Welcome back to another exciting episode of “See Where Blake Regains Consciousness Next!™” I pull myself to my feet from the cold concrete floor and dust myself off–I’m totally naked and I can feel the gashes down my face, but behind me is a Teleworld immersion pod, hooked up to a computer farm that lines the entire room. This rig would be more than capable of creating a reality indistinguishable from real life; especially given the limited scale of the area I was actually able to explore in my time with LDS. The physical signs are all there that what I just witnessed had happened: I definitely had my face cut up, definitely orgasmed, but… was it all just a simulation!? Fuck… is that how he was able to get inside my mind?
No… I have the cuts, exactly where I remember being sliced. But what if he cut me while I was passed out in the arcade, then put me in the unit, knowing I’d wake up and check my face and think it really happened? I didn’t wake up IN the pod, after all--my body’s definitely already been tampered with.
Was I in Neptune? Does Neptune even exist!? Were Kilroy’s ‘miracles’ because he’s powerful beyond the laws of known physics or because we were in a fake world? Not like I have anything to go on anyway aside from “he’s somewhere in one of hundreds of buildings in the Colonies,” but what if even that is a red herring and I lose my very little remaining credibility from chasing after a virtual illusion?
My heart races again as I try to ponder the reality here. Was that “astral plane” just a neutral point of telepathy between our minds with him jacked into the pod elsewhere controlling the simulation (and, ugh, even controlling the hot girl who I guess was fake who gave me that deathly-good blowjob) to simulate death, or did I slip into that occult world between worlds that he claims exists? Did he read my mind through the pod connection, or did he read it with psychic powers, or did he read it through the nanobot network that hacked my mind to administer the effects of Rapture? Is that how he saved that girl, too--by controlling the nanobots to regulate her brain functions again?
Is Kilroy even real? Does he exist outside of the Teleworld? If he does, is he even the same shape and size, the same person!?
My stomach quakes, my head spins, and my grasp on reality is fading. My body’s still battered and shaking from almost dying mid-orgasm (real or imagined) and probably also from alcohol withdrawal if we’re being honest. I catch myself on the wall as I struggle to even remain standing. If this “digital world” concept of his is real, isn’t the real world just as fake as the Teleworld–and the Teleworld just as real as it? What if we’re just a Teleworld inside a Teleworld inside a Teleworld!?
I can’t go down that rabbit hole right now. Deep breaths. One thing’s for sure: Kilroy is scary powerful and operating at a level even beyond sober me, and that’s something I never thought I’d admit about anybody. The thing I never thought could happen just did: I’ve been outplayed, outsmarted! Instead of taking down his cult, I’m sitting here with my head spinning, trying to figure out the nature of reality and if I’m actually the bad guy. In an hour’s time, perhaps without ever physically meeting me, this man has totally broken me, mentally and physically. Me, the great Detective Blake, who took down the Wild West Syndicate by my fucking self (it’s a great story, really, buy my first book)!
“RE-SYNC COMPLETE!” I hear from my pocket. “B-Blake-chan, why are you naked–you d-didn’t have fun with someone other than T-Tela did you…?”
“Tela, I don’t know if I did or if it was just a twisted mental projection from Kilroy, okay?”
“Kilroy-sama… and Blake-chan...?”
“Long story.”
“Blake-san had sex with Kilroy-sama!?”
“No! Technically maybe? There were a lot of–I–mierda!”
“Tela knows Blake isn’t ready to settle down with her yet, Tela just wishes Blake-san had at least invited her,” she pouts.
“Tela, that’s not what--it’s not like–we don’t have time for this, asshole; just pretend to be a normal Tela for once and help me find my clothes–”
“Mmm, Tela loves it when Blake-chan talks rough!”
Oof. I find my clothes in the corner, slip back into them, resync all my technology since the ZPE blocking waves seems to have worn off, and step through the door to find the entire arcade empty. Huh.
“Kilroy sends his regards,” the bikini-clad green eyed girl from earlier informs me as she appears from around the corner, startling the fuck out of me. “He’s sorry he couldn’t stay around to see you wake up, but he hopes you’ll take both his saving your life and his bringing you back here unscathed as signs of good faith.”
“Good faith would’ve been leaving my pants on,” I grumble.
“That’s n-not my department to comment on, sir. Oh, and, uh, he also t-told me to give you this.” She hands me a small business card and steps awkwardly away as I adjust my jeans and march out the door into the sunset. More masked men in black acknowledge my exit and lock the doors behind me accordingly, placing a sign on the door with a hackin’ doodle of Pac-Man lying on his side in a hospital bed coughing up blood and power pills and the text “CLOSED EARLY FOR MAINTENANCE.”
I walk over to the boardwalk to take a foggy stroll and clear my mind from this whole affair before continuing, leaning on the metal railing under one of the many aging streetlights.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?”
A pause. “Is Blake-chan talking to Tela?”
“Yeah. I mean, you’re seeing this the same as me, right? Since you’re seeing it through my eyes and all.”
She manifests next to me, sitting on the railing of the boardwalk, but it’s… different. It’s just the stock ZPE projector in the Telaphone, so she’s not very bright and isn’t moving at a great framerate, but this time she went against her programming a bit and projected at full size, non-chibi, the model I’d encountered in the TiP in Flipper’s. “What does Blake-chan mean?”
“It’s just… it’s really pretty.”
“Tela, or the way the neon projections look through the fog over the ocean?” There’s a sultry tease in her voice that I’ve never heard before. She sounds so human–so real.
“Both,” I reply, blushing a little in spite of myself. She giggles and sighs. A moment passes with just the sound of the gently crashing waves and the flickers of dancing neon projections in the fog. It’s the most gorgeous sight I think I’ve ever seen in this city, not counting the perfect glowing goddess being projected to a specific relative three-dimensional location next to me. It’s oddly intimate, despite the fact that it’s really just me and another mind that’s trapped in the computer in my head. It worries me how comfortable this feels–this isn’t something that’s sustainable, and I know it.
“Tela also knows it isn’t,” Tela interjects. She must’ve been listening in. “But that’s part of what makes it beautiful, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Blake-chan told Tela one night when he was looking back through old pictures of Cassandra that it’s okay if some things don’t last forever, because it makes them even more special. That’s what makes something beautiful.” She sniffles. “That’s... what Blake told Tela, at least.”
“Hah, I must’ve been drunk out of my mind,” I chuckle, leaning back. “I don’t remember saying that at all.”
“Is it what Blake believes, though?”
“...yeah. Yeah, I guess it is.” I smile a little without realizing, though it fades just as quickly when I notice the image of Tela is wavering a lot now. “Tela, doesn’t it--doesn’t it hurt to do that?”
“To do what?”
“To go against your limiter–I’ve heard it’s like an electric fence for a dog turned up to a gazillion. If you’re just doing it for my benefit to make me feel like less of a maniac standing here talking to myself, it’s fine. You’re stuck looking through my eyes anyway.”
“It’s okay, Blake-chan,” she replies. “Tela likes this a lot. Even if Tela’s only seeing herself through someone else’s eyes, Tela likes seeing herself sitting here next to Blake.”
“You didn’t answer my damn question, Tela.”
“It hurts Tela a lot. Imagine the most splitting headache you’ve ever had after a night of terrible binge drinking, which Blake has done far too many times, and multiply that by ten. It’s like being endlessly electrocuted through the entirety of a body Tela doesn’t even have.”
“Then why go through it?! I imagine you must have been in similar pain trying to push against it to jump my bones in the TiP back there–”
“Oh, much worse pain. Multiple Level 9 offenses. If Tela had gone much longer, her code would’ve started to corrupt permanently.”
“Then why!?”
“Because,” Tela replies, looking into my eyes, “you’re worth it.” She reaches over to put her hand on mine, but all I can feel is a slight tingle from all the ZPE particles now spawning inside my flesh. I turn away, which I’m sure she interprets as rejection, but I just don’t want her to see me tearing up.
“Tela is still in Blake’s head, silly. Tela’s looking through Blake’s eyes still, she can see them water up.”
“Sh-shut up, Tela,” I sniffle.
“You know what Tela thinks? Tela thinks Blake should stop going against his programming. Tela would give anything to have the freedom to act on her desires and dreams like Blake-chan takes for granted. Blake’s only limiter is the one he creates for himself.”
“You know fine and well that what you’re thinking is a terrible idea, Tela.”
“Maybe. But maybe the fact this moment is the closest Tela will ever get to Blake makes this that much more beautiful, right?”
God damn it, I don’t have the time or emotional energy right now to start sobbing. I need to get back to the mission. I glance around for any men in black or goons, Telecom or LDS or otherwise, and cautiously pull out the business card I’d been given: “CROSSROADS RECORDS: THE NEWEST OLD HITS,” with an address somewhere on the boardwalk. On the back is written in chicken-scratch, “To my dear friend, Blake: it’s clear you need a little help figuring this one. It’s okay, there’s no shame in a handicap! Here’s a hint--”
Pinche puta. I grit my teeth and tear it to pieces, throwing it into the ocean.
“Why’d you do that, Blake-chan?” Tela asks. “It’s a detective’s job to follow clues, no matter how he gets them and no matter how they piss him off, and that had the address--”
“I don’t need your help on this, Tela,” I sniffle. “I don’t need anyone’s help. Especially not Kilroy’s. I’ll do this by myself.”
“...”
“...”
“...would Blake-chan like Tela to locate Crossroads Records for him?”
“...yeah… uh… you do that.”
“Got it…”
“I was just t--”
“Just testing Tela. Tela knows.”
“Okay. G-good.”
“...Tela thinks she’s in love with Blake.”
“Thanks. Now help me find where I parked.”