Chapter 48

Time: Saturday, February 9, 2019 11:56 AM

Emily realized what had happened and turned around quickly, her face a mixture of guilt and shock. “Oh Holly, I’m so sorry!”

“What’s happening?!” Holly shouted back. “The displays are still showing two heartbeats!”

“I know! Holly! I wasn’t trying to deceive you! I’m one keystroke short of final verification. Don’t you remember? Mark asked to speak with you before we ... before we acted. Holly, I’m so sorry. I should have said something. I should have reminded you.”

Holly growled something unintelligible in response and squeezed her eyes shut just as the door from the library opened. In walked Mark and Toshi. Mark was dismayed that Holly was already on the autodoc and he glanced immediately at the time. No, he wasn’t late.

Emily saw his distress and came up to him and whispered, “We started the preparation a bit early. Holly arrived a while ago and didn’t want to wait. Mark, please make this very brief. This is an extremely difficult time for Holly, and trust me, you aren’t going to change her mind.”

Mark sighed heavily and whispered back. “It’s a difficult time for all of us.” He took a second to hug Emily.

Meanwhile Toshi had walked quietly up to the autodoc and leaned over Holly’s shut face. She touched Holly’s hand to announce her presence, and Holly’s eyes blinked open to see Toshi’s face directly above her. As the link began to form, Holly could see was so much sorrow in Toshi’s eyes, sorrow and guilt. Holly was confused. Toshi was feeling guilty? Guilty about what? And beneath the guilt lay a mighty purpose. Toshi’s eyes became a whirlpool, an irresistible vortex that sucked away the reality of the hospital room. Holly gasped and cried out, but the cry was released in a strange unknown chamber.

Holly gaped in wonder at her new surroundings. She was standing in a huge underground chamber seemingly carved inside a mountain with a large pit nearby. The walls and vaulted ceiling were of rough rock. The floor was polished stone. And it should have been darker. Actually Holly thought it should have been pitch black. But it was not. There’s was lots of light to see by, but miraculously there were no shadows. Where the hell was the light coming from? It was such a novel puzzle that for a moment Holly almost forgot the more pressing questions.

But not for long. The reality of what happened finally came to Holly’s mind. “Toshi!” she yelled out to the cavernous room. “I know what this is! This is one of your stupid mind games! I want out of here right now!” There was no response. “I demand that you get out of my mind right now!”

Holly gasped that the room did not immediately dissolve. This was an unbelievable abuse of power by Toshi. But before Holly could further that thought, a distressed voice came from the pit in the center of the cavern. “I’m down here, Holly.”

Holly walked to the nearby edge and stared down in amazement. There were stone stairs along the circular wall spiraling down to the bottom of the pit, and at the center of the floor below was a medieval torture rack, and stretched out cruelly on the rack was a naked Toshi.

Holly walked down the stairs in silence and came to stand by Toshi’s rack. At the head of the rack was an enormous wheel to control the tension in the chains, and Holly saw that Toshi was already stretched to painful tightness. Holly grimaced and looked Toshi in the eyes and shouted, “What is this madness?! Toshi, I demand that you release me at once! This is as bad as being raped. You don’t have my permission to do this. You are raping my mind!”

Toshi blinked in her pain from the rack. “I know, and I will spend much time in the future asking your forgiveness. Holly, I want to talk with you. I pleaded with my husband for the opportunity.”

“What?! He agreed to this?!”

“Not exactly. He made me promise to keep this voluntary for you. And I have, sort of. There is a way for you to leave here.”

“Tell me!”

“Break my arms.”

“What?!”

“I’ve set up this dream with full tactile feedback for me. If you turn the wheel, you will break my shoulder joints. I expect to pass out from the pain. I will fall to the floor in the hospital room and you will be released.”

Holly stared at Toshi in horror for a moment, and then bared her teeth. She reached for the wheel and started to turn it. Toshi cried out in agony and Holly could feel the reality of the pit around her start to dissolve. Toshi wasn’t lying. One more jerk and Holly would be free.

In the reality of the Red Mall hospital room...

Mark and Emily were standing on the other side of the autodoc across from Toshi. “I don’t know Mark,” Emily whispered. “I can’t imagine that Holly would want to stay in a long-term link with Toshi.”

“My wife promised me she would make this voluntary for Holly,” Mark replied, “and I’ve never known Toshi to lie.”

“Well...” said Emily, still uneasy. “Look! Toshi’s face! Didn’t she just grimace?”

Mark looked up. “I don’t know. You think so?”

“I thought she wobbled too, as if she were about to fall over.”

Kiyoko looked very concerned for her dear friend. “Let me go around and stand with her.”

Down within the pit.

Holly realized she just couldn’t do it. “Damn you, Toshi!” she hissed as she stared at her jailor withering in pain. Toshi didn’t seem to hear her, and after a second Holly reached over and released a ratchet, allowing the tension to come out of the chains. Toshi started gasping and taking in great big breaths. The reality of the pit solidified.

Holly stood frowning at her. “You win. I’m not going to break your arms, even in a stupid dream. So how long do I have to stay here?”

Toshi sighed. “Thank you. I promised Mark two minutes or less.”

“It’s been more than that already!”

“He never asked me whether I meant objective time or subjective time.”

“What? Oh ... So how much time has elapsed objectively?”

Toshi paused for a moment. “I think we’re running about a factor of forty.”

Holly nodded. “So, you want to keep me in this pit for eighty minutes? Okay. But I’m telling you right now, I’m not going to change my mind.”

Toshi shrugged. “You don’t have the power to do that.”

Holly frowned. “What? You think I don’t have the power to change my mind?”

“No, quite the opposite. I think you don’t have the power to keep your mind from changing. You can’t decide now what your thoughts will be an hour from now. The human mind just isn’t wired like that.” Toshi took a deep breath. “Holly?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not going argue with you, not about your abortion, not directly anyway. I want to tell you a little of my own life. I want to show you where I grew up and chat a bit about philosophy. The talk will be related to your decision in a general way, but I promise, it won’t be too specific.”

Holly looked at Toshi warily. “Oh yeah? What kind of philosophy?”

“I want to talk about emotions, one emotion in particular. I want to talk about fear.”

“Fear?”

“Yes.” Toshi looked around the pit. “It’s something Mark and Frida and I have had to put a lot of time into. The power of our minds are so vast, fear could be deadly to us if we lost our higher-level reasoning. Monsters, Holly, monsters from the id. The nightmares from our subconscious could destroy us if we didn’t understand how to vanquish them.”

Holly stared at her naked jailor, considering the request.

“And we don’t have to stay here,” added Toshi. “In fact, I have a much nicer place in mind for our chat.”

Holly managed a weak grin. “Oh yeah? A nicer place in mind? What a pun! So what do I have to do? Click my heels three times and say, there’s no place like home?”

Toshi grinned back. “If you want. Then you agree?”

Holly replied by closing her eyes and starting to click her heels together, but before she could make the second click, she sensed that her shoes were gone and there was also warm sand under her feet and between her toes. Holly opened her eyes in bright sunlight and guffawed in amazement.

She was standing along the shore of a deserted beach. No, not quite deserted. Toshi was there with her and like Holly was wearing a swimsuit. And nearby were two small children, a boy and a girl both at most four years of age. They were building a sand castle at the edge of the surf. Holly turned and looked around beyond the sand dunes and saw a forest. “Where is this place?” she whispered.

Toshi answered. “Irino, Japan. My parents had some friends who had a beach house here. There’s a modern city just to the other side of the trees. It’s not far.”

Holly nodded. “Are we going there?”

“Only if you want to. I’d prefer to hang out here. I have a lot of fond memories of this beach.”