Departure

Saul clenched the handle of his coffee mug until his knuckles turned white. He heard the crunching of paper as he placed it down onto a pile of scraps littering the desk. Only scraps, he reminded himself. He released his grip.

He turned to Lucius, fixating on the other man’s unkempt nails that tapped uneasy rhythms on the table.

“I think we’ve got it,” said Saul.

Lucius let out his breath. They looked at the computer monitor in front of them. Saul pressed some buttons on the keyboard, exited the backbones of the simulation, and launched the program. He sat back in his chair, crossing his arms. Below a pixelated image of a heart-shaped locket, the monitor read:

PRESS ENTER FOR DEPARTURE

After giving the screen a long stare, Saul moved to rise from his seat and stumbled, hip joints cracking. He paced towards the window with a limp. His fingers pressed against the glass. A shudder shot through him. He focused on the view for one last time.

Saul sighed.

The metropolis was still whirling in a mad frenzy, as it had always done. Tired, vulnerable, he felt the old temptation of distraction boiling deep within him. He forced his breaths to slow and fixed his eyes on the billboard ahead, in which an ironclad knight and a nimble archer were slashing through a battlefield, pouncing on droid enemies, waving for Saul to come closer. Scoffing, he looked down to the understory of the city, where he could hear the faint chirps of arcade machines. Nodding mechanically to the looping jingles, he gazed up to the table tops of skyscrapers, where holographs danced and winked at whoever was watching. Belly dancers, circus freaks, foxes with human features. Saul knew them all by name. His throat tightened.

“The big ol’ merry go round, huh?” Lucius said from his chair.

“That’s all it is,” replied Saul.

Frowning, he looked beyond the dancers into the night sky. It could hardly be seen beyond the dishonest glow of neon lights. But if you searched for it, you could find it. Up there, deep, black and empty. Saul scratched the thirst in his throat.

“You wanna call in a drone before we…?” Lucius asked in a higher pitch.

Saul made no reply. He looked down from the heavens and shook his head. A drone zoomed past the window and startled him.

The airspace was laced with them, darting to and fro buildings in single-file highways. They let themselves into windows, passing through the glass like ghosts with mouths full of food. Moments later, they emerged swifter than they had vanished, letting out a mechanical chirp as their visors flashed a bone-white glow before flying away once more.

Saul followed one with his gaze. He watched its tiny body dangle from its head as it swooped into a nearby window. Squinting his eyes, Saul caught a glimpse of a few vague silhouettes inside the building. A screenlight shone to show their features, sitting, lifeless and drooling. The light licked their pallid cheeks into a sickening glow.

But soon, the portrait of the family was blocked by the bulbous head of the drone once more. Sifting through the window, buzzing, flashing and dangling, it headed back towards the sky.

Saul turned his back to the city and slammed his body against the office window.

“Well, are you ready?” he asked Lucius, who had been staring at the monitor the whole time.

“Mm,” Lucius muttered, disrupted. He rose from his chair slowly, his hands like spiders against the desk, “It’s just a big move.”

“Are you… Doubting this?”

“I’m…” Lucius’ eyes still hadn’t left the screen, “I don’t know. I guess I’m scared.”

“Of course you’re scared,” said Saul, “You think I’m not scared?”

“Well…” Lucius straightened up his posture, hip joints cracking. He crossed his arms against his chest, “It’s just… It’s final. It’s for good. We’ll be gone for good.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Lucius looked down at his feet.

“Don’t do this man,” said Saul approaching his colleague, “I’ve told you so many damn times, there’s nothing left for us here.”

“I mean,” Lucius shifted his posture, “Surely there’s more we can do for our citizens. Another game we could design, maybe? One that forces you to exercise, like a jungle based-game that would remind them of nature, get their curiosity going. We could still save some of them at least, y’know, give ‘em a little push back into reality.”

“You think I haven’t tried to do that all these years? You think I haven’t spent decades working out the best way to get them to move a muscle? All of those proposals get tossed in the trash, you’ve seen it happen before. They never let us get through, no matter how hard we try. It’s a lost cause goddammit.”

“Mm,” Lucius’ eyes fled Saul’s until they landed back onto the screen. His body sunk back into the chair.

Saul walked behind Lucius, gripped the chair by its leather back and leaned in.

“Departure,” he said with a sigh, “Y’know, it’s so much more than that. It’s a clean slate. All the things that you hate about this world, we’ll correct them together. We’ll remake it all from scratch again. A blue-green virgin planet and a pure set of humans ready to develop civilisations all over again. Without fail this time! We'll watch over them they were meant to live, free of distractions. We’ll learn so much more about who we really are - you, me, them. Do you realise? The power we have to make things right again?”

Lucius looked up from his lap and saw himself reflected on the screen.

“The truth is waiting for us,” Saul whispered, grasping the seat tighter, “You and me. Gods of a better world.”

Lucius’ right hand was edging closer to the keyboard. Their bodies tipped towards the screen. Lucius’ finger brushed the ‘ENTER’ key.

“This simulation…” Lucius said, “It’s not real.”

Saul broke out of focus. His whole body became stern.

“Not real?” Saul’s voice was low and boiling, “Not real? After all this time, you’re scared of losing what’s real? Have you even looked outside?”

He snatched Lucius by the collar of his shirt, dragged him across the room. Lucius' legs kicked in weak protest as his eyes clung to the screen. Saul slammed his chest against the window. Lucius braced himself as best as he could.

“Have you even seen what’s real?” he shouted. He grabbed the back of Lucius’ head and forced it up against the glass, “Take a long hard look.”

Lucius’ breath trembled. He looked straight to the billboard ahead. The knight and archer had opened floodgates to an enemy fort. A surge of memories from his childhood resurfaced of him and his brother, invincible against the armies of Agaror. Lucius looked below to the arcades, where his brother had spent every last dime. The looping jingles turned his wits to shreds. He began to sob uncontrollably.

“Look up!” Saul ordered, tugging Lucius’ hair backwards.

Lucius’ gaze was ripped from below. Now all he could focus on was the belly dancer, Shwarma, his first love, the only woman that ever gave him a true taste of desire. Upon the throne of her skyscraper, she moved so whimsically, the rolls of her hips undulating in the night. She was nothing more than perfect. Lucius let out a little moan.

“Look further, you idiot!” Saul pressed his forehead against the glass even harder, “Can you see it? The blackness? Can you?”

Between his sobs, Lucius muttered, “No…”

Saul released his grip from his hair and paced away from the window. Lucius dropped to his knees and pressed his clammy hands against the glass.

“I’ll have to…” Saul said, shaking his head, “I’ll have to do this without you. I just… Wish we could’ve…”

Saul was interrupted by the buzz of a drone. Approaching the window, it came towards Lucius like an old friend. It passed through the glass, and landed next to him with a welcoming chirp.

“Oh, there’s the little guy,” Lucius gave a weak smile, “Saul, I got us burgers.”

The drone’s mouth opened, letting out the fresh, steamy smell of seasoned beef patties. Lucius grabbed the paper bag from inside its mouth, opened it and breathed in.

“I know I’m weaker than you Saul,” he continued, taking out the burgers, “It’s just hard for me. I want to leave this world knowing what I’ve left behind. It could be good for you, I mean, for both of us, to know what we’re leaving behind. Look, would you please just eat this quarter pounder with me?”

Saul slowly turned to face him and the drone. He measured his paces back towards them.

“Stuff of pity...” he said between his teeth.

“Come on,” Lucius said, tapping the floor next to him.

Saul crouched down next to Lucius, hand against his aching hip. He snatched the remaining burger and unwrapped it. The orange cheese was sagging down the side of the wrapper and scraped against his fingers. His brow grew heavy as he gave the burger a long, hard look. The burger stared right back at him, drooling out a film of slime oozing from the lettuce. Looking up from this tragic portrait, Saul saw his workmate merrily chomping down on the remaining half of his sandwich with closed eyes. He wrinkled his nose, looked back at the greasy mother in his hands and took a bite.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if they end up making these kinds of things in our simulation?” Lucius said with a mouth full of food.

Saul ignored the comment. The task of swallowing was already enough for him. He coughed.

Lucius looked up at him with concern, “You don’t like it?” he asked as he finished the last bite of his burger.

The granulous taste of the meat made Saul gag. He stood up violently, threw his food to the ground, spat and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

“Why is this stupid thing still here?” he pointed to the drone that hadn’t moved from Lucius’ side.

“Oh, I... ordered us some sundaes,” said Lucius, emptying the mouth of the drone. He took out two half melted snowmen encased in plastic. The drone’s mouth closed and its visor flashed, chirping one last time before lifting off the ground.

Saul’s eyes grew sharp. Before the drone could pass through the window, he rushed towards it and grabbed its body. He felt a mechanical resistance, the buzzes whirring into overdrive, as he threw the drone to the ground, pinning it down by the neck with his foot. He thrusted his elbow into the glass of the drone’s visor, failing to smash it. Its light began to flash red as the chirps grew into alarmed sounds.

“Saul, stop it, for God’s sake!” Lucius cried.

Saul continued to thrash against the visor of the drone, punching it with all the might of his bleeding knuckles. The frosted glass finally gave in. Saul’s vision was blinded by the naked light. He failed to see the poison darts taking aim at him from inside the drone.

Two seconds later, three darts had been shot into his neck. He fell backwards and hit the floor, strangled.

Buzzing like a scratched record, the drone drifted off-balance from the ground, through the window, and withdrew into the sky.

Lucius kneeled before Saul’s convulsing body, removing darts in panic.

“Saul! Can you hear me?”

Saul looked up to his friend with bloodshot eyes, foaming mouth, body shaking violently. He said no words.

“Saul, no! What am I…” Lucius covered his mouth, sobbing through his hand.

Saul’s eyes were fading, but they were manic, they clung to the air and to Lucius until the blood inside them stopped pumping.

--

Lucius got to his feet, stepped back to the desk and sat down. He read the words on the monitor over and over:

PRESS ENTER FOR DEPARTURE