MicroHorror

Back when Dr. Howard Morris used to smile, he’d often joked, “These apes aren’t just chimps–they’re chumps!” which had excused his failure so far to teach an ape named Simba how to talk. That had always made the investors chuckle, back when they used to chuckle, before they shelled out another five grand to fund the next month’s research. But that was also when they understood that experimental failure had to precede experimental success.

Defeated, Dr. Morris now sat at his desk and glanced at the wall clock beyond Simba the ape’s cage. Almost quitting time, in more ways than one.

“Don’t look at me that way,” he said to Simba, who stared at him from her bed of straw. “This gun isn’t intended for you, you worthless bag of fur.”

Dr. Morris put the .357’s muzzle under his chin and pulled back the hammer. “See? I’m not going to kill you–although I should.”

Simba regarded him solemnly before reaching out to a computer keyboard by her foot. The buttons were labeled with pictograms showing a wide variety of nouns and verbs that could be constructed into simple sentences. On one side, things like a tree, a cat, and a moon. On the other, pictures of Simba eating, Simba sleeping, Simba running. Across the top, hash marks represented numbers.

Simba touched two buttons, and a voice synthesizer said, “Four four nine.”

“Yeah, I heard you the first four hundred forty-nine times you said that.” Dr. Morris used the gun muzzle to push his glasses back up his sweaty nose. “Four hundred forty-nine. Four hundred forty-nine. Why don’t you say anything else?”

Simba tapped the keyboard: “Four four nine.”

“Yes yes yes.” Morris set the gun upon a stack of grant-rejection letters so he could take off his white lab coat. He grimaced at the cloud of body odor that rose from the garment–a byproduct of being up for three days straight–as he dropped it on the floor. He was starting to think the ape smelled better.

He hesitated, rubbing his thumb against the gun’s handle. “Two years with that machine–a thousand phrases it could recognize–and yet all you can say is that damn number.”

Simba blinked and reached for the keyboard. “Four four nine.”

“Whatever.”

Dr. Morris swiveled his chair, turning his back on Simba so she wouldn’t be the last thing he saw. He jammed the gun under his chin and took a deep breath… then pulled the trigger.

The bullet exited from the back of his head amid a spray of red bone. A moment later, Dr. Morris fell backwards out of his chair.

The impact jostled the clock off the wall. It flipped one time before landing face-up beside the ape’s cage.

Simba looked from Dr. Morris, who was leaking his brains onto the tile floor, to the clock lying on the other side of her bars, and blinked. The hands pointed to the time of the scientist’s death: 4:49.

• Copyright: © 2008 Matthew Warner

“It’s a murder simulator,” Dave Clearwater said in answer to the woman’s question. Others in his audience took notes as he leaned into the microphone. “The Death Alleys video game teaches our children to kill, and it teaches them to like it.”

The woman frowned at the billboards on Clearwater’s podium that advertised his new book, Video Games Corrupt Our Youth. “But where’s your evidence?”

“I’m sorry, but we have to move on to the next question.”

The woman blinked her eyes. “Oh, I see. Maybe you need to research this a little bit, huh?”

“Next question, I said.”

Her eyes began to glow. Clearwater felt a tickling sensation along his spine an instant before the room vanished.

He found himself in the front passenger seat of a car. The street scene tearing by looked like a cartoon drawn by computers. He screamed and looked at the driver, who was also a computer animation. The man–if you could even call him that–had close-cropped hair drawn with simple brown lines. His eyes were two black pits. His arms turned the steering wheel, but there were no pedals.

“What is this? Let me out!”

But even as he spoke, Clearwater recognized him. It was Nero Blaine, the protagonist of Death Alleys.

“Gonna get your ass,” a child’s voice spoke from Nero’s throat. It had a tinny quality, as if it came over the phone.

“Let me out! Please!”

“The people in this game are so noisy,” Nero said.

Another voice, a woman’s, answered in the same phone-in voice: “Maybe I should turn them off the next round.”

Despite his terror, Clearwater couldn’t help but note how unusual this was. What little research he had done into the topic suggested that males usually played these games. Not females… This was a game, wasn’t it?

As they conversed, Nero smashed out his side window with an elbow. Ahead of them, a white van turned onto the street. An Uzi appeared in Nero’s left hand, and he hung it out of the window to shoot at the van.

Clearwater screamed as they sideswiped the van. Both vehicles stopped in the middle of the street.

The two drivers shot at each other through their windows. A bullet grazed Clearwater’s shoulder, feeling like a bee sting. Still screaming, he pushed his door open and fell out upon gray, animated pavement.

Nero and the van’s driver, an animated woman, also got out. Clearwater gasped as he recognized her–or at least this crude representation of her. It was the woman with the glowing eyes.

She shot Nero in the head. An instant later, the main character of Death Alleys vanished. He left behind a glowing Uzi that glowed red until she picked it up.

She turned to Clearwater. “You’re next.”

A handgun lay on the street a few feet away, glowing red. Clearwater seized it and shot the woman in the chest. “Go to hell!”

The woman vanished.

Elation filled him. He’d never killed anyone before. The sensation was strangely exhilarating.

But how did he get here? Was he dead? Was this place Hell?

But there was no time to consider these questions. The street vanished and then reappeared. Clearwater and Nero again sat in the car. The car lurched forward. Nero again broke out his window with an elbow.

This time, Clearwater found a gun resting in his lap. Despite his terror, he couldn’t help but grin as he hefted the weapon.

Maybe this time, he could kill the van driver before she even got out of her vehicle. That would teach her.

• Copyright: © 2008 Matthew Warner