Doc was about to comment that he felt Wallace was bordering on insanity, when it
suddenly struck him: the Army man was talking about the General Wallace who had
been in charge of the redoubt when they were initially hooked up to the Moebius
MkI. He had no idea that he was now several generations of Wallace down the
line.
“Do you actually know how long you’ve been linked together?” Doc asked quietly.
The Air Force man looked puzzled, scratched his head and turned to the others
for guidance. They all seemed to be at a loss. Finally he said, “Something you
will soon realize Doctor, is that time has no meaning as such in here. Once you
become part of the rat king, as you just have, then the outside world and all
its concepts become very, ah, abstracted is probably the best word.”
“To a ridiculous degree,” Doc commented. “There is no need for this computer.
There are no Reds anymore. There’s little of anything anymore. Your obscene
plans caused the end of the world as you know it.”
“You mean there’s been a war?” the Army man asked after some whispered
consultation.
Doc gave a hollow laugh. “You could call it that. Skydark. A total nuclear
conflagration that has laid waste to the world. What we used to call the United
States is now the Deathlands. And believe me, gentlemen, it more than lives up
to that name.”
There was more whispered consultation. The Army man turned to Doc.
“So who won?”
Doc felt an urge to giggle. It crept up his throat, making him choke. He began
to laugh. At first it was soft and low, but it grew louder and louder, harsher
and harsher, verging on hysteria. Tears of laughter ran down his cheeks, turning
to tears of rage and sadness.
They watched him impassively, only the occasional puzzled flicker of a frown
giving away any emotions.
Doc finished, doubled up and in agony from cramps in his ribs. Which, if he
tried hard to concentrate, was absurd. How could he get cramps when he wasn’t,
as such, real?
He pulled himself upright. “Nobody won, you cretin. Everyone lost. There is no
world as you know it. There’s nothing. Just outposts of mutated idiots trying to
take little degrees of power and justify their pathetic existence. Just a few
people trying to make their way in the rad-blasted world without being chilled
by those of little sense.”
One of the men in suits stepped forward and spoke for the first time. “I’m
sorry, Doctor, but that just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t fit with any of the
models we’ve used for our simulations over the years. And those models were very
carefully planned and plotted to cover any eventuality. There’s no chance that
anything could have happened outside of that.”
Doc sighed. “I’ve been outside of this mechanism. Have you?”
“Of course. Before we were attached—”
“I’m talking about since,” Doc snapped. “You’ve been in here over a hundred
years. How could you possibly know what has happened?”
“Because the simulations and simulatory models fed into our mainframe covered
every possibility.”
It was a circular argument, and Doc could see no way of countering it. He threw
up his hands in resignation and exasperation. “Have it your way, gentlemen. Have
it your way.”
“Oh, but we will,” said the Air Force officer. “After all, there is one flaw in
your argument.”
Doc was about to explode in fury and say that it wasn’t a debating society, he
was talking about reality, when he realized that for these men, the rarefied air
of abstract argument and simulation had become the only reality they knew. So he
said simply, “What, pray tell, is this flaw?”
“Simple. If the outside world is so irrevocably changed, then why do we still
exist? Who is keeping us maintained?”
Doc shook his head, refusing to answer, to debate. It didn’t matter. Fate had
decreed that he be locked inside this machine, perhaps forever. If it came to
that, what was forever in a realm where there was no such thing as time?
“Gentlemen, I acquiesce,” Doc said with a bow. “As I am here, you may as well