the tower, looking heavy and immovable. But luckily one of them was slightly ajar, just enough for the three of them to squeeze through one at a time.
“Shall we?” Rich asked, craning his neck to look up to the top of the tower. It was high, but not even close to how tall Jessica had been earlier.
They fit between the doors and entered into a stone-walled room lit with mounted torches. It felt very medieval, and the rack of halberds and other weapons off to the right only enhanced the theme.
“Who lit these torches?” Jessica asked no one.
“Who knows,” said Rich. “Maybe they're always burning?”
A large staircase against the wall to the left hugged the outer wall of the large room and spiraled upward. Wordlessly, Harrison started up it, soon followed by Jessica and Rich. As they climbed they occasionally reached landings with doors, but the doors were all locked. Torches on the walls lit the way.
“Ugh these heels are killing me,” Jessica complained. “Can we stop a moment?”
Harrison and Rich stopped, but then Harrison had an idea. “How about I go up the rest of the way,” he suggested, “and report back what I see at the top. If it's something good you can come up too and take a look. We've climbed a lot, I bet we're close.”
“I'm all for that,” Jessica immediately agreed, sitting down on a step and rubbing her feet.
“What about not splitting up?” Rich asked. He had a good point.
“Um, I think I'll be ok. Where will I be able to go once I'm up there anyways?” replied Harrison.
“Ok whatever, just go.”
Harrison turned and started bounding up the stairs. It was frustrating that the tower had no windows, but after ascending a bit more he starting hearing the sound of a gentle wind that seemed to be coming from outside. Finally, he saw natural light.
The staircase ended on a platform that stood under the spire of the tower, with views of the city in all directions. Waist-high stone parapets prevented him from falling down to the streets below. But what Harrison saw from the top terrified him.
The streets right below the tower zig-zagged through the labyrinth of the city in no discernible pattern. Luckily, the buildings all capped out at the same three or four-story height. But the city was massive, impossibly massive. It stretched out to every horizon, for miles in each direction, with no breaks. It seemed to stretch to infinity. Seeing this, Harrison had only one thought: we're so fucked.
But turning around, he noticed something very strange. Behind him, the city looked the same except for an enormous building rising up from the smaller buildings around it. From what he could see it had one wall facing the tower, and taking up the entire wall was another green door. It must have been twenty-stories tall! At least twice as tall as the tower he currently stood atop. It was quite a distance away, maybe a few miles, but even if they reached it they would never be able to open it. Maybe they could squeeze under it? He figured it led back to the side space of VERSA.
He stayed at the top of the tower another minute to catch his breath and think, and then he returned down the staircase. He found Rich and Jessica both sitting on a step together making small-talk. He explained what he had seen atop the tower. “We need to get to that door. And find a way to make ourselves big again,” he concluded.
“How are we going to do that?” Rich asked. “Find another red book to talk into?”
“No idea,” Harrison admitted, “but I'm hoping that besides books, there might be other triggers and things like that throughout VERSA. Sujay seemed to suggest they have to exist, you know, for people to access other worlds. We should go back to the street and start looking for something.”
Jessica sighed. “After all this climbing, we're going right back down, huh?”
“Sorry ma'am,” Rich sighed, standing up. “No rest for the wicked.”
They reached ground level and after assessing the rather empty room they exited back into the street. The same gloomy, anonymous buildings greeted them. Harrison couldn't believe this same street scene stretched for miles around them. He oriented himself. “Ok the big door is in that direction,” he said, looking at the top of the tower and pointing behind it. “That'll be our north. Let's walk that way and see what we can find along the way.”
“Your idea, you take the lead,” replied Rich.
As they began journeying, Harrison found it was incredibly easy to get turned around in the maze of streets. They weren't oriented on any kind of a grid and instead seemed random like the lines of a jigsaw puzzle. Luckily, Jessica had a relatively good sense of direction and corrected them when they occasionally took a wrong turn.
Rich kept sporadically trying to open doors on the street, but without luck. After walking for about fifteen minutes, Harrison heard a sudden crash of glass behind him. Hastily, he turned back around in surprise, expecting danger. But it was just Rich, standing in front of a large display window. Through a shattered pane of glass he peered into the mysterious darkness of a shop. Rich looked back at him. “I found a loose cobblestone from the street,” he explained tersely before stepping through the window into the shop. Harrison and Jessica looked at each other in disbelief but eventually followed him in.
As he waded into the dark building, Harrison briefly thought about Jessica. He'd only met her a couple hours ago and initially thought she'd be dead-weight on this trip. But in this short time she'd proven herself to be not only keen on learning about VERSA, but also quite pleasant and a good sport about everything. She certainly wasn't a nuisance. Despite the calamity they'd already faced, she seemed be handling it well, especially as this was her first time in the sim.
Harrison tried following Rich into the depths of the building but Rich's stubbornness and impatience outpaced him. Harrison could tell from the light filtering in that they seemed to be in some sort of a store. Shelves along the walls lay cluttered with all sorts of trinkets and strange devices.
“You guys see any books?” Rich asked through the darkness. “Red books especially?”
“Nope, not here,” Jessica replied, looking through the shelves. She spotted a small colorful box and took it off a shelf. “What is all this crap?” she said. No one had a reply for her.
As Rich and Harrison entered another room a bit deeper into the building, Jessica noticed a small handle on one side of the box-like thing she held. Was it a jack-in-the-box? It had a shiny, gold-like color, which made it stand out from the rest of the objects in the shop. She cranked the handle. No music played but something inside of it clicked, like an internal mechanism winding up.
After one more click, everything exploded behind Harrison. The force of the collapsing wall behind him propelled him outwards as rubble flew violently though the air and tumbled down around his body. The roof of the building imploded, but it didn't even matter to Harrison who had already been flung well clear of the structure into another street of the city. He smacked the cobblestone pavement with his right shoulder; his vision went blurry and his ears screamed with some unearthly ringing. Dust surrounded him as he heard the continued sound of more buildings collapsing down the street. Coughing and trying to regain his vision, he stumbled to his knees and peered through the smoke. His shoulder hurt like hell. Maybe it was dislocated? He couldn't think straight. After a few seconds his hearing started coming back and his eyes adjusted to the new war-torn look of the street.
As the smoke began to clear and Harrison fully found his feet, he hardly had the chance to marvel at his survival. High above him and the surrounding buildings stood Jessica, once again at a mammoth size. She stood amidst the wreckage of the neighborhood, her tall shoes obscured by destroyed buildings. In shock, Harrison guessed she must have been about the same size at last time. Two hundred feet tall? It was hard to tell. He looked up and noticed he was right under her skirt, seeing the same crimson panties impossibly high over his head. If he hadn't been in survival mode again he would have certainly felt guilty looking up her skirt.
He stayed frozen as the world finally came to a calamitous stand-still around him. He hoped Jessica might be more careful with her steps this time around, but regardless he would still have to get her attention.
“Holy shit!” he heard her yell out above him, her voice booming over the city. “Not again!” At least her size solved the problem of getting through the door, Harrison thought. Now he and Rich only had to figure out how to grow too.
With the thought of him, Harrison immediately wondered what had happened to Rich. The building they'd explored was gone, pulverized into rubble. He began looking around frantically. Above him he heard Jessica speak again. “Guys are you ok? I don't know what happened. Don't move!” Her voice sounded frantic and distressed. Surely she was afraid that her colleagues might be hurt or dead.
Harrison looked up and saw Jessica twisting her body, looking around at the neighborhood below her without moving her feet. Being very careful, she lifted up one of her legs and settled her dust-covered shoe down into another area. Harrison started waving his one good arm at her, but he'd be much tougher to find in the midst of the ruined buildings, especially with all the dust choking the air.
After carefully readjusting her feet a few times and stooping over to see the ground better, Jessica finally made eye contact with him. “I see you!” she cried out happily, swinging her left arm over to pluck Harrison up. He flinched as her fingers swooped down and gingerly pinched him. “I got you,” she said as she hoisted him up, unfortunately still at an uncomfortable speed. She brought him up to her giant face.
“Harrison! Are you ok?” she asked desperately. He could see sympathy in her huge blue eyes.
“Yeah... I think so,” he croaked. He wasn't sure if his admission was true or not. He felt concussed and his shoulder ached painfully.
“Where's Rich? Is he ok?” Jessica asked Harrison frantically.
“I don't know... he was right next to me when....” Harrison could hardly talk, not just from Jessica's grip but from his pain and disorientation.
“RIIIICH!!” she called out towards the ground. “I'm going to find you!” She looked back up at Harrison. “I'm going to set you down on a roof.”
She lowered his beaten body down to a building that still stood at the height of her calf. Once she released him and he crumpled onto the tiles of the roof, she crouched down over the destruction and started picking up little pieces of rubble.
Harrison didn't have the energy to watch Jessica as she searched for Rich. Her large body absolutely dominated his view though and he couldn't look away. Luckily the roof wasn't very steep; he wouldn't accidentally roll off it anytime soon. His shoulder throbbed with pain as he tried focusing on anything else.
“Rich!” he finally heard Jessica call out. “Rich are you ok?”
Harrison couldn't see where she was looking, mostly he could just see her skirt covering her thighs. But he found himself a little amused that Jessica still tried talking to Rich, who'd be too hopelessly small to answer back to her. A few moments later she gently released Rich's battered body onto the same roof as Harrison. He was alive, but his safari outfit was torn and his hat was long gone. He looked awful.
“Jesus fuck,” Rich spat out, his face covered in dust. “What the fuck has SunCorp built with this fucking thing?” The man seemed a bit displeased with his current situation.
“Can't wait to get out this sim and listen to you give Ms. Bright a piece of your mind,” said Harrison wryly. Rich looked at him, still panting with exhaustion and looking over his own wounds. A small patch of blood stained the rags of clothes over his chest. He smiled, then winced with pain.
“Kid, I can't decide if this VERSA thing is the greatest invention of human history or the stupidest thing ever made,” he finally admitted. “Seems like everything that can go wrong does.”
“Maybe it's both,” Harrison offered.
As he finished speaking, Harrison noticed Jessica's huge face peering down at them. Because their building was so short, or because she was so tall, she couldn't get very close to them by crouching, but she tried anyways. She seemed unwilling to sit on the dusty city. Instead, by crouching directly in front of them, she inadvertently treated the two men with another view up her skirt. Harrison made a mental note to suggest she wear pants into the sim next time.
Rich put his hand up out of politeness to shield his gaze. He looked up at Jessica, and after a moment, she realized what he was doing and shrieked clumsily, standing up and changing her posture. “Well, it was fun while it lasted,” commented Rich.
Jessica fruitlessly tried to pull down her skirt a little farther, but there was no way she was going to get it down past her knees.
“Ok, screw it,” Jessica's booming voice said aloud. She took to one knee and then fully knelt down in the rubble, knocking more building over where her shins and feet settled down. She kept her knees together and rested her hands on her thighs, right next to Harrison and Rich's building.
“So here's what I'm thinking,” she said to them, her voice unchallenged. “I'll pick you both up and head for the door. If it takes us into another one of those hallways I'll keep opening doors until I find a new world, and then we can start looking for some apples or something that will send us back.”
Harrison didn't know how she intended to carry them around. His body ached and he really didn't want to move, but he knew she was right. With his good arm he raised a fist and gave her a thumbs up. Rich winced again in pain but didn't contest her idea.
“Ok, both of you crawl onto my hand,” she instructed them, holding her left hand out against the roof of the building. Harrison and Rich slowly crawled forward and they both easily fit on her palm. Her skin was warm and a little clammy, not the most comfortable surface to be lying on. Her hand was too unstable so Harrison didn't try standing up, so he lay down on her massive palm, resting on his elbows propped behind him.
Carefully keeping her hand balanced, Jessica stood to her full towering height. Harrison could see the huge doorway in the distance and as Jessica started walking, each step she took shook her two travelers. In her hand at stomach height, Harrison couldn't help but notice her breasts jiggle behind her blouse as she walked. Her boobs dwarfed him completely and Harrison couldn't wrap his mind around their size. It was a good thing he was so beat-up and exhausted, he thought, or else he would have certainly enjoyed the view a little too much.
Jessica carved a path of destruction through the town, bulldozing buildings out of her way with the simple steps of her heels. With just a few strides she's covered the distance to the door. Twisting the handle she pulled it open and sure enough stepped into the plain hallway of VERSA's side space. Harrison felt relief wash over him. “Thank fucking God,” he heard Rich say aloud.
They were out of the hellish plaza infinity world, but they were still tiny compared to Jessica. Harrison laughed inside when he realized their fate was literally in her hands. It was too perfect. What a surreal day, he finally thought.
Jessica couldn't hear them unless she brought her hand close to her face, but that didn't stop her from narrating what she saw to her little friends. “Huh interesting,” she said, “all these doors have the number eighty-four stenciled on them. It looks like we're in a different section of VERSA now.”
She started down the hallway looking at all the green doors. “A lot of these don't have words on them...” she noticed. “Let's see, this one says 'TUNDRA-Eighty-four,' nope, no thanks.... this one says 'CAVE-Eigthy-four,' eww no.... hmm this one says 'GLACIER-Eighty-four,' hard pass....” she kept reading off random doors that did not sound appealing to explore at all.
“'TWILIGHT-Eigthy-four?' Huh what's this one.” She turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. Harrison peered over her fingers to glimpse the new world. Sure enough it was mostly dark, but he could make out an open landscape dotted with trees. But instead of a clear sky he saw abundant lights floating up above, lights that were not stars but...
“Are those buildings?” Jessica exclaimed. “Floating?!”
Sure enough, monumental structures that seemed to defy gravity hung silently above in the sky. Lights, whether electric or something else, burned steady in their windows.
Rich scooted up on Jessica's hand next to Harrison. “This must be one of the boffo worlds Sujay was talking about, where VERSA just didn't get it quite right,” he surmised.
“It's beautiful,” Harrison admitted.
Suddenly Jessica took a step back and pulled the door closed. They were back in the hallway. “Not going in there!” Jessica said. Well, that settled that.
A few minutes later, Jessica struck gold and found a door entitled “ORCHARD-84.”
“Oh we're definitely going in here,” she said, flinging the door open. She stepped into exactly what Harrison expected, a mature orchard baking under a golden, late-afternoon sun. Without even worrying, Jessica let the door close behind her. Harrison couldn't see what kind of structure the door was attached to as Jessica began walking down a path between two lines of trees. The trees were the right size for Jessica, but looked dizzyingly large from Harrison's diminutive size.
Jessica walked up to a tree. She reached out her right hand and grabbed at a piece of fruit. Harrison felt relieved that it looked like an apple. Once plucked, Jessica held it up to the men. “Do you think this would work?” she asked.
“It's worth a try!” Rich yelled up to her.
“Um ok, lemme try to break you off a piece.”
She quickly realized she's need both her hands. “Let me set you two down,” she said, crouching and laying her hand on the dirt. Harrison and Rich staggered off and watched her in awe as she stood back to her full height. Standing next to one of her giant high heel shoes, Harrison felt overwhelmed by her presence and the power she held over them. Though he was grateful for her benevolence, at that moment he realized how badly he wanted to get out of VERSA.
“Here,” Jessica said, bending over and placing a small piece of the apple next to the tiny men. The chunk was still incredibly large to both Harrison and Rich.
“Here goes nothing,” Rich said. He braced himself on the piece and pushed his head into it, taking a bite of its juicy flesh. He looked up at Harrison, chewing, and Harrison saw his eyes roll back as he collapsed to the ground. But he never made it all the way down. Watching Rich's avatar blip out of existence was the best thing Harrison had seen all day. Without even looking back up at Jessica, he dove into the piece and eagerly took a bite.