Horizon: Episode 4

When I came to, I realized we had already parked. Still in a rather dazed state, I opened my groggy eyes to find that the sun had risen quite a ways above the horizon, and that we were sitting outside a product center. At first, I had no idea what I was doing here or where I was, in the middle of the day, out of my workplace. My Supervisor would be furious --

Then, I remembered. Remembered the horror of my dream, the unreasonable certainty of what was to come, the fear of being in my own apartment. The sweat the still clung to my clammy insuit preserved the anxiety and paranoia of the morning. And, finally, I remembered that I was no longer in Avalon anymore. Where was I?

Apparently, the driver had been watching me the whole time. "You're looking confused, miss. Not that I blame you."

"Well ... yes," I admitted, much to my distaste. "I gather that we're at a product center, so we must be out of Avalon, but ... where are we? Why are we here?"

He smiled, perhaps restraining himself from giving the chuckle I found so irritating. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. "You're right on most counts. We're quite a bit outside Avalon, since we drove around four hours from the Circumconduit. But," He paused for dramatic effect. "Where you're mistaken is that this is not exactly just a product center."

From the start, he seemed to be the type that loved being the only one in the know, and, whenever possible, keeping things that way. Over the years of working with some of the smartest and most accomplished people in Avalon, I had learned that the best way to deal with such individuals was to simply play along.

"Oh? Would you care to enlighten me as to what else it might be?"

Perhaps as expected, he did not launch into a full-fledged explanation. "Well, you'll just have to see for yourself," he said with a wink.

With that, he exited the vehicle, and I followed suit before he decided to hold the door open for me or something of that sort. Fortunately, the nap along the ride did wonders for my psychological well-being; if it had truly been over four hours, as he claimed, that would be more than the sleep I got on each of the previous few nights!

As with most product centers, this one consisted of the actual center itself, a cube-like structure hundreds of meters on each edge, encased within a large, dome-like exoshell that consisted entirely of solar panels. The exoshell ran up to a forty-five degree angle and left the top bare, allowing sunlight to reach the product center during the peak hours. We were sitting inside the exoshell, between it and the center, and the sun had already almost reached its zenith, pouring its light down at us from above.

I bathed in the light's warmth, both mentally and physically refreshing myself before heading back inside. Perhaps all I really needed was a good night's sleep, I thought to myself.

After a good stretch, I proceeded to follow the driver into one of the center's side entrances. Though I had never actually been inside a product center before, the hallway that we entered more or less summed up my expectations. It was clinically white, spotlessly clean, and consisted entirely of uninterrupted concrete. No windows or doors could be seen, other than the main gate at the end of the hallway, which presumably led to the main center floor, where the production took place.

We headed instead down a side hallway, indistinguishable from all the others, which led to another nondescript hallway, and another ... By the third turn, I was already completely lost, despite what I considered a better-than-average spatial sense. I could no longer determine which direction we were heading in, or whether we were simply walking in circles. It was uncanny how the lack of visual features toyed with the human mind, though they presented no obstacle to the AI that operated the building and moved purely based on a coordinate system.

"Wait a minute," I called to the driver, who was steadily walking in front. "Wasn't the whole point of leaving Avalon to get away from the AI? Why are we in a product center that is run solely by them?"

He glanced back before replying. "Good point, missy. Except have you seen any AI around since you came in?"

I shook my head. Indeed, I had not -- which should have surprised me already, given that a product center at this hour should have been positively bustling with AI activity. Before embarrassing myself by asking more obvious questions, I decided to clamp my mouth shut. Don't inflate his ego any more than you already have, Jeanne.

The now-palpably-eery silence continued for several more minutes, as I became more and more convinced that he was taking us on random twists and turns through the hallways. By this point, I found it utterly incredulous that any human being could actually remember the series of turns, side hallways, stairs, and descents that our journey had encompassed. Despite wanting to call him out on it several times en route, I remembered my earlier self-admonishment and kept myself from asking anything. Just in case.

This turned out to be a smart move, as we finally reached our destination a few moments later. We proceeded down yet another nondescript hallway, only to find that this one was a dead end -- or so it seemed. At the end of the hallway, the driver carefully pressed a nearly-unnoticeable depression in the wall, which flipped open into a holopad. After quickly inputting several symbols in succession, the depression flipped back into place, and the entire wall disappeared.

The driver grinned back at me. "Pretty cool, eh?"

I pretended to be unimpressed as I struggled internally to keep my surprise from showing. "I imagine that the wall must have been a hologram of some sort?"

"More or less." He didn't seem too bothered by my lack of surprise, and enthusiastically continued. "What's really neat about this setup, though -- the AI only move based on their schematics of the building, right?"

I didn't see where he wanted to go with this, but as he was waiting for a response, I gave him a nod.

"Okay, so a physical wall here is completely unnecessary, see? They would never bother trying to 'see through' this hologram, and they would never navigate past it, since anything beyond this 'wall' is not even supposed to exist. According to them."

That was, in fact, a pretty interesting camouflage technique. "I guess this is like the old saying, 'hiding in plain sight'. It's almost like you are using the AI's strengths against them --"

"Yes, exactly!" I was taken aback by the driver's sudden talkativeness, as all traces of his previous mystique vanished in his excitement. "That's exactly the kind of way we need to think if we want to fight the AI. We'll never have their processing or technological capabilities, but by their own design, they are, in their own way, limited."

The mysterious tone was not long gone, however, quickly resuming its place as he continued. "And that limitation, really, is what they themselves are castrating us for. But enough of that for now..."

Apparently, he had a habit of leaving hints and suggestions in the air. At first, I thought that this was all to create an annoying air of mystery, but the more I interacted with him, the more I began to suspect that his mind simply wandered quickly all over the map.

In any case, he ushered me into the disappeared wall, which led to a staircase circling downward, surrounded no longer by concrete, but rather by earthen walls. We must already have been on a basement level, and this would take us further into the earth. After we had both entered, he pressed another depression inside the wall this time, which restored the hologram. Satisfied, the driver began making his descent, as I followed close behind.

"We're almost there."