CYBER SOLARIS
by William Pauley III
“Psst.”
The sound split the air, catching the attention of every twitching ear inside the room, except for those belonging to the one man who was meant to hear it.
The room was dark, and unlike any other inside the Eighth Block Tower. It was a secret room, hidden from the other residents, a place that existed only to torture. Inside were twelve rusty cages, each one big enough to contain a single, malnourished body and nothing else. Starving men and women rattled the steel doors of their cages, excited by the sound they weren’t meant to hear. Though the sound meant nothing to any of them, it was still something, and it was all they had. One of the men, riled with anticipation, howled when he first heard it, and it was that howl that awakened the one prisoner the curious hissing was meant to beckon.
Outside of that strange prison, the man was called Rover, however inside his cage, he was known only as Prisoner #11. At first, the surrounding excitement gave him hope. He slid his body forward and pressed his face against the bars, his eyes scanning the room for any sign of change—but nothing had changed. Everything was still the same.
“Psst.” The sound returned, and that time Rover heard it. He cocked his head to trace the sound back to the lips it escaped from, and that’s when he noticed he was wrong, something had changed. The man in the cage adjacent to his own was calling to him now, and he wasn’t there when he had first fallen asleep.
“Excuse me, is that a pack of cigarettes inside your shirt pocket, there?” the man said. There was nervousness in his voice. He looked to be in his late forties, plump, clean shaven, well dressed—he didn’t look like he belonged inside a cage.
Rover cupped his hand over his pocket and sneered at the man. “What’s it to ya?”
The man held up his hands as if to surrender. “I mean no disrespect. I’ve just been an emotional wreck since they threw me in here. I could really use a smoke to calm my nerves, you know? Being cooped up like this…well, it’s my first rodeo, as they say. If I don’t have a cigarette soon, my anxiety may cause my heart to explode.”
“Am I s’pposed to care ‘bout that?” Rover said, then pushed his back against the side of the cage, removing a single cigarette from the pack and pushing it to his lips.
“Of course, I don’t expect charity,” the man said, removing an object from his own pocket, a smartphone. Light from one of the dim lanterns hanging on the wall reflected off its shiny black screen. “I have something here you may be interested in.”
Rover laughed. “What the hell am I gonna do with a cell phone, huh? Ain’t nobody cares if I die in here.”
“Well, it’s not just any cell phone, my friend,” the man said, tapping the screen to awaken the device. “This phone is capable of taking you anywhere and to any time you wish just by looking into it. There’s an app on here called Cyber Solaris, and it’s the only phone in the world equipped with it. It’s what got me thrown in here in the first place. Once word got out that I had a time travel device, just about everyone came after me. I suppose it was just a matter of time before I was locked up. People in power tend to snatch up anything that threatens their comfort, so the fools threw me in here to search my apartment for the device. The joke’s on them though. It’s just an app, and it’s right here in my pocket. Now, is that worth a pack of cigarettes to you?”
“Now you want the entire pack, do ya?” Rover laughed at the man’s request. “You think jus’ cause I’m some rat in a cage that I’m stupid enough to fall for that? If your little device really does what you’re sayin’ it can do, then you’d be using it right now to high tail outta here. You wouldn’t be offerin’ it to strangers for free smokes. Now, I know you can’t tell just by lookin’ at me, but momma didn’t raise no fool.”
“Ah, but you see, it doesn’t work the way you’re thinking it works,” the man said, tapping once again on his cell phone screen. “I’d say movies are to blame. The moment anyone hears the words ‘time travel device,’ they automatically think of these giant machines, lightning bolts, Deloreans…but that’s just fiction. In real life, we can only achieve time travel through our own minds.”
Rover leaned forward and exhaled a stream of smoke, completely engulfing the other man within its cloud. “Bullshit.”
The man pushed the phone through the bars of his cage, illuminating the smoke as it dissipated in the air around him. He allowed Rover one quick glance at its screen, then pulled it away, burying it inside his pocket. In that one glance, he was able to see video footage of rolling black ocean water, its waves crashing violently into one another—some stormy sea.
“You’re startin’ to piss me off,” Rover said, taking another hit from his cigarette. “Look, I know I don’t talk so good, but I’m not some damn gullible jackass who was born yesterday.”
“You think I’m trying to swindle you?” the man asked.
“I think you’re a snake oil salesman,” Rover said. “If that’s swindling, then yeah, that’s what I’m sayin’.”
“Cyber Solaris is real and it works exactly as I described.”
“How’s a goddamn ocean gonna send me back in time, huh?”
“As I mentioned before, the time traveling device is already inside you. It’s your mind. Cyber Solaris is just how we access it. At a glance, the app appears to be nothing more than waves in a dark ocean, but it’s so much more than that. If you open your mind and stare for a few seconds, you’ll see what I mean.”
Rover pushed his head back against the bars and exhaled another round of smoke. “Man, where’d you come from anyway? How’d you end up in Eighth Block? This ain’t a place for people like you.”
“How about this…” the man said, then paused until he had Rover’s attention. “You pass me a single cigarette and something I can light it with, and I’ll let you use Cyber Solaris just long enough for you to know it's real. Then, if you pass me the rest of the pack, I’ll let you use it a little longer.”
Rover thought about it for a minute. He looked down at the pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket and counted how many he had left. Seven.
“You’ll give me back the lighter?” Rover asked. The other man smiled.
“Only if you decide you don’t like what you see,” he said. “So, we have a deal?”
Rover removed a cigarette from the pack and tossed it, along with his lighter, over to the man. “Deal. I figure if anything I’ll at least get a story out of it. That’s worth a cigarette in my book.”
“Oh, I promise you’ll get your story,” the man said, then placed the cigarette between his lips and lit up. He breathed deep, nearly inhaling a fourth of the cigarette in a single pull. “God, I missed that. This is my first smoke in about five years. Makes me wonder why I ever quit.”
“Well, c’mon now,” Rover barked. “Let’s see it.”
The other man nodded and blew the smoke from his lungs. He took a second draw then pushed the phone through the bars of his cage, once again holding it so that Rover could see the screen clearly.
He watched as the black ocean water rolled across the screen, rising and dipping and rising again. The waves were as dark as the sky, and only visible due to the seafoam that collected as it writhed about violently. When the water peaked, it resembled a mountain forming and dissolving again, and as quickly as one collapsed, another would form. He stared at the scene for a total of twenty seconds before finally looking away.
“Alright, you got my cigarette, but I’ll be damned if you take my lighter,” Rover said, pushing his hand through the bars, waving at the man to toss it to him.
“You’re not concentrating,” the man said. “Give it another go. This time try to visualize what it is you’re wanting to see. Stare at the waves and just let it happen. Say it out loud, it helps.”
“You’re making me out to be a damn fool,” Rover said, retracting his arm.
“I promise, if you do this, really give an effort, then you’ll see it.”
“See what, exactly?” Rover asked.
“Whatever it is you want to see,” the man said. “Surely there’s a time or place you’d rather be than here, right?”
Rover thought about it for a second. “Well, now that you mention it, I s’pose I’d like to go back to the night that got me locked up in this damn cage. It never sat well with me that I ended up in here and the other two fellas I was with somehow got away, scot-free.”
“Perfect,” the man said, then took another draw from his cigarette. Rover noticed beads of sweat running along the sides of his face.
“You alright? What’s got you all worked up?”
“I told you, it’s just nerves. It’s my first time doing this—being imprisoned, I mean. I’m not cut out for it,” the man said. His hand was shaking, causing the phone to rock gently with the crashing waves.
“You get used to it,” Rover said, then finally returned his attention to the phone. The black ocean water rolled across the screen…
“Tell me what it is you want to see,” the man said. “Say it out loud and it’ll manifest, right there in those ocean waters.”
…rising and dipping and rising again…
“I’d like to know how I got caught,” Rover said. “I want to know who turned me in. Now, I know it had to be one of my so-called partners, but I wanna know which one, and where I can find the sonuva bitch once I finally get outta this goddamn cage.”
“Talk me through the events of that night,” the man said. “Speak every last detail and don’t dare look away from the cell phone screen.”
…rising and dipping and rising again…
“Well, it all started with the three of us in prison,” Rover said, his eyes locked on the screen. “Not this bullshit Eighth Block prison though, an actual penitentiary. We were all servin’ time for whatever we got caught doin’ before…after a while, I s’pose it all starts to run together…and as fate would have it, the three of us ended up sittin’ together in the cafeteria, along with this other fella who had just been thrown in the joint earlier that day. As we’re gobblin’ down the slop they served to us on those dirty food trays, the new guy starts spoutin’ off ‘bout some score he was wise to, but got caught b’fore he had a chance to go after it. Said there was this fella livin’ in the Eighth Block Tower that kept a shoebox full of cash stashed at the top of his bedroom closet. He said he heard it from another fella who used to room with him about a year or so b’fore that. Now, I ain’t dumb enough to follow every lead that gets thrown my way, especially ones I hear ‘bout in prison, but this one seemed too easy of a score to pass by. I mean, everyone knows Eighth Block is a shithole. It’d be nothing to break into one of the apartments here. Not to mention, you won’t ever see a cop on this side of town, believe you me. So, once I made parole, I set out after it.”
Just as he finished his sentence, his eyes fluttered and suddenly he could see himself and two others standing outside the Eighth Block Tower, right there on the cell phone screen.
“Holy shit, I see it,” Rover said, hardly believing the vision manifesting before him. The vision was so jarring that he nearly looked away from the screen. “This can’t be real.”
The man allowed Rover a few seconds to inspect, then all at once he pulled the phone away. As soon as the phone was clear of his sight, the vision on screen faded and the roaring black ocean water returned.
“Wait, no…goddamn it!” Rover yelled. “It was right there on the screen! I could see it. I could see everything!”
“It’s okay, you’ll get it back,” the other man said. “Throw me the pack of cigarettes.”
Rover was breathing heavily now. He didn’t hesitate in throwing the entire pack over to him. “How the hell did you do that?”
“Just concentrate,” the man said, ignoring his question. He held the phone back up so he could see it.
“No, goddamn it! First, I wanna know just what the hell is goin’ on here? Is this some sort of witchcraft? Cause I never consented to no witchcraft.”
“It’s not witchcraft,” the man said. “I told you, it’s only an app, one I developed myself. It was built as a means of connecting to our consciousness—but as I was writing the code, I discovered I could tap into a level that went much deeper than that, specifically into the realm of the collective consciousness. It’s inside us all, our brains. I call it The God Cortex. Every last one of us are connected by this. Psychics, telepaths, doomsayers—they’re merely exploiters of The God Cortex. I think of it as a database, a place where all memories have been filed away. The app allows for a direct connection to it, so that any of us can access the memory of anyone who’s ever lived on this earth, or even beyond! If they’re human, their mind has been linked to it, living or dead, all the information is there.”
Rover just stared at the man, blankly. The man didn’t have the energy to go through it all again.
“Let me put it this way,” the man continued, tapping away some of the excess ash at the end of his cigarette. “These waves put you in a state of hypnosis. While hypnotized, you can see anything you wish to see right here on this cell phone screen. All you have to do is concentrate. Care to try again?”
Rover thought about it for a second. “You say it ain’t witchcraft, right?”
“You have my word, it’s not witchcraft.”
Rover nodded his head. “Aight, then. Let me have another go at it.”
The man smiled, took a final draw from his cigarette, then tossed the butt out, between the bars. He held up the phone once again. Cyber Solaris was swirling.
…and rising…
“Only the three of us knew about the money,” Rover continued.
…and falling…
“When you’re locked up, you’re always hearing about big scores from all the other prisoners, the ones who made mistakes…ended up getting caught. Oftentimes, I’d make parole before any of the others, and that’s when I’d take a crack at it. Well, that particular time it just so happened that the three of us all made parole on the same day. What are the chances, right? Even though we didn’t trust one another from Adam, we still made a pact that we’d go after the score together, split the cash evenly. I mean, from what we were told, it was a helluva score, plenty enough to go three ways…so why fight about it? Of course, things didn’t end up goin’ quite as we planned…”
…rising…
And just like that, he was in again, seeing everything on the screen as soon as the words fell out of his mouth.
“This is blowin’ my mind,” Rover said, but the man was quick to interrupt him.
“Please, concentrate,” he said. “Get to the score.”
“The score?” Rover asked, then shook off the feelings of bewilderment. “Right, the score. So, the moment the state set us free, the three of us hightailed it straight to the Eighth Block Tower. Didn’t waste no time at all. We got here just before nightfall. Didn’t have much of a plan, neither. Didn’t figure we had to. As far as I was concerned, it was a one-man job. With the three of us, I knew it’d be cake, so long as we could keep from tripping on each other’s toes…”
The other man wiped his free hand along his forehead, as if just hearing Rover’s voice was enough to cause him physical pain. He exhaled deeply. “The apartment. Get to the apartment.”
“Jesus, what’s the hurry?” Rover asked, still staring at the screen. “Your arm getting tired or somethin’?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” he said, placing another cigarette between his lips. “I’d appreciate it if you wrapped this up soon.”
“Now, damn it, this was your idea!” Rover shouted, watching himself creep through the hallways of the Eighth Block Tower as if he was watching some true crime show on TV.
The other man sighed. “You’re right. My apologies. Please, continue.”
Rover bit at his bottom lip. “Aight then.”
As he said it, the three men on the cell phone screen broke into the Eighth Block apartment, moving in different directions once they got inside. He chose to stay in his own point of view, for the time being.
“Now what in the Sam Hill is this?” Rover asked, as if he was seeing the things on the screen for the first time. “Look at all that copper! That right there is a small fortune in its ownself! I don’t know how I didn’t take notice o’ that the first time ‘round. If’n I had, I reckon maybe I wouldn’t be locked up in here.”
He kept staring at the screen in disbelief. “And lookie there! All those electronics! By God, as soon as I get outta here, I’m headin’ straight back for it all, I tell you what! I suppose I was so fixed on gettin’ the cash that I didn’t even stop t’ consider there may be other things I could sell for a lot more than what was in that shoebox…”
Looking around at all he’d missed out on was making him sick, so he decided to switch tracks for a bit.
“Aight, so I need t’ go back to where the other two disappeared on me,” Rover said, throwing the scene into reverse a moment. “Right there…now, let’s follow those fellas and see just what the hell happened that night.”
The scene moved forward on screen once again, now following the point of view of one of the other men.
“See, now they went straight to the bedroom! They musta known all along exactly where it was, cause they didn’t struggle to find it in the slightest! Damn those sonuva bitches! Damn them straight to hell!”
The two men exited the apartment and made their way down the stairwell. A few floors down, one of the men removed a revolver from the waistband of their jeans and discharged three slugs of hot lead directly into the chest of the other man. Seconds later, he was on the floor, dead.
“Well now, would you look at that,” Rover said, not sounding a bit surprised. “That’s what you get for trustin’ a goddamn crook! Can’t help but laugh. Poor bastard.”
Rover watched as the man tucked the revolver back into the waist of his jeans, then set out running into the dark, wet streets of the city, a newly free man with a boxful of cash.
“Cyber Solar Eclipse,” Rover said, speaking directly to the cell phone screen.
“Cyber Solaris,” the other man corrected. “And you don’t have to address it. It’s not a digital assistant. Just say what you want to see.”
Rover shook his head.
“I want to see the money,” he said. “I want to see the exact location that sonuva bitch stashed my money. Show me.”
Just as the man promised, Cyber Solaris revealed the precise location his ex-partner had stashed the box of cash. It was hidden inside the air duct of room #1114, The Full Moon Motel, just outside of Mascoutah, Illinois.
“Room 1114,” Rover said aloud. “The Full Moon Motel, that ain’t but just a few hours drive from here. You reckon we can break free of these here cages? We could split the cash. Straight down the middle. I ain’t no thief. I ain’t like those other scound—”
Suddenly, a red dot blazed from the cell phone screen, directly in the center of Rover’s line of vision. The light from it was so blindingly bright that it stopped him from finishing his thought.
“What the hell is that?” Rover asked, afraid to look away.
The other man took a hit from his cigarette, then stamped it out with his boot. Rover couldn’t help but notice the man’s hands were no longer shaking.
“It’s imperative that you stare at the red dot without blinking,” the man said, pushing smoke out his nostrils. “If you blink, it can do serious harm to your brain.”
Rover did what he was told. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He was the one quivering now.
He stared at the thing for nearly a full minute before his eyes began to water.
“Is this about over?” Rover asked, but the man did not answer him. “Damn it! I don’t think I can do this much longer!”
Seconds later, his arms fell limp and his body slunk down inside the cage. To the other prisoners, he appeared dead, but the other man knew he was still alive, just unable to move his body.
“How does it feel, huh?” the man asked, knowing Rover could not respond. “Now it’s my turn to take what doesn’t belong to me. Your life. And the life of your friend too, as soon as I get down to The Full Moon Motel, that is. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I was the one you robbed that night. The money your buddy took from me, that’s what’s left of the grant I was given to finish Cyber Solaris. There’s still about two years’ worth of living expenses inside that box, and I’m not about to let a couple nitwit ne'er-do-wells take it from me.”
The man laughed, then pushed open the door of his cage. The other prisoners went wild, seeing him walk about freely. They hollered and wailed, as if by doing so, the man would walk over and free them as well. But instead, the man remained focused on Rover, now merely a pool of skin inside a cage.
“Okay, so I have to admit,” the man said, almost laughing as he said it. “That bit about taking your life, I was bluffing. I don’t think I could ever kill another man. It’s just not me. It’s not who I am. So, that’s why I coded that little red dot into the programming, to incapacitate you. Honestly, I’m still a little shocked the app worked as well as it did. I’m not quite finished with it yet. Probably still another year or so off from human testing, so the fact that it worked without a hitch was truly remarkable! That’s why I was so nervous when I first got here. I was worried something would happen, some unforeseen issue with the programming, and I’d be right back at square one. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case!”
The man removed another cigarette from the pack, then stuffed the rest of it down into Rover’s cage.
“Thanks for the smokes, my friend,” the man said, then lit his last cigarette. Just before he made his exit, the man tossed the lighter down on the floor in the middle of the room. The blatant display of disrespect had all the prisoners howling once again.
Well…all except for one.
Cyber Solaris
© William Pauley III, 2023
All rights reserved.
YOU CAN FIND THIS STORY AND OTHERS IN:
TWELVE RESIDENTS DREAMING is a short story collection that includes 14 stories:
Prologue: “The First Life of Anacoy Marlin”
A shipwrecked man comes upon an apartment building located in the middle of the ocean. Inside, he finds the skulls of twelve residents, each one eager to tell their story.
Dream #1: “Heirs of the Abyss”
A newlywed couple discovers their apartment is sentient and responds to their every command. Life is perfect—that is, until the apartment begins making decisions all on its own. Soon, they find themselves trapped in a psychedelic dreamscape, hopelessly entangled within the physical manifestation of its every want and desire.
Dream #2: “Trapdoor”
When her best friend goes missing, a young woman sets out on her own, determined to find her. Every piece of evidence she uncovers leads back to a mysterious man with white eyes who’s stalking the hallways of the Eighth Block Tower. Even in pictures, his beautiful eyes leave her helplessly lost in a trance. She knows if she’s ever going to see her friend again, she’ll have to find a way to avoid his hypnotic stare. Unfortunately, by the time she finally comes face-to-face with him, she discovers he has many other secrets…
Dream #3: “Bad Blood”
After losing her brother to a vicious disease, a nurse is inspired to volunteer for a program that provides free healthcare to lower class individuals. The job is often thankless, and sometimes dangerous, but in the end, she’s still happy she’s able to help people in need. That is until she meets Ellie. Ellie’s unlike any of her other patients. She’s unpredictable and downright cruel, and even worse, she seems to think all of her many debilitating psychological issues are due to the ‘bad blood’ running through her veins. She considers the problem to be only temporary, however. Sure, she may not have ‘good blood’… but she knows exactly where she can get it.
Dream #4: “Killing Teddy”
A slumlord discovers two of his tenants are competing in a dangerous reality game show that’s been taking a toll on his building. After repeatedly ignoring his requests, he busts into their apartment and is shocked to see the tenant has fully transitioned into a man-sized carpenter ant. Hoping to not be evicted from their home, they explain to their landlord just how the game works—one of them has been challenged to live a full life cycle of every creature on earth, and to speed things up, the other must come up with creative ways in which to kill him. After discovering how much they stand to win, he joins in on the fun!
Dream #5: “The Plant People”
Death was the only thing that made her feel alive.
Dream #6: “The Burden of Lunar Ticking”
A man recalls a story his grandfather once told him, one about a ticking moon and the only man on earth who could silence it.
Dream #7: “Cyber Solaris”
A nervous man, trapped inside a cage, offers his most prized possession in exchange for a pack of smokes, a light, and a little something more.
Dream #8: “The Sinking Sanctuary”
A man feverishly tattoos the words of a religious book onto his flesh, attempting to preserve the scared text from the punishing rain hammering against his windowpane. As the flood water rises, his pen moves faster—leaving no time to eat, sleep, or even rest. In a few days time, the collected rainwater seeps into his apartment, eventually swallowing up both his furniture and his sanity. To add to his struggle, the horrors embedded inside the text are starting to leap from the page, manifesting in physical form before him, hoping to pry the book from his busy fingers. Soon after the first ghoul appears, he discovers these curious creatures wish to destroy more than just the book…
Dream #9: “Black Friday”
A young woman returns home for the holidays, only to discover her parents went a little crazy with this year’s Christmas presents.
Dream #10: “A Mist of Light”
By rewiring his brain via the ingestion of psychotropic chemicals, a man is finally able to strip away all facets of individuality in order to become what everyone’s always pressured him to be—exactly like them.
Dream #11: “The Eden Room”
At the end of your life, you must walk a path you unknowingly created while you were living. This path contains both obstacles and useful items, things manifested through acts of kindness or selfishness. For Waylon Peter Hurst, this path is ripe with danger—though he believes the placement of these traps to be completely unjust. He’s led a life of mostly sadness and despair due to the harsh conditions of his reality, none of his own doing. He pleads his case to his dispatcher, the guide assigned to help him maneuver through these soul-grinding obstacles, and though he seems to agree with Waylon, he doesn’t have much control over what happens next. Along his journey, there are many surprises, including a brief reunion with a long lost loved one, a soul that’s been dispatched to the utopian Eden Room. Knowing Waylon’s spirit is destined for a much darker place, his dispatcher becomes determined to, at the very least, show him mercy.
Dream #12: “Life is Beautiful (In Spite of Everything)”
Every one of us are fighting a battle unknown to the rest of the world. Be kind, damn it.
Epilogue: “The Second Life of Anacoy Marlin”
Through the stories of others, a man learns what he must do to find his own inner peace.
Storytime: "CYBER SOLARIS"