Chapter 95: Book 2 Chapter 19.1: Headspace

“I don’t really think a dog would act any differently if it was a looper,” Hawke said.

“They’re clever enough to recognize patterns,” Lee said. “Surely they’d notice the repetitions.”

“I’m sure they would, I’m just not sure they’d do anything about it,” Hawke continued. “They’re dogs. They want food and to get played with. The only thing a loop would change is they’d know when they get food and get played with.”

“Fair. Though I suppose it depends on the dog,” Lee said. “Hold on a moment, dear, I’m being texted.”

The message came courtesy of Cane this time, and it was a group message, also sent out to Vell, Harley, and Freddy, consisting of a single word: “HELP”.

“Time to go, Hawke, I believe we might have found our apocalypse for the day,” Lee said. “Either that or Cane’s been locked in a storage closet again. Though I doubt he’d text Harley for help with that.”

“We better find out either way.”

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Cane beckoned them into the neurology lab, which was conspicuously empty of people and looked as if it had been abandoned in a hurry. Luke was already on the scene, sitting next to the inert body of a much older gentleman who sitting slumped in a chair and drooling on himself. The man had some sort of elaborate helmet strapped to his head, and was looking out at the world with a dead-eyed stare.

“Is that Professor Plocinski?” Kim asked. She took a few neurology classes, in an attempt to better understand the human brain, and her own. “Did you make him braindead?”

“I didn’t make him anything,” Cane protested. “This is someone else’s project.”

“That you consulted on,” Luke added.

“That I consulted on. But I was getting a credit on the final product, not a co-authorship, my role was minimal.”

In spite of his minimal contributions, Cane was the only student involved willing to clean up -or at least the only one who knew a gaggle of hyper-competent weirdos who could help clean up.

“So he is, uh, brain-dead, though, right?” Vell said.

“No! He’s just...brain-imprisoned. Possibly permanently. Let me explain.”

Cane stepped up to Professor Plocisnki and gestured to him, then to the helmet he wore.

“This is Professor Plocinski, he’s in charge around here, and this is our neuro-visualization helmet,” Cane said. “In a perfect world, it would create a sort of virtual reality projection of your thoughts and memories in the form of a fully realized three-dimensional space that you can explore.”

“So what does it do in our present, imperfect world, then?”

“It actually does all that,” Cane said. “Except there’s no way to get out.”

“Of course,” Lee said, not surprised in the least. “May I ask where we factor into this?”

“Alright. This is where it gets weird. As far as I can tell, the error happened because the mental scanning hadn’t been properly normalized across a broad range of neurological profiles. It’s impossible to recalibrate while it’s active...but it is possible to enter new calibration data by actively scanning new minds to normalize the data set.”

“Short version?”

“I need you to put on the helmets, poke around in your own mindscapes, and then go into Professor Plocinski’s mind to enter the data.”

“Cool! I’m in,” Harley said.

“I do have one minor concern,” Freddy said. “If the plan is to ‘normalize’ the data set, wouldn’t it be better to have a sample size, that is more, no offense to anyone present, ‘normal’?”

Vell shrugged. As did everyone else. They all knew better than to describe themselves as ‘normal’. Except Luke, who’s only odd quality was being oddly good looking.

“Good point,” Cane said. “However, you guys fall nicely in the Venn diagram of people who are normal enough to be good data and crazy enough to strap on mind-prison helmets.”

“That makes sense,” Freddy admitted.

“I got enough helmets for all of you, and I’ll be out here monitoring the transfer of information,” Cane said. “We can put all of you in-”

“I’m staying here,” Kim protested. However those helmets worked, she doubted they would work on her mechanical mind.

“Why?”

“I’m...the only other person with neurology expertise,” Kim lied. “You should have backup.”

“If you say so,” Cane shrugged. “I guess I wouldn’t trust me either, right about now.”

Though Kim knew she shouldn’t go, her disappointment was immediately obvious. She would’ve actually enjoyed a chance to go inside a human mind and poke around to see how it compared to hers. Cane picked up on her disappointment.

“I’m sure they can tell us all about it when they get back,” Cane said. “In the meantime, I’ll just try to shuffle you from mind to mind at regular intervals. Make sure to explore a little so we get good data.”

The group nodded in acknowledgment. Exploring their own brains didn’t sound so bad, by the standards of some apocalypses.

“So, the only question is, who’s up first?’

“Oh, we are absolutely doing my brain first,” Harley said. “I’m picturing a museum, but every piece of art is me.”

“Sounds good to me,” Cane said. “We want to start with the more ‘normal’ minds, so that’s probably you, then Luke, then Lee-”

“I should probably go last, actually,” Lee said. Both in hopes that they would complete their mission before they got to her, and knowing that her mind could have some very unpleasant hidden depths.

“Okay then,” Cane shrugged. “How does Harley, Luke, Freddy, Hawke, Vell, then Lee sound?”

“Hey, why’d you put Vell next to last?” Harley said.

“Because he wouldn’t get offended by it,” Cane said. Vell nodded along. Harley, who had gotten used to being offended on Vell’s behalf, resigned herself to aligning with Vell’s doormat attitude.

“Okay. Sounds like we have our plan. Only thing left to do is plug in.”

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Massive marble pillars stretched up to a jet-black ceiling veined with gold. Freddy tried very hard to stare at the ceiling, because the alternative was staring at the multiple effigies of Harley that lined the lobby. Thankfully, most of them were tastefully posed. Though there were a few busty busts in alcoves in the walls of the Great Museum of Harley.

“Hah! Nailed it,” Harley said, admiring herself in more ways than one.

“It’s a bit gauche,” Luke said, appraising the posed statues with his arms crossed. Thanks to being gay, he was largely unmoved by the mass amounts of female nudity, unlike every other member of the group. They were all studiously examining the floors.

“Hey, I didn’t expect company,” Harley said. “This is my internal brain-museum, I get to pick the interior design.”

“You are truly an icon of self-ideation,” Lee said. She glanced up briefly and then immediately returned her eyes to the floor. “And several icons of nudity, apparently.”

“Not that this isn’t pretty, Harley, but do you by any chance have a part of your brain that isn’t just you naked?” Vell asked. He could be a little more bold than most in looking around, since he’d seen Harley’s actual naked body on more than one occasion. “Freddy’s going to break his neck.”

“Yeah, sure, there’s probably some sections devoted to robotics or my family somewhere around here,” Harley said. “Come on, the PG stuff is probably this way. The statue of me by this doorway has a shirt on, at least.”

“No pants, though,” Luke noted.

“My legs are crossed, it’s tasteful,” Harley protested. After defending artistic nudity, Harley led the way. Their shoes squeaked lightly on the marble floors of the museum as they proceeded further in. Cane had commanded them to spend quite a bit of time in each mindscape for the purposes of generating usable data, so they had to take their time. The lobby alone had contained enough of Harley’s body to last a lifetime, though, so they were all hopeful for more safe-for-work exhibits.

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“Oh hey, here we go,” Harley said. She pointed to a side hallway which had an image of Botley hanging overhead. “That’s probably robot stuff. We can hang out in there for a while.”

The promised respite from the barrage of tits and ass beckoned, and they made their way into the next wing of the mental museum. The exhibits of the flesh gave way to exhibits of metal and machinery in the robotics wing of Harley’s brain. For the first time in the exploration of Harley’s mind, Freddy could actually look directly at something, and look he did.

“Incredible,” he said, as he examined blueprints of robots that looked straight out of science fiction. “Have you actually worked on any of these?”

“Only hypothetically,” Harley said. She poked at a display of a fully humanoid body for Botley. “I like to daydream.”

“You never struck me as the daydreaming type,” Lee said.

“Not when I’m hanging out with you,” Harley said. She was never really bored with Lee around. “It’s mostly in class.”

“That far ahead of the curve, huh? I know the feeling,” Vell said.

“Yes yes, you’re both very smart,” Luke said. “More importantly: who is this robot wearing sunglasses and why does he look so cool.”

“Oh, that’s Chillbot 69,” Harley said. She launched into an explanation of her repurposed murder-drone and while she did so, Vell very deliberately placed himself in front of one of the “paintings’ on display. He tried to look casual, which, of course, made him look everything but casual.

“What’re you hiding there, Vell?”

“Nothing, just standing in a place,” Vell said. Luke raised an eyebrow, and that was all it took for Vell’s charade to crumble. “Uh, okay, there’s, a weird sex robot, and I think we’ve all seen enough boobs for one day.”

“Sure, whatever,” Luke said. “Didn’t take you for the censoring type.”

Luke, who had other things to gawk at, walked past Vell. Freddy very transparently tried to take a peek, but failed and moved on. Vell stood his ground while Harley walked up and tried to see what Vell was hiding. He didn’t budge.

“It’s in my brain, dude,” Harley said. “What do you think you’re hiding?”

“Nothing, from you. From the other guys. It’s, uh, Kim. Her schematics, or something, I guess maybe just what you think her schematics look like?”

“Oh, yeah, keep that hidden,” Harley said. “I’ll bullshit something until we get out of this wing.”

“Okay. Where are we going next?”

“I think my childhood memories are on the other side of my gallery of sexual conquests,” Harley said. She pondered her own words for a minute. “Vell, does it say something about me that the mental dividing line between my childhood and adult life is sex?”

“I don’t know, that seems pretty standard,” Vell said. “Puberty, and all that.”

“True,” Harley said. “I think they’re moving on. Let’s get going, Vell. I want to see if we can find the portrait of you in my gallery of fuckbuddies.”

“Should I be prepared to censor myself?”

“We’re not going to bring the other guys, obviously,” Harley said. “Unless there’s someone here you’d like to show your dick to.”

“No.”

“Okay, because I was going to say, there’s easier ways to do that.”

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“Oh, but me having some statues of myself is ‘gauche’,” Harley chided.

“It’s just one portrait of me,” Luke said.

“The size of a building!”

The mindscape of Luke apparently took the form of a large, luxurious skyscraper. The lobby area alone was several stories tall, and completely dominated by an old-school bust portrait of Luke that towered over everything.

“It’s a good portrait, though,” Lee said. “Though the epaulets are a bit much.”

“Thank you. Nice to be appreciated again,” Luke huffed.

“Luke, are you still mad that Kim’s prettier than you?”

“She is not prettier than me,” Luke snapped. “She appeals more to people with certain tastes! That’s all!”

Luke crossed his arms and started marching towards the portrait of himself.

“Come on, as much as I’d love to stand around staring at myself all day,” Luke said, with no sarcasm. “I want to see what else my brain has in store. Come on, the elevator’s this way.”

Luke beckoned them through the very art deco doors of a nearby elevator. The interior was just as gilded as the rest of the building, and featured a gold plated row of buttons numbering in the hundreds. They were all numbered and extensively labeled.

“Let’s see, floor nine, childhood trauma, floor thirteen, first year of school, floor twenty-one, memories of Bucky…”

“Who’s Bucky?”

“Old dog of mine,” Luke said. “Looks like the tower is arranged chronologically.”

“Orderly and efficient,” Lee said. “I should’ve expected as much.”

“You have, like, seven stories here devoted to football,” Vell noted. “I didn’t know you were that into it.”

“I’ve been out of the game a long time,” Luke said, his voice filled with grim echoes. “Ever since...floor thirty-eight.”

Vell checked the label for floor thirty-eight. It read “The Incident”. It took every ounce of willpower Vell had not to press it immediately.

“Maybe we should just chill on these two floors labeled ‘Pokemon trivia’,” Harley suggested.

“Alright, but we’re stopping by the Bucky floor first,” Luke said. “I miss that little guy.”

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“I was expecting something a bit more sci-fi,” Vell noted.

“Yeah, me too,” Freddy mumbled. As they had entered his brain, everyone had been expecting something out of a Star Wars movie. What they got looked a little more like a Saw movie. They were sealed inside what looked like an elementary school, the cheap halogen lights buzzing and flickering overhead, barely illuminating doors and windows that were barred shut.

“Boy, you know, I had a lot of bad times in elementary school, but I did not think it was this bad,” Freddy said. “Maybe we should skip mine?”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Lee said. “The trappings leave a lot to be desired, yes, but this is still your mind. I’m sure there’s more good than bad.”

Lee looked to the nearest door, which was labeled “Suffering in Silence”. She bit her tongue and looked elsewhere. As she examined each door in turn, she found no more promising leads -the most pleasant sign she found read “Eating Lunch Alone”.

“Any chance you’ve got some memories of your aunt stashed away somewhere? I could go for some-”

The braying howl of a wolf cut Luke off mid-sentence. Freddy, who had been trying to keep up a brave face while surrounded by his trauma, immediately took on an expression of deathly fear.

“Oh fuck.”

“Frizzle, buddy, why is there a wolf in your weird school mind-prison?” Harley said. She backed up towards the rest of the group and latched on to Lee’s wrist.

“Oh yeah, you know, great question, I told my mom it was a bad idea, I didn’t want to go for a hike, I was scared of how high up the mountains were, but now, I just had to go outside and get ‘fresh air’,” Freddy said. He relived a very traumatic moment in a very literal sense thanks to the trappings of the mental projection. “I did not get any fresh air, what I got was chased by a wolf!”

“A wolf?” Hawke whimpered. “Did it bite you?”

“No, it didn’t really get close. In retrospect, I think it was just trying to scare us off, but you try telling that to an eleven-year old me,” Freddy said. The wolf howled again. “Honestly, you could probably tell the twenty-one year old me and he still wouldn’t buy it. The point is I’m still really freaked out by wolves!”

Nobody could judge him for his fear, since everyone else was just as terrified right now.

“As far as rational fears go, apex predators are pretty high up on the list,” Harley said. The howl of the wolf rang out again. “Okay we really got to find a place to lay low while Cane moves us on to Hawke’s brain.”

“Move out calmly, and stay close to one another,” Lee advised. “Wolves are pursuit predators, and they will ideally only strike a target separated from the larger group.”

“Regular wolves,” Freddy amended. “This is a literal manifestation of my nightmares. It’ll likely target us out of sheer bloodlust.”

Hawke started hyperventilating.

“Yes, Freddy, dear, thank you for bringing that up,” Lee said. She grabbed Hawke and kept him on his feet. “Keep moving. There’s got to be something pleasant somewhere in here, if we just take it slow-”

One of the halogen lights flickered, and a wolf-shaped shadow cast onto a wall and moved around the corner.

“Never mind, take it fast,” Lee spat, to a gaggle of people who were already running. They fled, and the wolf in Freddy’s mind gave chase. It was a wolf in only the loosest sense of the term -it was a child’s distorted nightmare of a wolf, all bloody fur and glistening fangs, with two vibrant yellow eyes beaming pure malice into the world. It’s oversized claws tapped out a predatory staccato as it sprinted after them.

Like a true nightmare, the wolf always seemed to be getting closer, but never actually caught up to them. An ever-increasing sense of dread sank in even so, and Lee knew better than to rely on that nightmarish hunt to work out in their favor. While she kept a weather eye on the wolf that crept ever closer, Vell handled scanning the various doors for possible shelter.

“Academic failures, romantic rejection, wedgies,” Vell said. “How did we end up in the worst possible part of your mind?”

“These ones aren’t even labeled, maybe they’re at least neutral,” Harley said, examining a new set of doors. As an experiment, she cracked open one of the unlabeled doors. An empty black abyss stretched out before her, and two hands reached out from the dark to grasp at her. Harley slammed the door shut on their fingers. “Nope, not those ones.”

“Oh man, I forgot those two,” Freddy said. “I had nightmares about them all the time.”

“Nightmares? We’re going the wrong way.”

“No, no, nightmares are adjacent to dreams, let’s keep going!” Luke said. “Open these doors, find a dream! Or at least a safe nightmare, like going to school in your underpants or something.”

“Oh man, I had a lot of those,” Freddy said.

Hawke opened a door, and found a tentacled monster, then another door, and found a metallic cat with sawblades in it’s jaws, then opened another, and found himself staring down an infinitely steep slope that gradually slid into nothingness.

“You got some fucked up nightmares, man!”

“I had sleep issues! I have a weighted blanket now, it’s much better.”

“Well I better find some of that ‘much better’ soon,” Hawke snapped. “There’s some red robot guy with a fire sword here and he’s looking at me funny.”

“Wait, red robot, fire sword...Everybody go in there! That’s one of the good ones!”

Eager to take the chance at safety, everyone pushed their way through the door at once. They toppled to the ground in a heap atop a cool stone. Luke, who had landed at the top of the pile, found himself pulled up by a large blue hook and examined by a partially robotic, masked face. Similar masks of red, green, and other colors besides stared down at them.

“You dream about Bionicles?” Harley said. “Isn’t this a little before our time?”

“Bionicle is a timeless multimedia franchise,” Freddy said. “And...my older brother gave me all of his toys. Don’t question it. They’re getting the job done, aren’t they?”

One of the dream-versions of a children’s toy had fended off the wolf with a powerful kick and then slammed the dream-door shut behind it. Though still surrounded by large, animate Lego’s, everyone felt much safer.

“Besides, you know what Bionicle is,” Freddy said.

“I’m in robotics, Freddo, of course I know about Bionicle,” Harley said. “Half the motherfuckers in my field swear by these things.”

She waved at Tahu, whose face was a sticker on three of her classmates laptops, and tried to settle in. Vell tried, unsuccessfully, to borrow an ice sword, and resigned himself to waiting until Cane shuffled them into the next brain.