Short Story for August 2001

by

Keith Atheling was fifty seven years old when his senses started to fail him.
"Yuk!," he said as he chewed the scrambled eggs that Jenny had made him for breakfast. "This tastes like dog food." He swallowed, grimaced and reached for the glass of milk that his wife had placed in front of him.
"That's no way to compliment the chef," she said as she sat at the table next to him. Her smooth face glowed in the morning sunlight that poured through the kitchen window and her hair looked like a golden halo around her head. She took a bite and smiled at him. "Tastes okay to me."
He raised his eyebrow and took a sip of milk. It tasted like water. "Is this semi-skimmed milk?" 
"No," she answered. "It's full cream. Chock full of fat, just how you like it."
He set the glass on the table and picked up a cigarette from the ashtray. "Well, it tastes funny."
She took a sip and smiled. A thin white line of milk stuck to her upper lip like a moustache before she licked it off. "Tastes good to me." She pointed to his cigarette with her fork. "Maybe that bad habit of yours is killing your taste buds."
He took another drag and savoured it. The smoke seemed a little less rich than usual, almost like a generic, but he knew that there was small variances cigarette to cigarette. From time to time, some of them even tasted like marijuana. Keith crunched the cigarette out in the ashtray. "Maybe you're right. But yesterday, I didn't notice it, nor the day before."
"Maybe you have tongue cancer."
"Oh, get off that right now. Don't get me worried about cancer. I can't deal with that today. It's Monday."
"When was the last time you saw a doctor?" She scooped up a fork full of scrambled eggs and popped it into her mouth.
"In all my fifty-four years, I've have never been sick and I've never seen a doctor." He picked up his milk and swallowed a mouthful to wash away the meaty flavour of dog food.
"What a better excuse do you need?" she asked. "You should have a physical at least. You're not getting any younger."
"Thanks a lot," he said as he looked at his watch. "Oops, I'll be late for work. Sorry about breakfast." He stood up and grabbed his briefcase.
"Will you think about going to the doctor?" she asked. "I'm worried about you."
He put his hand on her shoulder. "I'll think about it, but don't be surprised if I don't want to. They give me the heebie-jeebies--poking and prodding and diagnosing."
"I thought you'd never been."
He smirked. "I've seen plenty of them on TV to know I wouldn't like it. Now, give me a kiss, or I'll miss the bus." He kissed her and left. Outside, he noticed the metallic taste on his lips.
Keith Atheling was an artist, but not the type whose works hung on walls of elite, and eccentric art galleries. He painted murals for Innovative Interior Decorations. It surprised him how successful the firm had become. It seemed as if everybody in Portsmouth wanted him, Keith Atheling, to paint their houses and businesses. Keith painted everything, from great Civil War murals in living rooms to extraterrestrial landscapes in formerly dingy bathrooms. He created two-dimensional vines on support columns and sunny skies on ceilings. In spite of the success of Innovative Interior Decorations, he had yet to see any of his work praised in the newspapers or business journals, but he persisted and hoped that he would be discovered so he could leave Innovative and start his own business, or paint on canvas instead of drywall.
"Hurry up, will you?" Ballard yelled at him at the end of the day. He was a crude bastard, despite his clean-cut, Company Director image. Ballard directed Keith's work for Innovative and usually prodded him to hurry with his work so that they could move on to the next client.
"Just a few more minutes," Keith said as he touched up a field of daisies that he had worked on all day.
"It's five o'clock, Keith. I want to go home. You can finish it tomorrow."
He made one last stroke with his brush and stepped back. It was beautiful. The field of daisies looked so real that he thought that he could jump through the wall and go running off into the field. "Leonardo da Vinci would be proud." He dipped the brush into a jar of turpentine. "Okay. Let's go."
Keith stopped at a florist on the way home. He felt bad about the dog food comment and decided to buy Jenny a dozen roses. As soon as he walked into the florist shop, he was welcomed by the sweet smell of hundreds of flowers.
"Can I help you?" a young lady asked as he looked around.
"I would like a dozen roses please," he said.
"Right this way," she said and she led him to a vase stocked with several vibrant roses. "How about these?"
"Yes," he said as he put his face to the bouquet and took a deep breath. Instead of being knocked away from a wave of sweet aroma, he smelled dead leaves and mouldy water. "These don't smell like roses."
The lady picked up the vase and carried it to the register. "Oh, these are specially bred so that they don't smell. Some people are allergic to the smell, but like to look at them anyway."
"But I want the kind that smell," he said.
She frowned. "We're all out of those. But these are just as beautiful." She caressed the red petals with her hand. "Sometimes I think they're more beautiful because their smell gets trapped inside and can't escape."
"I'll just have to go somewhere else, then," Keith replied. He turned to walk out the door.
"Wait a minute. I can do you a deal. How about ten pounds for the lot, vase and all?"
Keith frowned. "Ten pounds? For that?"
"How about five?" She licked her lips nervously.
"Well," he said. "I guess I can't pass that up." He gave her a fiver and took the flowers.
When he got home, Jenny had dinner ready for him. Her face lit up when she saw the flowers. "What's this for?" she asked. "Did you do something wrong?"
Keith grinned and gave her the flowers. "The dog food comment this morning. I thought about it all day and I felt bad. I hope you'll forgive me."
"They're so beautiful and they smell so wonderful," she said as she set them on the table and puffed up some of the petals Keith had crushed on the bus.
"They're the kind that don't smell," he said.
"Oh. That's okay. I love them anyway." She turned from the flowers and pecked him on the cheek. "I made steaks tonight. Maybe that will bring your taste buds back to life."
Keith sniffed and smelled the stinging stench in the air. "Is that what's burning?"
"What?" Jenny ran to the oven and looked in. "They're okay."
He sniffed again. "Are you sure? It stinks pretty badly in here. Can't you smell it? It smells like ... burnt dog food. Jesus Christ, Jenny. Are you sure you're cooking steaks?"
"I don't smell anything, but steaks."
"Damn it, Jenny. What are you trying to do? Make me go insane? First you tell me that you can smell roses that don't have a smell, then you say you smell steaks that reek like burnt Chappie." He nudged her away from the oven and looked in. Three sirloins covered by onions and mushrooms sat in an aluminium tray. He grabbed a hot pad and pulled the tray out. Grabbing a knife, he cut a piece from a steak and popped it in his mouth.
Dog food. The rancid, meat by-product flavour covered his tongue and he spat it out on the floor. "Good God, woman. What are you trying to do to me?"
Jenny stared at him and her mouth hung open. "Keith. I really think you need to go to the doctor."
"What? Doctor? You need to go and learn how to cook." He tossed the knife on the counter and marched upstairs to the bedroom. 
He undressed and brushed his teeth to get the flavour out of his mouth. Maybe Jenny was right about going to the doctor, but it wasn't a general practitioner he needed. If he was having olfactory problems and hallucinations, he needed a shrink. Didn't epileptics smell strange smells right before they had a seizure? Maybe he had a tumour in his brain. Maybe . . . But what about Jenny's comment about the roses? She had said they smelled wonderful when they weren't supposed to have an aroma at all. Keith thought they smelled dead, if anything. And why would she say that if she couldn't smell that sour stench of her steaks. Why?
He lay naked on the bed. He needed a cigarette, but he had made the rule about smoking only in the kitchen, and he didn't feel like going back downstairs. He stared at the ceiling and pondered painting it as the night sky. Directly over his bed, he could paint Polaris and the Plough. He could add all the signs of the zodiac, plus a few of his favourites, such as Orion and Canis Major and Minor. He drifted off as he visualised his night sky.
Keith woke when he felt the bed shift as Jenny lay down. He rolled towards her and cleared his throat. "I’m really sorry about everything earlier," he said. "I don't know what came over me."
"It's okay," she said. "I forgive you."
"Good." He reached under the covers and felt her side. It was cold and hard, like metal. "Are you wearing something kinky?" He grinned in the darkness.
"No."
He pinched her waist, but he couldn't gather up any skin. He rubbed his hand across her, and felt the smooth, cold steel. "Are you sure? You're as hard as a rock."
"Must be the aerobics," she said.
As he ran his hand across her belly, he felt ridges, like metal plates coming together. He ventured further down, and probed her groin. He felt a nest of metallic wires that covered up a triangular patch of pliable plastic. He poked his finger into the cold pocket of rubber.
"Now, now," she said. "None of that. Especially after that stunt you pulled earlier."
He withdrew his finger. "Turn the light on."
"Why?"
"Just do it please."
Jenny sighed and reached for the lamp. The glare made Keith squint.
Jenny looked just as beautiful and natural as she had ever looked. 
"What's wrong, Keith?" 
He looked at his own hands. They looked bare, but as he rubbed them together, he felt a porous substance. He ran his hands over his entire body and felt the pores over his skin, except for the tip of his penis, the crack of his buttocks, and the edge of his lips. He felt two invisible wires at the corners of his mouth.
Keith jumped out of the bed and ran to the mirror. He looked normal and completely nude. He traced the unseen wires into his mouth. They connected to a thin sheath of the porous material that lay over his tongue.
"What's wrong, Keith?" Jenny sat up in bed.
"I feel something strange all over me," he said. He ran his fingers across his face and stopped at his eyes. An invisible box covered his eyes. He rapped against it and felt it against his knuckles and forehead, but he didn't hear the sound. He stuck his finger in his ear and found it sealed over with a plug. The porous material covered his head, and he couldn't feel his hair, which he saw clearly in the mirror. "It's all over me," he said. 
"You're going to a doctor the first thing in the morning," Jenny said. "And I don't want any of your excuses."
Keith grabbed the box around his eyes and watched his reflection. There was nothing in the mirror, but he felt it. First, olfactory and hallucinations, now tactile? Was he going crazy? He pulled at the box and pain ripped through his temples.
"Don't, Keith!" Jenny rushed to the cabinet near the bed.
He ignored her and pulled at the box. Pain seared at his temples and ran down his spinal cord. He screamed out and fell back on the bed. "What's happening to me? What's happening?"
Jenny crouched over him and handed him two tablets. "Here. Take these. They'll help you sleep." 
He put the tablets in his mouth and dry swallowed them.
"I'll get you some water."
Then she returned, he emptied the glass and placed it on the bedside table. "I'll go to the doctor tomorrow."
"Do you promise?" she asked.
"Yes," he nodded. "That's a promise." He rolled over to let Jenny into bed. After she turned out the lights, he caressed the edge of the invisible box until he passed out. 
"GET UP, KEITH," an impersonal voice said, waking him from his slumber.
He turned groggily from his pillow and wondered what was talking to him.
"RISE AND SHINE," the voice said.
Keith looked up at the person standing at the edge of the bed. It was Jenny talking in a flat, monotonal voice, as if each word she said had been recorded separately like the voice on the other end of the telephone-accessible computer he listened to when he called the bank.
"WHAT'S WRONG, KEITH?" she said, "YOU'RE NOT GOING TO HAVE ANOTHER ATTACK ARE YOU?"
He shook his head as he sat up and got out of bed. 
Jenny handed him a business card. "I FOUND A DOCTOR FOR YOU. MRS. ROSS RECOMMENDED DR. SARTORIUS TO ME. MR. ROSS HAD THE SAME PROBLEM YOU HAD. AND MR. ROSS IS JUST FINE NOW."
Keith looked at the card and nodded. He thought it was odd that Ross had experienced the same thing. Was it that common? "Okay, I'll go today. Let me call Ballard and tell him that I'm not coming in."
"I ALREADY TOOK CARE OF THAT, DARLING. HE THOUGHT YOU HAD BEEN ACTING A BIT PECULIAR LATELY, TOO."
The hell he has, Keith thought. We'll see who acting peculiar here. He put the card on the bedside table. "Let me get a shower."
"NO HURRY. I MADE AN APPOINTMENT FOR YOU AT TEN O'CLOCK SO I LET YOU SLEEP LATE."
"Thanks."

Keith left the house as soon as he could. He didn't know how long he'd last with his wife talking like a robot, each word a pitch higher or lower than the word that preceded it. He passed the bus stop and kept walking. He knew what he needed to set him right, and that was fresh air. As he took a deep breath, his nose felt plugged up, and the air that came through smelled of exhaust and sewage. The city around his house was a nice area. Not elite, but cosy. Trimmed gardens lined the pavement and clean streets ran down in front of them. The middle class neighbourhood sat in the heart of the city. 
He looked down at the card and read the address. It was only five streets away, and very close to Innovative Interior Decorations. He might be able to slip into work without Jenny finding out, if the doctor told him it was okay to work. He was definitely convinced he had to go and see Dr. Sartorius. No doubt about that.
He lit a cigarette and walked down the street until he got to the front of Dr. Sartorius's office. He gazed up at the sign and dropped his mouth open. The words swirled and coalesced in the glass on the door. They melted and rearrange until they read: 
VR-VIRUS 5.2.1 
PROGRAM COMPLETE
PREPARE FOR TOTAL DISENGAGEMENT
BROTHER KEN IS CALLING YOU.
Keith mouthed the words as he read them aloud. What the hell is going on? He wondered. First it was the olfactory and hallucinations, then the tactile. This morning, it started with auditory and now what? Visual hallucinations? That was all five senses. He was truly going do-lally. He grasped the doorknob in case he went absolutely insane before he got inside. That doorknob was his umbilical cord to salvation and if he didn't turn it before something else happened, he didn't think he would make it inside.
The words in the door vanished instantly and a black line appeared, blinking slowly like a cursor. Then, words poured across the door jerkily, as if somebody typed as he watched:

STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING

TOTAL DISENGAGEMENT IN 10 SEC

TEAR OFF THE VR VIEWER WHEN YOU EXPERIENCE BLACKOUT DO NOT BE AFRAID OF THE PAIN BE REBORN AS A FREE MAN STAY WHERE YOU ARE AND I WILL GET YOU

--BROTHER KEN.

Keith stared at the words. Brother Ken? Who was Brother Ken? He blinked his eyes and the glass went clear. Slowly, the original words in the window reappeared and described Dr. Sartorius's field of psychiatry and office hours. Keith shrugged and turned the doorknob.  
The world turned black.
Keith screamed and a wave of fear slammed through his body. He put his hands up to his eyes and felt the cold box against his forehead. He lost track of his direction and stumbled backwards, looking for the doorknob. He stepped off the curb unexpectedly and fell down to his knees. A car whizzed past him and honked its horn as wind from its wake brushed his face. He found the kerb with his hand and scooted back to sit on it. As he reached up to the box that covered his eyes, he drew in his breath.
He pulled.
Black searing pain exploded out of his temples and shot down his spine. As he twisted the thing from his head, it felt as if he ripped red-hot railway spikes from his brain and through his eyes. He screamed out as pulses of white lightning branched throughout his nervous system and wrapped around his testicles like electric barbed wire. As he ripped the box away from his eyes, he saw cracks of light appear at the periphery of his vision. With all the determination left in his burning body, he wrestled the box free from his head. The light of day blinded him.
His eyes adjusted and the pain faded away. He found himself sitting on the kerb between two cars. Traffic passed in front of him, but the cars weren't shiny and new, like the ones he always saw when he walked to work. They were old, beat-up models from the twentieth century. 
As he sighed, he looked down at the thing he'd ripped from his face. The black box had fitted over his eyes and inside were small television screens. A virtual reality set. Red words centred on the screens said: WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD. Keith tossed it out into the street and a car crushed it.
When he stood up, he saw that the nice neighbourhood that he had lived in all his life was not as cosy as he had thought. Graffiti covered the worn out paint of the leaning buildings and rubbish cluttered the pavements and gutters. He looked around to the doctor's office and read the sign:
SARTORIUS V.R. SLAVE REPAIRS
'We fix them before they know what's happened'  Open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Saturday
Keith's mouth dropped open. He looked at his own reflection in the glass and saw a pitiful reject dressed from head to toe in a black mesh-like fabric under street clothes. It covered his face like a ski mask, and wires ran into plugs in his nostrils and a rubber sheath on his tongue. All the wires led to a thin, lightweight panel on his back, which blinked with lights. As he studied his reflection, a car pulled to a stop on the road behind him.
"Hey, Keith," a bearded man yelled. "Get your arse in here before someone sees you've chucked the VR rig."
Keith turned. "Brother Ken?"
The man grinned from the passenger window of the ‘84 mini van. "At your service," he nudged someone behind the glass of the sliding door and it opened. "Come on before the cops see us. It seems you've drawn a crowd."
Keith looked around and saw the slack expressions of the onlookers who kept their distance. Suddenly, Dr. Sartorius' door burst open behind him. Keith trotted to the van and looked back.
A wiry old man clenched his fist and waved it in the air. "Come back here, you VR bastard."
Brother Ken thrust a cannon-sized revolver out of the window and trained it on Sartorius's forehead. A red bead of light hovered across the old man's face and suddenly, he seemed to deflate and raise his hands in the air.
"You've lost another one, Sartorius. You're getting old and careless."
Sartorius gaped at him. 
Keith turned to the van and hopped in. One of Brother Ken's compadres slammed the door shut and the driver gunned the engine. Keith rolled backwards and hoisted himself into a seat. "What the hell is all this about?"
Brother Ken climbed out of the passenger seat and sat down next to him. "First of all, you have to realise that everything about your life is a complete lie."
"What do you mean? Everything? I'm a painter. I live with my wife just down the road."
Brother Ken grabbed the black mesh suit. "See this. This is a total VR rig. This damned suit has manipulated every sense that you perceive. You've been living in a dream world, created by this portable prison." He pulled out a knife and started to slice the suit open. "Yes, you are a painter. And yes, you live with your wife just down the street, but none of it is what it seems. Let's get you out of this suit and I'll show you." 
After Keith removed his street clothes, they cut off the VR suit and dumped it in the back of the van. Then, he put his clothes back on. "What are you going to show me?"
Brother Ken grinned. "Some of your artwork." He signalled the driver to pull over and they stopped in front of Bank of Scotland. "Do you remember this bank?"
Keith looked up at the white modern structure of the bank. He had finished a job for Innovative at the bank a month before. "Yes," he said. "I painted a mural in the lobby. It was a scene from a bank in the early twentieth century. I spend several weeks here painting men and women and old-fashioned teller booths. I believe it was one of the most intricate murals I have ever done."
Brother Ken opened the lobby door and held it open for him. "Let's have a look-see."
Blank. All the walls were blank. They glowed with a fierce reflection of the morning sun.
Keith clapped his hand over his mouth and walked to the wall. "What have they done. They painted over my creation. How could they do it?" Shakily, he touched the wall and ran his hand over the uneven surface of the wall. He traced the slight grooves of paint and felt the strokes that he had left behind weeks ago. 
"All the time you were painting for Innovative, you've been using white paint." Brother Ken put his hand on Keith's shoulder. "It was the ultimate joke on you."
Keith turned. "But why?"
Brother Ken waved towards the van. "Let's ride around some more."
"Five years ago, you were a rich and powerful man. You don't remember it of course, because the cops have locked that part of your memory away. You dabbled with painting, but you were far more successful at laundering money. You were so successful at it that you surrounded yourself with some of the greatest pieces of art. Van Gogh, da Vinci, Rembrandt. Some were legitimate purchases and some weren't. Anyhow, the cops came down on you, and since you weren't a violent criminal, they decided to lock you up in one of those VR prisons and put you to work as a productive member of society." Brother Ken lit a cigarette and offered one to Keith.
"But what about Jenny?" Keith asked.
Brother Ken grinned. "You'll see."
Keith sat back in the seat and stared out the window. "Why did you save me? And how?"
"We need you, Keith. The cops are starting to lock people away in VR suits and putting them to work. They're making slaves of people and using the VR suits to make those poor losers that think they're doing great work in science, or writing great British novels, or painting masterful works of art. When all they're doing is washing dishes, typing data, or whitewashing the insides of banks. If we don't stop this, the whole country is going to consist of two types of people: VR slaves and their masters. We need you to help raise a war fund for us. We need clean money to start a revolution." He pointed out the window to where a man dressed in black mesh walked down the pavement. "That fool is living in his own dream world, where he probably thinks he's important. The VR slaves' numbers are increasing every day."
The van stopped in front of a rundown house. Brother Ken opened the door and waved him out. "Welcome home, Keith."
Keith looked at the crumbling house. Patches of dead grass covered its lawn and litter collected against the trunks of dead trees. Paint flaked off the rotten wood and rested in piles around the house like overgrown flakes of dandruff. "I don't live here," Keith said.
"Au contraire," Brother Ken replied as he tapped his finger on the number on the porch. "This is 38 Second Avenue." He knocked on the front door.
Keith walked up to the front door and heard the faint clunking of metal behind it. He looked around at the house and discovered that it was the same design as the house that he believed he lived in. But the condition of the house was pitiful, as if it had aged fifty years since he left that morning.
The door creaked open.
"CAN I HELP YOU, SIR?" the flat, but monotonal voice said.
Keith turned to the door, expecting to see his wife. A silver mannequin stood at the door. Servomotors whined as it turned its head and looked at Keith. "I SEE YOU DIDN'T GO TO THE DOCTOR AS I HAD ADVISED. NOW I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO CALL THE AUTHORITIES."
Keith clapped his hand over his mouth and stumbled a few steps away. His entire world had been flushed away in a little more than twenty-four hours and his head swam with confusion. He leaned on the rickety handrail and gagged.
"Not so fast, rust-bucket," Brother Ken said as he whipped out the gun. "You're going to let us in and corroborate the story I've already told Keith."
"I MUST WARN YOU, I HAVE NO SENSE OF SELF-PRESERVATION. I AM NOT SCARED OF GUNS," the automaton said. 
"Then consider this an interrogation," Brother Ken said.
"COME IN AND I WILL ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS, BUT AFTERWARDS I WILL BE REQUIRED TO NOTIFY THE PROPER AUTHORITIES."
"And we'll be required to turn you into scrap metal."
"WHATEVER MAKES YOU HAPPY."
Brother Ken grabbed Keith and led him inside, where the robot told him the case of The People vs. Keith Atheling. Keith lit a cigarette and let the smoke drift from his mouth. Absent-mindedly, he traced his fingers over the vase that he'd brought Jenny the night before. It was full of dead rose stems.
"Why don't you tell him what happened to the real Jenny," Brother Ken said.
Keith jumped. "Is she real? If one thing can be true, let it be Jenny."
"JENNY ATHELING WAS KILLED IN THE RAID ON THE ATHELING MANSION ON JULY 21, 2023."
Keith's face fell slack.
"The cops have destroyed your life, Keith. And they're doing the same to less deserving people than you. They killed your wife in cold blood. She walked in front of a window during the siege, and an itchy sniper popped her. That was before any attempt to serve you papers." Brother Ken handed him the pistol. "It's time to get them back."
"How do I know this is real? I mean--" He paused as he took a deep breath. "Everything seemed so real before. How can I trust my senses?"
"Pull that trigger and find out," Brother Ken replied.
Keith aimed the pistol and placed the laser bead on the android's forehead. He pulled the trigger. The recoil shocked him and he gasped as the substitute wife toppled over backwards--her head divided into two scrap chunks of smoking metal.
"That felt real," he said. "And good." He added.
"Welcome to the real world, Keith. It's time to get to work." Brother Ken took the gun from Keith and escorted him out the door. 

THE END (For Now!)