False Idols - Published Version

Chapter 5

Nick closed his eyes and commanded his MindWave to enter the multinet, with the intent of finding his way through the mobile network servers to Peggy's phone.

Instead of a navigable world, Nick found himself in a vast dimensionless darkness, filled with luminescent arrays of numbers and images. He tried turning his head and shifting his eyes, but his view didn't change. He realized he wasn't seeing with his physical body. Somehow the images were being projected directly into his mind.

He tried to move his consciousness around, but he couldn't feel his own physical existence within the dizzying endless blackness. He had no concept of his own location, or even of up and down and forward and back.

Nick ordered the MindWave to turn off, yet nothing happened. He thought back to his physical body, sitting on his bed in a room in Manhattan. He willed his hand to reach behind his neck and unplug the MindWave, but he couldn't control his limbs anymore. He couldn't sense them, even. He was disconnected from himself.

He cried out, but speech had left him.

There was no way back. He felt a chasm of terror engulfing him as he realized he would be trapped in this chaos forever.

And then she was there. A beautiful redheaded college-aged woman, dressed in a luminescent white silk gown that accentuated her statuesque figure. She stepped out of the blackness, giving form to formlessness, lending order to chaos by virtue of her very presence.

The beautiful girl raised her palm towards Nick, and in that instant he saw that he, too, had an existence, a physical body amidst the nothingness.

He had a voice, too. "Thank you, thank you!" he cried. He clasped his hands in front of him in a gesture of exaggerated gratefulness and relief.

"Let there be light," she said with a slight smirk. Behind her, a sun rose above a nonexistent horizon, briefly illuminating her red hair to a golden yellow halo.

And then Nick found that he and the girl were submerged in water, and the sun's rays were piercing down from the distant surface. Nick was a poor swimmer, and in a panic, tried to pull himself upwards.

The girl watched in silence as he struggled to stay alive.

Out of the murky waters, an immense shark swam towards him. It opened its mouth, exposing row after row of jagged teeth, each as large as Nick's fist. The shark's layered gums were bright red, engorged with blood, in contrast to the pitch black of its deep throat.

Nick had lost sight of the girl. He tried to scream, and his mouth and lungs filled with salt water and he choked. The shark swam closer, its maw looming around him.

But then solid earth pressed Nick upwards. He was forced down on his back by the speed of his ascent. Soon, the surface of the water broke over him and he felt the sun's warmth on his face. He opened his mouth and gasped for breath.

He looked around, and realized that the shark had been brought to the surface with him. It flopped and thrashed in the mud, opening its gaping mouth in a silent scream.

The shark's skin changed from grey to brown, and the shark rose up off the ground on legs that appeared beneath it. In a moment, it had transformed into a tyrannosaurus, which leered down at him.

Nick scrabbled to his feet to run away, but tripped and fell on his side. The dinosaur bent down, ready to rend him with its jagged teeth. Nick flinched away, knowing he was helpless. The monster roared, and Nick retched at the stench of rotting meat rolling over him.

Before it could bite him, the tyrannosaurus sprouted bright white fur, trimmed short in some places and grown into bulbous layers in others. Its horrendous roar became a falsetto yap. The dinosaur had become a toy poodle, not even as tall as Nick's knee.